 We are thrilled to have each and every one of you. And I will start by saying, welcome, happy Friday. Thrilled to have you here. Again, grateful for our exclusive sponsor of every single Friday of our Ask and Answer episode. Thank you, Fundraising Academy, Cause Selling Education that is launching their 2022 online Cause Selling Accelerate program next month. Today, I believe is the last day to register. If you have not checked this out, make sure you do that now. If you wanna check it out now, that's fine. Just make sure you don't turn off your audio so you can still hear us because we have some good questions that we will be answering here soon. And another quick plug for Fundraising Academy. Not only are they a sponsor with us, but they will be joining us for a dedicated series. So we will have all week, nonprofit Power Week, thanks to Tony Bell. He has coined that for us and that is coming up January 24th. So a full week dedicated to Fundraising Academy in particular, major gift strategies. So make sure that you mark your calendar and join us for that. And again, thanks to all of our sponsors that keep us going and growing into the new year, whether you think it's already six months into the year or if you think we're still in 2020, don't worry, Julie and I are here each and every weekday thanks to our dedicated sponsors. You know, we are here every day. We had an amazing guest on yesterday who spoke all about mediation, fascinating, fascinating perspective on solving problems. And she said to me like three times, now you do this every day. Oh yeah, we do this every day. We don't do Fridays and Saturdays, but yeah, we do this every day. And then she's like, came back like another week later. You do this every day. And then after doing the show yesterday, she's like, I cannot believe you do this every day. And I was like, you know, I think Jared and I are, we've just gotten in this groove and I don't know about you, but it seems kind of like, okay, well, this is just my pattern. This is just what I do. So how many days do they say it takes to make a habit? Because whatever it is, we've exceeded that with like gold stars. And we have witnessed to all of you, you know, in the very first, almost three years ago now, it wasn't easy to wake up and show up. And as we say in the South, put our face on. But it really has become, you know, a habit. It is something I thoroughly enjoy and has really expanded upon my knowledge in the sector. So I'm so grateful to not only have this platform, Julia, but to be a part of this platform alongside you. So thank you. Well, no, thank you. I mean, it is riveting. And I think it's really amazing. I also think that the questions that are coming in are changing. And so let's start off with Shane from New Orleans. I mean, it's Jared. Can you give me the specific breakdown of percentages in a nonprofit's revenue budget? I've heard you speak of this before, but I did not write it down. Thank you. You know what? I got a witness to you. This question comes back. It does. You know, people will be like, I think I heard her say this. I know, 70, 30, if you keep that in mind, Shane, 30% should be approximately your grant revenue. So you don't wanna be too heavy on grants. I learned this the hard way in 2009 when then we had an economy crisis at that time. The organization in which I was serving was predominantly dependent upon grant funding, government funding, you know, city, county, kind of RFPs and the funding. And then the other 70 that I mentioned is the individual giving. And so these people might come to you through an event. They also might come to you through planned giving. They might come to you, you know, as a sustaining monthly donor or quarterly donor or perhaps a pledge, but really looking at that 70, 30 because you want the lion's share, the base of your constituency base to be made up of people, right? And that is because if you lost 2%, 5%, 7%, the majority of that lion's share, the majority of that base is still pretty solid, right? So you want to have your revenue diversified and even beyond grants, even beyond individuals. In fact, I do think that planned giving is a separate slice of the pie, but I also add that into individual giving because that comes from an individual. But I'm gonna tell you, Shane, where I get super nerdy with this information is giving USA. So if you look up giving USA on the Google, is that what we're called? Google. Google. Okay. Every single year giving USA provides a wonderful infographic on this and that is where I get my data. You know, I think that's a great way to frame it up, 70, 30, always remember that. But then to your point, Jared, I really like going back into that 70% and then winnowing it down saying, okay, this is gonna be planned giving, this is gonna be event, this is going to be giving society. I mean, you do need to be, I think, for planning and for measurements, really looking at these individual pieces that make up that 70%. Absolutely. Yeah. Really powerful. Thank you. Well, Shane, I'm sure that you will find this question gets asked again. And thank you, Jared, for sharing that with us because it's really powerful. Okay, Beverly from San Diego. Stay classy, San Diego. How do you, you know, Anchorman, that tells you about how I lead my life. I'm not quoting Shakespeare or Plato, I'm quoting Anchorman. Beverly asks, how do you feel about sending thank you gifts to large donors? In the past, we never did this, but I'm thinking maybe we need to. What is your opinion? It's a good question. Yeah, you want to answer it, Julia? So I had, I've been very fortunate. I've been able to interview about three or four of the big super donors who have signed the Giving Pledge. And it's had to be anonymous. One of the questions I've asked was, how do you like being thanked, like are recognized? Cause it's a pretty big deal, obviously to commit to the Giving Pledge and to, you know, pledge a huge volume of wealth to the nonprofit sector into philanthropy. And one of the things I've been really interested by, and I've also heard this from corporate donors who say, do not send me any chachkas. I do not need them. I have a wall full of Cropola and I don't need another plaque. One person who signed the Giving Pledge, who was a female, told me that she really appreciated a handcrafted thing. And she had given a very large gift to a children's oriented nonprofit. And they sent her something that was like a handmade tile. And she was really, really captivated by that and that that was meaningful to her, which I thought was very interesting. And so my sense of it is, I think you do need to do an acknowledgement, but if there's a way to align that to what it is that you're doing, I think that's appropriate, right? So a loose site plaque doesn't, unless you're the loose site foundation of America probably doesn't translate, right? Do you know what I'm saying, Jared? Does that exist? No, I just made that up. But you know what I'm saying? I do. No, I agree. And here's the thing, Beverly. Your large donor may not know that they're a large donor. And I think that's interesting because when I served as a major gift officer, which for us was a $10,000 gift, right? Over the course of a year or above. And I was meeting with one of our major large donors and she said to me, she's like, oh, it's not a big deal. It's not a big gift. Don't worry about it. And I thought, you are a big deal in my portfolio. You are a big deal to our agency. I of course did not express it like that. But here's the thing that I really want to say is your large donors, your major gifters may not classify themselves as that. So I think that's really interesting. Now, of course, if someone gives very large sums, I was talking about a $10,000 gift, which then tells me this individual has greater capacity. That's what I heard, right? This person has greater capacity to give. However, personally, and I'm not, don't consider myself a large donor to my alma mater, but they really steward me by sending me like a travel cup that's an insulated travel cup that has the logo of the university on there. That is a great piece. The university has sent me t-shirts, right? I played sports, they would send me athletics t-shirts. Even knowing that I have a young son, they will send me his size t-shirts, right? And so now he's wearing t-shirts of my alma mater. They did one day, and again, this is very thematic, but I received in the mail from my alma mater a note from a current student, right? Which was very kind, and the flag of the university. And they had a flag waving day, and they wanted me to, you know, wave my alma mater flag 2,000 miles away from where it's actually located in South Carolina. Those are the gifts that I have received and have really appreciated because they're useful, they are, you know, wearable and they have a purpose. So I think, you know, when you think of that, that's really important because as you said, Julia, first world problems, I don't want another loose site plaque to put in my already cluttered and non-conmaried office. Well, and I would say for the university system, that's a huge piece of legacy building, alumni building and branding. I mean, that's very intelligent marketing and that's kind of a standard practice. And I think you're right. If you can help promote the brand, maybe there's a little bit more interest in doing that. And, you know, I'm fascinated by your comment and we do have to move on, but do you think that you should have said to that donor, you are a big deal? I mean, I don't know how I would have responded. Well, and I will admit this was a long time ago and I don't even recall what I had for breakfast yesterday, let alone what I said to her, you know, whenever this conversation did take place, I of course reminded her or reassured her that her gift means so very much to us. It is a significant investment, but she didn't want to, I could tell, she didn't want to be called, you know, like one of our elite. She didn't see herself as that. She, again, but what I heard, and again, going to Fundrey's Academy, you're listening, right? What are you listening for? Well, what I heard is she's got greater capacity to give. Yeah, so I'm really intrigued by that and I'm gonna have to think about that because it almost makes me wonder, did she think you were putting pressure on her to stay with you because she was such a big donor? I mean, I have heard large-scale donors say, I want to move on, but I don't want to pull the rug out from under that relationships. I've also heard more large-scale funders say, I'm gonna invest in you, but for only three years or two years. And then after that, we take a break for a specific amount of time so that there is, you don't begin to, going back to your 70, 30, relying on that money. It's an interesting piece. Wow, okay, we got off like a lot on that, but that's an amazing thing. Okay, let's go on to, thank you, Jared. That's your wisdom shines through every day, but especially with that. Jamie from Dallas, Texas, or Jaime, no, Jamie. I want to be promoted within my nonprofit development team. I'm beginning to think this will only happen if I get a CFRE, Certified Fundraising Executive designation. Do you think I need to earn this certification in order to grow my position? It's interesting. That is interesting. So I'm gonna say, if you think you don't know, so you need to ask. And that is very point blank, but I'm hearing a lot of vagueness in your question and a lot of vagueness in your certainty. So I would have a very direct conversation with your supervisor to ask what he, she, or they thinks of the potential growth for the organization, what that might look like. What is the growth of the organization over the next three to five years look like? So even if you don't have the capacity now or that position does not exist now, perhaps it will exist in the next three to five years or what that might entail. But I never like the word think because that is an assumption and it's not a certainty. So I would really encourage you to have an honest, transparent conversation with your supervisor. You know, Jamie, I would say to dovetail to what Jared's saying, I think that's very smart, very, very smart. And it's sometimes our leadership doesn't know that we're interested. And so that's even more of a reason. But I would go, I would hopefully, you know, be a part of AFP in your organization, in your community or YNPN. And I would talk to other CFREs and find out what the trajectory of their career has been like, you know, did this help them? Does this make a difference? I mean, how do donors respond? I mean, I don't know about you, Jared, but I don't think donors know CFRE. I don't think it makes a difference to them. But I think it's internally, in our management system, that's where it gets notified. I don't know about you, but. There's a few that are wondering what the heck do these acronyms stand for. Yeah, sorry. Sorry. AFP is the Association of Fundraising Professionals. YNPN stands for Young Nonprofit Professional Network. Both are nationwide, perhaps even international. I know AFP is. Or CFRE is the Certified Fundraising Executive. And Fundraising Academy offers that. We have Mr. Jack Alotto that's on quite a bit and he'll be joining us for Power Week, January 24th to talk about the CFRE designation. But I agree with you, Julia, perhaps talking to a CFRE to identify how they have utilized that certificate to help leverage their career is a great opportunity. Do you think that it's stronger in some communities rather than others, like, or maybe even regionally, like in the East versus the West with South Midwest? Do you have a sense of that? You know, perhaps I don't have a tried and true sense. What I have seen is that designation when it comes to a preferred requisite with a new hire. So not a CFRE, you know, carrying card holder. But it has never stopped me. It has never stopped me from achieving a high level executive position. I've been a successful consultant in the nonprofit sector for 20 years. And again, this really has not stopped me, but I do think that I see it mostly when it comes to a new hire and in the job requirements is that that is a preferred qualification. Right, and then before we move on, I've been hearing about more and more organizations saying that they will support the funding of the test, of classes, of the process for employees. And I think that's kind of like an employee training retention thing that generally comes from somebody who has a CFRE too, you know. But yeah, so don't, if you're looking to make this investment, it's a heavy lift. Make sure that you ask your organization if they will fund part of this, you know, so that you're not taking on debt in order to move through this. Okay, yeah, well, interesting. It's an ongoing conversation. I think this kind of pops up every now and again. Anne and Timmy from St. Paul, Minnesota. Woo, I bet it's chilly there. We're thinking about starting an association for our type of nonprofits across our region. We serve in the domestic violence shelter space and don't have an organized group that we can call our own. That's interesting. Do you think this is a good idea? What a interesting question. And I love the collaborative thought that is behind this for both of you, Anne and Timmy, because we've talked a lot about whether we should share best practices, whether it's safe to do so. And so to have the wherewithal and the interest to form an association, I guess my question is would this be a formal association? Is this, you know, an informal association by way of a consortium? Like what does this look like? I myself have been a part of consultants groups that we have come together to share best practice, to network and to really, you know, just be there as a roundtable discussion, very informal. And that in and of itself has benefits, but I also know that, you know, forming a formal association has guidelines and requirements in and of itself, you know, associations are nonprofits. Some of them fall within the guidelines of being a nonprofit. I think of, you know, one of my clients was an association of realtors, and it was, you know, a C6 because they truly had memberships as their base. So there's a lot to think about here and how you might want to create and structure this. What I love at the core is your interest and your creativity when it comes to the collaborating space. I do too, I think it's great. And I love that you give the framework from just getting together and being collaborative to formally organizing. There's a wonderful organization. I've spoken to here and again, the association of associations. It's like the umbrella group that association professionals, mostly association CEOs, join, and then they talk about all the different ways of managing their associations. And so it might be something interesting to reach out to them and then find out like what it takes because you're right, Jared. There are different IRS standards for this and there are opportunities to explore that because I'm seeing more and more associations get involved in the nonprofit space for purposes of policy. And then also collaboration. We're seeing this more and more, we've been seeing this with food banks where it's like, one food bank will have far too many bananas and not enough cheese. And then they use this collaborative system to move inventory. But also policy. And I think for domestic violence, that could be a really big thing, you know? Yeah, really cool. Even though I was making fun of the association of Lucite in the beginning, I didn't know that this would come back to haunt me. Oh my gosh. Yeah, collaboration to your point, Jared, is always amazing. And we've talked about this briefly before we go on to the next and last question. You know, there are more and more funders that want to have collaborative partnerships come to their funding. Somebody's got to acquire it. I know here in our community, there's a very large foundation that requires at least three partners to come together and be very formal in their partnerships and what that looks like. So. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is like a pretty big deal. And so, you know, it might have, it might be something that's not just a kumbaya moment, but it's something that's gonna actually impact how you're funding your work. Okay, name withheld Dayton, Ohio. You know how I love my name withheld. I've been tasked to increase my donor portfolio. My CEO wants me to submit a specific number goal of new donors and dollars raised. I'm at a loss of how to do this and actually make a plan I can achieve. I like that, that they want to achieve the plan. That's cool. So I feel like name withheld, you've been eavesdropping on my own conversations. I am working with someone today, a director development to identify exactly this, right? What do the portfolios look like? What are these measurements of success and key performance indicators or KPIs that we want to make note of? And so what I have advised we do is to go back three to five years and truly track and see our analysis of what has trended over the last three to five years. So if you have that data, you have that history, that's a great place to start. Now, I also wanna recommend name withheld, I highly recommend three levels of goals, a good, a better and a best. So going back to that, perhaps you want to increase your measurement by 3% as your good, maybe 5% as your better and perhaps 7% as your best. I don't know, whatever it is that you set, I recommend three layers because we want to accomplish success, we want to achieve that goal. And I think it's always really good to have a stretch goal. So go back at your previous data, take a look at that analysis. Sasha with Moves Management, she always talks about your plan, your goals, it's already in your database, it exists in there. And so that is really interesting if you can pull some of these data points to help you identify what that looks like. Some of the metrics and what I'm advising is in fact to increase the amount of new donors at all levels, but that doesn't mean that we want to increase it by 100 individuals at all of these levels. It literally could be five per quarter, like really depending on what that looks like, I believe firmly in not only having those three layers but in realistic goals. So I think going back to see what your organization has done in the past is a great benchmark to set a good, better, and best goal for your next year. Can I ask you this? In the past you've talked about sidebunt and livebunt. Would that be part of this? And can you, and we don't have much time left but could you dip into that briefly? So it absolutely could be. There's so many metrics when it comes to fundraising and it comes to portfolios, how you might want to capture your goals. Now again, realistic, so I'm going to say three to five is what you want to establish. If you are a team of one, perhaps it is just three to five. If you have a team of let's say five individuals, maybe everyone has three goals, right? And so that of course increases your departmental goals vastly, but every person would be responsible for three main goals and three different levels. So a livebunt report is a last year but unfortunately not this year, meaning they gave to your organization last year but they have not given this year. Same as a sidebunt, some year but unfortunately not this year simply means they gave to your organization some given year but unfortunately not yet this year. So those to me are two low hanging fruits because they have been involved in your agency. They have given a financial or in-kind or some volunteer time resource and so they are familiar with you. And so to go back and to steward those individuals to give again would be wonderful. I love it. Thank you for clarifying that and thank you for giving us more of a realistic thing because I think sometimes we're like, we're going to get a hundred new donors. Well, it's like, wait a minute, you're setting yourself up here for some misery. So thank you, Jarrett. Last year or you didn't get 25 new donors last year. I mean, I hope that you did. The acquisition would be wonderful but let's just be realistic. I love it. Amazing. Well, wow, this week, I mean, we were talking about in the green room chatter if you joined us, how time's flying by. I want to bring up one more thing that's flying by and that is the very, very innovative first national cohort of the cause selling accelerant. Fundraising Academy has done this but it's generally been in the Southern California area or region and they are opening this up to a national level. You have to apply. They're not taking everyone. They want it to be very high level. Today is the last day that you can apply. So you go on to fundraisingacademy.com website and we'll put a link here on our archives as well but really, really, we're excited about this and we think it's going to be an incredible opportunity for anybody in our sector who leads or is highly engaged in the fundraising aspect for their nonprofit. So today, a huge issue. A follow up to that, Jarrett, which we are really excited. We started planning this last year. Next week, we have a whole week dedicated to major gifts, a major idea. So excited and majorly excited. Majorly excited. I love it. We should wear drum major outfits. Okay, you did that, Julia. Yeah, oh my God. Well, you know what? It's gonna be really awesome because I think there are gonna be a lot of myths that are just like totally shattered. And so I'm really looking forward to that. We have a variety of guests, some who have been on, some who have not and then we'll really be able to dig deep into that. So make sure that you join us for that because it's gonna be an awesome thing. Again, I'm Julia Patrick. I've been joined by the nonprofit nerd herself, Jarrett Ransom, CEO of the Raven Group. Thank you so much to our presenting sponsors who are here day in, day out. We're blown through that 450 episode mark moving on to the start of year three. And it's really been an awesome thing. And these are the folks that make it possible for us to do this work. Hey, Jarrett, I hope you have a great and restful weekend. I know that you and I are gonna actually be working a little bit this weekend. So no rest for the wicked, I guess, huh? Hey, absolutely. Hey everybody, we wanna remind you to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here on Monday.