Episode 98: Whats a Radio? The Tried and True Old School Lessons of Fundraising

Welcome to another edition of "Around with Randall," your weekly podcast making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and Founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett.

It's another great day right here on "Around with Randall." Thank you for taking a few moments of your day to chat about philanthropy in a 20-minute segment or so. I had an interesting experience at the dinner table recently. I'm getting ready to attend my first Nebraska football game of the year and like many, besides being somewhat taken aback by the team's performance, I like to listen to the broadcast while I'm at the game and I have a miniature digital radio that I plug into a headset and or earbuds and listen to while I'm sitting at the game. My kids, nine and five, have not really been to many games and we're thinking about taking them and I was charging the radio and my five-year-old daughter says, "what is that daddy," and I said, "well that's my radio for the football game," and she looked at me and said, "daddy, what's a radio?"

I looked at my wife and realized wow the world's changing. The reason I tell the story, another one that might be true in your family as well is, we recently had a little bit of a power outage and my kids couldn't figure out where the internet went as we were saying hey why don't you you know play a game on your iPad to keep them entertained for, until the power came back on. And they said we'll just get online and we tried to explain and the kids would move around the house where'd the internet go? The world's a different place but it caused me to think about a couple things. The first was, what are the other things in our world that we don't utilize anymore that young kids wouldn't think about, understand, especially if you have gray hair like mine. So from the idea of phones, and my father-in-law has a house with a phone niche where in the old, in the olden days even before my time there was one phone and they built like a little cabinet recess into the wall where the phone would sit in a really long cord. My kids are like, papa what is that? Cameras that aren't part of your phone. Or we were going through some storage and we had pictures and the kids are like where did those small pictures come from why aren't they on your phone? In that same storage unit there were some VCR tapes of when I was broadcasting early on in my career and the kids were like what is this thing? Jay, my son, thought it was a light brick.

We're kind of old school so we still play board games but, like, Mousetrap and UNO and things of that nature, but you think about that or chalkboards, we think about Yellow Pages that are no longer here. We now have them on our phones. A hard map, the idea of just getting lost, a fax machine, all of this is in the past. Well how does this all relate to philanthropy? Well, this got me to think a little bit about what are some of the things that we used to do to raise money? And we can think about, when I was a child, fashion shows here in Omaha the Auxiliary, or the Association for the Hospital, the largest hospital at the time, Clarkson, which then merged into Nebraska where I worked for many years, had a style show. I was one of the models because my mom was on the committee. We used to sell stuff, what some kind of stuff did we sell? We sold candy, we sold trash bags, we sold candles, we sold first aid kits, candy bars, my gosh, I sold a lot of those, popcorn. wrapping paper.

My daughter's question of what's a radio led me to this thought process of how philanthropies changed. But in one other thought was how philanthropy may be the same. So I decided to go back and look at two people and some of their lessons that were not evolutionary, but revolutionary, in the fundraising profession. One was Hank Russo, who founded the fundraising school which became the Lilly School of Philanthropy at IUPUI in Indianapolis. The other is Jerry Panas, both of whom really wrote the book about what we do today. In fact they wrote many books about what we do today. What's interesting is these books were written in the 70s, 80s, and 90s when philanthropy kind of began to take shape. In fact, that's when we began to track most of the philanthropic activity in the United States, and I decided to take a look at some of what they said in those moments. And what I found is that philanthropy may not have changed as much as we thought. The granular tactics might be different but the lessons are still as powerful, that as the today as they were then.

The tactical piece of this podcast, as we try to do each week, is to realize what the real value of philanthropy is, and most importantly the value of what fundraisers, it's not a term I'm afraid of using, and I hope you're not either, do to bring resources into the organizations, and the missions we believe in that make the community a better place. Hank Russo wrote about it a lot. Achieving fundraising excellence. It's now, I think, in its fifth or sixth edition, which obviously Hank Russo's passed away but he started all of this in this kind of tactical way, particularly on one of the bibles of fundraising. In it you'll find things like personalization, appreciation, and paying attention. It's about the relationship. That impact, and value, and connection are the critical components of how we build those relationships and foster opportunity for people to make charitable gifts.

And you may be listening and you're an annual giving professional, or a major gift, or a chief development officer, or principal gift, or a board member. It doesn't make any difference. These basic principles about personalization, appreciation, and paying attention and communicating impact, value, and connection are tried and true. Think about the idea of personalization for a second. In many ways, whether it's how we address or segment our markets from an annual giving perspective or we teach individual fundraisers to build individual relationships, with major gift prospects, personalization is about making someone feel as if they're special. They're not just one of the crowd, they, that their engagement involvement is critical in our success, appreciation. It's about stewardship. How do we steward the people who have been generous to us? How do we show them that value and pay attention? There's nothing worse than you get a gift, we take stewardship as an example. and you don't hear from someone for two or three years and they show back up asking for more money. Was it transactional or was it a real relationship?

All of these things are completely identifiable as baseline, things we need to be doing today. And while the world has been crazy with the pandemic, and the economy, and all of these things, the changing nature of philanthropy in the United States in general, where we're now below 50% of households making gifts to charity, or to having a philanthropic gift intent each year less than a half or a decade ago was it two-thirds, these simple principles are just as important. I think if we pay attention to Jerry Panas and some of the things he wrote and said, I think we'd find some similar concepts. If you take apart some of his writings, and there were a number of books, you can find some very common themes.

Just seven for us to consider. First and foremost, the most important thing is you have to ask. It's interesting, as I work more and more with CEOs, that they're surprised that this is maybe the most elemental part of our industry. If you don't ask, how is someone to know you need help? That's true, not just in philanthropy but in life. And sometimes we view asking as a weakness. I think what Jerry Panas has taught us, and what I try to teach gift officers and fundraising professionals, is this a strength. If you're able to articulate why you're asking and what difference it's going to make, that's a powerful statement about wanting to work with someone to make your world, the culture, the organization, the community a better place.

The second thing that Jerry Panas has taught us, people don't give money away. They invest in great causes. And then I think something quoted from his book in asking in bold and exciting dreams, we've talked about this concept multiple times, I talk about it constantly in ongoing client relations, teachings, presentations. This simple concept of bold and exciting is articulated multiple times by some of the great philanthropists in history. They wanted to make the world a better place and yes there's a need for the small, but the biggest investments we can get come from wanting to change the world. You can define the world however you want. You can... the whole globe... your little part of the community, your organization, this sector of the community where help is desperately needed. The more you dream as an organization and priorities the more likely you are to attract philanthropist's bold and exciting dreams.

Jerry Panas taught us that integrity is the mightiest weapon in a fundraising's arsenal, and that's a direct quote. That, by the way integrity is based on the concept of having a relationship in some way shape or form with someone who gives you resources to support your cause, that more than anything else that integrity is the thing that's going to drive long-term success in relationships, in particular with fundraising intent. Does the donor believe you? Does the donor believe the organization is going to do what it says it's going to do?

Fourth, that it's our responsibility in the relationship, particularly in the asking part or the the investment piece, monetary transaction, that we make them feel, donors, prospects, at ease. And important, again, based on the relationship. Making people feel comfortable with the idea of giving, the idea with you, the idea what your organization does, and its mission.

Number five, I think this is the most powerful thing he ever said. My opinion, there may be others who disagree, but I'm gonna quote it. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Now he might have gotten that from somewhere else maybe it's not totally original but I'm going to give him credit because I didn't make it up. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And that's all based on the depth of these relationships that we're supposed to be building, that are genuine, and authentic, and filled with a sense of integrity.

Number six, giving up is the ultimate tragedy. Failure is not a crime. Low aspirations are. Again, another direct quote. Giving up is not the ultimate tragedy. Failure is a failure, is not a crime. Low aspirations are. We talk about metrics. When we talk, and I talk about John Wooden in this idea of, in his pyramid of success that I utilize, that, don't confuse activity for accomplishment. Same general premise that we need to realize the end result is that relationship depth, and from that relationship comes a tactical piece, which is we need to be asking for money. And it's based on integrity, and the depth of the relationship, and them feeling comfortable with what we do. There's all this building, but at the end of the day what we know is that if we aren't failing, half or two-thirds of the time, then we're not doing it right. We are a business and industry like baseball, where failure is a much more likely option if you think about batting. If you follow baseball, that if you go to the hall of fame if you hit 300. Well what that says is that you failed 70% of the time because you hit 300. But baseball spun the statistics to make that a positive. And we need to be viewed in the same way. If you're not failing a little bit or a lot, then at the end of the day, you're not doing it right. Gotta get back up, set high goals.

The last one of the goals I'll get to in my close, so if you'll hang on for one second, I'll tell you what that last piece is because it connects to the way I normally finish the podcast. Before doing that, let me remind you, leave a comment, share this podcast with a friend, leave a review, whatever you do I appreciate it. Hopefully they're helpful to you in 15 or 20 minute segments, and if you're interested in more, go to the website and look up the blogs - about 90 second reads. We're building out an RSS feed. People are asking about how they can get them in their inboxes. I'm glad to do that, but there's I think 180 to 200 of them, 90 second reads, on a myriad of subjects on on leadership and fundraising in the world in general, and if you want to communicate with me send me an email at podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com.

J Panus said one other thing that I don't quote but I allude to every time I either publicly speak or I do the podcast, whatever it might be. His quote was, "lucky you, you're a fundraiser. Some shy away, some are afraid, some say they don't like it. You know better, you are, in your own special way, helping to change a corner of the world."

I talk about this at the end of every one of my podcasts. I talk about this quite often when I speak publicly, that some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, then there are those who wondered what happened. My all-time favorite quote, Gaelic saying. And what that's saying is much to Jerry Panas's direction is that what you do is critically important. What your organization does is critically important. You are going to have challenges on a daily basis. There are going to be things you just throw your hands up and say oy vey, how did this happen, or why aren't they doing these things, or why aren't we getting this? And those moments stink, but the greater calling of people in our industry is to fight through those things and be people who make things happen. fight for those things that need to happen for the people and the things in our community are just wondering what happened.

the conversation today is about the old actually being tried and true. And even though my daughter doesn't know what a radio is, my guess is she'd enjoy what comes out of it. That the technology's changed but the love of music and the love of learning and listening hasn't. And the same is true of philanthropy. What we do changes the world. We find people to partner with to do that, and that's worthy of your time, effort, and energy, and a great professional career. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining me, Randall, on "Around with Randall." We'll see you next time, and don't forget, make it a great day.