Episode 189: Summertime (or Wintertime) Connection with Away Donors - Staying in Contact, Deeping Relations
In this episode of "Around with Randall," we discuss the challenges nonprofits face in maintaining donor relationships during the summer when donors are often away. We look at the importance of staying engaged through virtual events, personalized communications, and leveraging data to justify travel expenses for face-to-face interactions, with the ultimate goal of maintaining and deepening donor connections.
Welcome to another edition of Around with Randall, your weekly podcast for making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett.
It's a great day for our conversation. Hope it is a great day for you as well. And thank you for joining me, Randall, on this edition of Around with Randall.
I had an interesting conversation with actually a couple clients who were talking about their challenge in moving relationships forward because it was quote unquote summertime and they're busy and more importantly, they're not near. They've gone to the lake house so they've gone to cooler climates or they're in the mountains. And I thought, wait a minute. If we preach, if I preach, if we talk about that actually is gift officers and nonprofit organizations, we have more control in the relationship than we realize, then having the excuse of, well, we just don't have time. Whether too far away, we don't know what to do, isn't really an excuse.
So today we want to take apart this mythology of, well, they're, you know, it's summertime so we shouldn't be engaged. We listen to this and you are in the northern part of a climate zone and people go south and they're getting out of the cold weather in the same principles apply. But since it's summer, we'll take it from this particular perspective. What do I hear? Why is it that this is so challenging? First and foremost, I hear most often and particularly as we've seen inflation and pressures on our particular budgets is, well, we don't have travel budget. And I'm going to say that here and then come all the way back to it at the very end when we talk about the tactical. So let's put that on hold.
But I also hear other things. Well, they're going to come back. I think so, maybe true, but I'm not sure it's a very good reason not to consider what cultivation stewardship engagement you should be doing while they're gone. And again, I'm not saying for like four days, I'm saying that there's any long-gated period of time where the person or family or individuals might go. Well, they're busy when they're on in these other locations. I'm sure they don't sleep 24 hours a day, but I think there's a question of is that really logical? We'll talk about that in a second.
The last exp- they're busy. Well, I'm busy. So in the next podcast or two, we're going to talk about patent the cat backwards and my issues with what's taking some of our time away from building more meaningful relationships. But the point is is that the most likely way to increase your philanthropy's individual relationships. And if you're not in direct involvement with the people who can make the biggest difference in that individual philanthropy, then my question is, how are you maximizing the opportunity that you have? So the excuses of the three and we'll come back to the budgets that we're in is, well, they'll come back. They're busy. I'm busy. Okay. I mean, I hear people say it and that's kind of draw it, drives me crazy.
What led me to this podcast? Let's talk about the realizations based on all those. The first thing is, particularly if they're gone for a longer periods of time, they have options. And I think we can break this out into two distinct subcategories. Number one, they could replace you as whatever it is that you do with other like nonprofits at the other location. Is that something you are willing to take a chance on? If it's healthcare, they have hospitals most likely where you are, where they are. If you're, let's say, social service and food in securities or homelessness that challenges, my guess is based on what we read and see across the United States, this other location probably has similar challenges. That's a parallel replacement.
I also would say that as life goes on, things happen that cause us to reconsider what we do every day. We talk about this in the healthcare environment more than any other because of grateful patients. What the data has shown is that to begin a realistic, grateful patient conversation or family conversation that unless it's a major neurological issue where they're learning to re-walk or something of that nature or hospice, which there is a delay because obviously there's a morning process that the data says, even the middle of cancer treatments is an example. You have 30 to 45 days to begin that relationship. Does mean you're going to ask in that period. Well, I want to take that out of healthcare and apply it to anywhere else.
If you're not building the relationship, their affinity, which is the thing inside that drives action for human beings, the connection that we have. Remember, we always talk about 80% and 90% should be affinity. It should be likely not wealth. That if we really want to create or take capitalized on affinity, that when we let it go away, people make other decisions based on new affinities, new experiences. If you're not staying in touch in a meaningful way, and I don't mean every day, then you're allowing the possibility of something else that's not even in the same area, build affinity because of their experiences.
They have options as number one. Number two, distance in philanthropy does not equate to the heart-growing fonder. It drives me crazy when I look at portfolios of gift officers and they say, "Well, this is a really good prospect." I look and I can run the reports and I see that the last action was two years ago and it's actually legitimate. It's not that they've been forgetting to put things in this year end. They haven't had any contact. What kind of prospect is that? I mean, you got to be kidding me. If the data says that people's passions generically might adjust as they go, and in particular, if there are others that do similar things to you and they have a better connection to those individuals you want connection with and to keep, then it's absolutely, it's the A equals B, B equals C, so A equals, got equal C.
If you don't have interaction with them, they're going to find places that meet that passion they have to do what they want to do and it may not be you. And so this idea of both replacement and fondness growing just isn't true in philanthropy. You have to want to engage. Yes, I know they're busy, but they're busy when they're home. If they make time for you and you make it meaningful, they'll be time for you when they're gone. Again, not a three-day vacation, but a longer period of time. And if you're too busy with things that aren't driving revenue, then you're not allowing yourself, the department, the foundation, the organization to do the things that are going to generate the most amount of money.
And so if you've got nine special events in the summer and nobody has a chance to go to see anybody on a one-on-one basis other than saying hello at the golf tournament, the Grand Three basketball tournament, the bowling tournament, the poker run, whatever it else that you do, that the cat backwards coming up here in a podcast or two, man, you are leaving opportunity on the table. And so the excuses and the realizations when we push them together say, you just simply cannot allow large amounts of time as we see a decreasing number of people being philanthropic and our model is changing to a 95, five model, five percent of our people make up 95 percent of our dollars. Then the five percent that you do identify and begin relationships with or have relationships with, well, it's darn important that you keep them.
So if we agree that allowing people to go away for months at a time and having no regular interaction with them is not a good idea. And we now maybe can think about it more tactically as to why let's get into the tactics of the positive. What should you do? So there's five different ways in which you can look at and then we'll come back all the way to the end about the kind of the financial budget piece, five things that I think you should be doing when you're in the middle cultivation, in the middle of stewardship, certainly in the solicitation to build more deeply connected relationships with your best prospects. I will say before getting to that that this is not, qualifications hard. It's hard enough when they're there. When you're trying to qualify by distance, if you're not going, it's really, really, really hard. And so understand I'm really talking about maintaining and building existing relationships even if they're just beginning, but there's a beginning.
So the first thing is, I think that the pandemic has helped us out a great deal with this in terms of illuminating, shining a light on an option. Virtual events when done correctly are incredibly easy and incredibly powerful. Now the word event sometimes is misconstrued. So I want to be very clear what I'm referring to. I am not referring to a virtual gala. I am not referring to a virtual, although I don't know how this would be done at golf tournament. Events is about when done correctly more of a one on one or informational flow to a unique selected special group of people. Let me give you an example. Maybe if once or twice, let's say during the summer, you happen to be in a picked Dallas, Texas for lack of a better area. And you got a whole bunch of people that go up to the mountains in Colorado, in the Montana, in the Minnesota, in the Michigan, the peninsula, or up into the Northeast in the Vermont, New Hampshire, places like that. And they're gone from May to September.
But you do two, that doesn't have to be every day, two CEO briefings or unique position, ability to demonstrate what they do or have a outreach of continuing education that's unique to them. If you're an educational unit, doing something that's very easy to produce doesn't take a lot of time, but has a value. It has to be exclusive and it can't take six weeks to put on each time. So if you're doing it three times a year, 18 weeks of that time being put together, it's not time efficient. And it should be fairly simple, but exclusive enough that there's a value to it. Virtual events work particularly in stewardship, updating, keeping people involved and what we find is that people feel valued, they feel included.
So it can be for larger groups, but they're specially picked or smaller groups that have, you know, a larger affinity to a particular area. But this isn't really good for qualification. The second thing that I would suggest is the very least that you should be doing when someone's gone for a long period of time, is read something. So the easiest, you know, quick way of doing this is, let's say you were thinking about a mini capital campaign in a particular area of the business or the hospital or the educational unit or the social service, whatever, and say, "Hey, would you look this over? I'd love to get your feedback." Or maybe if you were thinking about maybe more board interactivity or that you were saying, "Hey, I need something to read. Could you take a look at this?" And it could be any number of things. "Hey, this article caught my attention." Or "What do you think about this? Does this make sense? Is this something we could use?" And that allows you to continue to keep them connected to what you hope the outcomes are in the area that they're passionate about.
The third thing is to call them. To text, to call, just say hello. "Hey, it's been too long. It's been a month. Just wanted to catch up. How's it going? What's new in your world?" Don't even have to talk about the institution or the organization. People like to be asked about what they think and people like to be in a situation where they feel valued. And even though you know they're gone, you know what, you give them a call and just say, "Hey, how's it going?" That phone call, that text, that message means a great deal.
The fourth thing that I would say is advisory committees. Now this works really well in the educational, works in healthcare with positions, works in social services where they join via Zoom, particularly if you have a little bit more frequent meetings. And even if they're gone, they're in the mountains and you know they're not coming back for a couple of months, maybe, just maybe it's a chance for them to join an advisory role for a period of time while they're gone. And that's a role they can continue to play, but you've got to make sure you're doing this on a regular basis. You can't let these advisory groups just die on the vine if they're not meeting regularly. There should be a consistent touch point with these advisory groups, maybe once a month, once every two months, whatever it is that fits the need of the organization, the committee, the advising committee itself.
And the last thing is, is that you should be doing something on a very personal level about thank yous. The time when people aren't around is usually where big life events happen because they're gone. Maybe it's an anniversary. Maybe it's a birthday. Maybe it's a death in the family. Maybe there's something in their world that is of value that if you were local, you'd probably know, but because they're gone, you might not. And when you find those things out, whether it's on social media or talking with a friend or something else, that you send them something, a card, a note, an email, a text that says, "Hey, just thinking of you, wanted to let you know I'm thinking of you. Congratulations. Hey, sorry for your loss." And that means more to people sometimes than the visits.
So virtual events, read something, call them, text them, send them a note, create advisory committees that include these people even if they're away and personal thank yous.
So now we go all the way back to the financial budget piece. And I'm going to be really transparent. There is no replacement for going to see people. I've been recently working with an organization in which they found they have a great amount of donors, particular donors that are not near them with a lot of high potential. I think we identified eight different places and four of them were drivable within two or three hours, four of them were flights. The excuse of, "Well, we don't have a budget for it," in my mind, doesn't play. What I've tried to teach is that if you have one gift of $10,000 that normally wouldn't come in without that touch point of that visit that maybe wouldn't have happened if you hadn't made the trip, that can pay for the whole program for a year. The data actually supports that. And so if you want to fight for a travel budget with your CFO, you put that information in front of them. They can't deny it. You might have to give them some real world examples of other institutions, maybe a sister institution in another town, another state. But if you put the data in front of them, fight for it in a respectful, appropriate way, they can't say no. And that allows you to go out and to meet people where they are.
And if you do all these things together, you will have less likely people leaving your organization for something else. You will have a higher affinity, which means you will have more gifts. You'll have higher dollar gifts and you're going to build longer lasting relationships.
So don't let summer or in winter, if you're in the colder climates and people go south to Florida or Texas or wherever they go, stop you from being in touch. You have to fight for the relationships, particularly those that are most important to your organization. Well, that's it for today. A little bit longer, a little bit more on my soapbox, but it is the summertime.
And if you're struggling to figure out how to stay in touch with your donors, there are ways to do it. And if you would just take the time and effort, you will see success in the long run, because what you do matters. So remember, check out the blogs on Hallett Philanthropy.com, two a week, 90 seconds each. And if you'd like to reach out to me, it's podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com.
We are all involved in this together in the more that we are engaged with those who can make the biggest difference. The more that we're going to benefit in the long run and particularly in these uncertain times, philanthropy fills the gap between what government can do and what the free enterprise system is willing to do. And it's that difference that we're making a difference for those people who are wondering what happened and we want to be able to serve.
My privilege and honor is knowing that you're doing good work and I hope this is helpful. Thank you for joining me here on this particular podcast of Around with Randall and don't forget, make it a great day.