The Fundraising Talent Podcast

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Is nonprofit fundraising long overdue for a reset? Feb 05, 2022

Show notes

My guest today on The Fundraising Talent Podcast is Kimberly, host of The Intersection Podcast and avid user of Clubhouse which is perhaps were we first met about eighteen months ago. Kimberly kicked us off with the idea that fundraising is long overdue for a reset. She believes that many of the underlying beliefs and assumptions that have gotten us to where we are today need to be surfaced and understood; and, as painful as it might be, we may have to let go of some of them. Kimberly and I agreed that much of this reckoning could happen with a simple overhaul of the fundraiser’s job description, a consistent theme in several recent conversations.

Instead of signing on for job descriptions that don’t look any different than an operating manual for a machine churning out inanimate objects at scale, fundraisers need to look for opportunities where they are given the chance to build meaningful relationships with donors who, rather than behaving like self-interested consumers, see themselves as citizens who shared a common commitment the positive change we aspire to bring about in our communities.

As always, we are especially grateful to our friends at CueBack for sponsoring The Fundraising Talent Podcast. If you’d like to learn more about hosting the Responsive Fundraising roadshow in your local community, email me for more information. And, if you’d like to download Responsive’s latest edition of Carefully & Critically, just click here.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fundraisingtalent.substack.com

Do boards and bosses want to ensure that they are the hero in the story? Jan 29, 2022

Show notes

What do you get when you put an academic who is all about the most effective fundraising methods between two rabble rousers who never shy away from giving their opinions. That was the lineup today on The Fundraising Talent Podcast with Dr. Russell James, author of The Socratic Fundraiser, and Greg Warner, founder of MarketSmart. The essence of our conversation was whether fundraisers both desire and know how to have genuine conversations with their donors and whether using the Socratic method is the ideal pathway to the meaningful opportunities that are available to our organizations. Today’s conversation reminds me of earlier conversations in which we’ve talked about how the sector has seemingly confused the advantages of being great story-tellers with those of being great story-listeners.

What I found especially thought-provoking was how we ended up asking why boards and bosses are notoriously uninterested in fundraising methods that afford the fundraiser and donor opportunities for meaningful dialogue. While we can all agree on the reasons why one would allow the donor to be the hero in their own story, we must ask ourselves why we don’t design strategies that allow this to happen. Greg’s explanation for why this doesn’t happen as it should really had me thinking; more often than not, fundraising design reflects the desires of boards and bosses who want to ensure that they maintain their role as the hero in the story.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fundraisingtalent.substack.com

How much of fundraising’s success depends on meaningful places? Jan 26, 2022

Show notes

Today I was privileged to connect with Laura Tepper, Executive Director of Development at the University of Pennsylvania, Carey Law School where she oversees all annual, major, and planned giving efforts. Her career spans all functions of frontline fundraising, including the recent Power of Penn’s Law campaign that raised $281M including two of the most significant gifts ever given to an American Law School. Today Laura and I talked about whether returning to the office is a reasonable expectation or if we should perhaps allow remote working to become the norm. This is an especially important conversation for Penn with its historic location in the heart of Philadelphia.

This really had me thinking about how much of fundraising hinges on the meaning behind significant places and whether becoming overly reliant on virtual spaces is going to have effects that we haven’t quite begun to anticipate. We can all appreciate what a zoom platform affords us in terms of fostering meaningful engagement; however, such platforms will never have the capability to transport us to experiences that are deeply rooted in a very familiar and particular place. Our conversation had me wondering whether our donors, even though they aren’t always in the room with us, count on us to rekindle their affinity for meaningful places.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fundraisingtalent.substack.com

How many job descriptions will dramatically change in our post-pandemic world? Jan 15, 2022

Show notes

How many job descriptions will dramatically change in our post-pandemic world? This is the essence of the conversation I had with Brent, founder of Evertrue who, like myself, never shies from the opportunity to provoke a conversation about what might take our fundraising efforts to another level. During today’s conversation on The Fundraising Talent Podcast, Brent pointed out that we were all reminded very quickly that meaningful conversations with our donors don’t necessarily require a plane ticket and a stay at the Holiday Inn. This awakening among boards and bosses could arguably have the effect of redefining a lot of jobs for a lot of fundraisers.

What is especially thought-provoking about today’s conversation is the notion that the pandemic has afforded an entire new cohort of fundraisers the opportunity to experience what academics are now calling perceived proximity - the sense that we are in the same room with someone who could literally be on the other side of the world. This perceived proximity could be what’s necessary to move large numbers of donors towards more meaningful levels of support. Brent and I shared the observation that some opportunities simply won’t budge beyond a certain point when all they’re counting on is an arms-length approach.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fundraisingtalent.substack.com

Why does fundraising let money be the hero in so many of our stories? Jan 08, 2022

Show notes

I could enjoy conversation with Guirlaine for hours, listening to how she describes her work and allowing her to provoke my thinking about how we can more effectively seize opportunities to a be real fundraisers. Today’s conversation was about Guirlaine’s article in Responsive’s winter edition of Carefully & Critically. Guirlaine wants more of us to learn how to stop being so focused on money, get it out of our way, and begin to experience fundraising as more meaningful work. She asks why fundraisers let money be the hero in their stories.

Much of today’s conversation was about understanding how fundraising builds a bridge between the haves and have nots allowing us to see and experience our common humanity. We concluded with the recognition that we have to find freedom from the belief that we and our donors are not bound together; and, instead, see that we are in an interdependent relationship. We have to allow the work to transform us in the same way that we expect it to transform our donors.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fundraisingtalent.substack.com

Did the pandemic afford us time for some tough conversations? Dec 29, 2021

Show notes

For this last episode of The Fundraising Talent Podcast of 2021, I’m delighted that my friend Samuel Butler has returned to enjoy a conversation about his recent article in Responsive’s Carefully & Critically. As a fundraiser in the UK, I am grateful that Sam offers us a perspective of fundraising that those of us on this side of Atlantic don’t always have the benefit of.

We started today’s conversation with Sam’s observation that the silver lining in the pandemic may be that it has given a lot of us an opportunity to sit back and really contemplate what it is we are doing. For the fundraising community, this has meant leaning into a number of difficult conversations that were much easier to overlook when we weren’t in the midst of a global pause. Sam and I meandered around the rest of his article and concluded with a statement he makes in the journal, “...we will need to bring the right people in to assist us in doing so; instilling in them a more robust and fearless attitude. We require fundraisers that are not reliant on the tired, tried-and-tested models that are simply not working in their current form; we need to embrace the change-makers, innovators and those of entrepreneurial spirit that are out there.”

#responsivefundraising #fundraisingtalent

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fundraisingtalent.substack.com

Do some of us take for granted how easily we can navigate fundraising? Dec 18, 2021

Show notes

One of the privileges of hosting The Fundraising Talent Podcast is the opportunity to develop meaningful friendships with individuals like Lisa Baxter who originally participated in a panel discussion back in the early 2019. Now Lisa’s back to talk to us about her featured article in the winter edition of Carefully and Critically. Today’s conversation was an no-holds barred one for both me and Lisa. I find it convicting to think that much of my fundraising experiences are similar to a game of checkers while someone like Lisa has always found herself in a far more complex game of chess. I hope that conversations like this one will help others not to take for granted the ease with which they may have been able to navigate this work.

For those who have yet to download the winter edition of our journal, Lisa talks in her article about being totally and unapologetically yourself and giving yourself permission to stop playing by archaic rules and feeling the need to people-please. Of her experiences in this space, she wrote, “fundraising as a woman and while Black is best described as being visible and invisible at the same time. It’s exhausting and on par with what training for a marathon must feel like.” Whether the podcast, or the journal, this isn’t one you’re going to want to miss.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fundraisingtalent.substack.com

How can fundraisers do the right thing and get caught doing it? Dec 13, 2021

Show notes

What happens when a donor has a long history of giving, they have unimaginable wealth, and all the reasons in the world to support your cause, however something in your initial meeting suggests that they donor may have dementia. In these types of situations, Tony and Tara want fundraisers to do the right thing and get caught doing it. In what might become an increasingly common scenario, Tara and Tony want fundraisers to know how to honor the donor, meet expectations for their employers, and do so within an ethical framework.

How do we ensure that our donors have the “donative capacity” to make a gift? Today my guests were Tara Adams and Anthony Pomonis who are raising awareness of the limitations that some of our donors might have and the care we should be expected to provide in response. Our conversation afforded us an opportunity to talk about ethics, metrics, privacy, and a number of other big issues that are sure to come up in these situations. If you’d like to learn more about Tara and Tony’s services, visit their website www.cognitiveempowerment.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fundraisingtalent.substack.com

Are nonprofits giving their power away by cutting ties with bad actors? Dec 04, 2021

Show notes

How do those of us on the receiving side of charitable giving get bolder in what we ask and expect of those on the giving side of the relationship? Questions of this sort, originating from fundraisers all all stripes, convince me that an increasing numbers of fundraisers are anxious to establish influential peer relationships with their donors rather than the inferior, supplicant role that we often inadvertently assume. Our conversation today on The Fundraising Talent Podcast began with Sarah Beth making a case for why we should stop giving away the power we have by divesting in companies whose decisions with disagree with. Sarah Beth wants us to wrestle with the question of whether nonprofits are giving their power away by cutting ties with bad actors?

Sarah Beth believes that rather than divesting in these relationships, we should strive to have the greater levels of influence and clout in order to change the directions of where these enterprises are headed. I would argue this means deeper, more meaningful relationships with key decision makers in the enterprises for which we are invested in. This is a remarkably different albeit very exciting place for the nonprofit leader to aspire to be. There are plenty of examples in life where we having some skin in the game in a prerequisite for having a say in our decisions are made. If we maintain the relationship, the ultimate question becomes whether we know how to be peer-to-peer with leaders in the two powerhouse sectors?

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fundraisingtalent.substack.com

Does fundraising deliberately distance itself from the truth? Nov 24, 2021

Show notes

April describes herself as a loyal Baltimore Raven’s fan and a lover of all things philanthropy, equity, and social justice. Our conversation today on The Fundraising Talent Podcast began with the assertion that fundraising has deliberately distanced itself from the truth and begs the question of what would happen if we were more honest with ourselves and our donors. April wants us to confront the fact that we are taught to be ok with the disconnect between reality and the narrative we tell the world. Perhaps our appeal letters are some of the most obvious examples of such deceit. April pointed out that our dishonesty amounts to a lack of authenticity and an obsession with jargon.

April’s career has afforded her experiences on both sides of the shop, both raising major gifts and administrating programs. Having the advantage of multiple vantage points, she understands why it’s so easy to tolerate a story that isn’t true. But it isn’t just those of us on the receiving side who are telling a tale. April pointed out that our funders aren’t telling themselves a story that is any more accurate than ours. After discussing what is true and what isn’t, and contemplating how this translates into the experiences of women of color, our conversation ended in much the same place as it began. Those on both sides of the exchange need to insist on the truth. The question remains, who has the desire to tell it?

As always, we are especially grateful to our friends at CueBack for sponsoring The Fundraising Talent Podcast. And, if you’d like to download Responsive’s latest edition of Carefully & Critically, just click here.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fundraisingtalent.substack.com

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