Name: The Trust Imperative: Strengthening Public Confidence in the Nonprofit Sector
Uploaded: 2026-05-19T17:30:58.979Z
Duration: 58 min
Description: The Trust Imperative: Strengthening Public Confidence in the Nonprofit Sector

Transcript for "The Trust Imperative: Strengthening Public Confidence in the Nonprofit Sector": Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for our fundraising master class session today, The Trust Imperative, strengthening public confidence in the nonprofit sector, presented by our expert today, Shannon McCracken. So before we kick it off, I just wanna let you know of a few things. You will receive a link to the recording within twenty four hours, and please feel free to enter questions as you think of them throughout this session into the q and a. You'll find the q and a to the right of the chat function, and you can enter them either in the chat or into that q and a right there. And then don't forget to access our incredible resources to help guide your mission's next chapter in our docs section. So I know the reason you're here. Without further ado, I'll go ahead and pass it over to Shannon to dive on in. Wonderful. Thank you, Abby, and thank you, Blackbaud. I'm delighted to be here with you today. I am Shannon McCracken. I'm the president and CEO of the Nonprofit Alliance. We're a national infrastructure organization for nonprofits and firms and partners that work with nonprofits. And, a lot of our work focuses on advocacy, leadership development, as well as pipeline into the nonprofit sector. So we are going to jump right in today. Our topic is strengthening public confidence in the nonprofit sector, really focused on trust. But I'm actually going to start today with something a little bit different. Let's talk about nature. So some of you may be familiar with Biosphere 2 at the University of Arizona. It is a three acre terrarium, the largest of its kind in the world, and an ideal space for scientific research. And early on in the Biosphere 2, trees grew much faster than they do out in the wild. And that makes sense. Right? Ideal conditions, air, temperature, water, sunlight, soil, perfect conditions inside of a terrarium. Those trees grow much faster. But then scientists observed something they didn't predict. These trees started to just crumble, fall in on themselves, And scientists didn't, at first, know why. But as they do, they eventually came to an answer. And the answer is that there is something that exists out in the wild that doesn't exist in the biosphere. And it's wind. Out in the wild, a tree's job is to grow strong and straight and tall and then here comes wind and it shoves it around and pushes it around in ways that make a tree very uncomfortable. And trees, in order to withstand this wind, actually develop wood with a different molecular structure. The special wood is called stress wood, and it's what allows trees to do things like grow around fence posts or signs that are in its way as its girth expands or to grow into those crooked little shapes to find the one patch of sunlight in a really dense canopy of leaves and to stand up against the wind. In the biosphere, there was no wind. There was no adversity. Nothing testing the trees. It turns out that wind, the very force that seems to threaten it, is what fortifies the tree, and it gives it the strength to stand. So I start with this metaphor for us today because the nonprofit sector is living through a very windy season. It has been a difficult year and a half. And while we can point to a particular day in January 2025 when the status quo for nonprofits really shifted and changed, when we're being really honest with ourselves, the challenges that we're facing started well before then. And in fact, nonprofits have been facing adversity, standing up and stepping up to challenges of all varieties for a long, long time. Resilience is about standing up in the moment, and it is all the hard work that preceded this moment that gives your organization and our sector the fortitude to withstand the storm. You have already developed stress wood in the shape of your good governance policies, in your communication strategies, in your fundraising messages, in your partnerships, in your cash reserves, in your very loyal donors, and your committed staff and volunteers, and in the unwavering commitment that you have to the cause or causes that you serve through your work. Today, we are going to be examining the landscape and the escalation of threat to our independence and public trust, and we're going to look at how resilient leaders are responding and communicating more effectively and more powerfully than ever before. So let's jump in. On the topic of public confidence in the nonprofit sector, there are a lot of things that we could be talking about today, certainly more than fit into one class. There are plenty of surveys out there that measure trust relative to other sectors, changes in trust to the nonprofit sector year over year. The Nonprofit Alliance released a report last year when federal funding was newly precarious that really detailed why a rock solid foundation of public trust isn't just important, it's essential in the donor decisions and whether to give or not give to a nonprofit. That report outlines the top five drivers of nonprofit and, excuse me, of public trust in nonprofits, and it is available on our website. We will share it with you after this re after this session, you will have it as a resource that you can take and read and share with your teams. But in our time today, I want to focus instead on some of the immediate threats to our sector in this politically divided and divisive time. Threats unlike those that most of us have have had to navigate during the tenure of our careers. And then we're we're going to look at how these threats are influencing or changing the public's idea of the role and the value of our sector and, therefore, our organizations within it and and questioning whether we can be entrusted with their contributions. There's never been a more important time to be having this conversation. Now as I get into this, I wanna be really clear that I am not talking as only about this current government, only about this White House or this Congress, only about one set of nonprofits. What is happening right now in our space is unprecedented. An unprecedented activity left unchecked becomes the precedent. What's happening now could become the new blueprint for all future elected officials and the ways that they talk about, interact with, and regulate nonprofit organizations. So I use today as our example, but consider this for something that for all administrations and all nonprofit types to come. Now let's take a look together at some of the and I'm not sure the animation is going to work here, but these are some of the headlines that have been shaping, public perception and public influence, excuse me, public impressions of nonprofits over the past year and a half. The animation's not working, but you can see this one on the top. The New York New York Post talked about how charities, with quotes around that, funded by your tax dollars helped break immigration law. Behind that is a headline from CNN, how leftist nonprofit networks exploit federal tax dollars to advance a radical agenda. There's a post on here that was on x by Elon Musk back when he was still in the good graces of the White House, talking about how nonprofits could be the biggest scam of all. There are also press releases from Congress on hearings, including one last year that was titled NGOs Gone Wild. This is what is out in the the public space, in mainstream media, on social media. This is what we're up against. What is what is influencing and changing that public perception of nonprofits? Whether or not your organization is named in these, it is certainly being considered as part of this broader picture. As I noted, unprecedented action today becomes the precedent. And likewise, public trust that is eroded today will not simply be renewed and refreshed with the next election cycle. Now, I wanna start by looking at a very specific example here of of the way that nonprofits have been under scrutiny and under threat, and that is with the use of our five zero one c three status as a political tool. Now just a quick refresher here for everyone in the room. Many of you are with five zero one c three tax exempt nonprofit organizations. The nonprofit part of that is determined at the state level, whatever state you're registered in. If you're registered in the state of New York, it is New York who has said that you are a nonprofit entity. It is then the IRS, the federal government level, who determines whether you are a five zero one c organization, and there are many types of five zero one c's, but most or most nonprofit organizations are five zero one c three, which means you serve a charitable purpose. That comes with a set of of requirements, that we have to follow, which are pretty straightforward. It basically means we adhere to our charitable purpose. We do our regular filings. We pay our fees. It's pretty straightforward. And then it also comes with a whole set of benefits for us. Of course, the most obvious is the exemption from most taxes. There's also the benefit tax benefit to our donors and our funders and contributors. There are other benefits that come with this as well, including some limited liability for board and key staff and public trust. There's a stamp of credibility that comes with that five zero one c three status. So for all of these reasons, including trust, we need to take it very seriously. When the government or certain people within the government start to suggest that our five zero one c three status is something they can dangle in front of us and yank away if they don't like the work that we do or the missions that we serve. Now some of you will remember in the 2024, HR ninety four ninety five. This was the bill that passed through the House of Representatives that would have given the Treasury unprecedented and largely unchecked power to revoke five zero one c three status for nonprofits based on their mission activity, looking specifically at organizations that don't align with the current White House's priorities. Now, this was was purportedly written to focus on terrorist supporting organizations, and I don't know all of you in the room, but I feel pretty confident in saying that nobody here would want to support terrorist supporting organizations. However, the language was so loosely crafted and so, unspecified that we had to look for clues from other talking points, both from Congress, from the White House, from executive orders themselves, on what could be what could be considered terrorist supporting activities. And those include things like DEI, like immigrant resettlement, and like gender affirming health care for minors. Whatever your feelings on those three particular issues, I doubt you see them as terrorist supporting activities. But this was the way this legislation was written, this idea that the tread that the Treasury could determine, not based on our compliance with established regulations, but on our mission, that our five zero one c three status could be revoked and, among other things, our trust lost with the public. Now, HR ninety four ninety five passed out of the House, went over to the Senate. The Senate did not, did not pass it, in fact, did not even pick up the legislation. That session of Congress ended and the bill essentially died or, you know, more more to the case, it was shelved until it could be reintroduced in another form and format. And we did, in fact, see that language again. In the 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that massive tax package that went through last year, an early draft of that included ninety four ninety five like language in it. Once again, trying to establish this power for an agency within the government to take away five zero one c three status based on operational activity and mission. It fell out of that legislation, was not part of what what eventually was passed and signed, more on a procedural issue than on any sort of lack of continued support. And while we while that legislation has not picked up again with any sort of pace, we have we continue to hear flavors of it in hearings, in talking points from our elected officials, and something we need to continue to be very mindful of. In all of this, we have to remember that while not everybody outside of the Beltway is paying attention to all of the commentary that comes out of Washington, D. C. And off of Capitol Hill, this is part of the, I keep saying it, the flavor of conversation, the way that our members of Congress are talking about nonprofit and tax exempt organizations. And it's a real shift from the the kind of conversation and the positioning that has existed for us in the past. We cannot safely tune this out or think that the general public is tuning this out. This is this recurring current of of sentiment is absolutely changing and shaping the way that people think about us. So, let's move on then. Let's jump to October, October 2025, and the Wall Street Journal broke an exclusive story about plans for an IRS overhaul. The Criminal Investigative Division within the IRS had been instructed to, refer nonprofit organizations and their employees and their officers to the Department of Justice for investigation and possible prosecution on various various, charges. This was a call from the attorney general. Also, the head of that division had been replaced. Old personnel new person in. The new person heading up criminal investigations was a White House ally who, and I'm gonna say this slowly, came into the role with a target list of democratic donors, donors to democratic causes. Just wanna reinforce that. This is an agency that by design is supposed to be nonpartisan and unbiased, and the head of the criminal investigative division came in with a target list of people to investigate because of the causes that they supported. This is a complete change of precedent, complete change of behavior, and you can imagine as these investigations start to occur, they're not going to occur quietly, and they are going to reflect not only on those organizations, but again on this baseline of trust that the nonprofit sector has rested on and has been our currency for most of the careers of the people on this call today. Now, what are the investigations? There's certainly nothing wrong with the IRS investigating wrongdoing, of of course, and that is the Department of Justice role, so I don't want to just gloss over that. But the types of of activities that they were looking for included anti anti American sentiment, what that means, and gender ideology. So, you can see that there would be a swath of completely lawful civil society organizations that could be pulled into these investigations. The government already has substantial powers to address legitimate concerns about tax exempt organizations. So, why the push for more? Well, when we look at the activity, we start to see the pattern. The current administration is, whatever you think of them, brilliantly strategic in targeting an outlier and making them an example. They go aggressively even if they know or suspect that the legal system won't ultimately support their activities, and they create an almost immediate chilling effect so that all the rest of us who see some similarity to that targeted organization simply step in line. See, when one organization skips its neck out and faces outsized consequences, others naturally become more cautious. We've seen this example across other other sectors, big law, colleges and universities, and we don't have to look outside our own sector to see some of this behavior. How many of us last year looked at our websites and scrubbed out DEI language or changed our DEI programming or our some of our, cultural values and the activities we do within our own staff. Not because these DEI activities are illegal, most are still completely legal, but because we didn't want to be in that bull's eye. Over and over again, we keep hearing the phrase, I'm gonna fly below the radar. That is very much this chilling effect and the reason why this sort of behavior or change within the IRS and our and our larger systems is occurring. And so that brings us to current day headlines. On April 21, the Southern Poverty Law Center was handed a federal indictment, 11 charges, including wire fraud, money laundering, most of it wrapped up loosely and described as donor fraud. These charges were being, levied against them for based on their mission activities of placing paid informants to infiltrate and monitor groups like KKK and Aryan Nations. This definition of donor fraud as it's being applied here is completely different from the way donor fraud has ever been successfully prosecuted in the past. If you look at any other instance, any other news story about donor fraud, it always involves one common denominator, personal enrichment, or sometimes the term is private benefit, where funds that come into the organization that are supposed to be for that mission operations instead go to be spent privately by one or more people who have access to those funds. Perfect example. I'm based in DC. There was a news case, a news story this weekend about a case that just went through. An executive director of a housing organization had, funneled, earned income through a differently named subsidiary and used that income to pay himself, salary bonuses totaling more than a million dollars, and his board didn't know anything about this. He was found guilty of donor fraud. We can see that that's a very clear case. That personal enrichment, however, is very different than what's being charged in the Southern Poverty Law case, which is which is charges on based on their organizational activities. So the blueprint being drawn in this case should concern every nonprofit in America regardless of your mission, regardless of your political alignment. This very public case, which is already hotly politicized, is at its core attempting to redefine for donors and the American public what it means to entrust nonprofits with the best use of donor dollars. This is the government attempting to reclassify mission driven operational spending, what you are putting in your budgets, the funds that you are raising, as part of your day to day business, to reclassify that as potentially donor fraud. That is significant legal departure, and they're engaging citizens in this broader activity. Two days after the indictment was announced, the whistle there was a whistleblower alert put out calling on individuals to report the misuse of federal funds by tax exempt organizations two days after SPLC. So this example was set out. It attempts to redefine what donor fraud could even possibly mean, and then it invites people to participate in naming names. Now Southern Poverty Law Center, let me tell you, if I wanted to go after somebody and fight and have have a shot like the like a bully on a playground, I certainly wouldn't pick the Southern Poverty Law Center. They have pled not guilty and they have said that they will fight this to the very end to to demonstrate their innocence and given their DNA, we can all expect them to do exactly that. I have no idea whether the federal government thinks they have a leg to stand on here or not, but by picking something picking an organization not only so prominent but also so divisive, polarizing, people can have very strong feelings one way or another on SPLC. They're creating a space for this to look like a partisan issue. And there's no better way to get people on board right now, at least some of the people, than by presenting something as a partisan issue. And we saw that response across our own sector. Right? Very, progressive organizations closely aligned with SPLC spoke up in their defense as did some donors and funders to SPLC. There were some conservative entities that spoke out with some glee at the announcement. But largely, most of us across the middle of this space have not said a word, at least not publicly. And what that does when only partisan organizations are speaking up, when only liberal organizations are defending liberal organizations, for example, then it's reinforcing this idea that it is a partisan issue, and that then goes out into the broader conversation and creates a more polarizing space that could encourage then people to speak up against organizations that they don't like based on their activities and the missions that they represent. Now the chilling effect goes a little bit further than that. And I didn't quite show you the the I'll spend a second here. This is, from Southern Poverty Law Center's site so if you're not familiar with the organization, just a reinforcement of the work that they do. But I wanna talk about the chilling effect. Within days, within days of the indictment, we all learned that Fidelity, charitable, and then Vanguard, and then Schwab would would not were stopping any distribution of funds from their donor advised funds to Southern Poverty Law Center based on the indictment. Now, why? Because these large financial institutions have policies in place that say we will not send funds, these tax deductible contributions, we will not send these to organizations that have been charged with major federal crimes, including donor fraud. And if we take ourselves out of this moment and go backwards, you know, even a couple months, that kind of policy doesn't sound out of order. Right? We if you you're giving charitable dollars, you want it to go to an organization that's not being charged with something like donor fraud. But here we are in this moment when this charge has been levied and suddenly the largest vehicles for philanthropy in this country have cut off funding to an organization. If that doesn't encourage a chilling effect, if that doesn't encourage other organizations to get in line, to lower our heads, to be quiet and not speak out, I mean, that's a pretty powerful powerful incentive to do exactly that. So that is part of the chilling effect that we've already seen. Now, I will acknowledge that across the sector, there has been a lot of outcry, very loud outcry directed towards these commercial donor advised funds. A lot of people have opinions and have been, you know, talking to and with the DAFs about their policies and the decision to cause funding. But in speaking out specifically to defend Southern Poverty Law Center, there's been much more silence. I will end some of the, the kind of background landscape context with this. We don't need to agree you don't need to agree with Southern Poverty Law Center's mission in order to defend their right to pursue it without politically motivated prosecution. We're not talking about administrative burdens here. We're talking about criminal prosecution. This is potential prison time, it's potential dissolution of the organization, it is the full weight of a federal justice system deployed against a nonprofit for how it pursued its mission. If this legal theory holds, which is that operational decisions about mission driven spending constitute donor fraud, then it hands every future administration a weapon to wield against nonprofits that don't align with its priorities. And it jeopardizes the foundation of trust, this currency of trust that we rely on with the American public. Today, it's the SPLC. Tomorrow, it could be the conservative religious liberty organization, it could be an environmental organization, a think tank, a community foundation. The blueprint that's being drawn today doesn't care about ideological boundaries, and we will then have an we will have established a precedent in which any administration can castigate a segment of the nonprofit sector and disrupt the public's ability to donate with confidence. So, that's our landscape. That's the space in which you are fundraising, promoting the brand of your organization, and going out boots on the ground to do this work. So, how do we remain resilient? How do we reinforce public confidence? We do it by owning our value and we communicate it right now like our organizations depend on it because right now they do. I want to share a bit of of data with you. This comes from a national survey conducted by the Nonprofit Alliance, and 85% of the American public agreed that nonprofits are essential to the well-being of our country. And you see the two different lines here. That's 83% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats, which given the given how far apart the two parties are on many, many issues, I think the closeness of that is pretty fantastic. 85% say nonprofits are essential to the well-being of our country. 69% trust nonprofits to operate effectively in the best interest of stakeholders. 8569%. When you look at that, that gap between those two numbers, you see the opportunity. Right? People understand there is a problem. They believe that nonprofits are essential to our country. That means they see us as problem solvers. But they're a little less confident in our ability or our current performance in effectively acting in the best interest of our stakeholders. That gap that gap, they wanna believe. They wanna see us as problem solvers. They're just not sure. That's our opportunity. That's the audience that we can we can work with. The Nonprofit Alliance last year, last fall, released a new framework that we're calling Own Your Value, and it's in direct response to some of what's happening here, that we've been talking about today, to some of these data points. It is not intended only to be addressing political issues, however. This own your value is a communication strategy and framework to talk to all of your stakeholders and all of your audiences. And it is, I'm gonna share a QR code with you. We will we will share this, resource with you afterwards, so you will have access to this. It's also available on our website, totally free and available. I wanna just capture a couple of the notes about it and describe it a little bit for you today. 10 framework, own your value. We can we can bucket those 10 elements really into three categories. The first one is communicating who you are. So this is this includes your history, your longevity, the scale of service or the number of people, the reach, the geographic footprint that you have. If someone asked you right now, turn the camera on you and said make the case for your organization's existence in sixty seconds, do you think you could do it? And do you think everybody on your staff could do it? That's what this who you are portion of the own your value is. The second one is why you matter. So there are a number of points within the framework that talk about why you matter. This is your economic contribution. These are the gaps that you fill that nobody else would fill or is filling, not the government, not the private sector. Your nonprofit is filling these gaps, meeting this need. These are external validators, the faith leaders, the small businesses in the community, which always rank right up there in terms of perceived trust. Right? The the community leaders, who are the validators, that that why you matter piece is very compelling. Large trust drivers within that. Being able to communicate that is critically important. And then finally, the why you can be trusted. Accountability practices, transparency, donor relationships, and also your beneficiary stories. Telling them with care and with permission emphasizes why you can be trusted. Now many organizations are doing some of these points really well, and not all of these points belong in every communication. Right? Your fundraising appeals are probably telling some of them are telling some really wonderful stories. You're pulling some of those heartstrings. You're talking about who you are. You're matching that up. That isn't necessarily the place to say, and by the way, here are the good governance policies that we have in place, or here's how we, you know, ensure that we are managing our our salaries and our CEO salary in line with reasonable market expectations. That's not the place to share that, but you need to have that information somewhere. You need to consider your audience and make sure in your entire portfolio of communications, you are messaging all of these various points. These all are based on the psychology of trust, understanding those trust drivers, and also understanding that one size doesn't fit all. Just like it doesn't fit in all of your communication, different individuals need to hear different things from you in order to feel secure and satisfied before they contribute, before they volunteer, before they advocate, before they believe that you should even exist, much less that you're effective. Wonderful heartstring stories work for some people some of the time, but if you are only doing that, if you're only showing fantastic photos on your website, if you're not touching all of these other points, then you're leaving some audiences without anything to latch onto. You're not pulling that trust lever for them in the way that we possibly could. Now as promised, here's a QR code and the URL if you wanna grab this own your value framework. Again, it is, absolutely available. You can find it on our website. It's under our policy issues navigation, I believe, and Blackbaud will share this out as part of the resource package afterwards. Okay. So let's talk about one more strategy here as we as we think about standing up in this moment, and it really is about looking at the opportunity. Okay? As the wind is blowing, what is the opportunity? Can we take the spotlight that is shining on nonprofits and turn the screw the scrutiny into a spotlight that we can leverage? Now I have five ways that we can do that, but I wanna start with the basic. Okay? We're talking about these existential crisis moments and existential examples today. But, you know, the easiest way for a charity regulator, for the federal government, for the media to come after you and to paint a bad picture and start to, you know, to to erode or shut down your organization, the easiest way to let that happen is to just not keep up with the basic compliance. You have to have good housekeeping first. So that is your governance and authorization controls. It is your financial oversight. It's your tax and filing obligations, making sure you send in the paperwork, that you pay your fees, that when you're fundraising that you're registered in states and that those remain current and you're submitting the filings for each of those even though they're a huge hassle, and that your Board is compliant. And and that includes meetings and structure of your board, composition of your board, etcetera. The QR code on here, which goes to an an article that we published that has a lot of these tips, but but you can do all of the fantastic stand up outstanding communications if you're not keeping up with the basics. The rest of it really just doesn't even doesn't even hold up for you. Once you have the basics confirmed though, let's move into how we transform scrutiny into opportunity. The first, right now and in moments of high scrutiny, the tendency, the instinct sometimes is to hide. Right? Like, they're shining the lights on me. I wanna step out of the light. In fact, our opportunity right now is to step into that. Increase your transparency. Oh, you wanna know about us? Here you go. I'm not talking about a data dump. I'm not talking about overwhelming people with information. Go back to that own your value framework. Make sure that you're reporting, and that includes everything from your form nine ninety financials, your annual report if you have one, your impact outcome measurements, the activities that you're working on, your your budget priorities. Be transparent. Put those on your website or make them accessible, make them easy to find, and make them easy to understand. Number two, engage your community. Familiarity breeds and strengthens trust. Now some of you are coming from big brand organizations. Maybe you already have high trust ratings and recognition. Fantastic. Keep it up. You're starting from a position of strength. Some of you don't have that same sort of marketing budget or exposure or brand recognition and this this second area is really an opportunity for you as well as for everyone. Engaging your community, showing up. That can include things like making sure that when your staff go to public events, they're wearing some of your swag. They're wearing the polo that has your brand on it, and not only to your events but other events, across the community, just making sure that you are visible. Because if somebody is only hearing about you for the first time and it's a negative story, that is their complete impression. If they're hearing about you in a negative story, but they've met you, they've seen you, oh, that's that person, you know, then then there's a little bit more of a hesitation. You you we have a natural instinct to trust people that we've seen before. So engage your community. Be be visible. Diversify your funding sources. Okay. Lots of fundraisers in the room. I was in fundraising roles for the first twenty minutes twenty minutes. Fuck. Twenty years of my career. And so I know as I say this, some of you are like, yes, Shannon. No kidding. Like, thanks for stating the obvious. We say this every budget cycle all the time. So I'm not here presenting this like it's brand new news. I'm here reinforcing the asks that you are making in every budget cycle. When budgets get tight, when we start to be afraid that we're not going to hit numbers this year, when we start, you know, needing to to make cutbacks or expenses are increasing. The first things that get cut always, acquisition, right, Testing into new channels and new lead generation. And those are the most important places that we can be investing right now. Expand our audience, expand our base, reduce our vulnerability. Nonprofit sector, we learned our lesson twice in the past two years, in 2020 with events and in 2025 with government funding. Diversified funding sources reduce our vulnerability. Number four, build coalitions. Coalitions have been created formally and informally since the beginning of time. Many of you are part of some of them. Yes, we think about coalitions in terms of response to political activity or political action, but coalitions exist for lots of reasons. And I would include in here other, you know, other kinds of of groupings and categories. Building coalitions allows you to reinforce and amplify your work together. It also allows you to, be part of sort of that aura of other organizations, so you're part of this collective, which naturally increases, typically some instincts of of trust and trustability and that you are a good partner. A lot of a lot of times we see opportunity within coalitions to improve efficiency, and I mean this more in the informal collection of organizations who maybe have overlapping service areas or overlapping, communities of people they serve. And rather than competing with each other, they sort of specialize and they kind of, you know, you do this and I do this and we we work alongside each other for greater efficiency and greater overall impact on the work that you're doing. We are hearing and seeing right now that there's been more intentionality around, creating some redundancy among similar and and, adjacent organizations so that if something happens, so one organization loses some of its support or, or can't sustain some of its activity for some period of time, then another organization is in its place to to step up, to reinforce, to continue the external work that you do as well as things like taking care of your staff internally. So use this moment of scrutiny to look at the way that your organization is working within coalitions and make sure that you're creating some opportunity there for yourself. And then finally, document impact. Collect it and share it. Not new to us. Some of us have whole m and e teams. Maybe we're doing this at, you know, granular levels. Maybe we're we have big goals that we're tracking against. But documenting impact, being able to show the actual improvements, the actual progress that we're making is a fantastic defense. It's also a fantastic offense. Put that out there. Go back up to number one, increasing your transparency. Look at the own your value metrics, sharing that out, uplifting trust. Oh, I'm not super familiar with this organization, but look at the work that they're doing. Maybe I should be more familiar with them. Maybe I do need to follow them on social media. Perhaps I need to consider them as part of my charitable giving portfolio this year. Document, collect, share your impact. We have, as the nonprofit sector, for a very long time relied on what I in my in the organization I worked with for many years, we called it the halo effect. So it's this pervasive belief that nonprofits and those of us who work for nonprofits are, capital t, trustworthy. And we are in a time now and have been for a while when we can no longer really take that for granted. What got us here won't get us there. One small action, one small commitment today as you're leaving this class to strengthening your messaging, to better communicating your organization's value is one leaf on your tree. It is one leaf on your organization's tree, and it is one leaf in our collective forest of resilience. The nonprofit sector has weathered political shifts, economic downturns, social upheavals throughout history. That's not new. What makes this moment different is not the existence of challenges, but the extraordinary opportunity that they are handing to us to present fundamentally the strength that we can bring, the strength of our operations, and how we can communicate. When we emerge from this period of turmoil, and I'm confident that we will emerge, organizations like yours that take these efforts now can come out the other side stronger, more effective, and more impactful, not in spite of the winds that are blowing against us, but because of them. I'm confident of that. Thank you for being here, and I would love to take a look, Abby, at any questions that have come in today. Thank you so much, Shannon. This is such great information. I know I learned a lot, and I know that this will help, our many nonprofits on the call today. So, for everyone, we will stick around for some questions. Feel free to enter them into the public chat or to that q and a, and we will go ahead and get started. So we have someone come in asking, can you give some tips on how to communicate the why you matter in this landscape? Sometimes this can be a hurdle and miss all of the noise that's going on. Absolutely. And it is. And we need to acknowledge we need to acknowledge the noise, so I appreciate that somebody called that out for us. The why you matter, so let's look at a big number here. Right? In the in this country, nonprofits represent more than 10% of the workforce and contribute more than a trillion dollars to the economy. Now those are massive numbers. Those are clearly not your individual numbers. And if you're a small organization or a new organization, you feel like a tiny speck in all of that. But you know who cares a lot about those kinds of numbers? You know who cares a lot about your impact on employment in your community? You know, those kinds of things? Your lawmakers, your community leaders, your community foundations, funders. That's the kind of space where you can start talking about how you matter or why you matter. Yes. It's about the mission impact that you have, and that comes out in some of your outcome measurements and some of your beneficiary stories. But your your impact as a as a an entity, as a neighbor, as somebody within your community, and I'm thinking of small organizations, but that's true for larger organizations as well, that can be a very powerful story. Again, it's not the hook for everyone, but it is certainly one of those trust levers that I think a lot of us as nonprofits kind of leave out. We don't talk as much about our our economic impact or the gaps that we fill if we just ceased to exist, you know, what that would look like. I hope that's helpful. Definitely. No. I I for sure think so. We had another one come in. I know you touched on this, but they asked, can you talk through more ideas to engage your community if you're a nonprofit that's just starting? We do have a small budget, but even more so, it's hard to get public recognition. Yeah. And that, that earned media is is, you know, hard when you're a young organization, scrappy organization. You're just trying to, like, get the walls built, much less get out there and really start to create your brand in your space. It depends somewhat on the, you know, of course, on the work that you're doing and your definition of community. If you have a very visible presence and impact on literally in your community, that's really different than if your work is all international, for example, and and, you know, maybe feels less visible or more distant to to people locally. But if we assume more of the former, you know, yes, you can put budget behind this. You know, if you start to do that, I would start to look at what are some of the high impact, high exposure activities happening in within your your community with potential audience. So, you know, do you wanna sponsor an event that is not necessarily something that is exactly in your space of work, but that puts your brand out in front of an audience and they start to recognize your name. They start to see that and go, oh, they're showing up here in this way. You know, certainly some, just as I mentioned, like having the swag out, having booths in places, doing some, you know, paid advertising in key places. Those are all places where, it's about showing up in your community. It's about getting your brand and your message out there so that there is that level of of familiarity and people are hearing about you and just sort of hitting in their subconscious as much as anything else. Mhmm. And if I may, I have interacted with so many nonprofits at, different events through their booths and, not only have that presence, but be really enthusiastic. You know, there's anyone can kind of stand behind a booth, but the people that really try and. engage people as they're walking by and you can feel how passionate they are about their mission, I think that can go a long way. Absolutely. As I'll put my mom hat on for a second when my kid my kids are now grown, but when they were in elementary school, I was really involved with a brand new, at that time, startup organization and, and wanted to figure out what I could do for them. And they let me do a booth at the school, the elementary school, like, spring fair outside. So I had my table and I set it up and I had some things I was giving away and I had this little interactive activity. And there were people who left there and put the magnets on their cars and, you know, talked to me about this organization. They were learning about it for the first time. How many people did I make an impression on that day? I don't know. 25? But it was the start, and they were going out and spreading that. And that was one volunteer for three hours on a Saturday. So it's it's those little things that start to take Absolutely. Oh, I love that. So we have another question a little bit different, effect. come in asking, can you share some of the early warning signs that an organization's donor trust is starting to fade before it actually starts to impact funding? Yeah. Well, I, the second part of that question, I mean, I think the the funding is often the canary in the coal mine. Right? You start to see some slowdown of funding. You start to see some pullback. Your acquisition numbers start to to decline a little bit. Maybe you start to see some of that feedback on, you know, at least in your direct mail program or in any place, canvassing on on the street where you have the interaction or if you're still doing telemarketing, like, those sorts of places you start to get some of that immediate feedback. That's where you're probably going to see some of those earliest warning signs. It's just about catching those early before they, you know, they really start to spread. There are certainly other places on, you know, are you monitoring for for mentions of you on social media, in Reddit? You know, there's places where some of that starts to to kind of spread and people say, hey. Did you hear this? Does anybody know about this organization? Is this organization legitimate? You can pick up on some of the the whispered or not whispered tones that are happening there. But I I wouldn't discount staying really focused on your on your acquisition and your fundraising programs as as some of that signal. Yeah. And so interesting. Karina just put into the chat. They said, last week, we received a call from an individual questioning the legitimacy of our organization After providing verified information and trust data regarding our organization, they generously donated a $100. So even, like, that simple, gesture can can go a long way against, combating that trust erosion. Oh my gosh. And what a fantastic opportunity when somebody actually calls you and says, are you legitimate? Can I trust you with my money? You know, because that person wants to trust you. You know, they're trusting you to give them an honest answer. They want to to have that conversation with you. So congratulations on converting them to a donor. You probably also just converted them to an ambassador for you because there was something that sparked for them that signal of distrust. And now that you've completely turned them and they now feel some investment in you because they made that contribution, they want to reinforce that that was a right decision, you know, some psychology in there. So so this won't end with them. That message is getting passed on to somebody else that you know, on your behalf. Absolutely. We also had Kimi come into the chat asking, do you have any suggestions around what specific kinds of communications that we can send out around building trust with our supporters? Great question. We don't want to and I don't think this is what you're suggesting but, you know, we have to recognize different categories of supporters in here, different categories of stakeholders. There's not going to be a one size fits all. So, you know, certainly if you're sending something like an updated version of an annual report, it could it could entouch on a lot of the the own your value 10 elements that could go in there and different people are going to sort of come in on on the things that are most relevant to them. I think otherwise, and managing all of this within your your budget and resource strategy, but, sending out, you know, additional information on the activities that that you're planning that may be outside or not just planning doing, but maybe outside what people typically think of as the work that you do. So I worked for Special Olympics for many years. Special Olympics is a really well known, well respected brand. Most people recognize that brand and think of one discrete set of activities or work that Special Olympics does, when in fact, the work that that organization does is much bigger and much more inclusive and much more expansive. In fundraising, sometimes only talking about the familiar was was the way to go because people could immediately recognize that and we didn't bog them down with more information that that might sort of distract them. But if we're talking about building trust rather than immediately raising dollars, being able to talk about the vastness of that organization and its footprint and the the work that it's doing and the impact that it has around acceptance and health and, you know, there's so many more components to it. Finding the right opportunities to do that and then the measures of success of that. Right? So if you're doing it only as fundraising, then some of that may look like it failed because it didn't bring in dollars. But But if you're talking about influencing ambassadors, building brand, finding new ways for people to engage, to be involved, to care about you, that's a different kind of measurement and and opens up a whole new set of opportunities. For sure. Alright. And we have one last question here. Sarah asked, do you have any advice on how to handle situations where leadership's definition of transparency differs from what us as a staff or perhaps the donors are looking for? Oh, that's interesting. So, you know, we're never going to sit here and advocate that you should just send out what you think should be sent out regardless of leadership. That's their their job is to is to set those parameters. I think it's a good conversation to have internally, though, about why those boundaries exist and if those boundaries need to exist everywhere, or is it in certain types of communications? Is it with certain types of people? And is this a moment when that needs to be looked at differently? Again, taking this, as we talked about at the end, using scrutiny to as an opportunity rather than sort of stepping back from it. I gave guidance that applies broadly, but some organizations are going to have a different risk calculus right now than others. And so depending on what that looks like, within within the closed room of your boardroom that that, you know, most people on staff are not going to have access to, that that may look a little different. So I went a little bit all over the place there, but I think the first step is just understanding why one of you is putting the the sort of dividing line in a different place than than the other, more or less, what that difference is and then and then, you know, kind of going from there. I I was assuming with that answer that you want to be more transparent than they do. If the flip is true, that they wanna be super transparent absolutely, you should be raising that information so that they're at least making these decisions with full information coming up from all levels of the organization. Makes so much sense. Well, thank you so much, Shannon, for your time today and for your expertise. I know that this was really impactful for everyone on the line. And thank you everyone for your time today. I know you're busy, so we appreciate you spending this past hour with us. Just wanted to call out if you're interested in learning more about Blackbaud's fundraising solutions and how we can help you raise more, and just make an even bigger impact. You can go ahead and respond to the poll, or reach out to me directly. But, if not, no problem. Just don't forget to join us for our next fundraising master class session, do less to raise more, how clarity, not capacity, inspires donor trust and generosity on June 9. So, again, while we were just talking about with donor trust, we can kind of dive on into that a little bit more. Julia Campbell will be presenting that session. So thank you so much everyone for your time, and thank you, Shannon, and we hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Thanks, Sal.