 Welcome to the nonprofit show. We are so glad you're starting your week with us, or maybe not starting your week if you found this on many of our streaming platforms. I am thrilled to have Nicholas Mekens joining us today. Nick serves as the co-founder and CEO at Lux Give, and he's here to share with us about fundraising with luxury travel and what that looks like for your NPO. So stay with us, and before we dive deep, we want to remind you, our viewers, as well as our listeners across the globe, who we are. So hello to Julia Patrick. Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy that had this wonderful idea that when she created it, I'm not so sure I thought it was wonderful, but I stuck with it. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. And we did start these episodes in March of 2020, and they are, as we've referred to them, a going Jesse. 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And for those of you that are podcast listeners, I know I am, you can queue us up wherever you stream your podcast as well. Just tell that little smart person in your TV or your telephone, hey, pull up the nonprofit show. And in fact, this show, the one that we're doing live right now with Nicholas will be on in just a few hours on all of these streaming platforms. So without further ado, again, I really want to welcome to today's episode, Nicholas Meakins, co-founder, CEO at Luxgive. Welcome, Nick. Hi, Jared and Julia, thanks for having me. How are you? Thank you for being here. We are fantastic. This is a conversation I've been looking forward to. I've had the privilege of speaking with your co-founder, Bobby, and really nerding out about this topic. But for our viewers and listeners, would you please share a little bit about yourself, Nick, and then a little bit about Luxgive as we dive into the conversation? Sure, happy to. I am CEO, co-founder of Luxgive, but I think more importantly, father to beautiful little girls. And yeah, I come from the luxury travel industry, and that's really my background. Before then though, I was a volunteer worker. My parents were volunteer workers in both India, Africa, in Ghana, and in Argentina. So I kind of grew up on the field doing voluntary work with them. And then I moved myself into a completely different industry, which is the luxury travel industry, and only as of like four years ago, really found how we can marry that together with fundraising and supporting nonprofits and being part of the positive change, which is incredible for me to be part of. And then yeah, we started Luxgive about four years ago to 2019, just before something happened in the world. I don't know what it was, but we should get on and everyone's covering their mouth. And I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I know what wasn't happening along with that was events and travel. So it actually gave us some time to build out our product a bit better and just more completely. And we'd already seen the effect that we could have with our product and with luxury travel in fundraising world. And so it was more a matter of, okay, well, I think the world's gonna open up again at some point, so we'll be ready when they are. And come fast forward a year and a half later, that's what happened. And now we're seeing just incredible growth. Our team now is almost 40 people, which is crazy to think a year and a half ago, we're four or five people. And yeah, there's no real science slowing down here. And really what we put that down to is the effectiveness of our ability to be able to fundraise for the nonprofits that we're working with. And yeah, what we do is provide luxury travel experiences for them at their events, which we're gonna go into more detail soon. So talk to us then about that, because your story is fascinating that you would have an idea and you'd be all good to go and then just run up against this brick wall that really changed the trajectory of your company as all nonprofits. And I've got to believe there's some pent up demand here that's gonna work in your favor, but step back and talk to us about how luxury travel really can fit into fundraising. And more importantly, now at this point in time, when we're going back to the Gallows. Absolutely. As you said, we've gone through a journey here, which has been changing and been shifting underneath us. We are now in a place I feel though that we're almost back to normal, I think across the board. There's been some slight changes, I think, some evolutions, I think, as they've come through the years that now people are starting to do more hybrid events as an example. So they've gone comfortable with promoting their events online and delivering them in that kind of format. So now it's like, why not reach your wider audience for those people that aren't there on the night? So with that aside though, I think those in-person events are really back in full flow from what we've seen. And I think as of last year, there were still probably people that were not having events as a result of something that happened in the world. But I'm not hearing that now. So that's huge. And how does that fit? And I guess with luxury travel, it's an interesting question because again, four years ago, I probably been like, hey, can you tell me how this fits in? But I think at that time, I was at a fork in the road, something from my career as well. I'd worked with two of the top companies for luxury villa vacations, luxury retreats. And they were subsequently sold to Airbnb, became Airbnb Luxe and just really had their very high-end stuff. It's a sort of separate platform of theirs. And then Travel Keys, which was the number two player really in the industry of that time as well. And then a core hotel, it's a big hotelier, I came and bought them up. And at that point, I'm like, okay, well, what do I do? That's my industry, that's who I know. We can do that again. And then I really stumbled across the consignment world and the fact that you can actually use these to raise funds for nonprofits. And this immediately spoke to me. We'd already had a bit of interest before in our previous lives from nonprofits asking us to create villa experiences for them for their events. But they were doing all the running around. They were doing all that work. I'm trying to like, okay, I need this, I need that on top. Oh, how much would it cost if I opened up for this much period of time? Which was a different pricing model than what we were used to, which was like, hey, hi, Jarrett, you would like Jamaica from the 7th to the 14th of April? Okay, this is what's available. How many bedrooms do you need? And it was very specific. So doing all that run around the backend work to create something of great value for nonprofits, that was something that we felt we could do using our current network of homes. And we had access to over 10,000 of the top villas and homes, chalets around the world, private islands. So we went to work putting together these experiences and that's the part that we knew. So that we were comfortable with. Like, I can get you the best stuff anywhere in the world. That I know. I know hospitality, this is what I've been doing. Can do with our eyes closed, with our one hand behind the back. Not as good with two hands, but so. And then what we had to figure out then was what did the nonprofits need? That was the part that we really need to understand. That's what we've gotten a lot better at over the last four years. And so we took their events and we're looking, what's their goals from these events? And what we saw was that these events are really being held to bring together their key donors and build and reinforce those relationships. Thank them for their generosity over the year. I mean, they rely on these donors throughout the year. Give them some excitement, some entertainment and ultimately thank you for what you're doing. And then almost as a sidebar to raise some funds in that event as well. They'll receive donations throughout the year independently of this. So sometimes for a lot of nonprofits, this isn't where they make the most. This is an event that they wanna build those relationships, build up that rapport, say hi in person, thanks. Feel the camaraderie, the community around them, around this cause. And there in, when we were talking about the raising funds, we saw that there was a few different ways that they do that. Sponsorships, for one, paddle raise being very, very effective way of raising funds. And then there was these raffles and auctions. And the high ticket items were always the travel ones. So this is where I was like, being okay, this works. And what we saw were very similar and repetitive, I guess, options coming up in these events. Hotel-based ones, and they're good, resorts and everything. But I guess where we saw the opportunity for the nonprofits and us was that when I look at a hotel, I kind of know how much it's worth in some way. If I say a Fairmont for the night, how much is it one night at a hotel? 500 bucks, I don't know. Like right in my mind right now, I could probably put somewhere a pin on where it would be. Most people will as well. Whereas if I tell you, four bedrooms in Turks and Caicos on the beach were eight people. Oh wait, that could be $100,000. It could be $5,000, like who knows, honestly. It's like how long is a piece of string at this point? And so that's where we saw, okay, because it's less quantifiable, I think these homes and these experiences, it makes it a much more effective tool for fundraising. And that was the part that really stuck with us. And again, got some good product market fit just before the world shut down. And that made us think, we're onto something here. Let's continue making these experiences and build a system that we can scale for when the world opens up. And so far we've seen it really work. We're 140% raise over the consignment price, which is interesting. And I know you had spoken earlier about multiples and how we might be able to make those more effective. But yeah, so that's really how they fit together, tapping into the donor's travel budgets. And these are people that have disposable income. That's why they're donating thousands in the first place and making sure that you give them the sort of experience that they're looking for. You know, I'm really curious, and you had mentioned tapping into the donor's travel budget. Let's talk about the demographic of these donors because I'm really curious, you know, with this pent up demand or interest to travel, has that demographic shifted? So what is the demographic truly of donors, you know, specifically for the luxury travel? Interesting question. Again, it is a sort of how long it's a piece of string question because it varies so wildly. And I think it kind of goes back to what is luxury in the first place for us. And this is a question that's constantly being raised. What is luxury? What does it mean? And if I look at, you know, for me, that varies from one destination from one experience to the next wildly. Like if I look at what we have in Patagonia, okay, you got no Wi-Fi, you got no pool. That's unacceptable if you're in St. Bart's. Right, right, exactly. But I'm in Barbados, I got staff. No, you're not gonna get that in St. Bart's, you know? So it depends on where you are, what you're looking at is, it defines what luxury is. But ultimately what we see is that, you know, these people, they're of a demographic that they know what they want. And they expect consistency, reliability, for one, good communication, they want us to understand their needs and respond to those and be proactive about that. And obviously with a little bit of flair to show them they're special, these people like to be a bit pampered. It doesn't have to be something crazy, but you know, you hear that, you know, their favorite thing is cookies and cream. Okay, but that by the side of the bed or something like this. Oh, wow, that's all you need sometimes. It's just something to show them that they're special. But the demographic of people, it is wildly, it varies across the board. And, you know, we work with a lot of, you know, private schools as nonprofits. And you know, these are all in that category that they will take these sort of vacations they expect the best. And what that is depends on the person, to be honest. You know, some people are quite happy to go to Patagonia and do some glamping. Others, absolutely not. And that's where it's about understanding your donor and speaking to, you know, us as the travel experts of knowing, okay, well, you know, this would appeal to this range. This will appeal to that range. We also have a winner's choice packages, which sounds like that's what the winners choose. But actually what it is, is that the winner gets to choose from a variety of different experiences. So that appeals to a wider base as well. Some, you know, some people want to go domestic. Other people want to go, you know, skiing. And others just want the beach. And so we create these two, trying to appeal to a wider range of people and understanding their needs. And again, providing them with that consistency, speaking to the nonprofits, you've got to understand that these are their most prized assets, the donors. And it's not worth the $5, $10,000 they're gonna get from that trip that you sold for them if you ruin the relationship or if you damage their trust. So then you need to take care of them the best possible, make sure that when things go wrong, cause things inevitably will sometimes go wrong. You are there, you have a response and you can make it right. And let me ask you this question because, you know, for those of you that are watching or maybe just jumped on, the ecosystem of this transaction really is occurring at a gala or an event, correct? Where there's an auctioneer and there's some sort of engagement with that group in that ballroom or meeting room, whatever. How are you seeing some of these hybrid events or online auction pieces? Or is the travel still being held to the live auction piece? We've seen it diversify definitely in recent months in the last year really. And it's still predominantly more effective, I think in a live auction environment. It is, you know, when you're shopping online and you have that moment to be like, okay, well, what do I want? You know, is that, is these four, five options that my nonprofit has offered me really gonna be like, okay, that's what I want. We'd have to get pretty lucky in some cases. And we do have some that would do well in that environment, which are definitely much more unique, experiential sort of packages for that. But I think in the live auction, again, it's the camaraderie, you know, you have your cocktail, you're competitive against the person, you only have a table and you wanna support your cause. And I think that's where you get the thanks and you get the recognition there. And that's where we see it is very effective. And on the backend, what we do to kind of solve to the problem of like, well, did we hit this on the head? Like just out of chance or not. What we do on the backend is we try and tailor that for them. So when they come to us and we fulfill it, we don't say, hey, sorry, Julia, you got five nights in Turks and Caicos, two bedrooms, doesn't matter if you want three bedrooms or you wanna six nights. No, what do you like? We have access to the world here. And these kind of donors, these high net worth individuals, they don't like to be told, no. They like to be told, okay, well, it costs you $800 more for this or something. Okay, oh, well, that's what I want. And this is their time. They wanna maximize it. They don't wanna be told, you're gonna fit in this little box over here and that's it. And so what we do as a result, we get people much happier with their trip because we're able to customize it exactly for them after the fact, as opposed to going to the nonprofit and sometimes they'll know their donors really well. Okay, this person we made a trip for, there was one of the Andy Roddick Foundation and to think so for $400,000. They raised hundreds of thousands of dollars off that package of loan and that was custom. See, going to the Australian Open, meeting pros, vineyard tours, all this kind of helicopter tours, it was all out. When it's at that level and you know your donors and you're speaking to a few people, sure. If not, we try and make it a little bit more generic because after the fact, that's when we put our magic touch on it because everyone's different and we're not gonna try and guess your needs without having spoken to you. I think that's just a faux pas in hospitality in general. Yeah, interesting. Well, let's talk then, you know, a little bit more about these costs that are associated with it, as well as the process of travel because I hear you say, you know, Lux give really does pay that attention to the donor specifically. So talk to us about these associated costs if you would, Nick. Absolutely, and this is the difficult part, I think, of coming up with the experiences, honestly was the pricing of it and how to get this right, what's the balance because you've got two clients. One is the nonprofit. You wanna raise as much funds for them as possible, but then you have to bridge the gap between whatever you raised because we'll have like a $3,000, $4,000 experience cost to the nonprofit that will easily sell for $12,000, $15,000. Now there's a big gap between the two and even with the discounts that the nonprofit get for what we're offering them, there's still a gap because we're doing our job so well and raising funds for the nonprofits. Now, how do we bridge that gap, I think, is the twofold. So I think that the first thing is we keep the core costs as low as possible. So we don't include flights as an example. Now that's an exclusion. We never include flights. The reason for this is just add so much extra costs and little value. Anyone can book their own flights and the costs we'd have to build in would have to be based on the most expensive, really. So it doesn't add very much value. It doesn't raise more funds for the nonprofit. And so we're like, no, we don't do that. What we do include is all the extras. No one likes to be told, oh, and then this, and then this, and then this. And I've actually been victim of that recently when I was checking out some experiences. We took part of it on a cruise to see if we wanted to include it in our offerings. And I think it'd be resounding no at this point. But there was just like add on and add on and add on extra fees, you know, oh, there's this clean fee and there's this mandatory grant, a gratuity fee. And then there's this and there's this and it's like you walk away feeling you've been gouged. And so we include all of our taxes, all cleaning fees, all the extras. There's no, okay, and you need a booking fee or service fee or anything like this. The only extras that we charge is if you want more. And this is what we try and do as well is keep it to a minimum. Make these packages simple because if you start adding one, two, three, four experiences on, you're gonna have to get lucky for those to be the four experiences that these people want to do anyway. Now, everyone will go and want to, you know, I want a wine tour, sure, and that's no problem. We'll have a wine tour in Sonoma, that makes sense. But if you start adding on and then this meal and that meal, what if they are allergic to that food or, you know, they don't like sushi or, you know, pizza like, I don't know. These people will go to restaurants anyway. They will go and book two or three other experiences of themselves, you know, pre-stocking in the grocery or fridge. What do you want? You know, if I just guess for you, I'll get half fit right. And you've been like, oh, that was a waste of funds. Again, the nonprofit's not winning and the donor's not winning. So that's really what we try and do to get the best pricing for that. Obviously you have very long windows to travel which you build into it and that's based on our relationships with our suppliers that were able to do that. And ultimately, I think one of the biggest value ads here is the concierge service. So that's something that's very underrated and it was something that was absolutely essential in our previous lives to provide real value was having the concierge team be able to basically be a trip designer. You know, these people know the areas, they know the best places to go, they have all the best connections to suppliers. You know, oftentimes they'll provide you with discounts because like, oh, they have the best boat charters and these people love us. So it's like, because we're signing a business all the time and they're like, oh, give them 20, 30% off, perfect. Hey, by the way, you get this sort of discount. So they get extra value just from the referrals. You know, they'll talk to the winners and be like, okay, what are you going for? Is it celebration? Is it just relaxation? And then based on that, they'll make the recommendations. We just had someone in St. Martin who wants to get some proposed to their fiancee or sorry, to their girlfriend. And he was like, oh, I just want this, this and this. Very simple. And our concierge, she was just like, okay, I heard you tell me this, but what you actually mean is this, this and this. And she went all out, planned everything for them and you know, had like a band. He wanted something playing from an iPhone. She's like, no, we're getting a band. No, we're doing this, we're doing this. And just knocked it out of the park and they came back, flabbergasted like, wow, there is the extra value for that. And that's what's included. Obviously, she said yes, right? Oh yeah, she said yes. It was a resounding yes. It might have worked with the iPhone, but it wouldn't have been the same thing. You know, Nick, it's really interesting because I think it's, I want to be very clear on this. And that is, is that a non-profit, the development director can hand over this transaction. Because I think a lot of times with travel, you know, the development team is like, oh man, I'm going to have to totally get in the weeds on this. But what I hear you saying is that with, you know, the handover, that's removed. That aspect is managed outside of the non-profit. That is absolutely mandatory for us. We don't want them getting involved, to be honest. It's much smoother, much easier. This is what we do, you know, just even from like availability questions and like, you know, transferring over from one destination other, we allow that as well. But you know, let me talk to them, see what they're like, you know, what are you looking for? We can recommend the best destinations based on your profile and everything like that. But yeah, I know it's completely, you know, plug and play and on top of that, you know, I completely get the donated trips and the value there. But then, you know, who's doing the linens? See who's doing the toiletries? You know, who's doing the check-in? Who's doing, you know, there's a lot of different pieces. Are you booking the transfers? Are you asking the owners now for availability and checking, making sure that they're booked off? And there's a lot of moving pieces that we feel that the non-profits time are better spent building their relationships with their donors and the relationships with the donors instead of like doing what we do for a living, which is travel. The other thing I want to mention to this because I feel like, you know, I hear and see this quite a bit, Nick, is the development team or the development committee, right, volunteers will say, we can't do, that's too expensive, right? And so I feel like we development are often adding these auction items with our budget in mind, as opposed to the donor's budget in mind. So I love when you said, you know, like really know your audience. Any tips on that, Nick? Because I would love to see Lux give, you know, at many more of these events, and to get that kind of paradigm shift from, maybe I development person can't afford this, but we have a whole room of donors that absolutely are craving this experience. Can you talk to us about that briefly? Absolutely. And I can actually speak this in compared to our previous lives where that's who we dealt with. And on average, the average expense that we would have on the accommodations alone was $12,500 for our clients. Now that is way higher than any of the packages, the average of packages that we sell. And I think this comes down to exactly that mentality, like they can afford it, you know? And it's, you know, if you're just giving generic stuff, fine, I understand. You know, people aren't going to be bidding that high, but when we're talking about an elevated experience here with the kind of, you know, pre-marketing that you need to do, you have to get people excited about this, videos. We love having videos. Whenever anyone has like a video, well, please put on videos. That's what sells the experience. We show actual photos of the residences and experiences that they're gonna be on. Then you realize that, okay, the budget that you have in mind may not be realistic with what, you know, these people actually are able to afford. $12,500 is very normal. That was our average. And, you know, if we drop that down to five, six, 7,000, you know, we hear a lot of nonprofits like, oh, I don't know about that. Like that's because, you know, that is travel. That's what it costs at the moment. And that's a good experience to have. So one thing that we look at is ticket price as well. So, you know, that's a usually good indicator of, you know, what kind of caliber of donor you're gonna be getting in the room. But as a strategy as a tactic, we do often suggest that you have a couple bands, like especially if you haven't done this before, don't put all your eggs in the basket with one really high end one. Have like that lower end, have that medium, and have a high end. And then, you know what, next year, you know, after the event, we're gonna say what worked, what didn't. Okay, and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna tweak and we're gonna optimize. Cause we wanna make sure that you're raising more year after year, that's the goal. And we will look at, oh wow, that $12,000 one sold like crazy. You should probably get just two high end ones now. Next year or something like that and raise an extra 50 grand. So before we let you go, cause we don't have that much time left, what is the actual or the average revenue share situation? At the very beginning, I thought I heard you say 140%. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So walk us through that really quickly. So what we're saying there is that based on the consignment price, and this is per experience. I'm not talking about like multiples or anything like this at this point. Cause obviously then it just gets higher. But what we're doing is we're looking at the cost of the experience. So if you have a $4,000 package, how much does that sell for? That's gonna be 140% above that $4,000. So you're now raising 104% of that 4,000, meaning that you're gonna be taking home just shy of $6,000 for that one package. So that's our average raise. I know that when I did some original research the consignment industry does sort of land around 40%. I think, and that's still good. I think we have to get nonprofits, allow them off the idea that this is, you can only have 8% expense ratio or something like this because that's not how a business runs. Like they have to operate as a business. You got people running this and they need a salary. I think that's something that has to change in the nonprofit world so that we can have more efficient nonprofits. It's not just about how much is donated. Like it has to be like you're running as a business sometimes. And this is the perfect example where do you wanna spend your time hunting down that? Do you wanna spend your time now fulfilling these trips? Perhaps not having the best experience, perhaps damaging that trust with your donor. Instead, look for other solutions. If you don't do consignments, look for underwriters or sponsors for it. And I've had some people who is like a real estate there was a real estate donor in the room and they asked, you know, would you wanna sponsor this? And so they had their name up there on the screens. This church's vehicles experience and they're associated with it. And that means 100% of it goes to the nonprofits, the raise, cause that's been sponsored. So there are ways around it, but I think we just need to be more creative with that. And yeah, that's a very good ratio for us, the 140%. Well, I don't know about you, Jared, but I'm ready to like pack the bag and get going and get that group dusted off cause it's been too long since we've been traveling. It's been a while. And for those of you that are listening and thinking about this for your events happening in the near future, I know we have a big, you know, push again in the fall, but events are on, travel is on, you know, there's a lot of energy around wanting to travel. So Nicholas Meekins, thank you. And for your entire team, I just, you know, really pleased to hear the growth and success that you're having. So for those of you watching and listening, Nicholas serves as the co-founder and CEO at Lux Give. Check them out, that's luxgive.com. Take a look at the experiences that they offer, really fantastic. I love the model. I love, you know, all of the extra touches that go into this. So thank you for being here and sharing this experience with all of us. Thank you, Jared. Thank you, Julie, for having me. Hey, it's been a lot of fun. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I've been joined today by the non-profit nerd herself, Jared Ransom, CEO of the Raven Group. Again, we wanna thank all of our partners who are with us day in and day out. As we travel the globe, right? Jared, each and every day, we have viewers from around the world. And those are supported by Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, non-profit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique, non-profit nerd, and Tech Talk, one of our new sponsors. So we're very, very excited about that. This has been a fabulous show, a great way as we're changing seasons to look at some of the different ways that we can be engaging our donors. So Nick, thank you so much for engaging with us. Thank you again. Hey, it's been a lot of fun as we like to end every episode. We want to remind ourselves, our viewers, our listeners, everybody to stay well, so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow.