 Already the Chitty Chat Chat has been great. So for those of you who've been with us, wow, what a great way to start our day. I know I'm inspired, I'm sure you're gonna be inspired. Hey, we wanna thank our exclusive supporting sponsor of our Friday Ask an Ants Fundraising Academy. They do some amazing, amazing training on cost selling education. And so we are grateful that they have partnered with us for one of our favorite days. Hey, we also wanna thank all of our other presenting sponsors without you. We would not be here having these amazing discussions day in and day out. If we haven't met before, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. And today I'm really excited. I'm joined by Kristen Howard, Senior Director of Development for Mentor. That's a heavy lift, my friend. It's a wonderful job that I am very privileged to have every day. It's so important to me to find the job you love and love what you do every day. You spend so much time doing it, and I get the luxury of doing my dream job every day. I love it, I love it, Kristen. Okay, before we get into all of our robust questions, can you spend just a little bit of time with us and share with us what the mentor organization does and where it's based? Sure, so we're based in New England out of Boston, we're a national nonprofit. And really our job is to build the mentoring movement. So the youth mentoring movement in our country, it's really around how do we advance that effort to ensure every young person in our country has access to a positive caring adult in their life. And so we are not direct service, but we support the thousands of direct service mentoring programs across the country, helping them improve their program quality, advocating for policies at the federal and local level that support youth mentoring initiatives and really try to scale just the general public's interest in stepping up and being a volunteer mentor for a young person in this country. So when I first was doing some research about you, I couldn't believe how much your organization had seeded movements within states across this nation. It was fascinating to see how you had, and I use the word seed, I don't know what else to describe it, because you planted seeds, it seemed like for different states and even regions in our country to create their own mentoring programs. Yeah, we have an incredible network of 24 affiliates that are predominantly state run affiliates. They are kind of us, but at a local level and they're really driving that movement locally and making sure mentoring programs have kind of the support on the ground to improve their program quality and they are inspirations to us and they're often the ones that are innovating and raising up ideas and programs at the national level. It's pretty exciting. Yeah, how exciting. You go back and forth. I think it was just so super cool to see that. Really, really amazing. Well, we have a lot of questions today and so you my new friend are in the hot seat. Love it, you ready? Ask away, hopefully I have some stuff to share. Okay, Shane from Portland, Oregon writes in, we are debuting a new logo and several of our team members think we should show this new marketing work to our donors first. Do you think this is a good touch point to use with donors? Yeah, I mean, I've been for several rebrandings. Okay, yay, good question to start. I think the short answer is yes, right? Like as a fundraiser, we're always looking for touch points, right? And, you know, through all of the rebranding efforts that I've been a part of, we very strategically early on, even before ready to reveal the logo, incorporated our stakeholders in designing that logo, giving them an opportunity to share what resonates with them about our work and what our work means from an emotional standpoint. How can we articulate that in a logo that they would really be proud of, right? And then when you get to the point of like revealing it, it's amazing. You can then, you know, share that in early stages with them to get them excited because what we don't want, right, is for a letter to arrive or an email to come in your desk and then wonder what is this new organization? I don't even know them. So the more you can give them an advanced kind of understanding, right? And then coordinate it, right? Coordinate your unveiling with your solicitation, your schedule, right? Like we announced ours at a big fundraising event leading up to an end of the year appeal, leading into a big national conference. And so how do you unveil it in a way to those audiences that really support your fundraising efforts? You know, I love that you said that about the branding confusion and how you don't want any of those stakeholders to be sending their check to someone else. In my community, there was a very legendary issue with that there was somebody that had, you know, XYZ named organization and then there was West Valley XYZ named organization. And the two organizations did similar work. They were both venerable, honorable organizations started many years ago when that made sense. And they had checks crossing the mail and it was brutal. Yeah, brutal. Yeah, it's really important. It's really important to think strategically about how you're engaging and unveiling to your donors. You want them to not be confused. And you know, it takes three to five touch points for anyone to retain any sort of information. So the more you do that in advance, the better. And in advance of your end of the year appeal or your annual asks. Right, it's not just about the signs on the building and the letterhead, it goes much deeper. Wow, okay. Well, Shane, I think you've got some great advice. And I hope that this moves forward well with you because you heard from the master here today who somebody who's gone through this, yay team. Okay, let's get on to Josie. Josie comes to us from Cincinnati, the Maddie in Ohio. Josie writes, we have a tremendous staff person who works in programming. I have seen her work with donors on tours and I'm wondering if I should try to get her to move into development. Is this a good thing to even consider? You know, we've been asked this question before where somebody in an organization identifies somebody and it could be the receptionist, it could be a security guard. And they're like, wow, you are so engaging. Let's get you into development. Yeah, yeah. What do you think about that? Well, I hired someone that was, their entire experience was programmatic and they're on my team and they're an incredible asset to us. So I'm gonna say, I'm obviously gonna consider it because I did it and it worked out really well. I think the thing about this question that stood out to me is, have you talked to this team member who clearly isn't a huge champion for fundraising and a wonderful asset in your efforts and have you explored their interests? Have you complimented them and gave them kind of reassurance of how valuable they are to you as a fundraiser? And asked them like, have you ever considered doing this full-time like coming over to development? Would you ever wanna know about that? I think I'm always cautious of not pushing someone in the direction of fundraising that may not wanna be there, right? Lots of programmatic staff members that I've worked with love supporting fundraising but never wanna do it full-time. And you need those partners. So I think it's really just kind of exploring with them but certainly the transferable skills are there and could be a huge win if they're interested. And if nothing else, they're gonna be flatter that you gave them this incredible compliment of what kind of partner they are to you in that. Yeah. I would say, Josie, before you lure them in, find out to your point, Kristin, is this something that they would even consider or explore? And if not, maybe you just found your go-to person on the tour circuit. Like when we get back to having campus visits or donor tours or whatever, you know that you will have that person that is going to be engaging and witness to the programming. It's a tough deal. When I first saw this question too, Kristin, I almost thought, I wonder if this would be, and I'm aging myself. But I'm wondering if like, at some point, sometimes programming is physically too demanding for an aging labor source. And maybe would this work for somebody who's like, I need to change the way I'm working or the hours that I'm working or how I'm working? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's totally worth exploring with them. And also, you know, just they might be good at other things too outside of fundraising. So maybe they are terrified of asking people for money, but they're really good at telling the story. Would they wanna go into a communications role? Could they share their expertise in that way? And so I think it's really about us being committed as coworkers to understanding and exploring people's interests and giving them feedback, positive feedback that helps them maybe see skills that they didn't know that they had that you think are really unique and special for the organization so that they can start to explore, well, I never really considered that, but maybe I would do that. Or maybe it means you're really poised for an executive director job one day. Maybe you're a young, it's a young programmatic employee. And right, we know the number one skill that is often missing for executive director candidates is being a good fundraiser. And so if they are showing those skills and still love the programmatic work, maybe their evolution is into an executive director or CEO one day. Okay, wow. I think that you just were waving your mentor flag a little bit there because I don't know and I'm just gonna take a swing at this. I don't think that you would have had that answer or perspective if you didn't know something about mentoring. Yeah, I mean, I think it's mentoring and it's good leadership and it's role modeling and it's being acutely aware of the people around you and being curious about them and that does make you a good mentor, makes you a good coworker and it makes you a good leader. And it makes you a good co-host on the topic you'll ask an answer. There you go. There you have it, sister. You know, I love it. Josie, I think we've given you a lot to think about and whether you bring somebody onto your team or not, it's the health of the whole team, of the organizational team. And I also think too, Kristen, I would never have answered the thought of this several months ago, but you know with this great resignation that we're now living through, we have compassion fatigue in the nonprofit sector, we're bleeding off labor because of aging out and retirement and all that. This might be one of those moments that helps you or serves you in almost like a labor retention piece. You're making somebody feel good about their place on your team as you mentioned right off. You know, you could be encouraging this person in a way that maybe they haven't been encouraged before. Exactly. And maybe you give them experiences that they typically don't get but really enjoy. And so maybe you find more opportunities for them to participate in fundraising activities. Yeah, I love it. And you know, I also too, maybe before we ask the next question, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this as a development director, I've always felt that it's from, you know, the day porters to the security guard to the receptionist, they are the fundraisers of your organization. It's not just those people over there that go out to lunch every day or seem to have the beautiful job. It's everybody in the organization's job to be thinking with that fundraising hat. And I don't know, that's just my opinion. And everyone is donors, right? Like we often, it's just this principle of just be curious about people and build good relationships that are authentic to you and that serves you really well. I often tell this story about it's the chiropractor. I would go to my chiropractic appointment regularly and we would talk about my work and whatnot. And randomly I received an incredible gift from that person that I had never even expected or known was a potential. And that gift has been sustained over time and crossing organizations. And it goes to show people give to people and they give to help people advance their passion. So like talk about your passion, understand other people's passion and that's gonna be kind of the best asset you have to being a good fundraiser and also helping other people be good fundraisers. And I love that you added helping other people could be good fundraisers. Wow, this has been rocking and rolling. Great, great start to my Friday. I hope it's been a great start to your Friday. Just to remind everybody, we have the wonderful Kristen Howard, Director of Development for the Organization Mentor. It's a national organization that navigates mentoring policy, structure and other organizations or other communities so that they can have strong and viable mentoring programs. Okay, now you don't know this Kristen but my absolute favorite thing is name with health. Okay. I love, that's like the drama. I think it's like what, like who is the, who's gonna get in trouble here? Well, you know, and I have to witness, sometimes I do type in, cause I'm the one that creates these slides. Sometimes I will put in name with health. If it's like a really dicey question and from a smaller community, and I feel like, oh, I don't want that person to be unmasked, I'll do that, but this is not the case. Okay, name with health from Houston, Texas. I'm trying to put together a budget for training for all of our executive team. I would like all our members to get training and fundraising. Oh, interesting. Our CEO says this is a mistake and a bad idea. What do you think? Well, I want to name with health, this is very interesting. Okay, I want to know, why does the CEO think this is a bad idea? Yeah. Like what, what drawback could you ever have from training your entire staff on being good fundraisers? I'm not sure what it is. There may be good reason. Maybe there's some internal dynamics. Maybe, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the budget I thought. Like maybe, as you were reading that, is it the budget that's the problem? Here's what I would say. The most important thing is we create cultures of learning in our, in our organizations, right? As nonprofits, it is just as important for me as a fundraiser to know that the entire team has the skills, the basic skills to support the fundraising efforts and seize themselves as a fundraiser, create that culture of philanthropy. But also it's really important that I, as a fundraiser, know about the programmatic work and can speak to the financial modeling and how we do hiring practices, right? Like it is important to know that stuff. So the goal should be to create a culture of learning that give you opportunities to train staff across function, right? Just good business, in my opinion, personally. No, I love that you said that. I love that you said that. And I love the way you phrased that. Yeah. And then I think, okay, so fundraising, how do you do that? Like you don't need a budget. Like everybody thinks we need this big budget. Maybe we need to bring in an expert. And maybe sometimes you do, but most of the time use the skills that you have on your team. Like we do relationship building training where we perform an event, right? We'll bring the whole staff together and just say, here's how you build good relationships. Here's some like conversation starters. Treat it in small bites, right? And in touch points that really matter to the organization because like I said earlier, the biggest asset as a fundraiser is having someone that can talk about their passion and their why. Why are you passionate about this work? Why do you work here? What is the why behind why you show up every day? If we can train everyone about that, which is just good business as ambassadors for the organization, regardless of fundraising and shouldn't be controversial, then we actually have assets. And then maybe the executive team, before you go into a meeting with a funder, you plan a prep session and you do that one-on-one. And maybe you can't have the formal training, but you can do one-on-one conversations as relevant leading into these foundation presentations or such. I love that you said something and I don't know if I've ever heard this before. So for Name With Health in Houston, one of the gems I think Kristen that you brought out was that, hey, you can ask internally somebody to run a training. And I think sometimes, my observation is this and I would love to get your comment on this. I think a lot of times the development team gets the bad rap of being like the beautiful people. Like, because they're always going out to lunch. You get to go out to lunch. You get to like do all these fancy things. Yeah, we are playing guys. I mean, we may be true in some ways, but not true. It's not all wonderful. Yeah, yeah. It's not all like wine and roses, as they say. So I think it would be really interesting for the team to hear about, you see me leaving the office a lot. Well, what does my day look like? And how do I ask for money? And what are the questions? And how do I deal with upset or how do I deal with failure or setback? Because it's brutal. You have to really be a strong mind, I think, to be in development because there's a lot of rejection. Yeah, you have to not take it personally. But also I think what you say, what I love about what you said and what we try to do is it also provides opportunity for all levels of staff to be leaders, right? Like I have our development associate presenting on the wealth screening that we did, why we did it, what it means, what it doesn't mean, how it's not the sole tool, how it's grounded in the fact that wealth in our country is predominantly held by white men, right? Like there are things that like well screenings get you but not it can't be the entire strategy. And so someone who is a development associate got to be in a leadership role presenting at a staff meeting. It also builds their skills, builds their confidence and gives them exposure to leaders across the organization. So I think it's like a win-win when you can engage your own team. And also I would just say speaking of mentors and mentorship, I go to my peers or people in the fundraising industry that are mentors to me sometimes where I don't have an expertise and I say, can you just come in and teach our team about X? They do it for free because we're friends. And so it's the power of relationships beyond just relationships with donors that can pay off to advancing your fundraising success. I love that. You know, when you said that, my mind immediately went to the point where I'm like, dang, I think we have too many like paid consultants on the show that are trying to drum up business because I've never heard anyone say, ask around. Get something to do for free. Ask your team. So that's the fundraiser in me. What will you do for free for us? It's so true. Oh my gosh, that is like so true. Okay, name with help from Houston. You know, sounds to me like your CEO might need a little bit of coaching or mentoring or support on that. And so I love your spirit. Keep going forward. And I hope you're successful. Okay, Jeffrey from Lexington, Kentucky. I have a couple who's been donating to our organization for more than 10 years. I'm having problems getting them both to meet with me. It seems that the wife is more interested in meeting with me than the husband. Should I go ahead with the wife only or wait for a time when the husband can also be there? Woo, okay. I'm so excited for this question. First of all, just meet with the wife. I don't like, I don't wanna meet with the wife. I didn't know what I was gonna say. I didn't, I really didn't. Okay, so here's what I would say. Maybe it's the independent woman in me that's coming out here. But I think this is true in same gender couples too, right? Like we make assumptions every day as fundraisers. We put assumptions that the person who makes more money has more power or decision-making ability. We might say, oh, well the male, the husband has more power and is the decision-maker and so they need to be in the conversation. This is like fraught with challenges and issues that is not true, right? Like I think of my own relationship. We have joint accounts, we have separate accounts and we make philanthropic decisions together and separately. And so like, if I'm really passionate about an organization, my husband isn't, I'm still given to them. And actually he has nothing to say with it. And so I think we can't make assumptions around where people's decision-making around philanthropic gifts as a couple come from. And we should capitalize on any opportunity to meet with someone who expresses interest in our work. And that does not mean maybe the husband does need to be on board, right? Like there are definitely couples that make these decisions together. But use your meeting to understand that dynamic, understand the husband's interest, get insight, figure out creative ways that if they're not willing to meet with you, maybe they have an expertise that you could use, like if you're going to a rebranding, could the husband who's a marketing exec be of value to you in a discussion that gives you face time that gets you to build a relationship so that you will take the meeting in the future, right? Are you having an event? Can they both come? If they do, are you sitting the right person at their table to make sure you're building a relationship with the husband? But don't diminish the power of the wife in this situation, or one member of the couple in any situation to be a powerful player and you may only ever need to meet with the wife. Wouldn't that be great? If you build a great relationship with that one person, maybe you equip them with what they need to make the case to their partner. And so meet with them. Okay, I love that you, you know, I really... Jeffrey, I hope this helps. And I also, I don't wanna be like super ethnocentric, but Jeffrey writing to us from Lexington, Kentucky, and I know that some of the issues that we have geographically throughout our country make the donor experience relationship with development directors a little different as well. So maybe that's something put into play. But yeah, I'm really interested in how you framed that. I like what you had to say on that. Yeah, Julia, the other thing I'm thinking about now that just given that additional comment that you just made is, right, I think we often think like one person has to hold a relationship with a couple or a person, like one entity at the organization should own a relationship. And that is like bad practices for lots of reasons, right? If that person transitions. So like also think about like maybe it's just that you're not the right person for the husband. Maybe there needs to be another, there's an opportunity to engage the CEO or the senior program director or somebody else in the organization to build a relationship with that person. Maybe you have to build it separately to get the joint buy-in. Wow, okay, you blow my mind several times in just the last 30 minutes. Yeah, I don't know if I've really seen that at play, but I like that approach. I do. Because there are definitely people that do not mesh with me and don't wanna meet with me. And they get another person to lead that relationship building effort. And that doesn't mean I can't inform or be part of the strategy of cultivation. It just means I'm not the person to be the relationship holder. Well, at different points in our lives, we have different interests or we have different abilities to engage. So if you had one spouse that was maybe in the construction industry and you're working on a capital campaign for a new building, they might really be involved in that. And yet you might have another spouse that's like, no, I'm much more engaged in XYZ and they get moved in that path. So I see that, I think that's really, really wise. Wow, this has been amazing. I suspect Ms. Howard, you are gonna be back on with us. I would love that, this has been so fun. You rock because you gave me some really new and interesting ideas. Hey, checkoutmentoring.org. I mean, first of all, damn impressive when you get a verb to become a good name. I'm just like, well, before me. Yeah, it had to be like in the first five minutes when 30 years ago, I'm sure. I just think she was open. Yeah, that is amazing. Mentoring.org, check them out. Wow, an amazing website that really connects communities and people and engagement. And I just, I bookmarked it. I have to tell you, Kristen, because I was just so enamored by the different thoughts that you were reporting on and sharing and encouraging. And mentoring is a part, I think what builds success in our nation and certainly within the nonprofit sector. We need this. We definitely need this. So check out Kristen Howard. She's gonna be reappearing with us for sure because I loved what she had to say. So I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American nonprofit academy. Jared Ransom, my co-host, the nonprofit nerd will be back with us on Monday. Hey everybody, we just wanna quickly mention that we're doing our second annual viewer survey. Please help us out by letting us know what is of interest to you. We say this all the time yesterday was our 400th episode. We thought this would be a two-week gig. I mean, that's kind of how I wrote to Jared and to doing this. And now we're coming on two years. We have so much more to talk about. We have so many more ideas and great guests. But at the base of it, we wanna know what you want to know. So reach out to us on the survey and let us know. You're gonna be hearing more about this as we move forward. Again, we wanna thank all of our sponsors without you. We would not be here and we are so grateful. As we are grateful to Kristen Howard, Development Director of Mentor. You've been a rock star, sister. Thank you, thanks for having me so far. It's been a lot of fun. We wanna wish everyone a wonderful and restful weekend. And we wanna end with the message that we end every episode. Stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here on Monday.