#193 | Is "keep asking" the only advice that fundraising experts know how to give?

As often as I hear fundraising experts insist that we should keep asking, I sometimes wonder what other advice they know how to give. Now is a perfect time to be asking, they insist; ask, ask, ask. With all this asking going on, you would begin to wonder whether a fundraising professional can be recognized and admired for anything else. Well, my guest today believes fundraising professionals need to temper their impulses and perhaps seek to be recognized for being patient and affording some margin in the relationship rather than asking for yet another gift. Sara and I agreed that far too many fundraising professionals have swallowed hook, line, and sinker the notion that, when we’re at our best, there is only one direction to go; to ask. This is, unfortunately, a very shallow and naïve understanding of what it means to be a fundraising professional.

Sara believes the driving force behind this impulse to always ask does not originate with the fundraising professional but is rather a consequence of the type of organizations with which we work. They have the mistaken assumption that donors are all lined up, checkbooks in hand, just waiting for a worthy charity to come along and ask them for their money. Sara has learned that, if her job is first to establish a meaningful relationship and second to raise significant amounts of money, then always asking sabotages the relationship and forbids her from being able to accomplish her goals. Sara and I agreed that fundraisers who want to thrive in this field need to be especially diligent in their search for an employer who values patience and asking with equal measure.

As always, the team at Responsive Fundraising wants to thank our friends at CueBack for being our podcast sponsor and for ensuring that we can deliver up-to-date and thought-provoking conversations every week to those in the professional fundraising community. 

#responsivefundraising #unpredictable

“far too many fundraising professionals have swallowed hook, line, and sinker the notion that, when we’re at our best, there is only one direction to go; to ask.”

Transcript of Podcast Conversation

Jason:  Hi, Sara. I am delighted to have you on the Fundraising Talent podcast today. We've spent a few minutes getting to know each other and we're going to dive into a topic that I think is particularly interesting to a lot of people who are thinking, "Okay, what should we be doing during Covid 19? Should we be asking, should we not?" But before we do that, before we have that conversation, Sara, how about you just introduce yourself to our listeners?

Sara:  Sure. I am the director of development at the University of Tennessee Tech. I have been there for about eight months now. I realized I have been a fundraiser apparently all my life though, just didn't know that word at the time. So back in high school I was on the yearbook committee and we ran out of money and there was going to be no yearbooks, and I told our advisor, I said, "Well, can I go out and ask community members and businesses if they would give us money so that we can have this and can we give them something in return?" My school had never done a thing called sponsorships at that time. She said yeah, she got it approved through the principal, so I went out two days all day long and just went to business after business after business. And we got the whole entire yearbook paid for. So that was my first technical dip into fundraising when I was 17 years old.

Jason:  So I guess it's kind of interesting. I had never thought about this, Sara, but now I am. I was the advertising manager, that was what they called us, I was the advertising manager for our yearbook my senior year, and that was essentially the job I had. And I would never have ... and yeah, it was fundraising, it was basically raising sponsorships. You put in little ads in the back of the back or spread out; I don't know where they put those things. And I put together proposals and all that stuff. So you're absolutely right.

So Sara, in addition to fundraising what else do we need to know about Sara before we dive into our subject?

Sara:  What do you need to know about me? I married my high school sweetheart. I have two beautiful daughters, one of which is going off to college next month, the plan is to go off to college, so that is exciting with all the unknowns that she is going to move into campus and God willing have a basketball career this winter.

I also live in East Tennessee and I have what we call a hobby farm, which means I have 34 animals on this property, all of which we pay money out and make nothing off of.

Jason:  Right. I totally get that, and we had a guest on the podcast just a couple weeks ago that was in ... I think he's in Missouri, his name was Ron, and him and his wife own a hobby farm. And I was sharing with him, Sara, that my wife and I, we live in York, Pennsylvania and we have a small town, city, in the center of the county and then we have a lot of suburban and rural areas. And my wife and I thought when the kids all leave we'll buy a hobby farm down in Glen Rock or something, in neighboring communities. So that's fascinating.

Sara:  It can be fun, absolutely.

Jason:  Yeah, so Sara, what's the topic we're going to dive into? I think this is particularly relevant because of Covid 19, because of some of the social unrest, and it's just a question of timeliness. So what are we going to talk about today?

Sara:  We're going to talk about patience with the ask. I think that a lot of time organizations that we work for are being, I don't want to use the word pushy, but they need the job done - we all need money yesterday. Everywhere we work we needed that money yesterday for this job, for that project, for that scholarship. And as the fundraiser I urge people to have the patience because that can add an extra zero onto that ask at the end of the day.

I can give you a really good example. When I became a technical fundraiser for an organization that I'm not with right now one of the first things is they asked, "Go ask this gentleman for $10,000." And I said, "I don't really know him that well. I have no idea if he will support such a thing that you're having me ask for." "We think he will." Okay, I only been there a month and a half. Didn't feel real comfortable with it, but I had practiced everything. I knew all the details, all the answers. So I met with this gentleman and I showed him the proposal and what I was asking for and why. He sat back a minute and he said, "I really don't want to support that." And I said, "I understand. What kind of thing would you like to support?" And that dove into a much deeper conversation. I got to know him very, very well.

And we met a couple times a year for the next year and a half. And then there was an opportunity for a $25,000 ask, and I knew it is what this man and his heart wanted to support. And when I went back to him with the right match it was a yes. It was automatic, out of the park yes. And if I had taken that time the first time and told those that were pushing for that 10, "Look, I'm not going to do it," who knows if that 25 would have been more had I not been pushy that first time?

So I have been very diligent in my career after that that when we need proposals, when we need this that I've told them, "Look, if it's not right I'm not making that ask. I'm not going to do it. It's going to sabotage the relationship that I've put so much time into building with this individual." And it's just it's not worth it.

Jason:  So if we use sort of that rule of thumb that you asked for two and a half times, you successfully solicited two and a half times what that original ask was, would you say six months, how what was the time between the two solicitation?

Sara:  It was about a year and a half.

Jason:  A year and a half, 18 months, okay.

Sara:  Because I had built a relationship with him at that time. And I think it takes a good year to build a relationship with a donor to actually know their passion and what drives them and what they're going to be willing to give it. It takes some time. You got to put in the time.

Jason:  Yeah, right, and it's that year and a half. So one of the things that we do in our seminars with our what we call our messy middle lane is we tell our clients, "You've got to get out of that 12-month." I think that's the phenomenal thing about essentially this logic that you're talking about. So where patience really comes into is you've got to get the organization thinking beyond the 12-month window that they're looking at in order to get to that much more meaningful gift. And so many organizations are so stuck on the 12 months, so it's one thing for you to come back and say, "I can't close this 10 grand," and it's like the boss is going to want you to go back there in a couple of months, it's another thing to sort of afford the relationship, the time. And I think anybody like yourself and myself who've done this work long enough know that it's about that, it's like that 18-month. I remember working with a client in Corpus Christi, Texas once and he wanted a similar sort of a very aggressive approach, and I said, "Deduct ..." He wanted to make the solicitation now or 18 months later, and I said, "Deduct 1/18th of that goal every additional month every month that you rush it."

But, Sara, is this a predicament that we as fundraiser ... is it the fundraisers that lack the patience or is it the donor or is it the boss?

Sara:  In most of the organizations I've worked for it's the culture inside that organization that they don't understand true fundraising because they're not the ones out there doing it. And most of them live inside a reactive culture - everything is reacting, everything. And it's there's no forethought, there's no five-year strategic plan in the fundraising. Most organizations have a strategic plan, but not when it comes to their fundraising efforts and what that's going to look like. And I'm not going to make an ask of a donor when four years from now we're going to have a capital campaign, and that donor needs to be in that capital campaign. So you got to learn how to plan out your fundraising strategy and for which donors and what are you going to work on the next 18 months, two years out. And who are you funneling into that pipeline to be on that next two-year cycle while still being able to steward the individuals that have made these gifts.

So being able to do your job you've got to look at these timelines in not a year, not six months, but two to three out and how you're going to keep cultivation and stewardship alive with each of them and moving them down that continuum.

Jason:  So how do you discern, I like the word discern, I've been using the word discern a lot. And the other thing, so Sara, and these aren't the people that are usually my guests lately but I'm getting lots of calls, I think there's going to be lots of movement. I think people are going to be moving around in their jobs as the sort of the economy sort of settles and we figure out what's going on next. How do you discern whether your boss or the culture, let's call it the culture, we don't have to blame it just on the boss, how do you discern that that patience is there in like an interview conversation? Like, how would you know? If all the communications there you and I are doing is like this, how are you going to know that I'm a patient boss?

Sara:  What I would ask you, and I do ask this in an interview, what is your fundraising strategy? How long have you cultivated a donor and what was your largest ask? And I kind of flip that around to see if they'll tell me a story or if they know the story of their previous development director, to see how in touch they are with that fundraising side. And did they understand that it took a year, it took some time? And if they say, "Well, I don't know. I just oversee them and they bring in money." Well, then that's your red flag. Do I really want to go here? Because they don't understand my job and they don't understand what it's going to take to get to that amount that they have as my goal.

Jason:  And I tend to think that one of the challenges that major gift officers, and I've been in these roles and we've all been in these roles and a lot of listeners have been in these roles, I tend to think that one of the challenges that we can own up to is that we're really not interacting with enough people. So one of the sort of the counterbalances to being patient, to ensuring patients, the ability to ensure that, "I've got enough time to cultivate this relationship and get it to the right place," is also to make sure that I've got three or four other people, for every person for which a solicitation is not timely now there's three or four people that are closer to that place. Does that make sense?

Sara:  Yeah. If you're working your portfolio correctly I know that you should only have 150 in there, that's all that we have the cognitive ability to remember.

Jason:  Right.

Sara:  So I place them out. I have my top 15 that I want to make sure that I'm in front of this year, I want to make sure I've given them all the information there closest to an ask, but then I already have my 15 for next year picked out. And I have those others. And I'm also working on 30 new people a week, 30 leads or 30 people that have been put in the portfolio, because I also know that out of that 30 one of them is going to end up being a major donor in the next two years.

And fundraising is all a numbers game that some people are just not going to be that, some of your donors a thousand dollars is all they're ever going to give and you got to bless and release those ones and they can get direct mail and information from you but they're never going to be that million-dollar donor that we all want.

Jason:  Right, yeah. Is part of the discernment process when you're doing that interview, for example, is part of the discernment process sort of picking up on the idea that the person you're interviewing with sort of sees the underlying logic that we're talking about? Going back to like the 18 months or the structure of the portfolio, that the numbers, there's an underlying logic to which this works, but so many different organizations I've interacted with and I can remember some of them that I worked for, they just didn't sort of have this underlying understanding of how it's sort of all pieced together and where donors sort of found themselves.

They generally assumed, Sara, that if you were wealthy, if you were super wealthy you'd give to and you give to what you were asked for. And there was very little sort of situational awareness we might call it. The timeliness never ... when we were talking about the timeliness of a gift, very rarely did we on the soliciting side take much consideration it seemed like into the sort of the situation where the donor found themselves. And I think that's particularly pertinent right now when you think about, okay, it may not be because they don't love you and it may not be because they don't have a million dollars, it's because the situation's a little messy right now.

Sara:  Oh, it absolutely is. And having that ability to know your donor and to be able to speak to them and know what's going on in their life, I mean, you know if their gifts are coming out of their checking account or are they giving stock normally, are they giving out of their retirement fund? And you have to know that with everything going on and the amount that they have probably lost in their portfolio, right now is not the time to make an ask. Right now is the time to check on them and make sure that they are okay, and let them know that, yes, I and our organization care about you, is there anything we can do for you? You are part of our family. Let us take care of you at this time.

Because I do know, I have a few donors where we talk very candidly about their portfolio, and when this all happened they lost 30%. And they've bounced back to the point where it's less than 10%, and then being able to tell me those kind of things also gives me those cues that they're probably going to be ready for an ask in the winter or the beginning of next year. Now most of them all still want to wait and see what happens in the election, that's another thing we all have to look at, is where do they fit on that? They all are going to wait to make those big commitments until after that and they know where our economy is going to stand.

So we as a fundraiser have to take all these things into consideration on how and when we make that ask, because we've got more things to consider now than we did six months ago on making an ask, that is for sure.

Jason:  So I had a guest on here two episodes back and they were talking about sort of living in a more abundant sort of mindset in that when we approach fundraising with this idea that very scarcity-minded like if I don't get this check today and if I don't get it yet, like we haven't learned how to accept a no and still retain the relationship. It's like the no ... one of the comments I made to the two women that I was speaking with, I said, "There's all sorts of places in our world today where we're being told we have to learn how to have meaningful relationships and say no at the same time." If all you can ever get is a yes and/or if all you're ever expecting is a yes you're essentially talking about exploiting a relationship based on whatever your whims are, whatever your needs are.

Is that part of that culture that you're talking about that we just ... I mean, yeah, I know that, I mean, I know the same donor you're referring to, the same type of donor you're talking to. I have interacted with so many donors that I knew, in meaningful ways, that I knew how to take a no and I knew it sort of didn't diminish the value of that relationship.

Sara:  Oh, absolutely. One of the things I think if you're going to be a fundraiser or if you are is you have to learn that they're not saying no to you, they're just saying no to what you're presenting at the time. And as a fundraiser I think you always have to tell yourself, "It means no not right now." It doesn't mean no forever, it just means that there's something else going on in their life that is making it so they say no, or you brought them the wrong opportunity and you need to sit back and figure out, "What did I bring? Did I really match up and make it a partnership for them or did I misread something?" And you got to go back and figure out what that was.

And with some people you can simply ask, "Well, what don't you like about this?" And a lot of people will be very upfront with you on what they don't like about it, and then you can make changes and then you can figure it out. But knowing that that no doesn't mean stop talking to me, stop sending me things, I don't want to meet you anymore. It just means that opportunity that you brought wasn't right for me right now and something else will be.

Jason:  Yeah. And I think I have discovered the more development officers that I interact with, and I don't know where it was early in my career, but there was something that allowed me to learn very early, and I suspect you've learned this too, anybody who has developed sort of a patience with the fundraising process like say, for example, just get to that, it seems like light years sometimes, you're talking about 18 months, for example. But it's the ability to continue to engage and the ability to say, for example, sit at a lunch table and not feel like you have to incorporate the ask into the conversation.

I remember Mr. Walters was one of the first major donors that I really got to know in a pretty, pretty intimate way and really got to know and understand the dynamics that sort of informed his commitment to our organization. And I learned how to be in the receiving seat, the solicitor seat, and I learned how to have him in the donor seat, but also I also learned how to sit at that lunch table that we used to meet at an old steakhouse, Southwest Corner of Virginia, we learned how to do that together probably once a quarter sometimes. And I learned how to not have to always ask.

Sara:  It's funny, I would have to say at least 75% of my career hasn't been me making the ask. It is usually led there at some point by the donor. And when it happens more organically and naturally and it is at that time and you've given them enough information about your organization to make them want to support it, that's when it's an automatic yes. I have, we'll call him Mr. A, he is the largest donor that I've ever had, and the way our relationship started is out of nowhere at Christmas time he wrote a thousand dollar check. I put him a little bit on my radar. I think they'd given 50 bucks before that.

So I followed up with a phone call and just left a message thanking him and his wife for their gift. And I hadn't received a response, and I cannot tell you to this day what made me do it, but his home was on my way home. And I went there just to drop him off a little goodie bag so he knew how much we appreciated that gift. And they were home and they invited me in, and I was there for four hours. I got to know them very well. And he said, "I got your message and I was contemplating calling you back or not, but I'll tell you - out of all the organizations I've sent money to over the years no one has ever come to my home to thank me, ever." And I'll tell you what, that next month he sent a $10,000 check.

Jason:  Of course, he did, yeah.

Sara:  And he continued to do for the rest of my career at that organization. And we still stay in touch today because I have that relationship with them, I know them very well. And he has left that organization $15 million in his estate now.

Jason:  I think when we think about that ask this is my critique on the ask - I don't think it's the culture, I don't think it's ... I think that's the responsibility of people in the consulting roles. I think we have made fundraising so much about the ask and so much about this very linear and very direct process, like use the word organic, for example, and you had no idea if they were going to even answer the door and you certainly didn't know if they were going to welcome you into your home and you certainly didn't know if they were going to welcome you there for four hours. But we expect it to be so linear, like A + B = C, like C is a million dollars. It's all you do, it's like playing checkers or something. And we don't see that fundraising is more like playing chess. And it's the idea that you got to keep moving and you got to stay on the board long enough. But the game is just not won with these simple moves.

Sara:  No, it's not. You have to be a chameleon as a fundraiser and be able to pivot all the time, all the time. Everything's changing. I've realized over the years that I'm not a fundraiser to them, I'm their friend, sometimes I'm their therapist. And I get to know many, many details about their lives. And I went into a conversation in a meeting where I knew I was going to make a proposal. But you know what? It didn't happen, because it ended up not being right. And you have to have that cognitive ability to realize in a conversation, in a meeting, that just because you thought and you put it down in writing that you were going to make this ask that it's not right, that something has happened that has given you that clue that, "Nope, I should not make this ask right now."

It can be a lot of different things that happened that come up. One was I had it in my bag to give to her at whatever point that the conversation allowed and she told me that her son had lost his job and that she was helping their family get by, and I was like, "Well, not the time to make an ask right now. Absolutely not." But I also knew that part of her life now so that when I checked in with her I could ask how her son was doing, how was the job hunt going.

And I think it took almost two years at that time for him to get back on his feet and everything to be good, and she told me these things as we went along. So two years later I made that same ask that I was going to make, and it was a yes. Because I realized not to push it. It was going to be a no if I pushed it then and it would just hurt our relationship.

Jason:  So if you and I were talking ... so you and I are both experienced fundraisers and let's say we're talking to somebody who's let's say they're 18 months in, they haven't solicited that gift, perhaps they've had those lunch table conversations - are there things you're doing in your conversation that are sort of testing the waters? And I'll sort of answer my own question, but one of the things I do, Sara, and it usually has always worked in my favor, it's the idea of suggesting that sort of like the next time we get together can I put a proposal in front of you or asking permission to have the conversation or asking permission to ask. But it's always putting on the table first being pretty forthright about the fact that we're going to have a conversation about a gift, but always affording them an opportunity to say, "No, now is not the right time." Is there any other sort of practices that you've sort of, something along those lines that sort of has worked well for you?

Sara:  All of what you mentioned is wonderful and very, very great. Some of the things that I will say to move the relationship along for the fundraising side, and I'll use tech for this example, I will ask them, "What's your biggest hope for our students? What do we do at tech that is most important to you? And what do you want people to think about tech?" And then I will take those answers and find out what opportunity lies with that. Because at the end of the day we do have to do our job, we have to show you where you can help. And we're not really doing you a service if I don't show you where you can be involved, if I don't show you how you can help move this organization forward.

So we can't be scared to make an ask at all because we'll do the donor a disservice if we don't know them where they can help and what they can do. I mean, most of them if they're on our portfolio they have some kind of relationship with us, they have some kind of value towards us. There's some kind of warm and fuzzy, our portfolio shouldn't have cold calls on it. So there's something there and it's finding out what it is and making sure that we marry that with what we need and what they want to do. But always using those conversations and those meetings to move towards that end goal of getting them what they want. They want to help, they just don't know how sometimes.

Jason:  Before I let you go, so one of the things I'm working on, I've got this in my writing project that I'm currently working on, this idea of serendipity. I think really good fundraisers, it's kind of like the tension that was created between that first gift that you started with, the idea of the you got to ask today and you were able to subsequently raise two and a half times as much money.

I think serendipity, we don't allow sort of those fortunate surprises to sort of show up in our work and I think that's because we're still sort of working like an assembly line, like an early 20th century assembly line like a Ford plant or something, and we don't see our work as ... I mean, the essence of it is human to human interaction and the exchange of values. I guess the question I would ask is how do you discern that? How do you discern that a shop, before I let you go, how do you discern that a shop isn't an assembly line that expects this stuff to work on a schedule?

Sara:  That's a hard one. I guess knowing and asking them what is your realistic time frame, how long do you give someone that is starting out with your organization to build relationships. And see what their answer is on that. If they tell you, "Look, I need you to raise 250,000 by the end of this fiscal year if you start," you know that that shop is looking at it as run down this list, make calls, bring in money. They're not worried about the relationship side and what could be if you actually put in the time. It's knowing that your goals are realistic from the jump from that organization.

Jason:  Like, and you're in higher education and I talk to a lot of people on here from higher education, but I hear this like one of the words I have not heard you say today is metrics. I remember one of the first guests I had on this thing two years ago he said, "We have this sort of this overwhelming culture of metrics."

Sara:  We do.

Jason:  And I've been to a couple Case conferences and I hear it, and it's like ... and I'm not somebody who's opposed to measuring things, but there's this overwhelming sense that only what can be measured and sort of this top-down sort of management speak is what it really translates into. And it's an inability oftentimes on the part of the organization to sort of see the process playing out.

Sara:  I think what happens is I have metrics, I mean, because I am in higher ed.

Jason:  Sure.

Sara:  I think that they take them from all the different studies and this is what this metric should mean and this is how many visits you should have. And that's all well and good, and I know my metrics and at the risk of being fired by answering this, I won't tell you (that I don't listen to them), but I do what's right for the donor. Just because I have that metric doesn't mean I'm going to push anybody.

Do I hope that I do enough work to meet that metric? Sure. So I work as hard as I can and do the best job I can every day with the people I have and the tools I'm given. And at the end of the day if that doesn't hit the metrics I'm okay with that, because I know that I'm doing the job that is going to have you those donors whether I'm here or not in five, ten years, because I'm making those lasting relationships and connections.

And my bigger thing isn't for them to connect to me necessarily, but so that if I were to leave they're connected to that dean, they're connected to that student they helped, they're connected to tech through all these other people. And I'm just that person that connects dots for you and that you can come to and talk to. And that we have that relationship so I can make those asks, but I want you to know all these other people and see all these other wonderful things going on. And that's what I work most my time on is getting them in front of not just me but others that can share the story about the student much better than I can.

Jason:  Sara, I could probably keep you going. I can always tell when I'm talking to fundraisers who are in the field, doing the work and I certainly hear that today. If somebody is listening and they certainly know how to reach out to me and they've heard plenty of the things and ideas that I've got to say but they want to follow up with you, how would you suggest that they do that?

Sara:  I would tell them to look me up on LinkedIn. There are only two other Sara Prinzi’s in the whole entire world, so it should be pretty easy to find me. I work at Tennessee Tech and I'm a blonde, so none of the other ones look like that. So go ahead and look me up on LinkedIn and I would love to connect with you.

Jason:  Thank you, Sara. It's been really fun, you're always welcome back.

Sara:  Thank you, Jason.