 Today, we do have Tony Bell on Senior Director Office of Program Administration with National University. Tony is now a very dear friend of the show and has come on many times to represent Fundraising Academy and of course is one of our many presenting sponsors. So thank you to Fundraising Academy and thank you to each and every one of our presenting sponsors that continue these conversations. We are so extremely appreciative and this week we launched yesterday our very first power week and this is a deep dive into philanthropy in particular with our partner here Fundraising Academy as we are talking about all things to do with philanthropy and how that can impact your bottom line. So thank you for joining us for this power week and thanks to Julia Patrick for being here and having this wonderful idea Julia Patrick is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm Jarrett Ransom also known as your nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. And again, welcome Tony. We are so glad to have you here to talk to us about looking inside and we're talking about inside our database to see our prospects or constituents that are inside our internal resources. Welcome and thank you. Thank you again for inviting me and I was grateful to be part of your initial conversations around this concept. So I just love the idea of non-profit power week like we were saying earlier. I just love the idea of non-profit power. Yeah. Yeah. Hashtag. Yes. So help us make that go viral. Hashtag non-profit power. Whatever you loved from today please do send that out there into the interwebs. Tony is very active on LinkedIn and make sure whatever you say you follow it up with hashtag non-profit power. We would love that. I think it's great. You know Tony it's really an interesting thing and I do want to pull this back before we dig into the database aspect is that we first met you. You were referred to us by somebody from Northwest and then it turned out we had all these oddly patterned you know pieces that fit together that we kind of all knew folks around one another. Really interesting. We got you on to talk about cause selling and from there Jared and I have really found a pattern and a process that we feel like if we had had this early in our careers the trajectory of our asks and our donor relationships would be very different. So Fundraising Academy has this amazing cause selling education program that we have you know drawn back to brought you in brought your team in and so we'll talk about this a little bit more but this is really part of a bigger, bigger piece of process really right? Would you call it process? I call it yeah I mean it is it's an eight step cycle you know cause selling with all kinds of different strategies and initiatives that you can implement to really enhance the relationship building aspect of your fundraising. And I love that you use the word relationship at the core of it. And when we talk about databases what we really want to have you help us figure out is I think sometimes we figure that the databases aren't a part of the relationship but they really is that's where all the information should be living right? Yeah well I brought my shovel today so we could dig into this. So yeah but you're absolutely right I mean we talk about tool kits and the tools of the trade. Databases are a tool of the trade. They're really critical in order for your development department whether that's one person or 100 because I think in yesterday's episode you talked about you know some advancement departments and how some advancement departments especially universities could have you know 50 people that are really just doing prospecting research right? So databases are just really a critical tool in housing all of that information and very specific information about not only your prospected donors but your existing donors. So when you ask the question what are we missing from our current database think about things outside of what's required in your database to run the business meaning you know but for normal things what is the donor's address right? What have they given history you know tracking their contributions? The things that you might be missing that we promote within cost selling in that relationship driven you know opportunity are things like you know significant other children anniversary dates hobbies right? All of those things that enable you to to enhance the opportunity for your interactions to be more personable and unique to that individual. Just a few examples. Yeah I love that and I was just looking at a database that I'm working on with the client and it happens to be blooming and you can connect. You did that so well that was so spot-on. I know you can connect the constituent social media links into their donor profile which then it innately helps us to identify what is their birth date right or what is their anniversary year you were just talking about your wedding like to have that date of so much joy like let's make sure that we note that so that we do have these very sincere conversations and I love that because it is customizable but it's so personal you know it's it's really a personal outreach and that's a great way to use your data. And I mentioned you know specifically like significant others and children but please do not forget about pets. Pets are big ones yeah. Pets are big ones. Yes they are children to many people absolutely. They are indeed. Okay now I'm going to play devil's advocate here because in this day of cybersecurity and all of these pieces of our world and of our personal lives that go out onto the web how do we know if it's okay to be talking about these personal things or tracking these things and what does that look like for for the average donor? I'll take a stab at that because I'm helping an organization do their policy and part of that is their cybersecurity right like what have we done to enhance safety measures and truly I'm going to say you know all of these donor databases have their built-in safety measures but there are definitely best practices and I'm sure you know these Tony but it's things like not inputting a credit card number or a social security number or things like that into the database in particular the notes section right like that's a big piece so when you have a credit card processing company that works in tangent with your database you've now made sure to protect some of this cybersecurity you know mitigation or my words aren't coming to me but really making sure that your data and your people are protected and that's just that's just one measure. It just seems you know I think sometimes we look at the transactional nature of philanthropy and how we align ourselves to certain organizations but there isn't a familiarity that sometimes I think can be a little disarming. Well and a lot of the examples that I gave are things that I would hope that you might learn about your potential donor during your needs discovery part of the cause selling process so this is information that's been provided to you you know directly from the potential donor it's not necessarily something that you might have found out because you're you know you're doing your diligence and and googling that. And I loved what sorry Julia your partner yesterday mentioned Jack he mentioned that at any time a donor could come in and say show me what you have in my file right show me my donor record and again if this is something that you would not want your donor to see or read that you have placed in his or their file then don't put it there. Yeah very that's great advice. Yeah I mean I think it's part of it. Well which which speaks volumes to what Jared was saying around having you know standard operating procedures and guidelines you know around the usage of your database and and again what you know what type of information or how that information is is is put in there. Yeah it's interesting. So Tony going back to what we can mine from our databases you had mentioned in one of our earlier segments in the cause selling cycle about sorting and understanding what information might be there and what its value could be and I'm wondering if you could kind of help us understand a little bit more about that because I hear from a lot of folks that they get totally frustrated from their database and then they kind of like mentally walk away you know because they're like oh it's just garbage it's not accurate you know and and then it's it's just kind of a cycle of not using it. Yeah so so you know most information in the database is going to be something that is keyed in by an individual right. So you know so we said this earlier garbage in garbage out I mean if there isn't integrity and credibility in the information being put into the database then you can't expect there to be credibility and integrity and and the information that you're pulling from from the database. One of the ways around that and and I you know I know from my experience and leading organizations I mean we're always trying to be really frugal in terms of our investments and and how you know how we're again investing the dollars that are graciously given to our organization. So a lot of times we'll subscribe to services you know like Blue Morang but we won't we won't buy the whole package that might include additional technical support or additional training so that our team members really know how to activate all of the bells and whistles that come along with these great products that they're investing in. So I think when we when we're comfortable with the systems when we go through the appropriate training we understand the bells and whistles it makes it easier for us to be able to extract the data and and go through those A B's and C's because we don't you know depending on how robust the information might be you don't necessarily have the bandwidth to action all of the data that you're pulling so it is really important to A B C that information so that you can you know you can manage your time more effectively. And I think I had shared with you Tony again back to Blue Morang it's like a power week with Blue Morang right now we're really talking about you know the report opportunities that this specific database offers and I love it because there's literally two reports one called who's hot and another one called who's not right and it's like I think you had said so very Paris Hilton of them and it is so hot it's so hot and you pull those reports and you can already see that A B and C sorting right and I joke and said oh it makes me want to swipe right on all of these you know who's hot list because it really is that I'm going to say low hanging fruit but it's these individuals that have been very engaged with the organization they have been you know donating opening emails things like that so these essentially are your A sorted donors and that the entire list really would be of that who's hot and so most other databases offer something similar right of some type of a opportunity to sort your data but then on the who's not that might be your C listers right and so for there you could create a moves management opportunity of how might we take these C listers sorted into that B category and to continue to move them to A and I just thought that was fun because um that's you know that's what we're here for yeah yeah absolutely no I love that you shared that because I was saying you know the the work of fundraisers is so stressful and and often and oftentimes you know doesn't feel as rewarding as as some folks might like might want it to feel so we have to take and lean into those opportunities to put the fun and fundraising and little things like that you know bring joy just in the every day and of course when we talk about you know A B and C or what's hot or what's not it has nothing to do with the individual their value to the community who they are it's really all about us defining where we're going to focus our activities so that we can we can be better planners with our time absolutely love that you said that because I don't think that that's what I was thinking oh really yeah I would I have to I'm going to be real honest honest here um and so I I like that you said that because I think there's two ways to go about that it's one is chasing the the obvious dollar and the other is chasing the obvious relationship right and it's it seems to me you need to be doing the relationship yeah and not the dollar other two reports I love and I remember learning this acronym and Tony you're you're leaning in you're like I can't wait to hear what it is um Liebunt and Cybunt right like these are the two these are the two reports so Liebunt is last year but unfortunately not this and then Cybunt is some year but unfortunately not this so again it's another way of sorting your A B and C data to see okay did they give last year because as we all know that is last year some year is some year but it's not the most recent you know so that also helps to sort that A B and C in your data and this is truly you know down to did they give within the last calendar or fiscal year however you pull that or have they've given some year but unfortunately not this so when it comes to time management again instead of chasing you know all the potential opportunities I would look at that and see great from this report where do I spend my time Tony I have a question for you that that borders it's it's somewhat of an ethical question in terms of this data and the information that you might be sharing this within the organization or the board I worked on a board that routinely twice a year would print off these kind of now I get the ABC levels and then they would lay it out on the table and ask all the board members to kind of go through these profiles to see if they had a connection if maybe there was information that was not accurate and I'm thinking now about this wondering is that a good is that a good action to take I would say yes I mean it's not you know again they the information we're making sure that we don't have super here great here I go with like technical super sensitive information right we don't have social security numbers we don't have credit cards and in the database right and and fundraising is a team sport and this is an opportunity for the board members to participate in the sport because again we're building relationships so so I think it's totally appropriate to have these kind of strategic conversations with your board saying I've identified this individual because of whatever reason they seem like a really great prospect for our organization does anyone on our board you know through my research one do you know them just here's their name and where they work but then you know they belong to this association do I have any other board members that belong to this association or you know maybe you know that they listen to certain podcasts so do I have any other board members that listen to these kind of podcasts that can you know if I don't have the time to lean in and listen to them tell me kind of you know what are some of the high level takeaways from these podcasts so you know I can speak to those so I think there's a lot of good relationship driven information that can come from those types of of conversations good good well that's good because I you know I'm thinking to myself if we we have such a crisis in this nation with the turnover and churn rate of our development teams we talked about this yesterday on the kickoff day a power wake of fundraising academy that it's looking like an 18 month tenure for the average American development director and that comes from AFP I mean this is a crisis so if we if we don't have these this team concept we're just imperiling our organizations yeah and and all the more you know reason and justification for the investment and these types of technical you know this type of technical support okay because you don't you don't want your you don't want your fundraising folks to walk away with all of that intellectual property no no and I think we've talked before with you Tony you know a previous episode probably doing the phases of the the fundraising cycle is truly like what we do now could be paving the way for a multimillion dollar gift years from now are a planned gift years from now right so really keeping that data in our database so that we can really steward that information and that donor properly what I loved about your ethical question Julia of bringing up you know donors to a boardroom I think that that also helps for us to identify potential capacity right so like here here is a list of individuals that are already connected to us who might you know and what additional information might you board member also peer have have more knowledge to share with us so that we really can use these data sources to help determine that capacity absolutely it's really hard I mean how often do you think that we should be going out to our board members and to our our staffs I mean I'm thinking my particular board that I served it was a twice a year thing is that enough is that not enough I mean what are your thoughts on that I would tend to lean into more of a quarterly check-in okay with with the board you know around you know for this particular kind of conversation so even though even though in your example Julia the board only meets twice a year well there's gotta be some kind of work that's going on you know in between in between those meetings so this is an opportunity you know again for for board members to be engaged with the organization outside of you know just those two convenings that take place what other data sources do you recommend that we use Tony for example like give me an example well I'm just thinking right so yesterday Jack talked about internal and external data sources and in particular today we're talking about our CRM or our client relationship management you know software but what other tools maybe even internal you know like what else could we use to help qualify some capacity now you had said previously like you're you're a huge advocate for googling and looking up you know oh sure yeah so yeah so so thanks to them and I think you even used the terminology yesterday you know some of the things that are super valuable to the success of our role as development officers but also very successful you know super important for the success of the organization you know things like the property appraise you know going to your county property appraiser website and putting in the the donor's name or address to to kind of see you know there's there's there's just there are all kinds of tools and resources and data out there that you can subscribe to that that help you better understand potentially the the financial portfolio of a potential donor again even some even as far as and this blew my mind when I learned that you could get data that would even inform you on magazine subscriptions wow like like there are ways to drill down that deep so we talk about personalization uh in your communication you know if you know that this donor is is getting you know yachting magazines you might be able to somehow incorporate that or maybe they're getting magazines on crochet you know I would not go on that yacht if it was a crocheted yacht I would not step foot no no there are two separate publications you know but you know you know you might you know I I don't know right you might quote I don't know but you know what I'm what I'm getting at there's just that level of detail that's available out there um and it's it's you know it's sourced information there's nothing about obtaining or securing this type of data that should make you feel uncomfortable it really is all about again helping us better understand our a b's and c's right and helping us to better understand how we can connect on a more personal level with our potential donors our potential investors and and this might be divisive and and as we talk about our pandemics plural I do include the political divide in one of those pandemics but you know contributions to political campaigns are also public knowledge and I think it's not charitable right but but it is public knowledge and I think that that is another way to identify capacity to see whether it's a corporate sponsor right or an individual to see maybe how they've invested their dollars towards a political um campaign or person even local right like your local community and I'm not talking just you know a US national campaign but even your local community this is public knowledge that you really could find some data sources from well I think that you know just generally speaking we we tend to forget the critical importance of being involved and educated on local politics right the the decisions that are being you know made that really affect our backyard and our main street in the communities in which we we live work and play so I'm glad that that you brought that up and we talk also you know through the cost selling cycle around you know part of our of our needs discovery and getting to know our potential investor is also making sure there's ethical alignment because uh you know the dollars are great but there has to be ethical alignment and and I'm not in favor of accepting money from just any line yeah yeah so there there there really has to be that that deeper alignment outside of a passion for the mission I appreciate that and we really don't have time to go much deeper into that but I have heard of people firing their donors literally like breaking up with their donors potentially giving money back for whatever reason to say you know thank you for your interest in investment however for whatever reason maybe it is that misalignment of values or beliefs or whatnot so I feel like many of us think oh my gosh it's money and we need it and we have to take it and that's typically the reason not to take it and and I'll go a step further because I know we're getting short on time and and and doing that doesn't mean that you don't celebrate diversity and doesn't mean that you don't celebrate everyone's opportunity for personal decisions great point it just means that the alignment to your organization is is not what it needs to be that is a great point wow making that yeah okay we that that is a probably our mind yeah that's a whole show because I've been personally involved in that uh where gifts were discussed about going back or not you know and these were multi-million dollar gifts and I would love to talk about that because I don't know I don't know if I align to use your word with that that sounds like an ask and answer question or chore it is but it's like an ask and answer episode yes because it's such a big big topic wow you know what Tony you are a wealth of knowledge um we always always always love hearing what you have to say and understanding your perspective in regards to the cause selling cycle which is just a masterful way I think to build success with any nonprofit organization so thank you for sharing this time with us it's been really cool here's Tony's information again fundraisingacademy.org is the place to check things out remember we have done a whole series of cause selling episodes they actually are a little bit longer than the 30 minutes you can find those online with us and also through fundraising academy so check those out on this week we have a bunch of topics and so make sure that you follow with us because we have some great conversations if you've come to this through our archives or even our live show be aware that this is a whole week and so we have other episodes just dealing with this concept again we want to thank all of our sponsors and especially fundraising academy you are the one that helped us launch non-profit power week love it non-profit power we're honored to be to be a part of of your vision and and thank you for creating such an informative and valuable platform for the for the nonprofit sector well thanks it's been a lot of fun and without your support we really wouldn't be here I say that from the heart and I know that Jarrett echoes that as well again I'm Julia Patrick been joined by the non-profit nerd herself Jarrett Ransom CEO of the Raven group this has been non-profit power week of fundraising academy we've got another great day planned for tomorrow so come back join us and we're going to get you powered up and yeah I'm going to get right on my social media right now hashtag non-profit power week absolutely love it well thank you again thank you thank you Tony thank you and as we remember our our frontline workers all the people that are in the non-profit world I'm fighting this COVID pandemic please remember to stay well so you can do well we'll see you back here tomorrow everyone thank you