Name: Ask Without Fear!® Essentials
Uploaded: 2026-02-05T20:31:56.178Z
Duration: 57 min 28 s
Description: Ask Without Fear!® Essentials

Transcript for "Ask Without Fear!® Essentials": Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today for our first session in our new fundraising masterclass series, Ask Without Fear Essentials, presented by our expert, Mark Pittman. I'm gonna let him introduce himself, but before I do, I just want to go over a few things. You will receive a link to the recording of this webinar today to your email. Please feel free to enter any questions as you think of them throughout the session. Mark will be sure to answer them. So go ahead and just enter that in that q and a section. And then I also want to let you know that my colleague, Daniel Gwynn, he'll be on the line. He's our Blackbaud representative. If you have any questions about how Blackbaud can help you raise more and transform your mission's impact. So without further ado, I'm gonna let Mark dive on in so we can get started. Thank you so much, Abby. And, I will do my best to answer them. I I love Abby's, confidence that I'll be able to answer all the questions. But like I guess I was saying, not seeing the docs, I wouldn't know how to answer that. I've also given Abby permission to jump in at any point if there's a question I'm not seeing, to be able to to interrupt me. So, great. I'm glad people are helping each other already in the chat. And would you for just for, for those of you that are live, I'd love it if you could put in the chat where you're you're calling in from or where you're joining us from. I'd love to see that. For those of you that are watching this as a recording, you can just think the thought maybe because you know where you're watching this as a recording from. I am so thrilled. Oh, great. We've got people from all over, North America at least right now. I'm joining from Greenville, South Carolina, so, so that I'm playing along with you guys as well. I am thrilled to be able to share fundraising because I think asking for money is one of the biggest joys. Put in the chat. If you would when you look think about asking for money and see this picture, what's the emotion that comes to mind that you'd be sharing if you were this little kid? Okay. Joy, Katie. Hey, Katie. Nice. Excitement. And, yeah, woah. And is that a good woe, Mercedes, or a scared woe? Enthusiasm of the yeah. Patricia. OMG. Yeah. So there's a mix in here. A good woe. Okay. Great. I can't believe that uncertainty scared wow. Great. When I'm doing this with hey, Cindy. Yeah. The oh, big wow. When I'm doing this with board boards of directors in particular, I usually like to ask them, has anybody here asked for more money than they think they should be asking a donor for? And seeing the donor's eyes light up with joy. Because that's really what happens. Invariably, there's a couple of people, and some of you yes. Okay. So Kendra's saying she has. The the reality that some donors just don't know that the giving to the organization or giving at that level is an option, and the joy that that unlocks is real. And once you've experienced it two or three times, it's amazing to then, just wonder, is this next ask gonna be the one that I get to feel this joy and feel this this or provide this joy for the donor? Because our nonprofits are sort of like a a wall of outlets. It's like the donor is an electric cord, and the nonprofit has a whole bunch of plugs. There's the the plugs that are in North America that have the three prong. They're the they're the kind of curvy ones. There's one that looks like it's winking at you. There's the ones that are they're in in New Zealand. They had Christmas tree ones. What we get to do with the donor is walk up and sit down the wall of our nonprofit and try to figure out where they fit in the best. Where is the place that is the right connection with their interests in our mission? Through there's a few things you're gonna hear me underscore through during this training. One of them is our mission should never be directed by donors. Our nonprofits have a mission, and they're to serve that mission. Donors help finance it, and that's how they partner with it. And it is right and appropriate for us to learn to talk the the donor's language, speak the dialect of the donor, but it's not that the donors get to start calling the shots. That's not what a nonprofit is, and that's not what we're in existence for. But what we do want to do is have a few options for a nonprofit for them to be able to invest in so that we can figure out what they're most interested in. In the chat, let me know if some of you I grew up in Maine, so we had these pre '19, fifties sort of, electrical outlets that were the two prongs, that were the the same edge, but then the the plug started having the wider edge. You guys know the love maniacs. Thanks, Sharon. So do I. The, the wider edge of the plug would go into the outlet. And do you get did any of you grow up with that experience? Put it in the chat if you want. Okay. So Cindy did. The what happens sadly, yes. The the thing is you can stick the fat end, the grounded end plug into that outlet, and it does work, but it it's not a comfortable fit. It doesn't feel right. And sometimes we do that with donors. We get so excited about our our project that we're not hearing that the donor wants to give to something that's within our mission, within our vision, and strategic focus, but just not on our mind right now. We may be so into the capital campaign. They they we don't hear them say, I'd really like to give to the annual fund, or we may be so into the annual fund and trying to make bills pay that we don't hear them say, I I'd really like to to set up an endowed chair or do a scholarship or or give to the endowment unrestricted. Could I do that? So part of what we get to do as we're listening is fully listen and know what our playing field is, know what our objectives are, know what our strategic choices are for them because the I just had for me, it's a gazebo. I've just been working with another organization that had donors start giving to a greenhouse that is not anywhere on their strategic plan. They're making six and $7.06 figure gifts for this greenhouse that now they have to decide what do we do. We have a rogue employee that's trying to have a greenhouse, and that's not right or appropriate, but they're just getting their fundraising off the ground. So what we wanna do is know what are the right options for people and then have that conversation because people work the the way I look at fundraising too is that the we have our values as human beings when we are in our lives, and especially younger in our lives, we're more in touch with our values, and then work happens. And we start kind of veering away a little bit slightly, ever so slightly away because we have bills to pay and mortgages or rent and obligations with our community and maybe family or friends, and we just and our parents, and we just keep going further away. Our asking them to give money connects them back with their values and then helps them to see that the sixty, eighty, hundred hours a week that they're working corresponds right with their values. It gives meaning to the rest of their week, and that's where this joy comes in. The other reason I have this picture here for the to symbolize joy is that some of my some of us have been around fundraising for a while. I get started in 1997, so going on thirty years. And one of the truisms that I've heard is that the best way to get a major donor is to wait till they're 45. The best way to get a young person to give a major gift is to wait till they're 45. Not totally true. Your mileage may vary. Some of you will have people that are are able to give it at different ages, but it is also the there is an age group where you start having a more regular income and you start having a different outlook of of what you wanna do with your life, and that's not a bad thing. So if your major donors are in their mid forties and above, you're not missing out necessarily. There may be some peer funding, ground and funding, other things you can do, leadership opportunities with younger donors, but you don't necessarily need to beat yourself up that 20 year olds aren't necessarily giving whatever your organization considers a major gift. You'll hear me also through the essentials this essentials class talk about the major gift process because it helps us talk to human the the dialect of human beings, which is how fundraising happens. If you ever look at the Giving USA chart, you know that there's the anywhere between 75 to, 80% of the hundreds of billions of dollars that are given every year are given by individuals. Corporations and foundations give much smaller slices of that. And who runs corporations and foundations? Human beings. So the better we get it understanding how to speak human, the better we're able to impact all areas of our fundraising. Plus, you'll see there's I'll make a reference to direct mail fundraising in here, but that is also because we're learning to speak human. So And all of this will apply to your entire fundraising process, but, you the I guess I don't want you to see yourselves, not not addressed if you're in a different area of fundraising than Major Giz. This applies to all of the work that we do in in the wonderful world of fundraising. Starting out too, part of what I want to do is, I I was doing a three hour fundraising, training for a board, a national board, and a board member busted in two hours into the three hour training. She hadn't done her pre call at all. She heard me talking about the ask and making a very, I had a story about the ask that she just went ballistic about. She had an incredible nuclear meltdown that I've never experienced in my thirty years of doing this. It's right up there on the Mount Rushmore of bad experiences. And she the the what happened to her was she had had a fundraiser that told her, I will not listen to you. I can see the wealth in your house. I'm not leaving until I get a gift of a certain amount. There's total manipulation, total power tactics, and that's not what I'm talking about. So has any have any of you learned or heard of a guy named Eric Byrne before? You can put that in the chat. I I grew up in a weird family where we had homework because I was went to school, and then I also had homework because I was a Pittman. My mom was getting her college and then post post grad graduate and then postgraduate work and family therapy. And so we we read a lot of her homework. She would photocopy her books, and my sister and I would read them right along with our whatever our homework was for grade school and then high school. Yeah. Amy, I know. That's that that would that deer in the headlight look. I just grew up learning all these things, and one of the things we learned was transactional analysis. This guy named Eric Byrne came up with this idea of human relations that when we come to in any interaction, we can show up in one of three ego states. So we have the parent ego state, the adult ego state, the child ego state, and the person that we're talking to also has that. We can't impact where they show up, but we can try to center ourselves where we want to be. For the sake of the rest of this presentation together, I would I would let you know that child showing up as a child is not a optimal place for nonprofit fundraising. You might be showing up in a child ego state if you're begging your donors. Please, will you please give me some of your some more cordage, please? That's not a very good it's a lot of nonprofit fundraising sounds that way. That is not the optimal space to be coming in. That's not the ego state you wanna be coming in at. The other child state can be kinda like a kid throwing a tantrum in Walmart. If you look at your last fundraising appeal or not yours. Sorry. Forgive me. Maybe somebody another nonprofit in your community's last fundraising appeal, it may come across a bit like throwing a tantrum. We need this money. Blah blah blah blah blah blah Will you please give us give give give. We want more. That is just not an optimal state. The other thing, the other state that's not optimal is the parent to child. This is when you start shooting on your donors. You should give this way. You should give to us because we're we're and then we're domestic, or you should give to three organizations large amounts of money, or you should give little bits of money to all of them. When you start telling a donor how they should give their money, it's a tell that you're moving into a different a bad state or not a not an optimal fundraising state. The, part of the parent child thing also is a we don't wanna ever un we don't want to if we get into these, we unintentionally reinforce systemic inequity in our fundraising and in philanthropy, and we don't wanna do that. Donors don't have power over us. They hold they have purse over us potentially, but that we still need to be the we're still the ones running the the nonprofit. And we'd like them to become part of the part of the wonderful work that's being done, but we're not gonna just do whatever they say because they've got the purse. We're not gonna let them be the parent and call the shots. We're also not gonna let them act throw tantrums and have kid like a kid and a and a poorly behaved kid. A number of executive directors I've encouraged to fire their donor. Their donor's causing too much work for them that's not mission related. And that can be very liberating as you think about, you know what? We thank you for your investment and your generosity over the years, but it's clear that we're not the right organization for you. There's a lot of other organizations that do things that you like, and we really would love to free you up to go that way. Knowing that you can make that choice means that you're more in that adult space. You are you have an an important cause that has a real life impact. You're doing important work, and you're trying to connect with the adults in the other side, the other person's adult, and be able to present that as clearly as possible so that they can make a decision whether they want to be part of it or not. Honestly, this is I find you know, we're picking up the phone call, picking up the phone to make calls. I've been doing this since the mid thirties. Still have to wrestle with this almost every time to remind myself. You know, Amy Cuddy's power poses, even though the science has been a little bit has been discredited, the power pose still works. So if you don't know what that is, Google Amy Cuddy power pose and save that tab for, after after watching this session. Given all of this background, though, that we're giving joy, we have the opportunity to give joy to people that we're not giving them control, but we're allowing them to participate in the impact in that we're moving from a we're talking human to human. Let's look at the overall process of fundraising. This class is going to be the overall the essentials for the overall fundraising process because the next class that we do in this master class series is gonna be specifically in the asking appointment. What are the exact things to say? Don't worry. If you can't make it, I'll give you a phrase in this one that you can use going forward. But I it's important to remember there's a whole circle. Sort of as a Gen Xer, we I grew up watching cartoons on Saturday morning, and it would they'd have these sugar cereal ads that we said, as a part, you know, this this Cocoa Krispies is part of this healthy nutritious breakfast, and they'd keep winding the camera, there'd be all these other things here that you would never eat as a kid. Well, I would never eat grapefruit. And there are other things on the table that wouldn't be there. I just want the bowl of cereal. Many people just want the ask, but the ask is in a context that's greater than just the ask. So growing up with the, as a Gen Xer too, I heard get real a lot growing, in my from my friends and from others, so I decided to use that as the acronym for ask without fear. The r in real stands for research, then you start engaging. After you're engaging, you make the ask. You'll notice there's a dollar sign in the ask because I don't think an ask is an ask unless there's a dollar sign mentioned. Would you support us is not an ask. It's a cop out. I've been married thirty one years, and I still cannot read my wife's mind nor can she read mine. Why would we put in a donor in a place of having to read our minds? It's just not fair. And then loving them, which is a sector is a nonprofit sector we we suck at. We are usually running so much into the the needing and asking cycle that we forget to thank to the people that have actually given to us. And that's why if you have a list of 10 new donors last year, you can cross off four of those names because our new donor retention rate is around 19%. That we don't that's not, if you had 10, you can cross off eight names. Sorry. I I'm sorry about that. Eight names. They aren't gonna give again, because we just haven't shown them that their their gift mattered. So the love step is incredibly important. The good news with the love step is that it's a lot like the, engage step. So as you hear the engage stuff, we're gonna cursorily go through the love step at the end, but I want you to know that it's being human with them that doesn't have to be about money exclusively. The nice part about the love step is it's showing gratitude because they've already made a gift. So that's that is always a fun fun way to be. And then it then it kinda just keeps going in this virtuous loop because as donors give to you, you learn more about what their interests are. You're able to to get to know them better, maybe give them either ask them to stay at the same level, maybe ask them to invest in more, maybe to a different thing that you're doing, and you get to thank them again. And it just keeps going. And what got me into fundraising? I was in admissions for the first two years of my post of my professional career. And the development office said, you know what? Bob Grinnell, my first mentor, said, you can have these life decisions, values, interests, and all that you have with the people coming to college. You can have those conversations with donors for years. You don't have to end when they decide what college they're going to. And so that's what I get into me. I love hearing what people are fascinated about, what they're interested in, and seeing where the match the the match is with our organization. With this whole process, what you're trying to show your donor is you know that they're not your ATM. If you talk to your donors and and or talk to other other organize donors for other organizations, many of us in the nonprofit sector start just kind of feeling like we're pushing a button to get their money, and we just want them to spit out cash. And what we really need to be doing is showing that we are interested in your wallet, but we're also interested in you as a human being. So that's what this whole process helps you to do, and this is what a a healthy, nonprofit fundraising breakfast would look like. So let's talk about the research step. The most of the models I heard when I first got into fundraising were cultivate solicit steward, cultivate solicit steward. And those are good steps, and those are three of the four steps that I have in in the get real model. But I had one executive director call me for fundraising coaching. He had started a nonprofit. He had ran two different nonprofits in two states and was starting a third one overseas. I asked him, how much are you fundraising? How much are you trying to raise? Took him twenty minutes of verbal processing to figure it out. He's already running two successful nonprofits, and he knows the mix of fees and government and film philanthropy charitable philanthropy for those. But he hadn't done the work to think about what does it what's the impact gonna be if he opens up overseas. This is where we need to know some of our stuff. It's not that we stay here. We we don't have to know all the answers to all the donors' possible questions, but we need to know what our mission is, what our strategic direction is, what our what we'd say no to. It's incredibly freeing as a fundraiser, executive director, or board member to know. There are certain things you're gonna say no to. And you can say no kindly, but those are just directions you're not gonna go at this point for this for your nonprofit. So knowing what you're trying to fundraise for is important. If you've been in a capital campaign, let me know in the chat if you've ever been in a capital campaign. We talk about the case statement. Some people, some organizations even do this for their annual fund. That's a way of doing that. It just what are the things we're fundraising for? What is the impact that it's making? And then you can start putting dollar amounts to those. What does it cost to do this program? What does it cost to do that program? What does it cost to do this other program? As you do that, you're not only figuring out what is it we're fundraising for. It's how much is it gonna cost? What are we asking donors to contribute to? Once you have that dollar amount alright. Wait a second here. Chat seems to be broken. I hope you're not zoning out. If you're zoning out, I hope you're zoning out really well, and you're owning that. But if you could put in the chat, if you yes or no, do you know how much you're you need to raise for the year? Okay. Few. Lots. Yes. Yeah. Good. Good. Good. Good. You'd be surprised at how many people don't know. So this is wow. You are a statistically anomalous crowd. That's great. Hey, Michael. Good to see you. Okay. So once you have that number, a tool that you can use is we've been studying successful fundraising campaigns for over a hundred years now, and there's a thing called the gift range calculator, or or gift chart or gift table. If you go to giftrangecalculator.com, it's a free place, standalone website that can show you a way of figuring out how do you ask what level of gifts you need to ask for. It's one of the scariest questions is how many 10,000,000. Alright. Way to go, Amy. That's the that's the number you'd wanna put in there. Knowing how much to ask for, it can feel like this this just gargantuan black hole of of ignorance. I I just don't know. I I and I wanna get all this donor research, and I wanna find out their net worth and all this other stuff, which there are tools that can help that are good with that, that can help you maybe have a little bit more confidence in your ask. But you don't need to know that to know how much you need to ask people for your your donation, for your for your nonprofit. This example here gives a 100,000 because it's easier to do the math that way. Part of what we know with a $100,000 goal is that, in any successful fundraising campaign, we need one of the gifts to be about 10 to 25% of the total. So I put it at at 25%. So you can see here it's it's right there at, $25,000. The reason I do that, even though 10,000 would be checking the box for that top gift, Donors negotiate down. They don't negotiate up. So I if it's 10 to 25%, I'd rather ask for 25% 25,000, have them say, well, could it give 20? That's still 10 tie that's still double what a $10,000 gift would be. So it's it I always like to ask high politely because donors negotiate down. So you'll see that. The other the next thing we know is that the, the other thing with this is you'll see the number of prospects you need. I've never met a nonprofit that has these as many prospects as they need, so don't worry about that. But know this is a guideline. If you have a board member that says we need to raise a $100,000 for this project, you can go to them and say, awesome. Pull up gift range calculator, type in a $100,000, and say, who are the five people we know that can give us 25,000? While they're still excited, help them start generating a names list. The other things I'll just go through quickly is that another gift needs to be about I think it's seven to 15%. So that's why it's 15,000, the 15% being the high one, another five prospects for that. Then there's, some that are, like, five to 10%, two gifts for that. And, so that'd be 10 prospects because it's five three the the ratios that are in the in the research I've consistently see are three to five prospects for each of these gifts. Five prospects is, again, more conservative. I wanna use the most conservative estimate as I'm communicating with donors about this. Some of you will have already been figuring out, wait a minute, Mark. If you're trying to raise a 100,000, this chart gives you a 128,000. And there are three reasons why. One is the cost of stuff goes up every year. Construction, HR, that always goes up, so might as well plan for it. The second reason is stewarding our donors is not something that we I I find compelling to tell the donors about, and I'm not really sure I want donors that are compelled to give because they'll get something. So I don't say we're gonna also gonna be thanking you. We'll be communicating with you about this, or your plaque on the bench requires that we buy a bench. You know, there's there's just that. So factor those costs in as well. And for those of us that have been in in this organ in in this field for a while, there's this really interesting momentum that happens when you start getting closer to your goal. You just start people start feeling more confident. They know the thing's gonna happen. The project's gonna be completed. And so they like to go over, and that is a good boost for everybody because they fit the donors feel good about that. The nonprofit feels good about that, and everybody feels like they're part of a winning cause. So factoring in those things can help as well. There are some other gift range calculators online that go right to the zero. So if it frustrates you that this goes too much, it goes to zero. You can even make your own. It's just an Excel spreadsheet. So don't get hung up on that. But now you know what you're fundraising for and how much it's gonna cost. Because you can now ask a donor in a meeting, hey. Would you consider giving in the, you know, one of these ranges, in the $15,000 range? And some donors will say, well, the $25,000 available. Can I take that? Absolutely. If it's taken, you could say, well, that one's taken. Honesty and integrity are always the best fundraising tools. So you can honestly say, you know, the $25,000 one is taken, but we'd be honored to make a second $25,000 level for you if you'd like. The other really cool thing about this gift range calculator as far as an asking tool is you could print it out and share it with the donor. It communicates to the donor that you're not put asking them to fund the whole thing. It's one of the scariest things for a donor. They wonder, am I on the hook for the whole project? No. They see a logical plan and a pathway to get to your goal, which gives them incredible peace of mind. I've seen it on their faces, and they realize, oh, wow. This is organized and well ordered. This is great. So doing your research can definitely even help you in the asking step itself. Now as you're thinking about the dollar amounts, it is wise to be looking at your donors at what level they're in. If you already have donors, you can go through your Blackbaud database and see where the donor's at, or you can be asking people, here are the prospects we have. Where do you see them? Where can where can we fit them in? Here are the the gifts that we need. A way to do that with your board, incorporate them on the research, is to have them do a peer review. I call it the CPI index. It's a it's, their capacity, their philanthropy, and their interest. So you can just ask them, you know, put their name, and you could put names of people you know and the names of people you don't. And then these three columns, CPI, where one is low, five is high, and then notes. And if you're doing this one on one, I'd I'd give a copy to yourself and a copy to the board member because you can write down stuff that they say. She'll say things verbally or he'll say things verbally that that you might wanna write down and might be helpful for you to know. But there's something wonderfully objective feeling about writing numbers. Are they rich? Well, yeah. They've got really good capacity, but are they generous? Do they give to causes? Yeah. Some. Because we can't get it's it's harder to get someone to be generous to charity than it is to have a generous person give. So, I mean, our I would submit to you. Our job is not to talk to wealthy people to get them to give. It's to talk to generous people to help them direct some of their giving to to our cause. And then are they interested? Are they interested either in our sector, the kind of work we do, or are they specifically interested in us as an organization? Both are acceptable. If anybody scores more than a 12, you as the fund the staff fundraiser should or a volunteer fundraiser, I would submit that you should go out and get to meet them right away because that is a very high call high scoring on this index. What this helps you to do is also show your your board members that there's, it's their their networks are important. So I'd always leave the one of the spaces blank on the sheet, or a few of the spaces and say, who else should we be asking? Who who isn't here, and who would be upset if they didn't hear about us this? Get the amygdala going that who would you be upset who would be upset helps helps clarify some of the brains. It's fun to watch how people respond to that. The biggest thing is to avoid you can get a copy of the template for sure, but you can go to getfrenchcalculator.com and put your own words in as well. So, and and there are some others on the on the on the web as well. So if you just oh, thank you, Abby. Yeah. Giftrangecalculator.com. The thing is you you're not raising money here. It feels good because you're dreaming about all the things you're gonna do. You're looking at the names of people and thinking about the possibilities of them giving and giving generously. We haven't raised any money. So don't stay here. Don't get stuck here. Avoid paralysis analysis. You need to talk to people, and you need to face rejection. But at least at this point, you know more concretely what you're asking them for or what you're gonna ask them for. When you get to the ask, first, though, you can engage. You don't have to ask for money, from donors initially. You might wanna filter them and see, are they even someone we want supporting our organization? So as you think about engaging and getting to know them, a lot of the research I've seen over the years, especially by the Veritas Group, is that a full time fundraiser, a major gift fundraiser with no other obligations, no direct mail, no events, nothing else, can manage about a 125 to a 150 assigned prospects. They're qualified prospects. These are people that wanna have a relationship. We also know from our research that, two thirds of our major gift donors do not want to have a further relationship with our nonprofit. They're happy to cut the check, and they don't wanna be visited by us. They don't need they don't wanna they don't want any more relationship. That could give you some settling confidence too of knowing, oh, out of the people I'm trying to reach, maybe some of them are just happy to give, and we're we're happy to have those. So the 125, the 150 are people that you're trying to either make sure that they lock in at a certain level, that you might wanna grow to a certain level, that you have special projects that you're working on with, or people that you're wondering, are they going back into a maintenance level of this is where they're gonna stay? And they only they don't need monthly touches or quarterly touches. They can be touched once a year or or some other format of stewardship. The book, it's not all about the money. It is really good talking about this, and it it creates a dashboard that I love using with my my clients, where you have the person's name, and then you always start with how much you wanna ask them for. If you're building this for the first time, I would I would submit to you that just look at what they gave last year. That's the easiest way to fill this in. Then you look at the month that you want them to give in, and you put the ask on that month. I always then reserve the month before that to secure the solicitation appointment. One of the things that we know from, just increase working in the field is that it's taking up to 12 attempts to reach a donor now. 12 attempts. So if you ever felt like, I called them and I left them a voice mail, and they didn't respond, you're only one or two of the steps toward your 12. And if you Google the pleasantly persistent follow-up formula, you'll find I just, at the time of this recording, just did a blog post last week or the week before on what the 12 steps could look like. It's basically different versions of just checking in, looking to make that appointment again, wanting to see if you got our our initial invitation. It's nothing creative, and it feels incredibly, tedious for most of us. And yet it's a way of serving our donors. Our donors are busy, and we're not the center of their universe. So if we are wanting to get FaceTime with them, it's important for us to spend that time to, to actually get the appointment. And if we're gonna ask in September, it's not to wait to get the appointment in September. It's best to secure that the month before. Then the rest of it is what are the things that we need to do before the ask to be able to have them say yes in the ask? So that's where the engagement comes in. You have all these different ideas of things that you can do to engage. They may need to meet somebody that's been impacted. They may need to meet one of the wanna it may be helpful for them to meet a program person. There's all sorts of different things that you can you can think of. It could, if they've already given, it could be a birthday note that's helpful. A tour of the facility is something that is really insightful for people. If you Google story tours, Tammy Zonker has a great formula for taking your whole physical plant and in a way that's HIPAA compliant and privacy protected, telling the story through your physical space that can help donors really understand much more of what you do. But this is the way you do it. You set up and I would I always work when I'm working with clients and I'd submit to you guys to do this too, it's just a spreadsheet, Google Doc, Excel. You can build this into your CRM after, but, there's something freeing about seeing it on one page. And if you your team does it, one of the organizations I worked with found that a particular employee that was having issues had 450 assigned people to them. And that was one of the reasons that they he was having issues with keeping up with his goals was that he was really scattered any at event responsibility as well. So, the the sheet is available. You'll get the slide these slides as a as a PDF, but that is something that you can it you can also take a screenshot of this just before I move it. This is how you build in the engagement. And so many I would submit to you that you should try to think about the whole year. And this is also where you can think about when are the impact stories happening? When are the other things happening, that we can organizationally, some of your touches could just be that you're sending a magazine or sending a thank you letter. It doesn't have to be that you are doing it all yourself. Your organization's communications and fundraising communications can definitely be part of that. There may be events that you have at different times, inviting people to graduation, inviting people to some sort of groundbreaking or something. Woo hoo. Alright. Thanks, Mercedes. Hallelujah. This is good stuff. Alright. So now I I'm getting we're getting to the really good stuff. This is the ask part now. So what you've seen is you've researched what you're doing. You've researched what it's gonna cost. Try to figure out maybe some of the names that are the the people that may help you with that. You start engaging them to see if they're even interested in the it sometimes you don't know if they're interested in this. And this aspect, the engaging aspect, was a picture of two people sitting side by side because you're sharing about your cause just as much as they're sharing about their themselves. There's some somebody's introduced to you, let's say there's somebody in the community that you think is could be an influencer or a positive. Find something. I would, my my direction to you would be to find something that you're sincerely curious about in addition to their wallet and and see if they you could talk. Hey. I noticed you've done a lot of construction sites in this community. We're happy to build something. Really would love to just talk to you and see the top five to things you know, five to seven things that frustrate you the most about nonprofits going about building projects. We don't wanna make those same mistakes. That kind of thing, finding something that they're expert in, it it will actually is is really wins if it's if it has integrity, can be very compelling for people, and it can give you a lot of great information even if you decide not to ask them for money later. Asking for advice is sometimes the best ask the best first ask. The, these tour connecting people with admission is Tammy Zonker, z o n k e r. She's a phenomenal fundraiser out of Detroit. And I think she's got she's got a YouTube video about how she did her story tour at an organization that she was working with. Story tour is that something. Alright. Let's talk about the ask. This is where the magic happens. This is the fun part. Everything else has just been building up for this moment. The reason you know when it's time to make the ask because you've decided this is the month you're gonna make it Having it on a sheet like this helps you to figure out, am I overloaded? Am I putting them all into the fourth quarter? That may not be helpful. It also helps you to know when do they normally give. If they normally give in March because that's when they get a bonus, then you know to to predicate that you ask closer to March even if you wouldn't necessarily think of March as a fundraising month. You also the I I wanna mention that the there's also the real stage here. The my clients put this in. The the Veritas Group guys didn't put this in, but my my, clients put this in to figure out, are they in the research stage, the engage stage, the ask stage, or the love stage? If they're all in the research stage, you may have some act ask reluctance. And if they're all in the ask stage, you may not be thanking people enough. So that can help you with that as well. So if you're asking for money by email or letter, this is the essentials course. This is we're gonna give you a really powerful tool for this. Look at your we's, ours, and us's, and the you, yours, and yours. I say you need to read your letter. So, typically, if you write out your first letter or email for asking, typical nonprofits, the clients I work with typically have 37 we's in that letter. The our organization, blank, blank, blank, nonprofit does these great things, and we do this, and we have these things. We have great people, and we have great causes we work with, we have great donors. There's a lot of organization specific language in there. And there's usually only seven to use, which is down three quarters of the way or or further down the page saying, will you join us in our mission to buy with your donation off? Not bad for a first draft. I would definitely not send that out because we know that that doesn't work. As we've been studying fundraising, it's the you, yours, and yours, you, your, and yours let words that keeps eyes engaged, keeps readers engaged in the message. That's why they're in black. The we are and us's are in red because they put your fundraising in the red. These do not engage readers. And so what we need to do is, take you in the last letter, get a red Sharpie and a black Sharpie and circle all the we all the references to your nonprofit and your and the we, ours, and us's. And then sharp in black circle all the use yours and yours your words. We call that the wee wee test. I call it weeding your letter, getting the wheeze out of the letter. Donors, as my friend Steven Screens says, donors aren't stupid. They're just busy. And so what we need to do is really strip down everything that's getting in the way of the ask. They know that we're asking them for money because our logo's on the on the letterhead or our address is on the envelope. They know that. So now we have to say, you and the impact. You can help this impact happen. It's not your gift through us. We'll help this impact happen. They understand that. But, donor, you're impacting this will that make this happen. The oh, yeah. The five five of those are are in the ask line, five of the seven, and this is not good. I had to put that in there because people are saying, oh, should we we do this? This is not what you wanna do. What you wanna do is make it as much about the donor and the impact their gift will have as possible. The other thing you wanna do when you're asking is make sure that it's just the problem. This is the hardest part for us because we wanna show that we're good at what we do. Education is not the purpose of the ask. Education is in the engaged step, and education is in the gratitude love step. The ask is saying there's a problem. Will you be part of the solution? That's the job of the ask. So here, traditional story arc of a hero has a problem and comes to, you know, a solution. Your ask is the first part getting them up to the problem and then saying, donor, will you play a part? And once the donor plays a part, then it's saying, wow. You're so smart. Look at how well that worked out. The essentials for making for a phone call is or for an asking appointment is if you're making a phone call to set up and ask, tell the donor that you're doing that. The first ask I ever made, I called them up and said I lied. I said, I'm gonna be in your area, and I wanna I'd love to get together for a cup of coffee. I was only gonna be in her area if she said yes. And I really didn't want a cup of coffee as much as I wanted to ask her for a $100,000. True story. So I didn't like the way I felt, and I wasn't able to listen to the donor at all because I was trying to figure out how how can I manipulate her words to be a $100,000 ask that I wanna make? Fortunately, she was a amazing individual, and we kept our relationship and that that that worked out. We didn't get that gift, but we we didn't ruin a relationship, either. So if you're gonna make an ask, I would say if you're gonna set up the asking appointment, I would say, hey. Love to get together with you and talk to you about our program, or I'd love to talk to you about this new project that we're doing, or I'd love to talk to you about your giving this year if they've been giving before. Just a little it's not like I wanna talk to you about reaching into your stock portfolio and getting a percentage of the transfer into our account. You don't have to get that technical, but just giving them an idea of the agenda of this meeting has to do with talking about giving or talking about a project or talking about something the stuff that is going on with us. The great thing about that is donors will get you back into, on track if you get if you get scared in the ask. You can get back on track because they'll say, didn't you come here to talk to us about the annual fund? Or didn't you come here to, you know, talk to you about the fund for character development? Oh, that's right. I did. And then you can get right back into to that. So I would be clear that that's what it's about, that it this isn't just for coffee. I'd love to have you know, engage. I'd love to get together with you a cup of coffee. I'd love to pick your brain. I'd love to learn more about what you do. Those are all good for engage steps. That is not appropriate for an ask invitation. But I also would say don't get into the ask on the phone unless you're running a photathon. That's the purpose of a phone a thon. But if your purpose is to get together in the meeting, say, I got something I wanna show you, and you could have the gift range chart. You could have, you know, a brochure or something. Or, would love to yeah. I've got something I wanna show you. There, this is this is too important to just go over on the phone. Trying to get the in person visit is the best. I am finding that's increasingly challenging. So some people may opt for Zoom, or some people may wanna do it on the phone. But the goal is to try to get them face to face. That is where you get the the better results. So I would always go for that first. I'd also encourage you to go in pairs when possible because you'll see different things and to hold each other accountable. You may chicken out on the ask, but if you go with somebody else and they but you both know what the ask is for, that the appointment is for the ask, you're less likely to chicken out. The the big thing is don't get hung up on that. Fundraisers aren't fundraisers. No nonprofit needs more friends. Nonprofits need more funds. Fundraisers raise funds. So don't get hung up on you know, coordinating two calendars is hard enough, so don't don't let it be a three coordinator you know, a three don't let the three calendar coordination hang you up on making the ask. You wanna get in front of donors and clearly make an ask. When you're in the appointment, and we'll go into this in much more detail, in the second class in this series, is I would specifically ask for a specific dollar amount. You could say if you have gift categories like president's club, that counts. But, I like also asking for the bigger amount. I'd ask, would you consider a gift of a thousand dollars? My friend, when I was doing a lot of capital campaigns with a particular firm, there was a colleague of mine, John Donovan, who taught the other way. Split up the ask. Would you would you, give the sorry. Would you give $84 a month? That is whatever works for you is better. I like the bigger dollar amount. I want them to think about making a priority of our organization rather than forcing them to do math on the fly. Here are the phrases. So here are some phrases, that you can ask. And if you didn't do anything else and you just start out using these phrases, you'd raise more money. You heard me say the first one already. Would you consider a gift of specific dollar amount toward this? I like that better than would you give. It's less I want a conversation. Because if they wouldn't consider it, I'd like to know why. They would consider it. I'd like to know how they're how they'd like to consider with their all at once or, you know, what in installments. The my favorite phrase is the next one. I have no idea how much to ask you for, but I'd like to ask you to consider a gift of a $100,000. Or I have no idea if this is even in the ballpark, but would $25,000 be something you consider to giving to this? And you'll learn in the next class that you know you're at that point in the conversation when you're able to reflect back what the donor has said. Most of it's not a pitch. It's not a spiel. It's a conversation where you're asking questions and the donor's telling you about themselves and about their values. And then you're able to say, you know, because you've said that, would you consider a gift of $10,000 to this? And then everybody in the chat, tell me what you do next. You say the dollar amount. You make the ask. Yeah. Carrie. Thank you. Carrie's in my school. Yeah. People are being nice, but okay. Megan too. Yeah. Shut up. I grew up in the eighties, so I had mister t in my head because I'm a verbal extrovert. And instead of I would say, would you consider a gift of $10,000 to this? And, you know, any amount would do, and, really, participation is what we're really most important interested in. And and it's kind of well, you don't even have to give. We still like you, and why don't I just pick up this receipt and pay the check on my way out? Like, I would just verbally had diarrhea all over the donor. I need mister t to tell me, shut up, fool. And it's not because, you know, in sales, they tell you he who speaks first loses. It's not that at all. What you're doing is you're giving them the the courtesy of letting them process your ask. You've already asked them for a specific dollar amount. They need to think about it. Do I have that in my bank account? What would my business partner say? What would my partner say? What are the con you know, what are the different things that I have to do? Do I even wanna give it that much? They have a lot of things to consider. Some people are fast processors. Some people are more more paced well paced processors. They'll let you know when they're done processing by being the first to speak. So that is hugely important. The other thing is if you're scared and they ask, if you're feeling nervous, name it because they're gonna think they're gonna pick up on it and think it's their intuition telling them there's something wrong with the project. So if you're especially if you're a board member, you could say, so sorry. I'm nervous about this because asking for money isn't something that I do on a normal basis, but this cause is so important when you consider a gift of $50,000 to this. You're giving them the service of hearing your ask without trying to intuit, is that my gut? Is this something or is there something wrong here? When you do that well and they're and when they say yes, that's when your eye their your eyes their eyes light up, your joy happens, the electricity goes on. This is where it's also important to talk to your steering wheel. The practicing the ask before you make the ask really helps it become much more confident for you. As you say it over and over, you can figure out, I wanna say a thousand dollars to them, or I wanna say $84 a month. You can figure out, what are the right phrases that seem right as you consider that person. And I would recommend you say it out loud. Back when I was doing this before, people would drive by me on the highway and look at me weird. Now they just think I'm on my Bluetooth. But the anything you can do to remove the emotion from the ask and make it or remove remove the negative emotion from the ask is really helpful, to help them hear the ask clearly and process it on their own terms, not trying to have other red flags or confusion in there. I like what Sofia says is, pause for twenty seconds. I I will sometimes under the table touch my fingertips, with slow counts of five or slow counts of one second each so that they're I usually do it. Something tactile helps me to remember that too. So much more we could go into. But if you do this, then, I guess if you if they say yes, the three options are yes, no, or maybe. Yes is great. Resist the urge to hug them unless that's your culture. That's awesome then. Go for it. But, you wanted to confirm how much they wanna give at what time, those types of things you'd wanna do. If the, if it's a no, it's there's usually three reasons for a no. The amount's too much. It's the wrong amount, the wrong project, or the wrong timing. They aren't able to do it right now. Then so maybe quarterly payments or monthly payments would be helpful. It's the wrong project. Oh, that's odd. I thought you were really excited about this aspect is preserving our history. Did I get that wrong? You can have a conversation about it. Or if it's the wrong amount, you'd be able to say, again, would would installments help with that if you paid it over, you know, quarters or maybe, you know, making a two year pledge, would that be something that would make it more more palatable? Could still be a no. That's fine. But at least you can have some questions and and figure and try to help them see a way maybe to to make the gift. The maybes are the hardest. So this is where I would say make sure that you always gain permission to follow-up. Whatever you do, whenever you leave that, say, great. If I I'm so excited you're excited about this. I understand you have to talk to the so and so about this or meet with your financial team. If I haven't heard from you in the next week to ten days, is it cool if I just check-in? Oh, no, Mark. You don't need to do that. I'm so excited. I'm gonna do that. That's awesome. But if I haven't heard from you, it cool if I just follow-up? I will push. That's the one place where I'll really push because when I'm following up, I don't want to have the negative inner critic saying, you're being in a nuisance. You're being a pain in the neck. You're being an annoyance. You're probably interrupting them. If I've gotten permission to follow-up, I am now following up as a person of integrity. Hey. As I promised, I'm just checking in to see how's that discussion going. Is anything there I can do to provide any more material for you to talk to your with the people you need to talk to? But it's out of a place of integrity, as opposed to a place of annoyance and and pain in the neck pain in nakedness. I don't even know if that's a that's a term, but it is now. The last step, and we're winding this down because I wanna give Abby some time and also see, if you have questions, start putting them into the into the chat. The last step is the love step, which is where we get to show our gratitude. This is where we get to say, hey. Look. You made a difference, and this is where we get to educate. If we're doing 27 things, we might be able to say to them, look. You know you made a difference in this area where you gave, the reason that you gave. Guess what? You also you and people like you help make a difference in these other areas, and you didn't even have a clue about that necessarily. But all this good is happening because of generous people like you. If their gift wasn't generous, then you don't have to use the word generous. You could say, all this work is happening because of people like you supporting it. Thank you. That can be done in person. It can be done in writing, and it can also be done in phone calls. If you're looking for a place for your board to get plugged into fundraising, I would submit to you that getting them to get in the love stage is the best place. It's kind of the gateway drug for fundraising. When people they start calling people that have already given, they realize people actually enjoy giving to their cause, then they may actually be more likely to give up names or think of names of people that might wanna be involved and maybe even sit in or even do the ask. But having I've had, would when I sometimes do board meetings, I'll have them print out a list of the donors that they had in the last year. Only one one list, and then it pass around the board. And so it's name, maybe city, definitely phone number, and then board members take three each. And they make three thank you calls. Really quick, they're usually leaving messages. It's, hi. I'm so and so. I'm on the board of such and such, and the staff told me you made a gift last year. I just wanted to say thank you. We couldn't do it without people like you. That's the voice mail. If they actually get into conversation, then they could say, how did you get started in giving? Or what do you enjoy most about giving this organization? What part catches your attention the most? But that that, we had one board chair that and outside of Atlanta that loved it so much. He would never start a board meeting without having those three thank you calls. He said the board started thinking about the mission, and they started thinking smarter when it came to those thank you calls versus when they came in and just or thinking just about the budget and just about spreadsheets. Lastly, as we go into as we bring Abby back up on stage two, if you want to know 21 ways for your board members to get engaged in their in their nonprofit fundraising, some organizations are using this as part of their onboarding. They're they're printing this out and saying, choose two. The first one is make your own gift first. And then there's 20 other ways that they can whether they're introvert or extrovert, there's all sorts of ways they can do this. You can, use this QR code and, definitely let me know how this or if this talk was was helpful for you. But and we'll I'll report that back to Abby and the Blackbaud team. But, also, it'll get you to have the follow-up Friday reminders, which is something that every Friday, my wife and I put out reminders about the importance of follow-up. And so and giving tactics and scripts for that as well. So, Abby, that's the essentials on asking without fear. Thank you so much, Mark, and thank you, everyone. Feel free to enter any questions that you have. Just as we wrap up here, again, I just wanna say thank you so much for this truly amazing road map, Mark. Very clear that it's super helpful, and I hope to see everyone here at Mark's next session on February 26. And just to kind of wrap up on mastering major gift asks, we wanna ensure that you have the right partner to turn these techniques that Mark has just talked about into real results. And that's where we come in with Blackbaud raises at GenXT. For anyone here that's unfamiliar, it is the world's most powerful fundraising platform purpose built to help you lead fearlessly into your mission's next chapter. And while today's session focused on the art of the ask, Raiser's Edge NXT provides the intelligence and automation to sustain that momentum. So it's powered by AI, and you can constantly, instantly surface hidden major potential and prescribe the best cultivation strategies. And then our new chat for Blackbaud AI makes your life a lot easier by summarizing donor activity, recommending next steps, and freeing you up to really focus on the high touch relationship building that we discussed here today. So if you'd like to learn more, you can answer the poll that I've just opened. It's available to the right of the chat and the messages tab, or feel free to send me a direct message or Daniel, and we'll be sure to follow-up with more details. And again, don't forget to join us February 26 for Mark's next session, exactly what to say in the ask. You will get the exact words of what to say and the keys to confidently ask for money. So thank you again, Mark, and everyone for your time today. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.