 But today we're talking with Armando Zumaia, and Armando is going to share with us all about reaching Latinx donors. And I say all about, but one of the things is, this is a topic you could talk about for hours. And so we will pare it down. Julia, unfortunately, will miss this, but Julia Patrick is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm Jarrett Ransom. I am privileged like these squirrels in the Bay Area to serve here as her co-host. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your non-profit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. We of course want to say thank you to our presenting sponsors that keep this show going and growing. So thank you to Bloomerang, to the American Nonprofit Academy, to Fundraising Academy, Nonprofit Nerd, your part-time controller, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Thought Leader, and the Nonprofit Atlas. And again, hey, you're impressed, right Armando? Sure. Thank you for being here. We are thrilled to have you. You're the founder of Somos El Poder, and I told you I was going to attempt it, and you're now welcome to correct me on the pronunciation. It's Somos El Poder. Just like I said. Exactly. Well, we're excited to have you. You have been on our show previously. It's been a while, so we're glad to have you back with us today. And to talk about such a very interesting topic, one that I hope we can elevate across the nation. And you are doing just that in every day, probably, of your life. You have reached some high accomplishments, awards, and we are so grateful to have you here. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do, and especially your company and how you serve the community. Well, it's not a company. It's a volunteer non-profit. I've been a development officer 36 years, which is crazy. And Somos El Poder is a professional development institute for Latinx fundraising. And it's such an oxymoron to some degree. People don't talk about it at all. You can Google that and find virtually nothing on the subject. Latinx, Hispanic, Latino, fundraising, development, it's not talked about. It's just it's, and we're, let's say this really clearly, 20% of the population. So what happened was, I've been a fundraiser, and here's what a lot of the fundraisers will understand. I'm not just a fundraiser for a long time. I've been a major gift prospect. And so I was originally a grassroots peace activist and a fundraiser. And then I had the freaky experience of going to work at Cornell in the first billion dollar campaign. So it's this weird transition from grassroots to being on the Star Trek enterprise, of fundraising, 200 development officers, this massive machine, and literally being a part of the machine, a small part, but understanding the two worlds of fundraising, grassroots versus the top of the top of the top. And that trajectory changed me a lot. And over time, I kept really trying to do small, medium, non-profit fundraising on that sort of scale and bring it down smaller and smaller and smaller. But also too, what happened was as a prospect or the prospecting skills I learned in major giving at Cornell and leadership giving was where I worked at the annual fund happily. I learned to prospect. I learned to get to new people. I learned to engage new philanthropy. And it made me kind of a mutant. Because what happened was, I raised a lot more money from Latinos, African Americans, Muslim Americans, women, Asian Americans than other people did. And I never thought it was weird or unusual or special. Only in the last five years did I stop. People asked me, how did you do that? I'm like, well, we're like everyone, you know? So only in the last few years have I stopped and said, need to write this down. You need to teach this. You need to speak and write about it. Because it's, I mean, not to be mean, but it's not that hard to do it properly. It's just good fundraising. That's the bottom line. But a lot of people aren't in that community and aren't, I mean, I'm a prospector. I believe in prospect research firmly. And most fundraisers aren't. And the vast majority of executive directors, CEOs know very, very little about prospecting, major gifts prospecting, other communities. And just numerically, the large majority of nonprofit leaders aren't Latino for sure. So we're 20% of the population. We're a $2.6 trillion annual economy in the US. We tied, our GDP is tied with France, with the seventh largest GDP on the planet. So the notion of the lazy Latino living off welfare that's a burden on our society is racist nonsense. Because we are literally driving the US economy inside. And so we're really making this happen. And I'm the first crazy person to actually ask, how much is the potential for Latino giving in the US, Latinx giving? By the way, I don't care. I mean, for me, I say Latinx because it's more inclusive. But the potential for Latinx giving in the US annually is $24.7 billion. Right. So it's massive. Foundations give Latinx focused nonprofits right now about 1.8% of their giving. And so that's statistically what I call being ignored. And that's for two reasons. One, because foundations don't see us. And two, because Latinx focused nonprofits have very, very anemic fundraise. They don't have successful fundraising. They don't invest in it like a lot of nonprofits. So Latinx aren't alone there. But there's a historic decline in fund rate in giving right now. I just saw a stat the other day from a Gates. It was a Gates, who else did it? Oh, Lily. No, no, the Indiana School study that said that in 2002 thirds of people give, in 2018, half of people give philanthropically in the US. And we're declining in giving dramatically because we're declining in fundraising. And there's this massive disconnect on the foundation institutional level of where does philanthropy come from? And in their minds, they are philanthropy. They don't think about the 70% of philanthropy that's individual giving. That's right. That's a huge piece. Well, so for those of you that have just joined us, I want you to make sure you know who you're hearing from and to check out the organization, because you and your team are up to great things. And I feel like you've already started to scratch the surface about what does the Latinx donor profile and interests look like? And you're right, Armando, I do not think at large, you're in good company, that many major gift officers or many organizations, I should say, take the time to prospect and take the time to research. And as you said, the Latinx community makes up 20% of our national, is that correct demographic? Yeah. Talk to us about the profile and the interests. What is it that says the Latinx community apart? Okay, so first thing is the Latinx community is extremely diverse. I mean, we come from different countries. My family has been here for over 100 years. And some families are newer. I mean, obviously, a Mexican American, I call myself a Chicano, is predominant in the US. But people come from all over the place. And we have, you know, we're everywhere now, which is trippy. I mean, back in the old days, when I was fundraising, I couldn't be in parts of the country, and there were no one that ever met a Mexican before. That was a trip. You're very nice. I was like, thanks. You know, it was a trip. Now, you can go to parts of the country, you never think there were Latinos, and it's full of Latinos of all kinds. And so, yes, we have a higher poverty level, unfortunately, but there's a lot more success, especially upper middle income success. And in some areas, high wealth. When I tell people there's seven Latino billionaires in the Bay Area, they don't believe me. And I go here. And it's because they don't know. They don't do their research. They're not prospectors, like me. They're not looking. And so, the demographics are very broad. And you have to know if you're in Pittsburgh versus New York versus San Diego, what kind of Latinos, what kind of Spanish do they speak? What are the economies where they're prevalent in? What are they doing for a living? Look, if you're in LA, it's going to be law. It's going to be music. It's going to be restaurants. It's going to be parking lots. It's going to be real estate. It's going to be landscaping, believe it or not. There's going to be places where people are making millions, and they're just ignored by philanthropy, completely ignored. No one asked them for money. And so, they're not seen, right? And that's one of the things that you said. And so, shame on us and for the individuals that are not willing to see this population or person. So, what about the culture? You spoke a little bit about knowing, what kind of Spanish do they speak? Here I am in Arizona, right? That's my community. I was fortunate enough to play on a Latina soccer team. And so, I got to meet women from Mexico, El Salvador, you know, like all over. And so, how do we better understand the cultural differences within the community? Well, you have to study the demographics of your community. And when I worked at a major statewide health organization, the prior CEO had done a mailing to California, mostly Mexicans and Salvadorans. And he had an Argentine woman write the copy. Also, it was about breast cancer, and he had his image throughout the piece. So, it's this strange white guy talking about your breasts. And culturally, that was just over the line for some more conservative people. And the language was the translations, words were funny to people. So, it was not only financially unsuccessful, but it caused a lot of offense toward people. So, it was just culturally ham-fisted, for example. And so, it's understanding where people come from and how you approach them. Yes, the language you use, the images you use, what people look like, you know. So, you know, you have to relate to people to people. Also, fundraising with Latinos is all about intentionality. So, if you're working with a population, you know, if you're going to fundraise in a city in Germany all of a sudden, you're not going to show people who look like that from New Orleans, are you? It won't be well-received, right? It's going to be like, oh, what's that, right? You've got to translate what you're doing. And hopefully, you're doing work in that community. From outside that community, and you're asking for money, good luck. Who gives to something outside their community? They don't understand. This is the frustration I have. Go left, right? Well, we've got that slide up now. Yeah, well, the cultivation. And so, what are some of the ways that we should consider cultivating if it's a new community for us, you know? And I know our final piece of this conversation is going to go to where do we start, but we're not quite there yet. So, what should we consider in the differences of donor cultivation specifically for the Latinx community? Well, first of all, it's a multi, it's a long process to engage any new population. There's a consistent theme I've seen where people will send out a mailing in Spanish and expect instant philanthropy, especially if you're not known in the community. If you're known in the Latino community, I'll give you a great example, which is St. Jude Children's Hospital. They're known because of commercials and radio ads and things like that. They're not really serving the Latino community wholly. They're a small, I mean, I'm sure somebody does, you know, Latinos go to that hospital in Tennessee, but they're not around the corner, shall I say? They're not vital, they're not something you know. So, if there's a local children's hospital here in Oakland, they have a name in the community. People know who they are. Their children have gone there and been cared for there, but they're not fundraising the Latino community because it's, there's implicit bias. They look past those people. They see them as poor and they see them as not philanthropic because they haven't been engaged, asked, you know, when you ask people, you got to ask them a couple of times, you got to educate them, you got to bring them in, you got to get into the community. It's not just a matter of send them mailing. Here's the money. We're done. Right. And that's with anybody you're fundraising from, but there's no tolerance in fundraising in general. There's no tolerance for prospecting. People don't want, oh my God, it's going to take years to bring money out of the pocket. No, we don't have time. I mean, top, top, top, we got to make, got to raise money, got to raise money. And so the lack of prospecting is killing American philanthropy and that's saying something, but it's also intolerance of new populations and new growth. And this is, you know, another reason we don't see a lot of aggressiveness, not aggressiveness, intentionality toward women in philanthropy because people always go for the white straight white guy, straight white guy, straight white guy. We don't, you know, we walk past often the people with the power in the room, you know, and so that too, I mean, that's a whole nother conversation. And as you had shared with us opening this episode, you in particular have had phenomenal success in many different communities, not just the Latinx community that we're talking about today, but women in philanthropy, you know, people of color just, and so as you were saying, you know, we really don't put enough emphasis, time, energy, effort into prospecting, and I'm going to go as far to say even stewardship and cultivation, right, to really build trust and rapport in these communities and with these individuals that make up the community. Yeah, I was in New Orleans. This is the power of prospect research. And I talked to this newly minted multimillionaire African American younger woman. And she first words out of her mouth, she goes, you're here because I'm black. And I said, no, I'm here because you're rich. And she died laughing. She goes, fair enough, let's talk. I did my research, you know, no tokens here, you know, and she made a good six-figure gift, you know. And so that's called doing your research. And the approach strategies with us is literally intentionality, give it time and do your research. There is a weird thing with Latino major donors, which is they're not engaged. And so the way we engage a white major donor of that same income is different because they've not done this before. I had a seven-figure donor who was a Chicano Latino here in the Bay Area. And a very, very, very successful guy. Worth almost a half a billion dollars. And so it's a smart guy. So I could tell when I was talking about philanthropy, he didn't really understand what I was talking about, because he'd never done that, because his alma mater had never engaged him, because no one's ever sat down with him and asked him for a major gift. I was his first major gift. So he literally had the guts to say, so how does this work? And so I had this like light bulb over the head of like, oh, okay, you're making a big assumption here. You're treating him different. So that's one thing. Another aspect is we do have familia. And so we do have this sense of we involve the family and our parents more than other groups. The African Americans in New Orleans do the same thing. So it's funny to me. There's definitely a sense of the family has to agree, whereas like white folks in the Bay Area, it's like, no, this is my gift. Why would I ask my dad? There's nothing to do with this. And so there's that difference. In some parts of the community, there's a familia giving sense. Other parts of the Latino community, it isn't. So that's one part you see. There is a tremendous disengagement with Latinas. They are not, even when you see them wealthy and successful, like in law is a big one. There's a lot of, you know, Latinas pulling down half a million dollars a year in salary who are single. And their law schools, the community ignores them as prospects for a whole bunch of gender bullshit reasons, excuse my language. But yes. So it's a, there's a different type of engagement there. You have to make sure they know about philanthropy from the start, because you could be talking over people, not that they're stupid. They've just never had experience in this area. Absolutely. You know, and thank you for shining light on this and educating myself, our viewers, our listeners. You know, one of the things that I think scares people in this is a broad assumption is the word philanthropy in and of itself is intimidating. And the definition of philanthropy is not the amount of gift, it's the act of giving, right? And so I would like to ask you, Armando, what could we do differently to start engaging in a variety of communities? So I'm broad stroke, even outside the Latinx community. What can we do? What should we be doing? So look at your demographics, study them, get a prospect researcher. If you don't have one, hire a freelancer. If you don't know where to get those, look at my website. And there's a list of freelance prospect researchers. But ask them, you know, when I was at Cornell, this was 800 years ago when I had hair and I was young. The vice president of Cornell said, literally, because I was a good prospect, she said, hey, we need more diverse board members, go get some. And I'm like, okay. So I went up to JT, my researcher and said, hey, I need very wealthy people of color at this certain level. She says, okay. And then I went and called them and saw them. And that was it. And that's how you can look at their board. And they have extremely wealthy people of color. And that's, there's no tokens there. That's the, that's when you really want equities when you can have a person of color, right? Same check as the white person on the board. That's equity. That's what we have equal voice and power. Everything else is tokenism. And so fundraising can do that, right? So fundraising can do that. So know your demographics. If you're in Atlanta and you look at your board and everyone's blonde and white, you got a problem, probably, you know, I don't know, figure that out. And not only that, so know your demographics, but also don't tokenize. So the number one thing people do is call a roommate, local priest, they get the corporate giving director who's a person of color to fill in the color blank. You don't need to do that. If you're in Phoenix, do your research and find the wealth of your people of color who are influential, who maybe are philanthropic, maybe they're not yet and engage them, you know, if they're into what you're doing. It's just like classic far across the research. There are the boards in California under three percent in California under three percent Latino, right? And we're over 46, 44 percent of the population. And so people don't research in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, there's no central value, central value. There's no reason not to have wealthy, powerful, Latina was on your board. It's just a lack of intentionality. They people just don't think about it and walk by it because the vast majority of people. We have a question. I'd like to read it out loud. I know a live question from an anonymous attendee, which Julia would love because she loves when it's anonymous. First of all, they say, I'm really enjoying listening to you and learning. So the question is they have heard in other presentations that if you want to pull in Latinx donors, you need to see them just as we were talking about, right? And that looks whether you have Latinx people on your board, your staff, executive, in addition, of course, to the community in which you serve. So if your organization, this is now the question, if your organization is not in a place where we can show enough diversity in all of these ways, what are some tips or thoughts that we have that you have for groups like this? I'm not sure what in a position means, geographic? Because if you're Vermont, yeah, it's going to be hard to have diversity or Nebraska because diversity is different in every place. So it's somebody says you have to have the same number of people if you're in North Dakota versus New Orleans. That's nonsense. You have to look like your community. If you're a national nonprofit, you have to look like the country. That's what I say. Then that's fair. Did you get an answer to that? Is it we're talking geographic or not? No, no answer. But I like your response because our viewers are from all over. And I've been around the block enough to know, again, here in Arizona, where we have a very high Latinx community. And oftentimes, organizations, the leadership, the leadership does not always represent the community in which we serve. And I typically see at Armando that the staff represents the community more than the board, more than the board leadership. Development and major gifts, it's overwhelmingly white. And that's unfortunate. There's just a continual misinvestment in bringing up people of color and development. It's just the way it is. Yeah, and that staff leadership level, the board leadership level, and I hope that many of us will take a responsibility to, and I hope I'm taking this correctly, what you were sharing earlier, Armando, is about educating individuals from all communities, what philanthropy is, what civic engagement is. If this is not part of their vernacular, then I kind of see it as my responsibility, I'm speaking from myself, to help educate. Again, I go back to the word philanthropy can be intimidating to some people. And again, it's not the amount of zeros, it's the act of giving. And I think that's really important. You've given us so much. And I feel like, if this is something that we're just embarking on, starting at knowing our community, as you said, is probably the first place, is there, we don't have much time, but is there like one other tip that you would say? It's courage. It's having the courage to look in the mirror, look at your nonprofit, look where you are and say, no, we got to do better than this. The thing that out loud, there are a few board members who have the guts to say that. And that's where I've seen change tip is when a board member says, this is not right. We've got to change this. And not talk about it, not have a training, but I want to see numbers. I want to see people, I want to see change. Things you can count. That's the number one thing. Then you look at your community and say, do we look like Atlanta? Do we look like Los Angeles? Yeah, do we look like New Orleans? Let's spend the money, spend the time, let's make an investment and do the work, not just talk about it, not just pat ourselves in the back when we get one minister of color on the board. Let's do the real work. You have been fantastic. Thank you so much. Julia Patrick missed a good conversation, but she's a big fan of yours. So I hope you know that as am I. And again, if you would like to look up Armando and Somos El Poder, please do. I still cannot say it properly, but I'm trying. I'm doing my best. One thing, it's for Latinx focused on profits. So we don't care what color your leadership is. If you're serving the Latinx community 51% or more, you can join the Institute. And it's phenomenally inexpensive on purpose. Thank you. I love that. I have a feeling your website traffic is going to skyrocket. So if you missed this episode or you want to go back and share this with anyone else on your board so that you can extend that courage, here's where you can find it. We hope that you will take a look as well as share it. Again, thanks to our sponsors, to Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy, Nonprofit Nerd, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, non-profit thought leader, and the non-profit Atlas. We are so grateful to have your continued support. And Armando, thank you. It was a pleasure. Thanks to all of you that joined us and for our questions we got today. I hope you'll join us tomorrow. Until then, please stay well so you can do well.