Nonprofit News, Tech & Marketing Stories from Whole Whale, a Nationally Recognized Nonprofit Marketing Agency for over a decade.
Founded in 2010, Whole Whale is a B-Corp that runs analytics, digital advertising, Google Ad Grants, and SEO for nonprofits.
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Internet History Hinges On One Nonprofit 🌐🏛️ (news)
Episode 411
Thursday, September 12, 2024 • Duration 18:47
Nonprofit News Roundup: Internet Archive's Legal Battle, AmeriCorps Grants, and Addressing Child Malnutrition
Hosted by George Weiner and Nick Azulay of Whole Whale
Key Topics Covered:
Internet Archive's Legal Challenges:
Discussion: The critical role of the Internet Archive in preserving web history and its recent legal challenges concerning copyright infringement.
Key Insight: The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against the Internet Archive in a case involving book digitization, raising concerns about the future of digital preservation.
AmeriCorps Grant Competition:
Announcement: AmeriCorps has opened applications for the 2025 State and National Grants Competition.
Eligibility: Open to nonprofits, colleges, local governments, and other organizations.
Statistic: Nearly half of all child deaths worldwide are linked to malnutrition.
Progress: Child deaths due to malnutrition have decreased from 6.6 million in the 1990s to 2.4 million today.
Insight: Malnutrition exacerbates other health vulnerabilities, making it a critical area for intervention.
Feel-Good Story:
Nonprofit Highlight: Face the Fight.
Mission: Provides skincare routines and mental health support for cancer patients.
Impact: Helps patients feel better about their appearance, potentially improving health outcomes and boosting confidence.
Reflective Thought:
The Internet Archive's legal struggles highlight the delicate balance between copyright protection and the preservation of digital history. As nonprofits, understanding these dynamics is crucial for safeguarding our collective digital heritage.
Call to Action:
AmeriCorps Applicants: If your organization aligns with the focus areas, consider applying for the grant competition.
Support: Visit https://911day.org/ to participate in a day of service and remembrance.
Closing Reflection:
Every nonprofit, regardless of size or scope, contributes to a larger narrative of service and impact. Whether it's preserving digital history, supporting community service, or addressing global health issues, each effort underscores the power of collective action.
YOU are not the hero - Your Donor is | Interview with Dr. JJ Peterson StoryBrand
Episode 410
Monday, August 26, 2024 • Duration 54:02
This week's podcast features an enlightening conversation with Dr. JJ Peterson, head of StoryBrand ( mystorybrand.com )
and co-host of the Marketing Made Simple podcast. Dr. Peterson shares his expertise on how nonprofits can leverage the StoryBrand framework to clarify their messaging and engage donors more effectively. With a background in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, he offers unique insights into the differences and similarities in their marketing strategies.
Key Topics and Guests:
Guest: Dr. JJ Peterson, head of StoryBrand, adjunct professor at the Owen School of Business at Vanderbilt, and co-host of the Marketing Made Simple podcast.
Main Topics:
The StoryBrand framework and its application to nonprofit marketing.
The importance of viewing donors as customers.
Strategies for creating compelling narratives that engage donors and drive action.
The significance of clear, concise messaging in reducing donor fatigue and increasing engagement.
Effective email marketing and donor follow-up strategies.
Critical Insights and Quotes:
StoryBrand Framework: Dr. Peterson outlines the seven elements of a compelling story: character, problem, guide, plan, call to action, success, and failure. "Nonprofits need to position their donors as the heroes of the story," he emphasizes.
Donor Engagement: "When people get to be a part of transformational work, their lives are better because of it," says Dr. Peterson, highlighting the importance of inviting donors into the narrative.
Email Marketing: Dr. Peterson advises nonprofits to use nurture emails to stay connected with donors throughout the year, providing value without always asking for donations. "You want to be there, top of mind, when they are ready to give," he explains.
Overcoming Objections: Addressing potential donor objections head-on can build trust and transparency. "Acknowledge the objection and then explain how you address it," he suggests.
Calls to Action:
For Nonprofits: Visit to create a brand script that will help clarify your nonprofit’s messaging.
Closing Thought:
Are These Organizations Really Nonprofits? (news)
Episode 401
Tuesday, June 11, 2024 • Duration 18:12
Are These Organizations Still Nonprofits? A Deep Dive into Nonprofit Status and the Blurring Lines
Overview
This week on the Nonprofit Newsfeed, George Weiner, Chief Whaler of Whole Whale, and Nick Azulay, Senior Manager of Digital Strategy at Whole Whale, delve into the complex and evolving landscape of nonprofit status. They question whether certain large organizations still meet the true spirit of what it means to be a nonprofit.
Key Topics and Highlights
NCAA's Historic Settlement:
The NCAA, a nonprofit with nearly $1 billion in revenue, recently settled to pay college athletes $2.7 billion. This raises questions about whether the organization still aligns with its original nonprofit mission of fostering amateur sports.
PGA Tour and Saudi Investment:
The PGA Tour, another nonprofit, announced a merger with the Saudi Public Investment Fund's LiveGolf. This billion-dollar deal casts doubt on whether taxpayer dollars should support such ventures.
OpenAI's Nonprofit Status:
OpenAI, which started as a nonprofit, now controls a highly profitable LLC valued at $80 billion. This shift has led to legal scrutiny and questions about whether it still adheres to its nonprofit mission.
The Linux Foundation:
With $177 million in revenue and high executive salaries, the Linux Foundation faces scrutiny about its contribution to the public good and whether it still qualifies as a nonprofit.
Critical Insights and Quotes
George Weiner: "When you cross that line toward profiting off the community you're trying to protect, it's time to review that."
Nick Azoulay: "Should your tax dollars be subsidizing the Saudi investment into American golf influence? That's a hard pill to swallow."
Calls to Action
For Nonprofits: Reflect on whether your organization still aligns with its original mission and the broader public good.
For Donors and Volunteers: Scrutinize the nonprofits you support to ensure they adhere to their stated missions and use funds responsibly.
Closing Thought
The conversation highlights the need for a national discussion about what truly constitutes a nonprofit. As organizations grow and evolve, it's crucial to revisit their missions and ensure they continue to serve the public good.
Additional Stories
Helping 40,000 Young Entrepreneurs | Sky’s The Limit
Episode 311
Thursday, December 15, 2022 • Duration 48:37
Interview with co-founder and CEO of Sky's The Limit ,Bo Ghirardelli. Bo discusses how they built a youth entrepreneurship network that has supported over 40k young people. Learn how Sky's The Limit leverages corporate partners to help achieve its mission.
[00:00:00] Today on the podcast, we have a great guest who has bravely come on, despite, frankly, Responding out of the blue to a message that we sent him cuz I found the organization very interesting. Bo Garelli, co-founder and CEO of Sky's The Limit, and that's sky's the limit.org if you wanna find them on the interwebs.
[00:00:23] Really quickly on Bo, since I did find him on LinkedIn, which is amazing, but this is quite a track record. After graduating with an
[00:00:31] mpa,
[00:00:32] In nonprofit management from the University of Washington was in the Peace Corps. Love it. And he was a small business development consultant in Morocco. Wow. And then goes on to co-found two other organizations
[00:00:45] in Morocco before, I guess in 2010
[00:00:50] for 12 years now.
[00:00:51] Co-founding Sky's limit. So Bo thanks for joining us and maybe you can start with that. Why is there a limit at the sky? What is going on there? Can you tell us what the organization does? ?
[00:01:01] Sure, yeah, a little. We work with underrepresented young adult entrepreneurs to help 'em chase their business dreams.
CVS CSR Needs a Health Check (news)
Episode 310
Tuesday, December 13, 2022 • Duration 23:36
CVS Shows “Pledges” Do Not Equal Direct “Donations”
In November 2021, US pharmaceutical giant CVS’s social responsibility team announced a $10 million commitment to the American Diabetes Association (ADA) to be delivered over three years, as reported by Quartz. However, what CVS omitted is that the donations collected from customers through in-store fundraising weren’t going to be in addition to the initial pledge. Rather, they would be used in lieu of donations coming from CVS’s coffers. Customers subsidized CVS’s generosity without knowing it, as their donations were part of a larger pledge that CVS had made to the ADA. A new lawsuit, which is seeking class-action status, claims that by failing to disclose the exact way in which the funds raised would be used, CVS committed fraud. Nonprofits (and donors) interested in better understanding corporate partnerships should heed the word “pledge” as merely marketing lingo until actual monetary donations are received by the NPO organizations such corporations purport to support.
#GivingTuesday Predictions: Search Is Down, Hope Is Up (news)
Episode 309
Tuesday, November 29, 2022 • Duration 26:04
2022 Giving Tuesday Predictions: Search Is Down, Hope Is Up
Whole Whale, the publishers of this newsletter, predict a record-setting $3.2 billion will be donated for Giving Tuesday this year. The prediction is the result of an analysis based on an adjusted linear regression, trends in Google Search terms around “Giving Tuesday,” and national giving trends. This method predicts an 18% or $500 million increase over 2021’s total amount raised. While this is an optimistic prediction, several negative indicators might give nonprofits more caution heading into the season of giving, including decreased Giving Tuesday search volume, narratives around inflation and economic pains, a public drained of giving after an election cycle, and a potential return to post-pandemic giving patterns. Yet, elections can lead to heightened social engagement, and online shopping trends continue to be strong despite economic worries. (2022’s Black Friday set a record for online giving.) Whatever the final tally of donation revenue comes in during #GivingTuesday, remember to thank your donors!
Controversy in Qatar & Giving Tuesday is Coming (news)
Episode 308
Tuesday, November 22, 2022 • Duration 18:28
Qatar World Cup Centers International Human Rights Issues, Corruption, And Sportswashing
The 2022 FIFA World Cup is underway in Qatar in a climate marred by years of controversies related to human rights issues, corruption, and influence peddling. While this is the first time the games will be held in an Arab country, Qatar’s bid was a remote possibility until it shockingly won the bid back in 2010. FIFA, the international governing body of football, is considered one of the most openly corrupt institutions in sports, where bribery, corruption, and influence campaigns are rampant. Since winning the bid, Qatar has faced sustained criticism for labor rights abuses since the country began luring low-income workers (largely from Asia) to work on construction projects in what international human rights groups have labeled dangerous and exploitative conditions. The country has faced renewed criticism of its internal human rights issues, particularly around women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights since fans have started to arrive. International NGOs have been long calling for accountability over the games’ human cost, and teams have been put in the awkward position of navigating complex disagreements between the Qatari government, FIFA, and the general public.
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Maximizing Corporate Event Fundraising | Move for Hunger
Episode 307
Monday, November 21, 2022 • Duration 34:41
Conversation with Adam Lowy, Founder and ED of Move For Hunger.
Adam shares about the landscape of food insecurity in the US and the need for year-round support for food banks - not just around Thanks Giving. Move for Hunger is also succeeding with great in person truck pulling events that raise food, funds and awareness across the US.
[00:00:00] Well, we've got a returning guest, Adam Lowie, founder and executive director of Move for Hunger, move for Hunger, mobilizes Transportation Resources to reduce food waste and fight hunger. And we're gonna get into how they're doing that. They were founded in 2009. So Adam, you've been at it for quite some.
[00:00:47] We met actually back in the day, my former life as Chief Technology officer of do something.org. When Adam Lowie was, was it at that time a Brick Award winner? A Do something award winner Do do something, yeah. I think it was the Do Something award technically at that point, yes. A do something. I think I still have my little exclamation point trophy from back in the day.
[00:01:11] Well, these were the sort of best of the best of young entrepreneurs in the social impact world. And I, I remember Adam at the time and we stayed friends and we stayed friends. He was a member of the New York City Global Shaper community and has really built something incredible at Move for Hunger. So, In, in your words, can you remind us, because obviously all of our audience listens to every single one of our over 250 episodes.
[00:01:40] remembers all of our guests. Can you remind us how Move for Hunger does what they do best? Absolutely. So we started, as you mentioned, 13 years ago, out of my family's moving company. We saw folks leaving behind or throwing away food when they were moving, and started to ask that question, do you wanna donate food when you.
FTX Collapse & Effective Altruism (news)
Episode 306
Thursday, November 17, 2022 • Duration 22:06
What The FTX Collapse Does & Does Not Mean For Crypto Philanthropy & Effective Altruism
Crypto-exchange FTX, one of the largest such exchanges, collapsed last week, leaving the cryptocurrency world in disbelief as stakeholders try to piece together what happened and what comes next. The company’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried (known by the moniker SBF) was a visible proponent and donor to the effective altruism movement, as well as someone who built a personal brand as a prominent crypto-philanthropist. As noted by The New York Times, SBF was perhaps one of the most visible supporters of Effective Altruism, a community underpinned by a utilitarian approach to giving where donors focus on giving only to the most impact-efficient charitable causes. Created by Oxford philosopher William MacAskill, the Effective Altruism movement faces serious reputational trust issues as supporters worry it was a cover for the reckless FTX founder. It was also revealed by The New York Times that the two largest FTX Foundation grants went to nonprofits where MacAskill was on the board or directly supported the work of Effective Altruism. Bankman-Fried, who has also spoken frequently of his crypto giving, may have abused the crypto-philanthropy space to shield himself from questioning, but nonprofits should still understand that 38% of millennials own crypto and represent a major (and growing) potential source of donation revenue. (Editor’s Note: The above link is a blog post written by Whole Whale CEO George Weiner, the publisher of this newsletter. The Giving Block is a proud partner and client of Whole Whale.)
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Rob Wu, Founder of Causevox.com shares lessons learned from talking to over 100 large gift officers and donors. Learn about the BAIT approach to donor qualification. BAIT - Budget, Affinity, Intension, Timeliness
About Causevox
11 years of
experience
We launched in 2010 and help nonprofits rally communities and raise millions every year.
1500+
customers
From small community-service charities and national organizations to global development nonprofits.
75,000+
fundraisers
From DIY fundraising and peer to peer to events and donation pages, CauseVox has you covered.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Today
[00:00:26] on the Whole Whale podcast, we have a returning guest who may, if I'm right, may be setting the record for the, the most, uh, appearances on the whole Whale podcast, episode 50, The Data Behind Donor Retention, Episode 1 53, Analytics Answer, Who are My donors? And Episode 1 59 Survive the nonprofit software business.
[00:00:47] Rob, we always appreci. Your candor, your willingness to come on the show to talk about it. And this is Rob Ru, of course, the CEO, founder of Cause Box. He has been diligently working in the sector, I believe, at least on cause box since
[00:01:03] 20 11, 27 officially.
[00:01:08] Officially 2010. Uh, actually also the same year that whole Whale was founded.
[00:01:12] So, uh, we were joking before we turned on record of our, our various, uh, check-ins with each other over the years. And, uh, we're still, we're still doing it. Rob,
[00:01:21] I'm so happy you're still alive, George . Thanks,
[00:01:24] man. You know, we'll, we'll continue to, to check in over the years. I brought you in today though, because you are always looking for the upside for the nonprofits using ox.
For Listeners: Subscribe to the Marketing Made Simple podcast for more valuable insights on marketing strategies.
Dr. Peterson's insights remind us that effective storytelling is not about making the nonprofit the hero but about empowering donors and stakeholders to see themselves as vital participants in the mission. By simplifying and clarifying their message, nonprofits can better engage their audience and inspire action.
Universal Analytics Data Deletion: A reminder for organizations to download their data from Universal Analytics before it is permanently deleted.
Robin Hood AI Poverty Challenge: An exciting opportunity offering up to $1 million for innovative projects addressing poverty in New York City.
National Foundation for Transplant Closure: The closure of this organization leaves many organ transplant patients without critical funds.
Feel-Good Story: The Growhaus nonprofit in Denver is planting vegetable gardens in food deserts, providing fresh produce and empowering families.
[00:01:09] And we combine business mentoring, advising and support and community with learning and training and access to a startup grant fund that we build. And so those three things that the mentoring, training and funding are really Produces some greater than their parts.
[00:01:25] And we've been as you mentioned, doing this for 12 years, but only six as a technology organization. And we can get more into that that journey later on maybe. Interesting. So maybe just to pull back why this cause, why this. Okay. I'd probably start at the beginning in that sense then so I was born and raised in Oakland, California to a family full of small business owners.
[00:01:49] And the conversations at the table were were about how to build businesses, how to solve problems for your customers, how to think about and develop. A business that's truly valuable to the community and and then, concurrently out, out in society and school, raised on this this myth of the American dream where America was touted as this land of equal opportunity.
[00:02:17] And I, I did not see that playing out in my friend group and my community. As I saw vastly different outcomes for people based on arbitrary things like their skin color and their gender and other other opportunities that were there weren't Really gave lie, I think, to in, in many ways this this idea of the American dream and equal opportunity for all.
[00:02:40] And that really sparked a desire in me to figure out how I could kinda combine my. Love of entrepreneurship and love of entrepreneurs themselves with with a way of creating a more just and equitable world. So the journey led to being a, a middle school teacher.
[00:02:57] I'm in south central la and when I got the opportunity to teach a, an elective chorus to, in, in middle school, I asked my students what they wanted to learn and they said they wanted to learn about business and money. And that was the first entrepreneurship course I taught and built was was helping sixth graders understand.
[00:03:16] What it's like to build a business. And students loved it. I loved it. And and I went on in into the the Peace Corps and during the Arab Spring I joined the Peace Corps in order to kinda respond to this this crisis that was brewing in North Africa in particular. It was really rooted in a lack of economic opportunity for young adults of working age.
[00:03:40] So roughly 50% of working age young adults at the time were unemployed. So it's a massive unemployment rate, completely destabilizing the the countries and societies and. While I was there, I asked the young people in the community, like about what what they needed. And they said, Look, we have business ideas.
[00:04:01] I've got a business idea, but I don't know what to do with it. So we built a business training program really rooted in business planning. And they said, Okay, now I got this plan. What do I do? And so we said, Okay, let's go to the microfinance organizations and see if they'll lend any money. So we went to all the, these ostensibly non-profit microfinance organizations.
[00:04:20] None of them would lend money to, to the young entrepreneurs. I was working with and and so we said, Screw it. We'll build our own fund. So I flew back to the Bay Area, raised some money from some generous folks in the community. And we created our own loan fund and underwrote interest free loans to entrepreneurs.
[00:04:38] They got their businesses up and going, and they said, Okay. Now what, how do I keep this thing alive? How do I grow it? And that's where we tap the community of business leaders for mentors and advisors, supporters to wrap a community of support around the entrepreneurs. And so that's the birth kind of our model of combining those three things that mentoring, training and funding.
[00:04:59] And and my Moroccan co-founder took that, that over. And I went back home to Oakland because the same thing the same gap in the ecosystem exists in the United States and existed in my own hometown. And so I, I felt a need to respond to my own community at home. And sure enough we can approved that out, right?
[00:05:18] We launched and quickly got served hundreds of entrepreneurs. We had thousands applying from around the country, and this is for everywhere from, rural Georgia to Detroit to, to the Bronx, like people were applying from across the country. And it just showed that there was this massive gap for earliest stage young entrepreneurs, people of color, women.
[00:05:39] Low income entrepreneurs who had all kinds of business ideas, everything from starting a clothing line to building a gourmet popcorn company to launching a beauty line. So the so I think that was the catalyst for kinda why we. Why we needed to transform what we were doing as a brick and mortar in Oakland to, to figure out how to serve a national and eventually global community to meet this need.
[00:06:06] So that's a long answer to your question, but but that's the why and what of our story that's.
[00:06:13] That's what I love about podcasts too, because guess what, , We have the time. We have the time to talk about it. And the truth is it matters quite a bit. The motivation and the process of how organizations are formed, how they have listened to the community and how they've responded over time, and very impressive that you have.
[00:06:34] Served over 40,000, if I have that right. 40,000 underrepresented young entrepreneurs from 50 states, and also a number of countries. And it seems like when you move from brick and mortar to digital, I'm seeing a sort of app look on your site. It looks like there is in fact an online. Portal that you created.
[00:06:56] I wonder if that isn't that moment where you went from serving into the hundreds to the thousands. Maybe you can talk me through that shift and what
[00:07:03] led to it. Yeah. So in, in 2015 when we had over 5,000 applicants to our Oakland based program that at best could serve people in the Bay Area we, I went to one of my best friends and who was a tech founder.
[00:07:18] He was at the time working on a small startup called blockchain.com, which is now a very big startup. And he and I, it's, he and I had spent many late nights in college talking about. What what our purpose was in life and what the what was the meaning of all this and what should we do about it?
[00:07:38] And he was a child entrepreneur in the same way I was different kinds of businesses, all technology based. For him, he to building a web company as a, 14, 15 year old building websites for other businesses. And and I said, Hey, look, I know you're really busy with this other startup, but what about helping us transform?
[00:07:56] There's a clear demand here. And I think the only way we can meet that demand is through technology and. The reality is that our customer our, the entrepreneurs we serve are the first generation of digitally native entrepreneurs. So when we think about meeting customer needs, our entrepreneurs want are going online.
[00:08:15] They're looking online for services and support. We took this this evidence to a few pe We shopped, shopped this around for a while. We were very fortunate to have a tremendous partner in, in Accenture and Accenture's corporate citizenship group understood this. They understood that that just like how the For profit sector was going had been undergoing decades of digital transformation that the nonprofit sector was also going to do this.
[00:08:42] And and certainly George you understand this well coming from a tech nonprofit that and so they said, Look, yes, we get it. We'll fund it. And they have for, eight years now. So they've really co-created this platform with us. And they did it in a really innovative partnership.
[00:08:58] They staffed a team of engineers, designers. Product manager to the, to sky's the limit to, to help us, build the platform that would power the services and support and impact. We were looking to achieve with our entrepreneurs. Now there's a second component to this and this is why, corporate funders are over 90% of our funding.
[00:09:23] Is that the Fortune 500 has some of the best and brightest people working for them and they've, the Fortune 500 can afford to pay the high salaries, the good benefits. It's the fortune in 500 in the Fortune, right to. To really support these incredible people and help them have great jobs and et cetera.
[00:09:43] And and so we recognize that the community element of what we're building at Sky's the limit was actually the harder side, right? We had a lot of entrepreneurs signing up. So we need to figure out this other side of the community who was going to support the entrepreneurs. And Not only did we get funding talent from Accenture, we also got to we also got a channel to recruit.
[00:10:06] From there, at the time I think there were 500,000 employees at Accenture, and now it's. Closer to a million than not. And and just an incredible global workforce that that was, that has come to bear and engaged thousands of their employees as volunteers on the platform in support supporting entrepreneurs.
[00:10:25] Everything from a digital marketer in New York, helping an entrepreneur launch their first Instagram ad campaign so they don't waste a ton of money. On the ads that aren't working everything from their internal legal department coming in and providing pro bono legal services to, to product developers, helping entrepreneurs, hone and enhance the value proposition of their products.
[00:10:45] So there's a, there's so much we can do with folks inside the Fortune 500. And then we've continued to replicate that model now with PNC Bank, our second largest funder, Goldman Sachs Wells Fargo, hp and some others who've come alongside and said, Hey, we give we will fund and we will provide.
[00:11:04] Access to our employee base as volunteers to bring this, the, this community together online so we can go into a little bit more about the platform. But that's the genesis of that and of the transition to becoming a technology organization now half the team or on our product and engineering.
[00:11:21] It's so interesting cuz there are a lot of different paths that a nonprofit can take to funding and clearly, If the money isn't there, it's very
[00:11:29] hard to support
[00:11:30] Your stakeholders. I'm curious, can you take me into the room of you pitching Accenture? Like how, Cause this has gotta be on a lot of organization's mind.
[00:11:39] You're like, Oh yeah, all you do is talk to Accenture, talk to pnc, get Goldman Sachs, throw a sales force in the midst. So you just walk on the door, knock on and say, Hey, money please. Now. Okay. time, talent, treasure. So can you talk to me about how it looks like you landed that anchor partnership
[00:11:58] with Accenture?
[00:12:00] Yeah. I certainly did not get into this work to fundraise, but the reality
[00:12:05] yeah. No one told you that nonprofits actually are obsessed with money because you have to get
[00:12:10] that right. Yeah no. I, It was, sorry. It was like it's one of those things like, look the mission and the people we serve are the end for me.
[00:12:19] And money is certainly a means to achieving that end. So fundraising has increasingly been more and more part of my day to day. And look, the, some of my favorite days we're working one on one with our entrepreneurs in the earliest days, understanding, their pain points and what their, the problems they're trying to solve.
[00:12:37] But to, I think, unlock the kinds of resources we need to make a dent in the size of this issue. It's gonna take hundreds of millions and billions of dollars and. . And that is what it is, right? I've had to learn how to do this. How do you do it? So what the journey looked like for us is we tried a lot of things that didn't work first and foremost, so failed a lot.
[00:12:58] Okay, so then, so once we figured out all the ways that this didn't work, like cold messaging,
[00:13:02] sending to HR at Accenture,
[00:13:05] the Sure. Everything, but what we realized was like that we had to find companies that had, So step one, find the, find companies that have a public statement around their corporate citizen.
[00:13:17] That, or corporate social responsibility programs that aligns with your mission. If it doesn't, then it's gonna be, it's gonna be a hard road. There's so much internal negotiating and so much internal planning that went into stating these public goals for these companies. You gotta align with the, I think you all of this is just my perception or my belief.
[00:13:36] So I think you gotta align with those. Once you do that you can the next step is much harder. It's figuring out and navigating the decision making process for how a funder can how a, how corporate funder makes decisions around who they. There are 2 million, I think over 2 million non-profits in the United States.
[00:13:57] There are often many non-profits doing similar work. And every nonprofit is, is looking for and hopefully trying to talk about their, comp their advantage, right? Their edge, their why me? , why this organization? And I think. That does matter. But what we realized was that in many corporations, you need to find somebody who cares.
[00:14:19] You need to find a champion. . And that champion needs to be able to influence the decision making process for funding inside of a corporate. And so that's eventually we found what worked. And so we started to recruit, managing directors who. Who could care about, not only not only cared, cuz it's easy to care about our work, right?
[00:14:38] It's a widely appealing mission. And but, Caring going from caring to acting was a journey. And I think ultimately we just find people that we have meaningful relationships with we genuinely care about them and they genuinely care about us. And then we, we also need to then after we have that kind.
[00:14:57] Based relationship, we need to deliver results. And that set and that's, a third piece here is like, how can you deliver results to the to, to a corporate who has a stated goal of what they're trying to achieve? And how can you do that? Technology, at least for us, our, our part, big part of our story was like, look, this is a big need.
[00:15:16] There's big numbers involved. And and even, we just hit our 50000th sign up. Last month. And so it's just, Hey, congrats. Gotta update all those numbers now. . Yeah. . And and we and we have to figure out, to me that's just the tip of the iceberg.
[00:15:29] It is just the tip of the iceberg. And we have to, continuously create value for entrepreneurs, for the volunteers we serve. And then a third customer group, which is the. And so we treat, we treat those partners as a customer group and we. We feel accountable to delivering results against their funding.
[00:15:45] Why they funded us. And it's for the impact. It's for the mission. And often it involves a, an element of scale to, to what they're looking for. And and all of those are important. And understanding each funder is, different, Each corporate is different. All of those corporate, social, respons.
[00:16:02] Goals are off, are all tailored exactly. To to the corporate. And how they measure success is different. It's one of the vast complexities of the nonprofit sector, right? Is what success looks like and what impact, how do you measure it? On the financial side, all of these companies use Gap, right?
[00:16:19] There's a very clear set of ways for accounting for the financial performance of a Fortune 500 company. And they all
[00:16:26] use, I'm sorry. GAP is general accounting principles. Is
[00:16:28] that right? Yes. Yes. There you go. Yes. Thanks for spelling that out. So it's, it is a, it's a formal process for counting for financials, so you can compare the financials of one Fortune 500 company to another.
[00:16:41] But how do you compare the, impact of one nonprofit to another? Is often very difficult because there is no standardized process. And we're talking about people's lives and we're talking about multifaceted issues on impact. So ultimately to bring this full circle, you have to be able to position your.
[00:17:02] Properly for in the ways in which these corporate funders measure. Impact. And and that's so that's a final piece of it. But really finding that, that champion and showing how you're better better different and and then delivering results and maintaining and valuing the needs of that partner over, over many years is how we've, I think retained some of our corporate funders for a long time.
[00:17:29] So to roughly summarize,
[00:17:31] it sounds like you start with this alignment list, this list of potential organizations that you have vetted and checked with regard to their vision, their csr.
[00:17:44] Corporate social responsibility
[00:17:46] programs then take a step back and potentially identify champions and you have an advantage just to reverse engineer this, it seems where you have a backyard full of potential volunteers that may already work at these organizations or can be recruited to become volunteers to see it firsthand, which can be pretty powerful.
[00:18:04] There's no substitute for putting in the time. Once you have that, you develop them into a champion and then you expand within with this sort of bigger vision. Clearly the name is, Sky's the limit, but you are bringing numbers, you're bringing opportunity for impact that is at a scale that frankly companies that deal in the billions understand and it just lets you, it seems level up and align with
[00:18:30] these organizations.
[00:18:33] Yeah, I think an so to speak about specific value propositions for corporate funders. So one is employee engagement, right? One of the top concerns, particularly now in this in this really tight labor market is retention and attracting new hires to, to companies.
[00:18:52] And then with the murder of George Floyd, you had a a social wining that demanded the companies, the employees who worked at these, at big companies are demanding a response. And more than, Lip service to the issues. And I think that the, one of the ways in which we've we've seen some corporate partners for example, PNC Bank made a massive racial and economic opportunity investment to in, in low income and black communities across the country.
[00:19:24] And they were, and they've and as part of that commitment, their people are able to volunteer on sky's the limit with the entrepreneurs we serve. 61% of the entrepreneurs we serve are black entrepreneurs. Again, most of our entrepreneurs are between the ages of 18 and 30, right?
[00:19:39] The working with young adult first time, earliest stage entrepreneurs, 80% are pre revenue. And this is a part of, part of our pitch to corporates, and part of the reason why we've had so many people sign up is because that is a true gap in the entrepreneurship ecosystem, even for nonprofits.
[00:19:57] Many nonprofits in the entrepreneurship ecosystem serve entrepreneurs who are more established. So they, especially if you're a lender or a C D F I a microfinance organization in the entrepreneurship space, and you're a nonprofit, you're still looking for an entrepreneur who's had one or two years of business operations.
[00:20:17] . But there's a massive gap for earliest stage entrepreneurs who don't have friends and family with money and who don't have savings, right? We know over half of America only has $700 in savings. The we call our fund, our grant fund, the Friends and Family Fund, to recognize this gap that exists for founders who don't have friends and family with money, because that's how privileged entrepreneurs get their first money.
[00:20:42] They get it from friends and family. And if the business doesn't work out their friends and family aren't taking them to court and suing them they're just saying, Okay, we're gonna let it go. Yeah. Took a flyer and that's what happened. Yeah. So all of this ties into the, this kind of the why.
[00:20:59] Why does your work matter? Why is, and why are you filling a need that others aren't? And what are you doing about it that's more efficient, better, faster, cheaper? All of those value propositions matter for corporates and particularly we, the employee engagement angle is an aspect, is an important part of why corporates partner with us.
[00:21:17] Gotcha. Now that you
[00:21:20] have passed 50,000, it sounds like signups and entrepreneurs. I have to say that
[00:21:24] the resources are pretty
[00:21:27] broad and impressive. You have on the site accounting, building a team, business planning, legal leadership, funding, operations, Like it just goes on and on for the really, like how we go from zero to one for these entrepreneurs.
[00:21:42] Can you tell me, moving back to the tech you've.
[00:21:45] How the app and maybe even the website gets
[00:21:49] that entrepreneur from zero to one. And I think a
[00:21:53] very tricky part, how you create
[00:21:56] the right connections between mentors and these entrepreneurs.
[00:22:02] Yeah. Absolutely. And we are, we're still, even, five years into building the platform, we're still we're still iterating, right?
[00:22:09] Like we have we can always be better, in my opinion. And we're still trying to solve what is fundamentally a matchmaking problem, right? As you pointed out. The. Entrepreneurs and volunteers create profiles on the platform, right? And we ask a lot of things about you about what you're looking for.
[00:22:28] And then we use that data. To recommend matches for you, but we also recognize that many people, we take a lot of inspiration from dating apps. The major difference from for us is, of course, these are platonic relationships, professional relationships and on a dating app, you don't really need to explain what, what dating.
[00:22:50] To people come in with a clear preconception around around dating and finding a partner, et cetera. And maybe people have different preferences except within that ecosystem. But when you talking about mentoring, it is a, you ask 10 people what mentoring means and you'll get 10 different answers.
[00:23:09] And and really what the kinds of interactions that we're facilitating between entrepreneurs and supporters more broadly. It's, it's between entrepreneurs as peers, Between people who, who may be an accountant really good at accounting, but not interested or able to support in any other area.
[00:23:27] Or you've got, small business owners or general entrepreneurs who've been on the whole journey and understand this. Then you got people who have an hour and you got people who are looking for. A long term relationship. And some people are looking for, shorter term engagements both on the entrepreneur side and the sporter side.
[00:23:44] So there's so there's just really a a ton of nuance and a ton of different types of engagements. Everything from pro bono offering, so that accountant, maybe they'll help you set up your, their, your QuickBooks for your business. That's nice, but maybe they also.
[00:24:01] Want to give you some general pointers around around. Accounting and how to think about managing your money, how to track your money, but you're not formally structuring saying
[00:24:09] Hey, if you talk to this person about accounting, you have to go jump into their, QuickBooks
[00:24:13] and go grind this out, or build their website for them.
[00:24:16] Yeah. One of our principles is that we want to mimic the way humans develop relationships in the real world. Through the platforms. So there isn't a lot of like constraints or rules or if I, I met you George through LinkedIn. Great. Cool. We hashed out what it was.
[00:24:35] Why are we talking, what is it about this, There are no, no rules about what kind of messages you can and can't send. Sure. There's common decency and we certainly have policies around building a healthy community. But beyond that, it's not to say that, if I'm an accountant that I am or if I'm an entrepreneur looking for accounting support do I even want to set up QuickBooks?
[00:24:55] I, Yeah. What do I want? It's so matchmaking between the nuance and what happens if you're as a first time entrepreneur. There's all these things that you're constantly learning about what you need, and your priorities are constantly shift, shifting as you figure out what it is.
[00:25:10] It's a very messy process, building a business, right? And there's a in 98, 9% of our founders are solo. So what are you doing when you're on your own, you have to do it all. You're all your. So again, the community aspect becomes really important, but the matchmaking problem is a really difficult one to solve, and that's what we've been really working on, is helping people meet each other where they're at and supporting them in in building meaningful relationships, whatever that means for an entrepreneur supporter at any given time in there.
[00:25:42] Is it all one to one or is it one to. Yeah it's primarily one to one. Wow. So entre each re each relationship is treated on an individual basis. So if I'm an entrepreneur platform, I can have I can reach out and build an entire advisory board. I can have, 10 different people.
[00:25:59] Doing that. So in that sense, it's one to many. And a volunteer can match with multiple entrepreneurs across many different areas. Now, am I actually
[00:26:07] swiping right and swiping left on people, or have you dialed
[00:26:09] back the dating to that point? Not yet. That's certainly on our minds.
[00:26:14] Oh guys. But yeah, the question is like how do we help you find what you're looking for in the community? At any given moment because it's changing rapidly, particularly for the entrepreneur about what their needs are. And how do we help you do that in a way that's engaging, gamified et cetera.
[00:26:31] What we've done is. We've built a gamification system into the platform so that the entrepreneurs and supporters who are creating the most value in the community as measured by, spending time together, achieving measurable results for co, for the entrepreneurs in their businesses.
[00:26:46] Which we call milestones. So cheating a business milestone. Everything from naming your business to getting your first business bank account up, all the way to getting your first customer, raising money, hiring employees, All of these are common business milestones. So we track those in the platform and the community members who are.
[00:27:04] Who are creating the most value are getting the most points. And those points aren't just for show. They actually govern our grant program. Entrepreneurs can create pitches on the platform and then the community votes on who wins those pitches. So your points are your votes. And so that's a way for us to, Oh,
[00:27:23] Yeah,
[00:27:24] so there that the interaction, but the points aren't just there for smiles and dials, like it's there
[00:27:28] for actual.
[00:27:29] Cache in the community. That's right. Yeah. And you vote for yourself or only for other people? Sure. You can vote for your, your points go to your vote, your votes if you have a funding pitch. But you can also use 'em on other people if you'd like. If you're a volunteer, you don't have a funding pitch, so you're you're voting.
[00:27:44] If you're an entrepreneur, maybe you aren't ready for funding yet or you haven't created the pitch. So sure, you can use yours however you like. The. But the point is that, this governs hundreds of thousands of dollars that we've given away through community voting.
[00:27:56] It's real money on the line and and we're always working to increase the size of that fund. And we've got a couple of, and I assume you don't
[00:28:03] take any, so it's not like a Y Combinator where you're like, All right, we get 10 points of your company going forward.
[00:28:09] It's just no equity. It's a pure grant.
[00:28:11] It is not repayable. It is as free money as it gets. Yep. And we're working on a couple experiments around this. The, blockchain technology is a really interesting potential use case here. Cuz essentially what we're building is a Dow a decentralized, autonomous organization that is governed by a, a token.
[00:28:32] And in, in this case it's on our platform. But we're we. In the process of building a pilot dow that will, potentially transform our community to be able to be governed by a, an actual blockchain based token that is immutable and and will have real control over the disbursement of these funds.
[00:28:51] And it'll all be on chain and and auditable and verifi. And really empower the community to feel a sense of deep ownership over, over sky's limit. And eventually we have plans in the future to turn over the entire sky's the limit organization. To the Dow. Everything from governing, what features get built to who the staff, the everything, and certainly the governance of the fund itself and where those funds go.
[00:29:21] But I think that's a long ways off still, but it's certainly yeah sky coin to the. Yeah, certainly something that we're we've been thinking about and already testing without blockchain technology right now. But but yeah, that's the community is at the hardest.
[00:29:34] Sky's the limit. And we believe that the people closest to the problems that they're trying to solve are. Suited to solve those problems. And we really do want our community to, can take an ever greater voice in in what we do and how we serve two-sided
[00:29:50] marketplaces
[00:29:51] are absolutely the scariest,
[00:29:53] the hardest, the most difficult to get going as a flywheel.
[00:29:56] Right now I'm curious, do you need more entrepreneurs or do
[00:30:00] you need more volunteers? I need you, George, on the, I'm somebody who gets that, that problem. It absolutely is a big one. We have we manage a bit of the kind of the two-sided demand dynamics here. We often, we have many more entrepreneurs signing up than we do volunteers, but we do offer peer matching and.
[00:30:20] That is a one way in which we think about balancing out the Demand from the community for meetings, for support. We're also working on other ways to engage beyond just just meeting. We're buildings, we're thinking about and cons and designing right now, some asynchronous.
[00:30:38] Opportunities for supporting an entrepreneur. Everything. Think about get, getting feedback on your business plan from the community would, could be really helpful and valuable. And get in writings. You don't have to, wait and book a meeting. But using that as a one of, one of the problems we've noticed is that.
[00:30:56] Maybe if you're joining a dating app, you're looking for dates, you're ready to go on the date when you joined. So it's not gonna hold you back from messaging people. But we found that so many people need to understand what the, they need to go on their own journey to, to saying, Okay, I'm ready to talk about something.
[00:31:13] The vetting and the prepping.
[00:31:15] You don't wanna put somebody who's I don't know what a, what is a business? And you're like maybe you're not ready for a mentor.
[00:31:20] Maybe, or maybe you are. And maybe the question, this comes back to the matchmaking problem. How do you get, how do you get the right person at the right time in your journey as an entrepreneur?
[00:31:31] And same thing on the volunteer side, right? Because it's, it, there's a lot of imposter syndrome from volunteers. It's never, I still, I
[00:31:39] wanna be very clear. I don't know what I am. I have no
[00:31:42] idea. It's one problem at time. And that's the thing, right? And that if only more people just were like, okay with that, that we're all kind of making this up as we go along.
[00:31:51] And if that was a more broadly met that was more broadly known message. We'd have, I think a much more open and ready to jump in kind of mentality between with communities. So doing this digital community piece is a tough problem to solve, but the.
[00:32:08] Reward when we crack the crack. The code on this is tremendous. It's imagine unlocking the social capital, the talents of the Fortune 500 and beyond. And really and unlocking the talents of all these entrepreneurs. Who are starting businesses across the country across the world who aren't getting the support they ha they need from their own community or from or online.
[00:32:32] And we can truly I think create a valuable experience for both entrepreneurs and supporters that could change the world. Spinning up a bunch of
[00:32:41] economic engines from the people. Potentially needed the most are in the communities that are, have the greatest opportunity, I'd say to benefit from creating actual companies.
[00:32:52] It's not, the idea of a handout. It's this idea of training as a great opportunity. And the exciting part about this type of model, and I'm wondering if this is actually bearing to be true, is that after, I imagine over a decade of. Do you find that there are people that came in as entrepreneurs coming back as mentors?
[00:33:12] Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We see that all the time. And part of the peer matching is, Hey, I'm an entrepreneur with the same kind of problems you're trying to solve, and neither of us have a solution, but let's figure it out together. That's a, an absolutely can be an absolutely powerful relationship.
[00:33:30] It, or it could be an entrepreneur who's Hey, I joined Sky's Limit with just an idea, and now I've got, a couple hundred grand in revenue and a team and working on product market fit and found it to some degree. And now I can come back and or not come back.
[00:33:45] I never left. I'm just can I help unshare some ideas along the way? Absolutely. So that's the. The reality is that our our system is broken right now. And so I think it's a tough thing to try to build a new system because what we're doing is too incremental.
[00:34:04] Like we have the same problems and some of the problems are getting worse in our society from a socioeconomic equity lens. And. We need something that is that is going to transform the reality around where opportunity exists because the talent is certainly everywhere.
[00:34:23] And I think the. The way in which we do that is by reducing the friction from people who care to and from reducing the friction for entrepreneurs to get support to get community, to get to have a thought partner. And it doesn't have to be a, a Fortune 500 volunteer. It doesn't have to be a, another small business owner who's, been there, done that.
[00:34:45] It can be. 24 year old who's, in the same place as you and you can work with them in, in building your business together. Yeah. To
[00:34:54] even find co-founders. It sounds like there's a lot of opportunity once you get everybody in the room. Absolutely. But I'm gonna pin you down tomorrow. If 10 new volunteers or entrepreneurs showed up, which would be the
[00:35:06] one you would say you needed more?
[00:35:08] 10 new volunteers. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Maybe this
[00:35:12] is a good transition into our rapid firearm pinning you down. Please keep your responses to about 30 seconds, respond as needed. And if you're ready, here we go. What is one tech tool or website that you or your organization has started using in the
[00:35:28] last year?
[00:35:29] We just started using Century for error log monitoring on the platform. What are some tech issues you're
[00:35:35] currently battling with?
[00:35:38] We are currently battling with wrapping up our web app and deploying it to the iOS and Android store. What is coming
[00:35:47] in the next year that has you the
[00:35:48] most excited?
[00:35:51] I think a big overhaul of our user experience design is is what I'm most excited for. And then the and having that be the impetus for the launch of our iOS and Android app in 2023. Can you talk about a mistake that
[00:36:06] you made earlier in your career that shapes the way you do things?
[00:36:09] Ooh, there's too many to choose from Doing too much, right? Startups often die from indigestion instead of starvation. That's not always true financially, but it can be from like an op standpoint. Like where do you spend your time as an entrepreneur in the earliest days? And how do you how do you balance it all?
[00:36:27] Because it's too much. And brutally prioritizing is is a skill that is That I've learned the hard way of how important it is. You believe that
[00:36:37] non-profits
[00:36:38] can successfully go out of business. Yeah, and I think they should aspire to. I wish that we had more going out of business though.
[00:36:46] Cuz I, we don't see a lot of non-profits, fully achieving these kind of persistent societal. Problems that they're what we're working to solve.
[00:36:57] Fair to put you in the hot tub Time machine. Send you back to the founding of Styles Limit. What advice
[00:37:03] would you give yourself?
[00:37:04] Just focus on people of finding people who, who care about the mission and care about the work and and don't let the people who don't get you down.
[00:37:14] What is something that you think your organization should stop doing?
[00:37:19] Lot of things. This is back to my earlier point around indigestion killing startups. I think we have got to stay focused on the matchmaking problem that we're trying to solve between community members and I think that anything that isn't trying to solve that needs to be deprioritized or to give you a magic wand to wave
[00:37:41] across the social impact
[00:37:42] sector, what would it.
[00:37:44] Oh man. I think that I would I, I would. Just find a way to, to build trust more between between the entire sector. If I could wave a magic wand trust building is difficult and it's hard. And we face it in tr in our community, right? Trying to build trust between members of our community.
[00:38:07] But when there is that trust, it's tremendous things can happen. And and I think that I would certainly wave my wand over the kind of philanthropic funder place and say, examine what you're doing as a funder to encourage or not trust in the nonprofit sector. What advice
[00:38:28] would you give college grads currently looking to enter the social
[00:38:31] impact?
[00:38:32] Focus on creating value for who you're serving. I think Richard Branson has a quote that it's like he, something along the lines of the. The only mission worth pursuing in business is creating value for people in people's lives. I don't think that's any different of the mission for the social sector, right?
[00:38:52] Like it is ultimately rooted in creating value for the people you're serving. And I would make sure that. Staying anchored to that and measuring that. And and listening to the people you're serving,
[00:39:05] what advice did your parents give you that you either followed or
[00:39:08] didn't follow?
[00:39:09] One of the big business lessons at the table is don't spend more than you have. And it's, and it, I know it sounds so simple, but man how many businesses have gone out spending more than they have? And same thing for, non-profits. That's all right. Final hardball here.
[00:39:26] How
[00:39:26] do people find you?
[00:39:27] How do people.
[00:39:29] If you're an entrepreneur we're here for you. You can sign up on skys limit.org. Everything's free. If you are a professional or a business owner and And you care about this work. And then you can either both and sign up as a volunteer on skys.org. And you can fund us and you can, and do both of those from our website at skys limit.org.
[00:39:55] Both. Thank you for your work.
[00:39:57] I love what you're building. I love that you have a bigger vision of what's possible and we appreciate
[00:00:00] This week on the nonprofit News Feed for November 28th. This week we, uh, we have our big day, the day of the Tuesday of Giving, giving Tuesday. We're excited to talk about this and what's going on. Nick, hope you had a great Thanksgiving and enjoyed family time. I know you had a massive amount of, uh, of humans eating Turkey.
[00:00:26] We had a massive amount of humans eating Turkey. Multiple turkeys I should say, but it was super fun and happy giving Tuesday. George, I sorry I didn't get you anything. Um, but what I do have for you is some predictions. Uh, we are starting out with our 2022 Giving Tuesday predictions, and we're going with the headline.
[00:00:51] Search is down, hope is up. We're seeing some. Conflicting factors. So Whole Whale, which is US , we write the nonprofit newsfeed, whole letter, uh, newsletter. And we as in you predict a record setting $3.2 billion to be donated for giving Tuesday this year. And our prediction is the result of an analysis based on an adjusted linear regression.
[00:01:17] But we also take a peak at things like Google Search terms around giving Tuesday and broader. Giving trends. So using this method, we have officially predicted an 18% or 500 million increase over 2020 ones total amount raised. So this is an optimistic prediction, but there are several negative indicators, uh, that could potentially, uh, be pushing down this increase in including headlines regarding, uh, inflation and economic pains.
[00:01:53] We just came off an election cycle. Maybe folks are tired of giving, um, and we're potentially returning to kind of a post pandemic social engagement. That being said, we're seeing online shopping trends from Black Friday set new records. So it seems that even though we're all talking about the economy, the consumer, uh, sector, particularly on Black Friday did real well.
[00:02:21] So, George, what's, what do you make of this as the, the, the predictor himself? The, the Chief Guesser and Chief Waer? Yeah. I am excited. 10 years of giving Tuesday. I mean, this is the 10 year anniversary, uh, of how it's come up and, you know, it is pretty steadily in terms of donations, uh, increased at a, at a decent clip.
[00:02:45] One of the things though that I am seeing, and this is tough cause there's some lagging search data when I'm pulling it up, but right now, um, it, it is, it, it's trending behind. Um, Uh, call it 10 to 20%. It's hard to pin it down exactly year over year, but it is certainly not exceeding previous years of giving Tuesday.
[00:03:09] And if you look at this trend for the past five years of, uh, giving Tuesday in search, why I care about it is that I'm hoping that it becomes a regular recognized holiday on par. The other major players, you know, Halloween of, you know, black Friday, of things that you will see in terms of increasing search.
[00:03:33] And, and frankly, over the past five years, it has been, um, it's peak, it's peak in terms of search related trends and, uh, questions in the United States being asked and has decreased. And this is seemingly continued into, into this year. And. One of the things that you need to happen for a holiday is continued awareness.
[00:03:58] And part of that awareness, and this is a proxy, but part of that awareness is the number of people putting in related queries to, to giving Tuesday in and around the holiday. And, you know, hopefully this isn't, uh, fatigue setting in, but we'll see it, um, we'll see the results in terms of, of dollars and maybe, uh, maybe it's just one of those.
[00:04:20] That finds, uh, finds its level of awareness, but a different level of giving. So I'm, I'm still optimistic about the giving cuz as you mentioned, people are, are still spending despite threats of recession, uh, looming overhead. And hopefully that continues. And, you know, we, we've been telling people to check their, check, their real time analytics to pay attention to look.
[00:04:42] I think it's an important time also, as you are looking and reviewing, like, okay, how did it go? How's our donation form? Like this is the kickoff to giving season, but also this is the last year. This is the last year that your current universal Google Analytics will work. We'll show you conversions. We'll show you where donors are going.
[00:05:05] This is it. This is the last December you. With the old version of Google Analytics. So just for funsies, take a look if you haven't already at GA four, Google Analytics four. It's the upgrade that Google is forcing all clients to move onto. Mid next year, in July of 2023, take a look at what it looks like in terms of your donation tracking and flow, because that's what you're gonna have this time next year.
[00:05:35] I mean, this won't be the last time I talk about it, but this is your last season, so this is a good time to be taking notes of what you, uh, what you may need to plan for next to your next season. But right now, pay attention, make sure donation forms are working and doing your best with your email messaging.
[00:05:52] Get people in the door.
[00:05:55] Yeah, George, those are great points. We'll wait to see the final numbers, but if you're listening to this today, make sure you check your forms and something we say at Whole Whale is always remember to thank your donors as well. Um, and if you follow the newsfeed, you can see some links to some best practices around fundraising, thanking your donors and all that good.
[00:06:17] Right. I can take us into the summary now. And this is an article from Non-Profit Technology. Uh, news was reposting from, uh, KOMO News, KOMO news uh.com, which talks about. In Seattle, Washington, um, a Seattle based nonprofit called Housing Connector has part partnered with a local technology firm, Zillow, which I'm sure you've heard of, to help more than 3,700 people.
[00:06:48] Homeless people move into affordable housing, and this was over the past three years and. I'm gonna guess, George, that we put this in here because we love a good public private partnership. It seems here that housing connector had a system for seamlessly connecting landlords to qualified homeless tenants eased the friction in that process.
[00:07:15] Of course, with anything administrative. Um, it, it's really significantly harder for folks experiencing homelessness. And in addition, uh, with assistance from Zillow, we're able to get homeless folks into housing. Um, cuz we are experiencing a housing crisis in these United States. So this is just a real cool example of tech and public private partnerships creating real results, at least in Seattle, was.
[00:07:44] This is exactly right. Their, their housing connector. They're talking about the efficiency that it gives case managers at the tip of their fingers, like the alternative here. The alternative here is that, Communities, municipalities pony up for incredibly expensive databases to manage and and maintain really cuz you need live data.
[00:08:08] And the truth is, the public market has already created this. They're paying for it. Zillow's doing just fine because of their knowledge of, uh, real estate networks. And this is the a type of partnership that creates efficiencies and really, Focuses resources on affordable housing, which if you pull the thread on so many societal ills in the United States, so many of them, that thread leads right back to affordable housing in areas that have access to resources, solve that.
[00:08:44] Um, and so I love seeing Zillow being a part of this and hope other. Other districts to take a look at this, uh, this housing connector versus, you know, the question of like, wait a minute, we have to build everything internally and go this, um, go this other route. So, uh, yep. I like highly and stuff like this.
[00:09:05] Yeah, I absolutely agree. It's a, a cool story. We hope more of this happens.
[00:09:10] The moment you've been waiting for George. Our next story is from Market Watch, and the title of this story is Charities funded by Sam Bankman, freed of the infamous FTX fame, has been asked to return donations to nonprofits that Ft X's fund had given money to. So the background on this is Fdx is a cryptocurrency exchange created.
[00:09:37] Sam Bankman Freed and the whole system collapsed a couple weeks ago in. What was a liquidity crisis that essentially created a digital bank run. And it's much, much more complicated than that. But anyway, uh, this exchange collapsed, but its founder was a very public proponent of the effective altruism movement, um, potentially to.
[00:10:03] Market himself and, uh, divert attention away from other potentially illegal, if not, uh, morally questionable actions. Um, but anyway, the funds that the foundation has given to nonprofits, um, there's a potential that in an effort to repay, um, folks who have debt in, in ftx, there might actually be clawbacks essentially.
[00:10:29] Uh, Through the, the process nonprofits might have to give some of the funds that they got donated back to the foundation, um, which is devastating to these nonprofits. And it seems that a, a couple of people might be stepping up to kind of, you know, provide cover for these non-profits, so it doesn't happen.
[00:10:50] Um, but, but Jordan, I mean, this is, this is terrible. And, uh, I have, I have more thoughts, but I wanna, I wanna get your thoughts on this. Well, this is just, you know, watching one, one shoe drop after another in terms of the, the level of fraud, which frankly is not the first time we have seen in crypto, or frankly in financial markets in general.
[00:11:17] You don't need to have that long a memory to realize that yes, this was in the level of a 16 billion fraud, but there was a level of 60 plus billion by Bernie Madoff also. A very well known philanthropist and clawbacks actually happened in that case as well. Which is just an important note to, to nonprofits receiving some of these donations, which is just brutal for them.
[00:11:42] You know, you're making plans, you're hiring, you're saying, Hey, finally this capital plan strategically done is gonna happen. And suddenly you're, you're now dealing with, uh, potential, you know, pullback of funds and that, you know, over a hundred nonprofits, I believe in the days of Bernie Madoff and that crash, uh, received such clawback notices.
[00:12:04] And so coming back to this character, Sam Bangin Fried, uh, the damage is, is still being calculated. Um, and, and albeit less money, there was his deep, deep connection and association with the effect of altruism movement. And there is some soul searching that needs to be done. And part of that is that when people.
[00:12:30] Make pledges, especially those that are in the public spotlight, that are seeking investment, that are seeking to build and effectively pay for a, a moral cause. Washing a official stamp from media and investors alike, that I am one of the good guys. I am one of the people out there making positive change.
[00:12:52] You can trust me with your funds, which by the way, he was gambling. Overtly with customer funds. That's not a legend. They can see that now. Um, and this was clearly paying the price to, in the same way he, he bought a stadium rights right in Miami, the Fdx arena. He was buying the movement of effective altruism to burnish his reputation.
[00:13:18] And now even beyond. You know, the, the call of effective altruism is using data and research and logic and making the best possible decision to solve the causes you care about. It's aligned with a bit of utilitarian thinking that even if I do, uh, morally corrupt jobs, questionable, and this is coming directly paraphrased from a.
[00:13:44] In a paper written by one of the main philosophers behind, um, McCaskill, William McCaskill, one of his papers, talks about taking morally questionable jobs because somebody else will do it anyway, as long as you promised to make large donations in line with effective giving effective altruism. This is a very tough moral justification.
[00:14:12] To play, especially when you play it at scale. And the fact that teacher pension funds were actually somehow rolled up in this as well and now are, are left empty. Um, all for the, the grand total of pledges that Sam Bankman free made. Yes, there was some money made, uh, and donated, but that money is now even being clawed back.
[00:14:35] I want to say it as many times as as possible, but when you. A millionaire billionaire making a pledge. It's called pr. They're making pr. They're not making donation. They're not changing society. They're making pr, public relations. I want to look good for something I haven't done. I think everyone's red flags.
[00:15:00] Red cards tie in some World Cup should be high, high. When we see pledges, they're worth the paper they're written on and maybe even less. It's frustrating. It's frustrating. Uh, net net, this is not going to end crypto philanthropy in the same way that Bernie Madoff to end family foundations and, and fiat giving.
[00:15:29] Um, this is not gonna end effective altruism, though. It's gonna push for some soul searching and, um, A lot, a lot more questions about, well, how morally bankrupt can I be and still make that tithing at the end.
[00:15:45] The church did this a while back. Look up the history of tithing. It's quite interesting. It doesn't go well. Alrighty.
[00:15:55] I mean, more ran ranum, but uh, you know, it's. It's good to, to turn around and look at the power of, you know, billionaires in philanthropy, um, and the detriment, um, that can, uh, can be cost. Yeah. George, I, I really appreciated that. For our listeners, maybe they're just this year they've started experimenting with crypto donations.
[00:16:21] Maybe they have a way to donate, uh, cryptocurrency to your organization. I think this situation has led to a crisis of trust coming from a lot of different directions. If you are a small made or large size nonprofit, how do you instill trust for people who follow this and maybe a little jaded by the whole thing?
[00:16:49] How do you as a nonprofit communicate trust?
[00:16:52] So you're saying for like, if you're accepting crypto philanthropy, crypto donations through your site, there may be questions of how, you know, like this is all a fraud, right? This is the, the top line banners one. You know, remember that roughly 40% of millennials actually have and own cryptocurrency. , um, and are able to, to sort of use it and, and I would say some of those parallels to, just because Enron existed doesn't mean that the entire equity market was a sham, that you shouldn't accept stock donations.
[00:17:27] The truth is when you accept crypto, uh, it is, if you're used at least the giving block, full disclosure, whole. Um, manage that manages with them as a client. They're a client of ours. Uh, but once that donation is made, it is immediately liquidated. So I don't care if you are getting some sort of animal coin or a Bitcoin or Ethereum, whatever it may be, once it hits that donation form, it is processed into fiat Hold onto your dollars type of things.
[00:17:58] One of the questions, however, is, as with any other donation, is that if it was I begotten and it is of high, It there could be suspect to clawbacks if there are legal proceedings. So maybe that is actually one, maybe large takeaway that when you receive a large donation, um, don't, aren't counting those chickens, um, just yet and making sure that that is money you can hold onto.
[00:18:23] But, uh, I would say keep going and it is, um, it is a minor setback and if you really parse into it, you're like, oh, I. Crypto was all on the blockchain and it was all transparent. How, how could this level of fraud be is, is because this was a classic Ponzi scheme of centralized control over these assets.
[00:18:46] There are abilities on the blockchain to have your own wallet the same way that you have a wallet in your pocket with $20 in it, and you're like, as long as I hold this, as soon as you hand that over. To a Lehman Brothers and they start leveraging the heck out of it. And you're like, I know I can get my $20 whenever I want.
[00:19:06] That's where the centralized trust comes in. And this particular company was based in The Bahamas with no regulation, oversight, financial responsibility, board members, or, um, frankly, asset back checks involved at all. And so when that happens, that's, you know, that's just human. Error that is, uh, human fallibility.
[00:19:29] It's hard to say, like, alright, you don't give that diri to anybody asking, but I I'm hoping that this isn't a knee jerk reaction of like, oh, we gotta pull our crypto off because it is all a scam. It's like, it is not, scams get perpetrated on top of it as, as they do with every other financial market. And this will set probably, uh, the crypto space back.
[00:19:51] Um, they're saying, you know, a year or so, um, as there's ripple on effects. But, um, the underlying my confidence in underlying technology, uh, remains and people are still building on it. George, I think that's a great synthesis of all the different kind of threads that nonprofits should be considering, and I'm sure we'll talk more about this in the next couple weeks, months.
[00:20:13] Um, as we do follow the crypto philanthropy space, I should say, we've got a, a webinar coming up with care two, um, I don't know when you're listening to this, but on. I should know it off the top of my head. December. I'm gonna say first December 1st. So check out, uh, that webinar. It's uh, hopewell.com. Um, you can find it on our webinars section there.
[00:20:36] That is an awesome reminder. You get to listen to us live, not me. Um, but you , you. I don't wanna do that. You do that. . Well, George speaking. Uh, wealthy philanthropists. Um, we wanted to highlight, uh, someone who is skeptical of them. Uh, our next article, um, comes from npr and the title is Pablo Eisenberg, A Fierce Critic of Nonprofits and Philanthropy.
[00:21:11] Critical out of fierce love, I guess you can say. Um, has died at age 90. Um, so Eisenberg, who was someone I didn't know until I read this article. Um, Is a professor, nonprofit leader, a social justice advocate, just really, really cares about, um, issues of equity and justice, and apparently was somewhat famous for kind of sticking it to the stayed old, outdated.
[00:21:43] Um, however he perceived it kind of traditional philanthropy space. Um, it says here, chastising prosperous donors for giving disproportionately to Ivy League schools, rich hospitals, and well endowed museums all while getting tax breaks. Um, so it seems like kind of a, I don't know, sticking out for the, the little guy in the, the philanthropy space, but seems like a titan nonetheless, within the, the philanthropy.
[00:22:10] Yeah, I mean, I put this in here also, uh, because I think you know this as an outspoken critic. Um, you know, often said of mega billionaires out there, um, that pledged, there's that word pledged, red card pledged to donate the majority of their wealth. Uh, were not spirit desire. He, uh, he criticized them for not giving away more of their fortune immediately.
[00:22:35] If you have it, give it away. Do the work, do the work now, and gets even more frustrated watching these towering offices be, be built, um, around giving away this money as opposed to doing the work. Uh, so I do, here's what I would say. I, I do believe when you're giving away that level of wealth, you must probably be very careful, um, about giving it away in ruinous ways.
[00:23:00] Um, I, I like the sentiment in there.
[00:23:02] I like it too. I think this guy deserves a movie. . I'd watch that movie. I don't know how many other people full would, it was a little niche, but I'd watch that movie. Uh, maybe Netflix. Netflix is at a documentary budget for that, for sure. All right. How about feel Good story? George, what have we got? This one comes from Ktv Q.
[00:23:24] Dot com and it is about an organization called Adult and Teen Challenge, which is a faith-based recovery program for men and women that suffer from addiction. And they are selling live Christmas trees to raise money for program costs, to help teens and other young adults experiencing addiction and needing recovery.
[00:23:46] And we do like a good seasonal article, and I don't know what says. Seasonal fundraising, um, like a Christmas tree sale, nothing. Not to like here. Yeah, it's, it's great. And I also love these earned, uh, earned models, um, that usually can be program related, but certainly around the season when people are buying you, if you have the ability to, to match a program to something that can be purchased is a way for you to generate some earned revenue, which can be put to good causes.
[00:24:20] It's great. All right. Got a, got a question for you. Oh boy. Yep. What should an unwell non-profit Twitter campaign do? An unwell non-profit. Just not, well, not feeling great, not feeling great Twitter campaign. Oh man. What did they do Nick? They should, uh, get treatment. Oh my. Oh, oh my. Look, they've made it to the end of this podcast.
[00:24:48] They deserve that. All right, have a good one. Happy given Tuesday. Happy Giving Tuesday.
[00:00:00] This week on the nonprofit news feed, well we're talking about a little thing called the World Cup and unfortunately, how it is mired in a number of issues of human rights and corruptions, so we'll get to that in just a bit. I'm back from Hawaii, uh, on a trip with my family. It was fun. Lot of sand everywhere.
[00:00:49] Kids love the beach. Uh, but it's, it's, uh, much appreciated. Nick, that you and Matt handled last week, I, uh, I was a little jealous. I did wanna share a few words on the FTX collapse, but we'll, we'll get to that in the future. Something tells me those dominoes are not done falling. Yeah. George, I'm sure, I'm sure that story will be making a comeback as we talk about crypto philanthropy and the fallout from that.
[00:01:16] To your point this week we wanted to talk about QAR and the 2022 FIFA World Cup. So the World Cup began this weekend in Qatar in a climate marred by, let's say, years of controversy related to human rights issues, corruption in. FIFA and influence paddling across the board. So this is the first time that the World Cup is being held in a Arab country, but Qatar's bid was considered just a remote possibility until it somehow shockingly won the bid back in 2010.
[00:01:55] And fifa, the international governing body of football. Is widely considered to be one of the most openly corrupt institutions in sports, uh, accusations of bribery up and down the whole chain. It's essentially assumed Qatar bought this bid. Um, but now this is coming full circle because since the bid was awarded to guitar, the country has consistently faced criticism for pretty egregious labor rights abuses.
[00:02:26] Uh, human rights issues, uh, workers working in extreme and deplorable conditions on the massive construction projects. And now that the World Cup itself is underway, a focus not only on the labor issues, but of just human rights issues more broadly in the country related to women's rights, um, LGBTQ plus rights, and the country's facing.
[00:02:51] Criticism from international NGOs calling for accountability and the whole thing's kind of a mess. But it's a complex situation. So, George, what, what are your thoughts on this one? This brought to you by the public service announcement that not all nonprofits are good. And I'll remind that FIFA actually is a, is a nonprofit, uh, that, that is running this.
[00:03:19] And I think, you know, you mentioned that you wrote a paper about this when you were in college back in 2010, about the human rights abuses, the, you know, the modern day misuse of labor there. Estimated deaths, which can't be accounted for. But Amnesty International and I have seen others quote in the, uh, 6,000 or more potentially that have actually just died, you know, issues of taking someone's passport once they come in and forcing them to work.
[00:03:49] Uh, you know, that it's, uh, it's an unfortunate thing to be happening in, you know, this age of , this agent of like modern globalization. When you bring the Globe's spotlight in, I think we have to be careful also about pushing Western ideals on other cultures. It's hard, you have to balance this like absolutism that we have the perfect moral compass here.
[00:04:21] So, you know, put a pin in that perfect moral compass here, baked in our western ideologies of, of, of rights and equality, and you really have to. It's hard to remove that because I do think there's some objective truth to like allowing certain freedoms of frankly, people to love each other, uh, to have providence over their own bodies.
[00:04:47] Uh, I, I, I want to believe in something like that, but also you just have to note when you're, when you're speaking with that, you know, absolutism to just be careful. The fact that they're, they're doing this. They couldn't even have it in the, the summer. They had to have it in November because it's not a climate that, uh, accommodates life in the summer.
[00:05:10] Like, no joke, 120 degrees. Like you can't take a ball in that temperature. I think the ball just sort of evaporates. It makes no ecological sense whatsoever, uh, to have done this and made this level of investment. And I really hope a touch more. Frankly, discretion and intelligence of just because they can pay doesn't mean we should do it this way from fifa, frankly from the Olympics, from these large institution, large institutions that, you know, do pull the world together.
[00:05:43] I, I think there's something very beautiful about the World Cup and I, and I hope it doesn't get lost because yes we can, we can focus here, but the truth is 5 billion people are most likely going to watch. 5 billion people are going to agree that one team beat another team. Do you know how hard it is to get 5 billion people to agree on a thing, to watch the same thing?
[00:06:07] There's just, I think, something beautiful about this, that despite all of this and the sports washing involved, like it is, uh, it is something that I'm glad everyone is still participating in and, and not simply boycotting because it's. It's easier to destroy than to create. It's harder to, frankly, some of these captains wanted to wear arm bands in support of issues of LGBTQ and human rights.
[00:06:35] They wanted to take a stand. Some are kneeling, some are showing it, but they're still participating. I'm more nervous when we stop participating collectively. And so, you know, uh, that's, that's how I'm viewing these games. I'm gonna watch. And we'll, we'll watch the news and we'll see that. And, uh, it's hard for mold to grow in the sunlight and there's a lot of sunlight right now on guitar.
[00:07:02] Yeah, George, I couldn't agree more with that, that characterization. And I wanted to give a shout out to some of the, the nonprofits that have been doing, uh, really great reporting on this. And I've been flagging it very early. And as you alluded to, I wrote a paper on. Years ago in college because the issues were, were still salient then.
[00:07:24] But Amnesty International in particular has done really great research from the beginning on workers and yeah, it's, it's really challenging. Um, and, and really actually sad, I mean, workers are essentially being lured, uh, Poor workers from Asia into this country, they're having their visas confiscated.
[00:07:47] It's not a good situation. Um, but I think to your point, the World's Cup is an opportunity to shine light on these issues, right? And I do not think we should be giving Qatar Pass. But that being said, uh, the chance to come together, Is, is really important, especially in a time of division. So yeah, I agree with that.
[00:08:15] But let's just fire everyone at fifa. I have no . I Oh yeah, let's get of those. Let's cleans. Oh my gosh.
[00:08:23] I think, I think 5 billion of people could possibly agree to that, that it's, it's really funny to see an institution solo, but an event so, Yeah. Um, , if you, if you're really into this, like do a deep dive on the bid, it's like the most outrageous thing. There was like a plane of the US delegation that flew to wherever it was, like Finland, Sweden or something for the bid process.
[00:08:52] It was like, Mid-level State Department people, a couple of us soccer people, the United States activated Morgan Freeman took him on this plane, but it was clear like Morgan Freeman didn't prepare anything for this speech. It was like this like kind of incoherent jumble of like why the, it's the whole story's wild.
[00:09:12] If you're into it, just read about it. Uh, but, but anyway, we'll leave that.
[00:09:17] Uh, yeah. Moving into the summary, I'll, I'll jump through this quickly. Meta, formally known as Facebook, the artist , formally known as Facebook Me, is gonna spend, uh, 7 million to stoke reoccurring donations around Giving Tuesday. Which is great. We'll, hope you're all getting ready for your Giving Tuesday to, to make what you can of the kickoff to Giving season, not the end, but the kickoff to Giving season.
[00:09:41] We have a bunch of those resources. Hope you find them. And, uh, another one here. Uh, Nick, do you wanna talk about what Bezos is announcing? Yeah, George. So Jeff Bezos, uh, formerly CEO of Amazon is, has announced, was giving away most of his 122 billion fortune. Uh, but this article from cnbc.com says, leaves many questions unanswered.
[00:10:10] Uh, It says that Bezos, thus far has resisted developing a public philanthropic identity, unlike that of his ex-wife Mackenzie Scott. But I don't know what's your take here is, is, is Bezos having a, I don't know, a conscious time? Time to do. Good moment. What's this about? I'm gonna say the following phrase, and I'm excited because I'm gonna say it so many times that people are gonna be sick.
[00:10:40] And here it is. Pledges are pr. That's it. I'm gonna say that every single time I see that, those of you listening, every time you see something like this, every time you see a post like this, I just want it ring in your head. Pledges are just pr. Cause if you were doing it, we would see the check and we saw that with Sam Bankman.
[00:11:07] Getting all that ink across all those papers about how altruistic you was going to be in the future. Right about me now for things I haven't done. It's called P, so Bezos can shove it until we see a check. That's what I think.
[00:11:25] I agree. See? See it Hit the books then we'll. We'll talk again, uh, remains to be seen. He's got some, some rockets to fund as well. So yeah, God bless him. Get it done. All right. This next one comes from care.com out of, uh, Richfield, Minnesota, and this is actually a follow up on a story we've talked about, but, uh, there was a 250 million fraud investigation to Feeding Our Future, which has fractured trust and efforts to feed hungry children across Minnesota.
[00:12:02] Um, and it's really affecting, uh, this nonprofit and a time when it's, quote, quietly delivered 10 million meals to hungry kids and counting. So, Yikes. It seems that you just have a perfect storm of kind of bad scenarios. Here. You have 10 million meals to hungry kids. Uh, being that's a gap, like that's a gap in our safe, our social safety net, in my opinion that is being filled by this nonprofit.
[00:12:32] Also at the center of a quarter of a billion dollar fraud investigation. Yikes. It's sad to see. Hopefully it doesn't erode confidence in giving locally to food banks that you know are serving your area. The, the larger groups have have a trust gap to fill. I'd say the ones that are, you know, chapter based and working out there.
[00:12:57] The on the onus is on communication and transparency, but please don't let that hopefully be a barrier to giving locally, supporting, uh, supporting your. Food banks and nonprofits. We, we spoke and had that podcast recently with Move for Hunger when, you know, please go back and listen to that if you haven't.
[00:13:17] Uh, because I think Adam Lloyd does a top shelf job of explaining how the need is year round and there's ways to support that. Yeah, George. Absolutely. And this actually takes us into our next article for nonprofit pro.com, which says that on behalf of a poll conducted on behalf of Vanguard Charitable conducted by interviewing 2000 US adults.
[00:13:42] Uh, it found that 60% of American donors with a charit giving budget, say rising inflation had no impact on their giving or caused them to increase their giving over the past 12 months, the nearly 24% saying they increased their giving. So we were talking about how critical time this is. Food pantries and nonprofits like that.
[00:14:06] Um, but it seems that the, the giving public is aware of that need, not stopping, giving potentially increase in giving e even in light of inflation. The survey size is a little small, 2000 adults, but. I think that's really optimistic news that the public is still committed broadly to charitable giving despite, uh, what's now kind of record setting inflation.
[00:14:37] It's a positive signal, one that we hope is, uh, is accurate as far as polls go. Giving Tuesday coming up, we're predicting that over 3 billion will be donated, uh, in and around the day, and hopefully is a, is a strong end of. Giving cycle. You know, sadly, we might as well just root for the markets to go up because that is another predictor of, uh, of giving.
[00:15:00] You know, we're past midterms, so now, uh, it's time for nonprofits to get their narratives out there.
[00:15:06] Absolutely. All right. How about a feel good story, George? What do you got? All right. This comes from the venerable ks LTV five.com and Salt Lake City, Utah. And it's estimated that Americans will throw out more than 200 million pounds of perfectly good Turkey meat this year, uh, most of it after Thanksgiving.
[00:15:32] But this woman. Uh, Dana Williamson founded the nonprofit Waste Less Solutions, which tries to rescue unused food and donate it to community organizations that need it. And we talk about food waste a lot on this podcast. And there's a couple, quite a, a number of organizations working in this space now, but great to see, uh, local Utah resident, uh, bringing it close to home and helping out the communities in Salt Lake.
[00:16:02] Any, any percent or stats on what percent of those, uh, pounds of Turkey are actually dry because he definitely left it in the oven too long. No stats on that. Nothing there. No stats on that. We gotta call the the Butterball hotline. I love projects like this because food waste needs to be solved locally.
[00:16:21] It's a last mile problem. We have enough food, we don't have enough food in the right places. Um, going back to Adam Low conversation in our, in our previous podcast, to end on a lighter note and because he made it to the end. Hey Nick, I got a, a question for you. How, how do you organize a Giving Tuesday fundraiser to help the earth?
[00:16:42] I don't know. How does one organize such a thing? George, you plan it.
[00:16:51] That was good. That, that's, that's, that's your, that's your, that was good. The best one. All right. On that note, uh, leave a rating if you feel like it, if you feel like giving. Um, and we hope you have a wonderful holiday.
[00:02:00] Turns out people wanna do good. You just have to make it super easy. And in this case, we were bringing a food drive into people's living rooms. Uh, today we have trained more than 1100 professional moving companies across the US and Canada to make food recovery a core part of the way they do business.
[00:02:18] We've expanded from just movers to work with relocation management companies, temp housing providers. We work with more than 600,000 apartment units, for folks moving in the multi-family industry. And we're also now tackling fresh food. So for us it's really about, ensuring that we can mobilize transportation networks to be in the right place at the right time to get food to where it needs to be.
[00:02:39] And altogether we've now collected enough food to provide more than 25 million meals, uh, to folks. And it's an incredible number, but also it's an innovative approach. We are, I'd say, generally familiar with how food banks work locally, and I think this is addressing both a problem and opportunity, uh, to, to use these resources, which are, you know, moving trucks and moments, which are moments.
[00:03:08] People relocating their living situation and saying like, yeah, there's a lot of waste in that system. How do we redirect that? And then it seems like you're expanding now to realizing that there's a huge last mile problem. As I understand it for food insecure people in our country there, there's enough food, there's enough planted, grown.
[00:03:33] In our country to feed everyone. However, getting it to where it needs to be is that last mile problem. And it strikes me that trucks are, are a good way to do that. And so maybe a little bit more on how you're expanding there. Yeah. So you kinda hit the nail on the head there. 35% of food produced in the United States ends up in landfills.
[00:03:57] And if you zoom out globally 28% of the world's farmable land. Grows food that will never be eaten which is just a wild number, you know, to think about. Hmm. and all of this, well, you know, there's now 38 million Americans including one in six kids that are going to bed hungry each night. So for us, it's really about mobilizing existing resources.
[00:04:17] You've got these companies, you've got these trucks, they're providing a service, and this is something that helps 'em stand apart from the competition. It's providing a really great service to their customers. You know, if you've ever moved, didn't know what to do with that food. Maybe felt guilty about throwing it away.
[00:04:33] Here's an easy thing to do. but it's not just about that last mile. In some cases it's about the first mile. So we're working with farmers. We are working with CPG companies, distributors. We just install a cold storage hub in Rhode Island to work with local fisheries out there, to be able to keep food cold longer so it doesn't have to go to waste.
[00:04:56] Um, and that fish is being distributed across our Rhode Island. We've done the same with some farms in New Jersey and some other places, Kentucky as well. Um, You know, there, there's a lot of reasons why food goes to waste. It happens at the farm level. Um, it happens when food is rejected. Um, we talked to, uh, a company that had bananas, um, 250,000 of them to be exact, that were.
[00:05:24] You know, the grocery stores no, no longer wanted them. They were at a port in Los Angeles and we were able to recover all of that food and get it to local food banks within just a matter of days. Um, so again, right resources, right time. Mm-hmm. , um, you could have a dented can in a 12 pack of soup. The, the grocery store isn't gonna take that 12 pack anymore because one can was dented.
[00:05:47] Oftentimes that food is discarded, and that's the reality of what's happening, not just in our country, but. . Well, I wanna come back to some of those stats, as you mentioned, one in six kids, uh, facing food insecurity. You know, we're coming up on Thanksgiving and this is a time of year where food banks get this sudden surprise amount, not surprise amount, predictable amount of support of volunteers of yet another can of cranberries.
[00:06:20] Can you, you know, from the perspective of somebody who works in the industry is like, uh, you know, you welcome volunteers with open arms, but there's a very much like, you know, where, where were you yesterday? Um, so what is the feeling at at food banks right now coming into this Thanksgiving? They're busy, right?
[00:06:41] They're, they're busy of an ever, um, part of it's for, you know, the reasons we just talked about. Food insecurity is, is at a, at a high, yes. In some cases it has lowered a little bit. Um, but then you couple that with inflation. I went to the grocery store yesterday and probably spent the most I've ever spent, and I wasn't even shopping for Thanksgiving yet.
[00:07:00] That is a reality for a lot of people that are seeing, you know, these food prices increase when they go to check out. So it's, it is becoming more of a problem than, than I'd say it has been in the past. Really where we are trying to kind of take this. As we go into the holidays is listen, hunger is a year round issue.
[00:07:22] People are food insecure on a year round basis. And by the way, hunger is a symptom of poverty. You know, handing someone a can of food is not going to solve their food insecurity problem. Um, you've got the cost of food, you've got the cost of healthcare, you've got the cost of housing. Insurance. All of these things are at all time highs.
[00:07:40] While wages are still at all time lows in, in many cases, um, yes, we're seeing some wages, um, increase, but, but that doesn't affect a lot of the minimum wage workers, um, out there that are working two, three jobs and still trying to decide between. A meal for their kids or you know, paying rent. And that is a real negotiation that a lot of families are doing.
[00:08:05] So when we think about the holidays, and I'm sure the food banks will agree, Yes, this is a busy time of year, but what we have moved for hunger at least trying to do, is create opportunities to have people think about food insecurity throughout the year, um, with different campaigns. So in February we do our Spread the Love campaign where we collect peanut butter and jelly.
[00:08:26] Um, or maybe in August we're doing our Shark Week food drive, um, where we're collecting can tuna fish cuz kids like tuna just as much as sharks do. Right. Um, in August, we're the only game in town. No one's holding a food drive in the summer. And by the way, kids are outta school. They're not receiving emergency food assistance or reduced their pre lunches.
[00:08:43] Those are the times where we really need to think about how do we put more food on the shelves of food banks and pantries. Those are the times where we need to raise our voices as hunger relief organizations and be the loudest, because that's where the difference can really be made. Yes, the food banks are gonna be fine this Thanksgiving.
[00:09:01] They're gonna feed a record number of people between Thanksgiving and New Year's, but come January two. Those shelves are just as barren as they were before Thanksgiving. And this is where we all need to come to come together. Not just to donate food, but donate dollars, donate time, um, donate your voice advocate, and really come together to make sure we can, uh, really reduce poverty, because that's the only way we're gonna reduce food in insecurity.
[00:09:30] We're such great creatures when it comes to moments of compassion, but sustained effort. It's just, it's tough. It is. It's, it's really hard. Which is why coming back to your solution make it easy. People do care, make it easy. People wanna find a, a moving company that supports move for hunger and will donate that extra food.
[00:09:55] You have a search on your site that has a network of moving companies that will actually directly assist in moving that food that last mile. And so, yeah, you can't just depend on these moments of caring, but rather you have to make it convenient and, and not just convenient for the person that wants to give, but convenient for the person that is actually implementing the process, right?
[00:10:20] So in our case, our movers, our multifamily partners, our relocation management companies, if you can create something that becomes part of their business model, becomes part of their standard operating procedure, if you. Then at some point you don't actually need a charitable cost. You know, you talk about charities going outta business.
[00:10:40] We're not trying to go outta business right now, but it's really fun to be able to see like companies like Bell Partners or fpi or Allied Van Lines like. Talking about food insecurity or food waste and food recovery as part of their marketing that wasn't happening 10 years ago. Um, but now it's something that they're touting as part of their brand, part of their values, um, and part of the service that they're offering their customers.
[00:11:08] And I think it's important that you have found this industry found an in innovative way for the industry to work in and around and directly on the cause of food insecurity. You've doubled down, really focused on how do I not just sort of ask for donations from this industry, but ask for the work, ask for their expertise in terms of moving and provided extra value along the way, and that's.
[00:11:42] Kind of where I wanna take this conversation. I'm gonna play this, this clip as a part of, part of transition where I was lucky enough to attend one of these fundraising events where all I got was a message from Adam. It was a text message, Hey, wanna pull a truck this week? And I was like, oh, what is he doing?
[00:12:02] And, and sure enough, I found myself pulling a truck. So play that.
[00:14:05] All right, Adam, so what you heard in the background was a lot of noise, music, maybe me being a little winded there. Uh, can you describe what was going on at, at this event that took place in the Bay Area, uh, the other month? It was such an incredible event. Um, we worked with, uh, bam Bay Area Mobility Management, which is a relocation association, um, in the Bay Area.
[00:14:31] And, um, we put together one of our favorite events, which is what we call a truck pull teams of 10 competing to pull a moving truck in the fastest time. Um, we had the most ridiculous venue, the USS Hornet. Which if you've never been, I, I recommend it. Um, what, what a ship that was. And they gave us the entire pier.
[00:14:52] Incredibly generous. Um, but we raised a ton of money and it was a lot of fun. And, you know, we had, we had taco trucks and beer trucks and, um, team building and people working together. To do this thing in this moment that they typically wouldn't do and everyone walked away knowing not only did they pull a truck, um, but the, the funds raised that day were going back to helping us feed thousands of people.
[00:15:16] Um, and it was probably one of our most, one of our largest truck pulls that we've done on to date in terms of, um, you know, people coming back out after the pandemic in terms of dollars that were able to be raised. Um, and. We shot a great video from it as well, uh, which has now been used and seen over and over again by others that are now inspired to wanna hold a truck pole in their communities.
[00:15:42] And that's what we're trying to think about. How do we, how do we scale these events? Before the pandemic, we were doing a lot of 'em. I think in 2019 we organized nine truck poles. Our plan for 2020 was 16 of them that we had on the books. And then obviously, Covid happened. Um, so this year we did three, and this was one of the three.
[00:16:00] And I was so happy that you were able to be there and see it in person. I didn't think that you were gonna pull it, uh, yourself, let alone drag me into pulling a truck. It's been a while. Um, but uh, you know, it's about creating these fun experiences for people and companies, and that's what we try. So I wanna unpack this because I think now that we're in a, you know, knock on wood post pandemic fundraising environment, you're combining some smart elements.
[00:16:30] One, you're focused on this industry. So you're, you're creating this package that has value, that is aligned with what they do. Moving truck, we're gonna move the moving truck. You get to pull it, truck pull. It is a unique experience. You're allowing also teams. Teams to jump in, fundraise to be a part of that.
[00:16:50] You have a unique venue potentially, but this can be done in a parking lot. This can be done in your, you know, asphalt backyard, and it can be paired with conferences. It can be paired with these industry events that are hungry. They are hungry for social ties, impact and particip. And you know, this checks a lot of boxes, so, you know, I think it was really smart to just not just run the event, but also sort of frankly bring, bring the cameras.
[00:17:22] And maybe you can talk a little bit more about how you see this expanding and how you see it as both raising awareness and also funds. Yeah, so, so during Covid, you know, I'd say prior to Covid we were doing a lot of in-person events. We loved in-person events. We did a lot with conferences and associations that we were partnered with, and then, All of that had to stop and we had to change our model, right?
[00:17:45] So everything became virtual. What, what type of virtual team building could we do? We did a virtual karaoke event. We've been doing virtual trivias. Um, we found like a lot of different ways to engage people where they were virtual wine tasting, you name it, we were doing it, um, because. We needed to find ways to not only meet people where they were, but also let them feel like they were still giving back.
[00:18:08] If you talk to most charity organizations that utilize volunteers, they were, they were at a standstill as well. People couldn't come in, so a lot of organizations had trouble actually delivering their services. Um, and it was a, it was a problem. So, It was great during that time for us to be able to be a little bit creative, reinvent a little bit of what we're doing.
[00:18:30] Now that we've kind of come out of c we're not abandoning that aspect of it. We're in some cases creating this hybrid experience, right? So, hey, if we're gonna do a food drive with you on site, uh, maybe it's one of our favorite ones we call, can the CEO or you fill your CEO's office with so much food they can no longer get.
[00:18:50] Maybe we're gonna kick that off with a virtual trivia to educate people about the issues of hunger and food waste. Because while we can't be there physically for your food drive, um, we can be there to host this great team build that then kicks off and hopefully inspires team members to collect even more food than they would have before.
[00:19:09] Right? So building up that moment, you can use the virtual. Uh, to almost, uh, work toward that in-person event. Um, and when we have these in-person events, then it's a matter of just engaging your networks and we're very fortunate to have a lot of networks that, um, we can kind of engage that way. What kind of staff is necessary to run that kind of event?
[00:19:33] Where I'm not quite sure how many people were there, it was a good amount of people, but like, what does a truck pull event staff look like from your, your. So there's definitely some behind the scenes happening before the event had happened itself. Um, but on site, again, depending on the amount of people that are going to be at the event, but we can usually manage it with two, uh, two people that are staff from for hunger.
[00:20:01] And then maybe a handful of volunteers can probably get away with four volunteers. Um, and that can run a truck full of up to 200 people, uh, most likely. Mm. You know, you hit those numbers and your math begins to, to work out. Uh, especially if you have multiple events, right? Just one and done the sort of, you know, can we do one massive chicken dinner and call it a day?
[00:20:24] It's sometimes frustrating, I guess, to watch that type of model. And that model was really shaken, I'd say, during the pandemic because, you know, it's all about this one day of fundraising as opposed to, A part fundraising, part programmatic implementation of an event that is doing the work that needs to be done, local building of awareness of funds, and also donations.
[00:20:54] Like you're pulling it together in the right way. And it also seems to be more, uh, sustainable because, You're mixing those two parts. Uh, does, does that make sense? Is that intentional? There are for profit companies out there right now today that regular companies are paying to manage their team building and employee engagement experiences that exists.
[00:21:21] Why can't we be the ones that do that better? And at least have a charitable twist and an impact arm on it? So instead of some company giving, This for-profit, $10,000 to do whatever it's going to be. Why not? Why can't we be the one that's getting that $10,000 donation, giving people a great experience?
[00:21:40] And then that company also is able to know that they were able to feed a whole bunch of people. Um, that's kind of the way we think about that. And I agree with you like that model of like the one big dinner. That's gotta be on the wayside. And we never did the big gala or anything like that. I know. I never got an invite.
[00:21:57] I kept waiting. No, I, well there was nothing to, I invited you a truck pull. Right. Um, instead it was how many of these different food drives fundraisers, special events could we do with our partners? We have a lot of partners, um, and a lot of them make a contribution every. But those partners have employees and those employees can also be champions and advocates and donors and volunteers.
[00:22:23] Um, so, you know, for any other organizations listening, you know, I do not discount the, the network that you have built with your partners because there's so much more than just a check one time to have their logo on your website. Um, you know, , anytime that we're going into a big partnership, I don't lead with a big ask and say, can you give us a hundred thousand dollars?
[00:22:47] I lead with what are you doing from an employee giving an employee engagement standpoint? What can we do to become part of your culture? Because if you do that, they're gonna stick with you. And most of our partners have stuck with us for over a decade now. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. And it. It's easier. I'll say once the flywheel is going, you've got like amazing footage of these events and the history and relationships.
[00:23:12] But even starting out, you bring up this, this point that just sort of stuck in my mind for, for folks listening and looking for ideas and it's like, oh, that's easy for you to say, you know, you're dealing with moving in trucks. They're right there. It's like so easy. Like, here's what you actually just gave as a, as a solid idea.
[00:23:27] Maybe you can help me flesh it out a bit more, where. There are corporate engagement, there are corporate activities. There is somebody in HR at Major Fortune 500 companies right now looking for that corporate event, team building. I'm using keywords right now. Team building events for corporate gatherings.
[00:23:49] Take a look at what's being offered. , see the sort of ropes courses or the escape, the whatever room. Packages that that are being provided. And then ask yourself, are any of these programmatically adjacent to potentially what we do? What would it cost to get someone on our team to do event planning or bring a fundraiser in for event planning and organizing and take a shot at selling it?
[00:24:16] Does that feel like a, like a, a couple, two step approach? Yeah, I mean, it, it can't hurt, right? Like someone else is getting that business. There's a market for already. Let's put the twist on it. Um, and that's really what we're trying to, to make work. Um, And, and, and you kind of, uh, mentioned it there as well where it has to feel like it's connected to your program.
[00:24:44] So it's not like we're just picking things that these companies are doing. But there are a couple things like that people wanna do cooking classes. We haven't done it yet, but if we could find a way to make that work, like, and the costs made. A hundred percent. Um, we could probably find a way to do some sort of zero waste cooking class for a corporate event.
[00:25:08] Um, unfortunately cooking is probably one of the most expensive things from a cost per head standpoint, but we are exploring those options because they do feel very relevant in some cases to the work that we're doing. Yeah, really. It seems like you, you don't maybe wanna do all of the things you wanna do one thing or two things pretty darn well have that package ready to go so that you have the costs, the planning all in place so that it's like, and you fundraising in a box, right?
[00:25:39] Yeah. Um, and, and that, and that honestly is what the truck pull is like. We ship everything to the mover, the truck pulls up, your whole event is in the back of the truck, , right? So it's, it's so easy. Cleanup is easy. Setup is easy. Um, and, and that's what we want. We wanna create events that can scale. Um, you cannot scale a foundation, gala, dinner in 30 locations and a hundred locations.
[00:26:04] The amount of time and resources that it takes to plan those things, it doesn't make sense. You'll never be able to do. But can we scale some of the things that we're doing virtually or, or can the CEO Food drive? Absolutely. What is the price point? What are the resources? What are our costs? And ultimately, most importantly, I would say, what is the impact?
[00:26:24] Because, you know, you can do all these things and not raise any money or food in our case, and what's the point of doing it? So there's gotta be impact. The, the ROIs gonna be worth it that way. And for, I just wanna come back to the, to the staff. Cause I feel like I'm glossing over some of the complexity inherited in event planning.
[00:26:47] You know, is this a position that you would sell something potentially then hire a part-time event planner? Like what is like the zero to one for implementing, we'll say a programmatically aligned corporate event fundraising. Thing. That's, that's the secret sauce. Georgia, but , that's why I'm asking. But, but you know what I, what I a hundred percent will say is you need to create it first, right?
[00:27:21] Mm-hmm. , you need to test it, and then you need to do a few of them. Um, once you've done a few, you can learn really what your price point is, and then once you feel comfortable selling, Then you can ultimately begin to start hiring that part-time, then full-time person to be able to implement some of these things.
[00:27:38] Um, when we started, you know, we didn't have an events person. Um, fortunately my background is experiential events. I was doing event marketing before I started Move for Hunger, so I've always loved that aspect. I could, I could plan one truck pull. Could I plan 30 and do some of them simultaneously? No, you need support for that.
[00:27:57] Um, and by the way, it's not just an event planner, it's who's doing your marketing, your photography, your graphic design to bring this stuff to life. Like there are more elements that go into just those things besides the two staff members that are on site to actually physically run the events itself.
[00:28:17] You can build that small. Not everything needs to be big and grand, um, to begin with. Um, but I will say there's a lot of, uh, tricks and ways to cheat to do some of that, to make it feel grander than it is. You'd be surprised just having a branded tent, top canopy at something with your table, bring a tent.
[00:28:38] It all, all of a sudden looks like an event. A tent does not cost that much money. Um, but without that tent there, it looks like it's a much smaller spectacle. Um, but now with the tent, you've got some images that you can take and, you know, those are the things that make things feel real. Yeah, I think that makes it just like a lot more practic.
[00:28:58] Because sometimes it's, you know, like watching someone at the, you know, top of the top of their game already going full speed, being like, it's easy. You just, you know, put one foot in front of the other, you're like, no, you started small. You grinded it out. You figured it. But I think those are, those are some great first steps.
[00:29:16] Uh, alright, well. Thank you for, for sharing those points. Are there any other big things? Cuz I've already done the, the rapid fire with you at least twice I think. Um, are there any other final points, you know, you're thinking about as we we move into the end of the year for, for Move for Hunger or what's getting you excited?
[00:29:37] Um, you know, we did a few things. At the end of this year and like tried some new campaigns that worked really well. Um, and I'd say the reason that they worked really well. Was because we had the right champions in place and the companies that we were working with. So this is not only something that I planned to do more of in 2023, but also that I would really, really encourage other organizations and companies to do.
[00:30:05] And I'm just gonna leave you with two very quick examples. Um, one of which I just did last week, um, in, uh, Amelia Island, Florida. Um, we were at a conference with one of our partner. They were planning to do a little fundraiser for us anyway, and they had dueling pianos as their entertainment. Um, I talked to the CEO and and said, Hey, How much would it take to get you up there singing a song?
[00:30:29] Right? And he said a lot of money. So I got on stage and I told everyone that if we raised $5,000, he's gonna get up and sing a song. And you know what? We raised $7,500 and it was just so much fun, um, to be able to do that and to see his employees want to support his embarrassment, if you will. He's got very little shame.
[00:30:54] And it was one of the easiest fundraisers that we've ever done, and the cost was virtually nothing. I was there anyway. Um, and the same thing happened a couple weeks prior where we're in Las Vegas. Um, and it's really hard to get anyone's attention at a convention in Las Vegas cuz there's so many distractions.
[00:31:10] Um, but one of the larger CEOs of one of the companies that was there agreed to jump off the stratosphere about two weeks before you can, you can do it. It's a thing that people are allowed to. So the, one of the tallest buildings in Vegas, and I, I asked, I'm like, Hey, would you be willing to jump off this building if we were able to raise some money?
[00:31:28] And he said, I'm in. And this guy, by the way, is one of the nicest kind of CEOs, TER Global Relocation, has been a partner of ours for a long time. Such a cool guy. And. He jumped off the stratosphere. We created a lot of buzz for his company at that conference, and we raised a whole bunch of money to kind of support the cause.
[00:31:47] These are things that don't take a lot of resources. Instead, what they take is who are the people are willing to embarrass themselves? Put their lives in danger. Do something fun or silly. Small stuff, right? Let's, let's not put everyone's life in danger, but do something fun and silly. Um, and, and think about tapping their network, not just your network, but their network.
[00:32:10] Um, I know that's like basic peer to peer fundraising, but when you can do that at scale with the CEO or a C-Suite executive, it really goes a long way. And, and we were really thrilled. To see how well those two activations went for us. I think it's testament to how ingrained you are with this niche community, this niche business network, and then you kind of know it and go all in.
[00:32:35] And I think we can get a little insular in the the non-profit world where we forget that there are entire industries just around moving companies. And like that's just one of many, many, many company networks that are out there. Like, here's another game. Look at Vegas conferences coming up. Just the random Vegas conferences coming up.
[00:32:59] And look at how many random things that you didn't realize. Professional networks gathering together, looking and needing to stand out. And I think those types of opportunities will present themselves. Adam, thanks. I hope you are doing even better next year. More truck pulls and more food delivered to those in need.
[00:33:22] Uh, again, how do people find you? How do people help you? You can visit move for hunger.org. You can make a donation. You can hold a food drive, you can donate your food when you move, you can advocate, you can learn about the issues of hunger and food waste, and share our content. Um, and you can show up at a truck pull, uh, near you.
[00:33:40] George, I hope to have you out to another truck, pull or put your life in danger at some point in the new year. Um, and I, I always really do appreciate, uh, having the opportunity to, to reconnect my friend. Well, thanks for your work and appreciate it.
[00:01:37] You're trying to stay on, you know, the, the practical, I'll say the practical cutting edge of how to raise more money for great causes. And so I was hoping you could share a bit on what you have been focused on this year with regard. Major gifts.
[00:01:55] Yes. How I see it in terms of my mission is that I'd rather be useful than to be sexy.
[00:02:03] I'd rather be valuable rather than to be a unicorn. So if you look at the field of all the animals, there are all these analogies. I'd rather be a zebra than a lion or a unicorn or whatever fancy animals there are. So, Starting cos walks Over a decade ago, you, we came into this, uh, this business to become a digital fundraising platform because there's a big gap between technology and fundraising where a lot of nonprofits couldn't go online.
[00:02:33] They didn't know how to do it. They didn't know how to utilize all the ways of social media fundraising. Digital fundraising, peer to peer. This and that. So it's been a great journey to us help accelerate that piece of digital fundraising and by bringing more and more organizations online and where we had some of our best years of growth and over covid, unfortunately, where a lot of organizations were transitioning into digital fundraising.
[00:03:01] As we see the next steps of what's coming up, I think one of my biggest frustrations is that a lot of organizations see. Online fundraising as a siloed approach where they think, Hey, I need to run an event. I need to run a gala. I need to do peer to peer fundraising. I need to be on Facebook. And they kind of just treat, uh, the, that style of fundraising as a one and done thing.
[00:03:26] They don't look at it as a process of how you can grow donors, of how you can grow gifts, how you can upgrade folks up the pipeline to become major donors. So I went on this quest to figure. When you're looking at major donors, how do folks actually get major donors? How do they qualify them? How do they really work through this process to grow a small $100 gift all the way to a hundred thousand dollars gift?
[00:03:54] And the results of this were actually really surprising, where it gave us a lot of inspiration behind what we should build next when it comes to major gift fundraising.
[00:04:03] That makes, uh, it makes a lot of. And as you're, as you're building this in this approach, the way I guess I look at it is that if you are ignoring, if you're ignoring the major gift strategy of your digital fundraising, You are missing out on easily half of the potential revenue you could and should be making.
[00:04:25] What does that actually mean? If you have a hundred donors, I can very confidently tell you that there is probably a power law distribution of their wealth and capacity to give fancy way of saying that 10% of them have 90% of the wealth, because frankly, that's just how the things in America are carved out.
[00:04:44] Thanks to capitalism, the question. That you should ask next is who are those people and what should we message them? So maybe you could pick up the thread there. Is it just, you know, smile and dial and be like, Hey, you have money. Give now please
[00:05:00] more. Right, right. It is kind of funny, like, so I did this huge research quest to, to speak to over a hundred people on major gifts.
[00:05:09] So I talked to, uh, over a hundred people who are either major gift officers, where the day to day is just about talking to rich people and China secure donations all the way to major donors who have carved out half a million dollars or more to give annual. Give to organizations. So across the board I've talked to like a lot of folks, and what's really interesting is that it's less about the message itself.
[00:05:31] Yes, having a compelling story and follow up and the exercise and activity of reaching out to prospective major donors is important, but what's actually more important? Is understanding what the process looks like. Having a complete process of taking a mass donor, which is someone who gives what, 50 bucks, a hundred dollars at your Facebook fundraising or your, your gala, that kind of thing, and having them have a strong cycle and process and methodology of identifying who are the folks that I should be reaching out to as my short list of major gift prospects so I can grow them conversations.
[00:06:09] On one end you have a lot of folks who do events and mass fundraising and crowdfunding and peer to peer. On the other end, you have just a short portfolio of a hundred, 150 people, uh, where. Uh, those are just like your prime targets and essentially you're just kind of reaching out to them and trying to secure meetings and tell 'em their story.
[00:06:30] It becomes a very one-on-one sales process, like for better work. And there's a huge gap in a middle where I've also identified that for mid-level donors, nobody knows what to deal with em. So that part gets severely ignored. And when you look at parallel, which is kind of the distribution of, of uh, I, a handful of donations can have astronomical impact on your fundraising.
[00:06:53] Uh, the, the top matters a lot, like major donors matter so much where you get a 50,000, a hundred thousand dollars gift that's transformational in terms of a small organization or if you get a number of mid-level gifts, which is around five 10 k each. Getting a handful of those, that's also transformational.
[00:07:13] But then when you look at mass level gifts, if you get additional five more donations of a hundred dollars each, that's not transformational anymore. So it's kinda interesting where a lot of folks focus too much time on the mass, not enough time on the major, and no time at all on the mid-level donors.
[00:07:30] So they're missing huge opportunities.
[00:07:33] Mm-hmm. , and that's the graduating donors, I think is maybe one of the terms I. Used in the past, how do we upgrade our donors from this level to the next level? But also acknowledge that like, guess what, You know, somebody who's given 50 bucks, maybe, maybe not. Is there, you know, wealth engine type stuff.
[00:07:51] I know Wealth Engine is a company, I know there's other, uh, data pools out there. Does that bring any extra information to you, or do you prefer just to look. The spread of donation amounts. Say like, All right, here's my bucket of people that donated an a hundred. As you mentioned, like, Oh, this person donated a thousand.
[00:08:11] That's interesting. Maybe I have a talk with them. Which way do you like to.
[00:08:15] Yeah, if you have the resources and the time, the ability is to do both approaches. That's where some of the organizations they, they really flourish because they have just a lot of different data pools to tap into. Of course, one of them would be like using folks like Donor Search and Wealth Engine and iWave, and to provide a great Kind of just well screening data where you can pipe out data into their services and come back with a rating in terms of the properties that a donor owns and if they have more of a propensity to give, you know, that kind of stuff.
[00:08:45] But really, when I talk to a lot of major gift folks, that data is rational at best. So it's not very bad. Mm-hmm. , So the most accurate information actually is previous giving. So if you have giving history of a donor, uh, the two things that typically, uh, are really great indicators of a great and major donor prospect, one would be is their, their loyalty.
[00:09:09] Meaning that are they being retained year after year If a donor is donating year after year, Whatever it amount, they already meet a qualification of, they support your organization, they know something about it. They have shown this intent to give, and they're just tied to you. So there there'll be a great prospect.
[00:09:27] The additional layer you can layer on top is actually giving amount. So donors that give it over a thousand dollars typically be the threshold. .
[00:09:35] All right, I'm back.
[00:09:38] I really like. How you were talking about the behavior, It's something that I consistently try to pull our clients toward, our teams toward in terms of finding insights, which are less about what public data we've scraped and more about, show me the behavior. Is this person acting like someone who cares?
[00:09:57] Are they showing the capacity to give through their actions? Because truth be told, a lot of this wealth data is essentially address zip code based. They pull it up and look at like, Oh, they live in this zone and live in this reason. They don't even talk about the, the reason they may have given, which is maybe it was a, a one and done check because, you know, someone's nephew wrote them one time and they don't really have a emotional connection to the organization.
[00:10:22] So I like starting with your, your own data in your backyard as you. To these fundraising experts. I'm wondering what is the most common way of starting that conversation of like, Hey, you've got a lot of money and seem to care about us. How about more like what is the shape of that? What is the cold, warm intro?
[00:10:51] Yeah, so ideally you're starting with a set of folks that have already donated to your organization. So you're looking at your own, uh, donor pool, whether you have 200 donors or 2000 donors or 20,000 donors, which is whatever. Uh, whatever you're looking at, you're starting with these. Warm donor prospects who've given something to your organization so they know something about you.
[00:11:13] So it's not a cold type of outreach. It's something that is more about, uh, having a conversation with somebody that, uh, knows what you do. So you start with that kind of formulate a list of folks typically. If you're looking at doing major gifts full-time, you can reasonably work only around 150 folks as part of your portfolio.
[00:11:32] So it has this account management focus where you short list list of folks who've, uh, given to your organization, uh, several years in a row that given over let's say a thousand dollars or whatever that threshold is. They can be higher if you're a larger organization, lower if you're a smaller organization and you come up with a list of.
[00:11:50] If you do have the ability to bring in some of the wealth data, uh, that we just mentioned, then you can use that to segment even more until you get to a point where you have 150 people that you can work on for a year. So after you have that list, then what you wanna do is, uh, basically qualify. So your goal is to get to a qualification meeting with a donor.
[00:12:11] Qualification meeting just means that you have a conversation with a donor, uh, to better understand. Uh, the capacity to give as well as their affinity to give. So those two points, capacity to give would be, uh, this basic understanding of how much wealth they have. Is, is this somebody who has. The ability to give more than a thousand dollars.
[00:12:36] Like can they give $10,000? Can they give 50? Can they give a million? Basically having a conversation, asking some questions to better understand what, essentially what is their wealth, and not in those direct terms would be the first part. The second part would be understanding the affinity to give. Why did they give to your cause in the first place?
[00:12:55] Is it because they're personally tied to your organization's work? Or was it because a friend asked a friend or something else in some other circumstance? So to better understand, essentially the affinity to give, I also like to add in, add a few additional qualifications to it based on my conversations with actual major donors who are donating hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.
[00:13:17] Uh, one. The third one would be intent to give. So someone who has an intent to give, uh, that is typically a lot stronger than someone who does not have the intent to give. Intent is essentially what I, is an indicator of generosity. So someone who says, Hey, uh, I have a donor advice fund. I'm trying to spend it down every.
[00:13:40] And, uh, I already give as part of my culture, of my process, as part of my family values, then that person has a stronger intent to give and are, and will be more likely to give. All else being equal . And the second, uh, qualification that I wanna add in is around budget. A lot of major donors that I talk to, they actually have carved out budgets for giving.
[00:14:05] So when they look at their plans, look at their cash flow, uh, they look at their donor advice fund or kind of whatever they have, they think about, Okay, I have a budget. I, and I want to donate $300,000. So, and they try to figure out, how do I do that? I give to the folks that I already give to, Yes. But then I still have a chunk of it that I'm trying to figure out who to give to.
[00:14:27] So, uh, in another instance, my framework for qualification is called Bait. Bait. Yeah. The budget, the affinity, the intent. And you also need to have the timeliness to give as well, like talking to somebody at the right time. That would be the last point I didn't really touch on, which is around this idea of like, did something happen where they, they come into an liquidity event where someone sold their business or they had a windfall of some sort.
[00:14:55] So a lot of major donors I talked to, uh, come to that point where they're like, Hey, I just sold my business. I have a lot of millions to, uh, to give away. Uh, now is the right time for me to get an ask from a non. So,
[00:15:10] and being top of mind in that moment is probably pretty valuable.
[00:15:14] Yep. Yep. So after you have this qualification framework and kind of the screening then really becomes an exercise of saying, outta these 150 people that have on my list do they check the boxes in terms of, uh, being qualified for B ait?
[00:15:29] And if they do, then I will make a. So it's as simple as that. The hard part though, is actually reaching out to each one of the hundred 50 donor prospects and trying to get that conversation so you can qualify them to get to a point where you can make a ask.
[00:15:46] Yeah. I imagine people are not itching to have a, a conversation like this, and I imagine it is packaged in a different way, such as talking about, you know, the, how the organization plans to grow.
[00:15:58] Maybe it's a capital campaign, maybe it's an upcoming event. It seems like there is more effective if you've got some sort of branded thing that you can talk about as opposed to give because it's Tuesday,
[00:16:10] right? Right. It's give, because it's Tuesday is definitely not a good reason for major donors to give.
[00:16:15] It, it, a lot of the outreach that happens with major donors happens way beyond the giving season that follows every year. It's really about, uh, thanking a. For making that initial, uh, donation or series of donations and having a conversation with them to better understand why they give to the organization and how the nonprofit can better match, uh, opportunities and present opportunities of giving to the donor.
[00:16:46] So, so that's really the key, getting that conversation, doing the qualification and understanding if this major don. Prospect would be a good person to make up bigger asks too. So a lot of it just revolves around just getting to know a donor.
[00:17:04] Yeah, and I mentioned, I mean, I just kind of threw out there the like events, the capital campaign, or maybe you're asking them, Hey, it's the end of year, we're looking for someone to put up a matching gift that will help other people.
[00:17:18] Are there other programmatic activities or types of packaging? I, I guess, that these conversations revealed as more successful than others? Things that are trending more given the, you know, shift in wealth or shift in, uh, philanthropic interest? Yeah,
[00:17:37] I think was it really interesting, especially when I talk to major donors they, they, they.
[00:17:42] they profile the same as any other person that you talk to where they're really interested in causes, they wanna connect their dollars with making an impact. They want to hear a compelling story. So it's, it's less specific about the time of the year and more about, uh, what kind of programs are available.
[00:18:01] There is an information gap when it comes to major donors and major gift officers, where major donors have the capacity. And they need to know what giving opportunities are out there because nonprofits never do a good, a great job of presenting all the opportunities that someone can give because they're just limited to their, their tools that they have, like their website or social media.
[00:18:25] And then major gift officers need to figure out what makes it a donor click and then presenting those opportunities. So I do think that there. Campaigns that organizations do, if you're doing a capital campaign, like building a building, that kind of thing, uh, that, that is a great opportunity. But by and large, when it comes to major donors, uh, they're supporting the programs, uh, the annual funds or just kind of whatever gap fundraising an organization needs to do.
[00:18:51] Yeah, the opportunity. To match that donor along their interests could be, you know, around a program, something they are particularly passionate about inside the organization and like, Hey, here's an opportunity for a, a multi-year support of this program happening in this region that I know you're interested in.
[00:19:11] Mm-hmm. , but it's about, it's about matching that. But it does sound like a lot of work, right? This like tracking, tracking down 150 people, having those convers. But it does seem like you, I mean, you only need a hit rate of what? 5% if they're the right gifts.
[00:19:27] You only need a small hit rate. So that's why a lot of organizations that invest so much staff time and effort into major gifts, where if you just secure a handful of them, then it's transformational as well as when, when I look at, uh, fundraising folks, development folks at an organization, they're better equipped to have conversations and tell stories on a one-on-one basis than on a one to many basis.
[00:19:51] Uh, I think for a long time, uh, we're. We as kind of just an industry we're trying to transform, uh, kind of fundraising people who are really good at one-on-one communications and turn them into digital marketers where you're saying, Hey, like, learn how to do direct mail or learn how to do social media, or learn how to put on large virtual events.
[00:20:12] So kind of forcing people out of like their skill sets. Or what they know the best and trying to push 'em into kind of this mass fundraising. And I, I believe that if you're able to do mass fundraising well, or just do it okay, as long as you have a, a, a steady inflow of new donors. You just kind of need to set some parameters and throw them at fundraising people so they can have these one-on-one conversations, get the major gifts, and use the parallel effect to transform the fundraising results of the organization.
[00:20:46] I have this,
[00:20:47] this assumption that if you gave me the fundraising data of, you know, a donor pool, I could calculate a projected potential. Upside for a large gift. Am I like, you know, am I on some sort of, you know, data island with this? Is this like an assumption too far because you know, if you've seen one, you've seen one?
[00:21:08] Or is it pretty immutable? Once you see like major gifts implemented over a period of time that you would get a distribution saying like, All right, if you have got, you know, 30% of your audience donating a hundred dollars, here's your upside. Here's what's potentially sleeping in
[00:21:24] in your backyard. Oh, for sure.
[00:21:26] I, I think you can completely forecast it given enough data set. Now, of course, if you're a small organization, let's say you only have a hundred donors, then your distribution in your data forecasting is gonna be grossly inaccurate. But once you get to, uh, several thousand, tens of thousands of donors, then you can easily make assumptions to start forecasting.
[00:21:46] And then that's where things get interesting, where then you can know, Oh, we need to talk to X amount of people every year because then we'll close a dozen major donors. And this is implication of that forecast.
[00:21:59] I think that's helpful, especially if there's somebody listening that has a. A standard, we'll say, sort of let people donate as they're going to donate.
[00:22:10] We'll go after grants and things like that. But individual donors are just, you know, fine at this, whatever level they wanna access at. We have an annual event. But I think looking at it as saying like, you're leaving money on the table if you aren't seeing this type of. Power law in giving, cuz it certainly exists in wealth.
[00:22:25] Is that a fair phrasing?
[00:22:27] Yeah, a hundred percent fair. I, I think for a long time, uh, and this is one of my frustrations, uh, at cos box is that, uh, we're empowering folks to do kind of these mass giving opportunities, but then there's not an easy way for folks to say, Okay, now what I. These couple hundred donors that I got from my peer, peer or craft funding campaign, let me have an easy way to move them on, upgrade them into a major donor.
[00:22:53] Uh, so that's something that we're building towards, to helping organizations have, have the right tooling so that they can reach out to folks, have those conversations, qualify them, track the stages, and eventually close on these major gifts.
[00:23:08] Does it make sense to be really trying to have those. Obviously qualifying conversations earlier in the year, and then as you move to the end of the year when you know, uh, you know, tax advantages, especially for the rich, they're thinking about donations and making those final donations.
[00:23:23] Is it more extreme in that, like you gotta have those closing conversations in q4 or are large net worth individuals just dealing with DAFs and it really doesn't matter when, when that gift is.
[00:23:36] Yeah, it, it is more of a letter. It, it is not as, uh, important when it comes to time of the year. Uh, but you before, for most major gift plans, their work plans is based on an annual cycle though, where at the beginning of the year, uh, they come up with a portfolio of folks to work and then they figure out what is my work plan for each specific person?
[00:23:57] When am I gonna reach out to them and when I'm gonna make an ask, But ask, coming on a rolling basis. Uh, some donors are qualify a lot faster so they can make a proposal center proposal, make an ask for a major gift while folks, uh, sometimes just kind of drag it out depending on time of the year. There is more urgency at the end of the year, typically speaking.
[00:24:17] But, uh, for major donors, they really break this process. They're not molded into, uh, this seasonal annual in of year giving.
[00:24:27] I think it's just super helpful and it's something that continually is on my mind because we work at various levels for digital fundraising, but also just for awareness building.
[00:24:37] But inevitably it is looking at a marketing funnel where you're turning attention into interest as measured by emails, converting those folks into people that care enough to open their wallets, and then sometimes it can sort of be left. At that point of the funnel as opposed to saying, and the next phase is this.
[00:24:59] You gotta have conversations. Your CEO needs to be set up with people that have been qualified to say, Hey, here's our larger vision and here's why I need a quarter million dollars to get there. .
[00:25:09] That's right. I, I think it's, the challenge right now is to make sure organizations are set up to have opportunities for major donors to donate.
[00:25:17] Uh, or kind of presenting in that format is one of the big challenges. I think the second big issue is that, uh, organizations don't have the right tooling. You know, I, I've been on this research quest and essentially folks have been telling me that when it comes to major gift fundraising, they just take data outta their data.
[00:25:36] Their CRMs and they just manage it in their head or in their spreadsheet when it comes to major gifts. So, the, the work of someone who's touching major donors, it really isn't served by by tools. So I think that's another gap too, where infrastructure, having the right tooling, having the right process built into the tools just aren't there for folks, and that's one of the reasons why folks don't do it.
[00:26:00] Well, it sounds like a, a great opportunity and a natural evolution. Maybe you can tell us a bit more about how people find you and maybe some of these new tools that they can check out at cause box dot.
[00:26:11] Yeah, so at Cosmos we're launching a new product. The, the product name's called Morningside. For now, probably need a better name, but the idea is that we want to build, uh, a product geared towards major donors.
[00:26:24] So we call it a major donor workflow Product essentially has three different tiers, uh, three different pillars. The first pillar being that, uh, you have a suite outreach tools, so you can send. Like one on one emails to donor prospects. You can text them, you can make calls, you can do all your outreach in one tool instead of depending on your phones or depending on your email system, uh, so that you can track everything in one place.
[00:26:48] Uh, the second piece of it would be this idea around donor tracking, where you can track. What stage a donor is in from prospect all the way to committed and fulfill. So you can easily see outta my portfolio. Major donors here are folks I've had meetings with. Here are people who are qualified. Here are people who've committed but haven't paid, and here to people who paid.
[00:27:07] So you can easily see that as well as you can apply different work plans to each donor where you can chart up. Uh, for this donor prospect. I'm gonna touch 'em four times a year, hear the dates that I'll touch them. It's basically like a. Giant reminder list or to-do list that lets you easily just see what needs to happen on one day.
[00:27:26] Uh, and then the D pillar will be attaching payments. So just the easy ability for, for donors to, to, to make a payment. But, uh, And have a customized, uh, donation page, equipment page for that. As well as if you're doing an offline, then they can send in checks or, uh, forward that information to their donor advised fund, uh, for our stock transfer, things like that.
[00:27:48] Uh, essentially the idea is that we wanna be end to end when it comes to major donors. So gonna help folks not only automate but accelerate their major gift fundraising.
[00:27:57] Awesome. Really appreciate you walking through it and excited that you're gonna be helping more organizations get a, get a bit more in their, uh, in their bank accounts.
[00:28:07] So thanks,
[00:28:07] Rob. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks George.
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