 just outside of Washington DC in Silver Spring, Maryland. I'm going to go through a couple of introductory slides and then we're going to hand this off to our presenter today. But before I started, as many of you know, I've recently relocated from Florida, so I want to do a shout-out thinking about all of our cultural institutions down there and all the folks dealing with the hurricane today. I'm also going to put in the chat also our national heritage responders number, which is a number that anyone can use when they're dealing with emergencies or disaster situations. So that number is going to appear in the chat in a little bit. And if anyone knows anyone in Florida, please feel free to pass it along or anyone else dealing with a disaster situation. So you are here today for fundraising for Collections Care, another one of our C2C Care free webinar series. Again, my name is Robin Bauer-Kilgo. I'm the C2C Care Coordinator and you just saw Mike Morneau. He's our Senior Producer at Learning Times. I always like to start these by showing a little bit of our home on the web connecting to collections.org. That is where you will find all sorts of fun information, including our upcoming programming, curated resources, also our link to our curated community, which is a place where you can ask questions related to Collections Care. We have a fabulous group of volunteer monitors and experts who help monitor that community. So if you have a question on anything, I encourage you to go there and ask it and we will see about getting you some good information. We also have two places that were on social media, which is our Facebook page and our Twitter page. So I encourage you to follow those if you haven't already. As Mike said, there are two ways you can communicate with us today because we are using Zoom webinar. There is a chat box where you can say hello, which many of you already are, or maybe showing your location. And also the Q&A box. The Q&A box is there for questions for our presenter. You can put a question in there at any point during the program and we will try to get to it during the Q&A period that's happening afterwards. We are also recording this webinar to be posted on the FAIC YouTube channel later. We do have some upcoming programs for C2C Care that I encourage you to go and take a look at on our website. Our next free webinar is scheduled for October 11th. It's Forget the Best, Good and Better Approaches to Preservation. That's actually a joint program done with CCAHA, the Conservation Center of Art and Historical. They're great. They're out of Philadelphia. We're excited to have that program, which is going to talk about just ways that you can really apply collection standards to your institution and how that are attainable. So for all sorts of different institutions. So I encourage you to go check that out. We also have a course that's being launched in October. Until October 1st, you can actually get the Early Bird Registration Rate. It's a five webinar series all about keeping collections safe and storage. We're going to be breaking that webinar series up into types of collections and each week there will be a presentation on how to store them with the best way to deal with preservation standards. It should be a really good time. It's running from October 13th to November 17th. We do charge for those courses, but like I said, there's an Early Bird Registration Rate going up until October 1st. So if you're interested in that topic, go to the website, read about it and you can register for the course. So without further ado, I'm going to introduce our speaker. Our speaker today is Bryce Gorman. He is the Grants Manager, Office of the Lieutenant Governor's Business Office, State of Indiana. We're really excited to have him today to talk about fundraising, which is something I think we all have experience with and it's always good to hear from a collections care standpoint. So Bryce, feel free to start whenever you're ready and we'll see you during the Q&A period afterwards. Alright, thank you very much. I am really excited to talk with everyone today. Let me make sure I'm sharing my slides. There we are. And thank you everyone for coming in today. I know fundraising is a little outside of the scope of what most people expect to do when it comes to collections care, museum work, nonprofit work. And there's different perceptions of fundraising. And what today is intended to be is not to be, this isn't supposed to be absolutely comprehensive look at fundraising. There are graduate studies, entire programs devoted to this. There's webinars and guides and all number of things for every facet of fundraising. The objectives today, we're going to just, for those of you who are fairly new to the fundraising, maybe you've been pushed into this, whether pushed to or not, maybe you're seasoned and you just like some ideas that might work for your organization. But I thought this would be good to just do a quick refresher of the process. There's a few things that I'd like to specifically note about record keeping and planning for your organization. And I'd like to touch on a few things that would be most pertinent, I would believe, I would hope, to collections care. Then we're going to start getting into some of the details about the actual solicitation process. So we're going to talk about some of the options. I've got a couple stories, hopefully some things that will be relevant for you. And I'd also like to talk about some of the solicitation options, benefits and risks, because there are benefits and risks to all of them. And then finally, I would like to spend some time talking about ways that fundraising can fit into your organization and your own role in a way that would fit best. Also just a heads up, if there are any animals that pop into view, either my dog or three cats, I apologize in advance, they don't listen to me. So fundraising, one of the first things I'd like to say about fundraising is that fundraising is something that should be reflective of you as either a director of the organization or someone who is new to collections care. It should reflect you and it should reflect your organization. Authenticity is, it's very important in the fundraising world. People need to trust you. And what I'm going to share throughout this webinar, some of the options, some of the things that I've seen other organizations do, some of the things that I've been a part of, they have worked for us, they may or may not work for you. But during this webinar, I'd like you to think about ways that it could work for you or maybe some tweaks that you'd like to put in to adapt it. And something that I'm going to say right off the bat that has always been important to me as a fundraiser and I've been a fundraiser since 2000, effectively 2009. But it gets a little murky at times. I've done a lot of volunteer fundraising over the years. Fundraising is not begging. And that's the reason I have this picture from the Smithsonian collection. This is an 18, no, a 19th century collections alms box. And a lot of people have the perception that fundraising is begging or that you are taking something from someone. That's not the case. This alms box is there to help the poor. And in your own case, you are helping your organization. We're going to, we'll talk about that a little more, but that's something I'd like to really stress today. So fundraising works in a cycle. And I know we have some, from my perspective, international communities, I saw, I believe, Lima, I saw England. Of course we have Mike from Canada. And so there are going to be different rules from an international or US or Canadian perspective. But fundraising is still going to operate on this cycle. I won't dive too deep into this, but most of the time we'll start with identification. Who are your donors? Where are your likely donors? Who are some of the people that you would like to be donors? So you'll be identifying those potential donors. Moving in towards qualification. So qualification is taking those people who are potentially donors and finding out who are your most likely donors. Who are your most prominent donors? Who can help you get to your goals? Cultivation is one of the biggest aspects of fundraising. Most of the time it actually takes the longest period in cultivation. If I were to essentially do this as a length of time, it might be kind of bowed out, but cultivation is the relationship. Moving into the solicitation, which kind of seems obvious. This is the point where you've decided, what are we going to ask this person to do? It could be money. Maybe it's something different. And then stewardship. Stewardship is the renewal of this cycle. And it's the time to show somebody that you have done something of substance with their contribution. It's a time to kind of renew this relationship building, because you're going to have to build trust from there. If you ever want a second gift, often the first gift is not nearly as hard to get as the second one, because you need to show that you have done something with their gift. Planning is something that I would love to, I could do an entire course on fundraising planning. But I don't think it would be enough. In fact, it would still not be enough. But something for those of you who are either in a starting phase for your own organizations program, I know that some of you are with organizations that probably have very developed plans. But when it comes to a specific goal, where your organization maybe you need to, maybe you have a $500,000 project and you need to set your own plan for this. So wherever this may work for you, it really comes down to what do you have and what do you need in the planning process for fundraising? What resources do you have available? And I say resources because some organizations, I've noticed a few of you on the chat, you may come from larger cities. And so what you have available, you have a large donor pool nearby. You may get international attention. You may have a large city or state attention. You may get a lot of eyeballs. That's wonderful. There's a lot of potential to find donors. Other organizations may be in smaller communities. And there's still an opportunity there. In a smaller organization, so let's say rural Indiana, I'm in Indianapolis right now, but in rural Indiana, usually a smaller organization there might be kind of the historic focal point for the county or for a large portion of the state. But there is a connection between that organization and their county or their area that no one else can really tap into. So with the planning, look at your strengths. Where are the areas where you have strengths? What does your board look like? What strengths do they have? Do you have excellent writing skills? Do you have a robust website? Maybe you have a prominent place in your town, city, wherever your location is. What can you work with? And look at the prior work. What have you done before? What has worked? Maybe what has not worked? There are times where I've been a volunteer for an organization. And early in the 90s, they did a lot of races. And that was a common way to fundraise at that point. But then it just became time-consuming. And the return on all that work became less and less. So yeah, they generated money, but looking at that prior work, maybe it was time to move away. And then what do you need? What are some tangible goals for your organization? So tangible goals are important to consider in fundraising because let's say you're an organization that, oh, you need $100,000. That's a nebulous amount. I just pulled that out of thin air. And sometimes people will say in fundraising letters or things like that, well, we need to maintain the mission of this organization. Or we need to keep the lights on. Or we need to remain a community asset. All of those things are true. There's no denying that. But your audience may have a different perception. Your audience may look at that and think, well, I can't give $100,000. I can't maintain your mission. What they can do is something along the lines of your donation of $1,000 can help protect or help. Safely house and protect the Dr. Pritchard collection. So that generations of women can see this, this incredible pioneer into medical history. I'm using my wife as an example and it's going to drive her nuts. But I think that with that whole your $1,000. Statement that I just made, is that a reasonable goal? Some of the organizations on here today may look at $1,000 and think that is a small amount. Others of you may think that's too high. But let's tailor those goals to fit your needs. And in a way that makes sense. I worked with a number of organizations who have very big needs. Usually it's a capital need. So big buildings. One organization needed a couple of million dollars to fully rehabilitate their building. It was not good for collections care. The heating was all out of shape. It was a mess. I'm clearly not going to name it. But this organization had huge goals. Their area did not have that kind of money. So rather than then help them with a plan that looked at, well, let's find some very large donors. Those donors aren't in that area. Let's broaden those goals potentially. Let's explore that later, but right now we need to focus on making the perception of this organization, a community asset and seeing what donors we do have. How can we move them up the fundraising chain to move those $100 gifts made in 200 or the $25 gifts to 50. So let's just slowly increase that part because that's reasonable. And also know your limitations. As I alluded to with the races in the 90s, you would spend huge chunks of time just setting up all of the courses and getting the numbers and working with all of the various entities. And when you thought, well, when the team thought about this, well, really they could have sent out the annual fund letter and receive the same amount of money without going through all of that physical and mental work. So be mindful of your time. Record management, this is specifically for organizations that are in kind of a new stage for fundraising. Whatever fundraising you do, whatever operation, however much you want to do, you can do it. So I'll document it. Please document it. I was with gift processing with Tulane University for three years. And this was post Katrina. So we had tons of gifts coming in, lots of records to update, lots of records to maintain, which is great. It's a wonderful, it was a wonderful turnout by the alumni and parents and friends. And so we had to maintain all that information in a dedicated system for Tulane in a comprehensive and consistent way. So anytime somebody made a credit card gift that was documented, it was documented what they gave to when they did it, whether they included their spouse on this, any notes, because any of the other fundraisers who went out to call and thank them, ask them for more, they needed to be aware of that. You don't want to catch someone unaware or having them forbid if you go and talk to a donor and say, have you considered making a gift of X to this organization, then be caught on where with, oh, I sent in my gift last week. That just puts you in an awkward spot. So anyways, if you are just getting started with record management for your fundraising program, find a system that works for your capacity. I personally, there's a lot of very expensive systems. Salesforce is wonderful. Razor's Edge is good. I've used a bunch of different systems. They're fine. They cost money though, but you don't necessarily have to have that. You don't have to have that. You don't have to have that. You don't have to have that. You don't have to have that in Excel spreadsheet is something that will fit your organization. That's great. That's perfect. Just keep it up to date. And stay on top of it. And make sure you maintain that information. That's perfectly fine. For those of you who are in collections care. The, what is it? The constituent donor. You can use that if you need an improvised system. And I have here on the right hand side, some key information to maintain. So contact details. You want to make sure you have their address, phone, email document. They're giving history. And along with that solicitation history. Because if you have asked somebody for $500 to support this initiative, and let's say they say that. Well, this car collection is neat, but it's just not my passion. Document it. It's okay. Because the next time you go to ask them for money, it might be, well, you certainly wouldn't ask them to give for your car collection. Maybe this time it would be for. One of the collections about. First responders in your community, maybe it would be too. To provide better cases and a more structurally sound environment. Sorry. A more sound environment for that collection. And that way you have your solicitation history saying, they're not interested in this topic. Let's move on. Along with communication history. If you call somebody to say thank you or anything like that, then it is important to document that. Finding your key donors. I'm going to stress that key doesn't always mean wealthy. Key donors could mean people who are engaged. I do like to break it up into engaged and influential because. When a lot of us think of fundraising in those key donors, most of us automatically turn to who are the wealthiest. That may not be the key donor for your organization. Somebody who is engaged and passionate about your program. May fall more under a key role than, than someone who has a large checkbook. Because they're familiar with you. They are consistent. And when they are asked to step up, they are more likely to do so. And the key donors. Influential donors would be those who have the wealth and connections that you can make use of. These would be people with business connections, family wealth connections. You can look at their position either with their employer. You can look at past giving. If they're a large donor. Then you can see some of the times where they're mentioned about their support. For, for, for an organization. Now a major donor. I want to stress this for those who are new to fundraising. A major donor is going to be dependent. Most of the time for most organizations. This is your top 20% of donors. They are. They should be highly engaged. But whether top 20% of your donors means 10 million. 10,000 or 1000. You don't have to spend all of your time with. But you need to be on top of them. Make sure that you are aware of what their. Interests and needs are. Because consistently over the past 20 years. Major donors that top 20% of donors are giving 80% of giving to organizations. So looking at the, the planning stage, the prior donations. And prior work. You can look and see who have the, who has been the top 20%. It may just be one person. But whatever it is, those will be your major donors. I like this chart. Because it's a good way to break up the. Who counts as a major donor. Who counts maybe is not. So looking at you, the entire. Like the entire population around your organization, everyone who's either in the area. Walk through your doors. So forth. You have. Wealth. Up and down. Inclination or. How inclined they are to support you in some way. Left to right. So someone here in the high wealth, someone who has the funds to support you and really cares about you. These will be your major donors. This will hopefully be your board. These will be people who want to step up. Ask their friends to step up. These are people who are going to host events. These are some of your key donors here. But that doesn't mean we can ignore. The people here who have wealth, but they're not as engaged. Now this is going to be. If you're new to say grant writing. It might be the national endowment because maybe they don't have a history with you. This may be large donors who are just unaware because. I've never received a grant. From Jeff Bezos. Not that I'm aware. I think I would remember it. He doesn't know who I am. That's. He has a lot of people asking him for money. For people with like that, you can build their inclination, but you're going to have to do it in a natural way. That may take time. And if that time is worth it to you. That is entirely your call. I think that's a good thing. And if that time is worth it to you, that is entirely your call. Low wealth, high inclination, these will be your most loyal donors. They'll be giving year after year. I give to my own amount of monthly. It works for me, but it's never going to be an amount that has a comment. That's, that's okay. But these are people that you should reach out to, to come to events to. To attend things, to be volunteers, you can ask of them their time. And so these are passionate people. And then finally the low wealth, low income inclination. This is the general public. This is not an area that I would focus on highly. If things change and they either move more into their inclination, they get more interested in you, maybe a hobby or something that you put on is an event is a particular interest. That may move them. But until that happens, usually in a kind of organic way, I wouldn't spend as much time with this. With the relationship building. So let's looking at those donors, the people who are passionate. The people who have the wealth. Let's look at the building of those relationships. I, I cannot claim that invite and form involved buyer is mine. But for the life of me, I can't remember who originated it. So if anyone knows, I am sorry in advance. And I would love to give them the appropriate credit. But this goes to the cultivation. This is one of the, just a refresher. This is one of the longest portions of building these relationships. I love these four eyes, but these people, you want to make sure that you're bringing them in on. Experiences, if you will. So behind the scenes tours, if you have a new collection, this is a ridiculous idea. I've seen it done before. I can't guarantee that it has raised money, but I found it kind of amusing from a fundraising point of view. So if you think about some of the unboxing videos that have come in, become popular on YouTube, and I know I'm old, this is a bit popular for a while. It has a lot of the same fascination for when your organization may get a random box and you have to decide what to do with it. But seeing that process, seeing how you look through the layers of materials and talk about this is something that is, is a good representation of this area we've been trying to fill. Or this book. We're going to have to take particular care of because the spine is coming apart. We might have to go to a professional to have this work on. You're reminding them of your goals and you're reminding them of all the work that goes into collections. I'll be honest. My background is fundraising and I did not know how expensive collections care was until I started working with historical societies. Holy cow, that stuff is pricey. But your general public might not know that. Bringing them, pardon me, bringing them behind the scenes is going to show them how that's happening. Involving your perspective donors, asking them to volunteer, serve on the board if it's applicable, if they're, if they have experience that would be helpful, great, bring them into the board. Ask them if they can make connections. Ask if they'll host an event. People love to be asked to do things that aren't just, can you write a check? And that's part of the entire relationship. Informing, make sure that whoever you want to support you is aware of what you're doing. This may be new initiatives. This may be new collections you've received. This may be changes to personnel. Keep them familiar with your goals. Let's say you have a big goal for changing the lighting in your entire organization. Fine, great, let people know. It may sound tame, but let them know why. And let them know why it's going to cost a number of dollars. And then inquire, I have found, and I've done, I've done a lot of face to face meetings with donors. In those meetings, I'm doing maybe 10% of the talking. Ideally, asking open-ended questions. What do you think about this? Have you, you know, what are your thoughts on this program? Would you be interested in this? Asking for feedback. That is how you really get to know people. That's where your donors, that's my dog in the background. That's where your donors are going to open up about themselves and their passions. That's where you're going to learn a lot about them. You know, I, you don't want to slot your donor into, well, we need money for, for this new wing. But you, in discussions, you've talked with them and you realized that a collection that you already have is their most favorite thing and what they're passionate about. A new wing might not be their passion or priority. It may be sustaining the collection you already have. So that's where the inquiring is going to really come in. Using these relationships. So those passionate donors, the influential donors, they're asking them to be asking your board to help out with the fundraising. You're, you can ask current donors. Can you bring friends in to see how this process works? The relationships your organization has. So you have business relationships. You have physical relationships with your area. So if, if you are located in the middle of town, say downtown or, you know, the town square, whatever it may be for your organization, there are businesses nearby that would love to, for lack of a better word, cross promote with you. And so those physical proximity that can be very helpful. And it's okay to ask them if they'll just hand out flyers. Maybe they want to sponsor a day or sponsor in the evening. If they're say a law firm, they may wait. They may want to sponsor a week at your organization, providing what the funding would be to keep all the, keep the whole organization going for one week, one day, one month, whatever it may be. And in exchange, you let them post like a, you know, a nice event at your organization in a, in a lovely space. That's if that is possible. And so on the right side here in this blue box, my dogs stop scratching. How can I help? Usually that people want to help. But what they don't want to do is ask for money. That is, that is one of the hard things about using existing relationships. People are a little scared to ask for money. I have a list here. You can host events. You can make calls if your board wants to make calls and say, Hey, thanks for your gift. Or we've got this really wonderful event coming up. I hope you can attend. Writing thank you notes. I love having volunteers and board members write thank you notes. One of my favorite things. Okay, let's get into the heart of it. A solicitation should be reflective of your organization. Looking at who are those potential donors. How do they want to be solicited? I, for instance, I give to my own the modern monthly because I don't want to write a check. I don't feel like it. I don't want to remind myself every year. Here's what I have to do to support. This organization. I like it to come out of my credit card. I don't like to be bothered with calls, emails from writers. That's me. Your donors may like to be called. Not to. Not to make, you know, any sweeping judgments. Older donors that I've had, they have enjoyed being called and having a nice conversation. But I don't want to be bothered with that. I don't want to be bothered with that. I don't want to be bothered with that. Donors just like to get a quick email. Whatever their preferences. Go with it. We're going to look into some of these options shortly. But if you are just getting started, don't overdo it. Start with one or two options. Look at what's going to fit your timeframe best. Look at what's going to work for you. Look at what's going to fit your timeframe. Maybe adapt something new. Maybe, you know, slow down. It's okay. You don't have to do everything at once. And to make a point of that, here's another picture from the Smithsonian collection, just because I love the photos. I have done fundraising marathons. It is an atrocious amount of work. You're getting up at 4am. You're, you're lugging stuff around. There's so many calls. It is so much work. I would not. If I could ever avoid it, I would never want to do that kind of event again, because of the amount of time for your organization. Maybe you have the people and the passion to do it. But be mindful of what you want to do and what's going to work for you. Don't over encumber yourself. Finally, when that answer is now, you're going to hear no from people. It's okay. Sometimes it is no. I'm not interested. Sometimes it's not right now. And that's an opening to try again later. Sometimes is no, not that. And that's an opening to say, well, what about this? Some of the common solicitation types. Annual fund. I've gotten a slide on that later. This is the broad audience. This is going to be everyone in your orbit. And it is, I say multi-channel. What I mean by that is you can use direct mail letters. You can follow it with an email. You can make a phone call. You have a lot of options. It's generally. Annual fund is kind of a catch all for general support. And it's very straightforward. People kind of expect to get a letter from charitable organizations at the end of the year. The risk for annual fund is you are, you're constantly renewing this every year. You have to make a new case. And you're competing with a lot of other organizations that are doing this. And annual funds are seeing a declining return on their investment. And it's not the case for about 15 years. People aren't responding to the letters or emails as much. So you, you should be aware of that before you say, well, a letter is going to fix everything. It may help. It may be a lot of work without as much return. Events are very popular, especially for historical organizations, arts and culture organizations, because it has that broad appeal. And it's not the case for people who do not want to come and, and do a harvest event just because of the season, a harvest event at the music. This can also be seen as friend raising. So in that gift chart, moving people's inclination to, to want to support you. And there is potentially some good return on investment. There are a lot of events that. I'm not going to say anyone should do the Met Gala because the amount of work blows my mind, but that raises a huge amount of money. So then there's a lot that comes out of it. The other side. Events are time and resource. Well, they can be black holes of your time and all of your resources. It can be so much effort. And if you have an outdoor event and the weather doesn't cooperate, if you have an indoor event and the weather doesn't cooperate, today is kind of a perfect day to, to, you know, to say that things happen. That can completely shut down everything. So that is one of the risks for events. Grants are very popular for nonprofits because they can be large organizations supporting a very specific project. And it's structured. I think a lot of people like that. There's structure to a grant where you don't have to. Glad hand to, you know, you can just write the reports. You can write the solicitation. And it's a lot more straightforward and that works for some people. So if you're someone who's been working in the funder side of grants for about four years. Grants take a lot of time. There's a lot of steps. And there is high competition for grants, especially with arts and culture organizations. You will be spending tons of time competing with a lot of organizations that have, you know, resources you may not. So if your project. Fits with the parameters of this grant program, go for it. If you can, if you can actually pull it off. Go for it. If you're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole with the grant program, just because there's a lot of funding. Grant funders are aware. And they don't get funded. I'm sorry to be so blunt. They don't get funded. It's, and that is a huge amount of your time. Spent doing that. With major gifts that would be your top 80%. These will be your largest donors. This, this approach has the highest return on investment. But it depends on a small group of donors. Things change priorities change. I spent about six years with major gifts and it's, it's wonderful work. I love it. But if a donor's priorities don't align with yours. There's only so much you can do about that. And if things change, you're, you're making a lot of bets on a small pool of donors to come through. And then plan giving, I'm not going to really touch on plan giving. I'm not going to touch on that. But I would like to remind people that it's an option. This would be larger, more accessible, giving options. This could be a request. This could be insurance policies. This could be. Gifts of anything that aren't really. Money. And they have kind of a deferred status. I think playing gives a great because you have people who don't have the time to do this. They don't have the time. Able to do this. Once they've passed and maybe after their wife has passed. And they are, it's a, it's a good long-term giving strategy. So if it's something that you think would be worthwhile exploring, I think it's, it has a very good outlook. And I think that this is the time to do that. But they are potentially complex. So if you need to see a return, the actual money come in will take a while. If you need funds now. Maybe this is something to wait for a different time. Oops. Okay. Sorry, my mouse is very sensitive. You're going to look at this. And the first thing you're going to notice is going to be the cockroach. There's a reason. And I write, usually when I talk about this, I have to wait a second for people to collect themselves because they wonder why on earth am I showing them a cockroach? As I said before, annual giving is typically general support. This is what is collectively known as keeping the lights on. Doesn't have to be stated as such. Annual funds have this issue where they are considered once a year because it's an annual fund. You could ask for annual funding year round. It doesn't have to be once a year. It doesn't have to be December. Be aware of the natural giving times. So if your organization has a very prominent anniversary date, maybe there's a date in a collection piece. Or a founder or the date that your organization had some huge change. Those may be natural dates to reach out to your, your general donors because you're on their minds. So maybe it's not December. Maybe it's July. Maybe it's in August. Whatever time people are donating. And I would look back at your past giving history for your donors to see when are people most likely giving. Whatever approach, if you want to write a letter, it's, it's tried and true. Whatever approach you pick, have a follow up. So I would typically, if I'm writing letters, I would send out the letters and I would put in the letter that I will be in touch via email or I'll, I'll give you a call within two weeks to, to follow up with you. Always follow up with them and be consistent with it. So sometimes I may really love an organization. I get their letter. I, I take the letter. I'm like, this is something I'm going to do. I set it aside. Maybe my son like decides to write on it with his crayon. It happens. When I get that follow up. It's a reminder. I need to do this. And this organization really cares that I make this gift. So please always follow up. And now why I've got a roach in here. Personalize your annual giving annual giving is perceived as kind of throwing money into a pit of just we need your whatever you can give. That's not, that's not what your donors need to hear. This is something. This is a. Annual fund kind of. I think this was a social media one. This was a social media one. This is from a zoo. In the United Kingdom. For Valentine's Day. You could name a roach for $1.50. And why would you do that? It's Valentine's Day. Because the roaches are fed to the animals. And you can pay to feed a named roach to an animal. a lot of zoos have actually started adopting this. Sometimes it's to adopt the roaches for their own collection for bugs. Sometimes it is let's name the roaches after everybody that drives you crazy and we're gonna have a video of feeding them to the iguanas, it's novel, it's fun. It's a, you can see here, it's a pound of giftage, very approachable and it raises awareness. But this works for the zoos. For you, it may be let's sponsor this wedding dress. Wedding dresses are very popular, a very common donation item. And the work that goes into preserving them is pretty intense. So you are, for this much money, looking at what goes into preserving that dress, for this much money, you can be the person who has sponsored this dress and you'll preserve Sarah Beth's memory and that this important day in her life for time and memorial, however you want to phrase it. Or you may want to do something along the lines of this book collection contains some of Dr. Pritchard's notes. And to preserve this legacy, we have to preserve these books. Your gift of $50 can buy these materials that will preserve these notes. Bringing in a tangible personal area for it is what's going to get your donors most excited. Now you may look at this and think those annual giving, giving them references for what these funds can do. Does it cost a pound 50 for this roach? It does not. But it is representative of what this gift can do. It can help feed the animals. That $50 can preserve the notes. And I don't have a slide for major gifts because with planned gifts, major gifts, your biggest donors, it's all about face-to-face solicitation. This is tried and true for centuries, honestly, not by me, but face-to-face solicitation is the expectation your biggest donors will have for being asked for a large sum of money. You are much, much less likely to receive a huge donation by writing someone a letter or sending them an email. This is also the place where a lot of people have the most trepidation about fundraising because this is the point where you're in front of someone and the answer may be no. That's okay. It's okay to be scared. I am anxious about all of my solicitations because the answer may always be no, where I may have gotten it wrong. But until I ask, that answer's always gonna be no. Face-to-face solicitation should be reserved for those key donors, the most passionate, the ones with the wealth because it's not that you don't wanna talk to everybody, it's that you cannot. You do not have the time. But this is for those people, it may take multiple meetings. It could easily, I've had meetings where it takes three or four of the course of a year. Sometimes it's a little faster. Sometimes it'll go on for five years. There's really no way to determine what it'll take. Whatever choice you make with your face-to-face solicitations, please set expectations prior to the meeting. So if you do not intend to ask them for money, you just wanna get to know them, you can say that when you're contacting them. You can say, hey, I'd like to show you around the collection, show you some of the new items, tell you about some of the materials that we've gotten in recently. And I'd like to remind you what giving can do. You are not soliciting them. Make them aware of that. It's not that you're trying to get them to come in, you are, but it's not that you're trying to trick them and just say, hey, so do you actually wanna support this? You need to be upfront with people because if you catch someone off guard and you say, oh, I'd love for you to come in and see this collection. And I think you'd be really interested in this. And then during the whole meeting, you say, would you be able to give $25,000? If that hasn't come up organically, and I hope it does, but if it hasn't, you're going to make your donor feel like you have only lured them in to ask them for money. Make them aware that you are in a relationship and that fundraising is important to the relationship, but it's not all that matters. With prioritization, so I had alluded to earlier that the major gifts will take time, three to four visits is pretty common. Again, it may take less, may take more. Look at the timing. Is this timing based on what your needs are or your donors? Some people do the very consistent, I make my gifts at the end of the year. Fine, great, ask them at the end of the year. If they give because it's the anniversary of something important to them, that's when you wanna ask. And then with prioritization, you'll notice I have one of the expectations of your donors and your community. If your community is one that loves hosting events and loves having a lot of big gatherings, I'm from North, that is kind of their deal. Go with it, great. But if you are part of a community that kind of, they don't wanna do the big affairs, they're more one-on-one, you can still have events, but they might be three to six people just having a small gathering of your organization. So look at what they want and need. Don't just shoehorn them. Now we come to the second odd picture that I have. Stewardship, as you will call, this is renewing that fundraising cycle. And it is vital. You are rebuilding that relationship. They have said, yes, I care about your organization. Yes, I'm gonna support you. What they're also saying is I trust you and you need to show them that they can trust you. So if you say that these funds are going to preserve this small library of books, show them pictures, keep them updated on what we've gotten through row one. We've found a few issues here and turns out we're going to have to send some of these books off to a conservatory. Keep them in the loop. It's that whole informing part from cultivation that I mentioned. But your stewardship should be reflective of the gift in the donor. You need to be consistent in a way that you're not treating all of your $50 donors like they are big $5,000 donors because it's just gonna jump everything up. And then when somebody does get 5,000, they're gonna say, why didn't you amp up those stewardship, but you should be consistent with it. And what I have here, this picture, this is something that I did for my board when I was with Tulane. You'll notice it's some tiles and I drove around town. I took some pictures of New Orleans. I prettied them up and I set them into the tiles. It's, we wrapped them up in some nice Tulane colored ribbon and gave it out. It took a weekend of work. It cost fairly little money, but some of my board members loved it because they loved their time at Tulane. They loved their experience. And this was a reminder that, hey, I know this is important to you. I'm giving you a gift of these photos that are reflective of your passion. And it's not that you have to give a gift to somebody. But looking at a way to say thank you in a meaningful way will go so much further. I have gone a little over time. I do apologize for that, but if I can reaffirm a few things, always have a plan for your fundraising. Be consistent with it. Stay on task. Fundraising is based on relationship building and it's gonna depend on your community, but find the best ways to engage with your audience that's natural for you and natural for them. And there's a ton of options for solicitation. You don't have to do what everyone else is doing. Use what works for you and just build on it. And whatever you do for fundraising, it's good and it's okay. All right, so that is my slides. I am happy to take some of your questions now. And Robin, if you were able to, I can pull up some of the Q&A or the chat. Yeah, that'd be great. I'm actually, I'm looking through it right now as well, because some people have brought up some very interesting points that I think we can start our talk about. Yeah, we were talking, some of us were chatting about that Roach picture that you put in. Yeah, that always gets a response. Well, and I was kind of saying like, I wonder if you could do an IPM type fundraiser, integrated pest management type, adopter Roach. Stop the pest from getting it out. Adopt a Roach. Yeah, exactly. I like that. Yeah, well, one thing, well, one question just came up, which I think we can talk a little bit more about. They basically just asked, can you talk a little bit more about online giving in your experience with online giving? Absolutely. Online giving is usually an offset of the annual giving program. And this is a growing area. So direct mail letters, phone calls are on the decline, but online giving is on the rise. That's how I do most of my giving that's not to my own amada. That's how the bulk of millennials and Gen Z give now, I believe. And with online giving, you will have to have a good, strong online presence. So that doesn't mean you have to do everything, but setting up a platform may take a little time. Some of those Salesforce, for instance, they have an online giving tool that you can pay additional money for, where they'll set up the whole donate hear box and everything and you just kind of paste the code on your website. But what a lot of organizations who might have smaller budgets, they may not have a dedicated system like that. What they've been using is PayPal. It's pretty straightforward, but with your online giving, no matter who it is, no matter what size you are, they are going to take a percentage off the top for credit cards. This is actually kind of a good thing in a way. It's not good to lose money, but with someone else processing the credit card, they're also taking, they're taking control of that credit card number and information. So it's not your responsibility to protect that donor information that is already protected. And that's a helpful thing. But be aware that it's not just gonna be donors sending in a hundred bucks and you get a hundred bucks, you'll get a hundred bucks minus 3% pretty typical, 6%, 8% is a little high, but it's not uncommon. A lot of these processors, PayPal, Bitly, Catera, they will reduce their fees for nonprofits and they may reduce fees based on the size of your organization, what they'll limit it to though is how much money you're generating and how many gifts. So there's a lot of good options out there, but I'd look into what are the fee schedules. And something that I would stress is when you're asking for donations online, you can have a lot of the implements of your letters or your asks, but don't ask for information from your donors that you don't absolutely need. And at the same time, have a thank you page always for if they have made a gift. Put links in there for social media. It's a great way to remind people and be consistent about your social media presence. So if you have a YouTube channel, I love watching some of the different museums on YouTube and then going through their stories. Have a reminder at the very end that you can support stories like this by giving to here and just be consistent with it. So I hope that was helpful. Yeah, no, I think it was. I was laughing to myself too when you were saying that millennial and a Gen C like online giving. I'm just at the end of Gen X and I enjoy online giving as well, which I'm so, because I'm lazy. Trying to find a checkbook in my house is always an adventure, that's for sure. Most of Gen X is that way. Most, although I don't know if it is 51% or more, but last I checked, it was close to most of Gen X. Yeah. Someone brought up the idea of the Adopt an Artifact program, which I've seen at a lot of different places talking about care. Their institution actually discouraged it because they felt like donors might think that they were trying to purchase the artifact as compared to helping out with conservation efforts. Do you have any thoughts on that? Like I would hope to think that the messaging would say, you're helping to preserve this, not you're gonna get one of these, but what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, that is a common issue when it comes to objects and collections. And I think one of the key things to do with any Adopt an Object item is to kind of show them the process of what you intend to do. So I like using Address because it can be complicated, but at the same time, there are things already set up to do this, but showing them the work that goes into it, do you have to fix items? Do you have to send it to a conservator? And just kind of take them through the process. You may not wanna do this for every object, but kind of take them through a general process. So say books, manuscripts, things like that, you'll kind of take them through the process of what needs to happen for these. So make it very clear that that's the case for one. And I have a hard time seeing how people think I'm gonna get the item, but I'm looking at it from my own perspective, which is a fundraiser, but just be very clear and upfront about what is happening. And I did see that one great comment about being discouraged from doing Adopt an Artifact because they don't want the money, it wanted to look like this is exactly what we're going to do. And in that case, and I come up against this a lot, it's a good reminder that, well, when you have organizations that do a lot of work, especially for say needy groups or kids, things like that, they'll break down the funding into, well, you get those commercials that are like a dollar a day, can feed the starving child for a month. It's so hard to believe that. But breaking down the costs of your organization to, let's say, here's all the work that goes into our automobile collection, because those things are so expensive. Even though it's not being used, we have to have someone maintain the oil and the fluids, and we have to make sure that the rubber is integrating or the paint or things like that. And so your support will contribute to maintaining items like our automobile collection. I would just look at the language that you're using in your solicitations as to your $50 will preserve the library. Your $50 will preserve the library, maybe it's not. So it would be instead, your $50 donation will help support things such as the constant preservation of our library, the automobile collection, our first responder exhibit that has brought in 500 K through 12 student groups. So it's using that word like. And some people find that deceptive, I understand. I'm not trying to be deceptive when I communicate that. What I'm trying to do is say that your money supports many things. These are some of those things. And what you're most comfortable with will depend on you, but do look at your expenses, look at what it costs to maintain a day at your place. I'm thinking of a lot of different parallels right now just with collections care where, and I'm sure you've seen this too, that when you get donations of objects, the last thing you want is a donation that is so restrictive that you can't use the object, so that's always really frustrating from a collections management standpoint, because when people give you these things that can really enhance your collection or really show the history of something or the culture of something, to then be told, well, you can't show it, it can only be there for certain things, it can only be out, then you're kind of like, you feel like your hands are tied, right? So which is kind of the same way you're talking about funding, which is super, super interesting. The other thing I keep thinking about is how there's this big movement right now amongst the collections community of demystifying what we do, right? Opening the doors and showing people, this is what happens behind the scenes, not to call it behind the scenes, but to be like, this is what happens within collections and this is what it costs and this is what you have to do. So all those things kind of work in with what you're talking about, where, you know what I mean, you want to show like, this is where the money's going to, give them exact ideas of where the money is going, right? But at the same time, being honest and showing like this, this is all the actual stuff, this is what it costs, this is how much a box costs. Which I think always shocks people whenever they see how much these kind of asset free boxes cost. So yeah, I'm just thinking of the parallels right now as you were talking about it. So it's very interesting. Yeah, and that is, that comes up to a problem that drives me nuts because all of you listening, all of you who are looking at fundraising and maybe you're a little apprehensive about this, you're doing something awesome. Asking for money is not a bad thing. You have value and that value should be so. If it costs $500 to maintain part of your collection, that's what it costs. I would not want any of you to do a haphazard job on protecting your collection. That is your mission. Be upfront with people. Yeah, it's a high price tag, but that's what it is. And you should be upfront. There's nothing wrong with being open and transparent with people. As I'm gonna guess, a lot of museum people did not get into their field because of the big box. I didn't start working for the Historical Society and the Indiana Historical Society because I thought this was a big pating. I thought it would be fun and it was, it was awesome. But if it costs X number of dollars to preserve a vital part of your collection, show them why, that's fine. Your kids programming, kids love to touch things. When I used to give tours at the World War II Museum, I would bring some props and of course they were not collections items, but kids love to touch that. Having funds that go into replacing those things that kids break, just being upfront, then we expect to have to replace that. We expect to have to print out materials. We expect to have lunches for kids who come from underserved areas because they typically don't bring lunches. Yeah. Great, share it. Yeah, I think that that's the thing is you don't want to mystify where the money is going, right? Like you want to be, it's no, these are going towards actionable things, which then I think makes the funders want to, you know, give more money because they'll see what's happening with their money. It's like even when you were talking about grant stuff, how like, it's like, if you can start listing things, you know what I mean being like, these are the things we want to work on that are actionable, so they'll give you still some gray area. You don't want to lock yourself in, but if you have some actionable things that you can do, that's really, really important. So someone in the chat said, can you give any examples of organizations that tell their stories well to donors? Can you give any off top of your head? Oh yeah, there's really good ones. And I'll have to skew a little bit. One that I particularly love since we were talking about the adopt book, adopt an item. This is a little off the, excuse me, curvy, but the New York Public Library, they're a massive organization. They are doing a huge amount of fundraising and the reason I bring them up is because I don't have that kind of money personally, but I love books, I love libraries, and I love the New York Library because it's beautiful. What I can do and what they make accessible is I can adopt a book and they show, here's what you get. You get a little nameplate if you wanna make it in honor of someone, you get that. For $250, I believe, I think they have, you create an educational backpack, I believe for a student group. And for a higher amount it is, you pay for literacy classes for people at risk youth, I believe, that are struggling to learn in New York, but they're breaking it down in ways that as you move up, you're showing more things that you're doing, these are their programs, these are things that you probably care about if you're donating, and they make it approachable for someone who may only have 50 bucks to give. So they're a good place to look for some of those adopt an item online giving. And staying with New York, honestly, one of the groups that I love is the Tenement Museum out of New York. I actually just visited them last month, I believe, but they tell such great stories and they really bring home, your own experience, maybe your family came in from Sicily, maybe your family came in from Germany, whatever it might be, your own experience and they tie that into theirs and they talk about things that are a little outside of academic sources, like cooking, and they'll host more events about ethnic cooking that would have been appropriate for their time and how those family recipes have kind of evolved and changed and morphed. And I love that because they always tie fundraising into it, who paid for this? Where does this come from? How do we make this possible? But oh shoot, I just had one that I just lost. There it is, the Columbus Museum of Art. I also love what they do because they use a lot of their fundraising to kind of bring home. Here's a more hands-on approach to art and it's not the idea of funding. Well, we've got these multimillion dollar paintings so much as your funding is going to help visitors and student groups get a grasp on art, do their own art, have their own say in the art. And I do love that personally. Those are great, thank you. And yeah, I went to the Tenant Museum years ago and it meant a lot, especially for someone if you noticed my main name is Bauer, my German background and seeing that I was kind of like, wow. I was like, this really puts into perspective our immigrant story that happened in the late 1800s, early 1900s and kind of put things into context. And I enjoy, they had a book that came out a bunch of years ago called 97 Orchard Street that talked about just the food pathways there and it was a really good read. So I would recommend that to anyone just on how to take that information. Well, it looks like we've hit most of the questions in the Q and A box. Do you have any final thoughts for our audience as we wrap up today's program? I have so many thoughts, but I think since I am a talker, I'm going to conclude what I have to say with one of the first things that I heard as a fundraiser that made it easier for me. And I hope that y'all will take to heart is you're doing something good and you should be proud of it. And when you ask for money, you should be proud that you are going to use that money to do something awesome. So if that helps you feel a little less apprehensive when you ask people for money, good because you should be proud of this. That's perfect, thank you. And yeah, that goes along with what I often tell people when I talk to just museums and stuff, is I say like, your stuff is awesome. People want to know about it. So please feel comfortable talking about the stuff in collections and all that stuff back there. So it goes along line with that. Well, I'll just point, say a huge thank you to you for this presentation day, it was great. Thank you to our producers at learning time. I did put links to the presentation and the resource sheet we put together for this webinar in the chat, along with a link to our survey that we always put out for our IMLS. So please fill that out if you can. This recording should be up on the AIC, F-A-I-C YouTube channel at the end of the week at the latest. And yeah, so again, thank you everyone and we'll see you in October for our next free webinar. And if you have any questions, just go to ConnectingToCollections.org. So thanks and everyone stay safe for the rest of the month, okay? Thank you all for coming. Bye bye. I hope this was helpful for you all. All right, thanks Bryce, appreciate it. Thank you.