 or could be evening, depending on the time that you might be joining us for today's conversation. Welcome back to the nonprofit show. We are glad that you are here. Today's guest is A.J. Steinberg, and I'm so glad that she's here with us. A.J. is also a CFRE certified fundraising executive and founder of Queen B fundraising. So today's conversation that she's here to share with us is about four steps. I forgot the title, Julia. I'm so sorry. I have a quick finger. Four steps to impactful and profitable events. So really excited to hear what these four steps are from you, A.J. And before we jump into the conversation, we want to remind our viewers and our listeners who we are. So you are seeing and listening to Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, and myself, Jarrett Ransom, non-profit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. And A.J., I saw your LinkedIn post today mentioning you got to get ready to nerd out. You have to grab your glasses. You got to get ready for this conversation. So I also want to thank our sponsors. They allow us these super nerdy conversations. So thank you very much to Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, non-profit thought leader, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, non-profit nerd, as well as non-profit tech talk. Do yourself a favor, do us a favor, do our sponsors a favor, check them out. They are here for you and your mission and to help you do more good. So also, if you haven't heard yet, we have added a platform. Julia, tell us about that. You know, it's really exciting, Jarrett, as we finish up our third year moving into our fourth year broadcasting. You, of course, can find us in all of our broadcasting channels. We also are podcasting all of our episodes, so that's a way to queue us up and take us with you wherever you might be going. But this is a really new and exciting thing. Thanks to our team here with the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm in our executive producer, Kevin Pace. We have a new app. You can simply, if you're watching this versus listening to us, you can take a quick snapshot of this QR code and you will get a daily update from all the things that are going on with each episode of The Nonprofit Show. It's really cool technology. It's really fun and it's a great way to stay connected. And you can also access all the archives that way as well. So really fun. Go ahead and take out your phone. I have mine right here. You can take a quick picture and you'll be good to go with us. So we invite you to do that. Hey, AJ Steinberg, you're one of my favorites. I've loved getting to know you, to hear your wisdom. Jared and I are on the rubber chicken circuit. We go to a lot of events and you have had some really magical things to share with us. And we first met you when the explosion of COVID happened and all of these events were changing and all of the things that we thought we knew were changing and we learned so much from you. So we thought, wow, what a great time to get you back in to kind of review how things have evolved if they haven't, you know, kind of what we can do. So welcome back to The Nonprofit Show. Thank you. I'm really thrilled to be here, especially right before ICON, all the excitement building up for that. Yeah, it's gonna be a lot of fun. Well, we know events are at the heart and soul of so many of our nonprofits around this country. And so we really wanted to re-engage with you and find out kind of what you're thinking and what you've observed and what's working. And one of the first things that I love, and Jared and I talk about this a lot in many ways, not just for fundraising events, but you say conduct a strategic event audit. What does that look like? Well, to a lot of organizations, it looks scary, which is exactly why they don't do it. You know, nobody wants to hear exactly why you screwed up. And if you are wondering why you're having trouble selling tickets, you're having trouble selling sponsorships, the first thing you need to do is a strategic event audit to see the high fives, the hey, doing it well, to see what didn't hit the marks of what your goals were when you all showed up goals before starting. And also it gives the people that are doing the audit with you, meaning your board members, your committee members, guests. It lets them tell you somewhat anonymously why your event didn't resonate with them. And that's really important because we learned just as much from our mistakes were smart as we do by our successes. DJ, I so appreciate this. I went to an event, it wasn't a fundraising event, but it was an award, like an honoree award type of an event. And I thought to myself, I cannot wait till this survey comes out because boy, howdy, do I have some feedback for them? And I never received a survey, right? And so hearing this from you saying, well, a lot of organizations don't wanna do it because it's scary, they don't wanna hear what comes of it. But can you talk to us really about why it's so important even more so to do that? Well, I think that I was talking with Julia just briefly. We were talking about changes in events and the strategic audit will show you things that should be done with your event, but it also shows you a shifting demographic that's coming down the pike that we need to pay attention to. One of the things these audits will show is what if your event resonated with different demographics, meaning the younger demographic, the ones who will have the money in their hands generationally and lay with their peers. That's a whole other conversation. But yeah, if your event is a gala and you've always, and first of all, let's just, I've always done it this way is the death knell to anything. If you say, I've always done it this way, then you're doing it wrong because we aren't the same people as we were. We're not the same demographic, we're not in the same world as we were 20 years ago. So if your 20 year old gala is flagging, maybe it's because the people who are sitting on your committee are 80 and they're not coming anymore because they're afraid of COVID or they're just too old or they're passing away. The next generation doesn't want a black tide gala. So your strategic event audit should include what kind of an event would resonate with you more? What would you like to see in the future? And when you say an awards event, say it's not a fundraising event, it's an awards event, any live event is a stewardship opportunity. That is the main reason it is not, we can fundraise and just go out and have one-on-one with donors, make a ton of money, but building community and affinity is all done in these live events. Huge reason that we do it. So if you're missing out on that, so your strategic, now I have a sample, so Julia, I don't know if you want me to, just like my email. I would love that. In fact, yeah, I would love for you to send me whatever you've got. I'm writing it down. Okay, strategic event audit. And then this is for a gala. Yeah, and then we'll also, at the end when we're done, we'll also mention your direct email so people can contact you. And you can also go through your website, but I love, love, love this concept. And before we have so much to talk to you about, but before we move on, tell me about how many people you recommend that we send this out to so that we can get the appropriate sample set. Right. It depends on how many people attend your event, your reach, and how many people are in your close circle. Absolutely, you're bored. And I think we're gonna talk about that in a second. Because believe it or not, your board is supposed to be intrinsically involved in the planning of this. So your board for sure, your committee, and you should be having this Rockstar event committee, which is a whole different conversation. So yeah, so we're gonna have the board, the committee, your biggest donors who attend the event. Super important. Now, if there are people who are younger, who you'd like to bring into the fold to get that next generation built into the stewardship cycle, I would suggest sending out a separate survey asking about what kind of events they'd like to participate with. And there's twofold. One is, you know, they didn't come to the gala. It's not their event. Their mothers and fathers have been on this committee. They're now 80, 85 years old. They've been on it for 20 years. You are never going to integrate easily the 30 and 40-year-olds, even the 50-year-olds into the 80-year-olds. So it's going to be a class warfare. There's gonna be a generational warfare and it won't be pretty and the younger people will just leave your entire fold of your organization. You wanna ask what they'd like to see and then have them start their own committee and build their own event, which you will build over the years into a larger, higher net worth donor event as their net worth expands. I love, love, love this advice. I think it is so critical and it's far more, it goes beyond just this event. I mean, it speaks to the whole ecosystem of stewardship and who you're working with. So I love, love, love this and we do need to have a more in-depth conversation about this because we talk about this issue a lot. I know I do and it's a really important thing. Julia, have you found that that conversation has been started and then just dropped maybe a thousand times? You know, it's really interesting. I get, I speak a lot publicly around the country and this is probably the number one thing that I'm brought in to talk about is the changing generation impact on fundraising and the demographic shift into stewardship and engagement. And I'm doing that a lot now for organizations, national and global organizations in respect to boards because the aging of our boards and how they can't pull up, they're not understanding why and how to pull up younger board members. And so yeah, I've been doing this. Now I was really starting to pick up before the pandemic and then like so many things, aspects changed, but now that we're doing more IRL work, holy moly, this is something that I'm getting asked about all the time. And it's really to me, I think one of the pivotal pieces to the overall health and wealth of the nonprofit sector. So yeah. And so we do need to come back to that, AJ. We really do. Hey, for those of you wondering what happened to Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd, I think we lost her. She told us when she came in, she was having some broadband issues. So we might have like really lost her and to that. But let's move on to standardized event protocols. You know, we haven't had a lot of standardized issues because we've been in a flurry of change for three years, four years. What do you mean by this? When we're trying to really optimize our events? That's a really good question. It seems like many, many organizations are reinventing the wheel every time they start out with their event. They know they're gonna do it the same old way, which is the first black mark against them. And then they are just starting the same conversations every year. There's like, well, let's talk about the silent option. Let's talk about the live option. If you have a standardized protocol notebook that has each, I think of it as there's 12 different tasks for event planning, including graphics and invitations, yes, management, you have marketing and social media, you have the stage program, you have day of, you have volunteer, if you have a separate section that outlines the steps you need to take to achieve that every time, you're gonna save time. And this is gonna lead into what we're gonna talk about next, but it's not fair to drop somebody into a committee or even a staff member into a slot where they're supposed to be suddenly an event planner without giving them tools and training to succeed with it. And that's where protocols come in because just like if I wanna change my filter on my refrigerator's ice maker, I go to YouTube and I click, there's no YouTube for how to get your volunteers engaged and how to do volunteer management on the date. I'm working on it, but it's not all there. So protocols should be, you should know that there's standardized ways to do things so you're not spending your wheels and frustrating your committee, frustrating your board. And it's up to you as you're going through your planning process to take notes and keep those notes for next year in a really organized way. You know, I love that. And I think it kind of goes into this next piece of it because the implementation and the training part, you can see a lot of people that have such a negative experience, even just on the volunteer and committee side, I think that then you're taking people who could really be champions of your organization and you're just spitting them out, right? And so talking about the implementation and training part, to me, that's something we're not spending enough time on. Oh, amen to that. And I tell you, I call it grumpy board syndrome. Have you ever like, do you think of that grumpy cat picture? I walk into these boards when they say, okay, we're having a gala and here's who we hired to do it. And they've got their arms crossed. They've got that grumpy face. And I know exactly why they feel that way. And the grumpy board syndrome stems from, they've had a bad experience in the past working with you on your gala. They're burned out because you keep asking them to ask people for things. They get burned out because they're not giving input. They have no skin in the game. You're just telling them what to do. So implementation and training. And this is also part of that strategic plan. Everything we're talking, these four pieces here that we're talking about, not one stands alone, they're all together. Asking your board afterwards to talk to you, have a meeting or a session about their feelings about an event. Let them complain. It's super important to let them be heard. Take notes. And then say let's, because when they know that you've heard them and they know that they've had a voice, then you say, let's talk about solutions. And that's where you build confidence. That's where confidence in that word, I talk about it all the time. Resources, boards and committees are your biggest resources and you need to get them confidence. They will be proud of the event and not embarrassed that their friends are coming. Yeah. Right? So then we lose grumpy cat and we get the little happy cats and everything. So that's just like your board and your committee. Now that it's very dangerous because when you're putting on a gala and have your event committee with your biggest donors and people that you're putting through the stewardship cycle when they have a negative experience because disorganized committee meetings, you're late, you don't communicate well with them. They're not reflected, their opinions weren't reflected. They'll leave. They will not be a part of your organization. Yeah. I agree with you and I see it all the time. I mean, I think that we oftentimes we see these organizations put so much energy up to that point and then the minute it starts and it stops, they're like, okay, our work is done here. Big mistake. The work is just starting. It's the beginning of the cycle, not the end. Yeah. And you know, but I agree with you. I think that we lose so much with these events far more than we gain and we just do not understand it. And so that's why this conversation to me is just so riveting because it's true. And one more thing is that these poor staff members who are handed a gala, they're very good at the mission. They're even good at one-on-one stewardship. They are not professional event planners. And this will tie into the next one. It's so unfair to expect them to put on the level gala. It's always like what I call the big kid gala. Like, oh, we want to be just like the XYZ organization. They're the biggest, nicest. They made $2 million at their gala. We're going to do it like them. And first of all, that's not you. You need to work within the comfort level of what you have and your assets, what you build. But it's not fair to expect novices to just muddle through something that a professional like me has done 20 years. That's not fair. So that's the training portion. Teach them, give them the tools. And I think I love what you said because I agree with you. I'm amazed at the number of people that say to me, Julia, give us advice on how we can be like event XYZ because they're making the $2 million in one night. And my question is always like, it's not, do you really think it's one night? No, this has been a journey for years, not. Just one year, not. Just one committee, but they know, they show up with these sponsorships and these gifts planned and stewarded. It is not just a three-hour event. It's nothing. If you knew what went into, so when you even talk about the paddle rays, there's not a paddle rays that I do. And I've gone, you've seen this too, where you go to it in the paddle rays, $25,000 and then there's crickets because nobody's raising and it kills the buzz. It kills the entire thing. I have never gone into a paddle rays without having my top two levels guaranteed that there will be a donation. And those donations could be something you already knew could be coming later on. It's completely legitimate to say, instead of sending us an anonymous check in two months, would you raise your paddle? Would you do a matching gift? That strategy is a professional nose. And even like sponsorships, I just had an inaugural gala for a small non-profit Orange County. I'm in the middle of doing it. This is where bringing a professional in. So they brought me in to do the event, but part of that is the sponsorships. I put together the sponsorship packages. They've never done this before and they've never had large donations. And I said, let's start at $25,000 as our top sponsorship. And yesterday we sold the top sponsorship. Why? It wasn't just because they did it themselves and said, okay, here's $25,000 and put it on Facebook or put it on Blankton. It's because we identified the prospects who have affinity with the board members. You know what I'm saying? These are strategies professionals bring into the game. Well, I love this and I'm really intrigued. And I know that you and I have talked about this on the off camera and we've talked about this on the non-profit show. I'm really intrigued with your level of engagement on the sponsorship side. And it seems to me that a lot of times we think, oh, it's just making the ballroom pretty, you know, when we look at event production. But really you wanna find that professional that can navigate the sponsorship issue. So let's talk about that because it seems to me, AJ, we don't have many CFREs that are involved in event production. And so talk to us about that a little bit. There aren't, and that's a sad thing is that to be a fundraising professional and an event producer is kind of like being a unicorn, but it's important for the health and wellbeing of your event to understand that it's not about looking pretty and it's not about timelines. It's about knowing the engagement. Everything you do for your event is engagement. Now what I wanna say is one of the things for engagement is my board members know that they are not to stand at the bar during the cocktail portion and talk to their golf buddies. They have a job and their job is they are the Goodwill Ambassadors for your organization as is your staff. I have them right at registration. They've been assigned important sponsors and potential donors and donors to meet, greet, and take and introduce to others. They know that. And that is the beginning of community building and affinity. Here's the problem. A lot of these staff members don't wanna spend the money for a day of coordinator, even if you've done everything right and building up to the event. Your staff, your development director, your executive director should not hold a clipboard during the event. Thank you. They... Thank you. That makes me crazy when I see that. And it's sort of, this is your opportunity to, you can be online. And this is why I don't do online mobile bidding during my events either, is you can mobile bid and be online 364 days a year. This is your one day a year to bring them into the real world. Why would you put them back onto their phone which they'll never get off of? We don't do that. You can email me and yell at me all you want about it. I agree. I do the pro, I use the platforms. I love the platforms for my cash sharing, for my registration. I do not do any mobile bidding. But your staff is there to make an impression and to make a relationship with every single guest you can touch there. If you've spent sometimes $100,000 or more for these galas, that's how much it is in Los Angeles. $100,000 plus to put on a gala. If you would spend $100,000 and spend nine months putting up all of this together, if you did it all right, you're still going to drop the ball. If you don't have a professional standing there, making sure the stage program, the AV works, that the videos are gonna play on time, that the food issues that always arrive have get handled. Your guests should feel like they are having concierge white glove experience. And it's all about relationship building for your staff. So that's, the pro is first of all, it frees you up to make those invaluable relationships in a build affinity. And it also ensures your investment of XYZ dollars, $100,000 plus here is not going to be wasted because you screwed up. But one other thing, and I just have to say this, if you don't have a post event protocol of how to follow up and stay in touch, you've lost the game already. Great, thank you for saying that, absolutely. You know, again, the event to me starts, not the event, but I always say this, you know, it's not the culmination of a year's worth of work, it's the start. You bring these people in and you, you know, they hear the mission, they watch the video, they meet people, they engage, that's the start. It's not the end. And so, when you burn your staff out by sitting behind the tables, you know, checking things off, they've got to be on the other side of the table, meeting people, talking to people, making introductions, I agree. And I don't know why that's such a hard thing, AJ, to understand for a lot of organizations. It's fascinating to me that we've had you on before and you've spoken about this, but it's still such a hard concept for people. And I've got to ask you, we don't have a lot of time left, but is it because our leadership, they're not going to successful events or they don't know where to learn? Like, why is this such a, which seems to me a basic concept, some of these things. Why are these not being done? I think they just don't know. They haven't been taught. And I also think there's a fear of spending too much money. Once again, galas are not the end-all result. I don't, lots of times people say, I want to do a gala and I steer them away from it. It's not the right event. Galas are expensive and it gets scary to spend that much money. So they don't think that they should invest in a professional to come and get a volunteer. So they just need to be trained and it's culturally always been that way, right? How, you know, that's always, and the board doesn't see it, right? They're like, oh, I don't want to spend the money on that, so, oh well. We can fix it, we can fix it, we can fix it. Yeah, you know, I thought it was magical starting off with the concept of the audit. And for those that want to know what that looks like and how to get that, go to queenbfundraising.com and you can reach out directly to AJ Steinberg CFRE through her portal. Her website's great. It has a lot of information. I think you communicate in a beautiful way that is very precise and not daunting, but it's strict. It's like, hey, you know, here's the way you go about this and I really appreciate that. So again, check out queenbfundraising.com. You can communicate directly with AJ Steinberg CFRE, the founder of Queen B Fundraising. We've had AJ on a couple of times over the years and it's always been such a cool thing to learn from her and to see how she approaches things. I've got to ask this quick question before we log off today. Do you ever do work outside of Southern California or is most of your work done in Southern California? No, I go anywhere. I go anywhere, everywhere. And I'm actually giving some free webinars over the next year, just to kind of get people back on track. So check it out. My website's just being updated. So if you can't find the opt-in form, try again next week. Okay, yeah. I got that, like everybody else, I'm in that limbo. But yeah, no, I love any place I can go and I do it virtually as well, which can reach a bigger group of people as well. And we need the help, AJ. I mean, as you know, I mean, our sector, we need as much help as we can get. Again, queenbeefundraising.com, check her out. And I think you'll find that it gives you a lot of ideas and maybe, dare I say, a new approach to working with your donors and stewardship and why you work so hard to only be disappointed at times. I think there are a lot of things that AJ provides you with a very clear and concise path to kind of help you navigate that. You know, our sponsors help us navigate things as well every day and we wanna make sure that we give a shout out to Blumerang American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, Nonprofit Thought Leader, Your Part-Time Controller, Nonprofit Tech Talk, Nonprofit Nerd, and Staffing Boutique. These are the folks that are with us day in and day out as we are now broadcasting into our fourth year, which is just amazing to me. And well on our way to our 800th episode. Hey everybody, don't forget to check out our handy dandy app. Check us out on your phone, wherever you like to get your app downloads and take us with you because I think with all of this information and now we're re-engaging AJ so to speak, there's a lot to be learning and thinking about in the nonprofit sector. AJ Steinberg, it's always a pleasure my friend. No, I loved it. Thanks so much for having me, Julia. It's been a lot of fun. Hey everybody, as we like to remind everyone at the end of every episode of the nonprofit show, we encourage you to stay well, so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow.