Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast

John Walsh is one of the most innovative digital marketers in the nonprofit sector today. He currently leads email marketing at one of the world's largest Evangelical ministry organizations. In this episode, you'll hear John and I discuss all things email marketing and fundraising, including:Designing and executing an effective email testing strategyHow to determine whether a variable is worth testing or notThe impact of change management and innovation on digital marketing and fundraising effortsHow his organization has created new and unique donor experiences during COVID, and the result of those efforts.If you're interested in digital marketing and fundraising, you'll want to pay attention to this episode!A Special Offer From Our Episode Sponsor, Velocity Strategy Solutions: You have people working in ways they’ve never worked, with people they don’t know, and for managers and leaders they’ve never met around projects they may not understand.The reality is the only thing your competitor doesn’t have is your team. But if you don’t utilize them well and position them for success, you’ll send them looking for better opportunities elsewhere. It’s time to optimize your talent.You can use the code RAINMAKER to get your FREE personalized talent assessment from Velocity Strategy Solutions today!  If you want to lead your organization more effectively and help your team avoid costly mistakes that drain your organization of time, talent, and revenue, check out my Amazon #1 best-seller, 101 Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits Make And How You Can Avoid Them. Transform your fundraising with Rainmaking: The Fundraiser's Guide to Landing Big Gifts, the best-selling resource that has been used by more than 2,500 major gift leaders, chief development officers, and executive directors to raise more than $150 million in the last decade. 

Kris Putnam-Walkerly is Founder of Putnam Consulting Group, and author of Confident Giving and The ImpactAssets Handbook for Investors. Kris has spent her career as an advisor to high net worth individuals, family offices, corporate philanthropy programs and foundations. She's also the author of the newly released book, Delusional Altruism. We sat down with Kris recently to talk about her new book, covering topics like: How well-meaning philanthropists get in their own way and prevent themselves from achieving the philanthropic impact they hope for.Debunking some of the deeply held, incorrect beliefs that often drive delusional altruism.Understanding how high net worth donors, foundations, and corporate philanthropies are changing their approach to giving during the COVID crisis.Asking better questions, and positioning them differently, to help unleash greater impact through high net worth donors.Understanding how nonprofits and fundraisers can better engage wealth managers, advisors, and philanthropists to unleash greater philanthropic impact. Kris is a highly skilled philanthropy advisor, and shared many of her insightful observations with us in this conversation. I hope you enjoy the discussion!A Special Offer From Our Episode Sponsor, Velocity Strategy Solutions.  You have people working in ways they’ve never worked, with people they don’t know, and for managers and leaders they’ve never met around projects they may not understand.The reality is the only thing your competitor doesn’t have is your team. But if you don’t utilize them well and position them for success, you’ll send them looking for better opportunities elsewhere. It’s time to optimize your talent.You can use the code RAINMAKER to get your FREE personalized talent assessment from Velocity Strategy Solutions today!  

How has COVID-19 impacted Mid-level and Major Gift fundraising? Are Mid-level and Major donors shifting their giving priorities because of this crisis? Are they holding back on giving? If Mid-level and Major donors did give during the COVID crisis, how is that going to impact year-end giving? These are the exact kind of questions that my close friends, Derric Bakker and Paul Martin of Dickerson Bakker & Associates were wrestling with in their fundraising consulting practice. To get to the bottom of these questions, they decided to go directly to the source -- to Mid-level and Major donors. In June of 2020 they commissioned and conducted the study, Charitable Giving in the Wake of COVID-19. This survey focused on donors to faith-based organizations, but I believe many of the findings will also hold true for organizations that are not faith-based.Derric and Paul are two of the smartest and most accomplished major gift fundraisers in our sector, so when they ask questions like this then do the research and offer their insights, I ALWAYS listen. What their research discovered is something amazing:85% of donors surveyed report that they plan to continue giving through year-end at the same or greater levels than they did last year.64% of donors expect the economy to rebound within one year -- a key consumer confidence indicator. Majority of donors reported that their giving during COVID was in addition to what they were already planning to do -- as in, increased generosity.Giving priorities remain unchanged, with outreach & evangelism ranking #1, and meeting the needs of vulnerable populations in the U.S. ranking #2.We sat down to dig deeper into the research findings, and to hear from Derric and Paul about how fundraisers and nonprofits can and should apply these learnings to their fundraising efforts between now and year-end. You don't want to miss this conversation!The Dickerson Bakker team is also partnering with our good friend Mike Buwalda at Money for Ministry to share even more about this study in a special webinar on August 25. You can sign up for that webinar here, and when you do, you'll get a FREE copy of the E-book, The Top 3 Ways to Approach Major Donors This Fall. Special Offer From Our Episode Sponsor, Velocity Strategy Solutions: You have people working in ways they've never worked, with people they don't know, and for managers and leaders they've never met around projects they may not understand.The reality is the only thing your competitor doesn't have is your team. But if you don't utilize them well and position them for success, you'll send them looking for better opportunities elsewhere. It's time to optimize your talent.Use the code RAINMAKER to get your FREE talent optimization assessment HERE. 

Have you ever wondered what your major donors really thought of your work, how you engage with them, and the experience you create at your events? Have you ever struggled to connect deeply with high net worth individuals that support your cause, and wish you had an insider's perspective on how to approach these relationships more effectively? You're in luck! Lisa Greer is a serial entrepreneur, a former entertainment industry executive, community leader, founder of the Philanthropy 451 blog, and strategic philanthropist. But Lisa didn't come from money. In her new book, Philanthropy Revolution, Lisa describes how her family became "instantly" wealthy, and how that launched a series of philanthropic experiences that shocked and frustrated her. It was almost as if the nonprofit organizations she and her family wanted to support had no idea how to deal with her or her husband. They didn't fit the preconceived narrative of what "wealthy" donors looked like or how they behaved. They didn't follow the neatly scripted approach that most organizations are used to following in dealing with major donors. And this caused friction for both the organizations, and for Lisa and her husband Josh. In Philanthropy Revolution, Lisa shares her own challenging giving experiences, along with those of dozens of other donors, nonprofit executives, and leading academics in the sector. This groundbreaking new book also shares:Upfront ways to ask for moneyEffective communication strategiesHow best to be transparent in donor relationshipsInsights for curating meaningful nonprofit eventsI got the chance to sit down with Lisa recently and talk about the book, her experiences as a philanthropist, and her recommendations for how nonprofits and high net worth donors can achieve greater alignment and make a bigger impact in our world.  Special Offer From Velocity Strategy Solutions, Our Episode Sponsor: You have people working in ways they’ve never worked, with people they don’t know, and for managers and leaders they’ve never met around projects they may not understand. The reality is the only thing your competitor doesn’t have is your team. But if you don’t utilize them well and position them for success, you’ll send them looking for better opportunities elsewhere. It’s time to optimize your talent.Use the code RAINMAKER to get your FREE talent optimization assessment here. 

On August 3rd, 2020, Bob McCartney authored the article, Nonprofits in trouble: One-third of organizations may not survive pandemic, recession for The Washington Post. This article is a sobering assessment of the health and sustainability of nonprofit organizations in the Washington, D.C. metro area. But more than that, it's likely a canary in a coal mine for our entire sector on a national scale. Bob's conversations with nonprofit leaders, institutional funders and other officials in the sector clearly indicate that while many organizations have survived the COVID crisis successfully, thousands of organizations were not prepared for this. In this episode we delve deeper into Bob's article and talk about the underlying challenges faced by nonprofit organizations right now -- and the risks the sector faces in the near future.This is a conversation you don't want to miss!A special offer from our episode sponsor, Velocity Strategy Solutions:Employee performance and productivity is the highest ranked concern for CEO's. This is true in the nonprofit sector just as much as it is in the for profit sector. That's why we're so excited to partner with Velocity Strategy Solutions to offer nonprofit leaders a special opportunity to gain an unfair talent advantage in their organizations. You can sign up for a FREE, confidential assessment and demo today by visiting People Get Results and using the code RAINMAKER. https://youtu.be/3HTdAsKkrfI

In many respects we're living through a period of time where we've forced a decade of disruption into (at this point) a 12-week period. Or at least that's what it's felt like between the COVID crisis and the ongoing struggles related to racial inequality, diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is a lot of change, requiring a lot of emotional investment on all of our parts, and all forced into a very short period of time. Those of us who lead teams need to recognize just how significantly this level of disruption and change impacts our teams. And we need to recognize that the way we engage with our team, and the way our people engage with one another, and with our supporters and volunteers has a very real impact on our ability to deliver revenue and accomplish our personal and organizational objectives. This is why I was so excited to have my good friend, Ben Stroup, Founder of Velocity Strategy Solutions and author of Master The Pivot, back on the show today for a second conversation. Ben has developed a new platform to give organizations an unfair competitive advantage to optimize talent and drive revenue improvements. This is a great conversation and will challenge the way you think about the link between people and organizational revenue -- it totally changed my perspective! 

Stewardship and gratitude are such integral components of successful philanthropy efforts. In my mind, it all comes down to showing appreciation for the people who make our work in the nonprofit sector possible.That's why I was shocked earlier this summer when I shared the results of a small test where 8 out of 10 organizations that received a contribution never sent a thank you letter or followed up on that gift in any way, either online or offline. Unfortunately, the fact that 80% didn't say thank you isn't the part that shocked me. What shocked me was that there's a subset of fundraisers and nonprofit leaders who came to the defense of that 80% and in some instances even suggested that it's a) wrong for donors to expect to be thanked, and b) that thanking a donor for their giving is akin to begging them for their support. This was such a crazy conversation that it sparked additional dialogue across the industry. I jumped onto the Responsive Fundraising Podcast and spoke with Noah Barnett, CMO at Virtuous Software about this. And recently my good friend Lisa Greer, author of Philanthropy Revolution and the Philanthropy 451 Blog wrote about this situation even last week. In the midst of this discussion, I had the opportunity to sit down with my new friend, Karen Paul, CFRE to talk specifically about this. Karen is Director of Development at Science Museum of Oklahoma, and I was particularly interested to hear her on-the-ground perspective on this issue.What I think you'll find is a very balanced discussion of this issue, that I hope adds value to your work and challenges your thinking in the process. Special Offer from Velocity Strategy Solutions, our Episode Sponsor: 

It was great to have Brady Josephson back on the podcast today for a second conversation. If you didn't catch our conversation last month on COVID fundraising trends, you should check it out. But today, Brady and I talk about all things testing. This is one of Brady's favorite things to chat about. That shouldn't be a surprise, given his role as Managing Director at NextAfter's Institute for Online Fundraising.As a direct response fundraiser, I'm a big fan of testing. We test all the time. Sometimes we test something that makes a dramatic impact on revenue or results for a client. Other times, a test doesn't go the way we think. It "fails", if you will. But in the end, we still learn from it. To be successful with testing, you have to think differently about the philosophy and execution of tests. That's where Brady and I focused in this conversation. He covered a ton of important ground, like:Why testing is important to fundraising successWhat type of tests deliver the most impact and value (and which tests aren't worth your time)Creating a testing strategy/planDesigning tests for successful learningThe value of iterative testingLow value vs. High value testsThe importance of tracking, and why this is the first step in your successful testing strategyI hope you learn a ton from this conversation, and that you take this opportunity to create or refine your own testing plan for the next year!Special Offer From Velocity Strategy Solutions, Our Episode Sponsor: 

Jaimie Trussell, CFRE, is Chief Development Officer and Vice President of Marketing & Communications at Adult & Teen Challenge USA. She recently sat down with me to talk candidly about nonprofit leadership. In this great conversation, Jaimie provided so much value!Check out the top 5 insights I took from our conversation:True leadership isn't glamorous. It's hard, but highly rewarding.Great leaders endeavor to find their tribe and thrive with them rather than being all things to all people. If you don't have credibility as a leader, you don't have anything.The best leaders focus on developing other leaders -- that's the true measure of leadership success.Leadership is a 24/7 game. Finding micro moments to refresh and recharge in the midst of packed work and home schedules is critical to your mental, physical, and emotional health.Check out the entire conversation for even more great insights! 

Trevor Bragdon is a behavioral scientist by training, and is Founder of 7-Figure Fundraising. He and his team have developed a proprietary training program that helps nonprofit CEO's, fundraisers, and board members hone their fundraising message (i.e., the pitch) to secure more 5, 6, and 7-figure gifts from individual donors, foundations, and corporate partners. This unique approach to crafting a compelling fundraising pitch has helped organizations raise millions of additional dollars. Yesterday, Trevor conducting an exclusive training for 70 Newport ONE clients and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. In our podcast conversation, Trevor distills some of those same key insights that you can start taking advantage of immediately.If you want to raise more 5, 6, and 7-figure gifts for your organization, check out this conversation. I promise you'll be glad you did!