Where Their Story Begins: Lessons from Community-Centric and Donor-Centric Voices

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Hi everybody, welcome to the session. How’s everybody enjoying the conference so far? Any good chats? Anything you’ve learned so far?

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0:06  

Hi everybody, welcome to the session. How’s everybody enjoying the conference so far? Any good chats? Anything you’ve learned so far?

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While you take a few minutes to load up our general chat, I wanted to introduce our keynote speaker. So originally when we plan for this conference and sharing stories was the theme of the session Dr. Alice Stanford, founder of Black doctors COVID consortium. An incredible story from our hometown of Philly is helping address COVID-19 issues with community. He was here ready to tell her story. But recently, Dr. Stanford was appointed by President Biden as the Regional Director of Health and Human Services, preventing her from speaking today.

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While we are proud for them to get for BDC to continue the work throughout through DonorPerfect we’re extremely lucky to have the host of our conference and fundraising thought leader, Robbie Healy, stepping in as our kids are starting a conversation about community and donor, fundraising.

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How do we listen and take lessons from these voices? We need to examine and understand where does their story begin? It’s important to understand the balance and know when to focus on visual donors versus community centric fundraising. Robbie is here to help you all gather your thoughts and discuss the balance. Robbie, take it away.

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Thanks very much. Thanks so much. And I really appreciate the opportunity to spend the next a little bit of time with you. I don’t know about all of you. But I found Mallory’s comments and I was listening to Tina’s presentation. Very interesting and insightful as we think about where does the organizational story begin? And how do we how do we really position that? How do we make it really come alive? When you think about

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conversations in fundraising, and we started off this morning talking about the stories and the chapters, when we think about the current conversations that are

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very, very emotional about donor centered fundraising, and community centered fundraising, donor centric, community centric, what was the starting point of all of those conversations, and

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for me, I think the real starting point, was quite a long time ago of late Hank Raso. Some of you may have read his original book, achieving excellence in fundraising, but it’s now been released in its fifth edition. Hank Rasul was the proprietor of the fundraising school, he had been a very accomplished fundraising professional and his intellectual property is what became the basis for what is now the lily School of Philanthropy at Indiana University. And his fundamental premise was,

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the degree to which your fundraising will be successful, is in direct proportion to the degree to which your agency sees fundraising

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as a program, as important as every other program, and I don’t know about you. But I’ve worked in several organizations where they really didn’t value the fundraising department equally, with the program departments with the programs doing direct services to individuals, and I suspect, all of us think fundraising is an is an important program. And without the work that we do in fundraising, some of the mission work would be at risk. So Hank really started that dialogue about donor focus in the early 90s. Then if we began to look at where the emerging conversations between community centric and donor centric began, it was not 2020

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If we look at the two dominant voices in community centric engagement, me too, me too. Tatianna Burke, me, too, was 2006

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and Boulais, and I’m sure many of you follow blue leis work. Boulay is 2018 is when that really had an established online presence.

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It’s not that the conversations hadn’t been happening before that, that that was the beginning of a really established presence. So if we look at those two voices really challenging us as nonprofits to think about, what does it mean to be embedded in the community? The contrast with that is Penelope Burke’s work through Cygnus applied research, where Penelope first challenged us to think about the idea of donor centered fundraising, and Tom a Hearn. Tom a Hearn, with his writing expertise is the the voice around donor centered fundraising. And I want to take a moment to thank you for correcting my typo. I’m very I apologize for that Tirana Burke, you’re absolutely right. So when we think about where these voices came from, and where they are sending us, the real question, then is, what were those dominant themes? And how are they influencing our sector? And how are they influencing our work? So the me to movement gave us real pause to think about the beginnings to thinking about controversial donors.

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And the social justice issues around our missions. And linking our mission and our brand and our reputations to donors who might share a negative light might shed a negative light on our work. When we think about the huge disparities within social justice, the concentration of wealth, the concentration of power, what does that do to us? What does that? How does that influence us? How do we manage that?

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That the implications are very significant. I’m also smart enough to know that we in the development office, don’t manage the way our organizations handle these questions. We influence them, sometimes we lift them up. But we don’t have total control over how our agencies work through those very significant issues. But if we look at what happened, beginning with me to, to crystallize this as as thoughts and movements, me to controversial donors, social justice, which of course, after the murder of George Floyd took on an entirely different energy, and urgency,

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and the concentration of wealth and the concentration of power, and how that influences the way we shape our strategy and our tactics within our sector.

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So what do we do with all this if you’re a development officer in an established charity, and you’re reading about community centric engagement, really, really engaging effectively and in a meaningful way?

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With the community, we serve the people with lived experience?

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If we’re really looking at donor centered messaging, and how to lift up that sense of urgency, that sense of ownership, who do we listen to? How do we decide what it means? And what’s the role of the mission in our organization? In answering those questions?

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And how do we lift them up? How do we ask them? How do we make sense out of this? And is there a way for us to listen to all of it, and begin to capture the pieces that are the most impactful for us?

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In 1991, Hank Raso, when he published his book, achieving excellence in fundraising, this graphic was in there and and probably many, if not, most of not all of you have seen this. And it reminds us that at the heart of our work.

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In the heart of our work in fundraising, we have the board members, the major donors and our key staff.

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And of course, the fact that board members and staff are in that group with our major donors comes as a shock to some organizations. But those of us who are successful in our work, recognize if those three core groups don’t have skin in the game, other people are reluctant to the next dominant circle, of course, is volunteers, employees, members, our clients and other individuals. So how do we look at this

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that constellation of people who have the biggest ownership of what we do, because without their voice without their participation, former participants are just likely to join. people with similar interests don’t necessarily pay attention to us. And that the known universe is is certainly far distant from us. But when we think about engagement when we think about how we evolve into powerful storytellers, Russell’s model gives us significant guidance there.

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When we move then into me to win its global impact on fundraising. Some of the research that was done on sexual harassment of development officers, two thirds of people who reported sexual harassment on the job laid their donors. And the rest said it came from colleagues, mostly those in senior positions. Time’s up, the fun to fight sexual harassment raised $21 million from around the globe. That got the attention of a lot of people. And experts doing the research said ending harassment at nonprofits means changing our office culture. It also lifted up the very powerful message of tainted donors and tainted money.

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And when we think about tainted donors and tainted money, we don’t have to go back to many years to think about that namings being stripped from major institutions.

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Arts and culture, higher education, almost no sector was untouched by that. And how did we take those lessons into our own nonprofits? Or did we? Did we assume that it it’s really only happening to the big ones, and not to the rest of us? I would assert that we all need to be very mindful of that. So What actions did mean to prompt? And and I’d be curious if you are willing to share? Did those activities really change? Gift acceptance policies in your organization’s? Did you narrow the scope or define the scope of organizations that you were willing to receive gifts from? Did it change your donor recognition practices? Were their gifts you walked away from? Did your board or your organization have any conversations about stripping namings? And sexual harassment was really just the beginning of that? Because when we look at the broad array of these organizations, What actions did meet to prompt or motivate

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what actions what conversations did the social justice conversations create for you? Did you talk about the concentration of wealth? Did you talk about the concentration of power? Did you talk about whether and how that preserves the status quo? Or perhaps, depending on their orientation, leverages the status quo? Is wealth a weapon or tool for good?

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And what were those donor centric versus community center conversations? And did you begin to see lessons for all of us? I’d love to take a pause right now. And get some feedback. I’m reading Sally’s comments in the chat.

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I’m interesting to be having this conversation today. Because Sally just read that Blackbaud is working to explain accepting funds from the NRA.

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And it’s interesting I that will be an interesting conversation to see how that unfolds. And if you’re willing to chat in your comments or your questions, I’d love to hear them. But I think it’s also interesting to think about within our own sector within the nonprofit sector within the third sector, we have organizations at opposite ends, a very emotional missions, and the IRS. I often say the IRS is not the mission police. They don’t have the role of deciding what is good and what is not good. If you meet the qualifications of being a 501 C three nonprofit.

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You can receive tax exempt status and fundraise for your philosophy your mission your view. So Sally, thank you for that. Other comments people might want to chat in or questions. Eleanor was prepared to help me read them but I maybe I’m we’re causing each other to think instead of react.

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act

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so let’s talk about what donor centric fundraising really is at its essence, donor centric is just another way of saying building trust. And as we think about the donors relationship with organizations, it either deepens or phrase mostly based on how much trust you can create in three areas, important to donors, trust that donors play an essential, vital and central role in our mission success. And of course, that goes back.

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That goes back to Hank Russell, how do we see the donor and the donors role in our work?

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The seven keys to a donor centric approach and this comes the references are on the slides if you want to check them. But this comes out of the nonprofit fitness of nonprofit fitness looking at donor centric first donor first commitment, it’s a philosophy, a charter, a culture, why I give offers that motivated benefit the donor, the donor journey, and we talk so much about the donor journey, the late toner l Tony Alisher saying we needed to be travel agents, donor choice, providing an array of options and multi channel and access. When we think about the journey, the United Way, started decades go from only community panels making decisions to donor directed donor choice.

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Thinking about customer service for our donors, donor appreciation, having a grateful heart, and then donor interactions, having a two way transparent, dignified engagement with donors.

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Molly is an interesting question in the chat. Do you think the size of the gift matters when a nonprofit considers walking away? Or is it how big the nonprofit is? I guess I’m curious what others might think about that. Are you willing to?

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Are you willing to

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make a guess about which it is?

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And and we’re being reminded to please put our questions in the in the q&a panel.

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I guess for me personally, and I’m speaking for myself, Molly, I don’t think it matters how big you are, I think your integrity and your brand or your integrity and your brand. So if it was a big enough gift, and you’d walk away, why wouldn’t you walk away from it? If it’s a little.

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And if your organization is small,

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and and perhaps needs the money, or perhaps thinks no one will notice? I’m not sure that’s a good reason to accept a gift. If we think the person’s reputation, or business connections, or whatever it might be, would would paint us in a bad light?

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So I see a couple of people agreeing with me not maybe not everybody does. But I also think we need to do the soul searching and have those conversations. So donor, person centered fundraising fulfills the donors three essential requirements. First of all, we all know acknowledgement, meaningful acknowledgments are critical.

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Making sure every gift they make regardless of its value is assigned to the program, project or initiative narrower in scope than the mission as a whole. And I think we see more and more and more of that, although, we might all agree that COVID did give some donors a pause where they were much more willing to be open and flexible in how they use their money. But it will also be interesting to see if they go back to wanting stronger strings attached and accountability on our part receiving reports in very measurable terms about what was accomplished with the last gift before we ask them for another. And of course that’s talking about outcomes. And in Tina’s session, and in Mallory successions, they were talking about that how do we communicate impact and outcomes?

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Now what about community centric fundraising because I think when we talk about these conversations, they are so emotional, and they are so loaded with very difficult, very difficult conversations. community centric fundraising is a movement and it’s a movement to evolve how fundraising is done in our sector. The goal is to support fundraisers and other professionals to re examine every philosophy and every practice we’ve been taught to engage

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and ongoing conversations and explore doing fundraising in ways that reduce harm and further social justice.

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The community centric movement, if we think about what a movement is, a movement define success globally, it’s way beyond one organization, or even one sector. Movements, sweet seeks sweeping change, and they begin with values. And of course, Tina talked about values this morning. And she talked about values in the context of donors being engaged with us. Leadership of a movement is flat, it’s agile, there’s no hierarchy, it’s very shared. Movements are supported from the inside out.

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And they adopt structures and systems that mirror how societies progress towards people living well together, I guess I would be willing to say out loud that everybody I know in the nonprofit sector, really does believe that the work we’re doing is helping people work towards living well together. So within community centric fundraising, there are nine essential principles. Fundraising must be grounded in race, equity, and social justice. Individual missions are not as important as the collective community. Nonprofits are generous with and mutually supportive of one another. All elements that strengthen community are equally valued and appreciated. Time is valued equally as money.

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We respect our donors integrity, and treat donors as partners, which means occasionally pushing back. We foster a sense of belonging in our fundraising work, and we avoid treating anyone as other we believe. And we encourage donors to believe that we all benefit from this work.

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And we believe in encourage donors to believe that the work is holistic, not a collection of isolated segments.

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I don’t know about you. But several of these points, would give the boards with which I have worked personally pause.

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And I think that’s where our role as fundraisers can start the conversations. Because I believe when we evolve, we are never flipping a switch. We enter a deliberate glide path to evolve, which for some organizations could take a year, for some could take a decade. But the question is, are we trying to take the best ideas of community centric fundraising, and the best ideas of donor centric fundraising and looking for the Common Ground?

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I hope that we are. And I hope that we as professional development officers, will play a very significant role in starting to ask the right questions.

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So what do we do with all this? And Eleanor? I think I see that we’ve got some questions in the in the q&a. So we do Robbie. If we take the dominant themes from Roscoe, who’s our core audience? Who can we do without?

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And can we help them evolve in their thinking? Which is an interesting question, I think, how do we help our donors think about things they perhaps have not been exposed to? If you’re already grounded in community centric engagement, you and your organization are already part of the movement? And how are you telling your story?

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And if you’re firmly donor centric at this point, do your donors want to join any movement? Do they want to be better informed? Do they want to be involved? What if they do,

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but what if they don’t?

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And for me, one of the key messages we have to think about is donor centric, never meant donor superior, it never meant donor dominant. What it did mean, in our work is fundraisers, we will focus on the donors. It never meant that donors could dominate our work. Donors could change our mission. Donors could somehow derail us from the work were called to do.

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So Eleanor, what’s in the q&a? So one question we have is, are there any long term strategies or ideas being pursued to change the philanthropic the nonprofit relationships structurally, that reshapes the unequal power balance that often results in harassment violence, emphasized by the me to movement

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if you’re talking specifically about

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Have a fundraiser

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issues around me to answer.

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And at this point, if you are if you read if you’re a member of AFP, or if you read any of the AFP postings. AFP has recently convened a sector wide group of individuals that have just begun to work on a fundraiser is Bill of Rights. And I emphasize the fact that it’s sector wide, because it will not be an AFP initiative. It’s convened by Liz LeClaire, some of you may know, Liz, from her work with the women’s impact initiative. But what Liz in the team is going to be looking at is what should be if we got a donor Bill of Rights? What should the parallel fundraisers Bill of Rights look like? And if we have an AFP code of ethics, the follow up question in my head is, should there also be a donor code of ethics? And I do hope that as the work Liz is doing, that team is doing, they will begin to really evolve that. And if it has their work is finished. How will that then shape the conversation?

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That’s great. I do have a kind of a situational statement from Tamara. Recently. Recently, a colleague expressed to me that they were confused as at if their job was bringing in funds, which is what they have been tasked with, or their job is educating donors risking losing funds, I told them, I hoped it could be both.

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I personally agree with you. And I think that the the interesting thing there is, if your organization has as a philosophy, the way you are going to interpret need an opportunity and impact in your community. And if that means you lose a donor,

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is that a donor who no longer shares your values. And of course, that’s very hypothetical and theoretical in this conversation. But I also think that that becomes one of the really critical issues that we were talking about earlier, will we get to the point where there’s money we need to walk away from, and I hope it could be both as well. But if we all had a chance to think about every donor we’d ever worked with, and if we think about your donors want to join a movement, some of them might,

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some of them probably never will. And some of them might be in the middle, where if they really understand better, what the lessons are, they may be very excited to join a movement that they were unaware of. So I hope that makes sense to Mara.

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Also, Robbie, one of my questions, or what makes me think is, you know,

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having having donors in the middle or more on the donor centric side, and you potentially want to take them to the community center centric side, how do you start those conversations? Is it something that is, you know, relationship building, and you ask, you know, what are you more interested in? Or is it you assume they want to move? How do you start making that shift? If, if that’s what you need?

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Well, I think it

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was about relationships, because if you don’t have healthy relationships with your donors, you can’t initiate initiate those conversations. But I often think it takes it’s a it’s a page from the major gifts playbook where we challenge donors, and we ask them, would you be willing to think about an opportunity you might never have thought about before? And of course, we’re asking it as a question. Because if they think, Oh, they haven’t said no to us, they’ve said no to the opportunity.

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And if they happen to say, yes, we get a chance to tell them a little bit more about something that perhaps is not in their sphere of experience.

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So I do think it’s, it’s person to person, it’s gradual. And if we if we have good relationships, which is key to everything we do, we can do very well. And I think the story

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I’m sorry, no, I was just gonna say, I think the story plays into it as well, right? You know, this whole conferences around stories and how it resonates with your individuals. And I think the story of anything that you want to share in changing somebody from maybe a little bit more donor centric to community centric, is fundamental in making this process happen.

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Oh, I agree.

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As your organization’s talk about this, where do we want to

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be in this evolution of mission,

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you as a fundraiser are not taking a donor to someplace your organization is not going. So if your mission is evolving that donors can evolve with you.

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Love that statement. Sorry about that.

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anymore. No, I think we’re good with the questions in the chat. Okay. So I happened to be a reader of the Wall Street Journal. And for some reason, I’m going the wrong way here.

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And I, I looked at how are we our messaging? How are we communicating which constituencies and what’s our messaging, and I looked at just two ways, print, and digital. Because obviously, most of us are still using both of those approaches. The print communication to many donors is still very important. But obviously, digital is more and more and more and more important to all of us. And I have been to RIA reader, the Wall Street Journal, and on May 13.

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And I admit that I read the paper edition.

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I

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in one and the May 13. Issue, the Wall Street Journal, one section, had a series of half page ads, all placed by major nonprofit organizations. The first two, interestingly enough, one in color one, a black and white, placed by ChildFund. So I thought, if I’m going to be working on this presentation, I want to go grab the digital images from the digital edition of The Wall Street Journal, because they’ll look so much better than these print ones. So I logged in, opened up the digital version. And none of these ads were in the digital version.

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Which was a fascinating statement, I thought about how are the nonprofits communicating with key constituencies? And what demographic does that key constituency represent? So instead of grabbing the digital edition as I had hoped, I made these scans. And then I also went on the very same day to the website of the nonprofit. So healthy, educated, safe, let’s get there together. Let’s walk together it makes things better. This is what was on their print on sorry, on their on their website, you can make a world of difference.

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i It’s interesting, I think the pronoun they chose. Next one was Disabled American Veterans. This was in the print edition, I went on their website.

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This is what was on their website.

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Interestingly enough, leveraging matching gifts, and also leveraging two very clearly different eras of service. Next one was built a bridge over the chasm of addiction. This is the Partnership to End addiction.

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And on their website, this is what popped up the impact of your gift, your support gives families hope. Next one Ranken Jordan hospital. Your next tax deductible donation could give playful healing to children in the hospital, emphasizing the donor benefit of the tax deduction interestingly enough, and on their website,

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giving changes everything no pronoun in their messaging on their website.

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This one, the UN World Food Program, reaching the world’s most vulnerable people with life saving food who’s doing that the program or the donors, it doesn’t tell us on their website, save lives by giving food today Donate now. So implying that the donor is doing that.

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And then lastly, and I will admit I’ve always been fond of this one.

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Doctors Without Borders together, you and I can turn a stairwell into an ER at a moment’s notice and on their website, ways to give individuals like you provide 90% of the funding that powers our life saving work.

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Any gut reactions to the images and the language

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So when we think about when we think about Hank Rasul and, and his giving concentric circles, and we think about marketing, the seven fundamental principles of marketing, one on one, product, price promotion, place, packaging, positioning and people.

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What does community centric fundraising tell us?

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Our programs run the risk of being irrelevant. If we don’t have the people with lived experience, involved in what’s needed, how it’s delivered.

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That’s marketing 101.

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And if we think about donor centric fundraising,

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and we’re talking about what outcomes does the donor want? And how do we story tell, in a powerful, insightful, compelling way, then,

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we aren’t applying the marketing concepts to donors either.

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So we’ll fundraising and I’m convinced we are absolutely smart enough to do this. Will we take the best concepts of community centric engagement, and the best concepts of donor centric fundraising, and create a new normal, which I happen to be calling donor forward?

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Because I think that in our fundraising shops, that’s what we need to be not donor exclusive, not donor dominated, not donor superior, simply donor forward, because in our fundraising departments, that is our primary audience.

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So I love this. And I think we are absolutely poised to create a brand new dialogue, a brand new future of how we store retail, how we message, how we communicate our missions, and how we have impact. So

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oh, I’m going back to Claire’s comment in the chat. I don’t know how many of you saw that. But I agree. It’s very interesting how the print versus digital across each example is not uniform.

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But when we look at those donor centric, print ads, it’s interesting, because of course, they’re customizing the messaging for what they they know is their audience in that medium.

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So I am really hoping that at this point, we can have some conversations with each other. And what does equity centered philanthropy really mean?

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Our sector is created for the good of the community. So the community must have a voice. I don’t believe that we will ever have a nonprofit sector that isn’t focused on the good of the community. I don’t believe we will ever all agree on what that means either. Because I think every every organization believes that it is creating the good it wants to see in the world. I think there’s absolutely no question that hyper personalization is absolutely here to stay.

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You know, through your storytelling and your customized storytelling and the way you use the tools within your your DonorPerfect that hyper personalization is not hard. But we have to be consistent, we have to be

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accurate, we have to know our constituents, we have to know what they want and how they want to get it from us. And if we’re not paying attention to that we run the risk of losing them.

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I also think within our sector, we need to be comfortable with the uncomfortable, we really need to begin to think about where is the status quo holding us back? And are we placing trust and power with constituents who shouldn’t have it or shouldn’t have as much of it? And if we are, how do we in the development office in particular? Begin to raise that question, because as I’ve said earlier, and I really believe this. We are rarely in control of the conversation, but we can certainly participate in it. And I like to find the natural allies within my colleagues or my volunteers or my board who seemed to get it so we can have those conversations together as

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teams?

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How do we explore the unanswered questions? And this goes back to Eleanor’s comment about

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or the question we were talking about in terms of what if we have donors who aren’t interested in in change? How can we start those conversations? How can we build those relationships? Is the storytelling now a story of we?

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Or is it you? Or is it both? And if you think about the, the print ads and the websites, we is a powerful image.

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You and I, and I’m going back to the Doctors Without Borders together, you and I.

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But we who’s included in way, Denise, you just come into the community must have voice? Absolutely. And if we were excluding the community from having a voice in the past, we did that our peril, because the programs and the services and the delivery methods may have missed the mark. Because we didn’t ask the right constituents. So is the storytelling now we not you? And how do we let people get into the conversations where they actually fit in those conversations where they want to fit in those conversations?

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So I am really hoping that you will feed back pushback, comment. Eller Do you want to join me? And let’s see what conversations people might be interested in having? Sure. So we do have a question or two. And I thought of some things when you put up those those signs itself. But from Judy, do you send both a printed and digital version of something to the same person? Is it too intrusive? Or good as you want to make? Or good as you want to make it? Sure they see it?

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Oh, I think we might be trying to do a channel outreach. So I think it really depends upon how your communication structure is working. I think some donors may only want print, some donors may only want digital. But if we look at the blending of digital options and print options, and we take a critical look at our budgets, and we make sure we know what we can sustain over time. I think the question is, yes, no, or maybe. But I also think I and I’ll say this, I say it all the time, don’t start what you can’t sustain. Because if you’re not able to keep it going, it’s going to feel like a take away. So make sure as you plan your engagement tactics, that you’re planning something that as long as it’s working, you’re going to be able to sustain obviously, you don’t keep something that doesn’t work just because you started it, but but make sure you can can keep all the balls in there. Awesome.

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So one of my questions is wanting to have your your sign set let people get in where they fit in. So

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is it is it up to to the organization to explain where they fit in? Or is it something that they naturally understand? Is it something that you confirm so that you’re on the right page with regard to you know, where the people are?

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I think it’s really a matter of capacity and x.

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Because you can look at fitting in from two perspectives. One is literally where do they fit in the conversation about our mission?

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Are they interested in what we do? And and it goes back to the chapters we were talking about this morning? Do we have options that make sense to them that they want to explore with us. But I also think getting getting in where they fit in is what capacity? Do we have to let them get engaged? And this is where I think there’s a really important lesson from community centric engagement, which is

44:25  

will we let them do hands on work with us roll up their sleeves and figure out if they want to play with us in our in our work in our sandbox? And when you look at how we have traditionally engaged volunteers. Some organizations are amazing at that. And some are horrible. And how do we create opportunities for people who really want to experience our work before they decide if they want to work with us? And how do we give them for example, how do we give them digital options, if we really don’t have the capacity to do that yet. So

45:00  

So if we don’t if we’re not building towards that, we’re really planning to be less relevant to future audiences. So I don’t think there’s only one way to answer that question. But it’s it’s both mission and engagement, I think.

45:19  

Okay.

45:21  

So Denise has a question graphically, graphically, should the campaign have the same look across all channels?

45:32  

What you’re really saying is, in my opinion, I think what you’re really asking is, how do we interpret our brands to different constituencies.

45:42  

So I think across all channels, there needs to be a thread of commonality with your brand, or you’re not going to look like the same organization. At the same time, think about the print versus digital examples, just this micro collection, from May 13.

46:00  

The the logos were the same. In sometimes some cases, the colors were similar.

46:07  

But the look was very different depending on what they were appealing to. So I think we need to end a partnership, a really strong partnership with our, our branding and communications colleagues is so important here, because we can have threads of common ground and different looks just like we didn’t have threads of common ground and different elements of our case for support.

46:36  

I hope that makes sense.

46:39  

I think it does. Now, here’s

46:43  

an interesting comment in the chat about the transition from u to v or u and I is so interesting. I agree that I think we is a powerful image. And I’m Madison, I don’t know if we’re in the same generation, but I was always taught that Converse communication with donors should be very you heavy. I don’t think we’re and I’ve done that. I don’t think we’re eliminating that depending on the demographic. But I think we’re also recognize that just because we have you in our conversation, doesn’t mean the donor gets 1,000% of the credit. It simply means that we’re acknowledging their role with us. And as they look at what do they want to be, what do they want to come become? I love that phrase from Doctors Without Borders together, you and I. So it’s creating we out of different language.

47:45  

I do like that. And I think I think that together, you and I is a jumpstart to a way, right? It’s something where, you know, I think if you’re trying to make the shift to community centric, you have to start taking some baby steps.

48:01  

So that it doesn’t seem like the organization can be changing, or that

48:10  

you’re not the focus anymore, the eye isn’t the focus anymore. So in my mind, what would be some first baby steps to making that happen?

48:20  

While the baby steps in the development

48:25  

in the agency, so the agency needs to have some dialogue around? What does it mean, to do community centric work in our mission and in our context? And as they do that, as we, as we encourage, participate in those conversations? I think it goes back a lot to what Mallory and Tina, were talking about in terms of how do we engage with our current supporters to get their feedback? How do we help them shape, not our approach,

49:01  

but our engagement with them, so that we bring them along, rather than somehow make them feel as if we have somehow changed overnight.

49:17  

And I think for some of us, this will be very quick, because we already work either in or very close to the social justice space. We want to be front and center. Some of our organizations may never do that. But every mission has its own

49:34  

call to action. And as we move through the conversations, and talk about remaining relevant remaining,

49:44  

very consistent, how are we becoming more relevant, more engaged, more active? Those will tend to define the way we evolve as an organization and I think it’s so important to think of evolution now.

50:00  

Change.

50:02  

Everybody knows change is scary that evolution is going to happen whether we want it or not. So

50:09  

are we going to be part of the future or left behind? And if we want to be part of the future, I think we begin, we have to begin to address this.

50:20  

Yeah, a couple of comments about together. We I love that.

50:28  

Okay, I don’t see any more questions. Oh, wait.

50:34  

Here’s one. One topic of potentially turning away funders. I recently had a conversation with a funder who commented that their foundation defunded several nonprofits because they felt that they became too woke in response to current events. I was left speechless, any thoughts?

50:59  

It’s a shame. It’s a shame that I wasn’t able to keep up with the community that the funder is present in.

51:10  

I would also say that if your organization has done the mission, soul searching and made a decision, then the organization has done its mission soul searching, and made a decision. And, and congratulations for having the courage to stick to their commitments. Not every donor will fund every priority. And as we know, the funder community changes from time to time, things funders used to fund they are no longer interested in the nonprofit community can also evolve. And not everyone is going to continue to be our donor forever. And I think,

51:52  

as we lose some if and when that happens, we may gain others. And it isn’t, I think we need to do it with dignity. But at the beginning of our work, the boards are in charge of our mission and our strategy. And we as the staff are facilitating that with them. And not everybody is going to be together in the same group forever. I guess I would be shocked as well. But there have been other shocking things that happened in our sector. And we are scrappy, and we are relevant, and we are necessary. And if that needs to happen, then the donor is voting with their feet, and we are voting with our soul.

52:41  

And do you think Robbie, that there’s any room to re educate the donor who might leave, you know, say such a thing?

52:51  

With a story with an impact with anything that might be you know, changing their mind in any way? I certainly hope so. And that’s where I believe that our donors will fall into three groups, donors who are already engaged with community centric work, donors who will never want to engage in anything different, and the vast middle, that if we have good relationships with them,

53:18  

and they respect us, and we respect them, and we gain their permission to have conversations about the way our work is evolving, and the way their roles could evolve, that there will be donors who absolutely are interested in willing to, and happy to evolve their thinking. But their lived experience may not include the kind of of information that we can bring them. So getting their permission to share with them, perspectives that they’ve never had an opportunity to experience is part of our role as the donors travel agent, that donors relationship manager that creating the donor journey.

54:08  

So we do have another question. How do you start a conversation with a board who are reluctant to be involved in these discussions?

54:19  

While my favorite method is to know if I can find one natural ally, either a board member for a key volunteer or even a donor and look at

54:33  

how can we as a team begin to plant the seeds of conversation. I know that where I live in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the Chester County Community Foundation has had a series of very interesting community dialogues around community centric engagement. And it’s very interesting. One of my friends who’s on the staff of the Community Foundation says every time they release

55:00  

An announcement of a new workshop like that, that staff member can predict which historically supportive donors will be in her in email box, complaining about getting to off focus. And of course, then that person has to call and talk to those donors and make them assured that the restricted gifts they’ve already set up are still with the same guidelines. So we’re not going to get everybody. But we’re not going to lose everybody, either. And if we take very seriously

55:36  

incremental change,

55:39  

we have a much stronger chance of evolving organizations that have a long history that aren’t necessarily thinking of themselves as change agents in the community centric movement. And that’s where I think, as we go through the rest of this afternoon and all day tomorrow, what are the voices of storytelling? How can we take the best ideas from all of these thought leaders? And I don’t know about you, but I’ve got at least 10 things I want to remember just from two sessions this morning. And when we think about how do we knit that together? How do we help our leadership see what’s happening in the environment? How do we help them apply that overlay that on our mission? And how do we then evolve our work

56:29  

and evolve the thinking of our donors to bring this all together?

56:37  

Okay, um, so Robbie, we have only like maybe two minutes left, so people can have two other sessions, anything else that you want to leave us with or any comments you want to talk about?

56:49  

I think a

56:51  

couple of things that you really think about. One is, as much as we as very accomplished fundraisers have been

57:00  

very focused on donor,

57:04  

make sure we understand and that we communicate, it doesn’t mean donor dominant, it doesn’t mean donor superior, it doesn’t mean donor control. If we go back to marketing 101, all of our core constituents are critical to our success. The clients, the consumers, the individuals we serve, have to have a strong and present and respected voice. The donors who are investors in our work, we have to respect and trust and admire them and give them an opportunity

57:39  

to really share with us, what’s meaningful for them. And at the end of the day, mission is the most important and if a donor decides to opt out, we need to let them opt out with dignity. And when we do that, our mission integrity is intact. Our work is intact, and our role in being change agents is intact.

58:04  

Great ending comments. I think everybody would agree with you as well.

58:10  

Okay, great. Thank you for your time. Robbie, thank you for chatting and sharing your thoughts and future of the donor, community centric and donor centered.

58:20  

With that said, with the one o’clock session is beginning soon, so hop on over to the others and take advantage of it. Thanks, everybody.

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