7-Figure Fundraising Podcast

46 - The 7 Steps for 7-Figure Fundraising

• Trevor Bragdon • Episode 46

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0:00 | 45:09

View Episode 46 Show Notes on our website here.

To grow your fundraising, focus on these 7 steps.


1. Ask Donors Only Once a Year (1:22) 

  • This is how major donors organize their giving 
  • Match your ask to their timetable
  • Don’t nickel and dime your major donors by asking them for a big donation and later asking them for smaller donations or sponsorships. 


2. Treat Donors Like Partners (5:05)


3. Add a Few New Partner Donors Each Year (12:00)

  • You don’t need hundreds of new donors. A few can go a long way
    • Focus on warm leads 
    • Referrals - ask your donors for only one referral
      • Script to use: "Is there one person, who is like you, that I should talk to about supporting our work?"
    • Referrals have some of the highest close and retention rates for new donors


4. Have a Big Vision (17:49)


5. Make a Compelling Pitch (23:06)


6. Execute on the Big Vision (30:17)

  • Execution is just as important as a big vision
  • Build trust with execution - show you are doing what you say
  • Books on building systems for execution


7. Staff with Fundraising Specialist (33:04)

  • Connector - the person who reaches out to prospects and works on securing a first meeting. 
  • Closer - the person who meets with donors and makes the ask
  • Cultivator - the person who manages the donor relationship throughout the year, ensuring they are getting a 5-star experience from the nonprofit.


To see all the show notes visit: https://www.7figurefundraising.com/podcast/7-steps-of-fundraising


To see all the show notes visit: https://www.7figurefundraising.com/podcast/

To learn more about fundraising and our training visit: 7FigureFundraising.com

Trevor

In our last episode, we looked at the psychology of fundraising in some of the different aspects when it came to new donors to renewing donors into creating fundraising habit. But today I'd like to dive into the content we teach in our seven figure fundraising workshop, the workshop that we host twice a year in March and in September. Joining me is tn bragden, the c e O of the Foundation for government accountability. And the co-founder of Seven Figure Fundraising, and we're gonna be discussing some of the fundamentals to our seven figure fundraising workshop and going through them one by one. So welcome to the show, Taryn.

Tarren

It's good to be talking

1. Have a Big Vision

Trevor

with you, Trevor. All right, well let's dive in and we wanna walk through these big seven. Key fundamentals to seven figure fundraising, and this is all focused on major donors. So there's different strategies when it comes to small donors, but what we're gonna be talking about, and when we mention donors throughout this podcast, we're gonna be specifically talking about major donors. So our fundamental number one is ask donors only once a year. So tn, why do we focus on this whole idea of only asking donors for money once a year? Well, I

Tarren

think that one of the big aha moments for me was that people who give a significant amount, big donors, were talking high five figure, six figure, and seven figure donors tend to structure that giving in a really methodical. In fact, we're talking in the first part of the year. A lot of those giving decisions for this entire calendar year have been locked in in the fourth quarter of last year. And so what you wanna do is be part of that annual conversation, but you always also don't want to pester your donor. All of us have had the annoying experience. I just had this recently of I'm flying on the airplane. I had to buy a ticket at last minute. It was$500. and then I have to pay$10 for the wifi. And it's all these add-ons. Add-ons. You feel like you're being hassled all the time. You don't want that kind of relationship with a major donor. You wanna lay out the strategy for the next year. You want to have them engage and support that, but they don't want to feel like every time I sit down with Terran, it's always going to be a shakedown for. It's not that kind of relationship.

Trevor

So how does somebody figure out when's the best time to ask a donor for money if we're only gonna ask once a year? Is that something that a fundraiser should set on the organization's schedule, or is it something where they should look at it from a different perspective?

Tarren

I think you really wanna look at it from the donor's perspective and donors are all over the map. We, as an organization, just because of randomness, really, we tend to receive most of our money in the first quarter rather of the year, but we tend to make those asks in the fourth quarter of the year. For other organizations, the fourth quarter is the biggest timeframe for them, and so don't try to. What is the giving cycle of a donor ask or just look at what their pattern has been in the past. You know, some donors give in August, some give in May and figure out, okay, if I want to be part of that giving cycle, I want to back up 60, 90 days before those decisions are made and make my case. I think sometimes people are reluctant to ask these questions and so we default to, I need to read their mind or just. when all you need to do is ask. I was just having this conversation with a six figure donor recently. They're changing a little bit of their giving schedule and he was talking to me about here's how the new process is going to be, but he wasn't specific. And so my response was, okay, so if we're looking for an ask in calendar year 2024, When should I be sitting down with you? And he gave me a really specific answer. So if you can't figure it out, just ask them. And they're happy to do that because they want to be strategic and they want you to fit in with their giving calendar.

Trevor

And I think that's something where, People get worried about it fundraising, like asking that specific question, like maybe that seems needy or desperate to ask, but it's just a logistics, like it's a professional question. It's about a meeting where they're making a big decision, like it's a very reasonable question to ask, and the donors don't mind responding.

Tarren

No, not at all. And again, we're talking about major donors. 10% of donors give 90% of the money. And so for that 10% timing is really important. For maybe the other 90% of your donors timing's less important. And so you don't need to ask this question of them, but you definitely need to ask it of your five, six, and seven figure donors, if you don't already.

Trevor

That's great. Well, let's move on to fundamental number two, which is treat your donors like partners. Now, this is something that some organizations struggle with because first off, they have this concept we talk about called the poverty mindset. That's where you focus so much on the short term. Like what can I do today to like optimize my money, optimize our staffing, but we don't look ahead and make those bigger decisions on what we should be doing a year from now, two years from now, or three years from now to grow our organization. So one of the things we talk about in the workshop, Instead of having this poverty mindset, you can't necessarily stop thinking away, but you can replace it and think a different way is replacing that poverty mindset with a partnership mindset and thinking of your donors more like partners.

Tarren

So I think the framework here to think about is people who write big checks have lots of partnerships in their life. They might run their own company, but they might be an investor in another business, whether that's a big or small business. And so they're used to that structure of I'm partnering with someone. To achieve something that I could not do on my own, and that's what you're really bringing to the table. As a nonprofit, you're not a pplicant, you're not Oliver Twist. In this relationship, your goal is to not make the most pathetic sounding case possible. Instead, your goal is to find partners who share in that big picture of what you want to accomplish, who are motivated by your mission. And. For you to do something amazing. Think about it like a marriage of together. You're able to accomplish something that would be very difficult to accomplish on your own. And it's that exact same mindset, and I think using that language rather than investor or some other language, using that partnership language really signifies that neither of you can do it without the other, you know, as a nonprofit leader, I need to have donors. Or we can't accomplish our mission. And from the donor's perspective, they need to be able to give their money somewhere to accomplish their philanthropic strategy, their vision to change the world through their philanthropy. And so it really is this cool partnership that you want to lean into. And I think what's hard is a lot of times, you know, the. Commercials we see about changing poverty overseas or you know, helping a child in need has us thinking in a small way about kind of this heart-wrenching message rather than presenting this long-term inspiring strategy and vision that really takes a partner who has a similar mindset. To engage with you and together accomplish amazing things.

Trevor

Right? And that's such a great point with the difference in the appeal, like with a partnership mindset, you'd give a pitch and kind of lay out the case for the year when you're asking only once a year. Whereas the kind of ads you mentioned, those ads are more targeted towards the small donor where it's more of about an emotional play, getting somebody to take action right now. Maybe it's to sign up for a monthly donation sponsor a kid, and those are all great tactics. but what we're talking about specifically is with these major partners, these 10% of donors who are giving significant amounts of money in the nonprofit space. So let's talk a little bit about what it looks like when a donor is treated like a partner, and we dive really deep into this in an episode we did called The five Star Level of Service for Your Donors. We'll link it in the show notes, but basically that whole concept. Throughout the year when someone has given to your organization, they are kept updated with specific updates from the ceo. You have a really clear process for thanking the donor. You know, there's a multi-part thank you sequence to make sure nothing gets false through the cracks, and then you're also reaching out to them well ahead of time to. Book update meetings to book, ask meetings so that they really feel like they're treated in a different way by your nonprofit. Almost like a Ritz Carlton level of service. So that's like the other component of treating your donors like partners. It's about the way you present yourself when you make the ask, but it's also about all that time in between. How do you treat them? How are they updated? Cuz there's nothing worse than giving a check, never hearing back from an organization until they want to ask.

Tarren

Yeah. And I think this is about just a regular cadence. You know, part of the key to life, whether it's been in fundraising or other aspects, ha, is consistency. And so you want to have regular interaction. You want to maintain that relationship in a consistent way. You know, people talk about after you get married, you still want to have date night every month kind of thing. It's that kind of regular check-in. It's not every day, you're not pestering them and it's not. Never, or only when you're asking for money, as you just said, it's just what is that regular relationship. And I think that sometimes we think of that in a way of that it's more complicated or it's harder to execute. You know, one of the great things about living in Naples is we have a Ritz Carlton. So when you use that reference of, you know, this high level of customer service, I think. Interesting about that is the things that the Ritz does differently. A lot of those things don't cost money. So my wife and I were at the Ritz a few years ago coming back from dinner at one of their restaurants and they were walking by the stores within right off the lobby that are all closed. And there was this couple looking in the store and this staff member walked by and said to the couple, would you like me to open up the store so you can buy? So, So the couple of course said yes, and that was the most valuable thing the employee could be doing at that time. But think about that. Never have we had that experience. Most of us have had the experience of, you know, 15 minutes before the store closes we're being ushered out the door. But instead, what they have is high level of customer focus and engagement. And that's what you want to think about with your donors of keep them regularly updated. Don't hound. just like an investment. You know, they're not looking for what's the stock price every day. Instead, they're looking at what are the trends over time, you know, every month or two months, getting some meaningful updates as it relates to your organization.

3. Add a Few New Partner Donors Each Year

Trevor

And the key thing with this, and that's a great story kind of illustrating just taking action and treating people in in a different way, is you can't do that for everyone. So these are strategies for your top donors, maybe your top 20, maybe your top 30 donors of your organization. Where you can treat them in this really big way because for most nonprofits, they contribute the majority of your revenue. So far we've talked about terren number one, asking donors only once a year. Fundamental number two is treating donors like partners. The third one is also about donors, and that's adding a few new donor partners each year. Now when a lot of people think about fundraising and growing their fundraising, they think immediately towards, you know, we need to add new donors when we talk about this in the class. That's actually the third strategy for growing your fundraising. But let's just talk about why you only need to add a few new donors each year. Instead of this being a major focus of an organization going out and finding brand new donors. Let's

Tarren

use this framework of 10% of donors give 90% of the money. So say your organization had a hundred donors, just to keep the math easy here, and 10 of those donors were providing 90% of the money. If you could add just one more to that, 10 this each year. That was providing that kind of impact. You could grow your organization in a really significant way. Whereas if you added 30 of your smaller donors, it might not have a significant impact on your bottom line. And so I think that there's this mindset that in fundraising, that the number of donors matters more than the impact of donors. And what you wanna do is focus on that 10% and expand that 10% because. These folks have the ability to transform your organization. So going from 10 to 11 of those donors or 10 to 12 has a huge impact on your organization, and it's a lot easier to dedicate resources to finding that extra one or two of those big impact donors than it is trying to. Get hundreds of people to give to the organization for the first time, and this is the real key, Trevor. And then getting them to give again because the dirty little secret of a lot of direct mail and other low donor big number fundraising schemes is they don't give again. And so it's this one and done experience where you feel like you're on the treadmill and always running fast, but never going anywhere.

Trevor

Right. And the industry average right now, I think in the last year is below 50% of donors who give for a first time, give a second time. So you think about like all the effort you take to get those new donors, whether it's a big donor or a small donor. Only 50% renew. So you really want to focus on this handful of new partners each year and then treat them really well. One of the things we talk about is this whole idea of the first a hundred days somebody is a donor. That's when they're kind of looking at your organization the closest. And really wanting to dive in and kind of find out what's going on. You know, we think as fundraisers, like once you get the check kind of your job's done, but that's just when the donors are focused on you. So if you can have a consistent plan of how do we bring an onboard new major donors so they get this five star level of service, you can help increase that. So you don't have that 50% of new donors not giving them the second

Tarren

year. Well, and that's a really good point too. most of those donors are used to not a lot of follow up in that a hundred days after they write the check. And so it's a way to delight the donor, but also to stand out from the competition by having that kind of plan. And we go over some of those strategies in the workshop.

Trevor

Yeah. And someone might be thinking right now, like, okay, so we can find a few new donors, but how do we, I do that. Do I do an event? Do we do direct mail? Do we do these other strategies? And one of the things that we've found, especially when you track the retention rate of donors, Is one of the most effective ways to find new major donors for your organization is through

Tarren

referrals. Yeah, and I think that, you know, the easiest way to find a referral is to just ask for Ask for one. All of us read the reviews when we're buying a product online, but really what we're doing is we're finding a. Somebody else has bought this product and they're referencing their experience and we're using that as the best indicator of is this, you know, the right product for me to buy for this particular thing that I'm looking for. Referrals are super powerful and what we found is referred donors or referrals who become donors have the highest retention. And so it also gets you off that treadmill of people giving once and never giving again. Instead, with a referral, they already buy into the mission, somebody they respect. It likely is a longtime donor and they're likely to stick, and so it also makes all the time and effort you put into going from 10 to 11 major donors. In that example, we were just talking about making sure that that 11 person sticks, and so next year when you're adding one, you're going up to 12. You're not standing in place because they haven't given again.

Trevor

Yeah, and it's so true, like most nonprofits could probably grow all they need to with new donors just from referrals. And like you said, you ask for that one referral. You know, you use that script. Who's one person who's like you? Who I should talk to about supporting our work? Just a simple script. You know, you don't ask for it when you're asking for money, but you do ask for it at some other point in the year. In the best run, nonprofits plan this out ahead of time. They think about when am I going to be seeing this donor? When would it make sense to ask? You know, of course some donors don't give referrals, but most of'em will give you one a year.

4. Have a Big Vision

Tarren

Yeah. And again, all it takes is one a year, and we find that they have the highest success rate of actually converting from a prospect to a donor too. So it's this double win-win that's your warmest leads, if you will, thinking in a sales funnel perspective, but with also your highest retention rate.

Trevor

So let's shift gears a little bit on the first three fundamentals. They're all about the donor, but on the next fundamental, it's about shifting to you as a fundraiser. And fundamental number four is you need to have a big vision. Now, what's interesting with our workshop is we see sometimes people really struggle with this whole concept of having a big vision for their nonprofit. And it's not that they don't want to do big things or and have big accomplishments with their nonprofit and have a big impact. It's just sometimes like. Actually lifting your head up from the day-to-day and the grind of, you know, what you need to accomplish this week, this month. And thinking about what do I need to accomplish two years, three years, four years from now. So one of the ways for a leader to figure this out and really think about what is our big vision, what's going to get people excited to give, but also our staff excited to work harder. Figuring out, you know, how do we meet this is by first just thinking about where do we want to. In one year. And then once you kind of have an idea of this, you know, like it doesn't have to be like a really detailed plan. It can be just a couple of bullet points, but then think about what about at two years? And then what about at three years? And then once you're out in that like three year range, that's a really good place to be for a big vision where you can say to your donors, this is where we see ourselves three years from now. And you lay out three big things you're trying to accomplish by then.

Tarren

Yeah. And I think that this is a lot easier to pull out of a conversation. So you've been extremely helpful to me personally, Trevor with. As we talk about interacting with donors and laying out this case and having this big vision, a lot of times it's you asking me questions of, well, what does that mean? Or Have you thought about this particular thing? Or maybe you could expand that vision even more so that it's big, but it also seems achievable. It doesn't seem fantastic or unbelievable, and so I think people. Don't need to be intimidated by this, but they need to understand. It's a bit of a process and a discovery, but what's great about it is once you feel like you have this compelling, achievable, big vision, exactly what you said can happen. You're not only inspiring donors to renew and increase, hopefully. But you're also explaining to staff why they're working so hard and why they want to stay and accomplish this big thing. And I think we somehow think that for donors, I need to do this, but my staff have already, they understand where we're going and they're bought in when what we've found is that vision is just important, if not more important internally than it is externally. And we'll talk a little bit about that a little bit later on, executing that big vision. But it's first just discovering what it is and like everything, it's a bit of a process and you want to lean into that process, but once you have it, it's a really great place to be because you know, okay. Now I am laying out where we're going. I'm laying out the big impact that it'll have once we get there. And I'm inspiring the resources and the staff to accomplish it,

Trevor

right? And that whole idea of, it's hard pulling it out, but that whole, having a conversation with somebody else can be really helpful. Just having them kind of try to understand it in a way by somebody who's not in the organization. If you don't have someone like that, one good resource. Going through and figuring out your big vision is a book by Michael Hyatt called The Vision Driven Leader. And we have people who buy that book in every class. They really enjoy it. Has some good exercises in it on just figuring out what your vision is, running it by your senior staff, you know, kind of talking it through and then, Really getting it down on paper on what this vision is and how are we gonna get there and we'll get into the execution, like you said in a minute.

Tarren

Yeah, and I think one of the coolest things about, say you lay out that big three year vision is odds are you're going to accomplish it in two years. Much quicker than you think because you're inspiring the resources and the people to have it happen. And so it becomes this really virtuous cycle, this pattern that's exciting of, I laid out this big thing. We were able to get it done even quicker, which allows me to then think even bigger as the leader of the organization or as a fundraiser and. It seems that much more believable. You can do this next bigger thing to your donors. And so it's just this great pattern of we think big. We do big, and we raise big money to make it all happen.

5. Make a Compelling Pitch

Trevor

Yeah, and I think that's such an important part of, there's like the. Early phases in any new thing or any new initiative are always way slower than we want. And then it goes a lot faster usually than we expect. So there's that frustrating, you know, maybe it's three months, six months where everything takes longer than we ever imagined it would, and that's where a lot of people give up. But if you give up, then you miss out all the benefits of you learn how to do this, provide the service faster. You learn how to, you know, these different techniques. Doing it quicker, more efficiently, lower cost, where you can scale it in a really effective way. So let's talk about after you have that big vision. The next thing for talking with a donor is fundamental. Number five is make a compelling pitch. So nonprofits are complicated businesses. A lot of times. You know, you're working with three or four or five kind of main areas of focus. You have different communities that you serve, and it's really hard. To think of, how am I going to explain this nonprofit to a donor in a short amount of time? So what naturally happens is, instead of pitching kind of the big vision and everything we're doing with the nonprofit, we usually focus down on a little part and do a project. And so instead of that partnership we talked about earlier, you bring the donor down and focus on a just a little specific project that doesn't get them necessarily inspired to give towards the overall mission and operation of the organization. So let's talk a little bit Taran about building a pitch and what people should be thinking about. With a pitch. And first though, why pitching a donor? You know, it feels weird to like maybe go in and have a presentation or kinda lay out a pitch for somebody, but why isn't that weird to a major donor? You

Tarren

know, maybe it's even just the phrase pitch over. It really is just this high stakes presentation that you're making and for all high stakes presentation, you know, whether that's asking for a salary increase with your board or high stakes presentation, maybe you know that. Making to your spouse on where we should go on family vacation this year or, or whatever you would put in time and effort to prep for it. But I think that somehow we lie to ourselves and believe that I'm just gonna have a conversation with a donor. I'm going to have some bullets on a page of what I want to touch on, and somehow that will be really surprising when the truth. Most of us are a lot more boring than we believe, and we talk for a lot longer than we think. And it's because we haven't prepared and we don't have this structure. And I think you really touched on this important thing oftentimes too, we're so close to the day-to-day work of what we're doing. We forget what's novel. Or we forget kind of, not just the why, that big vision that we talked about, but the how. And donors like to understand a bit of the how. So you're laying out, here's this mountain we're going to climb, and then here's how we're going to do it. Not this little project that may or may not influence us getting towards that big vision that we've laid out. And so you just need to do the. Of making it compelling. You know, you and I worked on my pitch for this calendar year. We went through 15 different revisions of it. Yeah. It took a while, Right. But this year we're raising more than 19 million. So if it takes 25 versions of it, that's still time well spent and you want to just put in the time and effort for it to be really compelling. You know, I think about it like a play. So one of my sons is going to be Charlie in Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, and so it's about scripts and practice and staging and adjusting the script so it works for the characters. All this time and effort, but all I'll see as a parent is the final performance. That's how it is with a donor. There's all the stuff behind the scenes with preparation, and then you just see the final performance. And the truth is, most people who struggle with fundraising don't put in the time and effort to have a great presentation, a great high stakes presentation, and it's really difficult to do that on your own because you're too close to. Or you're getting feedback from people who aren't completely candid with you, like your spouse or maybe some colleagues, and maybe they're too close to it too. And so what you want to do is just have a template and a structure, but make sure you are laying out that compelling vision, but also you're explaining a bit of the how, because the reason you're so effective. is because you're novel in some way and you want the donor to see that innovation that you have and how entrepreneurial you are as an organization and accomplishing that mission.

Trevor

Right? And that's so important. Like your point on what makes you unique, like in the process of what you do. And sometimes it helps to go through and kind of write out what you do or kind of talk with somebody through the steps and see whether they kind of light up or find it Interesting because. Things that you know, that are just day to day, that are fascinating to an outsider, are fascinating to someone who's interested in your industry. It reminds me, there's this famous David Ogilvy ad he did in the 1950s for Rolls-Royce, and the headline was at 60 miles an hour, the loudest thing in the car is the. And then he had all these bullet points, you know, about how the car was great and basically the ad was designed to make a case so you could buy the car and justify it to your wife back in those days. But the whole premise was he found that out because he went through and really. Went and talked to the engineers and went through all of the stuff they did to build that car, to find out these kind of things that grabbed your attention and were interesting. One of the things we do in the workshop is we have this eight part pitch structure where you start out by thanking the donor. When you sit down with'em, talk about the mission of the organization, then you wanna talk about the impact that you've had, and then go into what are we working on? You know, give us some details about, you know, what are the two or three big things we're working on? And then you tell a story of the success that's generated by that work, and then that final part of your pitch as you look towards the future and you say, okay, well we've accomplished all this so far, but what's really exciting is what we've set up for and the future. And that's where you lay out your big vision and you talk about like, here are the two or three. Big things we want to accomplish over the next year. And then end with that ask and we'll link in a show notes. We have a couple videos on that that we'll put in the show notes to help you as you develop your own pitch. And

Tarren

I think the key here is it is a template or a structure. It's not formulaic, it's not say these magic words and you know, people will open up their wallets, but just like how a movie tells a story, Or why Christmas movies are structured in a certain way is there's a formula that works. And I think what you want to do is lean into that because it's also comfortable for the donor and honors them. You know, starting out with a thank you of you're bringing that right in so you don't forget it, and they appreciate the gratitude that you have for this partnership.

6. Execute on the Big Vision

Trevor

Yeah, that's such a great point on that whole gratitude and making sure you are never feeling like you're entitled to their money. You know, this is something as a partnership where both of you are important, both of you are necessary to make this happen. So let's talk about number six. This is something that is bothersome donors when they give money, and then they feel like the big vision isn't executed on. So number six is you want to execute on your big vision.

Tarren

So the key here is you don't want that one and done donor. And a good way to get a one and done donor or to lose a donor is to not accomplish what you've said you're going to do. And what's interesting about this, Trevor, is we find for meaning, you and I, for a lot of students who come into the workshop usually. Their organization is good at executing on that big vision. Yeah, absolutely. They're usually doing really good work. They just struggle with, how do I explain that and what's next? I think this piece is really key, but for a lot of nonprofits that. Kind of self-select in that they want to go to the next level through fundraising. This isn't something that they struggle with a lot, but just you wanna recognize it's really key. So what you want to do is have a part of that conversation throughout the year be how we're accomplishing that big vision that we laid out. And it's really signaling to the donor, the partner that we have accountability that we said we're going to do. So, I'm going to tell you what we're doing. If something doesn't work out like I thought, I'm going to explain that too. Explain failure, but most importantly, explain what we learned from that failure and how we're course correcting. So the key here is execute on that big vision, provide transparency and accountability to the donor, and then it truly is that partnership that we were talking. It's about building trust, right?

Trevor

And there's lots of places where you can learn how to be better at execution. You know, there's tons of business books out there. I know your organization's had a lot of success with the Traction program. Gino Wickman has a book called Traction that's worked really well. Smaller organizations have had, like, it's a version of traction like the four dx that's been really successful with smaller organizations. But whatever. You know, system works for you and you might have to try a couple. The important thing is have a system hold people accountable and be able to execute on the work. And then you can title that big vision and the next time you meet with a donor, it's actually really exciting cuz you can update them on all the progress you have made.

7. Staff with Fundraising Specialist

Tarren

I think sometimes in the nonprofit world, we don't think of ourselves as a business, but we are a business. And so having the structure of how you run your business and you gave just a couple really good examples, I think is also a way to lean into your big donor as a peer of they made their money typically running and growing a business. You're leaning in and you might be talking about here, we run our business in a similar way. So

Trevor

speaking of running a business in a similar. We want to go to our last fundamental, which is all about how do you staff your organization. So fundamental number seven is staff with fundraising specialists. This is taken directly from how. Private businesses run and how business to business sales organizations run. So Tran, do you wanna explain kind of how to staff your organization with fundraising specialists?

Tarren

Yeah. I think most fundraising shops are organized like a pyramid where you have the c E O who interacts with say six-figure and above donor donors, you have your development director or maybe you are fancy and you call it the director of advancement. They work with the next tier of donors, say 20 to a hundred thousand. And then you have a bunch of younger hires who are development associates who are working with smaller dollar donors. And the challenging thing about this structure is everyone has to be a great generalist and that the incentives are all wrong. So if I'm a development associate and I'm wildly successful and I get somebody to give more than 20,000, They move out of my portfolio. So it's really perverse. I'm actually punished for success and there's a lot of churn at the bottom of the pyramid. And so what you need to do is recognize this is a scheme, it's a pyramid scheme, and instead exactly as you said, work like a private business to business operation where you divide up the sales funnel and you have these specialized roles because the truth is, None of us are good generalists. I might be really good sitting down with a donor one-on-one. I really struggle with follow up. I've gotten better, but I've gotten better over 20 years. Like I'm not sure that's something to tout. Right? So I think, you know, we want to believe, okay, if I could just hire the perfect unicorn in development, that that person would be great. But organizations that are looking for a. Tend to find what they think is one, and then that person leaves after 12 to 18 months and they go to work for another organization who'll discover it in the same timeframe that they're not a unicorn and they'll just cycle through. Instead, what you want is to hire accomplished specialists, and I told you we're at a 19 million organization. We have three full-time people in our development shop because besides the work that I'm doing, Because we have these highly specialized roles that are really valuable. You could pull from a different group than your typical kind of fundraising development shop, and they are wildly successful and stay. That's

Trevor

so great. Well, and put it that into contrast, the most rules of thumb are you need one development staff per million to 2 million. So your staff should be in the 10 to 20 development staff range. Not three. So that's a really good point. Let's just quickly hit on these three roles and talk about them and then why they're important. And I'll hit on the first one, Taryn. The first one that you want to think about having is the connector role. And that role is somebody who likes to go find. New donors. So we talked about you only want to add a handful of donors each year. This person might help you facilitate and set up meetings with those referrals you get or people you meet. You know, as a fundraiser, as the CEO of the organization, you meet somebody, you can hand that off to your connector and they can set up that first meeting and you're able to go meet with them and see if they're interested in becoming a partner donor.

Tarren

And the key here, This is a long sales cycle, so you really need somebody who's dedicated to it, but they're also, they play a long game and they're comfortable with that. The next role is the closer role, and that's the person who sits down with the donor and makes that high stakes presentation, that compelling case. For why they want to renew or increase or maybe give for the first time. So it's that person who has direct face-to-face interaction with the donor. I used to think that it was all about a closer, but really that's just one part of the sales funnel. It might be the most public part. But it's certainly not the most important part,

Trevor

right? And if any one of these three roles doesn't work, you're going to have a lopsided development shop, or you're gonna have like short-term success, but not long-term success. So the final role, and in a lot of cases, somebody that adds tremendous value to an organization is the cultivator role. And in the sales organization that's more like an account manager. But what the cultivator focuses on is making the systems and executing the systems so the donors have that five star level of service. So when the check comes in, they're thanked quickly. They have a phone call, you know, you know when to reach out to them to book that meeting well ahead of their giving windows. All of those details are taken care of by the cultivator, and all three of these roles work together. You know, the cultivator works closely with the closer. Sometimes they work together on scheduling meetings. Sometimes it's on drafting these donor update emails that go out, and they all work with the connector as well. You know, you get a referral from an existing donor that goes the connector. Then they set up the meeting for the closer. So all three of these roles are tightly woven together. Each person has a distinct responsibility or set of responsibilities, and then also has distinct metrics of success.

Tarren

Yeah, and the key here is they're all highly specialized, so it's easy to find them, what they focus on, and their measure of success, as you said, is really transparent and it's a really gratifying job. You're not hiring somebody who is expected to be the perfect specialist who and who is constantly justifying their existence of, I'm doing well in this area, but I'm struggling in these areas. Instead, these are people who really excel in the one thing that matters most in their role. And everybody, whether it's a connector or a closer or a cultivator, has that one thing that they're excelling in. And I think think of the cultivator as like a project manager, or if you are building a house as a general contractor, like they're managing all the different activities that are affecting that donor for the year. And that matters a lot because it's what makes that partner. The transaction of the gift doesn't make the partnership. It's the relationship over the course of the year that really makes that a partnership.

Trevor

That's such a great point. So to wrap up, I know we're almost at time and we're trying to keep these episodes a little shorter, but to wrap up, we just want to recap these seven fundamentals. First, you wanna ask a donor only once a year. Number two, you want to treat donors like partner. Number three, add a few new donor partners each. And then number four, this is back to you as a fundraiser. You wanna have a big vision that you share with your staff and with your donors. Fundamental number five is make a compelling pitch. And then number six, you want to execute on that big vision. And finally, how do you do all of this is you want to. With fundraising specialist, and if you go to our show notes, we have a bunch of different resources for each of these fundamentals. Different podcast episodes, videos we've made. But this is really a very quick recap or very quick overview of our seven figure fundraising system. And we do these classes twice a year where we dive into this in much greater detail. It's over 12 hours of live instruction and we go through and really. Each one of these fundamentals, what are the tactics or what are the ways to do this really well? And most importantly, how do you break it down so you can actually implement it? In your organization? Cause there's one thing just to learn stuff, but you actually wanna be able to do something with that.

Tarren

Yeah, and I think the great thing about the seven fundamentals you just went through is they actually don't cost money. Many of'em, they just require focus. And so I think sometimes in fundraising we're looking for, here's the magic thing that I need to spend tens of thousands of dollars on. When in reality what you need to do is lean into these seven fundamentals and the whole workshop is okay. How do you do that? Right.

Trevor

Well, I think that's a great place to end. I encourage you, if you're interested, you can go on our website, seven figure fundraising.com. You can book a call if you want to find out more about the class, but would love to have you, or if now is not a good time, just use these fundamentals and put them to work in your organization. They have worked over and over again over the last five years. We've taught this workshop and they'll work for your organization as well. Well, thanks for being on the show, Taryn. It's always good chatting with you and we'll uh, see you on the next. Thank you. Thanks for listening. To learn more about seven figure fundraising in our training, visit seven figure fundraising.com. Finally, if there's one person you know would benefit from hearing this episode. Please take a minute and share it with them. Thanks.