 This is a conversation that works now. And for some of us, it's gonna work, you know, at the end of the calendar year as well. But I thought, let's not let this opportunity go by without getting Jared's opinion about this and maybe encouragement on how we can move forward at this time that can be exciting and it can be stressful. Again, if we haven't met, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, Jared Ransom, nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group, doing double duty, because she's not only co-host, but she's actually in the hot seat today. So we're excited and welcoming of Jared. We're also incredibly and profoundly welcoming and grateful for our sponsors, Blumerang, American Nonprofit Academy, York Part-Time Controller, nonprofit thought leader, Fundraising Academy at National University, Staff and Boutique, nonprofit nerd and nonprofit tech talk. These are the folks that are with us day in and day out. We can also communicate with them and our viewers and our listeners on the cell phone. Thank you for holding it up. We have a new app, which we're really, really proud of. I wanna give a shout out to our executive producer, Kevin Pace, who with his team built this out. And it's really cool. It allows you to get a notification. It's subtle about when a new show has popped up and what it's about and it'll give you more information. So if you missed us live, you can figure out, if this is content that could help you, you can also search our content on that. And of course you can find us on podcasts and streaming broadcasts. As Jared likes to say, all you need to do is speak into your smart remote in front of your smart TV and we'll basically be sitting on the sofa next to you. Which is like super kooky. I have to admit to you, Jared. I do that because I do watch the nonprofit show on the big screen so I can learn and see what we did. And that's like my secret thrill. I pop into our family room and I'm like, it's a nonprofit show. And then it comes up. It's like, yeah, it's super crazy, but a lot of fun. Okay, Jared R. Ransom, nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. Jared, is this picture taken of you in your office? It is, yeah, my home office. That's really awesome. Can you talk to everybody about your desk? Oh, well, yeah, it's large and it gets a lot of fingerprints on it because it's glass and see-through, but it allows me to spread out. I like to spread out even though I do work on that laptop actually. But yeah, it's creative and actually what you see behind me is a lot of hats. It tells a lot of personality about who I am even at home. There's a globe back there, but an assigned that says adventure awaits, which Julia, that just is my soul, right? Like all about adventure. I love it. I think it's super cool. Well, it's always an amazing opportunity for me and for our viewers to hear what you have to say straight on. I know that you are an incredibly brilliant woman, but we don't always get to see that fully when as a co-host versus when you're the guest. And so we don't get to do this very often together, but it's really an exciting thing for me to be able to delve down into your super brain and find out what you're thinking. So the first thing, and I know this from you personally, goal assessment and planning, but how does this factor in finishing strong for the year? Yeah, thank you Julia and happy to be in the hot seat. So what I have today is really five top ways that you can finish your year strong. And so starting off with those five is this number one of the goal assessment and planning. So to really evaluate where are you now, right? Where did you start the year? Where are you now and how do you wanna finish it? Because you might need to course correct based off of what you had set your intention for the first of the year, but really looking at setting those clear expectations for the remainder of the year is important. So again, as we're recording this, it is almost June. So we're halfway through the calendar year, but at the tail end for most fiscal years that end June 30 and start July one. So you should be able to pull a lot of data already. Again, data sexy, we think so, right? We know so. We know so. So really looking at, okay, what did we set for our course this year and where are we to date, right? And you can always measure that again, fiscal year calendar, assuming they're different, they might not be for some of you and that's okay. So really just identifying where are we based off of all of the goals that we had set previously to achieve, where do we fall with those? And just getting an understanding because I think all too often, Julia, like we just keep going blindly, right? Like we just say, we just have too much to do. We have too much to do. We have too much to do and we just keep going the course, but sometimes we might have taken a wrong turn and we're going a course that we didn't intend to go at the start of the year. Right. And a course that doesn't ultimately help us achieve our mission, vision and values. And so it's one of those courageous conversations that we need to have with ourselves and our teams. And I love that you used that word course correct. It's not punitive, it's realistic. And to say, I think it's healthier to do it now than at the end of the year. And then you're like, damn, you didn't meet the goal. And then everybody's like beat down and everybody feels miserable, right? Versus saying, what can we do to pivot? So the other thing I'll say for this in particular is, if something has come onto your plate, yours as well as the agency's role, right? Go to the CEO, unless you are the CEO, go to the board chair and say, okay, what is top priority? What of these items do we want to continue? And are there any that we can set aside or push out into next year? So really looking to say, okay, what is on my plate? Because you might not have as many staff as you did when you started, or you might have more. If you're one of those fortunate organizations, you might have increased your staff. So take a look to really reset on those goal assessments and planning. Yeah, I love that. I think that's really, really smart. Talk to us about this next issue, which is such a lofty subject and it's donor engagement and stewardship. I mean, where are we with that in your mind? Julia, if I could make this like just so crystal clear and easy for organizations, I would, but I wanna tell a personal story. I was performing a development assessment for a recent client of mine. And through that process, I always liked to do a little bit of secret shopping. So I made a donation, right? And I did receive the auto responder donation. It's now been 60, 75 days. Never heard anything else from them ever as a brand new donor, right? So donor engagement and stewardship is very important. Since the time of my donation, big state giving days have taken place, right? Tax credit has taken place for tax time. Never once did I receive any communication. So that tells me there is a huge gap in their donor engagement and stewardship, which as we've learned from our partners at Bloomerang, right? If you steward and engage with a new donor right out the gate, they can likely give again quickly and give higher. So I really want you to focus on your donor engagement and stewardship for the rest of the year. Who have you not talked to? Here's something I did for another client. Also in Bloomerang, there's a report you can pull of new donors of the last 90 days. Do it, do it right now. Okay, not now, but maybe in about 20 minutes. Pull the report of new donors in the last 90 days and send them a welcome email, make a phone call, send a handwritten note, ask your board and leadership, do you know any of these individuals so that you really can engage with them because you want them to give again, if not now in the near future, right? And so customize this. I think that's really important but also utilize multiple channels, right? So again, emails, phone calls, social media, there's a lot of ways to engage with your donor audience and don't slip on that. Like that has to happen because there's so much not happening that it's really, it's not hard, it takes some time and it might take some automation but this is so important and you cannot miss it. Well, you know, it's like the old fashioned part of me that says, you know, you get a gift, you damn better write a thank you note. I mean, a birthday gift or a Christmas gift or whatever, it's such a basic thing. And I think when organizations don't do this, no matter what the reason is and because they're understaffed or whatever, it just is so hard to get beyond that with the donor. It's so hard to move past that and begin a good relationship. I mean, they came to you, they made that donation and to leave that, oh man, it's such a big mistake. It's such a big mistake. You know, it's funny you say that because, you know, I just went back to Georgia for my niece's high school graduation and she said, I have a lot of thank you notes to write and I was like, yes, you got it. Good job, Emily Post has taught you well. Like you need to recognize the gifts that are given to you as an organization. So definitely send, you know, some thank yous and don't rely solely on your online auto responder. Don't rely solely on that. It is a great piece, but that is not the only piece. Well, I always think of the auto responder as almost more of a receipt. Do you think that, Sharon? It's like a receipt. And it also to me communicates, yeah, it's gone through. We've received it. The email was entered correctly. Confirmation. Yeah, confirmation is a better word. Confirmation is a better word. So yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, thank you for that. Now we got to get into this next topic, which again is a huge topic which we could spend hours and hours on, but fundraising campaigns, looking at that. What does that mean to you? Yeah, so this one again kind of goes back to the first tip that I'd shared of these five, right? To really set those goals, assessment and the planning so what are your fundraising campaigns for the end of the year? I mentioned tax credit in the previous one, many organizations, right? You might receive a tax benefit, but we also know that the majority of dollars come in and Q4 calendar, Q4 for most organizations, we're talking 30% with the heaviest of that coming in in December. So I'm going to tell you to set a goal, right? Is it $150,000? Is it $50,000? Is it $5 million? Like depending on your organization, right? Set a goal. How much is it you want to raise by the end of the year? What will that support? Is it a vehicle? Is it program expansion? Is it additional? I don't know what it might be. So really set a monetary goal and that impact goal and make that very clear in your narratives and as you talk to your donors and you engage with them, share with them what you're looking to achieve by the end of the year and make it so tangible that there's no question about what you're wanting to do. Let me ask you a follow-up question to that. Is this something that you would just slowly leak out over the year or would you ever, I mean, obviously internally everyone knows, but is this the sort of thing that you kind of launch out and say, hey, everybody, this year's gonna be busy. We're gonna have a Valentine's Day campaign, a Mother's Day, a new building, whatever situation or do you wait until it's upon you? Yeah, so I don't do it that granular to externally share the variety of campaigns, but externally you can share. This year we have five big achievements that we want to meet that will help us to expand our programs, gain new vehicles in our fleet. Like that is something you can share externally, but internally you definitely wanna have that calendar of campaigns because there are multiple campaigns, right? Always, I think there's the annual campaign just generally speaking, but then you might have that special one could be for a program related, it could be something that is an asset, like a vehicle that I mentioned, that's a big one that I've heard lately, especially not just expanding the fleet, but repairing the fleet. Absolutely the same. The vehicles that are on the road are becoming old. And dare I say unsafe for many cases. Absolutely, I'm a big believer in if you have a physical space posting those up for the year, so that if you have a break room or you have a space where staff convenes, putting it on internal communications in the folio, I mean, this needs to be present of mind for everyone. And I just think it helps the organization move forward. So that's cool. I'm glad you talked to us about that. Now this is the next one that, and again, it's end of year, fiscal year, it's middle of calendar year, and this gets everybody a little stressed out, financial review and reporting. I think a lot of times we're afraid to ask, or we're like, oh, that's their deal. In that cubicle. Right. Well, this takes me back really to our conversation with your part-time controller, Deanna Peterson, about how we development partner with accounting and looking at that financial review and reporting. So if you've not been doing a monthly reconciliation between your donor database as well as your accounting database, you are likely reporting out to your donors, your funders, whomever, different numbers, inaccurate numbers, and that's not okay. I see it all the time, right? I see it all the time. And so really getting down to the penny, ideally. What are these financial numbers that we are reporting? Because you have to prepare for your audit, you have to prepare for your 990, 990s ask for your larger donors, that 5,000 and above. And so you really wanna make sure that you are capturing this throughout the year. I always, again, I just said it, but monthly is a great best practice and then quarterly is another one. So really just keeping your finger on the pulse throughout the year. So it's not, again, back to like, we're just going blindly and we're not gonna pay attention to any of this because it's either not fun or we don't have the time to do it. So. I think that a lot of people don't understand how to read these documents and then they're intimidated to ask or they misinterpret or they think, oh, this isn't accurate. They have like a crisis of faith within their own data and what they're getting. And so it's kind of like a triple threat. And so because of a lot of those issues, it's easier to wait till the end of the year to say, did we win or did we lose? Which is awful, awful, awful way to live. But yeah, I'm glad you brought this up because this is one of those things that is, man, if you don't know your numbers, it just seems to me like you just don't know anything. Right? Well, the other one with that, you know, is also foundations and different funders, they want you to use the money that they've given you by a certain date. And so as we look at the fiscal coming to us at that July one, a lot of dollars, monies need to be spent before the end of June. How many days is that? Like it's not that long from now. And so if you haven't spent that money, you need to spend the money because you're going to have to report on that or you might have to give it back. Yeah. Don't even think about it. That would be horrible. Take those words back. Horrible, I know. I mean, it's like, you know, you jump through these hoops to earn the dollars, right? And the trust from the foundation and the funders, the last thing you wanna do is to not remain in compliance. And so knowing your numbers and having that reporting accurate is really critical. You know, I am so intrigued by how these five different things really kind of commingle. One moves into the other and one supports one and one pushes you. And so even though they're five specific things, they're pretty woven together. And this last piece of advice that you have for us is volunteer appreciation. Talk to us a little bit about that. You know, this really goes back to similarly the donors. That engagement and stewardship is just as critical with your volunteers. So, you know, we do recognize, most of us I believe recognize volunteer appreciation week that happens throughout the year, but really having an opportunity to engage with your volunteers and to show that appreciation because there is data out there. And I don't know the numbers, but I know we've had a guest on to talk about it. How many volunteers are also financial donors, right? Of the mission, but volunteers are also some of your best advocates and ambassadors in the community. So if you are not showing appreciation to these volunteers, the chances of them coming back again and next year and maybe even galvanizing their own support of, you know, people to come with you is rather unlikely if you don't appreciate them. It's kind of like, you know, going back to one of your earlier tips and that is, you know, thanking your donors. It's a basic thing to thank your volunteers. You know, Jared, you and I have been talking and seeing more and more about the corporate partnerships that are coming in and corporations that are saying, we don't just have an open checkbook anymore. We query our teams and our employees to find out where they're giving, where they're volunteering. And then if we see a pattern, then we'll fund. So this is a big, big piece of the pie that I think most of us miss. Yeah. You know, one thing that I've heard from a client of mine and I had never thought of this, never heard of this and was really amazed by this practice that they've put into place is every year they send a certificate to every single volunteer of theirs, right? Tracking their hours, acknowledging their commitment, the impact that they made. And imagine if you did this for your organization, right? Many of us have an army of volunteers and without those volunteers, we wouldn't be able to fulfill our mission. Imagine if you also encouraged and invited them, the volunteers to post this on their social media, right? The amount of like just the spiderweb approach of that when it comes to awareness and recognition in packed galore. So I loved that. I served on a board where we did that and we actually had an event. And it was the humble event. It happened during volunteer appreciation week. We held it at a church and it was kind of like a barbecue theme and we had the different groups come. So if it was like XYZ Utility Company and we tracked their hours, presented them with a certificate. The group was there. They took images, posted it on their social media. We had a media wall. I mean, it got us so much attention. It frankly, kind of during a dreary time of the year where we didn't have a lot of these other things going on. And it really galvanized these teams to do matching team events, to recommit for the next year. I mean, some years these teams would bring chucks. Right. They would bring chucks to us. And you know, like the big rubber, you always call them the big rubber checks, but you know, the big like presentation checks. And we'd be like, what? I mean, we weren't expecting this. So it, yeah, man, this is, I don't know why this falls through the cracks. It does, you know, it goes back to tracking the hours, trusting the hours that are being tracked, having the contact information for the volunteers, because these certificates that I mentioned, they're mailed to them. Now you could certainly do an electronic version of this as well, which could be, you know, maybe beneficial. And I mean, I know I've received certificates online and never mailed and I'm still able to use that, you know, to share with my community. And a little bit of bragging, you know, I look what I achieved. And so I think, you know, incorporating this, making your volunteers proud because they are a big piece to the impact, a really big piece. They're an enormous piece. And it is something that, again, all five of your tips are good all year round, but especially as we're reaching these milestones, it's really important to step back and say, how are we achieving? How are we doing? Is it, you know, is it gonna be an upset at the end of the year? Or can it be something that we can be proud of achieving because we addressed it and to use your word, you know, we course corrected so that we could achieve these goals? Really amazing, you know, always, always. I love having your thoughts and your time learning from you, you know, Jared and I only get to see each other IRL a couple of times a year. I know, we don't live that far from each other, but we have our own busy schedules. I know, it's super kooky. But Jared R. Ransom, nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group, you can check her out at theravengroup.com. A lot of information on her website, a lot of free information. I mean, it can really give you some inspiration and some hope in how to conquer some of these things that, frankly, Jared, they're fear-based. You know, we get upset and we get fearful that we're not gonna do our work. I was working with somebody last night and he said, you know, at the end of the day, I just wanna do well and I do wanna do the right thing. And sometimes I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. And I thought, wow, this is like, it's so interesting because I think that's where we are in our sector. We wanna do the right thing. We want to achieve. Sometimes we just don't know how. And that's why the nonprofit nerd is one of my favorites. Well, thank you. Thanks for letting me be here. As co-host, it's always fun to have these great conversations and it's also fun to be in the hot seat and to share from my point of view a little bit more in depth. Yeah, I appreciate it. I think it's really amazing. And, you know, you and I see tremendous successes day in and day out. And it's really because of these strategies and this hard work and acknowledging where we can go. And so thank you for sharing that time with us. Hey, before we let you go, talk to us a little bit about your road trip to San Diego that's coming up. Yeah, so I will be flying to San Diego and excited for that. I will be there for the Cultivate Conference. Thank you, Fundraising Academy at National University. So June 1, I'll be broadcasting live from Cultivate and then I'll also share a webinar or workshop, rather, there at Cultivate all about tracking and measuring your fundraising success. So I'm gonna talk some cool nerdy stuff about KPIs and key performance indicators. But really excited for this. Yes, live broadcast at Cultivate June 1 in San Diego and then our ask and answer, our Friday special will also be live. So looking forward to that. Yeah, that's gonna be fun because that is going to be actually on the National University campus again and it'll give us an opportunity to drill down with some of the Fundraising Academy staff about what their experience as fundraisers has been like. And so kind of the journeys that they've taken, how they've dealt with success, failure, opportunity, loss. I mean, all of these things that we recognize but we don't always drill down into. And so I think that's gonna be really, really interesting, Jared, for you to be a part of the conversation. Yeah, we love our friends over at Fundraising Academy at National University and Cultivate is also really interesting because they have two tracks. They have one for the seasoned professional and then they have one for the person that's just going into fundraising. And so it's different, right? Different information. And I really appreciate them thinking about this. So it's gonna be a lot of fun. Hey, everybody, what's also a lot of fun is that every day we get to end our episode thanking those that support us. And they include Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Your Part-Time Controller, Nonprofit Thought Leader, Fundraising Academy at National University, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Nerd, and Nonprofit Tech Talk. These are the folks, like I say every day, Jared, they're in with us day in, day out. And what a privilege it is to get their support. Well, my friend, I know you have a busy day. Yeah, thank you, it's gonna be a good one. And then, yeah, I look forward to seeing these tips in action to all of our friends across the globe. Hopefully it's helpful. And I'm always here to be of service. So feel free to reach out. I love it. I so appreciate it. And I think you always make very specific action items that take a little bit of time but they're not just crazy overwhelming. That in many ways, they're just more of a mindset. Embrace and everybody be on the same page. And I think that's something we can achieve. So, hey, every episode we end with this mantra and it really means a lot. And it goes like this. Stay well, say you can do well. Jared Ransom, you're a treasure. Have a great day.