Episode 237: The Relationship Building Process - Stages from the Donor's Perspective
Welcome to another edition of Around with Randall, your weekly podcast for making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett.
It's a wonderful day here on this edition of around with Randall. I was reading something that had really nothing to do with philanthropy or even my profession or our profession, and something it was said that I had to sit down, put the book aside, and kind of contemplate its meaning. Which leads us or leads me to today's thought process around the subject of the podcast.
We always position what we do in terms of relationship building, whether it's leadership, annual giving, I'll even say annual giving in general. Certainly in the major gifts, plain gifts, principle gifts, the relationship piece of the nonprofit work that we all embrace, we always position it as the way in which we teach it, embrace it. How do we do what we're supposed to do from our perspective?
And this really has to do with the moose management process. And I've got a number of podcasts, whether it's the key questions in the episodes, five different episodes in the one 80s in terms of episode numbers, all the way back to kind of the late, episode numbers, 20s early 30s around, breaking them down, each one of the sectors or sections of the management process really around the idea of qualification.
Qualification leading to cultivation, leading to solicitation, leading to stewardship. And we have a metric section we kind of talk about in terms of maybe the identification stage, but all of those are the ways we talk about it. What I was reading was a kind of a challenging article around perspective, and that we tend to put things in our own viewpoint, but we don't put them in the viewpoint of those that we're actually working with, dealing with, or trying to motivate.
Which led me to think around the concept. If we were to ask donors to stage the process that they go through in making a gift, particularly if there are multiple conversations, it's a larger gift. There's a process to it. It's just not $5. I'll just give it. Would they entitle it the same way? The moose management process and what I thought about started writing about started thinking about is the answer is no.
They wouldn't that we've been positioning ourselves around the way we do our job. And we're not very often do we spin it around and say, how does the donor view their process in the relationship building paradigm? Today we want to take this apart from the other direction. Spin it 180 degrees. Think about it from the donors perspective. And in doing so, I think what we'll get out of this is a lot of practical, tactical thought about how we can better build relationships by taking off our own lens and putting on our donor lens.
So let's start really from the top. I kind of break it down into five because if you had metrics or identification, we've got five moves management pieces. We've got metrics or identification. We've got qualification cultivation, solicitation. Maybe you add closing to that and stewardship. Would donors have the same five. And what I came to realize very quickly is, is I think there are actually eight.
There are eight step stages in this process. And all of a sudden you begin to think about, well, wait a minute, how are they aligned? How do they come out? If we kind of pretend we're trying to equate what we do with their experience. So as I take apart the relationship building process from the donors viewpoint, realize I'll kind of fit some into certain segments of, well, the way we look at it, but they don't perfectly overlap, and they shouldn't.
And then in each one of these kind of areas or development stages, I'm going to give you some things, maybe that they think about that we should be concentrating on more often. Because if we do this in the reverse lens, we actually build better relationships. We think about them and what they're going through and what they need, rather than what we're trying to do and what we need.
And the more we do what helps them, the more money will raise for us. And I don't mean individually, but for organizations. But you have to change your paradigm. So let's start at the top. When we begin this process of the relationship and we spin ourselves around to the donor perspective, what we're really talking about at the very, very beginning is curiosity.
People who are looking for ways of making a difference. And I think this is true if you look at any of a prince and file seven phases of philanthropy, any one of the seven faces that they articulated in the 1994 academic study about donors and their behaviors and how you can categorize them, that all of them are in a curiosity stage to start with.
They're open to what's possible. They may be lightly aware of an organization, and they may be just recently introduced to the concept, or newly introduced to the concept of wanting to do something philanthropic, even though they've known the organizations long, maybe from long ago. These moments are really based on what they seek. What they're aiming for is a sense of clarity.
What does the organization do? Why does it matter if we begin to spin ourselves? This may be more inclined also with the annual giving pieces about communication, or as we've talked about a number of times, the number of donors that we have, households making a gift is below 46%, according to latest statistics. So if all we do is we keep talking about what we're doing instead of trying to figure out what they want, then we're going to see a continuation of a decreasing decline into oblivion.
When it comes to donors. The response that we should probably be thinking of when we think about this kind of stage of curiosity is all around storytelling. People don't want long verbiage. I do these podcasts. I really try to work hard to keep them right at around just over 20 minutes. Sometimes I get 26 or 27. People's attention spans aren't the same as they once were, and at the end of the day, the shorter, more concise your message, the better off it's probably going to be because people can absorb it.
That's why we have Instagram and TikTok and all these shorter versions of content. Well, they're all based on visualization of storytelling, which means we have to figure out how do we communicate who we are and what we do in a very short, confined way that really meets the donor where they are in terms of their curiosity level. And it can't be so broad that it's just about mission.
It has to be specific stories about the people we impact, why they were impacted, how they were impacted. The more we tell the story of the people and the output that we attempt, the impact on the on the people in our community are based on our mission that we're trying to effect. The more likely we are to meet curiosity.
So number one is curiosity. Number two is, by the way, that kind of equates to the identification stage. Who should we be talking to? Number two is if we spin it backwards and we're not worried about qualification, we probably can find two different aspects. And in this one, I would say that the second one bleeds into the another stage.
But we need to take it from the donors perspective. So once they have the curiosity satisfied, then it becomes about inspiration. Curiosity to me is kind of like the religious who talks about the difference between rational thought process and emotion. That rational logic leads to conclusions, but emotional leads to action. How do we get people to be inspired to do something, not just read about you or think about you, but actually do something to help you?
Which means we need to be able to think about their perspective. The donor's thought about a central thought. This is covers the entire plane of inspiration. I want to be a part of that. They may not know what that means. They may not know how to do it, but they look based on that curiosity leading to inspiration to say, I want to do something here.
They need to begin to understand that there are possibilities and that if we're good at our jobs, we're communicating that there are lots of different possibilities to do these things, to meet them where they are. And that that as an organization, our response to meeting that inspiration is all about more specific stories, impacts aspirational language. Imagine the possibilities if we did this.
It's a shared vision, not just need. It's about they want to do something that we're trying to do, and it's that shared connection that we have. Curiosity leads to inspiration and inspiration then begins a process from a donor perspective about what can I do? What should I do, what's possible? Which brings us to number three, which is all about natural hesitation.
How many times in your life have you looked at something and said, that is the coolest thing I could ever do? And then you reflect on it a little bit and realize I'm maybe not. This is the thought process around instant gratification when it comes to buying impulses. People who sell stuff don't want you to think about it.
They want you to react to it because you may think about it and go, wait a minute, do I really need to do that? Which makes hesitation an important stage because you have to overcome that. They may have a great deal of inspiration. I want to be a part of that. And then there's a sense of, wait a minute, what does that actually mean?
They begin to think about is my impact going to be valued? Is it going to be meaningful? Now we're talking about you as an organization, meeting them where they are about this idea of hesitation to be able to explain operational competence, that we as an organization do great things, and we can prove that we can show that we can tell those stories that we're financially responsible.
And in the same vein, we have to realize that this is a critical moment for the donor, because if they feel pressured or manipulated or that you're not honest, they won't go any further. This hesitation moment on the donors perspective is beyond critical, because it's the moment where they're willing to take the step, kind of to steal from ancient Rome to cross the Rubicon.
I'm willing to put my foot in here. I'm willing to take a step of action. So your response is to be non pressured or low pressure engagements. Lots of ways. And this is where we get visits and briefings and reports and you know come to meet with you know just general sessions. It's not highly pressurized. Maybe it's testimonials or third person credibility.
We always talk about boards and clinicians and others being or faculty members being referral points to begin the conversation. Maybe we should be thinking about them from the perspective of this stage, from the donors side of hesitation, or that third party endorsement says, yep, I've done it and it's worth it. I'm one of you, and I've gotten a lot out of this.
Curiosity leads to inspiration, inspiration into hesitation. And if we can cross the Rubicon from hesitation, we then move into and hesitation is kind of that overlap from qualification to cultivation. We're not talking about our side. They're side. Hesitation leads into now engagement. What is it that they want to actively participate in? And I mean that specifically active participation.
Writing a check is active participation. But that's not the only participation. Is this the point where we can get them to be have their questions answered around, you know, different aspects of our organization or the things that they most value. By the way, if you reposition engagement from their side, what they're looking for, which is going to lead us in to the idea of trust and clarity, is really the thought process of conceptualizing their passion.
What it is that they want to accomplish. What they're looking for is consistency and personalization. The higher the level of participation, i.e. bigger gift opportunities, the more individualized personalized that interaction needs and should be. It matches their interest and increasing the level of engagement with people inside the organization. That may not be you as a gift officer. These are our clinicians, our faculty members, our board.
Who else can tell that story? Because what we're looking for from their perspective, from a donors perspective, is regular touchpoints, a smooth coordination where they don't have to work very hard in avoiding redundancy or scattershot type communication. There's nothing worse in my world if I hear the same thing six times, I got it once. I don't need it six times.
If you keep repeating the same messaging to someone who is willing to engage, you're wasting their time. Identification on our side. We turn around or away from that. We go into start with curiosity to inspiration to a hesitation. Getting over that hurdle, then into engagement, which gets us to the most important thing, which we talk about all the time, but we don't think about it the right way.
And that's their emotional trust. What they want is confidence that their engagement, their participation, is going to be valued. It's going to mean something. It's going to make an impact that there's a stability in the relationship. And this is where the turnover of gift officers fits. If you spin it to the donor side, you begin to see some of the hurdles.
This is one that came hit me like a ton of bricks. Like, well, this is the moment when they begin to trust us. And then gift officer leaves after 18 months because they want the right fit, or we didn't hire the right person, or they didn't get paid correctly, or the metrics aren't reasonable. Whatever the myriad of reasons are what they've if we're doing it for them.
They've gotten to engagement. And when we lose this level of trust, what ends up happening is they don't just wait for us, they retrench. We got to almost start over at times. The donor wants to know that the institution and the people they work with are at a bare minimum and hopefully much higher competent, ethical that the values align, that their gift is going to be used correctly, and that we need higher levels of communication, value driven, impact driven alignment to what they're trying to accomplish and that they begin to get deeper into what we do.
It's behind the scenes. So engagement leads to trust. If we get their trust, if they believe in us, then that leads to clarity. Clarity to me, equals solicitation. And in some ways, it's a great reminder if we spin ourselves away from us and make it more about the donor. If you don't have clarity or if they don't have clarity, you can't ask for anything transformational.
They want a clear understanding of what you are asking of them. They want that to reflect the trust and the role and their position, their passion, their connection. They want to answer or have answered the questions. Why me? Why now? And now we're talking about creating tailored, individualized communication, a proposal that talks about it and frames it. Not that we need money, but that we want a partnership.
Clarity is critically important because it's the moment where the partnership elevates to. We can't do this without you, and we can't help you solve what you want based on that engagement and trust. Unless you're willing to partner with us.
Trust leads to clarity. Clarity leads to some type of decision. I'm going to engage. I'm going to participate. Which brings us to once it's done, what I would call validity, that validation becomes the next step. Whether it's $10, $100, $1,000, $2,500, $10,000, $1 million, we overlook the importance of validation. Was it worth while? Was their decision a good one?
Do they understand its impact? There's a sense of confirmation that the gift had a tactical, practical perspective in doing something, but emotionally also meant something to them. There was an emotional reward. Joy. Pride. Meaning. Connection. Elevation. And that our response. And yes, this sounds just like stewardship because it is is beyond important. How do we reinforce this validation?
Giving them either verbalized, written in person validation that things were done based upon their choice to participate.
And then we come to the last one, which is the one maybe you thought, well, wait, we're done. No, because if we know that our largest donors more often than not make many gifts before they get to that transformational level. And we know that the number of donors is is diminishing, but the dollars remaining same, bigger gifts make more of a difference.
Then there is another step here from the donors perspective, not from ours, from theirs. And that's continuity. Continuity is about understanding that the relationship's going to continue, that there's more to come that benefits them, not us. How does the continuation continuity of the relationship benefit me as a donor? This is where we get into conversations about really what their legacy, what they're trying to accomplish.
And this is where probably not surprising. There's, to me, a natural connection to plan giving. I do this more and more often, in part because I think clients are trying to be smart, but also with their money, but because it's an expertise I have about plan giving is the discussion or thought process around, hey, have we asked the question what they're trying to accomplish?
What is the most meaningful thing that they're trying to do? How can we help them do that? Because if we do that, that's continuity. Think about a relationship between a husband and wife partnership, whatever. And there's kids involved, and the kids go off to college or go out into the world wherever they go. To me, the first thing I thought about when I was thinking about this in terms of continuity was my wife and I, that there's a continuity in the two of us outside of our children.
We don't need the children to make our relationship work. Now our relationship is beyond significantly better with the kids in them, but eventually they'll go out on their own. That's what we're training them for, so we're raising them for it. The point is, is that I don't want that moment when the kids leave to be the highest point of our relationship continuity.
I want to reflect, be able to reflect upon not only where we have gone as a couple, but where we are going into the future, and that's going to be based on what we want to accomplish together and in many ways, how we look at each other and say, what are you trying to accomplish? What can we do together to do that?
This is where we begin to connect story to organizational future. It's asking the questions what is it that's most meaningful to you? What do you want to accomplish? Can we help you do that? Spinning it around. If we review curiosity, inspiration, inspiration to hesitancy or being hesitation from hesitation, overcoming that to engagement. Engagement to trust. Deepening that relationship to clarity.
Where they feel good. We can make that ask. We move into the invalidation that the gift was an experience, not just the gift. The experience was important. Leading into continuity that there's more to come. I think we need to spend more time talking about it from the donors perspective, because if we did, it would change the way what we do, how we talk, what we try to do in certain moments.
And in doing so, we would deepen our relationships with the people who actually care about what we're doing, which is the essence of where philanthropy said it. Spin it. If you spin it, what you'll find is you'll do things differently based upon what's in their best interest. And for those that want to partner with you, it turns out to be your best interest as well.
Don't forget to check out the blogs at Hallett Philanthropy two per week how philanthropy.com, backslash blogs and RSS feed right there. You can grab it, send it right into your inbox, and if you'd like, you can email me at podcast at Health Wycombe. Don't forget that as we look at the world and the needs of our community, that there are lots of people and many would say a growing number of people and organizations that need you, that need us, that need philanthropy, because it's the point where it fills the gap between the for profit world, which doesn't want to do any of this because it's not profitable.
And the government, which really does sometimes doesn't do things very efficiently. Philanthropy, nonprofits. If you're serving an important purpose. Remember my all time favorite saying some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen. Then there are those who wonder what happened. You're someone who's making things happen because what you're doing is changing your community as a donor, as an employee, as an annual fund person, as an administrative assistant, CEO, trustee, whatever.
What you do makes a difference for a lot of people who are wondering what happened. And that makes you someone who's making things happen for individuals, organizations, the community as a whole. Pretty cool way to spend your time, and I hope you realize the value that that delivers each and every day. We'll look forward to seeing you next time.
Right back here on the next edition of Around With Randall. And don't forget, make it a great day.