Episode 288: The Donor Wants to Give: Why Aren't We Asking?
I'm honored that you would take a few moments of your day to join me on this edition of Around with Randall. I had an interesting phone call with a colleague, not quite a client, but someone that, because of the great fortunes I have in my professional life and with my business, I take time sometimes to work with people who don't even pay me.
And in doing so, the question was more of an email than a real conversation was around. I kind of knew all of this, and I'm being asked to. Coming from a different background, build out a relationship and really to make and ask of a board member. In fact, a former board member and I don't know how to do this. And in that initial discussion, in terms of setting up a meeting with that former board member, the board member said something to the effect of, I've really never been formally asked for support, which really concerned this particular individual, and it should stop all of us in our tracks to think about a board member for board member saying, hey, I've already been asked.
And then in this particular case, one step probably to the maybe even stopping more quickly, a little more trouble or problematic is it was actually this forum board member son who has taken over the family business that has said, I think mom and dad might be interested, but nobody's ever really talked to them at that kind of level.
We spend an awful lot of time in our profession talking about donor acquisition, donor retention and donor engagement, but we probably and this is going to mirror many of the different iterations of the podcast that I've done, 300 plus of them at different times. Is we far we don't spend enough time talking about a basic reality that most of our donors, the ones that are consistent, the ones who give more than one time gifts, are more likely than we realize to give more.
If we actually keyword invited them into this conversation. How many donors do you have in your portfolio? Do we have an organizations that we've never really spent the time to build out that invitation? And that's really what my response was back to this particular individual is, is that you might have needs, but have you figured out what they want to do?
What's their priority? Why did they join the board? Why have they given for years things of this nature? Today I want to jump into the really tactical, really specific around this kind of melding of cultivation into solicitation and not to speed it up, but to do it better. And I think this is where I probably should spend more of my time writing is, is that we need to get better at it, because it's at this moment that if we do this right over one, two, three, five, seven meetings and build trust, what you're going to find is, is your donors, the ones that are giving to you now, the ones that you should be focusing
on, the ones that are your highest priority. We'll give you more. If you just do a few things. And today at the end, six tactical things to kind of help you think about how do you do that in a meaningful way? Let's start at the top. We always do. We'll work our way down. The bigger problem is really kind of getting ready for the ask in the proper way, or maybe even even avoiding it.
In the email that I received from my friend and colleague, there was an apprehension. She's new to all of this. I don't know if I can ask them, and that's why I framed my email around. Well, I'm not even sure you're ready to ask, but if you do this correctly, you really don't have to. There is a sense of fear of rejection.
You can listen to a specific Hallett Brown with Randall podcast on that around making the relationship maybe uncomfortable, which is why I formally recommend board members don't ask for gifts unless it's unique situation. Because they're uncomfortable, they're going to ask for too little. There's a fear of hearing no, there's maybe being of self-interest, particularly not necessarily of individual, but the organization wanting things that maybe not engaging the community leaders, philanthropists where they are and that it damages possibly fear of at least damaging future opportunities.
What we end up with then is actual, measurable outcomes. When we do this wrong, we actually get into more visits without movement. You've heard me say stealing from John Wooden and the Pyramid of Success. Don't confuse accomplishment with it with or achievement, with movement or with activity. That accomplishment means we're going somewhere. Movement is just. We keep doing the same things over and over.
We get meetings and we give more updates on another update and another update, because we don't know how to do this in the right way. It's another tour, it's another stewardship touch. And then another year passes and another year passes. And they may make their annual fund gift, but we don't get them into higher levels of discussion. And this, ladies and gentlemen, also applies to leadership annual giving.
If someone's giving $500 and you want to get to 5000, what we're going to talk about and how to do this, to find out what they want to accomplish is important in that area, as it is major gifts and plans, gifts. The organizational consequence. We talked about measurable outcomes when we do this incorrectly. Lots of visits, not a lot of not direction.
In other lunch and other stewardship visit and other tour is that we get underperforming portfolios and then gift officers start saying, you know, I need more people. No, you need to work with people you have in your portfolio better you have stalled major gifts programmatically, or maybe by a gift officer, you actually get donor frustration. I talked about a recent podcast and experience my wife and I have had regarding a nonprofit, and that I'm ready to make a gift, and they are doing exactly what we're going to talk about today from the framework of doing it wrong.
And I'm frustrated and I'm going to give my money somewhere else. It's also a loss of understanding of impact. Donors don't feel as if they're really valued that what they do mean something. You just want my $500 or my annual gift and maybe service on the board is the example we started with, but nothing else. And that leadership measurables, trying to figure out how we measure the value of philanthropic and the fundraising efforts, believes they're not in a prospects because they think, well, we we're asking all these people, but they're really looking at false data to get to where we need to go to get to the tactical.
We have to start with the foundation, not the entity, but the foundations of understanding donors first. There are 4 or 3 important things we should think about in this whole process. It starts with the premise that the greatest limitation in what we do is not donor capacity. It's truly the courage and the discipline, the most important, the discipline to do some things differently, do them better.
Asks should never be a surprise. People should know that's that soft ask. And I've talked about that many different times. I do it in all my trainings in education with gift officers, both as clients or in seminars and conferences. If you're not soft asking, then what you're going to do is you're going to have surprising donors. And the second thing is, and I've talked about this from a management perspective, that we need to get to a point where you can't ask for a gift unless you know their motivation.
What's their experience been? What's their interest? Why do they want to be involved? What do what changes would they think their gifts could make or their impacts could make? How do they define success when giving? What role does philanthropy play in their lives? All of these things drive motivation. What is it they want to accomplish? Now you can't get into this for 50 bucks.
But again, if we go from 500 to 5000, people are more likely to give you 5000 rather than the 500. If you can answer these questions, and I guarantee you you're going to have a hard time getting to 102, 50, 500, a million or plan giving conversations without the knowledge of these emotional connections, their motivations. Which brings us to the real fundraising objective.
Your objective in this whole process is to understand before persuading, discover before proposing, and listen before presenting.
Persuade comes after you understand. Proposing gift comes after the discovery, not of the idea of qualification, discovery of passion, discovery of connection. And finally, you can't present anything until you've listened to what they're trying to accomplish. The best asks are simply solutions. You're giving them the invitation to solve a problem that maybe your nonprofit does, but that they want to be involved with.
And it's already been discussed, expressed, talked about. This isn't a surprise if you do these things. Reframe this from the perspective of where the ask really should be, which is about solving a problem based upon what they want to accomplish that your nonprofit happens to be involved with. And you know exactly why that need to solve that problem is so important to them, and what kind of things they like in the process about whether it's reporting and stewardship or whether it's about naming or whatever.
There's no surprises in this process. All these soft asks being done. Which brings us to our six tactical solutions, six things. And if you want to get your pen out, you probably should ask if you go to the website alpha and backslash and then find this one, there's always a transcript. You can go grab it from there and throw it in AI and create a cheat sheet.
But you want to be listening to this because I'm going to give you the questions to ask in six different categories, six different ways of looking at this. So the first is this discovery. And I wasn't talking about discovery of are they qualified discovery of who this couple, this person, this entity, this family is and what moves them.
Strong fundraisers. Number one, create better discovery conversations that center around what the donor is trying to accomplish. And so there's some what I would call biographical connection ones. What first connected you to our organization? What then we start moving into broader inner desires. What impacts you most? What concerns do you have? Where do you feel like your gifts have meant more?
When have you been proud of them? What would you like your philanthropy to say about you? We spend and this is where the email started. They had a particular project. She wanted to go to them and ask this. And this is this colleague and friend, former board member, to just ask them outright for the project. And I pushed back and said no, because they may want to support the project, but you have no idea what they actually value.
What's important to them? Spend less time talking about your programs. Spend more talking, exploring their motivations, and think of it as an emotional journey for the donor. And these recurring themes, these reoccurring things that seem to always come up. In my case, I mentioned a little bit of a challenge in trying to make a gift, which seems odd, but it's true.
There's one central theme I keep coming back to it. It's very clear. I mean, even me is the author of the verbiage I'm using feels like I'm hitting myself and everyone else over the overhead with a baseball bat, because there's one reason I want to do this. And you figure that out by not listening to facts, but by listening to stories.
Because stories are about emotion. Facts are about data. What are the stories telling you? Think about discovery, not again about qualification, but about figuring out what moves them. Donors will tell you exactly what they want to do, how they want to be asked. If you listen carefully enough and ask the right questions. Number two, know the readiness signals.
Many donors tell us that they've been ready a long time before we realize it. They ask really simple questions, or they come up in simple ways, and we fail to recognize them as openings to engage in a much higher, more specific level, to ask to engage. How can I help? What are your biggest needs? What are you working on now?
Who else is supporting this? How much would it take to do this? I've always been interested in this area. We need to stop treating these comments, these indicators, these directional verbiage that they're telling you exactly what they want as casual conversation. And you need to move these conversations forward. But here becomes the key. This is why it's step two.
If you can't do these recognition moments when they say these things and less, you know what moves them because you're not going to put something in front of them unless you're lucky. That moves them until you listen and ask the questions about what does move them. Then you might even reposition a project that is exactly the same project, but fits within what they're trying to do, and they give you these signs.
You have to follow the donors curiosity when they express it, and that curiosity isn't about, well, I wonder what could happen. It's how can we make this work? Fundraising opportunities are lost because fundraisers ignore signals that donors are probably closer to the giving conversation than we realize. Number three is, is that we have to become more comfortable in making recommendations.
And I've talked about this a couple different ways recently in the podcast and in writing that donors have advisors. Donors need and want help. Most of the time there's a few that don't. They're more experienced, but they need guidance. They need the idea of how it's going to make the biggest difference. So instead of saying, well, here's our top five priorities, or gosh, this is our, you know, only 1 or 2 things that we're trying to do here.
Think about the difference in the conversation instead of that, by saying things around, if you've done the first part correct investigated, find out what their passion is. Better discovery. And number two. You're listening for cuz it sounds something like, well, based on your interest in our conversations, I believe there's an opportunity over here that aligns perfectly with what you want to do and what what's most important to you.
In some ways, we need to narrow the choices you aren't going to maximize. Transformational. Again, transformational is in a number of a number of zeros. What it is where passion meets their gift at the highest possible levels that you need to narrow their choices, because you're not going to get to that transformational on a shotgun. It's going to be a rifle.
It's a very narrow shot, which means you need to connect the opportunities to the donor's interest. You may reposition something. You may be building a new Ed as an example. Or in a university, a whole new business school doesn't make a difference if they say that they love capital projects because they show the vibrancy of the institution or the organization, then it's bricks and mortar.
If they say something around access, meaning that the business school is going to provide more opportunities for kids or students who don't have as many options, or the Ed provides better service for those who aren't insured. They're interested in helping the community expand its connection to great needs. It's the same Ed, but you're going to position it totally differently.
And that's why you can come back to, well, these are five things. No no no no. Based on what you've told me, we're doing this Ed and things you believe in or this here's how this connects and why that opportunity fits. And then the guidance on how they can be involved as a leader. Donors often appreciate when you make the right connections.
But don't guess at this one. You have to do one and two first before you ever get to three. Discovery of passion. Listening for cause. Then it becomes made into recommendations. Which brings us to number four practice. I don't talk about this enough. After 30 years, I'm pretty comfortable. Doesn't mean I get it right all the time, and I certainly can be better.
But money doesn't bother me and asking people for money doesn't bother me because frankly, if I do it well, I'm really not even asking for money. It's an invitation. But I've practiced and by the way, failed a lot. Think about this the greatest athletes in the world don't get there by pure luck. They practiced. I watched The Last Dance about Michael Jordan again and the Bulls.
And I love what Roy Williams, former assistant coach at North Carolina than into Kansas and then back to North Carolina. But he was an assistant when he coached Michael. And he said that Michael Jordan was the only player he ever could see who could turn it on and off. And he dadgum it never turned it off because he was always practicing.
I mean, it probably cost him things like relationships, musicians, practice. My wife's a classically trained musician. She didn't get to be the way she was as just an amazing performer. It was our just by guessing. So it was hours and hours particularly. We were dating and then we were married early on of her just practicing, practicing, practicing, listening.
Clarinet constantly practice certain things in the ask how about the transition trans into the ask or asking for a specific thing responses to questions, those challenging moments, being able to explain the value of impact or what it may mean, and then the pause and feeling comfortable just sitting, waiting until. Because the old adage first want to speak loses.
There are ways to do this. You can role play it, you can record it. You can bring in a partner who can kind of evaluate it, but you need to become more comfortable. Confidence is quintessential here. If you don't believe in the mission, I'm not speaking to you because you shouldn't be doing what you're doing. I'm talking to people who believe in the mission, want to make a difference, want to help.
But there's not the confidence to have the money conversation, which is really no more than just an invitation to make a difference. But that preparation, that practice, is what makes all the difference in doing it. With a deal of confidence and eloquence and making the donor feel good about it. The fifth is reframing what an ask really is, and this is also something we don't talk enough about and ask, isn't it?
It's an invitation. We're offering someone an opportunity to create impact, to express their values. And if we've done the first parts right, what we end up with is a conversation about how they can make a difference through our organization, through our mission. But it really focuses on outcomes rather than dollars, and it focuses on their goals rather than needs what they're trying to accomplish.
And that it's the donors ability to create and complete a choice. Our job is to invite people in. It's their job to decide if it's right the amount, the cause, the timing. Now we should pivot and ask questions like, is this the right time? Do we think we just the right amount that soft? Ask again, but my comment to my friend and colleague all the way back to the original part of this podcast, former board member said, you're not really even asking if you do this correctly.
You're presenting them an option to do something they want to do anyway. It's going to make it easy for them. You're a Sherpa helping them. And then the last thing is, is that you need to build this idea of solicitation, discipline, the relationship building process into the organization, changing your moves, management meetings. We're not going to allow you to ask until you can express what the donor's passion is.
And by doing that, we'll will increase dramatically our conversion rates. And thinking about and asking on a regular basis with individual donors. Next step. When do we want to do this? What's key important to in doing that next step. Are we comfortable moving forward. Because if one thing I've learned is, is that if we're really good gift officers, if they're like, well, I'm not sure, then something that's off, which means we probably haven't done the discovery well enough.
We need to in the review of portfolios. And we talk about prospect management. Clear written you boost management plans really push into this idea of next step, next step, next step based upon the donor's passion and change the institutional support that comes along with it. Donors don't move because time passes. There is no shot clock on this thing.
They move because of intentional action normally by us to help them make a decision, even if that decisions. No. So six things that you can think about from discovery. Then moving into the idea of kind of the building in the right discussions and the ability for us to really have, you know, learning those recognition signals, then it's about getting comfortable.
It's about practice. It's about reframing it from the standpoint that we don't actually ask if we do this correctly, we're offering invitations and then finally into discipline. So we're doing it in all things about focusing on that passion. I haven't been given an opportunity to support the organization at the level I want generic terminology from that board member.
Which donors do you have that might say that? Which ones have you cultivated too long? Which ones haven't? You can't figure out the passion of them. What are they trying to say? What are they trying to do? What opportunity has been missed by that? Most donors don't feel a need for perfection. What they need is guidance and they need leadership.
And when we truly understand their passion, their values and aspirations. Asking is less about asking and all about inviting having them join us. And to my colleague and friend, this is what I told her. 1 or 2 additional meetings before you ask, might quadruple the amount you ask, but also change the conversion of wanting to really build a relationship and find out what they're trying to accomplish to meet in the middle.
And at the end of the day, that's what we're trying to do. It is very technical annual giving, leadership, annual giving into larger or in a major gift plan gifts, principal gifts. You got to go do these things. That's how you're going to elevate your philanthropy in meaningful ways. Don't forget to check out the blogs at Hallett Philanthropy two per week, and if you'd like to, you can reach out to me at podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com.
My all-time favorite saying some people make things happen, some people watch things happen. And then there are those who wondered what happened. You're someone who makes things happen. You work in an environment where you're looking for other people just like you. I can't imagine a better way to spend a career and today is a challenge to maybe look at the way in which we develop relationships more effectively.
But it's also an affirmation of the amazing work that goes on every day in nonprofits, serving the community, making a difference, changing lives. You're part of that. Lean in a little bit. Take a little bit of a chance. Change what you do. Trust some of these suggestions in this podcast and others. If you've been to one of my classes, or in a conference, or been a former client or current client, if you'll just trust me a little bit and you just make it about them, those donors, what you're going to do is elevate the impact that you have, being someone who makes things happen and the nonprofits ability to make a difference for people in
your community who need what you do desperately. I look forward to seeing you next time, right back here on the next edition of around with Randall. Don't forget. Make it a great day.