 Hey there and welcome back to the non-profit show. We are thrilled to have you here and we are also thrilled to have Frank Velazquez Jr. back with us today. Frank is founder of Fordahood and he's here to talk to us about Evolved Donor Engagement. So he's got some really good insights as we move through the conversation and we talk about donor-centered and community-centered opportunities for our donors. So we also want to remind you who we are. So hello to Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy and I'm Jarrett Ransom, nonprofit nerd and CEO of the Raven Group. We are also super grateful to have the ongoing support from these amazing partners. Shout out of immense gratitude goes to our friends over at Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, 180 management group, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, JMT consulting, nonprofit nerd and nonprofit tech talk. Again, thank you to these companies that allow us these opportunities to have conversations like the one we're about to jump into with Frank. And if you missed any previous conversations we've got you covered, go ahead and take out that smartphone, scan the QR, download the app. You can find us there. You can also find us on broadcast and podcast channels. So Frank, we are thrilled to have you back with us today. Again, for everyone watching and listening either live or recorded, a Frank Velasquez Jr. founder of Fort Ahood. Check out his website, not now, but in about 29 and a half minutes. Four, that's the number for DAHOD.com. Welcome back, my friend. Thank you. Thanks for having me back. I appreciate it. You know, we loved having you on a few months, only a few months ago. We were so excited about many, many things that you said. And right then and there, I think during the broadcast, we were like, look, we need you back on to talk about this very specific aspect of donor stewardship, cultivation and management. And that was something that we really wanted to get your opinion about and hear more about what's going on because I think so many of us, we don't even entertain this direction of where our nonprofits could go and how we can develop. So getting into it, starting off with this, this is a barn burner of a question and that is do fundraising models respect clients? Never has this question been asked, I think on the nonprofit show, right? I mean, talk to us about what this means to you and what it should mean to us. Yeah, you know, and the question, and I appreciate you asking the question, quite frankly, Julia. So, you know, it's not a super easy answer. You know, I think historically, we did what we thought needed to be done in regards to how we'd be fundraised. You know, we got to talk to the donor, we got to essentially what is the donor one or adjust what we do to ensure we get those dollars because there's such a fight for those dollars. And I don't think, in a lot of cases, I don't think it was done intentionally where those models did not respect the clients. I don't feel it was intentional, but now I feel we're in a space where we really have to reflect and look at those models and say, well, did they? And I say, and I speak this literally from a personal experience because I only came into nonprofits in 2017. I ran an organization that focused on helping clients go through, supporting them through job training programs. And I think the language that we use, and we'll talk about this in a moment, was the thing that really started to bubble up to the surface. So I'm gonna give you an example. So I remember having, you know, we had, we call them career navigators and counselors. And so we were strategizing on how to build our revenue. We had this organization invested in us and we were using language like at risk. Were you using language like in poverty, students in poverty. And the counselors basically said, they, you know, clients don't like to be referred to as that. You know, and it's not that you're avoiding what the situation is, but when you start using descriptive language that ends up not honoring or uplifting, then that's when it doesn't respect the clients. So that's why, so I would say historically, our donor centric models have not respected clients, you know, and this is why there's a movement and toward this community centered space. And again, we'll talk about this in a sec. And I don't think, and this is why this title is called Evolved Donor Engagement. It's been presented as an either or, I don't believe it is. I think donor centric model is, I believe the community centric model is an evolution of the donor centric model. So that's how I would say that. And so yes, historically it is not, I don't think it's been respectful to clients. That's why this movement exists. Frank, first of all, thank you for bringing this conversation to the topic. And I know that I'm getting a preview of what you'll be presenting at a conference coming up in May with our friends Fundraising Academy at National University. So that's the Cultivate Conference. I just wanna make note, you know, really that I think in society, our lexicon continues to evolve, right? What we deemed appropriate at one point is no longer really appropriate to be saying anymore. I started fundraising for individuals that were, you know, of different skills and abilities, right? Developmental disabilities, those kind of, but there was a different word that I will not ever use that, you know, this client hell was referred to at one point. And that has been in mission statements, in grant proposals, you know? Even further, we think of underprivileged, you know, underserved, low income. And we're really, I think, moving towards a dignified lexicon, but I just wanna make note that it continues to evolve. I believe it does. Are you seeing us? No, no, it does. It's 100% and in fact, and I'll make a quick reference to it. I know Kevin, the producer of the show, I'll be sending a link to him later for those who can't actually see the link. But I have a document that it literally at the very end of that document, Jared, says that, it's like the language is gonna continue to evolve and it's gonna continue to change. And just there's never an absolute correct answer because of that. It's going to continue to evolve. Yeah, and evolution is a great thing. And I think that that's kind of what moves us to asking you to really spend more time on what is community-centered fundraising and why we should be using this nomenclature when we're thinking about the work behind development. What does this look like to you? Yeah, so let me start where the similarities are. So where donor-centric or certainly the best aspects of donor-centric fundraising still remains. And that's the development of the relationship with that person, the frequent communication with that person, the thank yous, the all of those are some of those pieces that still remain with community-centered fundraising. The biggest difference I would say is really just how are we talking to the donor in regards to their space? What we've typically have done is we've talked to donors in a way that we kind of other them. So we end up separating them just by simple language. Say, hey, you know, we want you to help these kids. So it starts to feel like it's a separation. And so what community-centered fundraising is literally in the title community-centered, it's where you're centering the community around whatever that issue that that need is and the donor is included as part of that community because they are. So it's every stakeholder, every volunteer, staff person, CEOs, whatever are all part of that community. And we want to center that fundraising about that. So we want to talk not just about transactions. And again, we said this briefly right at the outset. It's literally, we want to talk about transformative work. We want to talk largely about the vision, the needs, all of those pieces in a way that brings and offers a sense or creates a sense of belonging. That's how I see community-centered fundraising where it's literally centered around the community. In addition, I believe the community, because they're experiencing those issues, I believe that they have the solutions. They just don't have the capital or the resources. So that's another reason why we want to center it. Yeah, they don't get included in the conversation. Yeah, I'm amazed at the number of, you know, board meetings that I've sat in where the board members who are stewarding the organization really don't understand the problem. Really don't understand what it means to be a client. And I advocate all the time, man, if you're a board member and let's say you're serving in human services, you should spend a night in your shelter. You should go through counseling. You should go through to see what it looks like. You should go through an intake to see what it's like to ask for help. Because if you did that, you would have a completely different set of values when you make decisions. And we don't see that with boards. The big problem. No, we don't see it. So Julia, that's your, do you eat your own dog food? Is that right? Like you've done that combination for us. It sounds bizarre, Frank, I know, but it really is about like you essentially serve what you're eating or what you eat, what you're serving. Okay, I also want to make a note. Like I love our FQHCs, which is federally qualified healthcare centers. They have a mandate that a percentage of their board members must be from the community that they serve, right? Must be the clients, must be the participants, must be the patients. I wish that every nonprofit had this level of, I don't know if it's needed to be a mandate, but like this level of expectation that you don't need to go that extra mile. You absolutely need to bring in part of your community so that you can really have a voice at the table and voices plural, not just one, right? But like multiple. Right, yeah. You know, it's so fascinating. It's riveting and I want to move into this next piece because this kind of fits the topic and that is how transformative work engages donors. And this has got to be a little bit scary for some development directors who are like, wow, I just need to like get people rowing in the same direction and ticking the boxes and committing to X as opposed to something that's more grand and more frightening. Yeah, I would liken it to playing the long game. You know, I think with, here's where I talk. And Sean, I see you on as one of the attendees. I'm so glad you're on because Sean attended one of my session, attended my session on this last summer. And so it's really when you're kind of, you put it from, what's the word I'm trying to say? The transactional versus a transformative. Often we talk to donors in a transactional way for X amount of dollars, you can help us do this. If you give us this, we can do that. And it feels transactional. So the transformative component is really engaging donors and not only maybe volunteering, but also in how you're describing what your vision is for your organization. Again, often we talk about programs, but we don't talk about the overall vision of the organization in a way that really can hook donors into what you do, way more than just a $100 gift. You're saying, no, if you invest in us, you can help us achieve, you know, children no longer going hungry, children being able to concentrate on their studies at school if you help with our food bank. Instead of saying, hey, you're gonna help us feed 50 people today or, you know, this week with your donation. So it's a very different way of looking at language and how you engage. And I love to do it, as I said, and through a lens of how are they, how are they getting connected to your story? How are they, it's all through storytelling, but to me that's where the transformative work happens is when you're talking to them in a way that you're essentially re-educating them. You know, we shouldn't be underestimating our donors. It's a re-education of maybe everything that they've heard before to say, no, I wanna tell you a little bit more about what we're doing and then talk in a transformative way. So are you advocating more emotion versus data and impact or what that looks like? It's a combo. So that's a really great question. So, and again, and this is kind of a throwback to our previous session when we talked about those space, advocating for spaces for people of color, advocating for spaces for our white allies. Historically, and this is a white construct, is where you lead with data. Now, here's where I wanna talk a little bit about data and the context of, again, our history. Data is absolutely wonderful in the sense of like, you need to have the data to really kind of tell to ensure that it's working. Okay, so I'm gonna give you an example. Donor-centric model, because there's 30, 40, 50 years of data, I've often heard through that lens, well, community-centric doesn't work. Look, I have the data for the donor-centric way. You know, community-centered practices have only been around for two years, two, three years. So the data isn't there yet. So this is why I chose combat that a little, saying not saying that it's in the absence of data, it's that you're balancing the data with storytelling and balancing the data with stories of people who've gone through it. Because there's been a historical context of communities of color that have been oppressed, the data, you're not gonna see the data on its surface. It has to be built up over time. And that's a part where we balance that. It's like, yes, data is important, but we also have to acknowledge that data has been one-sided for so long. How do we start building the data in that way that honors and again, and it uplifts as I said, I believe the communities have the answers to the issues. They've never had capital to do to capture data. So let's start giving them dollars to do that. Yeah, let's do that. And I have to ask too, Frank, you know, why is it that we're not pulling in our community more? And I'm not saying that no one is. I know that there are some amazing organizations doing this work, but why is it that I'm going to be brave and say the majority of the nonprofits, myself included, right, do not go into this. And as I say this, I'm reminding myself tomorrow, I am actually a part of a think tank for a local organization here in my community. It's a three and a half hour discussion. And I signed up to be a part of that. One, because I wanted to learn what's being done and educate myself, but then also like, be a part of what's happening. And I don't see this happening often enough. Why is that? I have a short answer. Well, one, because maybe it isn't a short answer, one, communities of color, there's a connection between race and poverty in our country. There's an absolute connection. Systems were built to oppress and to keep down certain groups. That's a fact. So those communities often they're hustling. They're trying just to survive day to day. So they don't have as much time or access to those opportunities in regards to being part of a think tank, being part of a focus group to talk about these things. So it's incumbent on us, those that are of means and have more capacity and have the time and access to bring those people into those spaces, however creatively we can, whether it's incentivizing, whether it's feeding, whether it's any of those pieces, which I do believe that that should be the case because their time is valuable. If we want them in those spaces to talk about what the needs are, we need to incentivize them because they probably have kids. So who's gonna watch them while they're at this think tank? There's so many pieces that kind of intersect. So that's my answer, Jared. I know it's probably not the full blown answer, but I think that's a big piece of why we have to rethink how we bring communities of color into these spaces to talk about these things that we need to talk about. Well, I think it's a luxury to be able to have a discussion. When you are trying to survive and you're trying to navigate something, it is a luxury to say, I'm going to change or I'm gonna think about this or I'm gonna navigate in a different way or I'm gonna be something different because that's not the reality of survival, right? And so it's a really interesting thing to be talking about this, of building out a framework for community engagement because it's not that easy just to say, well, we had this at 10 o'clock on a Thursday and nobody showed up. It's not gonna work that way. Yeah, and it hasn't, like even when I led that nonprofit, we tried stuff like that and we had low attendance and even back then, because I wasn't really into the community center practices, I was falling into that. I was like, why aren't they showing up? And it's like, because they're making a living, that's why. Right, they're trying to live it. And we had no incentive, we had no incentive for them to attend, right? Well, it takes me back to the height of the pandemic, COVID and looking at the privilege that so many individuals had to simply, sarcasm, simply shift and work from home while their children also worked from home on a separate laptop, right? Like that was not the case for all families around this nation. And we made this big broad assumption that, oh, this is going to be an easy switch, but we've heard innovative ideas. I love this one where a school bus went out to a rural community with like an internet antenna, because there was no Wi-Fi in that community, right? So like, they essentially took a school bus with a Wi-Fi component. And I was like, that is brilliant, but where are the laptops, right? There still needs to be. Yeah, that's such a great point. And just to briefly support what you're saying, Jared, single mothers of color were impacted the most by the pandemic. A lot of them were frontline workers and to have to make these unholy choices of like, do I have a job or who's going to stay with my kids? Do I leave my kids at home? Those are choices that they should not have to have, but they did. They had to make those really, really tough choices on how to be there for their kids without a job essentially. Right, and putting themselves at peril, physical peril. I mean, you know, introducing their family and themselves to an epidemic. So yeah, that's brutal. Frank, with that, are you seeing that, you know, really this community-centered focus has been exacerbated as a need out of the pandemic? Like, are you seeing that this really helped to pull, like, you know, pull the blinds out far wide and say, look, you cannot continue this. You are continuing the same systemic practices that are not equal. Are you seeing that this is actually like, evolving because of COVID? That's a good question. I think so, you know, I don't think it's a coincidence that the community-centric fundraising movement started in 2020. I don't think that's a coincidence. You know, it literally started to shine a light on these issues and it continues to grow for that reason. So yeah, and then what I enjoy about the Southern Arizona community is we've got major foundations that have adopted some of these practices from a foundation side. And what I mean by that is if you haven't heard the term trust-based philanthropy, you know, that is a big way where you're trusting your community, your nonprofits to do the work. And it doesn't mean it's, you give them a blank check, but you really started engaging, again, now they're engaging with their nonprofits differently just as we should be engaging with the clients differently. So yeah, it's no coincidence in my mind, Jared, that there is a correlation. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Well, we don't have much time, but I do want you to just talk to us about the language and how language impacts connections and change when it comes to this, Frank. Yeah, and we kind of been talking about it. You know, it's often what I say, it's usually when a word is an adjective. So if we say at-risk youth, we've said that phrase over time, we already can conjure, because that's where brain works, an image of what that youth looks like, they're probably black or brown. And so, and we're not leading with their aspirations. And so simple shifts in language as a black student who is thriving in school, but is in a situation that they live in an under-resourced area, that gives a much clearer picture of what the situation is than if I just said an at-risk student. And so those little shifts in language absolutely impact them, the connections. It helps donors paint a new picture, and it's our responsibility as the storytellers of our nonprofits to help them repaint that picture, because they've been led, and again, over their time and their brain, have created images when we use certain language. So again, I feel it is incumbent on us to recreate the language to deepen and strengthen the connection, which then, to the last part of this question, leads to absolutely transformative change. And it's not overnight. And again, Sean was part of this conversation. You gotta chip away at the donors, you know, that can hear it. You can go straight hard to the ones that you know can hear it. The other ones, you may have to chip a little bit, and also be okay with maybe losing some donors, which is a hard thing to do, but if they're not aligned with the values of your organization, those are those conversations that have to happen internally. And again, would never advocate for losing donors. You know your donors best, but in the absence of saying nothing, that's gonna continue to cause harm. And it seems to me too, you have to do this internally. You have to get your team, your board, you know, your communications using the same nomenclature so that you are modeling that. And I find that it's fascinating to see organizations that they'll have, you know, one set of ideas and words on their website, and then you get something in the mail or you see something in a digital, you know, communication, and it's like, it's come from two different organizations. Yeah, yeah, that's really important what you just said. Yeah, I offered this thing around storytelling that really helps with that issue, where you tell a story using a story arc and you put that all together, and it really does help it help my organization with everybody on our staff we're starting to share, or using the same language. So yeah, absolutely, there's ways to do that for sure. Frank, I'm hearing from CEOs that it's not the staff or the board necessarily that they're struggling with to evolve language to change the narrative, it's the volunteers. It's the longstanding, consistent volunteers that I'm gonna call them out, they're typically older and they're white, right? They're not as connected and what used to be, right? Including smoking at your desk, you know, at one point in these individuals' careers. I'm hearing really, it's the volunteer segmentation that CEOs are having the hardest time navigating changes with. Yeah, I've heard that a little bit as well. I think then it just, it goes back to then the storytelling and maybe it's a new way to, as you bring volunteers on board, but certainly it would be like a retraining that would probably need to happen. And then again, the same situation, you may lose some volunteers, yet you still wanna have your organization on the same path because they do end up representing the organization if they're wearing a shirt, their volunteer shirt of the nonprofit. So yeah, it is hard, I have heard that as well. Well, even as pronouns show up, right? And Frank and I have them currently on our boxes, you know, where it's like, even when pronouns came out as a standard business practice, donors spoke up, donors left, right? But then it also attracted the donors that aligned with that. So it's kind of like, I don't know, you can't win them all, but really standing in your core values, knowing your mission, representing who you are in your true authentic self, that to me is worth losing a donor over. Well, now think about what you just said, Jared, that little simple change had this effect in people outside the organization understanding who you are. And now that's attracting those people. So that, you're literally, that was a microcosm of what we're talking about. Yeah, yeah. Well, perfect. I can move my tassel from the other, from one side to the other. Yes, you can. Well, Frank, I want to call out that you've got an amazing download. You referenced it earlier. It'll be in our show notes. So for everyone again, watching and listening, Frank Velasquez, Jr. Founder for De Hood, check out fordehood.com. That's the letter number four. And then thod.com. And yes, Frank has an amazing resource to send you. And if you want to have a more elaborate conversation about this, learn more about Frank, he will be presenting at the Cultivate Conference, which is in May, coming up early May, with our friends, Fundraising Academy at National University. I believe today is the last day of early bird pricing. So grab your seat and definitely sign up for Frank's workshop at the Cultivate Conference. And you're gonna be there too. Jared will be there. I will be there too. We'll be broadcasting the nonprofit show. We'll be broadcasting from it. So yeah, we hope that you come by and we get to chat and meet. Frank, this has been great. I love your energy. I'm so excited that you do this work and that you do it in our state where we can see the direct results. It's really cool to see your work and to see what you have going on. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, been joined today by the nonprofit nerd herself, Jared R. Ransom, CEO of the Raven Group. Again, amazing sponsors really come out to help us have these conversations. And they include Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, nonprofit thought leader, staffing boutique, your part-time controller, 180 management group, Fundraising Academy at National University, JMT Consulting, Nonprofit Nerd and Nonprofit Tech Talk. These are the folks that are really the backbone of the nonprofit show and help us to do more than 1,000 shows as of next week. Wow. Pretty crazy. It's amazing. It's coming up, absolutely. I know. Pretty crazy. Congratulations. Well, thank you, Frank. Thank you. Hey, you know, every day we end the show with our mantra and it means something different all the time. And today, really, today with Frank, it really means something else. When I think about his call to think about language and how we use our voices and telling our stories. And the message is this, to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here next time, everyone. Thank you so much, Frank. Thank you, Jared.