 Welcome to Adventures in Small Business, a collaborative effort by the U.S. Small Business Administration, Hawaii District Office, the Hawaii Small Business Development Center, the Veterans Business Outreach Center of the Pacific, and the Pat C. Teeming Center for Business and Leadership. Today, I'm your host, Teri Funakoshi, and I have with me Tim Sarantonio, author and expert nonprofit fundraiser, and today we're talking about making good happen. So, Tim, let me just read a little bit about you. Sure. Tim has more than 10 years of experience working for and volunteering with nonprofits. He has raised over $3 million for various causes, engaged and enhanced databases of all sizes, procured multiple successful grants, and formulated engaging communication and fundraising campaigns for several nonprofits. Wow, that's a lot, Tim. It is. It is. You really met Tim at a workshop at the Pat C. Teeming Center. You're talking about nonprofits and raising money, and I was so impressed with your background and the book that you wrote that I asked him to come on the show, and this was just a couple days ago. I know. It just all kind of came together that we didn't even know we were coming to Hawaii until like two weeks ago, but your center and Hano, which is the Hawaii Alliance for Nonprofit Organizations, were just such great partners to put that together. The group show up, even when I went to Maui and was telling them about it, they said, you got like 22 people to register and under a week for a nonprofit event. It was great. I know. It was great. Here in Hawaii, like I was telling you, we are about giving, and we have so many nonprofits here that can benefit from this, so that's why I'm so thankful that you came on today. I'm very happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you. Tim, tell us about your background. Where are you from? I'm from New York. This is my first time in Hawaii. I had lived in Chicago. I lived in Ireland for a bit, New York City, but I lived in upstate New York right now with my wife and three kiddos who are very patiently being there. My wife is supporting me by watching our kids, so I got a three-year-old named Pepper and then two one-year-old twins, Maggie and Rosie. Without fail, one of them always gets sick whenever I go on a trip, so I'm very happy to be here, but I'm also going to be excited to see my family. Great to go home soon. Yeah, and I think that having a good support network is important for any type of job, starting a nonprofit or a new business, you're going to need that type of support. Definitely. We all entrepreneurs know that for sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. So why don't you talk about your nonprofit background? Yeah. I've always been interested in helping people, and when I moved to Chicago, I had worked for a nonprofit in an intern type capacity in New York City. I was teaching kids English, but I didn't really start it officially until moving to Chicago, and all my degrees up until that point were very expensive master's degrees, Columbia University, National University of Ireland and Galway, and all of that got me jobs in the service industry. And I think that's something that a lot of people struggle with where they're trying to find their place. And for me, I wanted to do something that helped folks. And I said, well, what about nonprofits, and I got a job as a grant writer for a day labor organizing center? So I would actually help people in an anti-discrimination campaign for temp work, organize themselves and try to fight for their rights in Chicago, South Side Chicago primarily. So I even though as the grant writer, it was very important for me to understand what those folks were going through, because in order to tell that story effectively, you have to be authentic about it. So I actually went into temp agencies at four in the morning to try to get a job and saw the discrimination firsthand. So it was a very interesting start to my nonprofit career. I then worked for an art studio with adults for developmental disabilities. I worked for a Catholic school. That's why I raised most of the money that I did. And then I ended up at Neon where I am now, which is a software company for nonprofits. Wow. I mean, being a grant writer and actually going through and seeing what you know, the actual steps, that's more than anyone can actually do, I think. No more than the people who are actually going through it though. Is that what motivates you to keep going? It's to help folks. Ultimately, it's about using, look, I'm in a privileged position, realistically. So I want to be able to leverage that so other folks can have a fair shot and equitable shot when it comes to either building their dream business or just making it through the day or supporting their family. That's what drives me. And a lot of it is that we've seen such advances in software and technology and things like that, being able to live stream even this to people and they just have to have their phone to look it up. But we still have a long way to go when it comes to equal access to that. And so that's very important to be able to leverage technology for good. Right. I mean, and this sounds kind of like a big question, but what's your vision of success for nonprofit? I know everyone's mission is different, but in general, because you work with so many nonprofits. I think it's being able to make their mission happen in the broader tapestry of community. I think a lot of nonprofits end up competing with each other for resources and they don't collaborate enough. And so my dream and vision is more collaboration in the industry, more teaming up on grant projects so we're not splitting up funding sources or using technology collaboratively to communicate with each other or to just drive engagement and excite people, young and old. And so that's my vision. That's my dream. It's just a larger ecosystem of good. Right. You know, and you bring up the word collaboration and that's really been a trend word this year. I see a lot of nonprofits working together, even businesses and nonprofits doing social causes. Yes. What do you think the trends are that you see out there? I think the big trend is overall, especially when you look at where entrepreneurship is going and where nonprofits are going, is one more private public interaction and partnerships there. But especially, I just recently did a talk on generational giving. And so from boomers all the way to Generation Z, which is folks born after 9-11 and no matter what everybody likes to give, but people approach it philosophically different and especially younger folks, millennials and Generation Z folks, they are really interested and very, very concerned about ensuring that anything that they are buying, anything that they're putting their time toward has a social cause component to it. So corporate social responsibility is going to be a big trend that I think we're going to see more on the entrepreneur side, on the giving side, on the nonprofit side. I think that in an ideal world, the trend is that we're going to see more openness. We're a database company, ultimately. My company provides data services. And there's a lot of old players out there, kind of old ways of thinking where we want to be closed off and we don't want anyone to have our data and openness is actually the trend. Think about being able to, I think I see even an Alexa over there, right? Being able to talk to that and make a donation, or which actually there was an article in Chronicle Philanthropy yesterday about that. I've been talking about that and excited about that for a while, but some people made fun of me about that. And I don't think that's going to go away, where people are going to naturally start to fold this into their life. We are inherently givers. There's even science behind it where our brain fires off more when we're giving, as opposed to receiving things. And so I think that people are going to start to get back to their natural state as givers. That's the optimistic view that I have. Well, I mean, surely in small business, what we're saying is a lot of the product has to have that story, that genuine story where it came from, is it green? What's the mission behind the product? I see that aligning too in the non-profit side. Storytelling is so important. And I love watching the profit. That's like one of my favorite shows. And Marcus Monus always talks about storytelling as being a big part of a successful small business. And I think that applies to both nonprofits and for-profit enterprises. The big difference is that I think nonprofits need to not think necessarily of things like donations as transactions, but relationship building. I think that's where for-profit businesses can take a page out of the nonprofit book. And definitely, they need to hit their margins. They need to grow. But if they treat people as a relationship and not a thing that got bought, they're going to grow. I know in Hawaii, I speak a lot of nonprofits and businesses. And it's really culture-based. We call it Mo'olelo, Storytelling in Hawaiian, and really getting back to our roots, like you said. But along the way, there's so many challenges. So maybe you can share with us, what are some of the challenges that you've encountered with the companies you've worked for, and how can they chip away at that and get to that success level? Burnout. Burnout. It's especially if you look at the labor statistics. The nonprofit industry, people are rotating out at a higher rate than other industries. I wouldn't say it's maybe as high as the restaurant business. But nonprofit folks, they're underpaid. They don't have access to great benefits. But they're working very, very long hours. And a big component of that is that they feel that they have to do that in order to help people. And so there's that extra pressure of it's not that I just want my business to succeed. For them, I want my mission to succeed because it's going to help so many other people. And so we don't concentrate on our own self-care and our own mental health enough. And I think that if we start thinking about wellness, thinking about the nutrition of our own bodies and minds and things like that, that's going to be something that helps address that challenge. I know that that's a hard one. It's very hard. Yeah, we've always looked at it. And the people we serve, we always put them first. And that's tough. Right now, we're doing a lot of budgeting for next year. And we're looking at that again. And like you said, a lot of nonprofit people are underpaid. How do we correct that? How do we get all the leaders out there to help? And that's a huge question. So we're going to take a break, think about it. And then when we come back, let's try and see if we can figure that one out. All right, let's do it. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 AM. Please join me, where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaiiana all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. When I was growing up, I was among the one and six American kids who struggled with hunger and hungry mornings make tired days. Grumpy days. Bad kind of days. But with the power of breakfast, the kids in your neighborhood can think big and be more. When we're not hungry for breakfast, we're hungry for more. More ideas. More dreams. More fun. When kids aren't hungry for breakfast, they can be hungry for more. Go to hungarees.org and lend your time or your voice to make breakfast happen for kids in your neighborhood. We're talking with Tim, expert, nonprofit fundraiser. So we're going to tackle that big question again. How do we get the nonprofits to take care of themselves, get paid what they deserve without sacrificing serving their members? And another thing is, is there competition between the nonprofits? Wow, those are all big questions. Let's try to unpack it in a way that I think is going to be constructive for folks who are at home. I think the first thing that we need to do is foundations who provide these endowments and have millions of dollars, they need to free up their funds and stop making them tied to restricted giving. I think we need more unrestricted giving. So a lot of times, a nonprofit, I know this from personal experience as a grant writer, we will change our programming to just get a grant. And so there's actually great examples. You can look toward, I think it's the Lilly Foundation in Indiana, for instance, they launched a $45 million endowment campaign specifically around unrestricted giving, massive success. And so unrestricted giving is the first part. I think the second part is that we need to get back to the basics when it comes to our own fundraising. Stop worrying about how many widgets you're going to be giving people because they gave X amount of money. That's a transaction. We need to build relationships. So by telling that story, we concentrate on two types of donors. Donor number one, recurring donors. Millennials like to give through credit cards. So $10, $25, $50 a month. The sooner that you get that second gift, the higher your retention rate of a person goes up. So it's the idea of getting them back into the fold as quickly as possible. Once you get that second gift, the sooner that you do it, if you get it within a month, retention goes up to 80%. The next type is major donors. And so especially in a place like Hawaii, even though I've only been here for a few days, what I'm hearing is that it's very important for finding your philanthropists who get the culture here. I'm not going to pretend that I know it after a few days, right? Thank you for this, by the way. But the reality is that people need to understand the culture before coming in and dictating what needs to be done with the money. So people who have the capacity to give $1,000 or more, those folks, we need to cultivate them and treat them as part of the community. A lot of donors, 53% of donors actually cite that poor communication is the reason they stop giving to a nonprofit. So if you aren't telling your story in a personalized way, your donors are not your donors. You do not own them, just like your consumers are not your consumers. They might not come back if you treat them like it's an ATM. Right. I mean, communication is key. Yes, I know. And like you said, we may spend too much time on the widgets and all those transactions. All this Amazon smile stuff and taking the picture of the receipts and all these things, they're nice as supplementary things. I chased down every single dollar that I could. I chased down every single potential in-kind gift that I can obtain to cut down on event costs. But at the end of the day, all you need is somebody who just believes in you, and that's what matters. Yeah, I hear you. So why don't you tell us about some of the events like the Giving Tuesday? Oh, yeah. How can we maximize that? Giving days are an interesting phenomena. So if you aren't familiar, kind of folks at home with Giving Tuesday, it's a holiday at this point. You have Black Friday. You have Cyber Monday. Giving Tuesday is after Thanksgiving. And it's a day focused on philanthropy. It was started by the 92nd Y in New York City. And basically, they said, we're going to have a day that celebrates giving back. And now it's become an international movement. Our company helps oversee the data and analyzation for Giving Tuesday metrics. And it is interesting to see how it's going up. And I think some organizations struggle with Giving Tuesday because they don't know where it fits within their overall strategy. And I think an easy way that we can approach Giving Tuesday as a nonprofit is to treat it as a way to introduce yourself to a new audience. Imagine that someone has no clue who you are. There's a lot of noise out there. There's a lot of messages. Check your email inbox on the days leading up to Giving Tuesday. How many nonprofits are sending the same thing? So how can you stand out? How can you step back and say, what's the story that's going to speak to a donor? Tell the story for you. You need to tell the story for the donor and speak directly to them and personalize it. So that's, I think, where we can start with Giving Tuesday. But also think about retention. Retention Wednesday. I want that to be a thing. That's the next holiday where it says, thank you very much. Let's continue to keep investing. So here's a question you probably get asked a lot. What's the best medium for nonprofits to use? It depends on the audience. It's just like if you asked a marketer that question for their business. It depends on who the people that you're serving. If your donor base skews a little bit older, you're not going to start a Snapchat campaign or something like that. I always make fun of Snapchat because don't do Snapchat fundraising. I'm going to speak directly to Camera 4 on that one. But realistically, I think that get to the basics. Always drum back to the basics. And the basics are that personal, in person, is very effective face to face. Try to do that. In lieu of that, because we only have enough time in the day, email is still effective, but you have to hone your audiences and drill down and personalize those messages to specific audiences as possible, as much as possible. Don't dump everybody in the one list and say, thanks that you came to an event and donated and were a member. NN. NNN. That doesn't speak to a person. So hone that list. And then people do like still getting stuff in the mail. Yeah, it's still a big chunk, right? A huge chunk. 60% to 80% of gifts still come in for direct mail. Look, I'm all about online fundraising. Digital fundraising is a big component of what our software offers. But we also realize that you have to address the direct mail piece, too. So you can't ignore that. Right. I mean, I get direct mail that says, you know, click here. Yeah. Right? Yeah. The thing that I think is going to be a channel that gets wasted in terms of time put into it is social media, especially Facebook fundraising. It's not that Facebook is ineffective. It's that it doesn't help build a rapport. You don't get any information about the donor on Facebook. There's no data. And so even the biggest companies out there, it's smoke and mirrors. You still really don't get that much data to build a retention plan around. So if you're going to do that, use it to kind of what Gary Viarchuk talks about in his book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, is use Facebook for the jabs. The little storytelling and then the right hook is that big call to action that you've worked on by telling your story through the right medium. If you use an Instagram, big pictures that are mission-specific. If it's Facebook, video helps there. If it's Twitter, short to the point, informational. Boom. And I know a lot of nonprofits are always asking, we can't do all the social medias. Again, they have to choose specifically what they want to do. Yes. And like you said, it depends on their target audience. Yeah. And I think that an easy one to start with is Instagram, because Instagram is such a visual medium that use that for your storytelling piece. And then you can push that over into Facebook automatically at the very least now. So that's one way. There is some freer, inexpensive tools to help manage campaigns, things like Hootsuite. Nonprofits can leverage those tools and help automate and schedule out their campaigns as well. And actually, businesses should be doing that too. And then it also comes to Pretty Design. So a really great tool for Pretty Design that's free is Canva. Right. I love that. Canva's great. I know. So utilize it. Yeah, instant pliers. Yes, absolutely. So visual storytelling is going to be a big component. Video, beautiful imagery, Unsplash is a great resource for Creative Commons pictures. For instance, if you need something to put on your website. And nonprofits, that's actually a big one. Make sure your website is on point. Make sure it's very clear. Don't make it too busy. People only spend only about a second or two. We do website design at our company. And what we've realized is nonprofits specifically, because we're not catering to a yoga studio or a restaurant. We're doing nonprofits only and membership associations too. And so what we realized is that you have the clearest call to action that speaks to the donor. You're going to get that donation quicker. Make it as quick to click to get to a transaction page as possible. Is there a tip for the website that you can share? I'll start with one simple one. Don't have more than three to five primary navigation items in your menu. You can do submenus. But if you're about us page is 25 different things and you're having a separate page for every board member, you do not need to do that. People do not care. Three to five. Three to five tops. Start there. Great. So here's a question for you. We have a few more minutes. Where do you see nonprofits in the next five, 10 years? There's a lot of elements at play there. It depends on where we go politically. It depends on where we go as a society. I'd like to think and what I see is the good in people that we're going to start to work more together. We're going to get through this period of distrust and that there's a lot of good in the world that we just don't hear about. And so I think that people are going to start to say no. And there's new media that's helping put those stories out. This is a great example of that. And so that's the walls that are going to get broken down. And then I think when people say, wait a second, we're on the same team here that then we can get back to those basics. So that's where I see nonprofits ideally going because it's going to be a donor-driven process. It's going to be an organizational-driven process. And collaboration is going to be where it's at. So I see more nonprofit centers, co-working spaces. I see more integrated technology and larger ecosystems of people and software working together. And I see a lot of independent development, too. And young folks getting really excited about making their own giving apps and other types of things and even considering blockchain and cryptocurrency and all those different things. These are things that we're going to see more of. But no matter what, we still have to keep that drum of back to the basics. Always focus on the donor. That donor is not yours. I don't care if you get it through direct mail or Bitcoin, you still need to make that person feel special. Right. I know for our center at the Patty Timmick Center, we do launch my business and we do launch my nonprofit courses. And the nonprofit is picking up a lot of interest. And so that's why I wanted to mention your book, The Fundraiser's Guide to Annual Fund. This is a really great resource. Yes. And then there's some key things in here. And unfortunately, we don't have time to go through the whole book. Yeah, it is free to download. You can go to neoncrm.com. And it should be part of our resources section on the bottom there. But yeah, that's from my own personal experience. And it doesn't have to do with our software. It's more the basics of any nonprofit needing to do that annual fund appeal, kind of the grind of building a cultivation and stewardship program. Right. And just three things I took from looking through the book was the planning. You know how you start from the end? Yes. Making that ask. That's really important. And like you said, getting and retaining major donors. Yeah. So any last words you want to say about fundraising? Have fun. Have fun with it. It can be so, there's so many causes out there that it's not always about kids or kittens, right? There's cancer organizations. My wife's sister passed away in 2011 and we're raising money. Like my wife's going to be running a lot. And it's those types of organizations that it's not always fun, but it's important. So you can still have fun with a serious topic. And so if we try to enjoy ourselves while doing it, people pick up on that. And that energy comes through and they sync up with that. They're drawn to that. And so have that shine through whenever you're doing your communications with donors. Totally agree. Yep. It's about the giving. Well, thank you, Tim. Thank you. Thank you. I hope you had a great stay here in Hawaii. It was lovely. I can't wait to come back with my wife. Yes, and your little kids. Maybe. No, I love, I miss them. And it's just making sure they can handle the flight. So maybe just me and the wife sometime. Well, we really appreciate you coming on such short notice and giving us all this wonderful information. Can't wait to come back. Thank you so much. Thank you. This is Shop Small. I'm sorry. This is Think Tech saying thank you for joining us. And we'll see you next time.