 Welcome everyone to another episode of the nonprofit show today is Friday, you know, it's our favorite day for so many reasons, but it's really my favorite day because I get to work with Jack. Nacho, a lot of Nacho a lot of Nacho. I joined us earlier. Jack, great great voice and energy and font of wisdom coming to us from fundraising Academy, who sponsors this very special day, because this is the time when folks can write text, email, come up to us on the street. Ask us questions, and then we filter them through. So Jack a lot of CFRE one of the masterminds and trainers at fundraising Academy at National University. We are delighted my friend to have you with us. I'm so happy to be here and of course I always love talking to you Julia you're so much fun. Thank you. You know we have a lot of really great energy behind this episode every Friday. And a lot of that is because of our sponsors we want to make sure we thank Blumerang American nonprofit Academy, your part time to be generous fundraising Academy at National University staffing boutique nonprofit thought leader and the nonprofit nerd. These are the folks that help us have this conversation. And if you want to know what other folks have been asking, or maybe you want to drill down on a topic. We had a fabulous episode this week on Tuesday all about storytelling and sharing the ethos of your commitment to your nonprofit. And you can find these back episodes on Roku YouTube, Amazon Fire TV and Vimeo. Jack, we, and I think at the end of the next week, we will mark our 700 700 episode. Wow. Yeah, and to think how many, how many years with that be that has to be seven three. Yeah, finishing up on three years so amazing and if you want to get us on podcast format you can do that as well these we've been doing the last year thanks to our executive producer Kevin Pace who's dialed us in so you can queue us up where you wherever you'd like to stream your podcast and get it consumers. The nonprofit show that way. Okay my friend are you ready for question number one. Yes, absolutely. Okay, Jack, this is interesting because this came this came to you this question. Can you give me some strategies for approaching my CEO to get our nonprofit to pay for my CFRE designation. I would be the only one on our team with it and I think it would be quite valuable to organization, but I need some help on the pitch. Judith Chicago. Judith, you and I are compadres. Yes, I love this question Julia. So, I think the way to there are several weeks to to convince your CEO to pay for your CFRE and the first is that what is the value that CFRE is going to bring to your work. The extension, advancing the mission, the values and the vision of your organization. You know, Joe, Julia, I say many times that there's so many values to the CFRE as it relates to your donors, but you know what I want to, I want to talk about today is empowering what the CFRE does to the individual. It empowers them to be better fundraisers to raise more money and to advance the mission that they and their donors are committed. So, I, you know, one of my big mantras right now is the fact that as fundraisers, we have power. The CFRE brings that power to us, not only the CFRE, but I'm going to give a pitch for our cohorts at the fundraising academy that they become empowered. Look at people who start the CFRE process or the cause selling process at the beginning, and then I see where they are at the end. And at the end, they are more self assured and more valuable to their organizations. That's the thing that I think will convince your CEO of the value that it will bring to you personally, to your team, since you'll be the only one in that organization with it, and by extension the entire organization. So what happens when you get that power? So I am really in to the untapped power that we have as fundraisers. We can use that power going forward to not only raise more money, but also to examine some of the things that we are trying to fix, like homelessness, like sex trafficking, or poverty, or any of the various causes that we try to fix as fundraisers. We can use that power. When we had that CFRE after our name, or that certificate from the fundraising academy at National University, we can use that power. And that power can affect some change. One of the things that I like to say around power is that as fundraisers, we exist in two worlds. We exist in the world of our organization, and we exist in the world of our donors. Our donors trust us. They believe in us. They want us to help them fulfill some need they have to fix some social problem. We can use that power. It's so important. Okay, so now I've got two follow up questions because I'm going to sit on the other side of the desk, because I am the CEO of my organization, and, and I serve in the nonprofit sector on boards. My question would be, if I make this investment and I pay for you, Judith, to get this training, I'm, I'm empowering you and I like that word. Yeah. But I'm also giving you more power to leave my organization for a better paying job. We know that the average development director only stays with an organization 18 months per AFP. What would want make me want to make that investment when maybe it's just going to help you go on to some other organization? Sure. And you know what else? I'll tell you what, if I, if I was Judith, and I went to my CEO and I, and I said, help me gain professionally, empower me to be a better fundraiser. And, and he or she said no to me, I probably look for a job much sooner than the 18 months because you have to invest in people. You know, Julia, that human resources, you have to invest in the people who work in your organization, professional development. When you put a budget in there, when you're creating that budget and you put that budget for professional development, it sends a message to staff that we want to invest in you. And you know, you know, something else that I think really professional development does. It empowers marginalized communities who are trying to be fundraiser, fundraisers, whether it's women, whether it's African Americans or Latinx people or Asians, when you invest in them as fundraisers. And one of the really important calls that we see happening right now is to invest in fundraisers of color. It's such an important thing. You know, just over the last few days, I've talked to a woman from a marginalized community who achieved her CFRE on November 30. She was a static. And I said to her on the phone, she called me last night, this is, this is a true story. I'm not making this up. She called me and I said to her, you know, when we first talked about your CFRE, you said to me, Jack, I am going to get that CFRE. And I said to myself, what determination, what focus, and now she has it, and she is empowered to raise more money. She works for a special needs organization where the clients have special needs, and she's going to raise more money and advance that mission. It's really such an empowering thing to her. And I love that. You know, and I see that I see that the fundraising academy, when we have these emerging fundraisers who come through this process. And when they have that graduation ceremony, I hear them and what they're saying. And the important thing they're saying is, I am going to be better at my job. And when fundraisers are better at the job, Julia, you benefit. I benefit. Evan benefits. We all benefit because our work, whether it's in the United States, all these nonprofits are lifting people up. And that, to me, is so rewarding. It's, it is amazing. And I want to add one more question, tagging on to this that Judith writes. She's quote, she says, I would be the only one on our team with it. And I think it would be quite valuable to the organization. Is that true? Or do you need somebody else that's familiar with this? I mean, I've asked your team members about this with Fundraising Academy, like, does it work, Jack, when you only have one person trained up on it? Yeah, I think it does, because what she can do is she will be a mentor. She will be an example to the rest of her team. She and they will say, Hey, if she could do it, I could do it. What do I have to do? They'll go to her and say, how did you do this? Tell me how to do this, especially if they're committed to the profession as a career. And I love her question because it tells me, written in that question is that she is saying I am committed to being a fundraiser and to being the best that I can at this work. Yeah, I think it's interesting, because I kind of intuited that myself. Like, this is somebody that's not going to be selling tires next week, and then, you know, becoming a professional artist week after that, that they've looked at their life and they've looked inside and said, this is what I want to do. I don't know why I picked it up on that, but yeah, it's true. Well, let's go to another question that's come in to the nonprofit show asked and answered. And again, this is another question to you, Jack. Do you think donors value the CFRE designation or is this just something that we internally within the nonprofit sector recognize and value? I ask this because I'm considering pursuit of this designation myself Ramon from Houston. No, I have the same question too. Like, you know, when you're when you're working with donors, do they even know CFRE? Do they get it? Is it important? You know, talk about that. I think it's important for us to tell them. Oh, look at these letters after my name. Let me tell you what they mean, because it gives you credibility with that donor. It says to them that you have a commitment to fundraising, which is important. And it proves that you recognize the importance of your career. Look at the donor fundraiser relationship. Okay, here are people who we are meeting with who we're sharing our mission. They're sharing their values with us. They're sharing their care, what they care about. They're sharing their special needs as it relates to your organization. And in professional designation like CFRE, we're telling them, trust us, we've gone through a process of of deter of helping us determine how to do that best. I said this I had two calls yesterday. The second call I had was from someone who had not passed their CFRE. And you know what he said to me, Jack, I've learned so much about the importance of building relationships with our donors. Of having them trust me. So even if you are unsuccessful at something you try, whether it's the CFRE or anything else that you do in life, you still learn from it. And I'll tell you something else Julia, I've been doing this for many years CFRE trainings. I've learned so much from these people. Yeah, I really have. So we've been talking about CFRE and, and, and we talk about it a lot. That designation appears on many of our guests. We see it. And I got to say more and more, let's back up for just a moment and have you explain to us what CFRE stands for a little bit about the path and the trajectory because it's an investment of time and money and it's mental acuity. I mean, talk to us about that job. How does it work. So CFRE is certified fundraising executive that's what the initial stand for. And you, the CFRE is a relationship building strategy, similar to the cost selling strategy we use at the fundraising academy. So they're very much alike. There's very, lots of interconnections I love about both of these programs. Don't tell, don't tell the fundraising academy, but I probably do that work for free. No, I don't really that. But, but the interesting thing for me is that CFRE is six domains. What are those six domains, the really key foundational things that what we do as funders, finding prospects is one, securing a gift is to relationship building three. And there's five is leadership and management, which is such an important thing for all of us to actualize our skill set as leaders and managers of this fundraising programs that we are implementing and six, which is so important is ethics and accountability. The question about the value to donors, when you go through that ethics and accountability and you talk with donors about that, that just builds their trust in you. That you went through this domain, which we call ethics and accountability, such an important thing. Okay, we had a little bit of a skip in our broadband for three and four, three and four, can you repeat those. Three is relationship building. Okay, it's really important. I mean, all fundraising is based on building relationships and for four is volunteer involvement, how to use volunteers effectively, not only the volunteers who are helping with fundraising, but also those board members who are also volunteers. Yeah, yeah, interesting. Well, I appreciate you talking about this. Because it's really a, you know, Jared and I have talked about this well before we even thought of the nonprofit show we talked to always so much we've talked so much about how do we increase the professionalism across the sector. Well, we, we are victims sometimes of our own, you know, hearts and our desire to build, you know, a stronger community. And so, every time we can be more educated and more professional, it helps us achieve our mission vision and values faster so I appreciate you know, you're doing something else. You're doing something else which is not dissimilar to CFRE or the fundraising Academy. You mentioned on Tuesday you did storytelling, right. You're empowering fundraisers by presenting an expert on the value of storytelling which I saw it was excellent program. Guys go back and look at it. Yeah. So, so, you know what, that is such, you're doing way more than professionalizing and you're empowering them power. It's time for fundraisers to feel that power that we're giving them. You're giving him in a nonprofit show Jared is giving her with it in her work. We're doing it at the fundraising Academy CFRE is and some of your sponsors that you talk about at the beginning of the show. We're empowering fundraisers. What comes after being empowered is using that power. I appreciate this perspective because I hadn't really thought thought of it in those terms. Okay, let's go to somebody. And this is a really interesting thing I got a man up and talk about this. This is a question that somebody asked of me at a public event and and so I took off their name I put their their city. And they brought this up to me and I said okay we'll put it on the show and see what our expert from fundraising Academy says the question is this. Our board is struggling to put a give or get policy in place. Honestly, it's so divisive as board chair. I am thinking about giving up on the whole concept. Can you give me some perspective. I don't give up. Okay, first off. Here's the here's the thing about the give or get policy. I love the give part. Every board member should make a gift I got this question yesterday and with a group of fundraisers I was meeting with, you know, what about give or get every board member should make a gift. It doesn't matter the size of the gift. It's the fact that they give a gift. And additionally, they should also get, you know, one of the things we talk about in the fundraising Academy as it relates to prospect research is asking our board members to introduce us to their network. That's the get that's the get policy. That's the part of the get everyone must have a give policy. You know I always use the example of a site visit from a foundation and the question that program officer asked me what percentage of your board makes a gift. I would never invest as a donor in an organization that did not have 100% giving. Why would I invest when the owners, the those who have the fiduciary responsibility for that organization, don't want to invest. I agree. Yeah, I agree. I think it's like one of those starting points and I think if you have somebody who can't do that because of economic circumstances, then scholarship them in. Yeah, or a dollar. They can give the dollar. Yeah, but scholarship them in find somebody that will on that board that will will make an additional, you know, $100 25 whatever, and scholarship them in because, you know, we talk about that a lot. Oh, we don't have board diversity because you know we, we don't have the economic foundation of some of these other populations. You know, the second question you probably always get Julia and I'm going to ask you, you know, what is there a minimum amount that we should get from our or that our board members should give us. Is there a minimum amount. And I say, no, it doesn't matter the amount is confidential anyway, but the fact that they give is so important. If you have if you have an organization and I've seen this, where the minimum gift for a board member is $2,500. Do you know how many people you are eliminating from being board members, including the people who you're trying to serve your beneficiaries if you have an income organization and you have a minimum giving number of 2,500 or higher, or even 500. You are saying to a broad band of that population out there, you are not eligible to be on the board that is trying to fix the problems you're experiencing. Yeah, that's wrong. It is wrong, but I think you need to navigate. I think you need to address it and navigate through it. And that's why I think the scholarship is so important. Yep. Even if you have to take it out of your, you know, assign part of your budget for it. You know, we assign training dollars for the board food meeting facilities facilitators and we budget, you know, resources towards the board. We need to be doing that. That's professional development week that we talked about earlier. You're bringing your board members up by giving them trainings. Maybe you're giving them trainings on their, what their responsibilities are, how to write a gift acceptance policies or any number of things. That's really important. I love that. I want to come and work for your organization. Well, you know, I, that's one of my big passions for training and I, and I just feel like it's one of those things that for some reason, you know, we, we address the issue of board diversity and we, but we don't know how to work it we don't know how to navigate it. And then we hold onto these old structures that ultimately undermine going forward, you know, on this and then what I see Jack, and I'll get off my soapbox but when we don't think in a different way, we are not cultivating the next generation of leaders. It's not just for our own organizations, but it's for our community. So if we don't start to think about some of these things, then we're not going to be introducing more leaders into our communities that we desperately need. So I mean, it's, it's one of those things that we've got to be thinking about, but well good. I appreciate that you that you gave name with help from Scottsdale, Arizona. Some perspective. Yeah. And that's a cool thing. You know, it's a really interesting aspect too. I mean, I haven't ever heard anybody really say use give and get that they have to, and I like that. I'm going to, I'm going to start to tweak that vocabulary a little bit myself and send it to me and I'll use it, but I'm not going to give you credit for it. I love it. I think that's hilarious. Well, let's go on to another question and this is always interesting. This came to us from an entire executive committee from Denver, Colorado. This is we're looking at dealing with the retirement of our CEO. Can you give us some feedback on interim CEO placement and how that might serve us in the long run. We want to make sure our next hire is strong and long term fit. Yeah, so it is happening a lot and I had to interim positions in my career. You know, and I think the first characteristic that they need to look for is someone who's a leader to bleed and hit the ground running is number two and number three is to really believe and have a desire to forward the mission of the organization. And the goals and the core values. And I think that a lot of people, when they're looking for entrants, they really have to look for those key characteristics. You know, this organization is looking at a transition from their current CEO to the next CEO, but many organizations Julia have to do this as part of crisis management where their CEO quits, has some other, you know, doesn't get along with the board and they just say, Oh, this is it. I'm out of here. I'm not coming back tomorrow, or they're immediately dismissed for some other reason. So those are all crisis management type things. And I think that when you have a crisis management like that, it's even more difficult to find that person who could come in. Maybe it might be somebody internally, or maybe it won't. You know where you're just going to have to decide your organization fine, but they have to be leaders they have to hit the ground running, and they have an extreme focus on your mission, and your values and advancing that mission values. Well, as we had Jarrett ransom in the hot seat earlier in the week and you know, I don't know if a lot of people know this but there's actual interim designations I mean people, you know are trained. There's a very specific process, it's not a babysitter. Yeah, you know I mean depending on how you're navigating this. It can really be somebody that helps set you up for success and not just a churn and burn so you know organizations that have lost you know they're in the middle of the capital campaign. They've lost their chief development officer or they've lost their CEO, and they're you know they're such a good. There's such a good culture in that organization and organizational culture and I'm not talking about a cultural philanthropy I'm talking about other parts of the culture the organization that they can still go forward and some of those organizations start to exceed their goals, even though they don't have that leadership. So that's again back to our first question, invest in your staff people invest in them and that when you do have a crisis like this or you lose somebody or whatever the reason is, they can still move forward. Yeah, I love it. I think that's great wisdom on so many fronts and I think I appreciate you talking about that you know we, we've been seeing this jack I'm sure you are. Man, there is a bleed off of leadership across the nonprofit sector. So many people that were getting ready to retire. And then the pandemic hit and they're like okay I'll stay on. And now it's like hey, okay, you know I'm exhausted and I'm aging out when we need to. We're hearing about this a lot. Yeah, it's a stress on the sector. It adds to great resignation as they call it across the board profit or profit nonprofits. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's always just a pleasure to have Jack a lot of CFRE one of the great trainers from fundraising academy. You can work with Jack through fundraising academy at National University and so many different levels. He's really stepped up on a national level as well with CFRE training and really being a proponent on all things fundraising and so it's always so much fun Jack to have you with us. And to be a part of this robust conversation check out fundraising dash academy.org. They have a tremendous amount of content that is free. They have paid things and certifications but they have a lot of information that's free that is transformational. Jared and I always say Jack to your leadership team. If we had had this when we got started. We would have raised millions more for our community. I mean, I know that I would have been so much further ahead because I've been a fundraiser just a community fundraiser you know not paid. And I would have done so much better for the organizations I supported so me to me too. It's crazy it's one of those things it's like a heartbreaking thing to say but I do recognize it. Hey again we want to thank all of our presenting sponsors who've been with us day in and day out. Today, American nonprofit Academy, your part time controller be generous fundraising Academy at National University, staffing boutique, nonprofit thought leader and the nonprofit nerd. These are the folks that come with us day in and day out, nearly three years and 700 episodes. I know that even even that shocks me. Hey, Jack. I hope you have a really wonderful weekend and a blessed holiday. We will be seeing and chatting with you more and more but again thank you so much for your wisdom. Thank you for having me and happy holidays and everyone. It's been great. Hey everybody we like to end every episode, especially during this time of the year to stay well. So you can do well. We'll see you back here on Monday everyone. Thanks so much Jack.