 and welcome. Thrilled to have you here today. Another episode for the nonprofit show today is a thought leader episode. You should have noticed that with that bright yellow background. Thrilled to have back with us today, Tracy Van Der Neck, CFRE president of Philcom. Tracy's here to talk to us about how you can create your own fundraising model. So she's going to shake it up and I cannot wait. I'm here for the shaking. So before we get into the conversation with Tracy, we want to remind you who we are. So hello to Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm Jared Ransom, your nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group, and we are honored to keep these conversations going strong. Thank you so very much to our amazing presenting sponsors. Those of you listening, I'm going to give a shout out so you don't miss a beat. Thank you so very much to Blumerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, Be Generous, Your Part-Time Controller, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Thought Leader, and Nonprofit Nerd. If you missed any of our episodes, these sponsors again keep it going and growing. You can find any of our episodes, including the previous ones with Tracy on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV, as well as Vimeo. But wait, there's more. We're on podcast form and Tracy, I love that one of your prospective clients and hopefully client now said, hey, I recognize you from the podcast, from the broadcast. So so glad to know that this is working for you and really glad to know that we have a lot of viewers and listeners. So go ahead and queue us up wherever you stream your channels. Tracy, again, we are so thrilled to have you back. Tracy Van Der Neck, CFRE president at Philcom. Welcome back, Tracy. Thank you for having me back. Yeah, you know, Tracy, we've always loved the things that you've brought to the nonprofit show and all of the different aspects of being successful and navigating these really difficult, challenging times. And we're not out of the woods. We still have a lot going on. We're also, as we speak to you in that big final push for the end of the year. And whoa, you're putting my hair on fire, sister, because you're saying, wait a minute, let's think about how we navigate some of our fundraising models. So Jared and I are really excited to have this conversation. Great. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Okay, so I'm going to put you in the hot seat. First and foremost, fund development profession has methodologies and procedures. Okay, what does that mean? It's the boring version. I think a lot of times, board members and sometimes even nonprofit executives don't realize that fundraising is actually a profession. So sometimes it's up to us to educate them with the fact. And I have the list here of what makes us a profession. We have a recognized body of knowledge, which is everything that's laid out currently in the certified fundraising executive study list. We have continuing education for professionals, which usually comes through AFP. We have a code of ethics, which came through a bunch of associations together with AFP. We have research studying the profession, and we have a certification for practitioners in the profession. So those five things define us as a profession. And then the methodologies and processes are just the ways that we have learned or choose to go about our fundraising. So what we're talking about now is honoring the ways we have been doing it, but also being willing to evolve to a next level of fundraising practices. I love that you share with us that fundraising is a profession. And I have to own up, you know, so many people will say, oh, it's easy to raise money, or it's easy to get a grant, or it's easy to get a sponsorship. And then, of course, you have the other side of the camp that's like, it's terrifying. I don't want to do it. And so there's really, I think, two camps. But I've always said a professional fundraiser is completely different. So bringing on a professional fundraiser that has that body of knowledge, has that dedication to the sector, the code of ethics. There's so much that goes into that professional side of it. And you mentioned CFRE, those of you listening, that is Certified Fundraising Executive. And Tracy holds those, holds those letters behind her name. And that is the highest rank you can receive as a professional fundraiser. There's actually an ACFRE for very few people in the world. It takes more than 10 years of work putting into it. So there are far fewer of those. And I can safely say, I am not going to be one of them. Well, you share with us this journey and this rededication to the knowledge that we do have professional designations. And that this isn't just a sales, you know, somebody that's good at sales. I mean, this has a much deeper level of understanding. And as you said, professionalism, I'm really interested in the concept of you saying we need to focus on the donor. And what does that look like? Because we're talking about methodologies and we're talking about, you know, process. But yours, I feel like you're pulling us back and saying, wait a minute, we need to focus on the donor first. Is that true? I think that the most standard methodology for fundraising that many of us have been using for the last 10 or 20 years has been one that focuses on the donor. It's all about finding the right donor, making the donor happy, building the relationship with the donor, finding the right project. And all of that's, all of that's good, right? There's absolutely nothing no fault that you can find with building your relationship with somebody who has the means to help that wants to help. And we're the conduit in between that allows them to do that. We as the nonprofit. So the focus on the donor is, I think, what's been our industry standard for a long time. And at least for me personally, I don't see a need for that to go away completely at all. I think we do need to honor and respect the people who are willing to help and help them do that the best way that we can. I think it's also a good time for us to evolve into a wider view of thinking in different types of methods. That's fascinating to me because I hear often this cookie cutter model, right? And I love that you're still staying donor centric, you know, having that first and foremost is really important. But it's not always a one size fits all in. And you focus, are you shared a little bit earlier, Tracy, about the seasonality in your community? Could you share a little bit, we use the word snowbirds, but could you share a little bit about how fundraising might impact or be impacted by your community? Absolutely. And that's the perfect way to look at it is, as fundraising professionals and nonprofits, we all focus on getting to know who our target audience is or our prospective donor, who our current donors are. And in communities like mine, and I think like yours, I'm in Florida, so we have very seasonal fundraising. It's November to May is when we do the majority of our fundraising. But I have clients in the Northeast who don't think of that at all and they fundraise the best when they're not all snowed in. So it really does take knowing your community in that respect, Jared, but I think taking it much further to realize that our communities are made up of all sorts of diverse groups and types of people and categories of people. And by categories, I mean ways in which we can help those particular people. And in order to engage those people in the process and make sure that we're not making, we're not fundraising unilaterally and deciding what other groups of people need, we need to know our community well enough to bring it to make sure that everybody that should be involved in the process of our nonprofit mission delivery is really at the tape. You know, it's interesting because you're talking about focusing, like you said, on the community and the clients. How many of us in the nonprofit sector really do that? And what's your thought on that? Are we are we much more donor centric? And is this like a maybe a newer model because of these last three years? Like what are you seeing having caused us to even have this discussion? Jared mentioned something earlier about the fact that we as a nonprofit industry have sort of trained the people that we work with to expect to give in certain ways and to give it certain times of the year, like November through May in Florida. However, since the time of the golden age of philanthropy or the gilded age of philanthropy, whatever you call it with the Rockefellers and at the turn of last century, there has been a very specific focus on a group of people of means who can fix all of the problems for our communities. And over the last couple of years, there has been a younger newer group saying, wait a minute, we're not sure if we need you all to fix what you think is wrong with our communities. And what I've noticed is that it is younger nonprofits, not necessarily the people at them, but that too, you know, younger people, but at newer and younger nonprofits. And those that are at a more grassroots level, that are really embracing the idea of bringing the community into the fundraising process, not only the fundraising process, but the mission delivery process. What should the mission be? What does that mean? Who are we serving? It has been a characteristic of the nonprofit industry, at least in my opinion, for quite a while that sometimes we sit in boardrooms and make decisions about something that we think should happen. And unfortunately, we have not actually asked the people that it would affect. And new groups, younger groups are coming in now and saying, you need to stop that. It's creating a power imbalance and it's creating this savior complex, basically, of where we're holding the donors with money up on this pedestal so that they can fix and help people in need in the community. And what a lot of us, the conclusion a lot of us are coming to is it's neither right nor wrong to focus on the donor or to focus on the people of the community. And what makes sense is for all those groups of people, including foundations in the community, to partner to really get at the right issues and stop focusing on putting band-aids on things. Maybe, you know, go upriver and find out why people are falling in instead of just catching them at the end of the river. We really are at a place where I think the industry is starting, it is ready, some of the industry is ready and some of the industry is learning to be ready and some will be dragged kicking and screaming to the point that we really need to evaluate root causes of what is causing some of the issues and problems in our community. And one would think, okay, what does that have to do with fundraising? You're talking about mission delivery, but in reality it's all tied together. And many donors now are looking at the nonprofits in which they're considering investing, foundations or nonprofits directly, and asking them, you know, do you have a diverse board? Do you have diverse staff all the way up to the executive level? Do you have people from the community on your board? Are you, do your investment policies for your reserves reflect the values that you're putting forth here? And those are the type of things that we as fundraising professionals need to be cognizant on, that donors are becoming more and more savvy about the fact that this, we do need this to be a partnership and not this autonomous savior type of relationship that has sometimes happened in past years. So at least in my opinion, we can absolutely honor donors, build relationships, appreciate, thank them, help them find the right projects at the same time. We're respecting the communities, engaging everybody that should be engaged, even if that means us stepping out of the way and letting somebody else do it, just because we've always been the one in there doing something, whether it's fundraising or mission delivery, doesn't mean we're the right ones to keep going forward. So I guess there's a little bit of self-awareness that some of us are working on learning. That community-centered fundraising, I've heard a lot about that lately, Tracy, and you hit the nail on the head with it really being the shakeup from our constituency base saying, hey, wait, let's get to the root of the cause. Let's not just put the band-aid on it. Let's really figure out what is happening in the community. As you said, I love that. Let's go upstream, see where, you know, see where things are falling off. And you're right, funders are savvy with this, donors are savvy with this, so much so that I was doing some updating in GuideStar, known as CandidNOW, and they asked the questions of that diversity lens, you know, and we really have to start thinking about that because, you know, other organizations are asking to provide that information. And if we're not gathering it, then we're not able to share it. So thank you for bringing that community-centered focus and lens to this perspective because we have to create our own fundraising model. We have to consider what that means for our community, and we have to talk about, you know, really how we merge those together to really benefit the problem, right? Because that's why we exist. Absolutely. And to be clear, the donor-centered model, neither one of the models are my brainchild. I just know where to go to look to get information from the smart people that came up with those specific models. So the donor-centric or, sorry, community-centric model that has been gaining steam, I find that there are a lot of things that we can learn from it if we are willing to do that and to consider everything you're saying. Now, I've never been somebody who thinks that one size fits all, that one model is going to be it and, you know, that donor-centered is perfect or community-centric is perfect. I personally think you can take the pieces that work the best for your nonprofit, your community, the people you serve, your donors, and make this amalgamation of a model that works best for you and your constituency group. I have to agree. I'm always one of those two. I'm going to take a little bit of here, a little bit of there, and you're right, Tracy. We've got some die-hards that are like, no, we're absolutely doing this model, this model only. That's what we're going to focus on. So it's interesting and we realized we might be rocking the boat with this comment and that's okay, but really, you know, customizing a plan that's right for your organization is really what you're talking about and taking the best of what works for you. Very true. So when I hear you speak about this, my first thoughts are, how often do we in the nonprofit sector have our, even if we have a campus, like our fundraisers are here and programming might be like off-camera in another place and we don't really know what's going on. And it seems to me that for so many organizations, we're going to have to dig deep internally to say what is it that programming is seeing versus what is it that fundraising wants to be able to hear and the stories they want to be able to tell? That is a very good point and it really speaks to the idea that fundraising from the top down, the board, the executives down needs to be infused and move it into every level of the organization. And, you know, we've always said that as a way to explain why we want program people involved in the fundraising practice, you know, they're the content, they're the ones that deliver it, so we need those stories, etc. But what you just described, Julia, is what I think of as a stepping stone into the new evolved way of fundraising, where if we are not at, we as fundraisers are not at some of those conversations and not at some of the tables to understand how the process is happening and who's involved in it, then we aren't as equipped as we could be to tell the story to potential donors or even to know who we should be bringing in and who those potential donors might even be. And to remind and be the voice on the side of the room reminding people that the profile of donors is also changing and as generations change, motivations change and very much younger donors are really motivated differently. They're motivated by being able to interact and be part of something. Their philanthropy tends to be more social and engaged in their social life. So if somebody my age poos that and says, well, that's not the way I've done it or not the way I like to give. That's nice. I don't have to, you know, but what we do have to do is realize that we have a whole community of people who this is how they want to engage with nonprofits. So it's our job to figure out ways to do that in the best way that we possibly can. Yeah. And, you know, one of the things we've talked about on the show quite a bit, although probably not enough, is cryptocurrency. And so we talk about the ways in which people give, right? Like literally the assets and how that's being given has changed. And to continue that conversation is important. So is there a secret sauce to this, Tracy? I've got to ask, like, you know, when we're creating a fundraising plan that's right for us, is there a secret sauce? If we're using cooking metaphors, I am probably not the person to ask because I burn everything. But in terms of fundraising, I think, no, I think there is not one universal secret sauce however, I think the sauce is informed by or flavored, if you will, by the culture and personality of your community and of your nonprofit. What works for a 100-year-old, very established foundation with a billion dollars in assets is going to be a very different model than what works for a community co-op in New York City who relies on a large amount of small donations given through social media or text. So it's really up to us to be creative and be willing to test out a few things and try things. And when I say that in terms of fundraising, I don't mean just, you know, try every type of fundraising out there because there's a lot of them and we could spend all of our time and we could really dilute our fundraising efforts if we were just trying everything. But if you take a really strategic approach, look at what's available and try a few of the things that you think will have the best result with your constituency group in your community, then, you know, test it, see how they work and move on from there. I'm curious, when you test something, do you test it one time, one year, over a series of times, series of years? Like what does that testing look like? Good question. The thing that comes to mind is fundraising appeals and targeting different groups, donor segmentation of who's already in your database. Okay. So when I talk with clients, I always say you know, if you send this email or you send this type of appeal and nothing happens right away, don't get distressed, don't feel like you did it wrong or your writing was bad or anything of the sort. It's that one, if you have never done something in this way, you have to sort of train your constituency group to expect to see communications from you in that way. And then the other way of testing it is sort of the standard way that we've always done is, if you're doing email appeals and you send them out Sunday afternoons and you find out that Sunday afternoon gets you a better response than Thursday mornings, that is probably because of the type of constituency you have, how many of them are retired, how many of them work, what time of day do they really check their social media. And then you can test things like using images, doing text versus email. And of course, none of this is specific to major giving. I'm sort of putting that off to the side and talking about fundraising to groups of people. So I don't think testing something once or even twice is ever going to give you enough information to determine if that is a good way to go. I think you have to be invested emotionally and financially in it enough to try several different versions. But then, if it's time to cut bait and say, this is not something that resonates with our community, let's move on to the next thing. Yeah, I see often where people say, oh, we tried that and it didn't work. We'll talk about it. Yes, eight years ago. Yeah, one time eight years ago. It was horrible. Right. Well, QR codes are the perfect example of what you just said, Jared. Oh my gosh. Eight, 10 years ago, when QR codes first came out, some nonprofits put them on everything. Nobody used them because they were a huge pain, well, not a huge pain, a huge pain in our immediate gratification society in that you had to download an app to be able to use them and take the picture. And a lot of people were not comfortable with that, especially potentially older donors. Now, fast forward eight or however many years it's been, and the technology is better so that you don't have to download an app and your regular iPhone will bring you that QR code to whatever page they want. So the nonprofits that were ahead of the curve back then may now be saying, oh, QR codes never worked. Well, there's a reason, there's a reason they didn't work. And now it's, you know, it was early adopters back then in that whole crossing the chasm, you know, the early adopters, the people that want to do it soon before everybody else. And then there's that chasm and then the people that will try it. And then the last group of people that wait to see what happened when everybody else tried it before they jump in. So great point. Yeah, because now we're ordering dinner with QR codes. We're paying for parking spots. So that really is a good example of reminding ourselves not to not to stick too closely to we've tried that and it didn't work. Great point. Thank you. You know, it fits with this whole concept of creating your own model, which I love that you've taken us on this journey today because for so many of us, it's really stressful to think, Oh my gosh, we got to get rid of that system and start all over. And I love your message today. And maybe as we finish up here with our time with you, I hear you saying continuously and actually supporting the concept of take the best and apply it in. Don't just get rid of everything, but weave it through. Do you think that's fair to say? I think that is fair to say for me. Yes, that is the way that I am comfortable doing it. And I can see positives from the different models. Now, you know, anybody who follows these models as they are, you know, as they're coming to life, we'll see that some people do are really ready, some nonprofits are really ready to throw out the old models and really just go focused on the whole community. And if that works for them, especially if they're new, if they're starting out that way, that's great. You know, do it how you can do it so that it works in a way that helps you positively support the mission that your organization is doing. Nonprofits that have existed longer, sometimes change is stepped. And sometimes it is a compilation of things until you find what works for your organization. And it's, you know, important to remember that even in one organization, not all your constituents look and act the same. You know, you have very vast different groups of people who like to communicate in different ways and who are looking for different things from a relationship with a nonprofit right in your own database. So just being cognizant of that and being strategic about how you try and evolve and take the best from each type of methodology that's available to us now that we're aware of can be a really positive thing. Such good information, Tracy. Thank you so very much. I know there's going to be some questions and people that are going to want to replay this. So please do check out Tracy Vanderdack, especially if you're looking to create your own fundraising model. She can help you take the best of all of the different elements, the different, you know, profiles that are out there and customize one for your organization. Tracy, thank you and thanks to your company, Philcom, for all that you do and provide to our sector. It's so nice knowing that from, you know, the opposite side of the coast, you're there and supporting your nonprofit community in such a fantastic way. So please do check out Tracy Vanderdack, CFRE president at Philcom. Her email or sorry, her website address is Philphil-com.com. So Phil-com.com for those of you listening on podcast and this has been fantastic, Julia. I'll let you roll us out. I love it. Hey, again, I'm Julia Patrick. I've been joined by the nonprofit nerd herself, Jared Ransom. We want to make sure we thank all of our presenting sponsors who joined us today along with Tracy Vanderdack. Bloomerang, your nonprofit, excuse me, American nonprofit academy, your part-time controller, Be Generous, National University's fundraising academy, staffing boutique, nonprofit thought leader and the nonprofit nerd. These are the folks that are here with us day in and day out that allow us to have these amazing conversations with thought leaders like Tracy Vanderdack. So make sure that you check them out because they are here to serve. Much like Tracy has been here to serve our communities in the nonprofit sector. Tracy, thank you so much. Thank you. Enjoy talking with you both. It's been fabulous. You know, as we end every episode, we like to remind ourselves, our viewers and our listeners to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow, everyone.