Name: Fundraising Teams - Empowering the People Behind the Work
Uploaded: 2025-04-15T18:16:31.501Z
Duration: 59 min 20 s
Description: Fundraising Teams - Empowering the People Behind the Work

Transcript for "Fundraising Teams - Empowering the People Behind the Work": Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for our webinar today, Fundraising Teams, Empowering the People Behind the Work with our nonprofit expert, Maureen Walbeoff. Before we kick it off, I just want to go ahead and introduce my colleague, Daniel Gwynn. He's our Blackbaud representative who's on the line. If you have any questions during the session, just about how Blackbaud solutions can help you transform your donor engagement strategy and really just fuel your fundraising overall. And as a heads up, we will be launching some really fun interactive polls that Maureen put together through it for us. Those will be throughout this session. So those polls will pop up, on the right hand side next to the messages panel. So go ahead, try out for that, And without further ado, I'm gonna go ahead and pass it over to Maureen. Hello, everyone. Abby and Daniel, thank you so much. I am so psyched to be back here. It's April. This is the third webinar in our series. It's all about putting the heart and technology combination back into your fundraising programs. So the first session we did in February, and we talked about, you know, what you can do to build good tight relationships with your donors and your supporters. Last month, we talked a lot about donor retention, ways to do that in a genuine way at scale using the right systems and the right business processes and the right use of your data. Today, we're gonna look in house. We're gonna talk all about your teams, the things that they need, and what you can do to grow a good, healthy fundraising team. It's a thing. So this is me. If you have not been, in one of these webinars before, my name is Maureen. I'm based in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and I specialize in helping nonprofit organizations make really good decisions about their technology. I'm also an optimistic and realistic problem solver. So if there's something you're struggling with, inside your organization when it comes to fundraising or using systems to raise more money efficiently and effectively, I am your problem solver person. So here is our agenda today. We've got a couple of big topics we're gonna go deep on. Building a healthy fundraising team, how to support your team, and celebrating successes and maybe when things are not as successful as you expected or wanted or needed them to be. And then hopefully, we'll have some time for open q and a at the end. So here we go, building a healthy fundraising team. I've been parts of fundraising teams that were super healthy at times, maybe a bit of a mixed bag at other times. Would you launch this poll, Abby? So I wanna know as we start to think about all this stuff together, how is your team doing these days? Unique time for some of us in our, in our work? I wanna know, are you crushing it? Because I have some folks who are super crushing it in 2025 already. We're doing fine. We're just doing okay. We're struggling for one reason or another, or I do not wanna talk about it. Do not ask me how my team is doing these days, which tells us everything we need to know. So I would love to give you a second to answer this. I wanna know kinda where your head and your heart are at, maybe where your spirit is at as we start to work together this afternoon. Maureen, we had one question in the chat about this question. D e asks, is this about team dynamics or the work? It is, user defined. So however you wanna answer this question, I here's the deal. Right? Like, if your team is crushing it and hitting their goals, they might be doing okay. They're probably feeling successful, but they it might be taking a toll on that team as well. So however you genuinely wanna answer this question is right on with me. I'm seeing some chat. Yeah. Crushing it in some ways. Fine in some others. Thank you, Christy. Where are we at with responses, Abby? So we'll give it just a couple more seconds. Thank you everyone for entering. It looks like we're seeing a good mix of between we're crushing it and we're doing fine somewhere between there and the chat. We've got a couple we're struggling in the chat and, overall, we have our majority is in the we're doing fine category. Beautiful. Yeah. At 94, and then we have we're struggling in the 56 votes. Okay. Mhmm. At 18, and then I don't wanna talk about it about six. Okay. Good. That's that's a really good mix. And as we know, if we've been doing this work for more than a couple of years, depends on the day, depends on how that ask went with that major donor, depends on how my boss or my board is feeling about my work and my team's work. So I am not surprised to get that mix. And I really appreciate you clueing everybody in on like where you're at today. This title of this slide is pretty like a duh moment. Right? It is hard to be a fundraising pro. Even on the easiest days, there are always some challenges. And I was kind of shocked and a little a little, dismayed to see that the average tenure for development or advancement staff is just sixteen to eighteen months. It used to be two years. A couple of years ago, average was about twenty four months. So you think about all the time you put into the job posting, interviewing, multiple rounds of interviews depending on your organization, selecting that new hire, bringing them on board, not six months to train them, maybe a little less if they're seasoned. Before two years is up, lots of them are on to greener pastures. Whether they are going off to another organization to do similar fundraising work or they have said forget it. I've tried this once or twice. Not for me. I'm gonna explore other nonprofit jobs or other industries entirely. And to me, having done this for a long time, these are the four real reasons I think people don't stick around as long as we would like them to. Burnout and stress comes with the job, kinda comes with being a human. Unrealistic expectations, like, this is when someone defines a target, a goal, whether it's for a campaign, a month, or your whole fiscal year that you really don't have any way of meeting unrealistic expectations. Compensation concerns, we have all heard this. We have lived it. Nonprofits, you don't make a lot of money, but the benefits are great. Sometimes, nonprofits tend to really underpay sometimes and have very high expectations for their staff. And then a biggie is lack of support and recognition, Feeling like my work is going unnoticed. I'm doing more. Nobody's shouting me out. These are things that we can control to a certain degree. But if you're feeling like you're seeing team churn at any level, senior leadership, middle managers, frontline fundraisers, database managers, people who keep all the information accurate in your system. It's a sign that something's going on. We need to think about it, and we need to do something about it. When I work with nonprofit teams of all different sizes and budgets and missions, these are the things that I see with my fresh eyes because I'm not working there every day that lead to people leaving before they should or maybe before they really need to. We're gonna walk through these, and I want you to think about whether you recognize any of these yourself. And if you do, a, you can do something about it. But, b, think about whether it's in a team or a department versus it's the organization. We're just following along with the culture. So these are the four things that I see that make my antenna wiggle. Like, there might be some people work to do here. No strategy. No priorities. Every month, every week, there's a different thing we're chasing, Whether it's, donor advised funds, or we need to switch our technology, or now we're gonna answer the phone like this, or now our acknowledgments are gonna be different, all in service of trying to raise more money inside our organization, which is our primary job if we're fundraisers. Everything is started with a rush, not really planned, feels super reactive. We get halfway through setting it up. Suddenly, there's another priority. We dump that on the ground, and we go running after the thing that has caught someone's eye. Siloed work and resistance to collaboration. It's like the clash of the titans. Right? Whose names are these? We're sending these messages out about our thing. You don't have the ability to send your fundraising messages out. That's tough. Right? Little turf wars when not everybody's working collaboratively. Sometimes folks a little lower in seniority take their cues from those above. So if there's any leadership like strife or conflict, it changes the dynamics of how the frontline folks work. Consistently missing your targets. It is a it is a like an arrow through your heart. You know, when you're a fundraising professional and the goals that are being set for you, whether you agree to them wholeheartedly or with some reluctance. If you're consistently missing your fundraising targets, it's assigned to me as an outsider that there's something going on internally, difference between expectations and reality. How do we get reality to line more up with the expectations? We can't do that overnight. And poor communication, just generally. Right? This could be, again, organization wide or within a team, infrequent team meetings, only the big boss gets to talk, other people's ideas are quieter folks are sort of shot down, And sometimes changes in tactics or campaign plans happen three rooms over, and the people who are executing these plans or campaign tactics are out of the loop and have to, like, hustle to change what the plan was to doing other things. So if you see any of these things, it's it's a sign that maybe we have a little bit of work to do inside our organization. When we talk about improving things for our teams, especially when we are the type of a leader who, like, will take it on or will put themselves at the front of the line, try to protect maybe, our teams, it feels like the job of empowering our teams and creating a culture of support is about being nice. Like, don't yell. Don't yell. You looked mad in that meeting, or your email was a little terse. People start to interpret things and tell themselves a story that may or may not be true. For us as fundraising professionals in this industry, it's a strategic imperative for us to improve our organization's fundraising and collaborative cultures because that, whether you know it or not, is seen and experienced by our supporters in every interaction they have with us. They can feel it. Is this a team that likes each other? Is this an org that kind of has their act together? Does it seem like everybody knows what's going on, or am I getting different stories from different people? This strategic move to create a culture that's more positive, more supportive gives you all of these bennies. Yeah. People will stick around. They'll get better at their jobs. They'll be able to take on more senior type responsibilities. You'll help them grow in their career. But, really, it also helps us fundraise because we're demonstrating what authentic relationships look like with each other in our organizations. We have a clearer shared vision of where we're going and how we're gonna get there and who's contributing in what way to get us there. It's okay to be innovative. It's okay to try something and have it not work or have an outcome that's different than the outcome that we had expected. You let people learn. You get to use data in decision making instead of blaming. How come? Why? Data is used, with your head and your heart as a an indicator of how well the whole programmatic work is going, and it's not used to blame or beat anybody up. That stronger cross team collaboration. Left hand knows what the right hand is doing. We are all rowing the boat toward the same goal at the same time. And, frankly, as humans, we all deserve a safe and supportive environment in which to work, and we do important work inside nonprofit organizations. Not like making widgets. There are four keys that I use over and over again to create a culture of empathy and collaboration, and this is gonna take some time depending on where your organization or your team is at. These are the things that have worked for me and I've seen work for lots of other fundraising leaders. You gotta model empathy from the top. And if you're not the top, like, whoever the top actually is, be vulnerable. Talk about when things didn't go well for you as a fundraiser and the lessons that you learned from it. Listen without judgment. Right? Well, I would have done that differently. Sure. You can give people feedback, but the big thing is to sort of meet them where they're at. Communicating transparently and frequently. For all for all communication channels we have at our disposal, we're not great communicators. We're busy. We give things a drive by. You can't read tone in many things in a team's chat or in an email. Although sometimes I swear I can feel the pounding on the keys. When I'm reading an email, you can kinda tell if somebody's heated. Ask for input before decisions are made. We are better and smarter collectively than we are separately. Number three, establish shared values and agreements about process. Listen. From the time you plan a campaign till the time it is launched, whether it is direct response, digital, maybe you're doing texting, maybe it's peer to peer, or you've got a giving day or a national month of awareness. You have to everybody's gotta understand soup to nuts what's gonna happen. What's that donor's experience gonna be like? What needs to be set up? Who's gonna test these things? Who's gonna approve them? And, you know, is it delivering the experience that we want our supporters to have? It's usually not unless the right people are all in the room planning these things, making agreements. We have lots of unspoken rules inside our organization. If you are, have an experience of being relatively new to your organization or can remember a time that you were new coming in to an established fundraising team, there's a whole lot of shorthand and abbreviations and acronyms that not everybody naturally is gonna pick up on. Make it okay for people to ask about those things, and even better, communicate very clearly and then use the abbreviation after you tell somebody what that means. And then that breaking down silos by forming cross functional teams. I don't know any fundraising team that can't cannot do a better job of working with marketing communications. And if you've got a stellar relationship, you should stick around and tell people how you did it because it's a common place for wires to get crossed. We're all moving really fast. We make a lot of assumptions to get through the day. Celebrate the team wins as a whole. When you ring that bell I've worked inside organizations where donation comes in, ding, ding, ding, ding. Somebody open in the mail or in the development department rings a bell. That is aging me if you were not in the in the experience of hearing that bell rung. Who contributed to that? Lots of people. So when you recognize our campaign exceeded its goal by $10,000, and here's hats off and thank you to everybody who participated, all the way down to the guy who ran the audience list for you. Can't just be like people at the head. Pat on the back. Be inclusive. It goes a really long way. As we said with donors, donors expect you to recognize and appreciate the things that they're doing because they're people, and we expect the same thing as employees and leaders. A word on burnout because it would be remiss of me not to talk about burnout just for, a minute or two here. It is a real thing. Many of us have experienced it to one degree or another. You might be sitting here super burned out today, and this is the way you're getting a minute away from the spinning plates to just center yourself a little bit, give yourself a little bit of learning. Burnout is contagious. It's like a little fire. It normally doesn't just stay with Mary or Bob. Mary and Bob work with other people. Mary and Bob's burnout affects their behavior. Sooner or later, it's gonna affect somebody else who is exposed to it. Mary and Bob might not even realize that they are behaving as though they are burnt out. I was really surprised by this, national council of nonprofits report. It's from 2023. It was the most recent data I could find. Stress and burnout is why it's hard to hire people, why it's hard to keep good people. And it's a symptom of other things that are going on, sometimes professionally, sometimes personally, sometimes some combo. It doesn't mean that you're weak or Mary's got a problem. She's just gotta chill out. Give Mary half day off so that she can gather herself and take a walk or read a book, and then she'll come back already. That's not how this works. Successful fundraising leaders don't ignore it, though. Like, when you're smelling a little smoke, little burnout smoke, sit down and have an open conversation with that person privately. You seem super fried. How can I be helpful? And sometimes that's really all it takes to open up what's really going on for somebody, then you can make a plan when that person's in a head space to do so. And we are the work often the worst ones. As I said, we are sometimes the leaders who will throw ourselves in front of our okay. I'm protecting my team. We also have to watch ourselves for burnout because it's unlikely that someone who reports to you is gonna go, Mary, you seem super crabby. Are you burnt out? I'm worried about you. Maybe that's the dynamics in your culture, which is great and healthy, but I don't see that very often. Here's some tips, and you will get the recording and you can get the deck. Abby will share the way to get all that as we wrap up. These are ways to respond to burnout, seeing the signs of them for different types of people. So if it's your team and you start to see decline in motivation, lack of creativity let's just do what we did two years ago. People are cranky. There's interpersonal tension, or people who used to be participatory start to get very quiet, or your team just feels overwhelmed. You come to them with one new thing for them to do, and they're they can't they can't handle it. Some action steps on the, right hand column here, talk about it with them, make it okay to talk about it, reprioritize workloads, model healthy boundaries yourself. If you're sending emails at seven, eight, nine o'clock at night or on the weekend, that is telling your team that it's okay to do that, and it shouldn't be a problem. So take that, with a grain of salt. If it's your boss, you're the advancement director and you've got the VP who's above you, These are things you see, and sometimes we recognize them in ourselves. A little snappier. A little less cash conversation happening. A little bit more o all business. Indecision, they can't just like, do we do it this way or that way? They're noodling over things for way too long. Micromanagement. I redlined the living heck out of your appeal, so I basically rewrote it for you. Experience. Or resistance to change your new ideas, like, they just don't have the creative brain space to be open to thinking about doing something differently. This is different than talking to them. This is inviting dialogue. You know? It's a slightly different opener to the conversation than it is when someone reports to you, is looking a little burned out. Sometimes we contribute in ways that we don't on we don't really see. So I might bring my problems, my issues to my boss and, like, sit there and expect them to give me the solution. Show up with some solutions even if they got shot down, even if the solution that's selected is not one that you thought of. If you're at least coming to the table with, we've got a problem, this is what the problem is, this is the way that I think we could handle it or a couple of options, It feels more partner y. You're not just putting the burden of problem solving on them. And then advocating up. This is like, I would have put this in, like, gray, be careful kind of text. Advocating up feels like I'm going to my boss's boss. I'm going around them. You know, Mary seems to be having a hard time holding it together, whatever the situation is. Really think through whether that's gonna get you the outcome that you're looking for, which is someone needs to take some things off Mary's plate, and I don't have the power to do that. If it's you, it you, it me. Numb or cynical, mhmm. That's a great idea. You know? Or like you're giving side eye to things. Trouble sleeping or switching off. You just feel like you've gotta be in productive mode all the time. I recognize that. Or working more but feeling like you're getting less done. That's a rough one. Name it to yourself. I might be burned out. I'm running on fumes. I'm crispy toasty. Whatever you wanna say to yourself. Maybe share it with a peer. Delegate things. We're very careful not to put too much on our team's plates often. But sometimes, to save me, I gotta find someone who's willing to take this one thing off my plate. It's gonna be better for everybody. And block out time to just think. I work with a a leader fundraising leader who uses focus time. Two focus time blocks of two hours each on this person's calendar every week, Friday afternoon. It's always focus time. And she decides whether she's gonna give it away or not. But at least she's got a little bit of time to just think to get all the work done that we give ourselves in all the meetings that we have all day long. There are definitely better times and worse times for burnout inside our organizations and for us as human people. Pay attention to it. It we can change it. It is not a, a reality. That's just how it is around here. We can absolutely change this. We just have to recognize it, name it, and help whoever that is, even if it's us, get a little bit rebalanced. I'm seeing so many great suggestions in the chat. Oh my goodness. Thanks, everybody. Next section here in our agenda is supporting your team with training and tools. So Abby, my poll partner, I'm gonna share the slide with the poll questions on it. What kind of training does your team get? And these are the flavors that I usually see. They get a quick orientation round and they're all set. I call this a login and thoughts and prayers. You're young. Here you go. You should be able to log in to this incredibly sophisticated system and figure it out. Informal shadowing with other staff, like, go hang out with Barbara or or Jeff and watch them do this, ask them questions about it, get insight into how other people are managing similar tasks or different pieces of a bigger process. Some teams have very formal ninety day training plans where it's very mapped out, excellent if you're an organization that has their act together enough to do this, or something else. So we'll give everybody a minute. I'm seeing some stuff in the chat. I'm seeing b. Not much training at all. Johanna said d. It's something else. I'd love to know what that is, Johanna, if you wanna type that in the chat. Kathleen just says we need more. We need more training. This is a place that I see organizations be a little penny wise and pound foolish. They do not invest in training. They do not allow their team to learn and absorb and become expert at something. Just like I work in seven systems, and I know a little bit about all seven of them. Abby, where are we at with poll results here? I'm super curious. Okay. So we'll give everyone another couple of seconds to go ahead and add your answer. Again, it's to the right of the messages tab. But so far, we are seeing the majority with informal shadowing with other staff. So we have 50 votes for b. We have 48 votes for a, a quick orientation round and they're set. And then we have 27 votes for d, something else. And then 25 votes for c, we have formal training plans. Excellent. And we're seeing some some answers in the chat too as well. You know, a, b, c, a little bit of a mixture with everything. Yeah. Yeah. That's normal. You know? That's that's fine. I think it's a place though that if I'm not set up and supported to be good at my job, I'm more likely to leave. I'm more likely to have a substandard performance. Maybe I'm more likely to be a negative influence, or maybe I just I just quit. You know? I can't do it. Not for me. Again, this is something that is in our control. So let's talk about newbies first, those fresh fresh people who are either new to the work or new to your organization. When I think about training new fundraisers, I think about the pillars, the three pillars of stuff. These are these three, items in here in bold are comprised of many other things. Right? They're sort of the header of the list, but they need, skills. They need the right tools, and they need confidence, which means watching you, probably do it and picking up some tips the same way that we have picked up lots of tools in our fundraiser tool kit from other folks that we have been fortunate enough to work with over the years. So number one for me is donor stewardship and relationship building. How does our organization engage, think, and acknowledge, and retain donors? Like, is do you have a statement inside your organization? This is what this is what our goal is, or this is the experience that we want donors to have. We are positive. We are not annoying. We pay attention, like, what whatever it happens to be. Second thing here is ethical fundraising practices. It is important to conduct ourselves raising money with honesty, transparency, candor, all that good stuff that is, our values in action, personal values, our organizational values. There are lots of places, free places to get lists or some descriptions of what ethical fundraising in our industry looks like. AFP has a whole thing on it. How do you build in transparency and integrity? People come through the door with it, and we just have to make sure that they employ it even as they're, you know, trying to climb a mountain to hit a goal. And then CRM and data management. This is another place where I see people, like, I think this is how I'm supposed to enter that gift. I think that's how I'm supposed to enter the fact that I have coffee with this person. If it's not in the database, it didn't happen. That is my mantra. So hands on training from someone who is following the proper business practices, not Betty who ignores your SOPs. She just does it the way she feels like doing it or the way she was originally trained. So try to have your training not perpetuate, maybe not, not the approved way to do things. So those are our newbies. We also have to support tenured staff. That's what keeps them sticking around. That's what gets us a return on our investment in them as an employee and a member of our team. So these are some things you can do or some topics to help you and yourself and your team continue to grow, continue to learn, continue to expose yourself to new ways, of working, new ways of raising money, and building relationships with people like this webinar today. Major gifts and planned giving. Skills in soliciting and stewarding high net worth donors. The more people in your organization or on your fundraising team who can do this, the better off you will be. Don't just keep it for the executive director and the VP of fundraising or philanthropy. Other people on the team need to be exposed to this. Learn how to do it. Leadership and management. If you want someone to grow and they are, they want to raise up inside the organization, they've got some ambition, you have to give them some training. Yes. You're gonna model it for them, good, leadership and and management practices, but training and coaching. Maybe I need some training in how to delegate, how to build a team, a remote team, or a hybrid team. Some people are here. I can look at them. Other people are in other parts of the country. Helps them to begin learning how to lead others, which should increase collaboration. Public speaking. Right? How can you help people who know your mission, who can, really represent your organization well in your community? How do you train them up to be comfortable public speakers? It does not come naturally to all of us. I still get nervous in webinars, and I've been doing this for twenty years. Still get a little nervous at the beginning. Help them build their storytelling presentation and facilitation skills. If you've got something that needs to be presented to the team, let someone else do it. See how they do. Maybe they're gonna knock it out of the park. Maybe you need to give them a little bit of coaching and redirect to feedback so they do it better the next time. But if you're the only one doing it, not a growth opportunity for your team. And data analytics, as an industry, nonprofits need more of this almost than anything else. It really is a gap in our professionalism inside our organizations. Do we trust the data? Where do we get it? Is it correct? Is it timely, or is it six months later when we can finally analyze our campaign performance? So there is lots of stuff that could be a growth path for somebody who's spreadsheet comfy. So think about that. Places to get decent training. So lots of places for free, some places for paid. I know that, Blackbaud offers, lots of different learning opportunities, not just things like this, but truly training in products, all the time, whether it's scheduled or on demand. So look to your vendors, I would say. Look to your software partners. But here's a list of what I think is some high quality information for new and tenured fundraisers. So if there's any of these that you are not familiar with, I would take a pic of this or, reference the deck after the session is over, investigate some of these things, maybe make a training plan for the second half of the year. It's always slower in the summer. Right? The great story that we tell tell ourselves. But don't feel like you have to be the only one to train people on things. There's lots of other opportunities out there. So that's training. Let's talk about your tools because that is another thing that I have seen drive really talented fundraisers right out the door. We only work in spreadsheets. This tool is super janky. Like, the way that we're using it is dumb or it's clunky or I don't trust it. This is a factor for your donors as we've discussed in previous webinars, and it's also a factor for us and our teams and our staff satisfaction. This slide has what I call the big five. We probably have a bunch of other things, but these are the five things that every organization needs to raise money and engage their supporters. So going left to right, we need a database or CRM with data in it that we trust, that is segmented properly, that is, data has been cleaned up. And it's there to store information about people, our relationships with them, the things we ask them to do, and the things that they wind up doing. One over to the right is our website that is also a fundraising tool. It is your big front door. More people probably look at the homepage of your website than are on your email list. Depending on how big your email list is, it's a great place to have your team feel comfortable and confident to prepare assets to market your work and your campaigns and your fundability. Next one over the middle, teal bubble is your email marketing tool. We all know what that is. Gotta have a decent one. Shouldn't take you seventy years to build an email message and send it out. This is a thing that people think magic ales come and do, and it really does take time. One more over to the right is online fundraising tools. Right? Donation forms, etcetera, one time tribute, sustainer, what have you. Gotta have decent ones there. And then finally, even at registration, which could be in person like a gala with an auction or virtual, maybe RSVP only, some educational sessions. And I also put peer to peer fundraising here. So when you go back to your organization, I want you to think about how you would grade these things. Like, you were in school, what gets an a, what gets a b minus, what gets a d? Your team needs more than the basics, frustration, etcetera, but lost productivity, wasted time, or chasing stuff around. Nobody trusts the data. We make bad decisions based on data that was not accurate or we weren't interpreting correctly, or we get super overwhelmed because I don't know where to build this form. We have seven places to send an email from. I don't know which one I should use. Lots of workarounds. Lots of in the moment problem solving that results in kind of a Frankenstein after a year. Can't scale your programs, and you've got missed opportunities for donor engagement. So in order for your team to hit those audacious fundraising goals that are being set for them, you've gotta give them the right stuff. Don't give people a teaspoon and expect them to, you know, dig a hole that's six feet deep. It's gonna take a lot longer. They're gonna get exhausted, and they're probably gonna stop before they get to the end. These are some data and tech pain points that I see all the time, very common places for people to struggle, and these, again, can all be solved. Systems don't talk to each other. I collect information over here. It's gotta get over into my database. Doesn't happen or it happens once a month. Tough for, like, in the moment acknowledgements. Right? Incomplete or incorrect data. You should run a regular data hygiene program, make sure those dupes are, updated, and consider using a data append service. There are lots of them out there. If you've got bad addresses or missing contact information, you can often pay a small amount and have that data appended for you at those holes filled in. Limited functionality and flexibility. I can't I know the campaign plan says I should do this. Our system won't do it. Can't do it. So we gotta change the plan, which means less fundraising. And then systems that no one knows how to use. I'm a big believer in identifying a system owner, investing in training, and creating documentation and other training materials so that other folks know how to use it the right way. Big piece of frustration is I'm supposed to use this thing. I think I'm using it right. Nobody ever really showed me. Alright. Final section here. Leading through ups and downs, celebrating successes, and maybe, you know, responding to, lack of success, let's just say. So here's our last poll, Abby poll pal. Are you and your fundraising team in an up or a down phase right now? Generally speaking, either people's attitudes, completion of your team. Do you have some big holes in your team that you're struggling with? How your fundraising results? So are you way up? We're in an up phase. It's all celebrate all the time. We're ringing that bell. Kind of in the middle, depends on the day. We're down. We are down. I'm missing three important people on my team. Can't fill those jobs. We're in a hiring freeze, and I'm seeing us miss our campaign targets. Or it depends on the day. Like, it's a mixed bag like most of us, experience. So a little from column a, a little from column b. I'm curious where you guys are at right now. Up or down? I'm seeing b and d. I'm seeing some a's. Christy's way up. Excellent. Mioccha is a c, a little down. Melanie is in the middle or it depends on the day. Yeah. Very accurate and honest answer. Got any poll results to share, Abby? Should we give it another second or two? Yeah. Yeah. We'll give it one more second. Pretty interesting. So we have as of right now, we have the majority in b. We're in the middle at 69 votes. And then we have almost an even split between a, c, and d. Yeah. Right. Yeah. A lot of d's. A lot of it depends on the day. And, frankly, like, this is not the highest fundraising period of the year. If you've been around for a while you know what your highs and lows are so this could be a low that you you have planned. We don't raise a lot of money in April but May is you know crazy town. We raise a lot of money then depending on your organization's calendar and cycle. So let's talk about how to oops. Yeah. Let's talk about how to position ourselves as a great leader, great boss, great colleague in good times and challenging times. So if you take nothing else away from this today, and I hope you take a lot away, this is these three things keep you calm and centered if you can pull it all together and braid them together. So great fundraising leaders are strategic thinkers, short term and long term. Doesn't get dramatic about things. Isn't happy one day and, like, super low the next day. Steady. Uses data to decide what to do next. Clear and courageous communicator. This goes back to the ethics of fundraising. Right? You're honest. You're transparent. You're candid. I'm discouraged too. We're down. What are we gonna do to make it up, which is the next thing that always comes out of people's mouths after they say, well, we're down. What are you gonna do to get it to go back up again? So a clear and courageous communicator not only does that with their team, but they do that with people above them inside the organization, advocates for their team. And they're focused both on results and people. I bet many of us have worked with one or the other. They're only results focused, too bad about the people, can't hack it, get out, can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen, or they're only people focused, super care givery, which is fine, but results come second if they're on the list at all. We need both to be successful in our jobs as fundraising leaders. If you're a, we are crushing it or way up or we're doing fine, some advice to you for leading in good times. Shift a little bit from hustle mode to growth mode. It's a perfect time to figure out what's working and why so that you can replicate it. Give people time, invest in people's learning and professional development, focus on improving donor retention and building relationships, make a plan for future growth, test, test new strategies and communication methods, strengthen internal relationships, maybe explore some new partnerships, and great time to document some things or tighten up your business process so so your teams are working as effectively as possible. So if you are not hustling and have a minute over the next month or two, focus on one of these things, maybe two if you're super ambitious. If it is challenging, treat this as a pivot point, not a panic point. We have seen it. I've said it myself, and I have been in rooms where you can tell the leader is freaking out little bit or a lot. You can still communicate honestly and transparently, but you do not wanna yell fire in that theater. You wanna figure out what the symptom is and then diagnose the root problem. We are big Tylenol people. I got a headache, take a Tylenol. Why do you have the headache? Why do we need to pivot? What's happening? Reengage. Spend some time with your most loyal donors and volunteers. Who can you go to in times of need? Set shorter term goals. Don't look at the whole year. Don't even look at the quarter. Look at this month. What can we do this month? Don't try to change everything. Figure out what the right things are for you to change. Get input from people. Why do you think we're down? Major donor. Why do you think we're having a hard time right now? And there are only some major donors that you've got that tight, candid relationship with. Maybe it's your board that you go to and not external supporters. But peers, you know, if you've got buddies who have similar jobs in other organizations, what's going on for them? Bring them your situation. See if they've got ideas for you. Revisit that core case for support. Is it is it tight and right? Is it really strong? And definitely invite your team to share ideas and concerns. Motivation. Pressure motivates no one. Maybe it does for, like, a day, but then, you know, we start to get, weirded out by, I can't be motivated because I'm scared. I can't be motivated because I'm worried about my job. I can't be motivated because this is out of my circle of control. Pressure does not build sustained motivation, amongst yourself, your peers, or your teams. So I've got some motivation tactics here on the left hand side. I love this first one. Connect your team's daily work to the mission. Ask your team in your team meeting, whose life are we gonna change this week through our work, and how are we gonna tell that person's story? Whose life did we change last month? Like, get it down to the basics. Celebrating effort, not just outcomes. You guys worked really hard. We got so close instead of I only celebrate when you have hit it or gone above. Encourage growth and ownership. Yeah. We did not hit our target. That's on all of us. Gotta figure out how all of us are gonna contribute to fixing it. Two way communication, honest and open. Help make the work meaningful and not just transactional. What got you into fundraising to begin with? It was probably not to raise a million dollars. It's probably to do good work in the world, spread the story, improve people's lives, bring it back to that, and back to, creating healthy boundaries. Make it safe for people to ask for help, for rest, and manageable workloads. Because burnout, once you're, you know, down and not doing well, burnout, also, I've thrown everything at it, and I'm we're still not not getting it done. What am I supposed to do now? I know we're a a little over time. People have needed to split. I appreciate that. And so now let's if it will let me share. Share. Open q and a, that's all that slide says is open q and a. Abby, I'm unable to share maybe because we've run over. So if people can stick around for a few more minutes, I'm happy to do some q and a. Perfect. Yes. And I did put in the chat, but if anyone needs to jump, you will receive a link to the recording so you can catch up on anything that you missed if you have another, meeting. Yeah. So, Maureen, great content as per usual. I know that based off of everything in the chat and all the great questions we got, this is really, really helpful. So we have an interest just time for one or two questions, but we have an interesting one here. Monica wrote in, our biggest issue is communication. We communicate well when we get a chance to, however, all of us live in different states and different time zones and we are almost all volunteers. We are all aligned in terms of mission and vision, but putting our ideas into actions when we are just waiting on someone to communicate or waiting for someone to get a document or a graphic, etcetera, it's maddening. Any ideas? Oh, Monica. I have so many ideas, but I'm gonna hold them down to two. It is yes. It's communication problem. Right? Everybody's sort of popping up as a volunteer when they've got time to work on something. It's also, in a sort of an agreement and accountability opportunity. So when I hear this, my mind goes to a project plan in a Google Sheet or in Excel. How are we gonna get all these things done? Who's gonna do each piece? And when is each thing due? So that if I've signed on to create an image or, you know, write an email or whatever it is you're waiting for me to do, that I've been in a planning meeting. I've agreed to take this task on, and I have agreed to the date that it's due. And then someone, lucky person, maybe it's you, Monica, should follow-up with people when due dates are getting close. So I if Abby and I were in your situation and Abby had signed on to do a thing, and I had noticed that, like, Abby had a hard time, for whatever reason, hitting those deadlines or, you know, collaborating or communicating about status, I would proactively ask. I would send Abby a jaunty little note. Abby, Friday, you know, I can't wait to see what email content you create. Looking forward to seeing it on Friday. Let me know if, you're gonna have a hard time meeting that date. And, Abby, when I send that email to you, what does it do? If you're the recipient of that little jaunty before it's due, how's it going? Looking forward to getting it. What does it do for you? So, I mean, I personally I'm I'm very open to that kind of thing. Mhmm. So it lets me support Abby. Mhmm. Get it like, reinforce Friday. You're busy. You're a volunteer. Friday, Friday, Friday is the day that you said that you were gonna do it. I give Abby a chance to reply and let me know, on track, you'll get it on Friday, or, oh, no. I forgot it was due on Friday. Is Monday okay? Let's me readjust. If Friday is the date, maybe I take it, give it to somebody else, or I do it myself. Not a great solution. Sometimes that's what we have, to offer. It also helps both of us prevent the well, Friday came and went. Tabby didn't send it. You know? That's terrible. It's a terrible position to put someone in even if they sort of put themselves in. So I like to do a little, like, ping. Waiting for that on Friday. All looking good. Let me know if you got any questions as a supportive stance so that Abby can then communicate what's up with Abby and renegotiate, reassign so that Abby doesn't end Friday either forgetting that something was due or feeling terrible because for one reason or another, she couldn't get to it, and she's just waiting for those emails to, like, to, like, be unhelpful. Where is it? Why didn't you do it? I hope that helps, Monica. Wanna do one more? Yes. I'm 100%. Maureen, I think that was such great advice, especially, you know, everyone the topic of our series, everyone's human. And so when you have those days, it's great to know that you're supported instead of being penalized for something. So appreciate that. Let's see. Yeah. We have a couple more in here. One question came in about how can we be supportive and or influential when there are culture problems that might be out of our control. Do you have any kind of tips or any advice there? Yeah. I I've been in that position where the values on the wall were sort of not always in alignment with how the work got done or how people were treated inside the organization. And if you're not high up in the org chart, it can be very difficult to raise that. I would bring it to my boss, and I would bring it to my boss in a way that was sort of curious. So I've noticed a b c, but we say one two three. What should I do when that happens? The more people who can raise this up, the better because at a certain point, you hit a tipping point and leadership has to has to do something about it. I mean, good leaders will do something about it. But there are also other circumstances where it is just how it is. Been like that for a long time or it's been like that recently, and no one else seems interested in doing any of the work needed to make your culture healthier. And sometimes that is when you gotta vote with your feet. I'm not advocating that, like, everybody in this webinar, if your culture has some problems, to leave because every culture has problems. There's no perfect place to work. There's no perfect organization. There's no perfect team. But I think that we can change things when we change our own behavior. It's a slow change. But if I change my behavior, behave according to the culture that I want to see inside this organization, that can be as contagious as burnout. So if you're into it, you like the people you work with, if you like the work that you do, you like the organization's mission, stick it out for a little bit and try to change the culture yourself inside yourself and see if it's adopted by other people. That's the best info I can give you. Love it, Maureen. Leader. Rise up, become the become the executive director, and change that culture. That's the long way. It's the long path. You've got it. You've got it. And luckily, everyone here is so grateful for all of your great advice and tips. Yeah. That's great. With that, we will go ahead and wrap it up since I know everyone else needs to get on with their jobs and their days, but thank you everyone so much for attending. Thank you, Maureen. This was clearly such a, you know, such a topic that resonates so much with everyone. So we appreciate all of your incredible sage wisdom. Excellent. It is sage. I've had it for a long time. So one more webinar coming up next month, combining technology and the human touch. We're gonna pull it all together. So we'd love to see you there. Thanks so much, Abby and Daniel, for having me this afternoon. Thanks, everyone. Have a great day.