Podcasts to Build Nonprofit Capacity
Third Sector New England podcasts are designed to provide nonprofit executives, managers and staff with practical “how to” strategies to help their organization and community thrive.
 Following is the transcript of Part 2 of the highly-anticipated fall 2007 interview with fundraiser extraordinaire Simone P. Joyaux, ACFRE, Joyaux Associates, by media-maker David Tames. In Part 1, Joyaux discussed how developing good relationships is the key to effective fundraising. In Part 2, she shares some specific ways that nonprofits can develop and strengthen relationships with donors and potential donors.
David: Let’s get more specific now [about building relationships with donors].
Simone: M-hmm. There are clients, organizations that I know, that because they changed their newsletters, because they paid attention to being donor-centered; then they paid attention to good writing, journalistic writing, donor communications, effective donor communications, and they changed their headlines and they made the donor at the center of the newsletter and they made the donor the focus of the article. Not "David gave us money," but rather, "Your gift did this and this," they increased the amount of money that came in through their newsletter from, you know, from $500 to $3000 in one issue of the newsletter because they became more donor-centered in their writing.
David: OK so you have me sold. Explain to me what needs to be in place before a nonprofit can develop a successful donor-centric approach.
Simone: The first thing is attitude and behavior. You have to think about this as, “I truly believe in philanthropy. The giving of a gift is not a means to achieve my ends. It is both a meaningful act, in it of itself, and it also helps me achieve my end.”
So you’re not looking at transactions, you’re looking at relationships.
- So, first of all, it's an attitude change throughout the institution. We talk a lot about in fundraising, about building a culture of philanthropy.
- Then, the next thing is that you have to put in place the systems to retain current donors, whether that’s the computer system or the old 3x5 cards, where you can gather information about those that are currently giving.
We have a donor attrition crisis in the United States. We are acquiring them, and we’re not retaining them. That’s because we are not donor-centered and we are not developing relationships. So, you have to have a system whereby you speak to donors regularly, you find out their interests and you write them down.
So you know that David is interested in saving the hawk, but he is not overly interested in the chickadees. So, we in the Audubon Society talk to you about the hawks. It’s not that we say we don’t do anything for chickadees, but we focus on the hawks with you. So we have to have the system to find out what they’re interested in. We have to have the system to write down what [each specific donor] is interested in. We have to have the system so that when we’re speaking to donors we can remember what they’re interested in and focus on those issues.
We have to engage all of our board members and staff so they can be good “shmoozers,” good relationship builders. So when they hear what people are interested in, they take it and they give it to the development office. So we are constantly having that system to gather information. We have to understand that relationship building focuses on the other person’s interests. So every time we are with donors and volunteers we are asking them questions about their interests and listening to what they have to say.
David: What are some other things we should do immediately [to be more donor-centric in our fundraising]? Can you share with us one of your pet peeves?
Simone: Well, one of my pet peeves is when we have a fundraising event in an organization, and the board members go with their life partners and their friends, and they hang out and talk to only each other. How in heaven’s name are you cultivating relationships with your donors? How are you finding out what their interests are if you’re hanging out with your date?
- Be cultivators. We have to train our board members and our staff to be cultivators. They are relationship-builders and they need to be at our fundraising events talking with people, listening to their stories about why they love our organization.
- Create better written communications. Then, we have to have a way of improving our written communications, so that we are communicating with them well.
- Meet their needs. Then, we solicit [donors] for gifts based on what their needs are.
- Recruit board members interested in your issues. Absolutely do not say to board members, “We need to raise money go ask your friends for money.” We don’t recruit board members because they are wealthy, and they have a bunch of connections, and then we tell them to ask those people for money. We find those that are interested.
That’s how you actually have to do [fundraising], and it takes an enormous amount of work.
David: This sounds like a great strategy. To put it in slightly less tactical terms now, how do we actually measure the success of this type of program?
Simone: Well, we need to redefine and expand our measures. It’s not only about the money, and it’s not only about donor retention rates, although it is certainly about donor retention rates. It’s about lifetime value.
I was talking to a client one day and said, “So tell me who are your top donors we need to develop relationships with first and get to know better?” And they said, “Well, we’ll take all the donors that have given $500 or above.” I said, “Could you also look at longevity of giving?” They said “Oh, OK, we’ve never done that.”
They did that and came back to me and said, “Oh my gosh! We have 25 donors, who have given for 25 years or more.”
Now that’s lifetime value, and that’s the prospect for a bequest. That’s true love! So, it’s not only about the money raised. It’s about:
- What is your donor retention like?
- How many times did someone give you a gift in a year?
- Do they give money and also volunteer?
- Did they refer somebody else to you? That’s a true example of believing in you, they referred somebody to you.
- How satisfied are they with the material they receive from you?
We need to look at all kinds of different measures.
David: It seems very difficult to measure a lot of these things, because many of them are intangibles. It’s very easy to count how much money you’ve raised in a campaign. But how do you measure relationships?
Simone: Well, by some of the very things I’ve said:
- You’d have to do it through key informant interviews.
- You may have to do surveys.
- You listen to the number of complaints you get.
I was just with a client yesterday, where I was talking to several different donors and the numbers of complaints they had about everything – from the quality of the program, to how they were treated as donors, to how long they were stuck in hell. This is really bad relationship building. You start looking at the number of complaints you’re getting. You look at how fast you can fix complaints and how happy (the clients) are.
David: So it sounds like we, in addition to some of the traditional quantitative reporting and tracking that we do, we need to start thinking about a more qualitative approach.
That probably involves a little more anthropology and a little less statistics.
Simone: It involves a lot of work. In my new book, there’s an entire chapter on that, on measuring the effectiveness of relationships by not counting the money.
David: Tell us about your book and how we can learn more about it.
Simone: The book is called Keep Your Donors: The Guide to Better Communication and Stronger Relationships. It’s co-authored with Tom Hern. And it gives both the philosophical context. An executive director can read through and [find information like] “OK, here there are five reasons why we need to be donor-centered, and I can go recite this to the board.” It also gives very specific, tangible steps about what to do. Most people are desperate for the five things they’re supposed to do to get to Bill and Melinda.
David: Great.
Simone: And some of us are on a worldwide mission to say, “Enough of that.” People will either hear it or they don’t. Some people find this sort of broader context very useful. Some people just can’t deal with it and when you’re talking to someone like me, it’s the way I write, it’s the way I present. It’s not negotiable.
David: It looks like everyone’s on the chase to get a hold of Bill and Melinda Gates.
Simone: It makes me so angry and so amused, that I don’t know whether to scream and yell or fall down laughing. People pay attention to what interests them, so Bill and Melinda Gates may not be interested in your organization, and you can’t convince them.
We have this, I don’t know, momentary arrogance and sense of entitlements with nonprofits. It’s as we say, “We do good work; hence you should give us money.” I’m sorry, but there are 1.5 million nonprofits in the United States.
But people pay attention to what they’re interested in, no matter how wonderful you are. They will tell you, “I’m not giving to you. And [if you still try] to convince me it is offensive and patronizing.”
Furthermore, [pushing] wastes your time, which you are already don’t have much of. Nonprofits need to understand that philanthropy is one of the most personal acts that a human being, or a corporation, whatever, can do. Find those that are interested in you.
You are not running around convincing people or businesses to be interested in you. It’s also not a financial transaction. When you say, “I need this money to do my work,” it’s insulting to donors everywhere.
David: Thank you for sharing the basics of donor-centric fundraising. It’s been very inspiring to think about building relationships vs. numbers.
Read Part 1
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