Create an Efficient Lab Bill Format for Nonprofit Organizations

Lab bill format for Nonprofit

hello everyone and thank you for joining the nonprofit learning lab for today's Workshop if you have any questions along the way for our presenter you can type them into your questions box and your goto webinar control panel likely on the right hand side of your screen if you have any Tech related questions you can also type them there if you are interested in using live captions for today's Workshop you can use the link that we've sent in the chat if you are interested in receiving the recording and materials from today's free webinar you can visit our free webinars page on the nonprofit learning Lab website or you can send us an email at program at nonprofit learninglab with just a brief word of encouragement and that is to say yay you for signing up and being present for uh webinar on fundraising on January 3D so instead of sleeping off whatever fun you had over the holiday week you are here now and I just want to congratulate you on that I'd say hard work is really the first quality of a good fundraiser so congratulations let me talk a little bit about what we're going to do today looking at the agenda here I'll tell you a bit about myself myself and my company it's called major gift Solutions a small shop we're going to just take a brief minute to define a major gift what do I mean by that and then we're going to talk about from a bird's eyee view what is the Art and Science of major gift fundraising this is a framework that I've put together to think about the qualities that really do result in success for those who are responsible for direct fundraising activity we'll look at those specifically from front to back or from Back to Front looking first at the science of major gift fundraising this is essentially what anybody could do finding the right donors Landing donor visits I I think that's kind of easier to do frankly the finer points Point number five is in the art of major gift fundraising that is how do you conduct a successful donor visit where the donor feels comfortable engaged and then how do you craft a successful major gift ask uh resulting in a gift and then we'll look at some concluding thoughts so let me tell you a bit about myself who am I um this is going to be recorded I've got some words here on the slide so might not get into every single point but feel free to take a look later Bird's eyee view about who I am uh if you know anything about me looking at the bio on my website I have a background in faith-based settings that's actually been I think advantageous for me as a fundraiser it's allowed me to kind of tap into people's sense of hope their sense of optimism their desire to maybe join a movement and has allowed me to have some success so for example uh closed successfully a $1 million gift via zoom in 2020 this was for an organization that just had a budget of a little over uh double that so that was significant I pride myself on the fact that I've LED my teams in those categories of activity that are under my control so whether or not I had a portfolio that had a bunch of millionaires in it I did do my best to land visits have plenty of phone calls uh submit proposals when appropriate and then when we were talking apples to apples my portfolio to those of my peers I consistently raised more dollars frankly than than many that I worked with so um coming from a place of success you can see some of these other things that I've put here uh turned this into Consulting just in the last few years and in fact let's talk about that what is Major gift Solutions we're a boutique consulting firm in fact I think my colleague David Cree is here uh in the uh webinar today just a few years old started this while working full-time as a major gift officer and then went full-time into Consulting uh I want to say maybe 18 20 months ago something like that typically served nonprofits that are a bit smaller uh newer Boutique firm so that happens to be the clients that just kind of gel with us the best uh T talking about annual budgets really as low as 300,000 but upwards of maybe uh in the seven figures and we provide a variety of services you can see those here I think that really our bread and butter is in that number three bullet point under the services we provide and that's related to direct fundraising so we essentially become a kind of part part-time fundraising shop for nonprofits that might not be able to afford a specialist especially in major gift fundraising so let's dive right into the presentation proper talking about the Art and Science of this I would call most important aspect of General fundraising that is Raising major gifts and to do that let's kick it off with a poll what are your biggest challenges in raising major gifts and we'll Define that in a second but just off the top of your head think about your challenges here I've got five for you to choose from is it difficult to find time to focus on major gifts maybe number two you don't know where to start maybe you're like so many actual fundraisers and executive directors that I've talked to who say I don't really like asking for money maybe number four you're like like the characters in Glenn Gary Glenn Ross the movie back from the 90s we need more leads you don't have enough of those or maybe it's something else and I encourage you if you will to drop that in the chat so I think we have about 30 seconds for this poll to be open I'm curious what your responses will be I have maybe a a a gamble of what I think they will be but uh I'll give you a minute to respond there and then we're going to um see the results here moment momentarily okay so here we go this is interesting all right the winner is that you need more major gift leads I see that number four and then with a close second not knowing where to start I can feel your pain interestingly okay number three with 11% finding time to focus on major gifts to be honest I thought maybe that would be a little bit higher especially if we've got any CEOs or or executive directors in the audience today and then a few of you actually don't like asking for money and then maybe we got a few more something else okay that's very helpful as we continue moving forward here in our presentation and let's talk next about what counts as a major gift so you know looking at the kind of Wikipedia definition if you will again I don't like to get too bogged down in these uh details of what what would maybe count but let's just talk about it and you'll see that I focus on a particular aspect of a major gift that will be a theme throughout this presentation so we could call it a single donation could also be a multi-year pledge that's in just call it the top percentage of gifts that are made to your organization and because it's in that top percentage of gifts then it warrants individualized attention from fundraising staff that could be someone one like myself who is a direct fundraiser it could also be those higher levels of your organization vice president executive director Etc so it requires that individual attention and this is important for hitting your bottom line here are just a few samples from actual clients that major gift Solutions has served um for a small nonprofit closing a major gift can really be in terms of Revenue the sing most important activity for your fundraising team now I'm not saying that other pieces of your fundraising uh strategy are not important but you want to be carrying out all of those things so that you can land those seven six figure five figure gifts that really will help you raise money to advance your mission so let's talk about those qualities of a successful major gift fundraiser Bird's eyee view here I've broken this down into an art of major gift fundraising and a science of major gift fundraising and this is not necessarily a kind of scientific analysis but to just get your brain juices flowing here on January 3D the artistic side you're looking for someone you want to be someone who when you are with other people puts them in a position where they will be comfortable making a major gift that is very important so are you dis Ching are you fearless are you a good listener do you have good timing in your conversations are you sensitive do you have an emotional intelligence are you strong fortitude to keep going are you persistent positive and are you enthusiastic and then on the scientific side of things do you have that consistency are you organized I've seen so many gifts just stay on the table because people who were really good at this artistic side simply weren't organized so they're both very important do you follow through are you a hard worker do you have that hustle mentality and then do you understand what makes a major gift donor and how to move that donor down the pipeline to make a major gift so when I think about those qualities of the most successful fundraisers that I've met they are the ones who can combine both the art and the science of major gift fundraising if you get that science right you're going to be able to land visits with the right donors and if you get that artistic maybe finer points right you're going to be able to move from those visits to closing gifts from those donors making a good ask so that you can do that so in this scientific site of things again we're going to go back to front it's most important I think first of all to just find the right donors to ask for money once you do that in my experience the rest can actually be pretty easy so I want you to think about this we have a poll right now but I want you to stay active and think about what qualities does a major gift donor have what are those qualities that you would look for typically you'll see the experts if you will break it down into three categories number one they do have capacity so that is they have Financial capacity to make a gift to your organization they're you would just maybe call them wealthy you know they have money it might be in an i ra it might be in a Family Foundation or something else but you know it's there now they also need to have these other two qualities you can't just look for the Oprah Winfrey and the Bill Gates of the world you got to look for people who also are generous with their funds and who align well with your organization I've seen donors who only have one or two of these and it doesn't work so you're looking for the ones who do actually have all three of these and let me engage you here again now we got a poll what strategies have you used to find these types of donors what have you used to find the ones who are generous aligned and who actually do uh um have the capacity to make a gift so think about this you're in a development committee meeting you're with your board you're with your fundraising team somebody asks hey we got to get those leads which is actually that was the top answer in our poll a moment ago do you just pull up Google and ask the Google hey Google who's the wealthy people who like uh our particular Mission maybe do you look at the newspaper do you look for public donor lists decent idea little bit more uh time required to to to land in this one uh maybe you're number four here and you say hey we contracted a grant writer at our organization so I don't really need to worry about it or are you number five and you are actually looking at your own database to find those major gift Don owner so you got it here I think we've got maybe a few more seconds left on the poll to answer I'm curious what your answers will be and we'll come back here with some responses okay so we got oh interesting you know what I thought I was going to trick you guys but you have figured this out okay so we do have people who are looking for major gift donors from their own database that is opposed to a tie for number two would be good old internet public donor lists I do think you can find some resources there the newspaper and then just a few of you put here that you contracted a grant writer so this is interesting I think that this demonstrates we actually have maybe some technical uh fundraisers here in our audience and and I think that's um that's going to be good for for some uh uh good engagement later so let me tell you dear fundraisers who are relying on your database that's my first uh knee-jerk reaction as well here are some strategies that I've used to find the major gift donors that your organization already has and I think that's the important thing because you're going to find that um those who do align with your organization have been a part of maybe your communication strategy for some time that's going to be the lowest hanging fruit who are going to respond to your invitation to a visit and are going to respond to than a well-crafted ask when you get to that point let me just put it this way to be blunt the single most determining factor for you to find a future major gift donor is really a previous major gift donor this has been my experience sometimes it's actually much easier than one might think to find those people who have supported your organization in the past but who have not been cultivated well so that you're able to to Simply do a kind of minimal amount of cultivation and someone who was teed up before but nobody on the team had kind of worked with them is able to make a really good gift so I just use giving to see who those people might be I look first at the history of cash giving you're looking at things like the single biggest gift the most recent gift total giving and annual giving over the last five years so here's just a couple of samples of the way that I have broken this down myself putting this into a spreadsheet of course you're going to use your CRM hopefully you can figure out your CRM do a poll of donors put it into a nice spreadsheet that you can put across all your monitors here print out have your list that you're working through you're going to be looking at some of these categories here I like especially to do this I learned this as a gift officer in fact at lyola University Chicago learning from a more seasoned fundraiser on my team I literally put this out so I can see it in each column the last five years what was their giving and then I total that up as well so I can do a top- down sort simply looking at cash and then I can try to get those visits so let me just State this and maybe I'm preaching to the choir here but I want to say it for the sake of emphasis before you spend time worrying about finding new donors my encouragement to you is to get to know the donors who already support you even if they give at lower levels and there's two reasons for this one you're going to learn a lot you're going to learn about the donors who support your organization you're also going to learn how they view your organization you're going to practice your pitch you're going to practice your ability to present the organization and maybe while you're learning these valuable lessons you'll close some gifts in the process so it's it's my soapbox here to say listen it's vital for everyone on your team team to meet directly with the donors who support your organization so let's take a step back here again and think about this as we move toward the importance of meeting with those donors got a poll for you on average how many donor visits do you hold each month I'm thinking based on the answer to the previous poll we might have some allar here who are participating in this webinar but let's see are you on that left side where you're 15 plus each month again this could be inperson coffees as we used to always do them or nowadays virtual I count both of those the same you're going to get a little more uh maybe uh brownie points with the in-person visit but virtual can be very productive so are you getting 15 plus are you in the 10 to 15 range 5 to 10 one to five or maybe just to be honest are are there any participants here today who would say you know what I don't really meet with individual uh I don't meet individually with donors in which case we might need to have a conversation or two if you expect to be successful at fundraising but I'm curious if anybody would would go ahead and admit that so I think you've got maybe a few more seconds here to answer and we do have okay all right okay so we've got maybe a opportunity for for Bill to give us a little pep talk um it looks like really and the the the largest answer is not meeting individually with donors and then close second is one to five per month 5 to 10 we didn't have anybody who's at 15 plus and let me just say major gift Solutions the services we provide visits with donors that's actually the bread and butter of what we do trying to fill in some of these gaps and that's because in my experience in my opinion the single most important thing you can do to raise major gifts is to hold intentional focused regular conversations with the donors who already support you so that's the next slide here I want you to think about that I want you to write this down if you're taking notes take a minute jot it down go back look at the recording remember this sentence the single most important thing you can do to raise major gifts is to meet with donors we'll just start there just meet with him send out emails to invite him to a virtual meeting take them to Coffee call them on the phone listen and we'll get into some of those strategies here in a minute but those do need to be intentional focused regular conversations with the donors who already support you if you're not holding those donor meetings I'm gon to say to you if I could be honest it's time to re-evaluate your fundraising strategy because you're not going to raise major gifts if you're not talking to those people who can't support you in fact let me give you a little wakeup call here in my experience even working with donors who already supported our organization I wasn't going to get a visit just a visit unless I made 10 phone calls and I wasn't going to get a major gift unless I made at least 20 visits sometimes more so that means to get one major gift that single gift that right might really Propel you uh into the future you might need to ask between 100 and 200 people just to say hello to you let that sink in for a minute here's some tricks for landing those donor visits consider using an email drip campaign you want to make sure you're using all Outreach methods again we're trying to get those visits and my experience is good to know secretaries good good to know those administrative assistants good to know the team members of the decision makers at the businesses those wealthy people in your community who can schedule visits for you and make sure you're leaning on your board members your trustees and volunteers Etc again to try to get those visits a successful visit request strategy in fact will require between three and five planned emails and two to three phone calls so what I'm talking about is hey Bill you're saying I gotta meet with donors yes that's what I'm saying how do I get a meeting with donors you got to send them an email and the way I do that is I'll use a a cold email drip campaign might spread out over the course of about eight days with an initial email a follow-up email and a final email and all those email say is hey I'm Bill I work at this organization we're awesome you've supported us let's get together and talk so I include some samples here you can see those if you if you get this uh later take take a look at the recording take a look at the resources that are available but you'll notice it's it's not a Tome it's a simple introductory email I'm asking them for a meeting I tell them my availability I ask them to tell me theirs and then I will move forward into scheduling that visit with them now my team we use a third-party uh vendor it's called woodpecker maybe you've heard of this highly recommend you looking into it it's affordable it's a way to send out multiple e emails in the hundreds maybe even thousands from an actual email address that you have and it sends those emails individually so they'll make it through those spam filters and allow you to actually get the attention of the person you're trying to meet with so again you're using something like that to get those visits with the donors as you do so you want to also complement that use of cash to try to find those people who will support you by looking at a few other qualities are there donors who have made a pledge in the past do you have any planned giving donors and then here some secrets of the uh industry here you're looking for personal qualities like these that I've laid out you know what to be really honest if I could just say this the if I could just say the older the better age 80 plus donors who have never been married no kids they're the ones who might have resources I'm a father of four I don't have any resources so you're looking for people who will have those resources to support you some kind of connection to your organization and a willingness to discuss raising or discuss making a gift to you you're looking for some of these other indicators as well I'd encourage you don't get too lost in the weeds for some of these things um you're looking maybe at people who have given to you from a Donor advised fund Gifts of stock other kind of uh unique types of gifts from a retirement account Etc but let me just finalize this portion of the presentation by saying again if you're not having those visits with people you're going to have a hard time raising money and that's the most important thing that you can uh take out of this presentation in fact that means that the single most important activity of a successful whether it's a major gift officer or anybody who's responsible for fundraising at your organization is to hold visits with those major gift donors okay so we're about two-thirds of the way through our presentation here I'm going to fly through some stuff to finish us up what are the elements of a successful donor visit this is on the artistic side of fundraising I break it down into four categories you want to be able to listen you want to be able to learn you want to engage those donors and you need to be able to make an ask for money you are a fundraiser after all so let's look at those individually your goal in listening should be to help the donor feel like they they are a part of your organization and its Mission that's what I'm talking about that's that finer side that emotional intelligence you want to bring them into the project that you are leading ask them to talk to you about that how did they get to know your organization why do they support it how did they first learn about it you're going to complement that sort of move of bringing them into the fold if you will with learning some things about their giving so how do they give do they write a check is it through a retirement account do they have stock that they need to get rid of what tools do they use do they have some of those personal factors I was mentioning earlier that are true of a typical major gift donor do they give at a certain time in the year and if they're a part of a Family Foundation what's their typical timeline does the family meet every December to talk about who they're going to support next year is there an application process Etc so you're going to learn all of those things number three and facilitating a successful visit you're looking to engage them engage them in the mission of your organization bring them in get them excited about what you are doing highlight the face of your mission what people uh or what what animals what uh scientific Mission are you advancing bring them into that emotional connection with what you're doing to do that draw from personal experiences that you've had and then be ready to answer these typical questions in my experience I've been asked these so many times donors are just looking at your organization from a really high level so what's the size of your budget how many staff do you have and what do you do what's your unique your unique value add to this particular space then number four you don't want to be so shy that you can't ask for money let me say it this way it's rarely wrong in fact to engage a donor in a conversation about their giving now that doesn't mean you actually have to ask them for money but your main job is to raise money so you can advance your mission and your donors need to see you in that light they don't simply need to see you as a friend who takes them out to Coffee once every year so here's some ways to transition into that conversation ask them permission Mrs Smith would you mind if we talked about your philanthropy Mrs Smith you've been a generous donor for many years tell me why do you give Mrs Smith we've got a few minutes left in our Zoom meeting here can I talk to you about your giving and I found that they will rarely turn you down so go ahead cross that threshold ask permission go for it do not be afraid then to begin to make that ask and I look at this here from uh two different strategies you can can be direct in your ask after you get that permission to talk about their giving or you can be indirect let's uh talk first about that Midwest nice strategy being indirect here's some samples actual asks that I've used in the past to success so for example instead of coming right out and directly saying to Mrs Smith will you give us a million dollars Mrs Smith no don't necessarily do that if you need to use this indirect strategy instead blame it on the board our board has challenged us to find 40 donors who can make a five fig pledge Mrs Smith do you think this is a realistic goal she may laugh you out of the room I've had that happen before from a donor who eventually made a six-figure gift maybe you'll say to them you know what Mrs Smith it's so helpful for our finance team to know the future plans of our donors would you be comfortable sharing your plans for the future perfect way to open up an opportunity to talk about a pledge Mrs Smith you've given us X dollar each year in the past where do you see you're giving in the future so you see you're engaging them in a conversation about money without putting them really on the defensive you're bringing them in to this important conversation in an indirect way now on the other hand sometimes it's appropriate to be direct Mrs Smith you've been a generous donor for many years will you partner with us again by making a commitment of $50,000 Mrs Smith we're looking for 20 donors who can give us $10,000 a year for the next three years would you be able to make that pledge you see how now we're going we're we're kind of zeroing in and and I think that works I don't always use this direct strategy sometimes I go Midwest nice sometimes I go indirect and that allows me to engage the the donor in a conversation that I always always facilitate so that they will make that major gift so I'm G to give you some homework here recovering Professor I want you to draft three ways that you could make an ask during your next donor visit now first of all you got to have a donor visit don't forget that and I want you to be able to do that so I want you to think about three ways you can make an ask during your next visit and let me just give you a few including thoughts we're almost done I grew up in the in the heart of the Bible Belt in Tennessee in fact that's where I am now uh visiting my family for the holidays I heard a sermon growing up a missionary he said keep the main thing the main thing I think it applies in this context you're a fundraiser don't forget that every day when you look at your calendar you need to ask yourself do the activities on my calendar relate to Revenue moments for my organization will I be doing activities that will lead to revenue moments for my organization and again for me that's primarily visits held purposefully so you can talk to donors about giving keep the main thing the main thing don't apologize for your mission don't apologize for your role money is is important I think you know for the advancement of your mission so the thing you are doing to raise money that is vital to the overall good that you're trying to provide and don't be afraid to ask because you know what you can do it you can do it I've got faith in you somebody had faith in you to assign you this task and it's possible if I can do it I know you can as well and I just want to encourage you in that regard so we finished up it's uh 10:31 Central on my computer here we just made it in again I hope you will take advantage of the uh recording that will be available I think you'll be able to access those slides as well if you're registered for this but let me also encourage you to email me this is my cell phone number right here you're welcome to call or text love to hear from you in fact visit us online major gift that's one major gifts solutions.com and then my direct email is my Gmail address last name. first name send me those questions you can also drop them in the chat right now if you have questions I will personally respond to those questions and in fact love to meet with any of you via zoom and we can talk about what your needs are and how I can uh help you out if necessary you you can also find us on Instagram Facebook LinkedIn we're there as well love to hear from you again thanks so much great thank you so much William this is the official end to today's Workshop if you are interested in receiving the recordings and materials from today's free webinar you can visit our free webinars page on the nonprofit learning Lab website or you can shoot us an email at program nonprofit learninglab