0:00  
are lurking watching, you can actually join us. This is an open forum discussion, we're going to be talking about our Connected fundraising community. I'm going to put some information about that in the chat. Let me get that going. There we go. Okay. Oh, no, it's I don't need to I already got ahead of it. If you actually scroll down, folks, in the session notes right below us, you'll see how to join the connected fundraising. thing. So, okay, it might just be us chatting, and that's perfectly fine. But then you get to drive it. But, folks, if you do want to join, we'd love for you to actually pop on and have a conversation with us. We'll do some formal introductions and then talk about what we're going to be talking about today. So Alicia, why don't you give us an introduction to yourself, and if others join will will allow them to introduce themselves. It's as simple as hitting the share your audio visual, and then you could pop in and join the conversation. This should be an open thing. We got 26 people watching us and it could be just you want to lurk, that's fine. Use the chat then to at least participate.

1:22  
Perfect. Well, thank you, Tim. My name is Alicia Vermeer. I am the Operations Director of Community Youth concepts, which is a youth serving nonprofit organization located in Des Moines, Iowa. I've been with the organization since 2016. But last summer, so about 15 months ago, I was promoted to be the operations director. I don't know how long I've been connected with our, with our community, our online community, but I feel like it happened around that time. And so I cannot say enough good things about the Slack channel and our zoom, coffee chats. And all of these things that the neon ecosystem has offered and how much it has personally benefited me to have peers to really ask questions of get advice brainstorm. So yeah, I'm really excited that there's a whole session talking about community today.

2:26  
It is and it's driving a lot. So folks, if you're just joining, you can join the chat. And we'll have a dedicated focus topic. So if you're wondering what is this community that you're even talking about, right underneath, if you scroll down, right below the thing that says decks and resources, provided, we don't have a deck, we're having a chat. Below that notes has joined the connected fundraising community. And what the connected fundraising community does is it's a few different resources that we've established that kind of augment product. So we have our product team, and we just came out of our product keynote. But this is more for getting people like Alicia, together, we're just creating a space to share to feel like you're part of the conversation. And so there's an email, kind of update that we try to give on a monthly basis. There's a Slack community, that's probably the biggest thing, none of this costs anything. And so where I want to take the conversation is is this was an idea that was born out of kind of last year. Is is when we said let's try this out. And right now, if I actually pop into the Slack channel, which is is very easy to join, and it doesn't cost anybody, anything to actually join. We have about we're heading toward 400 People who are just in that alone. And the biggest thing happening right now is people posting in the superfans channel. If you've ever used slack, there's actually a little guide that we've made that says this is how to use Slack if you've never used it before. But the superfans has been fun because we have people posting like their checklist. And there's people who are like this is my first time here and stuff like that. And that's that's where we want to continue to give that space. But there's things that have worked. And there's things that haven't. And we want to understand what is going to be most beneficial for you. It's not what I think it is it's what the community thinks it is. Now Alicia, I want to want to actually point out to something for people how important the community was to driving Generosity Xchange itself.

4:50  
So Tim is very, very open to feedback. In fact, not only is he open to it, he actively seeks feedback out from Nonprofit Professionals have, what do you need to be successful? What professional developments do you need. And something that I really appreciate is there's ways to plug in no matter the size of your nonprofit organization, we, I work for a relatively small nonprofit organization, we have eight full time employees. Some people might have eight full time employees just on their marketing team. So what I find very valuable is to meet a diverse group of people, and to be able to take those nuggets of learning away from that, you know, translating it from someone else's context to our own. So I think that that's how a lot of the ideas for this year's generosity xchange were determined was by getting feedback from nonprofit professionals like me, and like the 400 of us who are on the Slack channel. To what do you think, what do you need? And how can we help which I really appreciate?

6:03  
So if you're, you know, we have several dozen people watching this. So thank you. And I want to invite you to be part of like, yeah, exactly that like, that's the thing, like people are overworked. They're frustrated. And, and especially in a digital world, where and I'm going to be honest, a lot of professional associations that might have locally handled that, like a local AFP chapter, they really are, are kind of reeling. Still, in the wake of the pandemic, I attended different conferences locally, and it's like, it's great, you know, people are like, I'm excited to be in person, and then you're still getting like a bunch of product pitches and stuff like that. And that's not what we want. So, the call to action, by the end of this session, in in, you know, let's see, we got about till three .. 4:15 eastern, right. So in about a half an hour. What I want to start and we will be calling attention to this afterwards, if you join and you can join it the link below if you haven't, and I get notified when you do so I'll see. We're gonna identify in the community 12 topics by the end of the year. That you. Not me, not Nolan, not Steve Kriter. You want to get answers to I don't. And they have to be, in my opinion, probably tactical things not like, what's the like philosophy that you have around fundraising? It's like, No, we had a lot of people who are like, I don't know how to do a nurture campaign. And what we'll do is we'll choose those 12 questions. And today. And if you want to just stay in the chat, Nan, Charlotte, Violet, thank you for joining, you are participating. If you just want to do that, that's fine. You don't have to go on green. But by the end of the day, I want to figure out one topic. We're gonna choose one of the questions today. When we went through generosity xchange, we had 1500 people registered. And so I don't know where they like we have a lot of people here, but I hope more people come. Right. And so how do I start from nothing? That's a good one. Right? So that might be one when we start with and so when we asked during registration, what do you want to learn? I looked at that a lot. And let me see if I have it like super quick, right? I don't want to distract people from from, like things. But I know I had a tweet that I put Yeah, I had the word cloud. So let me open this up and see if I can share this. So let me Oh, you're gonna you know what, you're gonna get a little behind the scenes here. No, I could do a tab. I can do a window. There we go. Okay. Let me share this. Do you see that? Yeah, we do. This is what everybody said when they registered for generosity. Uh huh. Uh, huh.

9:08  
Fundraising, nice and big. donor strategies, everything. Wow,

9:13  
everything was up there a lot, actually, which is kind of like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that, necessarily. So and we're starting to get good traction in the chat. So Nan. So yeah, we're gonna choose one of the things out of the 12 and then the call to action after the conference for the next few months leading into the end of December, we're going to get those 12 topics. I'm going to establish a schedule because Alicia is always like, I will join the call if I know when it's on the thing. So that's, that's screw up number one that I did is that I didn't have enough time to get ahead of the calendar. We're gonna get ahead of it. So we're gonna know what 12 Things we're going to do. Then we're going to do 12 sessions each month and we'll have Have a thought leader like Mallory Erickson, who pertains to that topic join in kind of a conversation for 15 minutes on their expertise. And then it's just open Q&A. Whatever you want to ask. Now I have a question relating to the format there, Alicia, that that I know I've posed to you that will pose the community. But let's get into it, folks for the next half an hour. Okay, so let's keep it going. And you can join, you can hit join, if you want to join the conversation if you're finally like, shut that guy up. I want to I want to I want to talk. So we got Nan late we got Violet, Nan and Charlotte, thank you for posting. So we got Violet: "How do I start from nothing effectively--no donors?" That's a good one. We have Nan, "Here's my issue: We use our social media platform for appealing to our clients. Science teachers cannot use the same platform to appeal to new donors. Is there a solution?" Oh, yeah, You're doing it. Sorry. Can I get your opt in? So I could take a picture because this is exciting. Okay, Violet, let it because Nan's got a great question. Charlotte's got a great question. Finally, you joined. So you're gonna get first crack. So tell me more about your organization.

11:21  
We're a makerspace. We are based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And we have two staff members, me and our executive director. And we've done well getting grants, we were lucky to have spent the last two years working on one really large grant that let us get staff let us stabilize kind of our our member community, get the earned revenue we needed. But, you know, we're still really trying to get that contributed revenue. So, so we're at that stage, and I'm in charge of that. And I haven't built a donor base from nothing before so. So we got Neon to do a number of things. donorship included, but not the only thing. And so now we have the tools we need, and we are trying to get started. But, you know, we feel like we have no traction and we're just kind of like running in place.

12:17  
Alicia, what feedback do you have,

12:19  
I just want to recognize how challenging it is to be a team of two and run an entire nonprofit organization. I I know for myself, personally, I can like see my to do list. And I can see everything that we should be doing to be successful and to get new donors and to communicate great with all of our donors. But ideally, there's only eight hours in a workday, and you can't do everything all at once. And you blink and months go by. So I just want to recognize that that's really challenging. And I know that it's hard, it's really hard. One of the tips that I remember, neon had sent out last year, I think maybe to prepare for Giving Tuesday, I can't remember to him. But there were emails that had like one or two things to add to your to do list. Yeah, that was so attainable. And I know that you were working from a grant. And now you're trying to expand to individual donors. But one of those things was to if you have any donors right now to reach out to those people via email thanking them for being a donor and offer to schedule a phone call or a coffee meeting. So I just did that with one person a day. And that was so much more attainable and easier to wrap my mind around than like, oh my goodness, how should I like, how should I reach out if my goal is to get 10 new donors like, how am I going to do that? So for me, it was helpful to break it into like really, really, really manageable steps that I could do one day at a time to start to make that progress. Yeah.

14:09  
Kim, can you talk I know you're having issues with your camera, but you did Ping

14:14  
i Yeah. Can you hear me okay?

14:17  
We hear you great, loud and clear. Okay. And Kim is another another member of the connected fundraising community that that like she actively outreached and said, I have to show you something that I've done. So now she has a session on generosity xchange that's tomorrow about that, but for Violets needs what would you suggest while I answer Charlotte?

14:42  
Well, so for me, we have a little bit bigger organization. And so we do have some folks that are responsible for outreach in that but because I work primarily on the tech side with neon and everything. It was literally blocking time with them to say, Okay, we're going to work on our acknowledgement letters, we're going to work on the system letters and making sure we have as much automation in place to reach out to our donors and things as possible so that they can get those touches and they can be personalized, and they can be up to date, and we can communicate frequently, personally and efficiently with our donors. And then from just a personal perspective, I, I, if you looked at my calendar, it is blocked out like I plan my day thoroughly, right? I block in time for, you know, issue management or whatever, free time or whatever, every day, but I block in and I plan everything out. And I have a I'm pretty rigid, people have learned that, you know, if I, if I say, No, I'm, I'm scheduled in that time, I can't just drop everything and go do that. Because otherwise you do. You spend all your time fighting fires, and you don't get time to work on those things that are so easy to push off, like reaching out to a donor or whatever. So I have time blocked every single day, where I'm reaching back to donors in either responding to donors or reaching out and initiating with them.

16:29  
A lot of it's communication. I can cite some data on that point. But I, you know, who've made it be to welcome Nan to the to the room. So and I know you had a question about social media, too. So welcome, and feel free to share.

No we can hear you.

16:51  
I know I'm listening.

16:52  
You're listening. You want to be on screen. But listen, awesome. That's fine. Cool. Yeah, Violet, I would say like, because I think back to before Neon, my first job was for a day labor center in Chicago, and it had two people. And that not that wasn't exactly screaming like donate, right? Like, like, we did antiracism campaigns in the south side of Chicago. That that, that wasn't really enticing to donors, in many ways. And then the next organization I worked for was was a great mission for adults with developmental disabilities. It was an art studio, actually. So I get the makerspace side of things. And, you know, I'm gonna try to avoid saying Yen's, but like, like, you got to kind of lean into your community. That's, that's one of the things there. But when I got to that job, the founder, one of the co founders had walked out with the database, because it was an Access database. And they literally walked out with it. So I got there. And it was like, I don't have a donor database. And where, so I even want to point to, and I'm just thinking about this right now. But I want to point to the fact that like we even named it superfans for the checklist. That's kind of the same thing that you need to do if the donor base because you're going to find somebody who's very passionate, like, Violet, can you think of somebody even just finished it just one person? That's, like, passionate about the work that you're doing?

18:25  
Oh, yeah, yeah. Yes.

18:27  
Build around that. You start to build around that. And you can build basic archetypes of that, right? You can say, Okay, this is the uh affluent lady who like her passions, the arts, right? Like, like, that's an archetype. There's the businessman or lawyer who wanted to go to art school, and and then Mom and Dad said, Get a real job. So this is where they're going to funnel their energy, right? Like, you're going to know. Yeah. And then you can do is you choose a few of those. And then you start to build around the things that that Alicia and Kim are talking about, where it's like, it's not just a matter of setting your schedule, but then establishing who who matters. And why do they matter? To me?

19:20  
Violet, is your Makerspace youth focused? Like, is that your

19:24  
hands? No. So we're actually we're adult focused. We have done youth programs with partners. But that's kind of like we'll kind of always be adult programming focused. We have. We're fortunate we have an Makerspace ish that is specifically focused on youth engagement in the city, and they work closely with us. And then we're kind of like the other side of that coin.

19:52  
Awesome. I was gonna say like, I work for a youth organization and you We do in school and out of school programs and donors love, like I love talking to donors. And we always have really nice conversations. But I think what they really love is hearing from, in my case, the students. In your case, it might be your clients. But what the impact is what they're working on, because I'm sure at a makerspace, they're probably creating some really cool things. And something that I like to do, too, we don't have a huge budget to do this. But I try to find the you know, like one thing, students have been working on a quarter and send it to donors. So like, one of my groups made, they made cards that said, you matter. And they identified people in their lives that they wanted to tell you matter. So I mailed those to donors with like a little description of the project. So there might be like, fun, creative ways to that donors will really connect with what you're doing, because they just want to see what's going on this month or this quarter.

21:04  
But by that is part of your question, just what do you how do you even get a list of donors to send to, or a list of people to start sending to

21:14  
That would be great.

21:17  
Don't buy lists, that's my thing. Don't buy lists.

21:23  
But I, I definitely want. So I mean, we have so we have a membership community. And maybe this is a relatable problem is. So a lot of the people who are like our super fans, they are our members, they pay for a membership. And they range the gamut. Some are extremely affluent, and some are low income. And it's because we create tiers based on income. So but we do have who would be our donor base, a lot of the times and they don't say it outright, but you get the tone after a while. Like they're like, I pay for a membership. That's my contribution. Right? And so I'm trying to separate the dialogue and get them to understand without, you know, I want to do this one day, but without having to pay a bunch of money to like, incentivize constantly, like, you know, having that budget would be great. But here at the start, I'm like, How do I get my members? How do I start a dialogue with my members where like, they understand. And I've said all the rational stuff, I you know, I literally go they're not going to be rational. Right? Yeah. So so it's like getting them to understand that like they're paying for the service, they're not donating to the organization. So they will then on top of their membership, donate to the organization. And even then starting there, because then I want to do external donors and stuff. But that's where I'm starting, because that's what I have to work with is I have 180 paying members who are passionate about the space. Is it

22:55  
something we did, I don't know if it would apply for you or not. But we have a physical space, we're in different. We do vocational and apprenticeship training and stuff like that. But we actually had some superfan some that hosted a dinner event for their friends at our facility, right, where they were able to, they brought in their network of people. And they we had our staff there to help give the specifics of our organization and how we function and where our needs are. But they were there as the host of the event and to kind of introduce our organization to their peers and talk about what a wonderful organization they think we are and why they support us. And that, you know, then fed in and then they had to dinner and they were able to tour our facility and ask questions. And and, and that did lead that did lead to an increase in, you know, donors, new donors that we hadn't had, you know, I don't know if that would work for you.

24:06  
I love that idea. Thank you.

24:08  
I want to hear from from Nan and Charlotte, if you wanted to share anything because I think I saw you raise your hand Nan. Yeah,

24:15  
well. I think my organization is very difficult to pigeonhole in terms of a broader development community. Yeah. And just in a couple words, what we do is we basically, we're trying to improve science education to stem not just primarily in Massachusetts, by training science to K12. Science teachers, and also informal science educators like the education staff at a science museum, for example, or Nature Center, and we're teaching them STEM content at the level they need to understand to be able to teach it. So we're not giving them a graduate, we're giving them a graduate course. But this content isn't graduate level. We're not expecting third graders to do, their science. Then we also help them learn to use inquiry based investigations and hands on activities, rather than lecturing at people, which is never successful, especially with kids. And we've been doing it for almost 40 years, very successfully. The pandemic actually was a huge benefit to us, because we had to go virtual, and anyone anywhere in the country can see what we do on a computer. So we suddenly now have people in other states interested in what we do, but we're not a big enough organization to expand in that way. So we're continuing to run some virtual programs. But we are basically known for being place based and doing hands on stuff. And we did find a way to do hands on activities, even virtually by sending kits of materials to our participants. At this point, we have a really good and large reputation for the excellence of our programs. And because we're rather unique in that we collaborate now in more states than just Massachusetts, but we have collaborating partners all over the place who are who are other nonprofits. So from a fundraising perspective, it's dicey, because we don't want to infringe on our partner's territory. Yeah. But I have two issues that I don't know how to deal with. One is that our founder, who is a magnificent woman, but she's 97, and she's still engaged. Although she's not entirely copus mentus anymore. The database I'm working from for donors is essentially her Christmas card list. And half of them are dying, and the rest of them are her family. And my board is dysfunctional, and in spite of being asked, hit over the head, harassed, harangued whatever, we have not come up with any new names to add to the database, and I sort of at my wit's end, because I don't know where to go to find new donors, I went, I used to be the chairman of the board of a family scientific foundation. And I went back to, we're closed, unfortunately, now, but I went to all my former trustees, and I wrote my own appeal letter, specifically targeted to them. And I prepared a template that, to give to the board to say, look, just use this wording and send it to five of your friends. Your friends, are your friends, because they are interested in the same things you're interested in, pick the ones that you think will respond. They didn't do it. They haven't done it for years. i What do I do? Oh, and the other thing is that, clearly, development is going more and more digital and using technology. And I don't even want to get into cryptocurrency because

24:28  
we don't need to get into cryptocurrency. The Crypto Kim has has covered that

28:52  
at her we're not going there because my

28:54  
own you don't need to, I'm gonna tell you right now, but sponsor that if you do want to get into

29:02  
it, I'm aware of this. And I feel like our marketing, especially through social media really needs to adapt technologically and catch up. And that we probably have access to a large number of potential new donors through social media. But I can't get anybody else in the organization to focus on that instead of well, we're appealing to our teachers because we want them to sign up for our programs.

29:33  
So a few a few things is we've had a few folks join the chats, pop it up, Kathleen, thank you not only for joining but using the my little avatar alternative idea for your profile picture. So thank you once I started doing that I was like happy so I had to get ready for our next session on the mainstage for recession stuff and probably seven minutes but Alicia if you could kind of take us on home afterwards and maybe report back on, what's a topic that we could start to do. I've written several down, I want to offer two items. One is generosity xchange specific. We have a great session tomorrow, called creating a community of support that sustains. I think all of you need to go to that one. There's some other great stuff. But like, that's one that I think, for this topic is going to be great cuz Katrina and Otis of turnkey are like experts, this type of thing. The other thing, and this is I'm going to use this to gradually get into Kathleen's question and address some of these things is, so one of the the items that the unhelpful pay for me to get was a certificate and philanthropic psychology. And all it is, is just a fancy way of saying, Why does somebody we have to move people from situational gifts I am giving because I saw something on social media I am giving because, like, I actually signed up as a member and I don't even count that as giving, but it's money, right? Like, that's situational giving, then there's relationship based giving. Nan's example of the Christmas card list is relationship based giving, because those donors when your founder, rest in peace eventually does go away, they're probably not going to stick around, or it's going to be harder to keep them to stick around. So that's why the ultimate one and Kathleen, I'm getting to your question there is identity based giving. Bingo, Robert, it's how does somebody shift and it's even something as simple thing that I've been saying in your product that you can do for your newsletter for your thank you receipts, when somebody gives, is everybody frames it as thank you for your gift of X dollars on this date, like you gave to Giving Tuesday. Thank you. If you start to frame it, as you are a generous person, because you gave, even that little shift in your engagement and mentality starts to reframe how you look at things like data, how you look at your communications, and how you look at your prioritizations you put people first not their money. And what that means when you get deeper in there is what is the thing, like Robert says that has an emotional tie. Where like what Mallory was saying on the mainstage, if you heard her talk about is like she remembers the smell of the first day of school.

32:42  
Right? For us, we we actually have it built in there, welcome to the Zaman family, right you're, you're part of and building an in group, whether you're giving up your time, talent or treasures, you're part of the family, you're helping deliver the mission.

32:59  
So when you start to tether that to building that in group of super fans, of people who are specifically structured around your stuff that helps inform how you can tune the software to your needs Kathleen, because you can make decisions around things like list management, around custom fields that apply to creating the segmentation elements. Now I will say spoiler, Abby Jarvis, who's going to be doing our storytelling session tomorrow in the coaching area, her big project is new nonprofits for 2023. It's like, I think it's gonna be like our big campaign that starts so like, I just started is like, I think it'd be a big focus that we're going to deliver on in the coming year. But, Alicia, as I get ready for the next session, this is great. Can you maybe help collect some of this feedback and things like that, and then we'll start to set up in the community too. We'll go there. Continue the conversation, continue enjoy generosity xchange. But I want to know, what are these vital things you get to decide? I think we have a good idea. But let's get it going.

34:16  
Awesome. Happy to Tim. Do Do we only have this room for a certain amount of time will another

34:24  
like might stay open for like five minutes after it ends. You have 10 minutes like you have like 15 minutes before it might have you mosey on out. Excellent, excellent. So you got it. I know you don't really have to do anything other than keep doing what you're doing. So I just want to assure you from the tech side, like if I disappear, the room does not explode. Thank you. Hey, folks, I really I also want to thank you for being part of the event and sharing. By the way, like this is really great. And I'm really appreciative of all of you doing this because this is this is time out of your day. So I hope it's valuable. Awesome. Okay. You'll see me on the main stage. Thank you for giving me keeping me grounded. This is why like, did this my team was freaking out, Tim, you're not going to be doing this stuff looks like I'm gonna be you're gonna be fine. Thank you, Alicia, you rock. Thank you for helping me. You

35:19  
rock. Good luck with the rest of the afternoon.

35:21  
Thank you. Bye,

35:23  
bye. Awesome. Okay, what I love about this group is it's like, we can provide each other an insider and an outsider perspective on things like insiders, because we're nonprofit professionals or doing something in the realm of helping others and philanthropy for our careers. But we have an outside perspective where you don't have you can confide in a way that maybe you can't with others who are so closely related to the issues that you're facing. So I know people have been throwing ideas in the chat. Does anyone else have an issue or a question that you've really been struggling with lately that you think would be good for a topic, either it for the q&a, the monthly topics where we can get a presenter in chat, or just in general, what would be really helpful to have more information or more discussion around, oh, donor advised funds. One of my board members recently brought that up, and I just like stared at him like a deer in the headlights because I didn't know much about that.

36:35  
Well, and I just spoke with Anna the other day about some things that are coming, which is probably going to mean I have to totally change the way I'm handling donor advised funds, which is going to be a bit of a pain.

36:49  
Because of like new, like tax regulations or things like that, or no, just

36:55  
so currently, I have donor advised funds set up. So if so, John Smith, has a personal account. And sometimes he donates directly from his checking account or whatever. And then sometimes he directs a donation through his donor advised fund that comes from Fidelity or whatever, I create an account for that fidelity donor advised fund, and then I associate it to John Smith's personal account. But I because I couldn't do the conditional emails to let John Smith know that that came in, I created a campaign for donor advised funds just as a back end way to try and be able to send John Smith a note a letter and say thank you for the donation that you directed through your donor advised fund and have that special wording that's not a tax receipt and stuff. And what Anna told me was that they're going to be they're going to be coming Well, there's soft credit now, but they will be coming out with a way to she thinks there's going to be a way to designate donor advised funds as a type of soft credit or something like that. So I'm just gonna wind up having to see what they come out with and change it, I guess.

38:12  
Awesome. Awesome. Anything else? What are folks struggling with? What would be good? Yeah, Violet? Well, you got

38:22  
might be kind of broad, but I think it's for a reason. So my background is not in any of this whatsoever. My background is I went to school for photography, and, and then just kind of ended up in events management, and then ended up in nonprofit management. And we're like, really arts management. And then I found this position at this organization that I love, and myself became a super fan. But anyway, all that to say is that I am I am like struggling to decode. So I have neon, it's great. You know, any CRM really, but I'm struggling struggling to decode the terminology. Not just so much of like having a glossary of things, but like Neon has all these tools, they do all these things. And I'm struggling to be like, Okay, so like, why automate this thing? Or like, you know, why is this called a campaign? And why is this like, you know, I think it would be easier to understand how powerful these tools are, if we could start connecting them with the underlying development. Like, I know, he said, not talking about philosophies but really understanding the underlying philosophies that lead to the technical action steps because right now, I'm really good at action steps, but I'm really not at the point in my career where I understand what people are talking about developmentally. And, and I'm not going to go back to four year school to do this. I need to solve these problems like tomorrow. So

40:01  
mad, you have sparked so many thoughts in my mind. I think like, we joke in the nonprofit world that like everything is learned on the job, like learn as you go, you just like, well, I've never done this before, let's just learn and see how it goes. And I think one of the most horrifying things as I was like getting further into my career, and adulthood is like, no one knows what they're doing, like, how have we made it this far?

40:32  
Dangerous, it's like, Oh, my God, all these organizations are hanging on by a thread. And I'm not the only one.

40:38  
Yes, it's comforting and horrifying. At the same time. It's like, okay, maybe I'm doing okay. And then it's like, how are we all doing? Okay.

40:50  
Well, you know, I've been in philanthropy, on the giving end, for 35 years. And I'm now acting as director of development for my organization, which was only one of the several nonprofits I'm involved with. And being on the development end is completely different from reading grants, and saying, Oh, sure, we'll give them some money. And, you know, just kind of handing out the book. So I just realized this morning, that I'm about a year and a half into this, this half. And I'm only now really beginning to fall into place a little bit, where I know, at least for me, what things I need to keep track of, and then it's a lot more than just writing grants. And then remembering whether or not we've got them. So violet, I hear you I mean, actually, I went out and bought fundraising for dummies. Sounds kind of like crib notes are a good way to start.

42:04  
I think the lingo will come over time, I struggled with the technology piece of it. The computers, thankfully, and one of the sessions earlier, somebody was giving kudos to younger people. And I'm like, amen. I could not work I cannot do this job. If I didn't have the useful co workers that I have. They're so amazing. I think it took me 15 minutes how to get on here Oh, I have a different kind of a question. So we just finished our gala was very successful. Like there's, we work with the committee and ladies who do a wonderful job really putting this event together. At any event. There's a lot of work for the staff, right. But they're talking about next year, they want to do exclusive sponsorships where you would only have maybe one mortgage company one, hospital support one, whatever the business is. Now, I've only done this one other time. And that level came in at 25,000 gave you the exclusive sponsorship right at that level, and so on. So I'm kind of nervous about this. I feel like this is a really bad idea. Any thoughts on that?

43:40  
So this is not at all my area of expertise. But I am curious, like I've definitely heard of a presenting sponsor or things before, which seems to be that sponsor at the highest level, I would be curious, like, what, what the rationale is like, like, why isn't it ideal to have, you know, to banks, or to insurance companies or to hospitals sponsor you like it seems like that would indicate that you have a lot of support for your organization and a lot of credibility. So yeah, I guess I don't I don't quite understand what the reasoning would be to turn away sponsors but maybe someone else has more experience in that area.

44:27  
I'd say that for us we normally do I think what you mentioned Charlotte as far as the levels you know, so you platinum sponsor gold sponsor, whatever. And we have two different auto dealers that are you know, sponsoring we have two different banks that are sponsoring in it and sometimes there's same level, sometimes a different level. The only time we did an exclusive sponsorship was was when a sponsor specifically approached us about I want to be the only sponsor for this event. Can I Can we work something out? And so we We basically said, Well, here's what our target is for sponsorship. And they're like, yep, we'll pay it. And so it was at their initiation. Okay. And then and they haven't done it since either. But then, you know, the pandemic was in between too, so I don't know.

45:20  
Okay, that's helpful. I'm not crazy about that idea. We have our follow up meeting coming up. And I thought, Oh, this is a good group project question. Now, what about naming rights? For like capital campaigns?

45:36  
I would assume would be pretty wise to think through as an organization, just because naming rights like, you can really only have one, one names. So yeah, what exactly that level would be, you know, what is our What is our goal? And what what do we really need someone to be at to have naming rights for this new, whatever the capital campaign is for building or initiative or whatever? So I guess that would make a little bit more sense if it's like a naming rights thing. But yeah, just in general to be like, Oh, I think we should only have, you know, one hospital sponsor one. Yeah, that just seems a little odd to me. Thank you, Kathleen, Nan, anything else come into mind of what would be helpful? We talked about board management or development?

46:35  
Well, I think you've got technology and issues around that, especially for those in the older generation, who are still working, who we're not born with cell phones in our hands, and are very, I'm considering my age, I'm doing pretty well. But I'm really intimidated. By all of it, I only just got a smartphone. And basically, because everybody else has one, and I couldn't my my flip phone broke, and it didn't seem worth it to buy another flip phone. So I got the cheapest. But you know, I don't know how to use it. Like my kids yell at me all the time. Because I keep asking, How do I do this? And they keep saying it's intuitive mom, you just know how to do it? Oh, no, I don't

47:30  
ever have one before. It's not intuitive.

47:34  
I hate it, I really I do I can't stand the fact that we're all held hostage this way. But more and more, actually, I find that society is already switched, and that you're expected to have the cell phone and you can't do whatever it is they're asking you to do without a cell phone. So I'm being forced to learn by necessity. But, you know, that's a separate issue. But I think the use of technology in general, especially for older organizations, too, who have not been using it to the full extent available, that some kind of I don't know what some cause some kind of way for us to, to tap into it. As much as we can. A lot of the platform's have training sessions, but they tend to cram everything into one, you know, half hour or hour, and they go really fast, because they know where they're pointing on the page with the cursor. Whereas I'm still here going, where are we, you know, where are you on the page. So that kind of thing really isn't terribly helpful. But I'm always feeling like, I don't even have a clue what all is out there, let alone how to use it, or benefit from it. And that's just kind of an ongoing problem. I can't learn by doing because I can't do it, basically. So that's one issue. I think, I think, you know, leadership and dealing with boards and executive directors is frequently an issue. full transparency. I am co chair of the board of this organization, as well as the director of development but I, I keep the hats in different closets and I, you know, I'm being very, very careful not to intermingle the two. And the board knows that I'm the director of development, they gave me permission to do it basically. So, so but the whole thing about dysfunctional boards or my executive director that I work, who works for me, but whom I also work for, is a very difficult person and I think a lot of people probably need some support in dealing with the To the higher ups in their organizations. What else? I don't know, the dysfunctional board is my pet bugaboo, we can't even get them to form committees, let alone serve on them. I mean, it just, it drives me nuts. They're nice people, and they care about the organization. And they're, they each bring their own expertise and experience. But the end, they've all helped the organization individually, you know, behind the scenes, but they can't work together. We've been trying to do strategic planning for the last two years, because our plan we had ran out. And it took them a year to realize that they still couldn't get one. And so they extended the strategic plan for a year. And now we're, now we're on the second year that they haven't done yet. It's and stuff like that is just incredibly frustrating. It's frustrating as a culture, but it's even worse as, as a staff member where, you know, a little request, like give me five names. That's not asking anything difficult or time consuming. And they and they can't even get it together to do that. And I'm not in a position to say, Well, you've got to leave the board because you're not doing your job. I mean, they're volunteers. You can't fire volunteers. You have to handle them properly. I it's very difficult. But I also don't think I'm tip my organization is typical.

51:38  
Yeah. Push back a little bit. I do think you can fire volunteers. But I totally understand that. Man, it's really challenging. And I and I feel like most people, nonprofit professionals, and board members, like so many people get into this business, because you're passionate about the mission. But you don't really like get the training, you need to like really understand what you're signing up for. I was talking to who was this? I think it was a speaker at a different conference. And she was presenting on the role of board members and like distinguishing what should the board be doing? What should staff be doing? And one of the things she said is like, I like to tell board members, like as they're applying for their position on the board, like you should think of this as a part time job, like that's the level of commitment that you should be ready to bring to this organization. Because just like, as you said, man, like, there's going to be like time and expertise that's required. And so if you're not, if you don't have the time, or the capacity to do this, a board position probably isn't the right fit for now, maybe just a volunteer position is a better fit for you at the moment.

52:57  
But the big problem is that we're also a fairly homogeneous group in terms of professions. But considering that there are supposed to be 15 people on the board, we've got well, at the moment, we've got 12, I think we were already looking for two new board members. And then we lost three board members, suddenly, and so now we're we're looking for five. And we've always had trouble finding anybody in the first place. So I'm, you know, again, I'm feeling desperate. And then I'm right in the middle now of trying to identify several people were suggested by other staff members. And so I'm following up and, you know, sending emails and trying to arrange phone conversations. But once again, the board is kind of in the way because they want to do it with a nominating committee, but nobody's willing to serve the committee. I realize I'm sounding very negative, but

54:07  
that's what I get. That's what I mean by like an insider outsider perspective is because, yeah, it's nice to have these really frank conversations in a way that I agree

54:17  
I haven't had an opportunity to do that I'm still we're still working from home, all of us, we, we technically still have an office, which is basically where things are being stored at the moment. And our office manager goes in once a week or twice a week to collect the mail and, you know, phone messages and whatnot. But in from a board perspective, working from home turns out to be better for all of us because it saves us commuting time, from got, you know, going to and from board meetings. Whereas previously one of the issues that was a big issue in recruiting was that people just didn't have the time to you know, spend half have a date day getting there and half a day back or whatever. Because we are kind of spread out over over Eastern Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire and Vermont and a little bit Rhode Island, Connecticut. So to go to a board meeting was a big deal. And now it's it's seamless, and it's so much easier. We all really like it this way. But I don't even know where it's just, I find it just I keep I know that they care about the organization, I really, I really know they do. And they demonstrate it in lots of different ways. But they just can't get it together to work as a group, I wrote a board notebook for them with all of the board duties are are laid out. You know, it has all I mean, it has all the information anybody could use on our organization, it has our bylaws. It has lists of our programs and what they, you know, how does one differ from the other, we have a whole staff section about who's responsible for what, who reports to who, so forth, it's so they all have a board notebook, most of them probably wouldn't know where to find it, if you ask them where they have it. It's just tremendously frustrating. And yet, I believe I am so committed to this organization, you wouldn't believe the reputation we have there's a there's a new organization called rivet education. And they list it's a very exclusive list Do you have you have basically have to be invited to apply to be on their list, but it's the list of the top professional development organizations in STEM in the country. And we're listed we are listed there. I, I when I went our new executive, she's not new anymore. When we hired the executive director. I, I am the one that told her that she should be going to the Aztec national conferences as tech as the association of science and technology centers. So it's like all the science museums and nature centers in the country and even in the world. And so she started going to the meet to the conferences each year. And it turned out that really just as she started attending was when that community suddenly realized that they that they should be doing their own professional development in house. And so there we were already collaborating with some of them and, and with this successful, well reputed program. So they asked her to be the lead investigator on on a $250,000 grant from BP, which took our model around the country for two years,

58:21  
produced a white paper on best practices in collaboration and also in professional development. When we when the pandemic locked everything down our staff, we were in mid program with one of our programs. And so they really had to scramble to keep that program going for the for the teachers that were already participating the name, they did an extraordinary job. I don't know how they did it. But they made themselves experts in remote teaching and best practices in remote teaching. And so not only did they convert all of our programs, within a space of less than six months, they rapidly were recognized as the the experts in remote teaching around the country. And so they suddenly our staff suddenly started getting to, you know, invited to conferences and to well all zoom and webinars but by other organizations that wanted to know how to do what we had just done. So we have this huge reputation. And we really are as good as the reputation says we are I mean our education staff is extraordinary. And yet I can't I haven't got a clue how to how to spread the word further than we're spreading it I just in my God, I know it's technology and social media. But one of the problems one of the many problems I have is that basically the The executive director of micromanages, everybody, and the staff isn't really allowed to talk to each other. We know only 10 of us, and we see each other every other week for staff meetings. But if I have a question, say, I have a marketing question. And I want to ask the marketing, the, our director of, of media or media marketing person, I have to go through the executive director, before I'm allowed to ask her a question. Or if I have an idea, I have to give it to the executive director. And I'm, that's a disadvantage of working remotely, because if I were in an office, I could just go next door and and talk to somebody but she'd be listening in. I mean, it's not it's, we're being one from the founder down and our founder. As I said, She's extraordinary. She's 97. She's a Vanderbilt. But she, what people don't know is she's also she was married to a Wade, and the wades owned Western Union. So they were even richer than the Vanderbilts. She's got an incredible amount of money. And she's incredibly generous. And we think she's left us an endowment, but we don't know, she refuses to tell us, even though she's 97. And she never set us up with an endowment in the first place. They got an NSF grant for the first five years. And then after that, she just kept it was her her baby. And so she kept using her money to run it, which is wonderful and incredibly generous. But now we're sitting here going, she's gonna die. We know she's gonna die soon. She's already fading. So great, too. I just think she's a lovely person, too. But, you know, we could we could go down the tubes. Overnight, because, you know, a Vanderbilt Wade estate is not going to get probated overnight. So even if she left us an endowment, where does our funding come from? in between? You know, it's just, it's, it's really, it's one of my big frustrations with my current situation is that I only see all these issues, some of which could be resolved if people would only do the right thing. And I just, I don't know how to get around any of it straightened up. Nice. That sounds so challenging, I beg your pardon? No, no,

1:02:40  
that's just fine. That sounds so challenging, because I can tell how proud you are of the session. And it seems like you're doing incredible work in the community. One thought that came to my mind is I wonder if the organization would be open to remote board members. And maybe some of these folks who like look to you, as leaders in your field, even if they don't live in your city might make great point,

1:03:12  
that's a very good idea that, again, our biggest problem is identifying who those people might be. But it's certainly one that we that we are considering in all of this is just the biggest problem is finding people to reach out to, and again, not encroaching on our collaborating partners turf. We have we've been very lucky. I mean, we were set up with this format. And all of the programs, for example, are designed in collaboration with two to five of the organizations that partner with us in whatever region of the state, that program is going to run in. And so they're designed and, and presented in collaboration. We use our education staff, but we also use their education staff, we bring in guest lecturers as resources for for our participants. I mean, it's an it's a great model. And it's a wonder that we haven't had any real conflicts. I think, in 40 years, there's only been one when somebody pilfered something from us that they couldn't we didn't have a written agreement in place. We do now we we use one now but it's been a really effective and successful process for all of this time. And yet, we still, you know, we still have to respect the boundaries a little bit. I can't go applying to the same people that are supporting them. Unless it's accidental, then their development person does it independently, and I do it independently, and we both go for the same grant. But you know, the easiest thing would to do would be to look at their annual report and say, Oh, well, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna take these, but you can't you can't do that. That's unethical. So I don't know, I finding it very difficult. And I finding that fundraising this year, seems to have been much more difficult for a lot of organizations. I keep hearing that at various webinars that people are, aren't succeeding where they used to succeed. And I'm, last year, I wrote, I can't believe this, because I'm all by myself. And I'm only part time I work as far as to work four hours a week, I work five or more usually, but I don't get paid for them. But I put out 23 grants last year, and we got some huge percentage, it was over 50%, I think was about 70% return. But then this year, so far, I've done 17. But but the years not done yet. And I know I'm gonna get a couple at least two more out some I'm not quite at the same level, as last year, but almost, and we're getting rejected over and over and over. It's it's scary, actually. Because when you do a budget, you know, when you do a budget, based on what they've always given us a grant before, and then all of a sudden, you're $30,000 in the red.

1:06:49  
Yes. This current fiscal year was the first year that I have created the budget for our organization. And it, it was a very, like I learned a lot during that process. Because like, you know, when you're an employee for the organization, it's different than when you are in a leadership position, when you realize like, wow, okay, so my budget is just based off of assumptions and guesses, like, hoping that we can, you know, our funding is renewed if it's grant funding, hoping that we either stay at or exceed the level of individual donations that we were last year, but like, what if we don't like it? You know, like, so? It's scary. And it's definitely when you're the development director like you are, it can definitely keep you up at night. Sorry, oh, no, you're just fine. And if you have to take that Tim said, we would get kicked on 15

1:07:48  
thing about my stupid smartphone. Nobody ever calls me except spam calls.

1:07:54  
Oh, my phone even says now like potential spam. Say it on there.

1:08:00  
Yeah, just like, on the on the computer. I know. I just, I keep it on because I'm supposed to have it. And I'm supposed just I am I'm, I'm an iconoclast, I think I just everybody thinks it's funny, that I'm so annoyed with cell phones, but I mean, I don't even talk to my husband anymore. He's always you know, he's always on the phone constantly. Anyway. No, I never need to answer it. I guess it's good to have it with me when I go out if I go out. But I'm an old lady. I only go out for doctor's appointments. Wonderful, I really appreciate it. Do you have any other issues that I that I could weigh in on as yes, that is a problem. Or, or no, that's not. I'm gonna

1:09:02  
put my email in the chat. Nan. If you ever wanted to do one of these zoom calls some time I love chatting and connecting with other nonprofit professionals. I just find it so valuable to be brainstorming of like, oh, this is what worked for me what worked for you,

1:09:19  
I really appreciate it. I got a call from the salesperson at one of the one of one of the many platforms out there who was obviously trying, you know, just following up on on the fact that I'd been at a webinar and was hoping to convince me to buy that software. And we ended up talking for like an hour and he sort of went off the clock somewhere along the line and just kept, kept talking and giving me suggestions and sent me a lovely helpful email afterwards. It was fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. So thanks. Thank you. I really appreciate it, Alicia. I'll just keep plugging away. I'm you know, Damn the torpedoes full speed ahead,

1:10:11  
Nan, have you ever used slack before? Is that a new platform? Slack? Slack, Slack? Yeah, never heard of it like an instant messaging platform. So I think if you click like, if you scroll down below this video that we're on to the sponsors, there should be like right underneath the video, the first line says decks and resources provided by speakers can be found here. But the second one says join the connected fundraising community.

1:10:47  
It's not on this screen, but it will go back to the home screen. It'll be on that. Your coworker. Again, the dinosaur rears its ugly head I, I don't, I've never used Instagram. I just put the WhatsApp app on my on my phone. But I haven't got a clue how to use it yet. So I'm not I'm not familiar with a lot of what's out there and available. And I unfortunately, with you know, four hours a day. And I'm writing short writing grants like mad. It's not even having enough time to do basic research into potential new funders, let alone wasting time with technology that I don't understand. So I hopefully will learn these things at some point as I go along. But it's just not working right now. I you know, I feel like I've been swimming and trying to keep my head above water for the last year. And like I said earlier, I just something just really clicked this week. And it's like, oh, I got it now. You know, I got it all in place, and know what I'm doing and know what I'm expected to do to it. So it's it's a it's a, you know, you get old you ability to learn this stuff is very much reduced. I mean, it's going out one ear and coming in the other. I mean, old stuff is getting lost, while new stuff comes in. It's don't get old. Don't ever get old. It's not fun. But everybody says that. And it's just trite, but it's true. I gotta let you go. You're spending way too much.

1:12:44  
No, this is great. I love these types of conversations.

1:12:48  
I do too. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Good luck. Thank you, I you know, I'm I have to keep doing this till I die because I need them. You know, it is what it is. But social security, as nice as it is together does not support a household. And that's me and my husband combined. Wow. So yeah, so I'm feel very fortunate that I have this job and I really, thank God, it's an organization I really genuinely care about. And I enjoy what I'm doing. I love the writing part of it. So yeah, that's good. And I'm just gonna keep plugging. I mean, I keep trying to learn. I you know, trying to educate the board which is damn near impossible, but I'm not gonna stop. Anyway, Alicia, say I got your email right here.

1:13:55  
Catch this was lovely

1:13:57  
and we'll stay in touch. I am very grateful. Thanks.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai