Episode 49: Moves Management - Leveraging Meetings

Welcome to another edition of “Around with Randall” your weekly podcast making your non-profit more effective for your community, and here is your host, the CEO and Founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett. 

It’s great to have you here with me on “Around with Randall. Today's topic is about moves management but really we're going to delve into how to create a sense of accountability through meetings and your team for moves management. I do this quite often with clients more and more where I’m actually running these meetings for clients and maybe even their regions to help them have a better understanding about how the process can and should work.

So as always, let's start at the top and then we'll work our way into the tactical and there are a number of tactical suggestions that go along with today's conversation. So what are moves to start with for those who maybe are wondering what a definition is and moves are the actions that connect, or the steps that connect, the organization to the prospect with this being the most important part that moves them towards a gift. I’m reminded of the great John Wooden, the UCLA basketball coach in the 1950’s, ’60s, and ’70s won ten of 11 national championships from about ’65 to ’76 and ’75 and what I took from him or have taken from him… a lot of his writings post-coaching is his idea of pyramid of success and then one of the sayings in this pyramid is “don't confuse activity with achievement,” and moves is really about that. It’s not just making a phone call and saying hello but what are you doing in that call, in that visit, in that zoom video conference to move them towards a gift opportunity. This gets into the question of, “well if I send a birthday card, is that a move? Did it move them to a gift?”

What we need to do is start with our organizations defining what is a move so that gift officers know what things should be counted and which are just activities. Once you build in this concept of what a move is, then the real question becomes, “How do you use it with your team, with the organization, to move people towards gifts and create a sense of accountability where everybody does it?” The goal of moves in particular, if you set it up on a regular basis, a moves management …let's say meeting or review with a gift officer is number one to identify where that prospect is now. And let's not forget about the donor cycle part of this is being able to articulate, are they in qualification, first level cultivation, second level cultivation, their pre-solicitation, their slip being solicited, they've been solicited, we have to close or they're in stewardship… all things that we've talked about on this podcast before, particularly in that four part series several podcasts ago, which you could go back and watch and listen to where are they now, is the first question. And if done correctly it's followed very quickly with the thought process of where's the next place they need to go? What is it? Then, do I need to do, as a gift officer, as the manager of that particular prospect, to get them to that next step? What are my actions? What are my responsibilities and when do the last kind of two questions combine? When do I think i'm going to ask them, and how much am i going to ask them for?

The idea is is to create a consistent series of conversations, and these conversations could be between you and yourself alone meaning, I don't have a big office, I’m going to review my best candidates my best prospects on a regular basis and figure out what the next moves are. It could be in a supervision or supervisory role and a gift officer where is that applicable, what are you going to do next, or what I really like is a group setting where we do it on a very regular basis with a set agenda, which we're going to talk about here in a second. I think it's also important to note that this is not just for major gifts, principal gifts, annual gifts, planned gifts, are all a part of these conversations. I get very hesitant, by the way corporations, foundation grants should be a part of this conversation, I get very hesitant when I see organizations foundations try to segment what I consider gift officers, “well he does grants and foundations and she does major gifts, we don't want them in the same meeting…” for something like this my answer is why not? They're doing the same things, they're just doing it slightly differently. Their accountability is to be producing proposals or producing moves that make those opportunities come to fruition. While the metrics might be different, the goal is the same, getting us to the point where we're asking enough people for the right dollar figure for the right opportunities.

The best place in my mind to really lay out in an office setting tremendous opportunity and accountability is to have a regular meeting which no craziness here is called a moves management meeting, where you pull all the gift officers together and in some ways they become more accountable to themselves and their colleagues than they do actually do the metrics, because in this meeting they're going to talk about who are they working with what are the next steps, what's possible in terms of opportunity. And if you show up and don't have anybody to talk about after a number of weeks or months, or you just come back to the same person unless it's a $100 Million gift or $50 million, if one that's…you know, so large one everyone’s… that person's attention on it most of the time they actually will begin to turn in terms of collective pressure on the people who aren't delivering and it rewards, sometimes is the impetus for people who need a little bit of a push to get their stuff done because what they end up with is the opportunity to create a sense of accountability that I can't show up to that meeting without my stuff being done.

A moves management meeting, and I do several as mentioned for clients, I just love them because I can tell who are the gift officers that are digging in and doing their job and I can tell the ones who are probably a little closer to the edge or the line than they should be. And most importantly, I loved them when i was an active leader inside the organization. I had no problem holding gift officers accountable, but sometimes they need a different sense of accountability than just their boss pressing down on them. Sometimes it's the team. Are you doing the things you need to do so we all achieve? And that's because I love athletics and sports. It's one of the great things about being a team member, you are accountable not just to the coach, you're accountable to your teammates more often than the coach because it's a collective effort and that's really what we're after. There's a bottom line number the end of the year that we're asked to meet to move the organization forward so that's kind of the big picture about moves and goals and kind of this meeting concept.

Let's move into the tactical what are some things you can do right now that will help build a sense of accountability and create a moves management culture probably using a meeting or meetings to do so. So here are a number of tactical suggestions. So let's start at the top. I believe in this meeting process so deeply you should set a regular time to conduct that meeting every Monday at 8 a.m or 9 a.m. Do it when it's the least likely that people are going to be out making calls or visits. Everybody has to attend. It shouldn't be that long. With 15 gift officers we're talking about 30- 45 minutes. We'll talk about agenda, what happens in the meeting here in a second. Be consistent, keep it short and keep it directed. Don't let it wander but create consistency.

Number two, create a repetitive agenda. That agenda should start with quickly good news  - who had something in the last week or ten days or two weeks or months that's worthy of reporting. Let's celebrate success, and success may not mean a gift but I moved someone from “I wasn't quite sure what to happen is I got a proposal in front of them for $500,000 and I wasn't sure that was gonna be possible two weeks ago or three weeks ago or two months ago.” So, good news always to start. I believe in celebrating success.

Number two is a review of the metrics. I always had a report that I would hand out or that was emailed to them before the meeting started with metrics for the last week. When I would do them when I did my meetings or if you're doing it every month for the month and here's the rule and we'll talk about the CRM here in a moment, if it's not in the CRM it didn't count so you gotta have your actions, you gotta have your opportunities or proposals in. You gotta do it right and that sheet becomes a great catalyst for accountability because if they don't people, don't have their stuff, it's big goose eggs, zeros, and that can be detrimental in many ways to a person if they're not performing and may move some people out if they don't want to do this kind of work and reward those who are doing tremendous work. Quick review of the metrics, and then we would go around the room and it was not meant to be a long diatribe. I used to actually have a stop watch to say you got about a minute and a half to tell me who is your most important product, not me, the group, who's your most important prospect and what's the next move. And by the way can you tell me when you're going to ask them for how much and they get about a minute and a half or two minutes that can be elongated if you use moves management also as a collective think tank it's a great way when somebody says look I’ve done about all I can think of and I’m stuck and I don't know why and the group might have some suggestions about maybe particular situations they've been in before that would help a gift officer or maybe there's something in the collective thought about well if we do A, B, and C or we partner this with another item… I can't tell you how many times that that has allowed or an organization or a gift officer or a pair or whatever to move a prospect forward because we use the collective knowledge of the group. The other thing it does in the group is it, and I’ve had this happen recently, regionally is we found out that somebody wasn't putting their stuff in Razer's edge or in the CRM and what was -  why was that important well it turned out two gift officers were talking to the same person because one wasn't putting in their stuff. Guess what? Neither one knew the other one was having those conversations regionally. Well, that's a problem. Moves management discovered that it also opened the door for a conversation to the individual not putting their stuff in, their actions, you got to get it in what are you doing here. So have a time, have an agenda.

Three is use that CRM, whatever it is, create those reports, they don't have to be complicated, they don't have…make them simple if necessary. Probably better if they are but if people aren't using their CRM it's hard to build a sense of accountability. What we know is is that when we create metrics for ourselves we're more likely to be successful, so in that meeting, in that process, use those metrics to your advantage create accountability create a series of of rewards by people getting their stuff done.

We've talked about this before you can go back and find the a podcast on smaller portfolio sizes and it is essential that we reduce portfolio sizes to under 100, preferably under 80, to concentrate on the people that are actually going to be making gifts. And remember, portfolio sizes should be moving people. Which brings me to my fifth thing to remember, blessing and releasing is a good thing. If someone's not going to be making a gift, if the likelihood is low enough, no matter what their capacity is, bless and release them. So, the moves management meeting can be used as an opportunity to remind people, are you blessing releasing people, are you letting them go so we can worry about the next series of people coming in. And then it's incumbent on the organization to also build a great pipeline.

Number six, remember quality is more important than quantity. I would much rather spend a little more time on one person for a million dollars than to do a rapid fire ten people for five thousand or ten thousand dollars a piece. Quality is what we're looking for. Reducing the number of asks to legitimate ones is more important than just having a ton of asks. Moves management and meetings can be supportive of that endeavor, maybe putting a floor on the number that people can bring these particular gifts in into the room with, so remember quality is more important than quantity.

The seventh… don't forget the importance of renewals and upgrades. I sometimes see, and I’ve been guilty of it myself, where I have pushed who's new, who's new pipeline, because it's something I believe in very heavily, but yet a part of that pipeline should be okay, so who made a $25,000 gift and paid off their pledge. We should go back and talk to them about another $25,000 or good lord $50 or $100,000. Renewals should be a part of everybody's efforts in that stewardship process, and if you remember, we did a podcast not long ago about stewardship and what individual gift officers can do to steward as they go, to re-qualify individuals that directly align with this principle of not forgetting renewals and upgrades. 

Last, don't forget this isn't about just major gifts. Planned giving, which may have less asks but more impact quality, corporations and foundations may have a different metric system but they're still building relationships and creating proposals to ask for money. Annual giving - the zeros might be a little bit different but it's still the same process. You can bring a lot of different players into the room to create a sense of joint accountability. Moves management and their meetings can be very valuable in helping your organization align internally and externally so that you have the success you're looking for and you're gonna know the hurdles, the hiccups, the successes and the trial and tribulation as you go rather than just waiting to the end, might give it a shot if you don't already do it. It's well worth it.

Just a reminder, I encourage you to check out the blogs posted two-three times a week, 90 second reads. And if you want to get a hold of me, as always, you can get a hold of me if you want to talk about the podcast at podcast hallettphilanthropy.com or if you have a complaint or I missed something, you disagree, that's reeks r-e-e-k-s at hallettphilanthropy.com. Look forward to hearing from you.

I’ll conclude as I do each and every podcast. I really believe this is a calling, that this is vocational what we do in the nonprofit world is still professional and still a science but it's one that also engenders the idea of emotion feeling and opportunity and I hope you feel like you're moving the needle on your organization, your community, making it a better place. I know I go to bed every night, wake up every morning thinking I’m pretty darn lucky to do what I do. There are a lot of things during the day I shake my head at but that doesn't dissuade me from thinking knowing and feeling that I’m a part of something pretty cool and I hope you feel the same way. Remember some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, and then there are those who wondered what happened. We're people who make things happen. We find, cultivate, build relationships with other people who want to make things happen for the people in our community, for the things in our community that are wondering what happened, and there's no better calling. And I hope you feel that each and every day. I’ll look forward to seeing you next time right here on “Around with Randall,” and don't forget make it a great day.