 But I do want to kick us off and get us started because we have got a powerhouse today. Jonathan joins us, Jonathan McCoy and Becky. I'm remissed, Becky, but I'm going to say Indicott, is that correct? I'm so proud of you, you nailed it. So good. Phew, because we did not practice that. I am still glad to have both of you here with We Are For Good and you are going to be talking to us about rethinking that employee giving campaign. But before we do that, we always start every episode by extending our deepest, sincerest appreciation and gratitude to our presenting sponsors. You can see them here on the screen. And if you have not checked them out online, please do that. I know yesterday was National Nonprofit Day. And I just want to say National, National Nonprofit Week, month, year, because holy hell, we all like deserve some love. And it's just been just quite, quite a journey. And we are so grateful to have our supporters supporting you to do more good. Julia Patrick had this wonderful idea about 350 plus episodes ago. She's actually in Montana this week working with a client. But Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm Jarrett Ransom, also known as the nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. And I am so honored and privileged to be alongside Julia for these 350 plus episodes and to have both Jonathan and Becky on here with We Are For Good. So welcome. Hey, thank you so much. I'm so glad to be in your house. It feels like mom's house. Like it's just nice. We should have worn our yoga pants or something. I mean, you're not. That's not what's on my bottom. Terry cloth shorts, guilty confession, being authentic. I love it. So for those of you that might have heard the chitty chat chat, and again, that's our formal term for pre episode conversation. But we open our digital doors and we like to let our guests in. So Becky and Jonathan and I have already really just like shot straight to the heart with having some really cool conversations. So I'm excited to learn more from both of you. But today's episode, and I know we could talk for hours about a lot of different conversations. But today in particular is that employee giving campaign. Yeah, it's kind of a funny topic, right? Who cares this much about employee giving? We like love it. We love it the most. And I want to share a little bit of our story of why that is. Please do. And I want to know like, who are the two of you and who is we are for good? And like, why are you here? Oh my gosh, I love her style. Kick it off, John. And you have cooler glasses than me. I don't know where they are, but I'm hoping they're going to shine on your face in a little bit. So Becky and I met, she hired me as her intern 15 years ago at the Oklahoma State University Foundation. And we never left each other's sides. We love philanthropy. We love threading marketing with fundraising and just love what it can do. So we stayed a few years in higher ed and then went into healthcare. And that's really where this planted a seed for employee giving. We went into a statewide organization that had 10,000 employees that literally had a very, very tiny amount of employee giving happening. I think less than 300 people. Yeah, it was like 300 people out of 10,000. And so I'm threading this together with our We Are For Good story because it became our pet project. We were like, how can we go ask the community to give to this really important organization that we believed in if we ourselves, as an organization, weren't giving and weren't involved in philanthropy and understanding the power of it too. And so we just made it our mission to make a disruptive campaign and approach that would go to the heart of why we exist. Why is a hospital raising money? It's already kind of complicated in a lot of ways how the funding works, but how can we bring people along in this process? And it's where we really grew up, I would say, in knowing how to build a movement and knowing what that looks like and shooting for higher level goals, not just raising dollars, but building a group of believers that believed in your mission and what that can do to transform the culture of philanthropy and ignite a worldwide movement or a nationwide movement or whatever area you're trying to face. So all that was happening in Becky and I have always just wanted to create space, create community for people that have like-minded ideas. And that's kind of planted the seeds for We Are For Good. I will not hijack, I'll let you- You did an amazing job. I'm not going to stop you. You're on a roll. I mean, I think if you want to put an umbrella over We Are For Good, we are marketers disguised as fundraisers. We're ridiculous, idealists. We really think we can change the world. And this employee giving campaign and this idea honestly for We Are For Good was birthed from watching this movement happen within our health care organization with employee giving. And so I don't know if anybody out there has been tasked where your administration has said go do this campaign. Go do this initiative. I want to start this, which is exactly how our story started. And we started researching what is everybody else doing in the employee giving space? And it was ugly. It was terrible. It was kitschy. It was impersonal. It was transactional. And John and I just kind of looked at each other and said, what if we threw the script completely out? What if we broke every single rule? And what if we just brought humanity to this? What if we took out higher administration telling us what we needed to do? What if we go to the base and just ask, what's your passion? What's important to you? And we lifted from there. And we just made it super simple, incredibly personal. We took the corporate giant out of it and the results were crazy. Yeah. I mean, it started with this bedrock event we call an ethos. And that is like we sat down. I remember sitting in Becky's office and sketching this out and say, what do we want to be true of this? And if we're trying to really build a movement that is garnering believers, not just donors, people that really believe and understand what's happening, we thought if we can activate those 10,000 employees, then we could get more patients to believe in this and their families and their communities and all the clubs they're involved in. And so totally the ripple effect. And so the ethos that we baked in is like, we want to build a campaign that everybody matters. Like we see you housekeeper, we see you CEO, and you're the same, you know, and how do we bake that into the DNA of it? How do we make it about the act of giving that's personal to you, your personal best, and not necessarily some overarching participation goal. It was about just galvanizing believers. And those are the kind of threads we pulled together for we are for good to say we don't have business degrees or actually have a marketing degree, but I don't have a business degree. We don't have to start a business, but we know how to build a movement. What if we just built this movement of like-minded people that want to change the world? And so that's how we are for good started. We set up a podcast one year ago from next week, which is really fun. We're going to have a smash cake. I wanted to have a smash cake at my 40th, but now I'm three years past that. So maybe I'll do it at my 40th. Do it at your next one. It's never too late for a smash cake. Exactly. I agree. Well, I want to jump in real quick because all of this is amazing, and I'm starting to hear and really understand the value of employee giving. And I also heard one of you, I think, in particular, talk about this word disruption. And I love it. I embrace change. I embrace disruption, especially like, what if we just threw everything out and we figured out what really works, but I want to call the elephant in the room. And that is like, should we be asking our employees for giving? Because I know that is so taboo in some places. But what I just heard you say, Jonathan, truly is you're building a culture of philanthropy. Yeah. No, you're completely right. And I think that's a natural place to start. And everyone is always asking that question. What's the appropriate tone? And for us, we thought if we adopted the belief that we're going to treat employees with the same respect, same dignity that we would our donors, that we can feel really great about the interactions. That's why I struggle. And this literally happened yesterday. So I love that you ask this because I'm on lots of different forums, always listening and trying to hear what people are talking about and what are kind of some of the trends. And in healthcare, it's rampant. And if you're listening to this, I may be calling you out if you do this, but it's very common to say, we're going to run a campaign and we're going to have 100% participation because everybody's going to fill out a paper form, whether you're going to give or not. Because I want to hear that you heard the message and I want to hear that you've decided to get to know. And I'm like, would you ever do that to a donor? Would you ever do that to your board? Like, I mean, the level of intensity, I'm like, I would feel aggressive coming to an employee saying that, how are you in a hospital right now? But the culture that we built through this campaign has been recession proof. It has been COVID proof. People are connected to their passion. They're not connected because they feel obligated to give. So even if it's a less participation rate, we were great with that because to say we have now three, we had 3,500 donors when we left. So it grew 10x over the period of time. And those people got it. They weren't giving because they felt pressured. They gave because they were connected to the cause. I'd rather have that than 100% any day of the week. And for us, we believe it's the depth of culture. So that's kind of our naysayer still. And it's just, we don't want to take the joy out of what the effect of philanthropy can do for someone. And especially right now, I think of healthcare specifically, our healthcare workers are beat, brow beaten. They are so tired. And so we weren't even sure last year if the campaign would succeed, because I think we're raising about $15,000 from those 310 employees, the campaigns now almost at a million dollars, that it raises for this organization because people are so bought in. And you don't want to take that opportunity and make that decision for them that they cannot give. It doesn't have to be a hard sell. It's just, hey, we're doing this thing. What's your passion? Do you want to give there? Here's the impact that your gift's going to make when we pair it with others. And here's the project that you're going to be giving to, total transparency, making impact happen. That is the way to connect. And you don't want to take that away from someone because it is life-giving for them. And it translates at the bedside. If you're at a higher education institution in the classroom, if you're at a homeless shelter, it's in those social services. So it's translatable across all fields. We have taught it in so many different sectors. And we just think it's groundbreaking. And I feel like you've touched on the visual on the screen here is really that roadmap. What does that roadmap look like? And I appreciate all that you've said so far. So for those that are watching and listening and thinking, okay, okay, I'm bought in. I do think that there is probably a better way to do an employee giving campaign. What might this roadmap look like? What are some of those best practices? Yeah, I'm so glad you asked this question. Seriously, I'm excited. You guys even got a slide. That's exciting. So, you know, for us, we, I don't know if we coined the term, we just started calling it impact led staging. We just love this idea that we let the impact lead the staging of the campaign. And so if this is your first campaign, it's a little harder because you don't have something established. Most of us have some type of employee giving. But if you really look at that impact, whatever the campaign's going to do, and you've got to attach it to something tangible, I mean, these employees are going to know if you're using a stock photo, which is what another thing we teach. It's like, why are we using stock photos with our own people? Take a picture of them in the hall, right? And they love, know and love. Show their own faces. Yes. So they don't want to see a stock photo of a piece of equipment you're going to buy, you know, off of a sales PDF or something. They want to see the actual equipment in the room with the cords looking ugly and see an actual piece of equipment connected with serving a patient. And so we believe that is the catalyst. So like you talk about impact and that becomes this bedrock for you to talk about the campaign. But we never wanted to look at employee giving because part of our story, you know, we didn't really want to go outside of the walls before we went inside the walls just to galvanize that support. And it creates this beautiful narrative in this staging process that if you show impact at the core level to get the people bought in, you can kind of go through different ripple layers. And I don't know if we want to talk through each of those. Yeah, I think, I think we'll walk through them because if you're a serial note taker like I am for anyone out there, this is the point where it's like, I draw pictures she takes them. Well, that's a perfect kind of writer. So, you know, you get us and where we're at. But your campaign really begins the day, next year's campaign begins the day after your last one concludes. And so thinking about it in a mindset of it's not the day you launch, it's actually the day you end is when the next campaign starts. That's when stewardship starts. That's when engagement starts. That's when you start thanking. And then you start the process of making the money work. And we had a commitment we spent our money within the year, which is very difficult for nonprofits. And it's kind of again, a disruptive thought. But we wanted to be able to show impact in action before we launch the next campaign, because that's going to build trust that's going to build transparency. And so the steps that we would take is one, we would really start with, do you have a match? Do you have somebody that you can go to for leveraging an employee match? I don't think this is something that people think about very often. We worked again at a health care organization. We had a volunteer auxiliary at each of our hospitals. We went to them and said, would you be willing to pour into this? And we got, I want to say $225,000 amount of money. We had no idea they would give it that level. So we had that leverage. It could be boards, it could be vendors, it could be community, it could be anything. It could be just passionate advocates. So that's number one. Number two is going to your executive leadership. And this is probably about maybe 10 or 12 weeks out from before your campaign. And we don't like the 100% because we want people to give purely. We don't want them to feel pressured to give. And we know that if they feel like they want to give, they're going to give more and they're going to give every single year. And so, but however, the asterisk on that is, it is important that your leadership gift because that sets the tone for the organization. And that, that's true in any organization. If you're filling out a grant, you want your board giving before you ask a foundation or an organization to give. So start with your base and then they can start socializing to the people underneath them. You know, we probably had 75 people that were in upper management that we would solicit. We would give them their shirt. They would pick their passion and all of a sudden that visual branding starts happening and people know that the campaign is coming. Then we solicit our staff. Don't forget your staff, your foundation staff. They are integral to your campaign. Ask them why they're giving the whole story out of them. It's going to make it so much more personal. Okay, then the third one is you're going to go to your donors who gave last year. So we're actually going to start the campaign probably two weeks before we actually launched to one to two weeks before with last year's donors. We treat them like VIPs. We give them early access. And I will tell you that we built in tracks where our retention would get up to 85% and we would get 60% of our campaign goal before we ever launched with executives and with retention. Amazing. And then you launch to everybody else. And by the time you do that, you can see you have a ground swell of support. Your impact report has gone out four weeks before the campaign has started. So people are like, oh my gosh, my impact made a difference. Look at the impact I was able to have. Look what's bought and working. And you can just feel the energy growing into the campaign. It feels natural. It feels low pressure. And we do it with story and engagement. It's so much less about the ask and the more about how do we engage everyone? How do we create community around it? How do we make it whimsy and fun? Like we should have had glasses with tape on them that say the nonprofit nerd. Statistically some did have glasses. I'm sure they did. I'm sure they did, but they probably didn't help. On brand. On brand. You do that internally, but then you've got this ground swell and don't stop because that's when we can go to the community and say, look at the investment of all these layers. That's right. So we would thread it into direct mail after that into many campaigns to finish funding a project or into major gift proposals to show up with a proposal and say, hey, we already had 20,000 committed from employees. Will you help us get over the line with this? It's such an easy yes, you know, and it feels like the timeline of this road map is is beautifully laid out. So let me just pull this right. So the employee giving campaign, that's what we're calling the EGC employee giving campaign. This was a beautiful demonstration, Becky, of the road map, the timeline, and you're right, Jonathan. So at that point, it's like, okay, we've already achieved this goal. Will you help us, you know, to the next level or take us across that finish line? Because you what you just described in this timeline was there's already so much stewardship and that VIP feeling that, you know, we, everyone wants to be a part of a winning team. So you've built that momentum and and it really, you know, pulls it pulls it into furthering that campaign. So I don't know if I interrupted you, Jonathan, because I feel like you're going somewhere with a conversation, but in regards to leading this campaign, like who are the people that are really in charge of talking with the employees, making those asks, and is it different based off of who the person that they're asking might be, for instance, that CEO versus a nurse or something like that? Well, can I tell you how we failed at this to start with that question? Yeah, we knew higher ed, we didn't know healthcare, you know, when we came in. And I think we definitely started with this idea that our foundation, that's 10 of us, we're going to take on the 10,000. And it's literally like David and Goliath, but for years, and you can look back, I would say the first two to three years, we definitely garnered believers that love the mission, but we were like, oh, we're going to handle the campaign, we've got it, we're going to take 60 presentations each, be all over campus, drive all over the state, and ran ourselves into the ground. We were, we were creating our own plateau. And so this may be a really elementary lesson. I hope everybody that's watching this has already learned this, but employee giving cannot be staff led. It's got to be mobilized by the people. I mean, it's about people, it's always about people. And so how do you get more people involved? And so when we added in more layers of involvement, so at the departmental level, at the facility level, at the leadership level, we had people, you know, as I had people to not only hype up during those stages, but people to mobilize, you know, people that I can activate and, you know, the lead on the ground can focus on really activating those people, giving them information, giving them encouragement, shouting out, and applauding really cool things that are happening and leading the charge and getting out of some of the details that should be happening by the people that they know, love, and trust that are in their floor or on their unit or whatever. So maybe another disruptive question. So let me preface it by saying, get, get ready, right? Oh, I love, I love these. Okay. I don't know. Yeah, we'll go look it up and we'll come back to you. It's kind of twofold, right? So one is, is the employee giving campaign only for annual giving or can it also be done for capital campaign? So that's, that's one question, but I'm going to ask the other one simultaneously. Oftentimes, I feel like our employees, especially here in my community, they are accustomed to giving to like, let's say, a united way. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you asked this. Okay, so how is this different? Because I remember having some of those Braulby conversations when I was new in my career, and I was like, I don't have money to give. I have time to give and I will volunteer, but I really don't have that money, you know, at a capacity. So employee giving campaigns, to sum all this up, how does this work for the organization, perhaps annual campaign, capital campaign, and then what the heck do we do with something like an additional community campaign? Okay, I'll take community campaign if you take capital campaign, or do you want to switch with Mr. annual giving, you should take that. Okay, so go ahead, you go ahead. Yeah, I mean, like we said, we started threading things together, and you know, we didn't actually run into, we did have a capital campaign during our tenure at Integrus. And so what we did is we tried to integrate it, I mean, as much as possible, because we're not advocating to like create a bunch of projects that are not aligned with the strategic direction, we are definitely advocating find the ones that have great stories and that are meaningful and that don't seem like, you know, filling a hole in the supply closet or something like that. What is something that has a warm feel. So we integrated the capital campaign straight into it, we introduced multi year gifts for leadership level, if they wanted to pledge that out, kind of a new thing, but allowed it to be one of the same. I mean, I, there's, there's places that are saying this is separate from this. It kind of got muddy because our, our ultimate passion was getting people to connect with their passion. That was their passion. We're not going to get wrapped around the axle that they need to make this specific gift in this. The ethos was we want you to believe and get involved in philanthropy. And so following the spirit of that, it was very organic, I would say, we didn't step on each other's toes too bad. And I would just say for anyone that's ever been in a campaign, you understand that a campaign is a season in time. You know, it's a moment. And so, you know, for us, we were in the middle of a, you know, about a $50 million campaign to build this revolutionary addiction center. So we added, you know, addiction and mental health as a passion that you could give to, you knew exactly what you were going to give to, you were going to give to a scholarship fund for someone who could not afford their care or for something specific there in each year, we might change it up, you know, what, what the money is actually going to, but we 100% saw that as the grassroots portion of the campaign. And of course we would want to invite employees to be a part of it. And the stories that came from the addiction that we were not prepared for were were earth shattering and heartwarming at the same time. So I would say you're missing out if you're not integrating employees into the major strategic initiative of your hospital. And so on outside competing campaigns, I'm so glad you asked that because when we first started employee giving, our leadership said, we want an employee giving campaign go and do we don't know what that is, but go build it. Oh, but by the way, this was an actual quote, we don't want it to interfere with the United Way campaign. We were United Way, Paysetter Organization, we love United Way, we actually have parts of our healthcare organization that benefit from United Way, but the culture of philanthropy was clearly not built up in our organization when your administration is saying we would rather give to an outside organization than buy into our own. So we played very well in the sandbox and we built a structure, we separated our campaign from six months away, so completely different season than the United Way campaign. We made sure that everything about our process was contrary to what they get during United Way. United Way, they get a tchotchke every single day, they get an email with a giveaway, they've always got a theme of like Casino Royale or something. We were like, no, this is going to be about our people, our impact, our mission. And so naturally and organically, I will say, and I don't say this to be, you know, diminishing in any way to United Way, but our campaigns went like this. And when people could see the impact of their own gift on the front lines, when they could be a part of the miracles happening at the bedside, it changed them. And we watched things happen organically that we could never foretold. They were sharing stuff during the campaign on their social channels, employees. This is why I love it. People commenting, responding, people wanting to give from the outside. We saw retention, employee retention increase, we saw joy in the workplace increase. So there's HR benefits, you know, there's, there's so much that goes into feeling good and feeling trust and transparency in your organization. And that is why this campaign cannot be transactional. So tap into it please and cast the vision because it's worth it. That is phenomenal advice because leading an employee giving campaign, I'm going to say it's not easy, but it's so worth it. I love that it has these other very tangible benefits that you named Becky just like employee retention. Because as the workforce currently is, right, we really need to work on retaining our rock star talent. And, you know, we've already talked ad nauseam, not, not this episode, but in our sector at large about that pay gap, you know, and how the nonprofit community, you know, deserves to make pennies on a dollar because, well, that's what we're doing here. And it's like, no, there's so many other benefits. And, and the nonprofit sector at large is such a large workforce. It is, it's an engine. Huge workforce. And I say, I think there's 1.8 million nonprofits in the US. So there is enough of us, you know, to go around. So we want, we should, we want to create a culture of philanthropy within our internal systems. I think you said it best, Jonathan. What was it like, you want to go inside the walls before you go outside? Yeah. And I feel like we feel like that as the family units too, you know, it's just like, how do you recognize philanthropy before you go ask somebody? I feel like that in fundraising, I want to personally give whatever level is meaningful to me before I'm going to go sit across from a donor at some level. It just changes the conversation. It changes the awkwardness because I'm an awkward person. So that helps me, that's just a hack. And I feel like it works at scale too, because it just gives you this incredible heartbeat that you can talk about in the community that that is just an incredible, I don't know, launchpad. Yeah. And it's like, if you do that, it's not about you asking the donor to give you money. It's about saying, Hey, I've done this. It's had this kind of an impact on my life. This is what we can do together. Join me. And then it becomes a partnership and it's totally equitable. And then we break out of that scarcity mindset that you were just talking about in pay and the way we value each other. And I mean, this, I really think that employee giving, if you can do it well, it can be the bedrock of like a philanthropic revolution. You can teach your administrators and your leadership, you could teach your boards, you could teach your community the value of what can happen when you start at the bottom and build up. So many, so many good things. Would one of you please tell us like where we can find more information about you and maybe even plug your podcast because you're not a podcast, but you were absolutely a podcast. And so I'd love for everyone to know where they can find more information. Thank you so much. Yeah. Please come find us. We are real humans that would love to meet you. So you could email us at john at we are for good, Becky's Becky at we are for good. And come to we are for good.com slash hello, if you want to join our mailing list, we're the we are for good podcast on everywhere the podcast art, we drop three times a week, which you know, we're, we're topped by the nonprofit show here. I can't really brag about that. We don't do five a week, but that was always my dream, but Becky kind of now now hard pass. So we're doing three a week, but it's a labor of love. I totally get it. Yes. And I really are interested employee giving. We love freebies. We have a four part series on our podcast on how to build this. And so if you need the framework, you want to go into more details, just head up to our we are for good.com. Well, thank you both so very much. Julia Patrick is remiss in joining this conversation. Julia. I know I hope she's doing well. I'm Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd. Again, thank you, thank you, thank you to all of our presenting sponsors. We are so grateful to have your investment, not only in the nonprofit show, but truly our community at large. And these companies exist to help you do more good. So please do check them out because they are here in every corner of the community to support you and your mission driven goals. Well, I hope that we can schedule some more time because I want to narrow out even more. And these verticals that you've talked about Becky certainly add me on to the children in philanthropy because that is a huge passion of mine. And so I just I appreciate the work that the two of you are doing. Happy National Nonprofit. I'm going to say week back at you. Thank you for the good work you're putting into the world. We so appreciate it. Thank you both. And for those of you that have joined us for this amazing conversation with Jonathan and Becky, we are for good. And please do look up more for the employee giving campaign because I love, love, love that these are shaking up some, you know, old past kind of best practices. Let's do it, let's do it in a new way. And it's really important how fun with it as well. So thanks again for everyone who joined us. Please come back and join us tomorrow. And until then, please stay well so you can do well. Thanks everyone and we'll see you soon.