[00:00:05.110] – Intro
Welcome to The Nonprofit Hero Factory, a weekly live video broadcast and podcast where we’ll be helping nonprofit leaders and innovators create more heroes for their cause and a better world for all of us. Da Ding!

[00:00:21.470] – Boris
Welcome, everybody, to The Nonprofit Hero Factory. I’m excited to have a new type of guest on the show, someone talking about an issue that I think is totally important, absolutely relevant to the work that we do, but hasn’t really been discussed enough. And it’s something I’m passionate about. So I’m really excited to learn from our guest today.

[00:00:41.700] – Boris
He is Louis Diez. He is the Executive Director of The Muhlenberg Fund at Muhlenberg College and is the host of the Donor Participation Project, which we’re going to learn from today. He’s an expert in annual fund development, digital fundraising, and engagement strategies. Prior to Muhlenberg, Louis was leading Annual Fund development at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, at Johns Hopkins SAIS and at Maryville College in Tennessee. Of varied interests, Louis holds an MBA from CUNEF, a PhD in Business Administration from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, both in Spain, and an MM in Music Performance from the University of Tennessee. Louis describes his superpower as building communities of purpose that energize donors and raise both donor participation and major gifts. Topics that are incredibly important, I think, to every organization out there today. And I’m excited to bring Louis onto the show to talk about that. Hey, Louis.

[00:01:40.070] – Louis Diez
Hi, Boris. Thanks so much for having me here.

[00:01:42.960] – Boris
Thanks so much for being here. As I said, I’m really excited to have you on. I am a huge proponent, advocate, if you will, on the topic of building communities. I think they are absolutely critical. Social media is often thought of as a community, but rarely used as one. People throw that term around and then don’t really know what that means or how to back it up or much less activate it. So I’m excited to learn from you today. But before we dive into all that, I read your bio. Love your superpower. Give me a bit of your story. Why do you do the things that you do today?

[00:02:18.290] – Louis Diez
So it’s so funny. I was graduating from my masters. I was thinking I was going to be a musician, and I worked as that for a little while. But I was doing a really interesting internship in New York at the Lincoln Center. You know I was actually putting stands… You can’t put stands on stage, but preparing coffee for the orchestra. There are lots of rules.

[00:02:43.810] – Louis Diez
And I discovered our CEO at the time was a fantastic fundraiser. And I kind of discovered the fundraising development, advancement, whatever you call it, as kind of a wonderful place because it’s mission oriented. It can be very technical if you want it to. It can be very humanistic or it should be humanistic. It kind of just has everything. If you’re a people person, then there’s a place for you. If you’re a data person, there’s a place for you. So I felt really like it all came together for me in this work. So the mission and the data and the people, it’s kind of beautiful.

[00:03:23.130] – Boris
Awesome. Like so many of us, you kind of came into the nonprofit space through a side door, if you will, hoping to do something else—I think arts are absolutely necessary for humanity and do a lot of good for humanity. And I think a lot of artists do find their way to nonprofit because it’s a different way to serve humanity and also maybe not necessarily starve.

[00:03:49.150] – Louis Diez
It’s really tough being a musician. Yes. So I was playing with the Knoxville Symphony for a while and had a day job in fundraising at Maryville College, as you mentioned, and having a son. And it’s tough, especially classical musicians.

[00:04:08.290] – Boris
I can only imagine, coming from the world of theater and acting and film. I have friends who are on TV shows. You would recognize them, and they’re still working in restaurants.

[00:04:23.440] – Louis Diez
Wow.

[00:04:24.290] – Boris
Yeah. It’s a tough, tough thing. So I’m glad you found your way to nonprofit, though. And I’m glad that you were able to combine your various interests, as you said, into doing the things that you do. So let’s talk about that. What is it that you’re doing out there? Tell me about the work that you do today.

[00:04:44.170] – Louis Diez
So right now, I’m the Director of the Annual Fund at Muhlenberg College, which is a fantastic institution in Eastern Pennsylvania. I manage a team of seven fantastic professionals, and we raise money for unrestricted accounts at the college. So basically, donations that go to work right away have an impact immediately.

[00:05:15.430] – Louis Diez
On the side, about a year and a half ago, I started getting together with a group of fundraisers in what has turned into a kind of a community. And maybe we can talk about what that even means, right? As you pointed out, Boris. But essentially, we just started getting together to discuss how we could support each other and how we could learn about increasing donor participation, which, as I’m sure you’ve talked about, and folks that listen to your show know there are less and less donors every year giving to nonprofits. Definitely doesn’t mean that people are less generous in any way or that giving through Facebook is a bad thing, right? But giving to nonprofits itself has been on the decline for the last decade or two decades. And we were thinking, well, nobody can solve this. And maybe it’s up to us now.

[00:06:09.070] – Boris
So it definitely is up to nonprofits and up to nonprofit development and communications staff, people passionate about the subject to solve this problem. I will say there’s a new report out. Last week I had a guest on, Tim from Neon One, and they just released a report that actually says that during the pandemic, individual giving did go back up. And so it’s a positive trend. The issue is and I think today’s episode is going to play right into that. So for those of you at home, go back and listen to the previous one right after you listen to this one.

[00:06:41.600] – Boris
But the issue is that communications is not capable—or not currently, effectively maintaining relationships, establishing strong relationships and tying into identity in order to keep donors donating after they’ve given the first time, which is often in response to a particular cause, like right now, Ukraine or the pandemic over the last couple of years. So people will give and then they’ll disappear. And from an individual nonprofit’s perspective, there’s going to be a lot of decline. So community, I think, can definitely help solve that problem. If not 100%, then get us a lot of the way there. Let’s talk about that. What does that mean, community when it comes to donors?

[00:07:25.550] – Louis Diez
Absolutely. So I’ll give you a little bit more background about how I came into this philosophy. At Muhlenberg I was working a lot with folks that maybe are more familiar with academic fundraising classes and looking at other schools who are doing well. And then at the same time, in the donor participation project, we were having people like a Harvard researcher from the Harvard Divinity School talk to us about how communities, how millennials were flocking to some types of organizations. And it wasn’t necessarily nonprofits: things like CrossFit, Peloton, just organizations that were really capitalizing on this community. Some churches. So even though overall religious participation is also on the decline, there are really successful cases out there.

[00:08:23.670] – Louis Diez
And a quote that she shared with us that really stuck with me was “I came for the whatever—workout, dinner, conversation—but I stayed for the community.” So community is one of those things that’s kind of a stickiness factor, right? It’s what makes people stick around. And that’s the whole problem is what probably Tim was sharing with you. And the research that he’s involved with is amazing. But it’s keeping people around that we struggle with, right?

[00:08:52.000] – Louis Diez
And I started to develop a theory and started to also read a lot. And I have a book here. I don’t know if I’m supposed to do this on the show, but Get Together, really good book for people and kind of came on the definition. It’s a working definition. So if folks, if you Boris you even have improvements, I’d love to talk about it. But it’s community is when people get together in ways that are participatory. So it’s two-ways, right? Purposeful. So it’s about a purpose. So sometimes there are communities that kind of get together.

[00:09:23.550] – Louis Diez
There’s a very famous book, The Influencers, something about people getting together just to make dinner. And that’s cool. But what’s the purpose, especially for nonprofits. Recurring. So that’s a really big one. So it’s these people that get together on a recurring basis in a way that creates an expectation and a habit. So I’m a part of this. And I get together every month, every week, every time I open my phone and I scroll through my Facebook feed. So that’s an element.

[00:09:53.380] – Louis Diez
And then the fourth one is it identifies leaders. So no nonprofit staff, no community host is going to be able to do all the work that needs to get done. So they’re going to have to ask for help and support others in achieving those goals. So I turned that into an acronym, which is PPRI, it’s not great, but what we have.

[00:10:15.070] – Boris
We’ll work on some fancy backronym for it where we’ll first pick a word and then we’ll reverse engineer it to match what you’re trying to say. Because I really like everything you just laid out there, starting with this concept of CrossFit, which— CrossFit really is community. It thrives on that. I’ve never been part of a CrossFit, but I do know a lot of people who were, at least for a while, I don’t know how it is right now through and post pandemic. They were fanatical about it, right? It becomes a part of your identity. You are someone who does CrossFit. You belong to a chapter in CrossFit. And I know that I have friends who told me about this. They would sign up, and then if they didn’t show up for a couple of days, somebody would call them and say, “Hey, we haven’t seen you, where are you?” And then they might even take it to the next level and reach out to you other ways to get you back in the door, keep you going. And it works, despite the fact that a lot of people get injured doing CrossFit. But I’m not going to….

[00:11:17.810] – Louis Diez
I don’t know about that. So definitely not endorsing injuries. But it’s a very weird thing where I started to apply some of this that we were finding to our little group, the Donor Participation Project. And it started those same things you’re talking about. I never kind of reflected on them, but it started to happen to me. So we had sessions. And when I forgot to schedule a session, people would say, “Hey, I thought we were doing this this coming Wednesday.” Because it’s like what we always do and they were calling me to task. So it’s something like human. It’s based on human nature. It does work.

[00:11:49.400] – Boris
So I’m kind of going to flip the script a little bit here. Usually I want to know, all right, well, how do we make this work? And then what are the results? But in this case, I want to flip it around. I want to say, all right, what results have you seen from building these types of communities? Because I really want people to understand. I’m sure my audience is pretty intelligent in the first place, but I just want to highlight what is the benefit of doing this. And then let’s talk about what’s the work involved to get it done.

[00:12:15.710] – Louis Diez
Okay. And in development, sometimes we get stuck on what’s the ROI of this specific thing, right? I’m going to send this one letter; how many dollars came out of it? I’ll give you the big picture. At Muhlenberg, last year in the ranking of alumni participation, so as a percentage, how many students alumni gave to the school, we climbed into the top 100 for the first time. So we’ve been climbing and we’ve been able to reverse that declining trend. So that’s really good. Was it 100% this? Did we not solicit people? No. I mean, yes, we did solicit people. So don’t think that… Sometimes people say, “Louis, does that mean that we just stop asking people for money?” No, absolutely. As I can see Boris, they know… [crosstalk 00:13:04]

[00:13:04.370] – Boris
It’s not a panacea. Nobody should expect that this actually replaces everything else that you do. But there are benefits to it, right?

[00:13:12.560] – Louis Diez
Exactly. I’m just kind of sharing things I noticed. Did we have the largest fundraising year for our annual fund in the history of the organization? Yes. Was that, again, 100%? No. Was there a pandemic and lots of people were making big gifts? Yes. Was the largest donor in the history of the college part of one of the communities that is just the best one we have? When we talk about this in a bit, I’ll share that we organize these communities by classes, right? And that’s the best one that we have and kind of the model for the others. Well, that’s also true. Is there a one-to-one of what exactly caused that gift? I think it’s kind of like a preponderance of evidence thing. It looks like a duck. Smells like a duck. Sounds like a duck. It feels like that’s the right direction.

[00:14:02.710] – Boris
Okay. So it helped the school get to its highest participation, highest donation levels so far in its history. We don’t have a direct causal connection, but there is a lot of corollary evidence is basically what you’re saying, right?

[00:14:23.070] – Louis Diez
Yes. And especially if you’re working it. So what I love about it is that it also really kind of changed a little bit of the dynamic. And we did tie it in with switching our model to asking for monthly gifts first. But when you’re in that model, kind of the feedback that you get is so totally different because you’re not always just the face that shows up to ask for a gift and then get the angry kind of response. It feels more like you’re a part of something. So that was an added benefit as well. We applied all of this to our fundraiser community, and that has been growing very well. And again, the qualitative feedback is fantastic. People post love messages on LinkedIn about what we are and what we mean, which is great.

[00:15:13.010] – Boris
Why do you think that works? Why do you think building community… I mean, you talked about, of course, the CrossFit and the kind of elements of community. But what are the benefits of community? Why do people want to be part of your alumni network for their given class or something, what do they get out of it?

[00:15:30.670] – Louis Diez
So there’s the benefits for the person that’s in the community, and then there are benefits for the organization. For the person that’s in the community, well, I would say that we have a very deep need for that. There used to be civic organizations. There used to be… And there’s this book, right? Bowling Alone, I think, that talks about how all of that, like, social fabric has gone away. People still need it. It speaks to kind of like a very basic human need, essentially it just feels good for people.

[00:16:02.570] – Louis Diez
For the organization, it makes people retain so they stay around, which means that more of them stay around giving. It reduces your—I call them, like donor service, the customer service costs. So instead of having to be staff always one-on-one being the interface with the donor, you have a group of people, and they can answer their own questions or create their own content and support each other in that way and stay connected in that way. And then, if you’re aligned with the purpose and it’s clear that this group is there to support each other but also support the cause, it creates an environment that’s very helpful for kind of major gift conversation. That sort of thing just starts to kind of surface.

[00:16:55.530] – Boris
I really appreciate and I like how you think that you broke down what’s good for the actual members of the community and what’s good for the organization as a whole. Because when it comes to marketing, when it comes to promoting anything that you’re doing, I go through this with students, with organizations that I’m working with all the time. They focus on what it’s going to do for them rather than what it’s going to do for the actual people involved. And you can’t sell it on the features, and you can’t sell it on what it’s going to do for you. You have to basically sell it on what it’s going to do for them. And they can network. They can maintain some sort of connection to their past. They can maintain some sort of connection to the work. They could do more for you in other ways, right? So I would imagine that it’s easier to get volunteers out of the community than it is out of an email list that you just blast out to because they’re already connected and you keep at top of mind for them. So they are regularly thinking of you, not just once a year when you reach out to them at the end of the year or something.

[00:18:02.770] – Louis Diez
Yeah. Even if you look at… There was somebody posting on LinkedIn the other day who said, well, we probably… Somebody said, “I’m going to venture to say that we don’t send enough emails as a nonprofit.” And then I was thinking, well, what’s the quality and what type of email? I mean, it’s like the devil is in the details. So if you see the number of communications and emails that a community generates, and it’s all well received. It’s useful. People find it helpful, it’s value providing, but it does help you increase that very organically.

[00:18:33.750] – Boris
Awesome. So let’s get into it then. What does it take to build a community? First of all, what does the community even look like? I’m assuming at this point we’re talking technology, right? Digital platforms, although community should if it can bleed over into the real life IRL, as the kids call it. How do you define community and the systems that support it?

[00:19:01.430] – Louis Diez
That’s a really interesting question, Boris. I think for folks that have been involved in fundraising for a while, this isn’t really so new. I think of it more as taking that model of the experience that we provided to board members to maybe very small groups, to campaign advisory group, things like that, and extending that to more people. So as you said, it can be in real life. It can be digital, but people do need a place to get together. Can that be in an auditorium? Can that be a Discord channel? Can that be a Facebook chat? A LinkedIn group? I think you get the gist. It can really be anywhere. And that’s why I always sometimes feel a little bit—it’s not hesitant to recommend, but it’s like, well, it’s more of how you do it than exactly what it is. You just need a place for people to get together.

[00:20:00.070] – Boris
But how do you choose that place then? Because there are all those different channels that you just talked about with the Slack and Discord and Facebook and all kinds of groups out there that exist, right? And then there’s the independent platforms that you could spin up yourself, right?

[00:20:17.260] – Louis Diez
That’s really good. I would definitely call Boris and ask him for advice on this matter, because I’m not an expert. I would say I’ve been opportunistic. So I kind of went with what was either available or where I saw people were already. So some of our younger groups said we live in LinkedIn because we’re in that age in life where our career is everything. So I said, okay, let’s do a group. It gets really hard to manage, and maybe we can talk about it where you need to kind of think through, are you going to do one big community like your donor community, or are you going to have different groups, especially in larger nonprofits or more established nonprofits, will have people that are interested in sports or in this type of biomedical research, you know, so it can get hard to manage.

[00:21:05.370] – Boris
Yeah. All donors are not the same. They all have different interests, and they have different interests related to your cause. They have different reasons for supporting you in the first place. They might have different motivations. And so if you could give them a community of fairly like minded folks rather than you have a community around sports and a bunch of people talking bowling and I just want to talk about basketball. I’m not really going to want to stick around, right?

[00:21:28.230] – Louis Diez
Exactly. So that’s where we talk about kind of having a content. Well, the content strategy, content-first approach to building these things is really important and ties into the purpose, right? But just having a clear area that you have a group that’s large enough to make this worthwhile, but also that’s united by enough of a common theme. And it could be I mean, you can think very creatively. It can be according to things people do, like playing a sport. It can be according to their age if that works. But if they’re all interested in something like, I don’t know, providing scholarships to first generation students or something like that.

[00:22:13.650] – Boris
So we’re talking basically bucketing or segmenting based on either psychographics and interests or on demographics like age and other aspects like that, geography, perhaps, whatever is most natural, I guess, to the groups that you’re working with. I appreciate you said go ahead and call Boris and ask him which platform to use. But you kind of answered it yourself already. It is a much more extensive exercise to really go through it.

[00:22:39.360] – Boris
But the question is. Where are the majority of your people already congregating? Don’t make them adopt a new tool, think of checking in at a new place. That’s a very high barrier, high friction point for people to overcome. If they’re already mostly on Facebook, then maybe that’s the answer. If they’re mostly on LinkedIn or it feels more natural because it’s a professional kind of group to be on LinkedIn, great. Wherever they’re going to associate it, or if they’re younger kids and they’ve got a bunch of Discords already up, let’s throw them into another one. Let’s give them a new one to play in, if you will.

[00:23:13.580] – Louis Diez
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then the next step is kind of, know that once you have that town hall platform or the place, that you’re going to have to feed the community with content. And I saw this with the Donor Participation Project. I would take the content from our sessions and from everything that we were learning. But then somebody has to be feeding that constantly back to the group out in the world. It’s also kind of your recruiting tool. And that’s something that I find that lots of nonprofits, maybe they start with a platform and then they think that’s going to magically create community. But it does take work.

[00:23:51.180] – Boris
Yeah. If you build it, they will come is not real or at least they won’t stick around, right? So there is this role that I know a lot of organizations have, nonprofits, for-profits, which is this community manager, and it’s their job to maintain this community. And it does take resources, right? It’s either somebody’s time or it’s a new person that you bring on just for that role. So there’s definitely some investment in there. But what should they be doing? What are the types of content that work when it comes to keeping a group interested and active?

[00:24:25.090] – Louis Diez
I guess there’s a lot of per group nuance here and lots of cultural—the culture of each specific group. I can speak from experience. You don’t think that this is something that has to go through your marketing department and be finessed to death, something as simple as photos of back in the day, and then that starts a thread and they start sharing photos and it goes on for 20 emails, just asking questions, surveys, letting everybody see the answers to the questions. So it’s a little bit of… Lots of the nonprofits that I’ve been at or worked with have this kind of marketing approach where everything has to be perfect on brand and 100% ready to go out in the world. This is more of kind of like a family chat feeling, and that tends to work, I found.

[00:25:21.070] – Boris
And you’re saying things like, let people see the results of surveys that they’re taking, make it a two-way conversation, but also make it feel like everybody’s getting to know everybody. It’s not just they’re giving your organization information about themselves that you could later use for marketing, right? It’s actually which, by the way, you could be doing that at the same time. But it’s actually them getting to know each other and feeling more comfortable and confident with each other and getting value from each other at the same time, right?

[00:25:52.300] – Louis Diez
So another of the great benefits, and this is for both the people who participate and the organization, is that communities build trust. And I’ve read some research that it’s actually one of the better ways to do it. It’s really hard to get somebody to trust you based on ads or brochures or letters that you’re sending them. But when people get together to do something around the common purpose, it’s much easier to turn minds and hearts around.

[00:26:17.470] – Boris
They get emotionally invested. They get financially invested. They get—what do you call it when they invest their own time into it, right? They feel like they’re getting more value and they’re investing more of themselves into it. So they have more ownership, more stake at the table when it comes to your organization’s work and success.

[00:26:35.790] – Louis Diez
That’s totally it, Boris. And you described it. That sounds like your ideal donor. I mean, doesn’t it? Somebody who’s invested. So you’re kind of like creating the environment, too. So that doesn’t mean that you don’t need major gift officers. In fact, your content leaders and your thought lead, internal thought leaders and your gift officers ideally should be a part of these communities kind of embedded in them.

[00:26:59.170] – Boris
So there’s one particular aspect, and we’re coming up on time here, but I really want to get into and see what you have to share, which is, is there a way to actually solicit donations without feeling like you’re just asking for money within a community?

[00:27:15.740] – Louis Diez
Okay, I’m going to tell you a secret. Everybody hates to be solicited, but everybody loves to be recognized. So just do that. When I work with volunteers and they say, “I never want to ask somebody for money.” I said, “I promise you won’t have to.” But you can elevate people. You can publish lists of donors. I mean, what is Facebook but one long list of who liked what you know or who did what, and it works. So that’s an easy kind of evolution, right?

[00:27:51.010] – Boris
So what does that do? Do you put out let’s say you’re a community on Facebook? Do you put a post up that says, “Hey, thank you so and so for the amazing donation. And here’s what it will help us do.”

[00:28:01.680] – Louis Diez
So one of our most successful efforts was (our fiscal year closes on June 30) our communities are organized—and we didn’t cover this, Boris—on Google Groups, so which is kind of low tech, really; it’s basically listservs. We shared the honor role, which is what we call the donor list for each specific community for each class on it and the gifts. And then we said, “Well, thank you so much to all of those.” This was a thank you message. If you haven’t given no, you still have time, head over here and we’ll update this. And they did, in droves. So that was really powerful. And then people say, well, you put out this donor list and it doesn’t work in this way. Well, sometimes I find that they do this in the annual. The premise is that people recognize each other, that they feel part of the same group, not some random list of 500 names.

[00:28:56.710] – Boris
That is so important and powerful. If you are part of a community, you want to do what everyone else in the community is doing. There is a social contract of sorts that you feel you need to uphold your end of it, and you want to compete or match what others are doing, match the expectations upon you. So if you see this role, this honor role, this donor list of people in your class, and you see, oh, wait, most people or a lot of people in my class are giving. Well, I mean, I should, too. I can. It’s clearly important. I’ll do it.

[00:29:34.730] – Louis Diez
You hit it on the nail, Boris. I’d be interested to hear from you. Do you see applications for this model to other… of course, my background is in maybe the arts, is in one type of or a couple of types of nonprofits. Do you see this as applicable to other types of nonprofits?

[00:29:53.250] – Boris
Oh, absolutely. I mean, every organization should cultivate some sort of community for their clients, their donors, their volunteers, and crossing over between them, depending on how you define your segments, if you will. But even without the community, I mean, I always teach you want to be sharing stories, you want to be sharing success stories. You want to be sharing stories of donors. Hey, I did this and now I see this out in the world and I feel so much better. I can sleep better at night because I gave to this and I saw that it had some sort of an impact, right? What you’re doing when it’s inside of a community is really amplifying that within an echo chamber. An echo chamber for good, as opposed to so many of the ones that are currently happening right now online. So, yeah, every organization could be doing this.

[00:30:39.070] – Louis Diez
Totally. Yeah. Maybe a last point kind of for thought is and I haven’t figured this out, right, is: what is the metric for success? We look at our donor retention, obviously. But also, as you mentioned, there’s a community manager that does this. Please do give them ownership on a metric, on something, not just have it be kind of a random expendable role that you have in the shop.

[00:31:05.810] – Boris
Yeah. I do always like to focus on metrics. And I think donor retention would be a great one to measure and see how well is it working of the people who are in the community? How many of them are staying and giving regularly? Because again, it’s that identity thing, which is key. And then some of the other KPIs would be how many people per month or per whatever cycle you want to measure are actually adding content, how many people are checking in and reading content? That is an engagement metric that’s pretty straightforward to download from whatever app that you’re currently using, I think would be great to measure and track and give your community manager some goals. Hey, can we increase this? Can we bring in more people and have them engaging around more things? Hey, surveys seem to be doing really well. Or, hey, we put out a quiz and everybody shared it, right? Those are dynamite when they work.

[00:31:57.790] – Louis Diez
Exactly. Very helpful. Thanks, Boris.

[00:32:00.140] – Boris
I love all that. So I don’t want to take too much more of your time, but I do want to ask: You did say you’re on Google Groups, and I do like to ask everybody for some tools and resources. You also held up the book Get Together earlier. Who’s that by? How do we find that?

[00:32:17.480] – Louis Diez
Let’s find this out. It’s a group of folks. It’s published by Stripe Press, and I’m opening it right here. Okay. The authors are Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh, and Kai Elmer Sotto.

[00:32:31.310] – Boris
Awesome. We will definitely find that book and link to it in the show notes. We’ll also link to Google Groups so people can get started easily like you do. What’s your call to action for the folks that are listening, watching, or reading the transcript of this at home?

[00:32:46.630] – Louis Diez
So if you want to join a community of fundraisers who is really nice, smart, and we get together to solve a really big issue in our industry, head over to joindpp.org. So one word joindpp.org. And we’d love to have you and kind of if you bring even just a lot of what you learn here with Boris to these conversations, I think people will be thrilled and you’ll gain a lot too from that back and forth.

[00:33:21.590] – Boris
As you should in the community. Awesome. So we’re going to link to that, of course, too. If people want to follow up with you, where should they find you? What’s your preferred community?

[00:33:32.330] – Louis Diez
LinkedIn, for sure. And just look me up by name and title.

[00:33:37.850] – Boris
Fantastic. And we always link to guests’ LinkedIn profiles anyway. So that’s going to happen and when we publish this post on LinkedIn we’re going to tag you as well. So hopefully a lot of people are going to connect with you. I think this is really important and also really accessible content that people should be thinking about and tactics that people hopefully will start to implement if they haven’t or take the next step and level up if they’re already doing it.

[00:34:05.590] – Louis Diez
And it really works, which also helps.

[00:34:08.000] – Boris
That definitely also helps. Louis, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate having you on. You came on. You dropped a whole lot of value on us today. I think that will hopefully get people thinking and working and I hope that people do go and check out the Donor Participation Project because the more you can contribute, the more you can learn, the more the rising tide lifts all boats.

[00:34:33.910] – Louis Diez
Well, thanks, Boris. Thank you for having me. I look forward to learning from you even more.

[00:34:38.350] – Boris
Awesome. And thank you, everybody for joining us at home. If you like this interview, do go ahead and share it with your friends. Leave us a review on iTunes on Spotify wherever you enjoy your content and we look forward to seeing you again next time on The Nonprofit Hero Factory.

[00:34:56.150] – Intro
Thank you all for watching and listening to The Nonprofit Hero Factory. We hope this episode has given you some ideas and strategies for creating more heroes for your cause and a better world for all of us. Please be sure to subscribe to this show on YouTube, Facebook, iTunes, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform and let us know what you think by leaving a review.

[00:00:19.610] – Intro Video
Welcome to the Nonprofit Hero Factory, a weekly live video broadcast, and podcast. Where we’ll be helping nonprofit leaders and innovators create more heroes for their cause and a better word for all of us. Da-Ding!

[00:00:21.140] – Boris
Hi, everybody, welcome to another episode of the nonprofit Hero Factory. I love having experts on every single week to not only share information with you guys about how to do better marketing and communications and fundraising and make better use of technology. I also love it because a lot of times I get to learn from them what their ideas and their strategies are, and we have some great conversations around the subject. Today, it’s a particularly interesting episode for me because while I’ve been aware of this concept for many, many years now, of course, I have never actually personally delved into corporate sponsorships and how to set those up with corporations, perhaps in the area or national corporations for nonprofit.

[00:01:08.210] – Boris
I know how to market them. I’ve done that many times, but I’ve never actually been on the back end of things as the initial negotiations even happen. So today I’m excited to have Heather Nelson on the show. Heather is the President and lead consultant at BridgeRaise. She is an MBA and a CFRE. Heather is a corporate partnership and sponsorship specialist who leads her own boutique consulting firm, BridgeRaise, as I just said, which focuses exclusively on raising money from companies for nonprofits. And Heather has developed an extensive following of fundraisers who want to join her in raising money based on building relationships and impactful partnerships, which I think is key, and I’m sure we’re going to talk about a lot in the episode today.

[00:01:50.820] – Boris
Heather describes her superpower of building aligned relationshipbased partnerships between nonprofits and companies and really seeing and believing in the value that nonprofits can bring to those partnerships. With that, let me bring Heather onto the show.

[00:02:05.565] – Heather Nelson
Hello everyone. Hi.

[00:02:05.565] – Boris
How are you today?

[00:02:09.480] – Heather Nelson
I’m great. Thanks for having me today.

[00:02:11.760] – Boris
It’s awesome to have you on. I’m really excited to learn from you today. Before we do, though, you just heard me read off your bio and it is really impressive already. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about you? What’s your story? Other.

[00:02:25.930] – Heather Nelson
Well, I’ll start with saying I’m Canadian. I’m based in Canada, and I have been in the nonprofit sector my whole career, which I feel puts me in a bit of a unicorn position. I did start in programming and working on the programming side in international development organizations and a few other organizations. And then I went and got my business degree and came out of that really wanting to work on the revenue side, business development and fundraising. And so, I’ve been doing that ever since. And most recently, prior to starting my own consultancy, I worked at Food Banks Canada, which is the National Food Bank Association here, and we focused entirely on corporate partnerships.

[00:03:12.920] – Heather Nelson
So that was where I really got to flex that muscle and practice things I learned at business school and throughout my career. Which I’ve now applied to BridgeRaise, which has been around for five years. And we’ve been working with nonprofits of all sizes on their corporate programs.

[00:03:29.640] – Boris
That’s very cool. I, too, started out in programming, but mine was in C, C++, Lisp.

[00:03:38.710] – Heather Nelson
The other kind of programming.

[00:03:39.560] – Boris
The other kind of programming. It always catches me off guard for just a second. My brain has to turn… no, no, we’re talking about nonprofit programs.

[00:03:46.990] – Heather Nelson
That’s right. Yeah.

[00:03:48.900] – Boris
Awesome. Heather, tell me, what are you seeing out there? What’s going on in the world of corporate sponsorships and nonprofit development? I know that things in finance in general have been changing a lot over the last couple of years, shifting alignments, shifting resources. What’s happening specifically from your point of view?

[00:04:10.580] – Heather Nelson
You know, I’m so happy you ask because… well, first, I’m going to start with I really like using the word partnership instead of sponsorship. And one of the reasons is to highlight one of the changes that we’re seeing that I believe, which is very good for nonprofits. We’re seeing the evolution away from either a very philanthropic and donation-based or a very transactional, purely marketing based scenario to this place in the middle. Right? So I like calling it—using the word partnership because it does have some elements of both of these things in it. And that is an emerging priority amongst this sector. We’re seeing that happen.

[00:04:51.590] – Heather Nelson
It’s becoming more and more pronounced that companies are looking for certain things from the nonprofit that extend beyond just doing good in the world, but include doing good in the world. We also have seen, obviously, with the move to remote working that we’ve seen happen over the last year, the influence of virtual marketing, virtual events, virtual connections between employees and their companies that has heavily influenced how corporate partnership looks. So that’s been a big shift that we’ve really had to adjust to in the space of corporate partnership.

[00:05:28.040] – Heather Nelson
And I think… the last one I would like to highlight is I think a lot of people felt that when the pandemic started, that maybe there wouldn’t be the funding that there had been. And we didn’t see that. We’ve seen actually companies be more and more generous recently than maybe ever before. They’ve leaned into their marketing to do good in the world. They’ve accessed employees in different ways. And so we’ve actually seen companies do at least as much as they had before, and many do more.

[00:06:02.760] – Heather Nelson
Of course, there is exceptions. There is companies that have not been able to do that, but where they have been able to we’ve seen them do it. And I think that has led to at least a certain amount of optimism around what is possible, which I really appreciate.

[00:06:18.100] – Boris
That’s wonderful to hear. I was actually going to ask you, has it been increasing or decreasing and it sounds like organizations…

[00:06:23.978] – Heather Nelson
Yeah… Some of each.

[00:06:24.691] – Boris
Right…

[00:06:24.762] – Heather Nelson
It’s not all bad.

[00:06:26.820] – Boris
So I wouldn’t be surprised if it mirrors the overall donor and donation landscape where some things have declined, but overall things have gone up. And I definitely want to get into all of the reasons why the organizations, the businesses are doing it. And especially at this time, there might be some additional reasons. But before we get there, I’m wondering, what does it look like? How how are nonprofits creating these corporate partnerships as it were? What does it look like when it’s successful, when it’s done right?

[00:07:03.440] – Heather Nelson
Well, I mean, I think from my point of view, I mean, there’s a bit of a personal question and a bit of a factual part, I think to that.

[00:07:11.468] – Boris
Tell me both.

[00:07:12.620] – Heather Nelson
From my point of view, when it’s done right, there’s a strong alignment on the reason for the partnership. Could be alignment on a value between the company and the nonprofit. It could be an impact that they both want to have. But there’s some really core reason why they’re partnered together. And then when it’s done well, that extends into there being benefits that the nonprofit provides and in return, an investment that is proportional to that relationship that is given by the company. Right?

[00:07:45.640] – Heather Nelson
And that’s when it really works. And sometimes they’re more consistent across a few. And sometimes they’re fully unique, depending on obviously, the amount of that investment. But I really like it to look proportional. So it needs to be… both sides need to be valued in a really good partnership. And that’s what it looks like inside. And then outside, we see stories being told. We see announcements being made. We see a connection between the two that is visible to their employees, maybe to their customers, maybe to the public at large.

[00:08:24.330] – Heather Nelson
The audience might depend on the situation, but it shouldn’t be a secret if it’s a good partnership, that’s really working.

[00:08:31.580] – Boris
Of course, yeah. So you’re kind of getting into this anyway, but I really want to dive further. Why do companies want to form partnerships with nonprofits? I mean, we kind of know, especially those of us in nonprofit, that—why a nonprofit might want to form a partnership. And I’m sure that maybe you could even talk to, not every company is going to be a good fit for a nonprofit in the first place. But what is it that a nonprofit can offer, is offering per se, from their side of the partnership that will entice the business to work with them?

[00:09:08.400] – Heather Nelson
Sure. Well, I think following up on that alignment piece, what we are seeing out in the world is companies really wanting to solve social problems. Some of them want to have an impact on certain social problems. Some of them want to stand for something in particular. And nonprofits provide them with knowledge in that space, provide them with expertise, authenticity around making that happen. So that’s the first thing. But there’s also other benefits we’ve talked about. We’ve seen in the world this disconnect between employees and their employers because of more people working remotely and employee engagement opportunities. To opportunities for employees to volunteer with the nonprofit is a really outstanding benefit that nonprofits can offer to companies.

[00:10:00.100] – Boris
They can also help provide some content for marketing. That could be stories that could be the impact that the company is helping them make in the world and sharing that with the public or with their employees. So there’s different benefits. And part of an overly good partnership is finding out the ones that the company values and that the employee and that the nonprofit can execute effectively against, and matching those together.

[00:10:27.050] – Heather Nelson
But we do see them fall into these buckets, most typically around employee engagement, some and authenticity and impact. Those are three buckets I would look at.

[00:10:38.640] – Boris
Yeah, I really love the part about the employee engagement. It’s hard to see the news and not hear about “the great resignation” that’s happening right now. Where, ever since the pandemic began, people are not excited to go, first of all into the office, never mind back. But people are being more selective. There’s actually a labor shortage in a lot of areas because people are much more selective about what they want to be doing. And I know that it’s popularized with the millennial generation, but I think I’m a lot older the millennial, and it still applies to me, obviously, because I’m doing this work.

[00:11:13.910] – Boris
We want to have alignment with the work that we’re doing. We don’t just want to work for a paycheck anymore. Most of us that are privileged enough, I should say, to have these choices and opportunities. So when a corporation can not only say, hey, we also care about these things, but actually devote dollars and time towards that, that helps with the employee retention and appeal. I’m sure too, right?

[00:11:38.140] – Heather Nelson
Yeah. I agree. It absolutely does help with those things. And I think I really believe that a company just saying it’s making a difference is insufficient, right? They need to prove it. And one of the ways they can do so is by giving their employees time. But providing incentives by giving the space and opportunities for employees to engage in this cause that this company cares about. So if it’s done well, it can be a real win-win because it can strengthen the tie between the company and the employee.

[00:12:18.240] – Heather Nelson
And it can also make the purpose or the community investment priority of the company more real for everybody. So that’s great. And I think, you know, to your point around, people aren’t looking forward to going into work. We also find that we’re connecting so much virtually around work. It’s really nice to have something else to be connecting about. And so we do find nonprofits offering lunch and learns and training sessions and, virtual tours and all these sorts of things just give, like, a different cooler conversation for people to have. And, you know, they need that. That helps with the connection for companies. So nonprofits have that to offer.

[00:13:05.230] – Boris
Absolutely. And there’s also on the other side of the millennial stereotype, which is a positive one. They want to be spending their money on organizations that they don’t consider evil or that they consider aligned with their own morals and values. So I think in that sense, it’s a marketing tool. Hopefully it’s a genuine endeavor by the organization, but it is a way to signal— virtue signal, in the true sense what their priorities are, right?

[00:13:35.020] – Heather Nelson
Yeah, for sure. For those companies that have a consumer facing brand, I mean, there’s so many other things that a nonprofit can do with them to demonstrate through sales and through how they interact with customers, that they are connected to a nonprofit. That does tend to sort of lie in the purview of more sophisticated nonprofits. And it’s a great vehicle, and it can be very lucrative for both sides if it’s working well.

[00:14:08.160] – Boris
So I know that in grants, for example, when an organization, a nonprofit gets a grant, there is a certain amount of reporting to do and a certain amount of perhaps even mile posts that they need to reach and metrics that they need to keep and report on. Is there anything like that with a corporate grant? What does a company want to see when they’re forming a partnership?

[00:14:32.120] – Heather Nelson
You know what there’s probably as many examples of what the company wants to see is there are arrangements. I would suggest that they do fall into a few categories. Within the context, there is corporate grants that are more heavily weighted on metrics related to the impact on the stakeholders, the beneficiaries of the organization. So some are designed that way, and they are, well, not exactly the same as other granting. There is more similarities with a fairly clear guidance around what kind of reporting you need to do.

[00:15:09.010] – Heather Nelson
Outside of those kinds of relationships, it does tend to be on a negotiated basis. There should always be some form of reporting. And I do actually recommend that fairly early on, you find out what it is they are measuring. Because sometimes they’ll be measuring a number of employees participating. Sometimes they’re measuring the number of Facebook likes they got. Sometimes it’s, you know, that you met the certain impact. So it’s an important part of working out a successful partnership to know that piece of information and to plan to report on it.

[00:15:43.950] – Heather Nelson
I do generally like to recommend, however, which is different than most foundation grants, that the report back is as succinct as possible. So you’re reporting on what you have promised to report on without a whole lot of extra, because generally it is being shared. So making sure that you can share a fairly tight story of success is perfect.

[00:16:12.440] – Boris
And making sure that the organization can share—the company, I should say, can share—a fairly succinct impact statement as well. Because it’s one thing to say, yeah, we care about something, and it’s another to say look at the change that we helped create with our consumers, with our employees, right?

[00:16:31.280] – Heather Nelson
I love that you bring that up, because one of my keys to success, actually, in corporate partnerships, is that you can boil the complexity of what you’re doing with the funds down to a sentence. And that can be very difficult, especially if they’re funding a very complex issue. And when you’re in the weeds of it to boil it down to “and we’re helping 100 kids exit poverty” or something very simple like that or serving 100 breakfast can feel like you’re oversimplifying very complicated social issues. However, companies need to be able to communicate fairly succinctly in annual reports and other places what their money went to do.

[00:17:15.130] – Heather Nelson
And so we do need to be able to do that. Somebody at the company is looking further into the detail to make sure it’s authentic and real and all those things, so there’s somebody that you can provide more detail to. But you need to be prepared that there are a lot of people at the company that are only going to know that headline and that headline is going to help you renew your money and get more.

[00:17:39.670] – Boris
You made me think about this concept where I’ve actually, with clients at times, aske them for a testimonial before we actually start the work. And I promise not to use it unless they still believe in it afterwards. But for me, it’s trying to get an understanding of their expectation. What do they value? What do they want to see at the end that’s going to make them super happy? So as you were talking, I thought, well… I wonder if you almost want to create a press release ahead of time. What will the press release in six months look like if this is successful, right?

[00:18:12.680] – Heather Nelson
I love that idea. That’s a great idea. Yeah, because it is like that sometimes. That’s when you see, “oh, that’s what they wanted to say. Why did they just tell us?” I mean, that’s another argument, honestly, for long term relationships. Because there’s only so much that a nonprofit and the company, there’s only so much information they can exchange the first go round. Right? Nobody has the time for everything to be shared. And therefore, if you commit to a relationship over time, then there’s always incremental gains each time.

[00:18:48.240] – Heather Nelson
Whether you do the same thing each year or you change aspects of it, you have time as two organizations to get to know each other, right? And improve on it. And that would be the kind of thing you’d be like, okay, we got the press release at the end of this year. Okay. Now what we want to say next year would be a really cool conversation?

[00:19:06.620] – Boris
You’re welcome to steal that idea.

[00:19:09.140] – Heather Nelson
Yeah, that’s right… it’s in my notes!

[00:19:10.790] – Heather Nelson
That’s all yours. You and everybody listening to this episode. Okay. I feel like so far, we’ve really established why a business might want to be in a partnership with a nonprofit. What they’re going to get out of it. And similarly, what nonprofit should be thinking about when they’re looking into partnerships. But let’s break it down to if we haven’t started any corporate sponsorships yet, or we’re looking to grow our partnership program, what do we need to do? How do we even identify the businesses out there that might be a good fit for partnership with a nonprofit?

[00:19:51.830] – Heather Nelson
Okay. Well, so the first thing I want to say is that if you haven’t started before, be looking to only find a few companies to start with. So I find that often what happens is we think, okay, let’s first get an exhaustive list of every possible company. And then once we’ve done that and got research on all of them, then we’ll go to the next step of having a conversation with some, and we’ll kind of go on. And I am really all about getting into the part where we’re having the conversations, we’re testing our ideas and we’re getting to partnership with somebody so that we have something to build on.

[00:20:25.740] – Heather Nelson
I ask to start with to try to find ten companies that you think you should start with. And usually we start by looking at people who’ve given in the past who are lapsed. Companies that are in our geography, so that can be a good place to look, companies that are in geography because then already you have one little piece of alignment.

[00:20:45.980] – Heather Nelson
And then, I call it dream storming. Usually when people work at an organization, they already have thought to themselves, this is a company for XYZ reason I think should be giving to us. Right? You know, your organization, you know, the organized companies that are likely to align. So we start with a list like that, and we do… I recommend then doing a very specific kind of research. And it’s not about all the research… it’s about going to their social media. It’s going to their website. Going to a few places and really looking for the things that you need to know to show alignment between your organization and the company.

[00:21:22.660] – Heather Nelson
What are they talking about around employees? What are they giving to already? What’s important to them right now? Are they really focusing on a certain social issue? How do you speak to that social issue? So we’re looking for those kinds of bread crumbs in what they’re talking about. And social media is amazing for this. So this is like 100% where you spend your time to figure that out.

[00:21:45.980] – Heather Nelson
And then based on that, you move to outreach. And I build a little bit of internal knowledge around benefits and what we’re going to give to them before. But it’s not fancy. It’s not polished. It’s not all glossy. It really is more of a working document. So that then we can start having conversations and learning what they value before going further.

[00:22:09.290] – Boris
So as soon as you said, social media and all things digital, I don’t know if you saw my eyes light up and my grin come across my face, because obviously, that’s where I live and brief most of the time. What are some of the social media tools? I would think LinkedIn would be a big one for work like this.

[00:22:27.860] – Heather Nelson
Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:22:28.980] – Boris
Where do you tend to go?

[00:22:29.670] – Heather Nelson
Yeah. LinkedIn and Twitter are the two places that we tend to go to look. And we start with that list and then go to those two channels for more company information. And, of course, their website, too. They have media releases they’re putting sometimes that’s a good place to look. But yeah, LinkedIn for the people that are responsible for their community investment, for marketing and sometimes, sometimes even human resources. So you will usually see that those are the places that there tends to be relevant information. And Twitter, too.

[00:23:07.190] – Heather Nelson
That’s where companies tend to broadcast things they’re proud of. Right? So another place to look.

[00:23:13.270] – Boris
Now, do you approach them on LinkedIn or on Twitter? Where do you initiate? And then I want to get into how, but where do you initiate the conversation?

[00:23:22.040] – Heather Nelson
To the degree it’s possible we initiate the conversation in email. So that is the preference. If that’s not possible, then LinkedIn can sometimes be a choice. If the person is very active in LinkedIn and you can tell that they’re engaging there regularly, then that can be an option. But if they’re using it mostly as a broadcast channel, then it’s more appropriate to try to reach them at their work and through email. That’s my recommendation.

[00:23:54.580] – Boris
Ok. Great. Do you ever just do cold calls as well?

[00:23:59.920] – Heather Nelson
You know, that’s not my recommendation. Generally, I believe that… look, the email maybe may be cold, but we’re going to try to create warmth around it by following them on these social channels and communicating with them and showing appreciation before we reach out and then making sure the email is an aligned email that just very simply gets to the point about why they should call you back. If it doesn’t, then sometimes putting in it that you’re going to call to follow up is great. But I like to break the ice, especially now with people working remotely and different things, with an email to notify them and explain who I am before the first phone call.

[00:24:40.960] – Boris
That’s great. That’s great. Okay. So we know where we’re going to stalk them, pardon the term. We know what types of things that we’re looking for on these social media channels and where we’re going to first initiate contact. What do we actually say when we’re trying to initiate contact? Because, boy, those cover letters can be awkward. And I’ve seen people… I’ve personally fumbled for what the perfect intro to make in certain situations. How do you do it, Heather? What secret?

[00:25:09.400] – Heather Nelson
Right. Well, I think the most important key I always tell my clients this email is so short that it is painful. That’s how short it is. Because it really is the least amount of information you can give them to get them to call you back. And for many of the people we’re reaching out to, this is not an important email, so they’re likely reading it while they’re walking on their phone while they’re in the elevator. So, long with attachments is not going to work.

[00:25:39.420] – Heather Nelson
It should be short. It has one sentence explaining who you are and where you’re from. The next one is the alignment. That cool thing that you found. Hey, I saw your employee engagement is really important to you, and I have a cool opportunity I’d like to talk to you about. Hey, I see that this is important and I want to talk to you about that. And then what your next step is, can I have 15 minutes? I’m going to follow up with a phone call. Three sentences. That is it.

[00:26:05.480] – Heather Nelson
And if they don’t answer that, they don’t respond, then we can start thinking about what’s the next version? What’s the next next little bit of information that we try? Because they may not answer the first time. But holding back a bit of information, like, you know, we were in the news or this is a little bit more about what we’re offering, that will give you a chance for a follow up email. And we know that sometimes it can take a few tries to get a call back. So, you know, no point in, like, avalanche of information on the first go.

[00:26:35.970] – Boris
So I really appreciate that you don’t want to overwhelm them. So often when people are doing marketing, regardless of whether it’s nonprofit or for profit, they try to cram everything in there possible. Look at all the reasons why you should this and this. And there’s a lot of overwhelm versus telling a clean and concise story, something hopefully that teases that there’s more and that we’d love to talk and tell you more and that there’s an opportunity there. Right?

[00:27:04.220] – Heather Nelson
That’s it. And then again, the the more is a little bit more right. They don’t need to know everything about your organization to buy into this one thing. I think that this feeling that in order to give the money in order to create a partnership, they have to know everything right away is like a myth that trips people up. Just think about enough to have another conversation, enough to get to yes. If they want more information, honestly, they will ask you. If they want financials or HR structure or all the programs that you have available or all the events they will ask you. Generally, they’re not shy people.

[00:27:45.240] – Boris
And frankly, they could Google you, right? And you’d show up.

[00:27:47.340] – Heather Nelson
Right, they can go to your website. Well, that’s another thing I always say is that there is no such thing as a first impression. The second you’ve written an email, they have gone to your website. They may have already gone to your LinkedIn. So make sure that those things look corporate friendly… I call “open for business,” before you make the call. Because after it’s too late, you’ve already got “okay, now they don’t like companies,” or “I don’t see a company anywhere in any of their stuff. Why are they calling?”

[00:28:17.540] – Boris
Absolutely. And your website is a powerful tool in that regard. So are your social media profiles. Do you advise organizations to have specific corporate sponsorship and partnership pages on their site?

[00:28:32.740] – Heather Nelson
Well, there’s different ways to show that you are open for corporate partnership, and so it depends on the organization all day. But I do very, very heavily recommend that there’s some visibility of companies on your website and on your social. So how that looks? There’s lots of different ways that can work, but there definitely should be evidence that this is something you do, that you welcome companies to support you.

[00:28:58.490] – Boris
And if you already have had sponsorships, they should be on your home page. They should be on your sponsors page. They should be in several places as reinforcement for not only potential new partnerships, but also just individuals will say, oh, this company supports them. It gives you some sort of credibility social proof, which is great.

[00:29:19.860] – Heather Nelson
Absolutely. Right. So that’s for sure. That’s super important that that shows up somewhere.

[00:29:25.280] – Boris
So I don’t want to pull all your secret sauce out. But let me see if I could get just a little bit more from you, Heather. Once they have agreed to a call, what is it that you need to be prepared to deliver in that call? Because I’m assuming it’s not going to be a four hour call with the entire executive board of the business. What is it that you need to have prepared and what’s your goal for that first call?

[00:29:50.740] – Heather Nelson
Well, so what I say to have prepared is a brief description of what… expanding on the hook that you put in the email, expanding on the alignment. So, the key benefit. You need to have a little bit more about that, and then you have to have a series of questions. So I have a series of questions that I always look at and pick from, because by the end of that call, you should know what the proposal should look like or what more information you need to know in order to know what the proposal should look like.

[00:30:19.350] – Heather Nelson
You should not come to that call with the proposal. You should have the primary idea and maybe even a secondary idea that you’d like to tease them. If the first thing, like, drops like a rock. Like, they’re like, no, I’m not doing that. Then you’re like, sell, maybe there’s this be prepared to pivot, but in both cases, it’s like a paragraph description, a few bullets. It’s not the detail because you’re going to want to follow up with thoughtful details based on the answers they give you to the questions, after you talk for a little bit.

[00:30:50.830] – Heather Nelson
They’ll make you say something because they generally won’t just tell you the goods without knowing what you want to know. But if you tell them a little bit, then follow up with a few questions. That’s really an ideal first call. Then the next step is more, right? More of a proposal, a one page summary, whatever the next step might be. But again, you’re building right. You’re building the relationship. You’re building the partnership. You’re building a benefit that makes sense to them.

[00:31:21.690] – Boris
Absolutely. I appreciate that you think of it and advocate it as building a relationship. It’s not an exchange. It is a partnership. And those really grow over time. You don’t… I’m almost tired of saying this metaphor all the time, but you don’t ask someone to marry you on the first date, or text them, “will you marry me?” after you just both swiped right. Whatever the new dating analogy might be. It takes time to build that trust, build that credibility with each other, that you’re both going to deliver on what you want, and that it’s a worthwhile investment for both of you in terms of time and funds, Right?

[00:31:59.080] – Heather Nelson
Exactly.

[00:32:00.420] – Boris
So if organizations that are listening to this haven’t started yet, haven’t gone down the path of corporate sponsorships, corporate partnerships, and now they’re looking to or maybe they’re looking to grow their program. What’s the first next first thing that they should be doing right now?

[00:32:19.860] – Heather Nelson
Well, let me start with answering it for newer organizations. They really need to answer the question, why is a company going to give to me? And for what? And that has to be from the company’s point of view, not from the nonprofit point of view. It’s not, “I want money to do this thing.” It’s this makes sense for a company because it helps them accomplish Y. So the why and the what. We have to answer that. After that, all other things can follow.

[00:32:46.970] – Heather Nelson
And if you’re a more sophisticated organization, I would be pushing the limits on that. So they can tackle more complicated whys and whats in terms of connecting audiences to their brand, that kind of thing. So it’s the next level of that same question. You need to understand that… what you have to offer in a corporate context before you can make a call.

[00:33:11.470] – Boris
Absolutely. Whenever I’m working with a client and we’re trying to whether it’s develop a website or some kind of campaign, we always start with the target avatar. And in that target avatar, the most important section is actually not even the demographics. It’s the psychographics, which focuses, in part on what are their morals and values, what are their concerns and what are their pain points? And how do we solve it? So I feel like for a corporate partner, maybe you fill out the head of HR or the head of whatever department it might be. But they are thinking on behalf of the company, what are their pain points? And how can we solve those pain points for them, right.

[00:33:51.980] – Heather Nelson
That’s right. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:33:53.450] – Boris
I love it. If they haven’t… Starting with a blank page for most things is pretty difficult. I know you have some resources and some templates. If nonprofits want to get started and want to kind of leap frog those first awkward moments of sitting in front of their keyboard, what can they do?

[00:34:12.740] – Heather Nelson
Yeah. So I have two things that I can offer to help. First, if you go to bridgraise.com slash gettingstarted, there’s a free download there that goes through the why and the what, and some of the key questions to ask yourself in that. And a few more things that you might want to do internally just to get ready before you start reaching out. So that’s free. You can download that. And then I also have a bundle at bridgebaise.com slash timesaving templates, and it’s a low price offer.

[00:34:43.520] – Heather Nelson
And I basically have, the research brief is in there, an outline for an introductory proposal, some email samples for that three-line email. So I have a bunch of things in there that are designed to just get away from starting from scratch. Of course, every organization will modify them slightly to meet their own personal needs.

[00:35:04.981] – Boris
You would hope so.

[00:35:05.230] – Heather Nelson
It really gets you past that, “Okay, how do I even structure this?” Because I tried it. And these ones work.

[00:35:11.880] – Boris
That’s brilliant. And I’m sure it’s a great resource for organizations. I know in marketing we have what’s called swipe files, where you literally take example copy and images and videos, whatever it might be from successful campaigns, and you modify them because if that works and there’s enough alignment, then chances are it’ll work for you, too. Or at least it’s worth a test. In this case, Heather, you’re clearly super knowledgeable on this subject. If someone wants to get started and wants to leap frog that whole initial stage of research, trial and failure, I’m sure they’re going to love the resources that you offer.

[00:35:50.110] – Boris
Is there another tool that maybe isn’t yours or resource that you recommend organizations that are looking to start or expand their corporate sponsorship program? Check out.

[00:36:03.700] – Heather Nelson
Absolutely. Honestly, I learned from other organizations all the time. One of my favorites is called Accelerist. They do some great research. They have a technology-based corporate partnership database that helps find alignment between your nonprofit and companies. It’s a great tool. I highly recommend going to their website and taking a look at some of their resources. So that’s what I love and turn too often.

[00:36:30.160] – Boris
I’m glad to hear that there is such a resource because I know for the foundations out there, there is the Foundation Database Online by Candid, and there’s other search tools out there, but I didn’t know that there was actually one for corporate sponsorship. That sounds great.

[00:36:47.700] – Heather Nelson
Yeah, absolutely. It is super great.

[00:36:50.170] – Boris
So, Heather, we’re going to have all these links in our show notes, obviously. So that it’s super easy for anyone to grab your tools or check out accelerist if people want to get in touch with you directly, what’s the best way that they can do that?

[00:37:02.620] – Heather Nelson
Of course you can reach me through my contact information on my website, but I love connecting with people on LinkedIn, so I know you’re sharing my link there. Follow me on LinkedIn. I drop videos in there. Tools, other… have conversations on articles that I think are relevant in this space, and I love being connected to more people there. I welcome new friends over there.

[00:37:24.150] – Boris
Awesome. As someone who has recently connected with you on LinkedIn, you share great content. So anybody who’s interested in this stuff really should connect with you as well.

[00:37:31.886] – Heather Nelson
Brilliant. Thank you so much.

[00:37:33.050] – Boris
Heather, thank you so much for being on the show today. I learned a lot. I love learning it’s one of my favorite things to do. That and teaching. So I really appreciate your time today and I’m sure everyone listening has enjoyed it as well. And if you have, folks at home, could you please please please subscribe? Leave us a review.

[00:37:50.300] – Boris
Share this with others so that more people can discover. Great experts like Heather learn more about the things that they can be doing both online and in storytelling to activate more heroes for their cause. Thank you and we’ll see you on the next episode of the nonprofit Hero Factory.

[00:38:25.880] – Outro Video
Thank you all for watching and listening to the Nonprofit Hero Factory, we hope this episode has given you some ideas and strategies for creating more heroes for your cause and a better world for all of us. Please be sure to subscribe to this show on YouTube, Facebook, iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform and let us know what you think, by leaving a review