Episode 246: When the Political Becomes Part of the Donor Relationship
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.
I'm so appreciative. You take a few minutes of your day to join me, Randall, on this edition of Around with Randall. Received an email recently from a colleague, and I think of anybody in our profession as a colleague. Jordan Evans, out in Denver, a major gift officer sent the question in, which was really well thought out and leads us to our conversation today about an issue we have to deal with more so in the modern today world than maybe we did even five years ago.
And certainly before that. What happens when an issue, more likely than not a political issue, gets into the conversation with our donors and may and sometimes does preclude donors from wanting to give, even if they've been long time supporters to the nonprofits we represent. This comes up in a myriad of different ways. Most recently, it's been through the lens of potentially D-I or equity.
As it's discussed in the public nomenclature. It could be something related to taking a stance related to health issues. It could be something dealing with the engagement of maybe an overseas conflict. Our world has become much more so, at least from my vantage point. More conflict engaged. And I don't mean war, although there's some of that to be noted as well.
I'm talking about the civility or the diminishment of civility in our society. And that does bleed into philanthropy, because if we're doing our jobs correctly, we're in the relationship business. And being in that business, we are not immune from what goes on in regular relationship building, civility, act level activities. When we're in a society, people get upset about things.
Some of them true, some of them not. Maybe quite as true. At the end of the day. It doesn't make a difference, because what we're charged with is finding ways to continue to build, to engage those relationships. And in doing so, we represent the mission that we've been asked to go out and talk about and elevate. So how do we do this?
And I don't have to do as much philosophical here, because your imagination can pick up a whole bunch of examples just like that. So a lot of, of the tactical kind of a step by step process in ways in which you can hopefully change the conversation, elevate the conversation, adjust the conversation, but not ignore the conversation. So where do you start?
Well, there's kind of two things that I think are overreaching principles that we have to embrace. And this means sometimes putting our own personal thoughts, beliefs in our back pocket. The first is, is that.
Being agnostic in terms of the particularly on the things that are incredibly divisive within the political landscape, is important. I wrote recently in a blog post about changes that the IRS indicated that they were going to begin to allow churches to individually announced support.
Organization, the church as a whole, and maybe a pastor from the pulpit, or a rabbi from the pulpit, or a priest during a homily. Support for individual candidates. Nonprofits have always been able to support issues, but individual candidates has been something over the course of time. That's not been allowed. The recent changes in our administration have allowed for a new way of looking at it.
What I wrote was is that while it may be allowed now, is it a good idea? Because if you're a church and your unifying factor is your belief system religiously, and all of a sudden somebody from the pulpit says you should be supporting Bob Smith or Cindy Smith while allowed, is that wise? Because there's a pretty good chance you're going to people on both sides of that particular.
Endorsement. The same is true of gift officers. We have to be agnostic to many things from a professional standpoint. I am not advocating you put your personal belief system and throw it away, but you're going to work with a lot of different people who have a lot of different views on a lot of different subjects. Now, certainly if the issue is so morally, ethically challenging, maybe that's not the organization for you to work for.
If they're constantly working against something you believe in, and that's okay. I'm not judging that. But for the most part, people should know what your political belief system is. Many times, and I think I've told this story before, but my wife will tell you that we have sat through many a dinner and she has been just the best partner in going.
When I was more of a practitioner, to going to dinner with couples and making it a little bit less subdued, not, as you know, tactical or in-your-face philanthropy. It's just a conversation. You bring other people into it. It kind of deep, deep values, the direction of it just being about money. And she'll walk out and she'll say, they have no idea if you're a Republican or a Democrat.
You they have no idea if you believe X or Y. And my comment is because it doesn't matter what I think isn't the reason we're having the conversation. The reason you're having the conversation isn't about you either. What it's about is what the organization is trying to do to make the world a better place, and whether or not that person's passion or that couple that entities desires to support something align with what you're doing.
So there's a sense of being agnostic about a lot of different issues. The second thing is, is something my mom taught me many, many, many, many decades ago. Now. And it's the first kind of tactical step when maybe an issue comes up. We don't want to support that you anymore because of this particular stance that maybe the organization has taken is telling them that they're wrong.
When I was a kid, I did something and it was probably justified that I got in trouble where I said to my mother, well, that's not fair. You feel that way. And she went, whoa, whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. When you your choice was to do X, but you don't get to determine my feelings. As I look at what you did there.
My feelings. I own them. And even as an, I guess, I'm guessing I somewhere between 8 and 10 when that happened. That moment has stuck with me for a lifetime. Because there's nothing worse than telling someone that their emotional belief systems wrong now are their extremes. Sure, they are far and few between. The point is, is people come into the conversation in the relationship with preconceived notions, with their own opinions, with their history and experiences that lead them into the where they are from an ethical, moral perspective.
Our job is not to tell people that they're wrong. Plus, I have found that not to be a very effective way of building a lot of trust and relationship in general, including a marriage. The point is, is that if you remain agnostic and you don't tell people that they that it's not fair or that you disagree completely, or that, their belief system is, is off kilter, you're going to start in a good place.
The key here is to not judge where they're at. I know that tends to be something we do in particular with social media and immediate reactions. And in part this is why I don't have social media accounts, because people react to things and then can't take it back. Try not to. It's hard because we have our own personal feelings I got it.
I get it. But at the end of the day, we're there for a greater purpose.
Part two. Or the second thing you need to do possibly, is within that belief system that your organization has what you're trying to accomplish, what your mission is and what they've supported, or what they might support is to find some type of value in shared outcomes.
Because we can agree that the goal of, let's say, in a social service agency, youth, children, kids thriving, their opportunity is critical.
That particularly things like diversity, equity and inclusion, maybe it's that we want everybody, every student, every employee, every person to be able to access a helping hand. And that opportunity or that when we think about equity, maybe it's more about we want to remove barriers so every child has a chance. What are the commonalities of the eventual outcome?
Can we find ways of connecting with that. Is that a guarantee they're going to re-up their gift to continue a gift, change the way they feel? No. But what I know is, is that that's the way in which you bring people together. What is it we all want?
Which moves us into part three. The communication strategy.
How do you when someone says, I disagree with the organization you work for doing X, or that they've said this or that they there was a public comment about that or that you're doing X. I think of communication strategy is critically important. And I kind of look at this as a four ABCd execution strategy.
The first is that you want to reflect their position back to them. Their phrasing sounds like you believe this A, B and C.
Active listening is critical. All too often we tend to hear or communicate back only what we think we hear, and too much too often of the time it's not accurate. The first blog I ever wrote for my time here is doing this work, and how it philanthropy was what I called the second shave because I shave twice every day.
I shave once when I get into the shower, which is before, and I shave once when I get out because the hairs are different. And I paralleled that to second shave. Listening. Did you really hear or did they really say what was actually the intent and the key communication point to clarify? Sometimes it's great to reflect their language by phrasing it back to them.
Number two is then reframing it into a way which we just talked about. That's about those common values.
And we discussed a couple of ways of talking about diversity, equity or health or various things to say. We're trying to do this.
Isn't is that something you can still agree with? Number three is to listen, then ask, what inside of all of this are you actually trying to accomplish, which should align with things? I talk about all the time about getting to the passion of the donor. Instead of telling them what we need, find out what they want to do.
And then for remain, stay nonpartisan, agnostic. Talk about the mission, the work, and the outcome.
I would be remiss if I didn't say it kind of here in part three is that there are some organizations that are incredibly by mission, cause immense divide. If you're working for one of those organizations on a, on a, on an issue that causes a lot of people to decide one side or the other, then you are aligning yourself by design with something that the organization believes and you're not going to try this.
This is what we do. If you don't like it, that's fine. But those that do want to support it. I'm talking about when the organization is a little bit more, I'll call it content neutral educational institution, social service, hospital, health care. They're not doing the controversial. I'm not saying people should be controversial. I'm just saying there are some nonprofits that they're headlong into by advocacy and by law and appropriate controversial by subject matter.
That's not what I'm talking about.
The other part of this third kind of communication piece is realizing what power you actually have, which is not a lot. If you're a gift officer. So the commentary question coming from Jordan, you have two power bases that you're in between. One is the organization who may have done said represent. Does something that maybe somebody doesn't like, and there may be very little chance.
And we'll get to this in a moment. How to do feedback back into the organization for them to change. Number two is your between that and the donor who has their own perspective. I tell CEOs and executives and particularly nonprofit boards who are more operational boards, like a hospital board or a university board that donors, people with money have opinions, and you just don't get to wave a magic wand philanthropically and say, well, you know, that opinion doesn't count.
That's not how this works, or that their opinion shouldn't influence how they make their monetary decisions. The point is, is that if you mirror the language, translate it back to the values of the organization. But listen first, then ask, what do you care about that we're doing that we weren't trying to accomplish? That means something to you, and then keep it above nonpartisan.
You at least may be able to reenter into the conversation.
To keep it alive, to keep it moving forward towards maybe a philanthropic gift or support. Number four, this gets a little bit more complicated, but it's something I talk about in terms of just needs assessment. Be able to communicate more specific needs when the organization maybe doesn't have as great a strategic vision campaign plan as we all would like, and that's to break down the budget into smaller pieces to find things they might support.
So there may be things that the organization has said or done that somebody doesn't like, but if you break it down into smaller pieces, you can find a commonality, i.e. maybe they like youth programs like mentoring, teaching, workforce training. But the organization has had commentary about other things outside of that. Would they be willing to support and restrict their gift towards that what you do, or it's potentially something in health care where maybe the organization has a political a particular stance on a health care issue that's somewhat controversial.
But the health care, the hospital still doing things like primary care, pediatric visits, children wellness checks, outreach, remodeling space for a particular area. Can you break it down into a smaller bite size piece to find out if they would support just that part of the organization? Education. We could talk about scholarships, tutoring, mentoring, things that they believe in that you actually do instead of the largesse that maybe the organization said or did something that was problematic to that particular donor.
The point here is, is that the work that is being done in these, what I call minor, and I don't mean it by impact, but minor in the budget areas may still resonate and it's still being done with the right output, which we talked about in part two, which is finding that common ground and talking about what the organization's accomplishing.
Can you break it down into something that's more meaningful and connected to what their passion is, or.
Part five or excuse me, I think part, yeah, part five is how to circle this back into the leadership. Leaders make decisions, boards make decisions. And sometimes we can't influence those. But we do have a responsibility when we can and when it's appropriate. And with respect to create a feedback loop, to talk to the leaders about what you're running into, what people in the community are saying.
Because they can't, if they want, make adjustments unless they have the data and the pieces that best exemplify what these issues are and what that means, at the end of the day, they still make keep that decision and move that forward for other reasons. But our responsibility is to share that if you happen to be a leader and you're hearing this feedback or having donors say, hey, I don't like this, we've given you some tactical, individual steps.
But from a global perspective, I would posit that you should pivot towards more highlighting stories and outcomes of what the organization is trying to accomplish. These impact investments that donors make can be very specific in individual, say, line items in the budget, but you have to communicate that the organization is just not about whatever that controversial issue is, but also about all these other things.
And look at the work that we're doing. So the frontline gift officer or people in communications, whoever is getting some feedback, need to share that back in to their leadership. Leaders need to maybe pivot a little bit on communication, talking about outcomes and stories and how and the value the organization presents for the community.
The last thing that I'll say is kind of part six is that when these things happen, it's a realization that not every donor is the right fit for every organization. It's okay for donors to choose to give or not to give. What's not okay is a loss of civility. And that's kind of where I started. All too often, I find too many people are concentrating on the point 5% of where we're different, rather than the 95.5% where we are the same.
And when that happens, there seems to be a loss of civility, respect, everybody's. And it's a great thing about freedom. We're entitled to our opinions. Doesn't mean they're all good ones. It doesn't mean they're all correct. But we're entitled to them. And this goes to what you study in law school about the First Amendment speech. Limiting speech is a bad idea.
We need to advocate more speech. The problem is, is that we've lost some civility in listening to others, being respectful of someone else's opinion.
I tell my children constantly because it's kind of the way I was brought up. People will forget what you say, but they'll never forget how you make them feel.
And if you're not civil, if they're not civil, what you're end up with is an emotional disconnect that won't be forgotten. And really, all you can do is control. You. I'm willing to listen to anybody's opinion, even if I totally disagree with it.
There are couple of massive exceptions that are unacceptable at any level at any time, but I'm okay with someone else's opinion. My job is to go home to my wife where we have alignment, our children where they have alignment, and we're not crazy. Pretty normal, boring people. What I find is, is that if we have a little more civility and we were realizing those boundaries, particularly when it comes to the conversation we're having today about philanthropy, what we end up with is relationships that continue even though we may not be at 100% aligned.
Today is about leading with what's that shared reason that they are involved or interested. The value of that in the outcome. Using language that really emphasizes what the nonprofit's results are over ideology or the conflict, and breaking down different aspects of the organization so that you can tie it into their interests, their passion for something you do. And in doing so, you do so with a lot of civility.
It's kind of something that philanthropy does naturally, if done correctly. Philanthropy is about bringing people together to think about hope. The future. And if we do this in the right way, we can keep more people engaged. Maybe they don't give this year. Maybe you keep the relationship and they give next year.
What I'm here to say is, is that we all want the world to be better. And the ability to do so even when we disagree is critically important. Hoping today gives you some of those tactical ways that you think relationships enhance relationships. Yes, even when the organization or your donor or prospect has a different perspective, at the end of the day, that's a great thing for everybody.
Don't forget to check out the blogs two per week at House philanthropy.com. You can do an RSS feed right to you. And if you'd like to reach out to me, just like Jordan did, thank you for the Question Today podcast at Health Wellness v.com. Glad suggestion or two. Never know if it'll show up on a podcast as we work through the upheaval of discontent, maybe upheavals, too much of a word.
Maybe just unevenness of discontent. Philanthropy has a unique way of positioning itself. What we do, what we believe, what we engender in the relationships we build with philanthropists. Or maybe you're a philanthropist with the nonprofit. It's the whole between free enterprise that doesn't want to do it, and government, which isn't that efficient. And in the middle sits nonprofits and philanthropy.
What we're doing is critically important. And remember, you're someone who my all time favorite sayings saying some people make things happen, though it's you, the volunteer, the board member, the CEO, the gift officer, whomever. You're someone who makes things happen. There are people, entities, things that are wondering what happened. And then there are those. We're just watching what happens.
We're here to take care of the people who are wondering what happened. People who are watching will have to make a decision which way they're going to go, but we're people who make things happen. For those who are wondering what happened. That's a great way to spend a career. It's a tremendous way to know you're making a difference in the life of your community and the people and the organizations that are meant to change keep those relationships alive, particularly with those philanthropists, giving them every, every opportunity to continue to be supportive, but in ways that they can support and agree with without compromising the relationship as a whole.
I'll look forward to seeing you the next time, right back here on the next edition of Around with Randall. Don't forget, make it a great day.