3 ways to be a more effective fundraiser Kara Logan Berlin
Translator: Ivana Korom
Reviewer: Krystian Aparta
I’m here today to talk about fundraising,
or as you probably think of it,
“the other F-word.”
(Laughter)
Because if you want to change the world,
you have to know how to pay for it.
I’m not talking
about being a good person –
you can do that for free.
I’m talking about if you want
to create something,
start something,
galvanize a community,
improve the lives of others,
run for office.
Every day, great ideas die on the vine,
because they don’t have capital
to get off the ground.
And all of the work,
the thought, the vision
that goes into the idea,
isn’t worth much
if you can’t pay your bills.
And while most of the greatest
social movements in history
were powered purely by an idea
and people’s belief in that idea,
real change and impact require resources.
Real people do this work,
they need real change,
real impact and resources
to actually make it happen.
The people that believe in this work
have to have the support
and the resources to do it.
That’s where I come in.
I get essential resources
into the hands of people
and visionaries on the front lines,
doing work that matters.
We spend the majority
of our waking hours working.
We spend more time working
than we do with our loved ones.
So I decided early on
that I have to love my work,
and it has to add value.
And while I would love
to be one of these people
who spearheads social change
from the ground up,
the thing I realized early on
in my nonprofit career
is that the thing I’m good at,
the thing I’m really good at,
is raising money.
And I love it.
I think it is a privilege
to work alongside bold,
ambitious, optimistic leaders
and the organizations they serve.
So I teach people
how to do the thing I’m good at,
because the more people that learn
how to be good at my end of this work,
the more work will get done.
And I teach everyone.
I teach CEOs and presidents,
and boards of directors and EDs.
I teach development directors
in all sorts of teams
and nonprofit newbies,
social change agents and candidates.
I teach anyone that wants to do
something extraordinary
how to fund their dream.
My dream is that there will be
more people like me
doing this work well
and that development will be
an undergraduate course at universities,
so that fundraising animals like me
will find this job out of the gate,
instead of discovering it
years later, accidentally.
I even have the curriculum developed,
but short of overhauling undergraduate
course requirements,
I think tonight’s probably
a good first step
to get people to think about fundraising
more as an opportunity
and less as a dirty word.
If you want to change the world,
you have to know how to pay for it.
To do that well,
you have to understand three big things.
Your feelings about wealth and money,
the importance of building relationships,
and how to ask for what you want.
Let’s start at the top,
your feelings about wealth and money.
What is your relationship to money?
Money is complicated,
it makes everyone squeamish,
it makes everyone act kind of weird.
Anyone who’s ever had to split
the check after dinner with friends
can tell you this.
Imagine what it was like before Venmo.
(Laughter)
To help people learn how to raise money,
you have to help them understand
their deal with money,
because everybody has baggage.
Grew up poor? Baggage.
Grew up rich? Baggage.
Mad or envious that other people
have more money than you?
Baggage.
Think people with money
are smarter than you?
Baggage.
(Laughter)
Feel guilty that you have
more money than other people?
That’s some first-class baggage.
(Laughter)
It’s still baggage, people,
it’s still baggage.
So whatever your deal is
with your baggage,
you have to reconcile it
if you’re going to be able
to ask for money.
And here’s a little tip
about asking people for money.
The only difference
about really wealthy people and us
is that they have more money than us.
That’s it.
Don’t overcomplicate it.
They come with their own baggage.
When you think about how to do this work,
it’s important to remember
that money makes the world go round.
You hear that all the time, but it’s true.
Whether you’re a nonprofit, for-profit,
or you pay your own bills.
We often feel like talking about it
is this icky, embarrassing, ugly thing,
but it’s just money.
And it’s a fact of life.
So how you feel about it
directly affects how you approach it.
Like everyone else
when I started out in this work,
I had to examine and understand
my own feelings about wealth and money.
And I had to learn how to separate them
from how I feel about raising money
for important causes.
How I feel about asking for money
to help people do good work in the world
is not the same as how I feel about
asking for money for myself.
This is an important distinction.
When I go and talk to someone,
I’m not asking them to pay my mortgage.
I’m giving them an opportunity
to invest in an idea
that’s going to change
the world for the better.
Why should I feel bad about that?
If you want to be good at raising money,
you have to be able to reframe the ask,
both for yourself and for other people,
as an opportunity.
Next, you have to get prepared
to build some relationships.
People give to people,
they don’t just give to ideas.
And if they don’t believe
in the person running the place,
you’re already dead in the water.
This is true whether
you’re in stocks or venture capital,
politics or nonprofits.
Building a relationship
with people takes work.
You have to care about more
than just what you want or need,
you have to also value
what someone else wants or needs.
I know, it’s a shocking, terrible idea.
But oftentimes, closing gifts
is understanding the person,
more than it’s important
to know the product.
And if you think building a relationship
with people takes work,
building a relationship with someone
you’re asking for money from
takes work, and it takes homework.
Have you done any research?
Do you have any idea what they care about?
Do you know why
they should invest in your work?
Can you answer that question
in less than 30 seconds?
If you can’t, the meeting
is going to be pretty rough.
And the answer can’t be
“Because they’re super rich
and they live in your zip code.”
When you talk to people
and understand what they care about,
it has to be in person.
Fundraising is relational,
it’s not transactional.
And you have to ask them questions.
When I sit down with a donor,
it goes something like this.
“Hi, thanks so much for seeing me.
How have you been?
Did you guys go anywhere fun over holiday?
Nice, I love Mexico.
Do you always go to the same place?
Oh, that’s awesome!
Are those your kids? They’re so cute.
How old are they?
Where are they in school?
Oh, that’s a great school,
are you guys very involved there?
Your spouse in on the board? How’s that?
How did you guys meet?
Oh, at Santa Clara, that’s awesome.
Are you super involved
in the alumni network?
So interesting.
Where do you guys live, again?
That’s great. Is that your boat?”
(Laughter)
I literally go through
all of these things, right.
And you know why?
Because guess what I know now.
I know they’re out of 120 grand a year
in schooling for the next 12 years.
Right?
Spouse is on the board
of the kids' school,
I know they’re out of 100K probably.
It’s a six-figure.
They’re both involved
in their school alumni,
that’s probably 25K.
They told me they live
on the Upper East Side –
I can look up their apartment online
and find out what their mortgage is.
And I know they own
a second home in Mexico.
Oh, and they own a boat.
Which is like funny money, right?
So what I now understand –
(Laughter)
It’s true.
What I now understand
is that their 1,000-dollar gift
is probably more of a starter gift.
And I should be thinking about ways
to help them partner with us
and invest in a more meaningful way.
I know this sounds a tad mercenary.
I’m not confused about how it sounds.
But here’s what I want to tell you,
because this is the part
that all my clients always want to skip,
because they think it’s the fluff
and it’s not important.
If you don’t understand
what they care about and what they value,
how are you ever going to be able
to tell them about your work, right?
I want them to fund our work, I do.
But I also want them to have
a really meaningful experience as a donor,
so that they feel like we’re partners
and they’re not an ATM, right?
So it’s important to ask the questions,
because the more you know about them
and you know what they value,
the more you can steer the conversation
in a direction about your work
that will resonate for them.
And once you get past
the get-to-know-you part,
you get into the fun stuff,
like, “Why are you philanthropic at all?”
Right?
“Why do you invest in new ideas?
Do you want giving back to be a value
you pass on to your children?
Can we help you do that?”
It’s really awesome, it’s meaningful,
and remember, it’s a conversation,
it’s not a cross examination,
it’s not an interview.
Don’t walk in there and tell them
everything you already know about them,
because you did your research.
You don’t get extra points
for knowing how to use Google.
It’s 75 percent them talking,
25 percent you listening.
It’s better to be a good listener
than a good showman.
And once you understand
what they care about,
you can talk to them
about what you care about.
You can tell them about you.
Now, when you do this,
don’t get too deep into the weeds,
or you’ll lose them.
It’s a lot like when I sit down
with guys in finance, right,
and I say,
you know, “How’s work?”
I’m looking for, like,
a thumbs up, thumbs down.
But what I get sometimes
is a long description
of how the markets are trending,
and my brain leaves my body
and starts to think about
what time my dry cleaner closes.
(Laughter)
Like, I don’t have capacity for that.
And they don’t have capacity
for that level detail of our work.
If they want it,
they’ll ask you the questions.
It’s this thing that happens
over and over,
because – here’s an example.
I worked with this CEO once,
and I was hired to teach him
how to talk to human people,
like a human person.
(Laughter)
It was a very difficult job.
So, he kept getting great donor meetings,
and he wasn’t closing any gifts.
And I could not figure out
what the problem was,
so finally, I was like,
“I’m going to come with you.”
So I went with him to meetings,
and what would happen was,
he was getting into such detail
with the donors
that their eyes were glazing over,
and then after he was done
with his 15-minute pitch,
they literally would say –
this happened, like,
three times in a row –
“God, that sounds great. Congratulations.
Keep up the good work.”
And that was the meeting,
which was obviously not
the outcome we were looking for.
So, he couldn’t understand
what I was trying to say to him,
that I finally, in an act
of sheer desperation, was like …
“You know what I love?
I love NASA.
I love NASA.
I think it is unbelievably amazing
we have figured out
how to get a person to the Moon.
I think it’s awesome.
I think the idea of getting
someone to the Moon,
and they walk on the Moon,
and I love rocket ships.
I love rocket ships,
rocket ships are amazing.
But if you start to tell me
about the rocket ship,
and how it gets to the Moon,
and the math and the science equations,
on how the rocket ship gets to the Moon,
I promise you, I will hang myself
with my own hair.”
(Laughter)
I was like, “That is not
how you tell people about your work.
What is the need?”
Like, what’s the point, right?
How do you address the need,
why are you better at it
than anybody else?
And what can you do to make it about them?
How can they help you get to the Moon?
That’s the good stuff.
If you’re able to do that,
you’re probably ready to make the ask.
Now, I don’t expect
everyone to be super excited
to ask people for money.
That’s why development
is an actual profession
and not an awkward hobby.
(Laughter)
Naturally great fundraisers love people,
they can and will talk to anyone,
they can find common ground with anyone,
they’re your friends
that talk to people in the elevator
or at the grocery store.
They believe in the work required
to both build relationships and keep them.
And they naturally have
a high tolerance for rejection.
But I don’t expect everyone
to be a natural,
and you don’t have to be
a natural to raise money.
You just have to respect
the people and the process,
and do the work.
Will you reconcile your baggage?
Will you commit to build relationships?
If you will, you’re ready to make the ask.
And the ask is oftentimes
as simple as using the phrase
“Would you consider?”
Would you consider
becoming a monthly donor?
Would you consider increasing
your support to 100 dollars?
Would you consider investing in our work
at the one-million-dollar level?
“Would you consider”
does a couple of awesome things.
One, it gives the donor an easy way out.
Like, they can say “no”
without it being “yes-no.”
And two, it gives you a second ask.
“Well, what would you consider?”
(Laughter)
It’s good, right?
(Laughter)
When you do this, remember,
you’re not asking for yourself.
You’re asking on behalf
of all of the people you serve
or are touched by your genius.
This isn’t a personal favor, right?
Feel proud of the ask –
it’s incredible that you do this work.
Don’t try to be someone you’re not,
you’re going to go to these meetings
and think you need to big-shot it.
Be yourself, authenticity matters,
nobody likes a phony.
Just be yourself.
And please,
please don’t torpedo your own ask.
What I mean by this
is don’t walk into the meeting and say –
I had an ED that did this all the time,
I stopped inviting him.
He’d say, “We’re not here today
to ask you for money.”
(Laughter)
Yes, we are!
(Laughter)
That’s exactly, literally,
why we’re here today.
Don’t do that.
Don’t say, “Whatever you can do to help.”
That is hands down the fastest way
to get the smallest possible gift
someone thinks they can give you
and get away with.
Not kidding.
And don’t take it back.
Once you’ve made the ask –
“Would you consider supporting us
at the 10,000-dollar level?
Or the five? Or the two? Or one?
You know what? Take the year off.
You’re the best, thanks!”
Don’t do that!
Ask the question,
wait till 10, count to 10
before you speak again,
keep your face like this.
(Laughter)
They are grown-ups.
They have all the power in this situation.
They can answer the question.
Don’t take it back.
Which brings me to my favorite.
Don’t ask, don’t get.
If you don’t make an actual ask,
no one will give you actual money.
And if no one gives you actual money,
you actually can’t do anything with it.
It’s very simple – don’t ask, don’t get.
Listen, I would love to live in a world
where we didn’t have
to ask people for money
to do important work
that will change people’s lives.
I would love to not have to teach people
how to make a case for the importance
of feeding and housing
and educating people.
But this is the world that we live in,
and if we’re committed to doing this work,
and doing it well,
we have to be as committed
to the art of funding this work
as we are to the art of executing it.
I’m going to repeat that,
because I think it’s really important.
We have to be as committed
to the art of funding our work
as we are to the art of executing it.
And at its core,
the art of funding the work
means that we have to truly believe
that the purpose
and the privilege of our work
is to provide people
with an extraordinary way
to use their wealth
that will change people’s lives.
It’s an opportunity,
because at its core, that’s what it is.
And how great is that?
Thank you.
(Applause, cheers)