Episode 231: Stewardship for Unrecognized / Anonymous Donors: Recognition Does Not Equal Less Contact
Thank you for joining me, Randall, on this edition of Around with Randall. We want to talk today about some of our most important donors, but the ones who sometimes are in the shadows under the covers. And this is the idea of how we steward our unrecognized donor group. Why is this important? Why does this matter? Well, my experiences and that of, I think, a lot of other gray haired long in the tooth professionals is that our quiet donors are some of our most generous donors and our most loyal donors.
Maybe I'm jaded a little bit by the fact that here in Omaha, Nebraska, I say this often there are more millionaires and billionaires per capita almost anywhere else in the United States, and there's no Rolls-Royces. There's no Lamborghinis. And you very well could pull up to a stoplight and sit next to someone who's worth a half $1 billion, and they're not even driving a Mercedes.
The anonymity to many people is important, and Omaha, and it has given me a perspective. And I think this is true in most places, not everybody, but in most places that many of our best donors aren't looking for a lot of recognition. The other thing is, is that failure to failure to properly steward these donors, like any other donor, leads to disconnection and attrition, particularly as we'll get into with those, maybe, that are more on the legacy planned.
Giving side. And lastly, is that. There is this disconnect, this incorrect assumption that anonymity equals no contact or less contact. And actually they are completely independent variables of each other. Somebodies wanting or willingness or desire to remain anonymous is not connected to how much stewardship you should be doing. And yet, too often because they're not vocal, because they're not up on the wall, their name's not on the side of the building.
Somehow, I think sometimes we forget them. So today we want to talk about how to do this. So as always, we start at the philosophical let's start at the top kind of let's kind of, first of all categorize who are these donors we're talking about. There's obviously the ones. And I think of them in three levels that are the first group is they're formally anonymous.
They have said checked off a box, made some kind of indication, it's almost legal. They do not want to appear anywhere.
These are the easy ones. We just don't ever talk about it. Now we're going to talk about some issues when you deal with them here in a moment. But we know who these people are because they've said, if my name ever appears anywhere, we're done. Number two, or what I call or think of is the functionally quiet. They don't really want a lot of publicity, but they're maybe more known internally, and even maybe there is limited amounts of lower level or limited acknowledgment.
And I'll give you a perfect example. Me my wife might now take some zeros off of any thoughts you might have. The philanthropy that we choose to do is what we feel we can do, and what we feel is important. But there are a couple of nonprofits, charities, entities that we believe in that we have said. If you talk about our gifts, there are no more gifts.
And so whether that's an estate intention or, you know, being listed in a publication, we generally pull back from that. But with that said, I'll use me as an example again. I really believe in philanthropy, and thus I'll use my law school as an example. Philanthropy maybe hasn't been as heightened as it might or should be or could be.
And so actually, I've chosen to my wife to have us listed in the annual publication as to kind of where we fit into the donations that we give. And I do that for a very specific reason. I don't want the elevation. Nobody cares who I am. I can barely get my kids and wife to care who I am when I'm at home and they love me.
It's because I want to try to elevate other thoughts in other people that they can do things like this as well, particularly my classmates, which we had a pretty close knit class still to to this day from for a large degree. The third is kind of this group of people that is legacy plan giving donors and much of the time and we've experienced this, that you ask, hey, can I get some documentation?
And they say, no. And basically maybe all we can get is a designation that we're in an estate plan and they really don't want anything listed. They don't come to any events that are related to it. It's fairly common among blended and planned giving, deferred giving options. This is the third group. And so these three groups, whether it's formal, functional or kind of a state legacy, there are times and many of us know this.
Which brings us to the challenges. What is it that we're trying to overcome? And there's really three things that I think of here as well. The first is, is a lack of feedback channels. We are used to seeing people at events. We are used to seeing them in public. We're used to being able to talk to them about their level of engagement or recognition or things of that nature.
And this group of anonymity doesn't want to do some of those things, which cuts across what we normally do. So we can't always find the connection that we want, and we risk under engaging them at an appropriate level. Number two is, is that there's no public recognition. And so that's a normal conversation at times with people. Gosh we've got a wall.
We've got you know our maybe video boards. And that's not on the agenda for the for this group of people. And that's fine. But because there's no other connections, by the way, sometimes the idea of stewardship is for some people, recognition by third parties, i.e. your names on a wall or a building, a room, whatever. And people say, isn't that cool?
That is stewardship on our behalf. If it's a part, if it's positive, positive thought or conversation. Thirdly, internally, sometimes our records are not managed or correctly identified, or if they are, which we'll talk about an experience in a moment. Other people in the office don't know all the details, so they don't casually steward, which is commonplace. Thank you for all that you do because it's not publicly known.
So if these are the three groups and these are the challenges, the question becomes moving into the tactical. What is it we're supposed to do about this? And there are very specific things that I can recommend. Again, it stems from the premise, the incorrect assumption that anonymity means no contact. That is not true. Anonymity means no public recognition.
These are still donors, many of which need some level of private, narrow, appropriate stewardship. The tactical what are we trying to do? How do we do this? Well, the first thing is, is that we need to know, understand and make sure we ask. If we don't know what is the proper channel of communication, who should be involved in this conversation?
With the proliferation over the last 25 to 40 years of financial advisers, tax lawyers to some degree, or state attorneys always been prevalent with people with resources, but more people need them, particularly in more complicated estate thought processes. Certain people know certain things. Children. Brothers. Sisters. Parents. Who knows what? You have to respect what that donor wants. I have had a circumstance.
Only one which I appropriately, I feel disgust. I don't say fight, but disgust. Where? I had a married couple. Where one of the couples. In this case it was the husband. It doesn't make a difference. The husband? Was making gifts. And the wife wasn't all that in the know. And I was under instructions not to talk about it with her.
And that was uncomfortable. It put me in a very bad position. We talked about it, but that's what she wanted. I would also say not a wise decision, in my opinion, and I told them that as well. So number one is respect the communication who should be in and how they want to be addressed in these kind of conversations.
Number two is finding ways to give blind impact updates and reports. We're going to talk about this here and it over and over in terms of tactical my experiences. And when I talk with people who are individuals in our industry that I really respect, they have very similar thought processes, is that it's the impact that the people really want to know about that have grading and anonymity as a desire.
It's the difference the gifts are making or might make. And so you can use language even in writing. We'll talk about maybe some tactical ways to make sure that you stay in communication. Things like this is how this program impacts certain outcomes, whatever those are. You don't have to talk about their name. You don't have to talk about their gift.
They know that. Talk about what the gift does impact. You can create number three in kind of in this building the relationships without, you know, violating that privacy is you can create under a no name stewardship package. Had a donor many years ago who really didn't want his name known. And but impact and knowledge of what was going on was critically important.
It was the kind of the first inkling for me about this not trying to connect anonymity with kind of the assumption of no contact, because it was just the opposite. We were actually talking more often, and the gift was significant enough that it was appropriate. And I would create Private Impact reports every six months. Why?
Because I would say I can track it and I know exactly where it goes. It's in a sealed envelope. It's not going to become public. It comes from me to them directly. You can also offer in that same vein and a podcast just recorded recently about feedback loops. Episode 225 I believe create anonymous feedback loops give that donor or those donors an opportunity to privately with a return envelope back to you without any recognition.
Tell me what you think about your giving. Are we meeting expectations, giving them that mechanism to tell you what they think? You can also do private briefings, which I have done, where you go to them and you say, look, let me give you an update and it's verbalized. Maybe there's some literature or some assumptions about statistics, data output, whatever that shows.
This. It can be done video wise, obviously with the proliferation of technology. Very easy to do all this to say. There's lots of ways to communicate. You just have to be careful in how you do it. Then there's the internal process. And this is actually, to me, as important as the manner in which and the choices we make about communicating directly internally.
How do you handle this? So the easy way is anonymity flags and are in razor's edge or whatever. You're sorry I miss. That's easy. But that means that there are people in the office. Those are the functionally quiet group because more people know there's something there. There are times where we get gifts, where the anonymity is even above that.
I worked with a donor who's honestly, his first name was John. I'm not making that up, John. For anonymity purposes. Who made an incredibly large gift to an organization that I was the chief Taubman officer for, and I was the instrument for that conversation over time. And his anonymity was so strong that we didn't record the gift in his record in the CRM to go further, because at his request, at once, we started with once the gift kind of was solidified, that his comment was, I only want you to know that I've made this gift and we had to have a long conversation around, I can't do that because if I get hit by a
bus, we have a problem. And so we worked through a conversation around who would know. And the CEO of the organization was brought into the loop. I was knowledgeable, and we had a sealed document in the safe that would be available for anyone in the future if something happened to the CEO and myself. We created a dummy record in the CRM, which the staff was like, and I told my database manager, I said, here's what we're doing.
I want you to create a record for John Smith. Well, who's John Smith? Yeah. Not important. And they made a mistake gift. And that's all you're going to put in a dollar. We're not putting anything else in. There'll be no contact reports nothing. And we recorded everything by hand. This donor I mean it was an eight figure gift.
And the terms of the gift and the anonymity were pretty serious. We had to set up even with the chair of the board. We informed the board, the executive committee of the board about this gift and told the board in the lawyer's office in the safe is an envelope. If something happens to the two of us, you're gonna have to go get it.
But we're not telling you who this person. These things can happen. And then there was the issue of the handoff. I eventually left. I talked to this donor. I said, look, I've taken another job. I'm going to be leaving the organization. There are still in two people that know I've got to bring somebody else into this loop. We talked about how to do that and we didn't appropriate staff handoff.
I know this sounds crazy and this is that is extreme. John's example is an extreme one. But they do happen. Are you prepared internally to do this setting up dummy records if appropriate, making sure certain people know when certain people don't. Having the flags. The flags are easy. It's when they want more anonymity than that. They just don't want everybody to know.
And you'd be surprised how many people that applies to. If we think about it more broadly as we move into kind of the idea of other things that we can do, miscellaneous extras, you can invite people in and anonymity, people who are anonymous to events generically. You can invite them privately. Would you like to come to this gala, this event, this golf tournament where you're not going to say anything about who you are, you're just there to play or there to attend and enjoy.
There's nothing wrong with that. I learned that the hard way, because I didn't do that with a particular donor, that in this particular circumstance and others, they wanted to come to events again, that misconception that anonymity equals no contact or involvement. It just means you don't talk about that gift. Give them the opportunity. There's all different ways of connecting people back into the organization.
The other thing is, is to keep in mind is, is that anything you do that is related to this idea of planned an estate giving, which I've done obviously a number podcast on that may introduce third parties to this. And sometimes you don't know they want the gift to be anonymous and it's so anonymous. If we use Community Foundation, a donor advised fund, you don't even know who the donor is.
But you know that someone's intending or on a regular basis, giving you larger sums of money. The first thing I would recommend episode 221 I break down how to deal with donor advised funds in the sense of anonymity that's built into being a community foundation in donor advised funds. And sometimes we don't know who those people are, but you can still steward people if it's an attorney or a financial planner or a community foundation, provide stewardship reports to them with specific instructions that say to please forward this on to the donor.
We respect their anonymity, but we want them to know the value of the gift, the impact. You have to become creative when you have third parties involved, particularly with something like Community Foundation and a state attorney or an attorney. They have confidentiality. The attorney in particular. That's the hallmark of being an attorney to some degree, the attorney client privilege.
You can't violate that. And financial planner, while they don't have a legal, confidential party, they take that very seriously. It's frustrating. Steward through them. Create partnerships with them. Try not to resent them, because you never know what might spark a donor to increase, to continue to grow or to come out of the out of the hidden spaces and say, I've been really impressed by what you doing.
I want you to know, and I want to keep the anonymity up, but now I want you inside that loop. All of this is really important because at the end of the day, it's we need to strengthen these relationships. We can also create metrics around them, just simple things like how many new inquiries are the we have about anonymity because the word's out, hey, these people take anonymity pretty seriously and that we can track, mind you, the idea of responsiveness and communication with groups of anonymous donors.
And are we creating longevity with some of these anonymous donors? More so meaning transformational long term relationships more so than maybe the average relationship, the number of gifts over a number of years. These are all things that we can do because at the end of the day, stewarding recognize unrecognized donors and anonymity is about respect, discretion, and depth.
We can have them all. You can have a deep, meaningful relationship in anonymity if you do it the right way. And as we said at the top, these tend to be our largest donors and our most loyal donors. And the other thing is anonymity. At 10 or 15, 25, $50,000 done correctly. My experience is it grows the dollar figure.
The more you respect what they want them, and the more they're engaged with the mission that they believe in, the output, the value, the impact, whatever, the more likely they are to increase their relationships with you. They're testing the sand and limiting any one of the three levels. The more you step into this, maybe go back and look at who are your top ten quiet donors?
Are you doing the right things? The better you're going to be at elevating their transformational gift opportunities, which tend to be incredibly large and can be of great effect. Outcome impact to your organization. Don't forget to check out the blogs at Hallett Philanthropy two per week 92nd reads I write about all kinds of things, all related in some way, shape or form to one of two things kind of leadership, maybe through a personal perspective and or philanthropy in different ways.
And if you'd like to get a hold of me, talk to me, give me some feedback. Tell me what you think that is. Podcast and how it philanthropy.com. We need nonprofits. We need philanthropy now. More so maybe than ever. I mean, we didn't have it as formerly in the Great Depression where it was predominant.
And I'm not saying that's where we're at, but there's a lot of uncertainty right now. Philanthropy has a way of filling that gap between, as I always say, between free enterprise, because things aren't very profitable and government, which is inefficient. Philanthropy. Nonprofit work fits in between the two to fill that gap. What you do every day is critical.
The people you work with, the people you partner with, the people that you engage, all of you bring together an important value for whatever it is the mission supports. Don't forget my favorite saying some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen. Then there are those who wondered what happened. You're someone who makes things happen. You work with people who do this every day for the things and the people in our community.
They're wondering what happened. I just don't know what I would do with my life if I didn't do this. I hope you feel the same, because I feel as if in very, very, very, very small ways. I'm making a big, big, big difference to a very small group of people. If we all did more of that, the world would be a better place.
And I hope you realize that value as well. I look forward to seeing the next time right back here on the next edition of Around with Randall.
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