Episode 301: Integrating Program Staff Into Donor Relationships Without Diluting the Philanthropic Process
It's such a lovely day. I hope for you this day or whatever day. But today, on this edition of Around with Randall. As the stakes for philanthropy become more challenging, we see less donors. We see bigger donors making more of a difference. The I'm doing more and more trainings and conversations at conferences with clients around maximizing portfolio value.
Where do you spend your time? And that's usually with the biggest opportunities closest relationships need to maximize these opportunities when they come. And recently I've run into a couple situations where we may not be doing everything that we should to prepare these upper-level discussions for the best possible results, because we're not bringing in what I'll call program staff, clinicians, doctors, nurses could be volunteers, board members could be education teachers or other educators in that way.
Maybe social service. It's people on the front line, the program office. We're not bringing them into the donor conversations. Today's episode is to figure out how we can overcome that. Why that's important, and maybe some tactical, as we always tend to do tactical reasons why these things are important and how to do them in a more effective way.
So, as we tend to do here on around with Randall, we'll start at the big picture and kind of work our way down to those tactical. And the big picture is, is that we know that there's a natural disconnect with the difference between our philanthropy efforts and our program or service offices or people, professionals that do that work development, hopefully staffers gift officers know philanthropy, but they may not know the intricacies of the program side.
I'm very certain that most program people don't have any clue about philanthropy. I wrote a book about that for the idea of the being vulnerable enough for our CEOs, vibrant vulnerability for our CEOs. And that really applies to all, to be open to fleeing therapy in a meaningful way and to engage in it. This differential creates actually two levels of priorities.
If we're doing what we should be. Number one, the programs trying to figure out programs, trying to figure out how do we maximize impact with limited resources. In fact, most of the time they can't even think outside the box of what's possible with more resources. Our development people are trying to figure out how to maximize relationships. This brings up some common problems when these things conflict or are not aligned.
First is, is that maybe we're providing too much technical detail, or maybe even not enough. There could be conflicting institutional priorities. Well, I need to raise mine dollars or philanthropic revenue, certain percentage or metrics or goals or whatever the numbers are, versus really what the program side is trying to do in terms of outcomes we can have on unapproved promises or intentions to donors.
And I've seen this where there's not an alignment, a gift officer gets out of head, said, we can do this. And the clinical people was clinical in that case program overall. Or like we can't do that. And it's we need a lot more money than that. There's uncoordinated donor relationships I've seen. And this is more often than health care than it is in other places.
But it can happen is, is that all of a sudden there's two conversations going on about the same subject. Maybe the program side's having one conversation because maybe they are engaging in flamethrower B, but they're not engaging with the full office foundation, development office, Advancement office to coordinate that. So they're out having a different conversation, and we have donors who are confused.
And finally, there's unclear responsibility as to who's going to follow up. Who's supposed to do what. What does this mean? And in the context of the nonprofit world, the easiest one to explain this to is to grant regarding grants, I spent an awful lot of time, in particular on the program side, explaining to those who are looking for grant dollars, and the same applies here for individual relationships.
It's just not getting the money. We're supposed to actually report what the money was used for. And in grants, corporations, foundations, particularly government, there are reporting requirements. And the clinical or program side says, well, I don't have time for that. I'm just using money. No, no no, no. We got to work together to create that accountability. Donors get confused.
They miss. We miss opportunities. And potentially we diminish confidence when we're not aligned. So why is it so necessary to even include program people in this conversation in the first place? Well, we know that larger donors to in today's world, particularly with generation X, that's me. So coming out of the baby boomers and absolutely millennials, every data point is telling us when we look at the generations is that the trust of the institutional brand that the silent generation and the baby boomers, particularly those closer to the front end from 1946, 1964, the front end, they're more trusting of the institutional brand name generation X.
And millennials are saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I need execution. I need to know this is going to work, and I need to know how you're going to measure it and come back to me. So as we see this transition and we know bigger donations are becoming more and more important. We used to operate the 8020 rule, the Prieto principle.
20% of our donors made up 80% of our dollars. Like Prieto, the Italian economist. Dead. That's true in our industry. It's 95 at least. So if that 5% is so important and they're larger and we know what their motivations are generically from a generational change perspective, then we have to have things to answer about specific problems and solutions.
We need an expertise that's going to be much above what we could ever talk about as a philanthropic expert. They're a subject matter expert on delivery of what we're trying to accomplish in through your mission that there may be some investment required, i.e., maybe a partnership that requires the organization to partner with donors because the dollars that are needed are so large.
I recently wrote a blog post on the increased trends of debt amongst nonprofits, and that's a scary trend. How do we use philanthropy in that mode, in partnership with organizational funds, to bring them together to maximize a particular strategic intention? We might have expectations. In fact, I probably would suggest we will from donors about outcomes and risks. We tend not to talk about those risks.
There are risks in what we do. Some things may not work. How do we articulate that in a way that doesn't sound negative or downtrodden or, you know, it's this is a hopeless cause. That's where service people can be incredibly helpful explaining why they're choosing these kind of methodologies or opportunities to execute on. And lastly, the institution overall has to deliver.
Maybe we're dealing with several what I would call mini campaigns or mini strategic initiatives all at once. It's not always one thing. And so as a result, we need to kind of bring all this content expertise from including CFOs and finance people to physicians, educators, social service, all of these people, researchers in particular, what are they doing to find the solutions?
They bring credibility and firsthand knowledge of what we should be trying to accomplish in the first place. As an organization, we hold the personal relationship on the philanthropy side, but with a content expert and done in the right way. We strengthen donor engagement because we bring credibility to the process, and program staff can add an immense depth of understanding and opportunity that development professionals cannot fully execute on because we don't have the experience on that.
I would also argue they don't have experience to what we're doing. If we truly are professional and I believe we are, development is responsible for the direction and the movement of the relationship should be in charge of what is trying to happen and absolutely should be the head of the idea of solicitation or solicitation strategy. But we're better off when we bring those content experts with us, particularly in those high level situations or opportunities to ensure that we are maximizing the moment emotionally, structurally, impact wise, to be us.
Explain what we're trying to do to maximize a donor's interest, particularly if they've expressed a general interest in that maybe area or outcome as to what we're trying to get done. That partnership is critical. So what about the tactical six tactical things that you should do to ensure that you are aligning this in the right way? The first is, is that you need to develop keyword shared cultivation plan all too often.
First of all, we don't have enough cultivation planning going on all too often. When I ask my clients, hey, share screen, show me the CRM and what you're doing for cultivation plan. There's nothing there. So the first thing is we got our own responsibilities. We need to do more cultivation planning, but it's the integration of the cultivation planning with the program development that's so key.
What is it you're trying to explain to a donor of the to elevate towards, as we always talk about transformational giving, not a dollar number or number of zeros but maximizing gift opportunity. Where does the program side fit into that. What do they need to know? How do they need to know it? Is it complicated? We have to do it in multiple steps.
Thinking about research is a good example. I've done an immense amount of philanthropy with research, both in practice and supporting clients and consulting. There's the tour aspect, which is kind of cool, but then there's really the understanding unless the donor happens to be a scientist, those are two separate steps. How do we do that in a way, give a tour.
And by the way, that would apply to health care when you maybe giving a tour of a surgical area or a plains look like education, where it was to bring donors in to the classroom, alums in particular, 50 years after they were there to feel that emotional connection that they've always had. But that was just the emotional connection.
And then I'd bring in content experts to talk about what we're trying to do to make this environment consistent with what they experience a little different with technology and updated history and things of that nature. But the same, this joint planning is critical. What it does is it not only identifies the donors and motives and creates a clarity for the program clinician, faculty member, researcher, whomever understanding of what we're trying to do.
But it also then brings in kind of the thought of readiness, both on the donor side, but most importantly, are the program people ready to execute? I have a client that we're dealing with, a situation where somebody made a major seven figure gift because we didn't do this in the right way, and I wasn't there at the time, but I'm part of the team, and so I take some responsibility.
We're having to give the money back. Oh, man. The only thing worse than that possibly is not cashing a donor's check. Letting it sit in a desk can't do that. And so this ability to create a multi-level cultivation plan with both donor directed activity and hopes and opportunities moves along with what the program sites doing is really, really important.
And it will create a clear sense of expectation for the donor interactions that are to come. Number two is we have to have a unified case of support. All too often, I tend to have to write a lot of case statements without a lot of what I would call program support. I'm a pretty good writer. I think I do it fairly well, but I I'm not a content expert.
And so if we're not unifying the case and when I what do I mean by unifying? Well, is this actually what we're going to do with the money? Are these actually the outcomes we intend? Or am I just pulling general data points from various research around the United States or around the world, depending on clients? I have them all over the world or we just guessing.
I don't want a gas, so I'm asking for $10 million. There's no guessing. I need those program people to help me define what they're trying to do and how we're going to measure it. What it does is it creates, number one, I think, realistic cases of what we're doing and what the outcome is going to do, but it also creates talking points as to here's what we're trying to do and here's how we're going to measure it.
And in doing so, we can identify what we can and cannot do. And this is where I think the danger is on the case statement side or the case development side. We don't have content experts. We start guessing it sounds good. And then all of a sudden somebody says, you know, we can't do that. We should have figured that out a long time ago.
All this creates a sense of authentic communication within the institutional priorities or parameters or what we're trying to accomplish. So number two is establish unified, agree details. What are we doing and how it's going to be done. Number three is defining the responsibilities. This is one that I screwed up once. It's one of my favorite stories. I will not go into the details here, but I failed my CEO, my boss, because we did not define and rehearse, which will be number four, what this meeting was going to look like.
He assumed he knew what he was doing. I allowed him to have that assumption and we came out of it not in the place what we should have. And that's my fault, not his. The idea is, is that we need to ensure that the development strategy, as well as the case statement strategy align and really what the goal of that particular meeting or series of meetings is.
Not all meetings we know are the same. They don't have the same goals. If we don't really define what the responsibilities are, what we end up with potentially is two lines of communication. All of a sudden the program people are communicating different things without us knowing, or we're communicating things that the program office didn't understand or know. This idea of coordinating all of this into individual responsibilities, really what we're responsible for in is the strategy, donor relationship, solicitation, and obviously coordination.
The program staff is technical expertise, vision, impact and feasibility of not study, but feasibility of what we're doing. Is it feasible to accomplish that will lead us into really more robust conversations beforehand and the prep. But most importantly with the donor, where we kind of know what we're trying to accomplish. Which brings us to number four. You need to brief and rehearse.
Do not walk into a meeting with someone else without there being a briefing and a rehearsal. I'm not saying two hours and you have to like a word for word. What's the plan? The background and interests donor. Why are they interested? How did we get to this point? What's our central messaging? What questions might we anticipate or have come up that we want to make sure we cover, to make sure we're meeting them?
What's the order of the speaking? Who's got the transitions? Who's going to answer questions. Maybe it could be two people. Technical expertise. They may ask this question. Philanthropy. Philanthropy of how to make gifts possible. What are the options? Well, that would follow on this side of the table. And you want to prepare as if it's almost like you're writing these.
Now, I'm an oral person, so I don't need the writing, but having the conversation frames for me, kind of a sequencing of options or different ways the conversation could go. So you need to define the roles three for brief and rehearse what this might look like. So everybody's on the same page. What are the goals. What are we going to accomplish.
Number five I think it's absolutely quintessential and almost never done to any level of appropriateness that we train the program staff as to what we're talking about in philanthropy and donor engagement. One of the things that I did, I did not realize its value at the time. I was kind of desperate at the medical center and as chief philanthropy officer.
And so I did two things. We're trying to develop stronger, more aligned program philanthropy, office relationships and goals. So I began to take people with me to two places. Number one, other organizations that were doing similar things and let them watch and ask questions. Clinical people to what? Let them watch and ask questions as to exactly what was going on, what they do, and hoping that they might see successful places, higher level places than we were at the time.
That would allow our team to see, oh, this is how this works. Or number two, bring them to donor meetings. One time I needed a clinician who was a little bit reticent. I'll leave it there. I actually had a board member act as the donor in a way that would be very natural, but to do a practice run so that I could move that clinician closer to where I needed them.
This is an idea of teaching the art and the science of we've already qualified them. You're not taking them on that cultivation soft ask and entered solicitation even though the program staff is not going to be making that ask. Hopefully this will allow for practice communication without excessive jargon. One of my favorite words because I tell particularly scientists.
But it could be anybody. You're not allowed to use words more than three syllables or ten letters long. It's really hard to talk about the value of philanthropy and the impact when nobody understands the words being used. It also gives us a chance to demonstrate and show the value of listening. Two years one mouth. Use them proportionally. We're asking questions.
We're trying to figure out where they're at and what help the program staff understand that. That we don't know all the answers. But if we ask the right questions, we'll get them as a part of this process. It also allows us the idea or affirmation of confidentiality and what can and can't be said. What are the ethical boundaries?
What can we promise? They don't know what we do. They don't know the idea of what AF AFP puts out about the donor bill of rights. They shouldn't, but we can help them understand the basics of that. And lastly, we can really hone in on with that soft ask perspective. A lot of program people here like, oh, this is really interesting.
We got $1 million gift. No, no, no, we have a lot of interest. We've got to take several steps around. Well, tell me at what level you think that is. Here's what we might be able to do. Where do you see your philanthropy? How would you make this gift possible? All those things are totally within our normal realm of understanding.
I want the program staff to understand that as well. They have to do the details, but have an understanding that this art is a movement of pieces, like a puzzle around the board. We're trying to piece it all together. So number five is really train your program staff to understand donor engagement. What we do six is the is the back end.
Help everyone institutionalize the idea of follow up and accountability. I talked about this with grants a few moments ago as an example that it's helping them understand, hey, we got $1 million coming. You got to report to me quarterly, yearly, semiannual, whatever you choose. That's a part of this process. It doesn't end when we get the money. So it's debriefing after each session.
Do we still need to come into this together? And where were the holes documenting exactly what was promised and what will be delivered? Assigning responsibility when we on the stewardship side and then evaluating how the collaboration worked and didn't work. We've done better. I think back to my practitioner days when I would do this with both physicians and executive leaders and board members, and there were a couple of them.
We did it so often the rhythm, the amazing. But it didn't happen the first time. And so evaluating that collaboration is really important to elevate the next time it's going to happen, make them feel good about this. We need these program experts because they are a part of the idea of really promoting impact and value and importance and the six tactical things, if we go back to them, allow you how to build that relationship and really walk in unified into donor meetings.
It starts with that shared cultivation plan, both philanthropic and programmatically. It's about establishing a unified case. So everybody's on the same page as to what we're trying to accomplish, what's possible. It's identifying those responsibilities and then practicing them. Number four, so that we know who's doing what and when training our program staff overall to better understand what we do and why.
Relationships and trust are so important and money just doesn't fall off of trees. And we got to work for this. And six the idea of accountability and follow up, how do we do this in a meaningful way that allows the donor to feel it much beyond just making the gift or writing the check? Or it should go on.
That's stewardship at its finest. This is an investment in philanthropy. With this relationship, the more important donors understand what they're trying to do, but they don't know how to do it. And this trust that if we bring the program team in to really elevate the case, the conversation, the impact, the value can elevate exponentially the opportunity for gifts to grow.
We have to coordinate these conversations. We have to understand that it's going to take some time, and that at the end of the day, we do what the donor wants. Maybe that should be one of the six or part of them. Hey, donor says they want to do X. I know you do. Why? We have to go with the donor stars and we'll have to adjust.
Our job is to bring the right people into the donor relationship, to give the donor every opportunity to feel great about being engaged and at the right time with the right message. We can do that. We need these content experts, these program staff, professionals, clinicians, faculty, whomever to be a part of this process. And in doing so, what we'll get is a much deeper opportunity with our donors.
Don't forget to check out the blogs at Hallett philanthropy.com two per week. Always humbled and stunned. And how many people are reading 90s. Get feed right to you. That's hallettphilanthropy.com/blogs. And if you'd like to reach out to me it's podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. We need philanthropy. We're seeing a lot of economic upheaval. And this is where philanthropy can be at its best.
It's solves that middle gap problem that I always talk about. On one side you have free enterprise. It won't do certain things because it's not economical to their profit motives on the other side of government trying to do the right things, but most of the time it's bloated and bureaucratic and not very efficient. And nonprofits fill a gap.
Partner with both. They're not isolated, but they fill that gap in a meaningful way. And that means that the missions that we believe in, that we work for, that we try to promote, are really doing something critically important. All time favorite saying they're making things happen for the people who are wondering what happened. And if you've ever listened to me speak, podcast or otherwise, how I always end.
Some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen. Then there are those who wondered what happened. Man, I don't know if I was to try to go back and recreate a professional life 30 years up to this point, or just short of it. Where can I go? That would be more valuable than this to make a difference.
And yes, I make a difference. I with my consulting with the now the donors deserve most of the credit. But I'm that conduit. You're that conduit. And if you're a board member or a donor, you're part of that effort. If you're a gift officer, CEO, whomever, making a difference for the people and the things in your community that are wondering what happened.
There's a lot more seems like every day. And that's the value you deliver when you are engaged as a nonprofit leader. I'll look forward to seeing you the next time, right back here on the next edition of Around with Randall. And don't forget. Make it a great day.