Episode 272: The Fundraisers Bill of Rights - What we Should be Looking for to Achieve Success
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 an absolute honor to have you join me, Randall, on this edition of A round with Randall. We should be. I hope you are. I try to remain aware of consistent two. Always preaching and or commenting on the positive nature of the donors Bill of Rights, which I hold in my little hand here. It's been endorsed by created by RFP, by AHP, by case, by the Giving Institute.
And it speaks to the nature of how we should treat donors. And things on it include that donors have a right to be informed of the mission, to be informed of the identity of those beings that are leading the organization. They have access to financial statements and so on. All ten things that we should know, and probably in many ways, you've either heard of the donor Bill of rights or been forced to maybe read it.
Maybe some of you have it on a corkboard and you keep it in mind. I'm not here to talk about the donor Bill of rights today. I want to talk about something that crossed my desk that aligned with this, that I had never thought about, that I had never seen, which caused me to really do kind of a deep dive into my own thought processes about what we do and how we do it.
And I want to give credit where credit's due. It came from Boomerang and the work that they do with their CRM, but they write a lot of other material. And back in September of 2025, there was a post or a blog post or writing whatever you want to call it around the idea of a fundraisers Bill of rights.
And I in 30 years have never thought about it. I certainly was more than aware of the donor Bill of rights. But what is it that we are as fund raisers, asking for what should be non-negotiable? But really, what came of it, and what we want to talk about today is what it means. And then it goes much deeper than just a list and a very good list of things that fundraisers should fight for, should be a part of all of our jobs.
But it really speaks to what we should be looking for when we think about success, when we think about connections to donors, when we think about organizational impact, which is the essence of philanthropy, love of mankind, of love of humankind. How do we help others and what our organizations do? Today, we want to take this apart. Not so much the ten aspects of the fundraisers Bill of rights, but what it is we should be asking when we think about the jobs that we accept that we have, that we embrace, that we go to every day to try to make the world a little bit better, place.
So we'll start at the top. What is this? Fundraisers. Bill of rights. And I'll just give you a couple I'm not going to read all of them, but you can go. Google fundraisers bill of rights. It's on the Boomerang website September of 2025. And it talks about things like the right to be have clear, measurable and realistic fundraising goals, the right to term limits for board members, the right for professional development opportunities, the right for an annual performance evaluation based upon realistic measures that include donor retention and donor satisfaction, not just revenue.
The right to role modeling and mentoring leaders who understand and respect how fundraising actually works, not what the rumors are. Autonomy to how you work and how you do your work. Respect for from leadership about not just the job, but what happens outside the office, which may include and should include seeing people making phone calls, building relationships that a culture of philanthropy exists of in totality with gratitude donors, and that there's the right to nurture oneself.
Meaning take care of yourself. I guess I did read all ten. The point is, is that as I thought about this, that all of these things I totally agree with in in some way, shape or form, you could find them in any one of my podcasts blog posts when I speak all things that I really appreciate, Boomerang bringing together into one spot because they're legitimate, but it doesn't actually answer the right question, at least in my mind.
What is coming of this is that we should be asking, does the fundraiser make the organization, or does the organization make the fundraiser? And maybe I should put successful in there. Does the organization make the successful fundraiser does is the successful fundraiser make the organization? In my career, there have been a couple people that I've run into, not meaning that they could go raise money for something nobody wants because they're just great at relationships and at providing messaging to providing context to providing contact, to building a transformational relationship.
They're just good at it. So it would make a difference where they work. Those are the few and far between. Which brings us to this case of what I would argue in their most recent Super Bowl. Sam Darnold order back of the Seahawks. Here is Sam Darnold, who was cast aside after being the first draft pick by the New York Jets.
He quote unquote failed with the Jets. He failed with Carolina. He bounced around to a couple of other teams behind the scenes. Certainly San Francisco would be at the top with, Kyle Shanahan, then went to Minnesota somebody. But as a backup, somebody gets hurt. J.J. McCarthy and he has to step in. Has a great year, signs for less money with Seattle and goes and wins the Super Bowl and is projected is shown to be an amazing leader and a great quarterback.
And his journey through the NFL has sparked a conversation amongst the commentators, the pundits around this same type of question. Does the organization make the quarterback or does the quarterback make the organization? Every once in a while there's a Peyton Manning, a John Elway, a Joe Montana, Patrick Mahomes. But most of the time it's the organization who's around them.
What do they do? And here gets to be the crux of the issue for us today. Do we really realize how much we don't control.
And how many times have you. Have you heard have I witnessed situations where fundraisers aren't being as successful as they should be? Can be will be because of the organizational issues that have nothing to do with them. There are things we can't control that we need to be more aware of and maybe think about and talk about. Institutional credibility.
Reputation is something we alone don't control. Think about that. There are things organization does, says doesn't say that sometimes put programmatic legitimacy into kind of a nebulous situation. We don't get the clear case. More often than not. I'm dealing with CEOs and executives and boards saying, help us. We need to help you and help us clarify what we're trying to actually raise money for leadership behavior.
How often has it been? And I don't mean illegal then that's just in another level. I'm talking about leadership behavior, about what they do every day. Are they visible? Are they engaged? And when I say leadership, I'm not talking just about the paid staff. What about board participation, network activation? Are they willing to go out and tell the story?
Consistency with strategic priorities are is the consistency of where we're going remain or are we just bouncing around? We don't control that behavior. Infrastructure and tools for fundraisers. If you're the CTO, CPO, chief of philanthropy, you probably have more influence. But data quality and CRM integration. I've got a number of clients right now that I'm actually recommending, bringing in somebody that I trust to say, look, before you ever hire me, you got to clean up your data because I can teach you.
And I'm a for profit business, and I like working with clients and making money. But I'm not going to take your money and not going to sign a contract now, because we can't even execute basic things because your CRM is not right. You also don't control marketing alignment. How often is it that we want to communicate one message but marketing says no, I have one client that's they're dealing with some events that are coming up, and the marketing will get to the kind of material that you need.
When we get to it, it's like, wait a minute, we're being held up by this time horizon. These are things we don't control, those expectations that come with it. Unrealistic revenue cycles or compression. Maybe it's a better way to put it because the CFO says we need the money right now, or we eliminate non-cash giving pledged. So plan giving isn't a priority.
But yet we know 85% of the dollars assets, really in the United States are behind a marketable wall. If you go to Australia or the European Union, very much similar things aren't as liquid. There's confusion about pipeline development that comes out of these expectations and how often we have to close. And people feel like, well, I just have to go ask, not build relationships.
Fundraisers amplify institutional strength. It's not. And we can't be substitutes for its absence. If you have these issues, it's really hard to be successful when it comes to raising money and developing relationships. Which brings us back to this fundraisers Bill of rights.
How do we look at this in a more holistic way? The fundraisers Bill of rights is really a government, a governance document does the alignment between what we want to go talk about align governance wise with the executive leadership, with the board, with the expectations, with the budgeting, with the communication that we have with the community, as I always do, I want to pivot to tactical.
So you're in a current job. You're wondering, is this the right fit? You're looking at a new leader, either a chief philanthropy officer, maybe a new CEO. What questions would you ask? You have a new job, i.e. you're looking you're trying to figure out what job to go take. What questions should you at? And even when we talk about our ultimate governance, our board members, what is it we are looking for in terms of setting that governance agenda, which is really driven to alignment so we can go do our jobs?
There are six things that I believe that we should highlight out of this, that we should be framing more conversations around. If you're the chief philanthropy officer, you need to be pushing in the CEO respectfully with these or with the board. If you're the CEO executive director, you need to be pushing into the board with these. If you're a board member or the board chair, you need to be talking amongst your brethren.
The other board members, about these. And we need to shift from theory to practical application, decision making. So let's talk about tactically what the six are. The first is is what I would call leadership accessibility. And I don't mean that the chief philanthropy officer can go see the CEO. What I'm talking about is the frequency and the quality.
And we'll come back to that in a second of the executives interaction, the leadership interaction with donors in the community. It's just not frequency. If all they do is go to quantized groups and speak, but have no interaction, interaction generally assumes a two way communication. A lecture is a one way, and if all they do is go to Kiwanis groups or a Rotarian in groups, great things and there's no interaction.
Then all it is, is a lecture. It's better than nothing. But it's not all that great. Which means that they need to be willing to participate actively in cultivation and solicitation. Now, that doesn't mean they have to ask, but what we want are people who are going to engage in a realistic way with the people who are making what we do donors possible.
This gets more complicated when we have alternative streams of revenue. So a nonprofit, let's take a hospital. Most of their revenue is not coming from philanthropy in most cases. But yet the CEO still has a responsibility for engagement with donors. Are they willing to do that or do they hide behind the office because 80 to 90% of the revenue comes from reimbursements, education from tuition?
Or if you're a public institution, from state dollars, but they still have to integrate, engage with donors. So are they accessible from a leadership vantage point to the people who make philanthropy possible? Number two, board functionality. Is there evidence that there's engagement beyond oversight and there's a difference? I'm all for oversight. It's critical and critically important. I have a client right now that I'm dealing with where this is the biggest issue, and it's deeply hindering their philanthropy.
The board has really good oversight. There's no problems. There's no financial malfeasance. They are really engaged on oversight. But what they're not engaged with is actual engagement with the community. All they do is talk to each other and at each other at board meetings. And yet there's no outreach. And really, this is the idea of network connections, ambassador behavior.
Are they willing to go out and spread the word, spread the gospel. And this comes to other podcasts that I've done, you can Google them around. What board responsibilities are? They need to be outward looking as much as inward looking. If all the board does is approve the finance, hire CEO and approve a budget and be hear a mission moment every meeting.
They are oversight. If they're coming back in with dashboards about. I've introduced three people or we're having a little a little and I've done the salon. How do you build out a salon if you're not doing those things? And all this board is, is oversight, and that's not helpful. So board functionality is important.
I would add in this that board functionality also includes people not staying around too long are their term limits. Got another client. We're kind of helping rewrite their bylaws. This is the number one thing because there are some people that need to go. And even though I think I'm a really great board member because I push things that we're talking about today, there's certain point where I need to go six years, five years, four years, maybe seven.
There's a process where you got to turn people over so that there's a new sense of energy. Number three is, do they have a case for support based upon integrity and mission? Is there a clarity, a specific specificity, a credibility with funding priorities? And this is one that I think we have mass challenge with as the economic climate coming out of Covid and certainly with the pandemic has changed.
We have less strategy going on. There's less clarity, which directly pushes us to be understanding of what we need to be doing, what we need to be talking about. I have another client that I'm working with. This is a massive issue because there's a disconnect and misalignment between the board, the CEO, and the fundraising and finance. It's not an enormous issue.
We're going to fix it. Not a big deal, but it's causing issues because the fundraiser is bringing in money. But the board and the CEO like, look, from a financial perspective, we need more support for the basics of what we do. Not new programs, but supporting what we currently have. And once we kind of get everything aligned, we can go do some more, probably interesting, aggressive things that are going to make our nonprofit more effective.
But right now it's some basics, which means that there is if there is some type of vague or inflated messaging that doesn't actually get to what's needed.
Specifically, not just more money, as we've talked about a million different times and you've heard we're not doing. I'm all for unrestricted giving, but that's not where the big dollars come from. How do we make sure we have a case for support that's based on integrity and mission? Things to go talk about? Number four is data and system maturity.
This is all about the infrastructure, about your CRM, about donor records, about visibility within the pipeline reporting reliability. Is data being used effectively.
Number five is performance expectations. And really more of the logic that we should have our time frames reasonable for what goals are being set. Is there a balance between relationship development and revenue? And I mentioned this earlier performance evaluations based not just. And this is in directly from the fundraisers Bill of rights. That's just not based on revenue but on things about deepening relationships.
And this goes right into something I've talked about recently about plan giving. Do we recognize count not account meaning not as be not GAAP, not accounting rules. But do we count plan gifts? Does the performance expectations make logical sense? And six I would classify kind of generally as cultural signals.
How are success and failure interpreted particularly failure. Is it seen as incredibly detrimental. And everybody's fired. Or as we took small chances to do good things, and we're accepting of the results and are going to improve upon them. Is fundraising viewed as a strategic partner to the organization in its direction, or is it transactional to put it into finance so we can pay our bills?
There's little logic to all of this that we probably should be asking more questions. So the six tactical things to think about is about leadership. It's accessibility. Are they present not just internally but in the community. And that means two way street communication involvement, cultivation, solicitation, stewardship, all of those things. Board functionality are things. Are they are they operating in engagement or in oversight?
Do we have specific cases to raise money for there based upon the organization's direction? Does it align with strategy? Do we have the data, the maturity of systems, the infrastructure to measure what we're doing and use data to our advantage? Do we have performance expectation logic meaning what they're asking for actually is reasonable in the time frame that's being asked.
And finally, cultural signals that are about understanding what risks we take. And are they accepted in terms of success and failure? What this is all meaning and maybe is the overriding feature for today is my advice to you all is you need to be interviewing your organization or your future organization, or your new board, or your new CPO or your new.
You know, as much as interview you and ask diagnostic questions about engagement, their engagement, donor engagement. Look for historical patterns. It's hard for organizations to change particular they keep promoting from within that you need the opportunity to figure out. Are we just repeating the same thing over and over, but with different people and look for consistency, connection between values and behavior.
If you do these things, if you look for the six tactical things we talked about, what you're going to find is, is number one, you might be able to help your organization evolve, change for the better. Number two, you could be looking for the right people who can help do that. Board members, leaders, employees, staff. And number three, if it doesn't work, you now have a platform to figure out.
Maybe I need to go find someplace that does and have some framework to do. So. I'm not encouraging anybody to leave, but what I am saying is, is that the fundraisers Bill of rights put out by Boomerang, really talks about what we should be looking for when we are the people out on the street. The gift officer. Leadership.
Annual giving. Planned giving. You are someone who is relationship based, and if you're the CEO, maybe you want to look around and say, am I doing the things in terms of leadership that drive some of these particular aspects? This is about reinforcing fundraising and fundraisers effectiveness. Then it's inseparable from institutional design, and that it encourages leaders to treat fundraising success as a shared responsibility.
And at the end, that's really what's most important. There's nothing more frustrating than having someone in the executive team say, well, you go raise money like, no, no, no, no, no. We're all in this together. This is one of these podcasts. It's more theoretical, there's tactical. But really what this is, is a sort of methodology around what we should be and how we should do it.
And hopefully it gives you a chance to kind of reframe some of the questions you asked to figure out what you want to be and what your organization can be that brings everybody together. Based upon in September of last year, 2025, interesting put output fundraisers bill of rights. Don't forget to check out the blogs at Howlett philanthropy.com two per week.
Different things I see right about 90 seconds. Get an RSS feed right into your inbox and if you'd like to reach out to me, it's podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. We need philanthropy. We need nonprofits. We need you to be the best, that there's more and more people falling into that gap that I talk about. Each week between the government, which isn't all that efficient, and free enterprise, which doesn't want to do things that don't make money.
Philanthropy lives between the two. It lifts communities. It lifts people to give them options, opportunity, hope. And that's what you provide every day. No matter if you're a volunteer, a CEO, a CPO, a gift officer, infrastructure, whomever, whatever you do. What I hope is, is that you take a moment of each day and look around and say, I'm making a difference.
Could you be making more based upon things we talked about today? The answer is unequivocally yes in every example, but that doesn't mean that what you're doing is not important. By doing the work you do, coming to work every day, coming to volunteer every day, being a leader, you are making a difference. Remember, some people make things happen.
Some people watch things happen. Then there are those who wonder what happened. You're someone who makes things happen. You partner with others who want to make things happen for those people. Those things in our community that are wondering what happened. It's a pretty good way to spend a day. Hope you can see and feel that. See, when you show up tomorrow, you can do it again by making that difference, by being someone who makes things happen.
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.