Refreshing Nonprofit Innovation: Overcoming Obstacles and Igniting Impact

Hello, hello. It’s so great to be here. Hey, Mallory. How’s it going?
Hi, Julia. Good morning. I am so excited to be here in Philadelphia with all of you.
It’s really amazing. The office is abuzz right now. People all over the place. It’s so good to be together. It’s gonna Read More

Hello, hello. It’s so great to be here. Hey, Mallory. How’s it going?
Hi, Julia. Good morning. I am so excited to be here in Philadelphia with all of you.
It’s really amazing. The office is abuzz right now. People all over the place. It’s so good to be together. It’s gonna be a great day for sure.
Yes, I cannot wait. This is an amazing week. Welcome, everyone. We are so happy that you are here with us start to tell us in the chat where you’re calling in from what you’re the most excited about being together. I see already 200 eager people are here. 10 minutes early, my like favorite little early birds. And so yeah, tell us tell us about you. And we’re so excited to spend the next few days with you.
Yeah, it’s gonna be amazing. Are there any sessions obviously Mallory, we’re so excited about your session coming up this morning. Any other sessions that you’re really excited to catch while we’re here? Mallory, anything you’re looking forward to?
Well, we have an amazing day today. I am so thrilled and I feel like there’s so many thought leaders speaking at this conference that I really admire and listen to Dana Snyder is, of course, a really close friend of mine and my go to digital fundraising guru, Sabrina Hernandez is also a great friend Nathan Chapelle, Ria Huang, it’s just going to be an incredible day. TYSKIE Williams, I always love everything she says. So I just feel like we have so much to look forward to in this schedule.
And then, of course, our keynote speaker this afternoon, Joan Geary, I can’t wait to hear from her. It’s gonna be a full day, I’m so excited. It’s gonna be a blast. And honestly, I’m going to be taking notes all day long. And there’s going to be so much to learn. I can’t wait.
I know. And you know, I remember Gosh, all those months ago when we first started talking about this conference, and we were thinking about the theme for the conference and this idea of refresh, maybe like, we just tell everyone a little bit behind like the inspiration behind why we’re coming together under that theme right now, because I love the way you all are thinking about this.
Of course, yeah, I’m so excited about our theme this year. So for those who are on the call, and don’t know, my name is Julia, I am the Communications Manager here at DonorPerfect. But prior to this, I was also a fundraiser, I was in fundraising for 10 years. And I remember there were so many things that I would do year after year, that were the same like just because we did it last year we’re doing it again, we had an auction in May last year, we’re going to have an auction in May this year, we did a back to school giving campaign in September of last year, we’re doing a back to school giving campaign, September of this year, the goal of this conference is to kind of revisit some of those things to refresh the things that maybe we’ve done and have worked in the past. But how do we take another step up? How do we refresh those things that we love and that have been successful, but we want to make them even better. And honestly, in the, you know, back end of COVID, there were so many things that we really had to reinvent, and we had to be innovative and figure out these new things. And this is also in that sense? How can we be innovative? How can we be creative? How can we refresh some of our strategies? So I know we’re going to tackle that in the next two days, and there’s going to be so many ideas, it’s gonna be wonderful, for sure. Now, Larry, how do you see the theme of refresh playing out over the next two days?
Yeah, I think it’s such a perfect time for us to be talking about this. Because like you as a fundraiser for 13 years, I definitely know that this has always been the way we’ve done it. And I feel like we’re in this funny place right now where there was a lot of innovation and shifting during COVID. And there’s a little bit of this like stickiness right now around like, do we keep changing things up? Do we keep refreshing things? Or do we go back to what we were doing in 2019. And so I think this conversation is so timely, because the world is different, and everything is different. There is no going back. And so what does it look like for you to take a fresh look at your organization with where it’s at today, right now with everything going on. And it also just feels like a really good time of year. I know it’s probably technically summer by calendar months, but I’m still in spring cleaning mode. So I feel like it’s just like the perfect time to be like freshening up these things refreshing thinking and being together and community.
Yeah, that’s so true. That’s so true. Speaking of community, well, I love seeing where everybody is from. Thank you all for posting in the chat. Shout out to Trisha from Vero Beach. That is my hometown, very small beach town in Florida. That’s so cool. It’s great to see all these people really wonderful to see all over the place. This is so cool.
I know. I was wishing I was wishing I had like a tracker to be writing for everything from I’m like, I think we have like a lot of provinces and Canada covered most of the states covered so it’s so awesome to see all of you here.
We need a heat map for sure. Yes. For those who are asking in the chat, the sessions will be recorded, there’ll be available on our website. And also you’ll get the slides in the presentation. So don’t worry, if you miss something, you’ll be able to revisit the sessions for sure. This is so great. So I would love to know, in the chat, so those who are joining us now, how long have you been in fundraising? Are you new to the sector? Have you been in fundraising for a long time? Are you here to learn? Are you here to refresh? What How long have you been in the sector? I would love to hear that from you all. Oh, and yes, thank you, Laurie, for pinning that. That’s perfect. Yeah, and if I ask you, how long have you been in the sector?
I, so I have been, gosh, you know what, I’m at one of those ages where I stopped counting. And I keep using the same amount of years, you know, and then I’m like, wait a second, I’ve been saying 15 years for like five years. So how long can I keep this up? But you know, I mean, honestly, my first interaction with the nonprofit sector was when I was like, 10, or 12 years old, I started volunteering at a really young age. Following my undergrad experience, I went full time, full time into the sector and never turned back. So yeah, I’m getting close. I’m coming close to my 20 years inside the sector and was a frontline fundraiser for 13 years. So definitely, you know, I love this sector, I don’t know that I ever thought it was going to be my whole life. But once I started in it, I never wanted to leave. So I love hearing this such a huge range, which I think is so amazing to see we have some new bees few months in. And then we have folks who have been here for over 20 years, and which is so cool. There’s so much to learn from each other too. And I love when folks chime in, in the chat throughout the sessions. Because you all have so much knowledge and wisdom to share with each other. And so I love seeing this huge spread.
It’s so funny to hear how long you’ve been in the sector. Man, how different is the sector from the time where you started when you were 12 to now?
Oh, my gosh, well, I can’t even really compare to when I was you know that that young? But yeah, I mean, gosh, even in the last like 1015 years, particularly when it comes to technology. I know over you know, lunch yesterday, we were talking about some of the early Tech, I was using, you know, 1015 years ago. And it’s just amazing to see the resources available to nonprofits today. And the way that can enable just so many things that we only dreamed about, you know, 1015 years ago.
It’s so true. I mean, I was in fundraising for 10 years, and the things that changed from day one, to the end of the 10th. Year, astronomical I can’t believe all the things that changed. It’s really amazing. And honestly, I mean, if you think about how much changes in one year of fundraising, there’s so many trends, so many things to focus on. It’s a lot. It’s a lot. So we’re hoping that this today, conference will help you to kind of focus and refresh. It’s gonna be really wonderful. I can’t wait.
Yeah, and I think you guys at DonorPerfect have been so smart and thoughtful about curating a schedule that’s really intentional and supportive without being totally overwhelming, because you’re right, there are so many things constantly being thrown at fundraisers do this, do that do this. And sometimes it can be hard to sort through it all and figure out what to prioritize. And so I love that we’re having a conference talking about refreshing, but we’re not throwing 150 things at you. And it’s to really be able to manage your sort of intentional and strategic ways of looking at innovation in your organization.
Yes, I love thinking about innovation and nonprofits. I think sometimes we get so stuck in, man, we got to get our program done, or we got to do this one thing or whatever. And we don’t take the time to sit down and think creatively. So very impressed with the many of you that are here today that are ready to think creatively and revisit a lot of the things that you’re doing in your strategy. So thank you all so much for being here. It’s gonna be wonderful. We just have about one minute left before any anybody want to put in the chat that session that they’re most excited about. What are you most looking forward to today? I think it’s going to be really great. As Mallory mentioned, I’m really excited about Dana’s session. online fundraising is something that is really necessary in our day and age. And it’s it’s definitely required for fundraisers to know how to raise money online. So I’m, I’m looking forward to that session for sure.
Yeah, there’s so much goodness today.
It’s gonna be great. For sure. It is 1030. So we want to definitely kick things off. Thank you all so much for being here. My name is Julia gokken Bach I am the Communications Manager here at DonorPerfect. Prior to being here, I was a fundraiser. So I’m, I was in the weeds with you all and I know the burdens that you’re bringing into this conference. I’m so grateful for each of you who put time aside today to be part of the conversation about refreshing your fundraising. As we spoke about a few minutes ago, we’re talking a lot about how to revisit some of the things you’ve been doing, and how to refresh some of that content to make your fundraising new and unique in a new year. So thank you all so much for being here. We’re so excited that over 4000 of you have registered for this event. Over the next two days, you’re going to hear from thought leaders about things like monthly giving and online fundraising and major gifts. And you’ll also hear from DonorPerfect staff about how to use your system to better fundraise, which will be really practical and amazing, it’s going to be great. A couple of housekeeping things, all sessions will be recorded. So you’ll be able to go back and re listen to the many many many ideas that you hear over the next two days. Additionally, in every session, there is an attachment that you’ll find that attachment will be the slides from that session. So if you missed a slide or if it moved too quickly, you can download the slides from that session and you’ll be able to revisit, it’ll be wonderful. Additionally, each session will have a poll. So if you’re interested in hearing more about that session, you can answer the poll at the end, and we’ll be able to reach out to you. It’s gonna be a great day. Without further ado, I’d love to hand it over to Mallory. So Mallory is an executive coach, fundraising consultant and host of the podcast what the fundraising aimed at supporting nonprofit leaders to fundamentally change the way they lead and fundraise. Through her signature framework, the power partners formula, Mallard provides unique tools to help Nonprofits Fundraise more from foundations, corporate partners and individuals. As of 2022, she had trained over 60,000 fundraisers using elements of our unique Win Win framework, which combines best practices from executive coaching science back behavior design and fundraising strategy. Mallory has so much information to share with us today and wonderful wealth of knowledge that she’s pulling from. So we’re so excited to hear from you. Thank you so much for being here today. Mallory and it over to you.
Oh, my gosh, thank you, Julia, for the incredibly warm welcome. I am so thrilled to be with all of you today. I am here in Philadelphia at the DonorPerfect offices. And I am just so honored to get to host this conference and to be able to kick off today with you. Because as we were talking about, we have so many incredible sessions and incredible speakers, knowledge, practical tips and tools to be talking about today. And I really want to start by framing up the conversation around how you can refresh and innovate and integrate that innovation after this conference as well, because it is so amazing to be able to come together to talk about new ways of doing things to be thinking critically together about those things. And then sometimes you might notice that after a conference, you go back into the daily grind of everything. And we lose track of that inspiration of that energy of that refresh. And so the first session today with me, we’re going to be talking about how you learn the content over these next two days and think about it in a way that you’re going to be able to practically integrate into your organization once this amazing two days together is over. So let me start off by just introducing myself. If we haven’t already met before, it is so nice to meet you. My name is Mallory Erickson. I’m an executive coach and fundraising consultant. I’m the creator of the power partners formula, which is my signature program, and the host of the podcast, what the fundraising. And most importantly, I’m a fierce advocate for the nonprofit sector. If you were on a little early, you heard that I have spent almost now 20 years working exclusively in the nonprofit sector. And I was a frontline fundraiser for 13 years. And I love it. And I believe in the sector’s potential. And I also see the different challenges associated with our sector. And that is why I focus on the work that I do today. And I would love to hear from you in the chat too, if this resonates with you. But I actually became an accidental fundraiser. First, actually, as a nonprofit Managing Director and then an executive director, I started to get promoted up through nonprofit and I didn’t know when I entered this sector, that that meant that big fundraising responsibilities, were going to come with those roles. And so tell me in the chat, if you have found yourself as an accidental fundraiser as well. But I had this idea that being a fundraiser was going to be easy, and I don’t know why I had this idea. But I thought oh, you know, I’ll never work more than 40 hours a week. Have donors come to me. And that was very, very different than the reality. And I call this phase of my life, the impact report fake phase of my life. Because the truth of the matter was that I really disliked fundraising. And I felt this incredible pressure to put up this appearance everywhere that I had it all together, right that I that I had this amazing group of donors and community and the programs were running smoothly. But every day was a constant hustle, I was so burnt out and overwhelmed all the time. And so if you’re coming to this session today, if you’re coming to this conference today, feeling that way, I just want to say I have been exactly where you are. And I totally get it. I was prioritizing my, my nonprofit over my family, my friends, I ended up developing chronic pain. And I really got to a moment in my life where I was like, I cannot keep doing this anymore, you know, a year from now, without having a donor pipeline that I trust without feeling fundamentally differently about fundraising. I don’t know if I can stay in this sector. And I knew I didn’t want to leave the sector. So I had to figure out a different way of doing things I had to refresh. And so for me, unfortunately, there was no DonorPerfect conference focused on Refresh at that time. So I ended up going down my own research rabbit hole, I got certified as an executive coach, I got trained in habit and behavior design with Dr. BJ Fogg, I got trained in design thinking. And those frameworks really came together and fundamentally changed the way that I fundraise. And it had a huge impact on the nonprofit that I was leading financially, I grew an organization from a million to 3.8 pretty quickly. But more importantly, it changed how I felt about fundraising. And I started to actually love fundraising. And the what I built for me first has now become what is my signature program, the power partners formula, and everything that we’re going to be talking about today in my session, is inspired by that formula. So I’m going to be talking about this idea of refreshing innovation from an executive coaching lens from a habit and behavior design lens, because it’s so important to me that you leave these next two days, feeling inspired and energized, and that you have the tools to be able to implement them into your nonprofit when you go home. So let’s talk about what we are going to be doing today, I’m gonna give you sort of a quick welcome and orientation to the day, I am going to talk about why implementing innovation is so hard, like why is it so hard to sometimes we’re great at the brainstorm or the idea phase. But the implementation is where we hit a lot of roadblocks and sticking points. So we’re gonna talk about some of that, we’re going to talk about how habits happen. And I’m going to use habits and rituals a little bit interchangeably, we’re going to talk about what actually creates a habit. And then I’m going to talk through five fundamental habits that are going to help you integrate the innovation, the refreshed ideas that you come up with over these next few days, when you go back into your organization. And I’m also going to teach you how to design habits for your team. I’m just going to say I have so much I always do this, but I have so much content that I want to share with all of you guys. And so I am there will be question time at the end 100%. I’m watching the clock. But I probably won’t be able to fully manage the chat the whole time. So I’d love it be in the chat, pump each other up, share feedback, I always go back and read the chat after all of my sessions. So please hang out in the chat. But just know that I’m not necessarily seeing questions in real time in the chat, but we will make sure to get them at the end. Okay. So first of all, why hit the refresh button. If you were here a few minutes early, you heard Julia and I talking about this a little bit. The reality is in the nonprofit sector, we are often so caught in the doing right, we are so caught in the hustle from day to day keeping so many things afloat having way too many to dues on our plate. And we need opportunities to be able to sit back and hit that refresh button to think about things critically and differently to learn to get creative and think outside the box. And this is such a great time to be doing this. In particular, the last like three years have been very different in terms of the pandemic and moving out of the pandemic and not look different for every one. And there was a lot of innovation that we saw in the nonprofit sector over the last three years. And now a lot of organizations that I’m seeing are sort of in this in this funny place where they’re like do we do we go back to some of the things we were doing in 2019? Or do we keep the things that we were doing over the last few years and and so this is such a great moment because the world is different. Your organization is different. And so we wanted to take this moment to say what is refreshing your organization look like today? What do You want today and moving forward. And so that’s really the inspiration behind this event. And we’re going to be talking about this more later about the impact that a lot of your ability to innovate to refresh these practices has to do with the combination of your energy and the actions that you’re taking. And we’ll talk about what leads to this a little bit later. But today, together with some amazing speakers, Dana Snyder, Ria Huang, I’m Brian Crimmins and Nathan Chapelle, tastily, Williams, Sabrina Walker Hernandez, you’re going to be hearing incredible ideas from different thought leaders in our sector, about the different types of energy and action you can be bringing to refreshing your different practices and, and then the other tactical support from and the look inside how DonorPerfect technology can really help you do this is going to be so instrumental. And so that’s why we want to take this moment and really give you a diversity of ideas and verticals to sort of be looking at inside your fundraising inside your organization. And throughout all of those different things. Themes. Think about the different energy and actions you want to bring to it. Okay, so I am so excited to dive in to this part where we are going to talk a little bit about why implementing innovation is so hard. And I just want to say that the reason I said this at the beginning, but the reason why we’re talking about this, which will become a lot more clear in one minute when I show you the next slide, is because being together in community like this learning together is such an inspiring and motivating and energizing experience. And I want to give you the tools to be able to maintain this and integrate it when you go back into the daily grind of your life inside your nonprofit. So I’m going to be talking about what I’m going to be talking about in my session is really going to help you as you think through how you implement what you learned in the rest of the session. So it’s really like a tone setting. For all the great tips you’re going to be learning from the incredible thought leaders over the next two days. Okay. So let’s talk about innovation. So when we innovate, when we change something, when we refresh something, there are typically like two primary phases to that, right. There’s the decision making phase around what we’re going to change what we’re going to innovate around what we’re going to refresh. And then there’s the implementation phrase. And what’s really interesting, so something I started to notice a lot. And maybe you’ve noticed this, too, is that sometimes you’ll have a staff meeting or a board meeting, and everyone’s on the same page in that meeting about how you are going to innovate something or change something. But then you go to actually implement that thing. And all of a sudden, there’s a lot of resistance. There’s a lot of Yeah, but or what about this? And I remember sitting there as an executive director and being like, wait a second, didn’t we all agree on this, like last month in the board meeting, or in the staff meeting? What’s happening right now? Why all of a sudden, my Am I getting all of these additional questions or all of this pushback that I wasn’t getting when we were making this decision? And I would love to hear in the chat if this has been true for you, too. Because this is something I see with a lot of the organizations that I work with today. So I started to research this and try to figure out okay, what, why is why does this happen? So commonly, when it comes to change management and innovation? What’s fascinating is that the process of making a decision, and actually implementing change involves multiple regions of the brain. And so when we’re making a decision, we’re in that sort of like logical mode, our prefrontal cortex is what’s primarily online, okay. And that’s the brain part that’s responsible for executive function. And that’s where we weigh the pros and cons of different decisions. And we consider potential outcomes, and we make a choice, okay. But actually following through with the change often requires the involvement of other brain regions. For example, particularly, we’re going to talk about the amygdala for a second. And if you’re like, Oh, my God, Mallory, I did not sign up for a brain science class, just hang on for a second, because I think this really helps give a lens into why this becomes so hard. So the part of our brain that is making a decision, the part of our brain and body that makes decisions are different than the part of our brain and body that come online when we’re implementing the decision. And so why, what’s the big deal? Like why is this so important? So the amygdala, that’s the key player in processing emotions, and generating emotional responses, like fear and anxiety, right? So this part of our brain that comes online, when we start to move to the implementation phase, is the part of our brain that regulates the release of hormones and act tivity of our nervous system, our fight or flight response, our sweaty palms are racing heartbeat are spiraling thoughts in our head. So that means that all of a sudden, when we go to implement this decision that we felt like we had a lot of clarity around, we had a lot of consensus around, all of these other parts of our brain and our body come online. And those are the parts of our brain and body that tell us all the Yeah, buts or what about. And now I’m worried about this, right, because all of a sudden, this whole other part of our brain and our body are online. And so in implementing innovation, in particular, impacts our nervous system. And so this resistance that we experienced this transition from learning and decision making to implementation is incredibly significant. Because innovation implementation really impacts our nervous system, when we’re refreshing something, we’re changing something, when we’re innovating, there are these very natural things that happen, right? There’s uncertainty, uncertainty about the outcome of this new project, there’s maybe the threat of failure or rejection. Sometimes even when it comes to different types of, you know, new technology tools, there’s a fear of being replaced by a new technology or a process. So all those things happen once you start to get up to that line around implementing that innovation. So what happens, then, all of a sudden, we have these feelings of anxiety stress, it starts to impact our ability to think clearly and creatively. And we have a lot of difficulty implementing that change, we experienced a tremendous amount of resistance. So I’m going to be giving you five different habits today. And part of what we’re going to talk about in those habits is how to down regulate that fight or flight response. Because that is what is key to I’ll talk about this in a little bit, but getting over the action line to actually implement that innovation. So I know folks have been jumping on throughout this entire time. And so I just want to remind folks, the reason we’re talking about this is because you’re going to leave here with a very happy prefrontal cortex, who is ready to make all these decisions to implement this innovation, and then these other parts, you’re gonna go to implement it, and these other parts of your brain and body are going to come online, and I want you to be prepared for that. And I want you to have tools to deal with that, when that happens. So that you can keep the energy, the momentum, the ideas that you came up with over these next two days, and actually be able to integrate and implement them into your process. So before I give you my habits, I want to just like lay the foundation of like, what is a habit? So a habit is a settled or regular tendency or practices, okay, so but for the purposes of this presentation, we’re going to be teaching, particularly around designing behavioral habits. So for any action to take place, any action to take place, three things need to come together, motivation, ability, and a prompt. Okay, so let’s say that, again, for any action to take place, three things need to be able to come together enough motivation, the ability to take the action, and a prompt, right, the prompt a call to action, a reminder of the thing that you’re trying to do. Without one of those three things, a behavior cannot happen, no matter how motivated you are to do something, somebody asked me for a million dollars to their nonprofit, they could have give me the best pitch in the entire world, I could be crying, I could be so emotionally invested, I could have never cared about anything more in my entire life. But if they tell me, all they need is a million dollars, my motivation can be at the very, very top, but I cannot give a million dollars. And so you we always want to be thinking about do we have enough motivation? Do we have the ability to take the action? And are we being prompted to take the action. So I’m going to be giving you some of my favorite habits and rituals to implement innovation. But I want you to understand as your if you want to design some of these yourself, what you want to be focused on. So when you start to think about new habits or new behaviors for your team, things, you’re leaving this conference with that you’re like, Okay, we’re going to start doing this on Monday, one of the first things to start to think about is that you want to make the action as easy as possible to do. So the first thing is what you’re asking people to do the first step, BJ Fogg talks about this in terms of tiny habits, the first step in the process, you want to make the action as easy as possible to do so that people get over that action line. That’s always the first step. Actually, the first step is to make sure there’s a prompt, right? Because if you don’t ask people to actually take that action, and then you’re like, Why didn’t people do that? Okay, first thing, did you ask them to do that thing? Okay. So first of all, make sure there’s a problem. Second thing is to make sure did you make that action easy enough to do that people can actually take the action. But then if people still aren’t getting over the action line, you know you’re pumped up about this New monthly giving program, you, you know, you felt like the whole team was on board. But all of a sudden, people aren’t taking the actions that you thought they were going to take, you’re asking them to take in your shirts easy, it’s just they just have to click that button and enter their name or something like that. Then the next thing you need to look at is motivation. And motivation is where it gets a little bit tricky because motivation in in Dr. Foggs model is the relationship between hope and fear. So hope drives our motivation up. And fear drives our motivation down. And so before when I talked about why do we experience such different things, when we are thinking about innovation versus when we’re implementing innovation is really related to this, right? When we are often making decisions about things we are in a really hopeful state of mind. And so we are and we’re using that prefrontal cortex, when we go to actually implement that decision, we start to have a lot more fear and discomfort around something. And so that is what activates our nervous system. So I’m going to give you five different habits to help you deal with that resistance when it happens. And you’ll see in each of these habits, how I’m using the Fogg behavior model to really design to help you be able to integrate these, when you go back, take a quick sip of water.
Okay, so, this might seem incredibly basic what I’m about to explain to you, but I actually find that in this sector, it is not something that we do very frequently, particularly for ourselves. So Habit number one is to acknowledge and validate feelings. So you might leave this conference, and you might be so pumped up about something that you hear. And you go back to your team and you are jazzed and you are going over it with everybody in your team, and one of your staff members is having a lot of anxiety or stress around it. Sometimes we kind of bulldoze over that, well, you don’t know what’s going to be so great, trust me, it’s gonna save so much of your time. And it’s going to, you’ve been complaining about this other thing, and it’s going to take that away from you. But what actually really helps people feel more safe, be more open to change and refresh is to have their feelings acknowledged and validated. Because our emotions about something, this is a slide I show in a lot of the work that I do this is the underlying principles of executive coaching, is really understanding that how we feel is informed by the thoughts and the beliefs that we hold. So when we feel discomfort in our belly, when we feel that drop in our stomach, before picking up a call to even make a thank you call us what’s causing that emotional reaction, our thoughts and beliefs that we are holding about taking that thing away, don’t want to bother them, they’re gonna be so mad that I cold called them. Nobody likes getting calls out of the blue, those thoughts, those beliefs, that’s what makes the thank you call really scary, right? It’s not the call, the call is just the call, but the thoughts and the beliefs that we hold that lead to how we feel, and then that ultimately impacts the energy and the action that we bring to something. And oftentimes, when we’re in conference mode, when we’re together, over the next two days, you’re gonna have all these new thoughts and new beliefs, you’re gonna have a lot of energy and excitement and momentum around those. But when the self doubt beliefs come back next week, or they creep in a little bit, you’re gonna start to feel differently, you’re like, Wait, was that a good idea. And so I want you to start to recognize that a lot of those limiting beliefs, a lot of what happens in our brain is self doubt, trying to keep a small place safe, right, that is not designed to help support innovation. It’s not designed to help support a refresh. And so we need to start to be aware of the thoughts and the beliefs that we’re holding, and how they’re impacting the way that we feel. And we need to acknowledge and validate how we feel because even if the stories behind the emotions are not true, the feeling is always valid. The feeling is always valid. And so the very first habit and I want you to use this with your staff, I want you to use this with yourself is to acknowledge and validate how you feel. Yeah, it is scary making change. It is scary, refreshing a practice, it is scary, trying something new, and start to notice how that acknowledgement how that validation actually helps you be able to move forward. And there are two other strategies to use to actually help you interrupt. Cognitive Behavior loops spiral when you’re having some feelings, some emotions that are negative are holding you back. One sentence and these are scientifically proven to actually down regulate your nervous system to make your body and your brain feel more safe to be able to implement that innovation. The very first sentence to save yourself is that makes sense. Like I’m really nervous to call this donor that makes sense. How often do we say oh my gosh, Mallory, you’ve called 400 donors like just pick up The phone Come on, right? We like bully ourselves, we tough love ourselves, we try to just push ourselves over that action line. But actually what helps us get over the action line is acknowledging and validating how we feel. Yeah, that makes sense. You feel nervous. And then the second part of this is something called distance self talk. So using a positive statement and your first name, starting to swap out, I for your first name, you can do this Mallory. You’ve overcome hard things like this before Mallory, scientifically proven when you use your own first name, it helps pull you out of the tunnel vision of the black and white thinking that you might be experiencing of that limb, those limiting beliefs that negative self talk, it’s actually scientifically proven to down regulate your nervous system and help you be able to implement that refresh. Implement that innovation. Okay. So that is that is Habit number one. Habit number two is to focus on increasing your curiosity and decreasing your judgment. So again, something that happens a lot of times in conference mode is we are curious, we’re in learning mode, we’re so open, right? We’re not sitting there like, oh, well, that won’t work for me. And that won’t work for me. And that won’t work for me. Sometimes most of time. We’re like, Oh, that’s interesting, or how did that happen? Right? But then we go back, and all of a sudden, we get back into black and white thinking, we get back into tunnel vision, we get back into all the reasons why it won’t work for us. And so as you go back into your organization, I want you to think how can you bring this curiosity with you? How can you bring that wonder that ah, that excitement that what if with you, because there are these two types of energy that we’re infused with as people catabolic energy and anabolic energy? Anabolic energy is energy that’s constructive, expanding, fueling healing. It’s growth oriented, we experience flow state, we’re an anabolic energy and we see a prism of opportunities. When we’re in catabolic energy. On the other hand, it’s draining, resisting contracting energy, right catabolic energy, sometimes it can provide you with like an energetic boost for a moment, but over time, it really drains you. So a lot of black and white thinking, a lot of judgment, right? A lot of tunnel vision, right and wrong, that won’t work for us, because so as much as possible, you want to be thinking about where can you get curious, what is what might be what might happen when, remember, increasing hope increases motivation. So where can you swap out some of your judgment for curiosity, and you guys will get, you know, the slides and everything for this. But I want you to think about and do maybe a reflection for yourself, at some point, maybe at the end of this conference, as you’re thinking about integrating all these things, what catabolic energy feels like in your body, what anabolic energy feels like in your body, and start to notice when they show up and play with that idea of increasing that curiosity, see what happens. See what happens when you said what if? Or what might be possible if instead of being caught in more of that judgment, and I just want to say, like, awareness of this energy, it gives us so much important information, right? The goal is not to say, oh, my gosh, there I am in catabolic energy. Again, that always happens to me, I’m so bad at this. I’m thinking negatively all the time, so much black and white thinking, No, it’s information, saying, oh, there it is, again, there that judgment came. I wonder what caused that? I wonder what it would look like to be a little bit less judgmental around that? What would it sound like to be curious, instead of judgmental there? Right. So just use it. It’s knowledge, it’s awareness. It’s an entry point, to learn more about yourself to learn more about the thoughts and the beliefs that are behind why you’re feeling the way that you’re feeling about some type of innovation or some type of refresh that you’re talking about. Okay, habit number three, continuous improvement, not perfection. So nothing kills innovation, like perfectionism. And I think sometimes when we get to hear the amazing work of thought leaders, and we see case studies about what other nonprofits have done, or even we hear things, we jump straight to like the end, well, this nonprofit was able to do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what we’re not seeing is the entire journey of getting there. And so we get in this perfectionist mindset, like our insides are supposed to look like somebody else’s outsides, and it actually stops our ability to refresh right in its tracks. It stops the innovation right in its tracks. Perfectionism leads us to a fear of failure, right? We’re so focused on achieving perfection, that we become afraid of making any mistakes, right? And this fear leads to a reluctance of trying new things, experimenting, taking risks, all of which are essential components of innovation, and refreshing your nonprofit. And if you’re like, ooh, Mallory, this little bit of a gut punch for 11am in the morning Hey, I just want to say like I am a recovering perfectionist, I totally understand that this is a process. But I want you to start to realize that you can’t take these ideas and expect perfection from yourself from your staff. And I also want to say if you’re, if you are expecting perfection from yourself, you’re likely also expecting it from your staff. I used to think like, oh, no, like,
I’m not, I’m a great leader, right? I’m very flexible. I’m very open. I’m a great people, manager and coach, for all my team members. I’m just a perfectionist with me. But your staff are watching that your teams are watching that they’re watching you be hard on yourself. They’re watching the perfectionism, and that’s creating culture inside your organization. And so if you want an innovative culture, if you want your staff to embrace a refresh, you have to be able to lead with things like adaptability instead of perfectionism, because perfectionism also leads to a lack of adaptability, we get really rigid in our thinking, right. And we have a really hard time adapting to new ideas or changes or different circumstances, which can make it so difficult to be flexible, when we need to be or include new perspectives and ideas. Perfectionism also decreases motivation. And if you think about BJs model, that makes perfect sense, right? Perfectionism is basically just a version of failure, a version of fear. And so perfectionism absolutely drives motivation down. And then perfectionism also leads to a lack of collaboration, which hopefully, a lot of the ideas you’re leaving this conference with, to refresh, are including your team members, your board, your community, and our including community, and collaboration. And so we want to make sure that we aren’t saying, Oh, I really want to work together on this, I really want to be collaborative around this. And then we’re holding things like our perfectionist tendencies, that don’t allow us to actually work with other people. So here are a few ways if you’re a recovering perfectionist, right me, like me, then I want to share some things that help address perfectionist tendencies, setting realistic expectations and checking with the people around you Around how realistic it is, right? Making the actions and behavior smaller. Remember, I said the very first thing to think about is is this action easy enough to do track progress of behaviors instead of outcomes. So if you go into okay, we want to refresh some of our fundraising practices. You can’t just wait to see what the monetary outcome of that is you need to start to track and celebrate the behaviors that people are taking the new refreshed behaviors that fundraisers are taking, instead of just the financial outcomes. You want to create a culture of feedback and learning. And then celebrate failure. I used to have something inside my organization once I realized the perfectionist tendencies, I was exuding out where I had a failure Friday, where people shared their biggest failure and learning from the weak. And I did too, and I shared really vulnerable things that helped people open up about what they were learning what they were trying, what did they try to refresh, that didn’t work. And then the last piece here is celebrate self compassion, celebrate self compassion, compassion to your team members, of course, as well. But everybody watches how everybody talks to themselves too. Right? And so we can say things like, oh, you know, you don’t need to be perfect. But when we’re not demonstrating any self compassion around our own mistakes, we still send the message that actually if I need to be perfect, everybody needs to be perfect. Okay, so dressing perfectionism is a huge element of your ability to actually be able to integrate the refreshing ideas that you’re coming up with over these next few days into your organization. Habit number four, is get time on your side. Okay. And I know, I don’t know if there’s any sentence said more in the nonprofit sector, then I don’t have enough time. But time, yes, there’s a fixed amount of time, we all have 24 hours in a day, okay. But how we use our time is different. And there’s a huge difference between just having enough time and being optimized and productive with our time. So I want to teach you three time optimization habits to help you integrate the innovation, ie the innovative ideas that you’re learning today as well. So the first one you have probably heard of before in some way, which is time blocking. So giving yourself enough time putting time on your calendar to do the specific tasks and things that you typically don’t have time to do, right? Because you get all these meetings booked on your calendar or you end up checking your email 45 times a day. And so putting blocks on your calendar for deep thinking time or your fundraising time and I’ve some ways that I talked about tailoring the fundraising time in particular but really putting those blocks on your calendar and sticking to them sticking to them, right? Because when we break those commitments to ourselves, and we override our, our working time blocks with meetings every single week, then we don’t actually trust that we’re gonna give ourselves the time that we need to do those things. The other thing is buffer time. So I explained how you use different parts of your brain when you are moving from, you know, thinking about decision making to actually implementation. So this is part of why buffer time is so important, different parts of our brain come online during different activities. And so when we run from a strategy session into a donor meeting with no buffer time, in the middle, we’re like expecting our brain and our body to switch modes without any actual transition time in the middle. So buffer time have 50 minute meetings, instead of 60 minute meetings or 25 minute meetings, instead of 30 minute meetings, give yourself buffers, so your energy your brain, your body can actually transition between the different activities that you are expecting yourself to do. The third time optimization habit, this is my favorite. And I will tell you people hear me speak about this and then I get messages for the next week. Like I just started doing the fearless 15 Oh my gosh, it’s changing my life. So the fearless 15 Is the idea of of spending the first 15 minutes of every single day, doing two to five minute tasks that scare you. So I shared a little bit about what fear does to our brains and our hormones, and all of those things, right. So what we what we do inside power partners and in all of my work is we spend the first 15 minutes of the day doing two to five minute tasks that are activating, right send it clicking Send on that donor email, clicking submit on that grant application. Because there’s a lot of language around you’ll be a fearless fundraiser. You don’t need to be fearless all the time. I’m I’m not fearless all the time. Nobody’s fearless all the time. You just need to have moments of fearlessness. And if you know, okay, I’m going to do those those scary tasks, those things that make my stomach drop the first 15 minutes of that of your day. First of all, it clears a heck of a lot of catabolic energy out of you for the rest of your day, you get to operate with a lot more anabolic energy. But then you also know it’s contained. Right. And I hear a lot of people say, you know, it’s so helpful, because then something happens that like makes me feel really uncomfortable. And I just I put on my fearless stiff team for the next day. I know I’m going to address it. I know I’m going to address it the next day, but I don’t have to worry about it and have it weighing on me all day long. Okay, so Yeah, feel this 15 is spend the first 15 minutes every day on two to two to five minute tasks that evoke fear. And when you have awareness around your emotions, and your thoughts and your beliefs, when you have this lens, this is why it’s such good information that can really help you identify the activities that might be triggering fear and actually be able to build community around them and rituals around them. Okay, the last habit around integrating your innovation and refresh is to prioritize connection and celebration. So our nervous system can down regulate when we experience genuine and safe connection. And habits are cemented when we celebrate the behavior that we’re taking instead of the outcome. Right. So think about I have a three and a half year old, I think about teaching her how to brush her teeth, right? I don’t just celebrate her brushing her teeth every six months when we go to the dentist, right? I celebrate her brushing her teeth every day when She brushes her teeth. Oh, good job. Oh, I saw you got a you did a better job with the back teeth today. Right? Because I want to cement the tooth brushing habit. And I know that once every six months at the dentist isn’t going to be enough to do that. But we don’t really apply this to our fundraising. We’re like, oh, yeah, we’ll celebrate on December 31. When we finish our last fundraising campaign of the year. And by celebrate what we really mean is maybe we have five minutes, where we celebrate together and then the clock starts over and the budget starts over and we’re back in go mode, right? A big way to change this a really big way to embrace innovate innovation, to embrace the ability to refresh is to start to celebrate, the habits start to celebrate the rituals, okay? Instead of just the actions and come together to practice and behavior change. We call this shine, right? So what this looks like is you first you identify the actions that you want your team to be taking or yourself, right, what are the actions? What are the behaviors that you want people to be taken, you’re gonna think about that, like when you go into all of these sessions over the next two days. And you’re like, Oh, I really want to implement that idea. I loved what Dana talked about regarding blink, blink, blink. And I really want to do what RIA said here about x. I really think about okay, so what does that mean in terms of the actions you want your team to be taking? Right What are the actions then I want you to prioritize those actions because if you hand them a list of 150 things, you are going to have a very overwhelmed team. So I want you to prioritize those actions. And then I want you to decide how you’re going to celebrate each time someone does that action, right? Not just the outcome, the action. Okay? Use team meetings and check ins to follow up about different action totals confirm that shine was given, build community around the behaviors that fundraisers staff members yourself are taking. That’s what’s going to cement innovation and that culture of innovation into your organization, right, that’s gonna have it be that not that one time decision making prefrontal cortex space. But that’s going to be how your brains and your bodies start to feel safe integrating and implementing motivation as well. The other thing I really wanted to say for positional leaders is that there are three primary things. There’s some really cutting edge research in neuroscience around this right now. But there are three really big things that lead to dysregulation and burnout that can stifle innovation inside your your nonprofit. And so I wanted to bring those up. The first is a lack of autonomy. The second is injustice. And the third is insufficient resources. And you all like me are probably reading this and you’re like, oh, my gosh, Mallory, did anyone ever say the nonprofit sector? So yes, I understand that everybody, even positional leaders are oftentimes leading with challenges around these three things. It is part of why we have such a challenge with innovation inside this sector. And so I just wanted to transparently talk about this, that we can’t go back and say we want to innovate, we want to refresh, and then micromanage and be in perfectionist mode, and all those things. And so take it a tiny, a tiny piece at a time, right, a tiny piece at a time. That’s what BJ Foggs model can be so helpful around, what’s the action that you want people to take? Do they have the ability to take the action? Are they motivated to take the action? Are they being reminded to take that action? And then if you experience resistance to implementation with yourself, or your team, like, I just want to say that I use this with myself. Okay, all the time. Here’s some questions to ask yourself. And I shared this at the beginning, too. Is there a prompt? Was there a prompt? Was I reminded to do this activity? How can I make the action easier to do? Maybe there’s an ability issue there? How can I make the action easier to do? And then how can I increase hope and decrease fear around this action? Okay, there’s a lot of resistance here. How can I increase hope for myself for my team, in order to be able to drive motivation up? So those are some questions when you go back, you experienced that resistance implementing some of what we’re talking about today, in all these sessions. These are, these are the questions to think about, around how you really bring them into your organization. Okay, so today in this session, what we talked about is understanding why integrating innovation is hard, and how to prepare for it in terms of designing the behaviors that you want people to actually bring it back to your organization or that you want to bring back to your organization. Think about increasing curiosity, decreasing judgment, and cultivating this on your team as well. Adopting that continuous improvement mindset, right and avoiding the perfectionism and getting time on your side. So creating space for creativity and adaptability. Because if you are in Go, go go mode, okay, constant hustle, constant sympathetic nervous system activation, it’s super hard to be creative in that space, right? So create those time buffers create that space for that innovation for that refresh, okay? And then prioritize opportunities for connection and celebration and do this internally for yourself, too. Okay, if you are interested in learning more about me and the work that I do with fundraisers, my signature program, the power partners formula is opening again in August. This is the first time I’m actually sharing this link with folks if you want to sign up for my free masterclass webinar. It is available on my website right now. And it will be coming in August. If you are interested in joining my free community, the what the fundraising community, you can do that as well. I’ll throw these links in the chat too. But I want to make sure we have some time before we wrap up for questions. Because I know I just gave you a lot to think about and hopefully bring with you in terms of how you look at and think through your learning over these next two days.
Okay, that was that was a great presentation. And we have plenty of questions and I I kind of wanted to let you go. So we have maybe about six minutes for questions. At this point. I wanted to make sure that you finished Okay, so one of the first questions that came in was what steps did you take to start overcoming your perfectionism?
Hmm, well, those slot all of the tips that I shared with you in there were definitely strategies that I use so Being more realistic about my expectations of myself, acknowledging and validating how I felt that I was uncomfortable making mistakes and being honest with myself about that having self compassion, having my own back when I did make a mistake was also huge, right? Because if you’re like, Okay, you know, Mallory, you can make mistakes. And then you make a mistake, and you beat yourself up forever about it, it doesn’t really cement that in. So having your own back when you do make a mistake, sometimes with perfectionism, honestly, we just need to learn that we can survive it. And so we need to take these tiny little moments of trying something new, refresh something, innovate on something a little bit, survive it, and then have your own back in that moment, no matter what happens. And that’s how you start to move move out of that perfectionist mode.
Okay. So Gabby asked, if you are not a leader of a team, how do you make the case to your leaders that perfectionism is? Is not it? And we need a refresh? I’m looking for advice on how do I start that conversation?
Well, you can blame me and you can say I went to this session where this woman was talking about the science of implementing innovation. But there’s a lot of research to support this. There’s a lot of research to support how perfectionism stifles creativity gets in our way, like everything I shared with you all is really backed up by research and science. So you could say I listened to this session where this woman was talking about it, I did some of my own research. Here’s some really interesting things I found, I know that you leader really care about X, Y, and Z. And I think that the way we’re approaching perfectionism around blank is actually getting in the way of what you truly want, which is x. So what if we tried just a little bit, this little thing a little bit different, make the action easy to do? ease them in to trying things like maybe you do one less revision round to start on something you usually revise, you know, a certain amount of times? Like how can you make that action, easier to do and, and show everybody how they can survive the imperfection. Right? Perfectionism is an illusion, nobody is perfect. So it’s just like, showing people that they are safe moving through that.
Okay. All right. And well, she posted after that. She said, Whoa, how do you get board members to be okay, with tracking behaviors instead of outcomes?
Ooh. So I, first of all, my first question would be, why do why does that have to roll up to the board members before you start tracking that like that, I would say can be an internal team thing that you’re doing with your staff and celebrating on your staff, because that’s going to be part of how you’re building culture inside your organization. So I don’t think it necessarily needs to be a board conversation. And if you have a board that would push back on that, maybe you don’t start with them. The other thing is, is in all industries, other than the nonprofit sector in a very funny way, we there is a lot more talk about the relationship between our behaviors and our outcomes. Right. The outcomes are the lagging indicators of how we’re doing with something, the behaviors that we take, are the leading indicators that give us a sense of how we’re ultimately going to do right all all other industries really look at this relationship between leading indicators and lagging indicators. So they should be familiar with that concept. There’s also a ton of other research out there around it. But I would also say like, I don’t see, I don’t think it has to happen with the board.
Okay. All right. We’re gonna do one more question. And this is from Tracy, she says, How do you celebrate when the team is a team of one?
Hmm. So first of all, shine and celebration is absolutely something that needs to be happening inside your head. Okay, so when you take an action that was scary, hard, you make that call to the donor, you click Send on that email. I want you to say something positive to yourself in that moment, okay. Right. Sometimes I write things in whitewash markers on the mirror in my bathroom, put little motivational post it notes around your computer, right? Keep a file on your folder of kind things that donors and community members have said, open that up when you need it, right. But how we talk to ourselves, the person we hear the most is ourselves. Okay? The person we hear the most is ourselves. And sometimes you go like, wait, you want me you’re talking about me talking to myself? Yes. You are you talking to yourself? You were talking to yourself all day, every day. The question is not whether or not you talk to yourself. It’s what are you saying? So the very first thing around shine around self ration it is what is happening inside your head.
Okay, positive reinforcement. Always. Yeah. Okay, so that is all the questions we have. I apologize that we did not get too many more of those. I can they reach out to you? Yes, absolutely
send me a message, send me a message through the app over the next two days, I will be checking it you can send me a DM on Instagram or on LinkedIn as well. Absolutely. If you have a question that didn’t get answered, hit me up. I am here. I’m spending the next two days with all of you. And I’ll be in and out of all the other sessions, chatting it up there as well. But please reach out. My Instagram is just Mallory Erickson, I’m putting it oh, it should be up on the the board as well. And I dropped the link and then I’ll put the what the fundraising community in the chat as well. If you and you can connect with me through all of those different channels, probably like you there are so many ways that we are in touch these days. So please reach out with any questions you didn’t get answered. It’s been so wonderful to be with all of you. I’m so excited to spend the next two days with all of you. And I hope this gives you a lot to think about in terms of how you learn and how you apply your learning over these next two days, because there’s going to be so much inspiration, so many incredible ideas. It’s an unbelievable lineup and tactical tips around how to optimize your DonorPerfect software. So I’m just so thrilled to be able to be in community with all of you.
Yes, and we’re so excited to have you with us for the next two days. This is going to be as we mentioned earlier, very good days. So we hope to see you in about 10 minutes. We have three more sessions lined up on the next hour. So we’ll see you soon