 Welcome, you have joined us for another episode of the nonprofit show. We're really excited to have you here with us today because this is one of my more favorite days of the week, not for what you might think about, it's Friday, but Friday is always our ask and answer episode. And I love these days because we get to hear from our viewers, learn from our community and see what's going on. Before we introduce our person in the hot seat, Hannah Berger, the philanthropy coach, I wanna thank all of our presenting sponsors. They are here with us day in, day out. We are now over 350 episodes strong and these folks on the screen make that happen. So we wanna say thank you. Hannah Berger, the philanthropy coach, best moniker ever, I love that. Welcome back. Thank you, I'm so glad to be here. Well, we loved having you on. You've been on before and I think that day that you were on, you were with our co-host, Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd, and she loved what you had to say and I think it was a great episode. I got to watch it on Roku in our archives and I was like, we need to have you back for some more, sister, but I wanna be on that episode. So thank you so much for joining us. Oh, it's my pleasure. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Okay, we've got some big questions that have come in. Let's hit it, sister. All right. Name withheld. Okay, you know, I don't know if you know this, but name withheld questions are my favorite. Because they always- They're always juicy. They're juicy and they're tough. And I'm always like, who asked that question? I'm an executive VP of a very successful mid-sized family-owned business. The family wants me to investigate the establishment of a foundation that would be the giving arm of our business. Can you give me advice on where to begin? This is a huge question. Yeah. Okay. Do you wanna go first or shall I? You hit it. You're the guest. Oh, well, my first question would be, have you already discussed this with your business CPA or your family CPA, right? Because as we all know, philanthropic giving has, it can have some great benefits, right? To your bottom line around your taxes and establishing a foundation. We'll also play into that. The easiest route to take, in my opinion, for establishing a private foundation, I'm assuming since it's a mid-sized family-owned business, we're not talking about a publicly traded company, right? So a private family foundation would be to partner with a community foundation. So community foundations, you know, Julie, I'm sure you can name a few in the Phoenix area, but here in Los Angeles, the really big ones are California Community Foundation, Jewish Community Foundation. There's a number of organizations, you know, in San Diego, the San Diego Foundation, and what all of these community-based foundations do is manage smaller funds or smaller foundations, donor-advised funds that exist within their larger philanthropic pool of monies. And so their people on staff would act as your staff, right? They would manage your funds in your portfolio, but they would also help you develop a grant proposal that you would use with organizations that you might wanna invest in, and they would be your gatekeeper also, right? So that's sort of the, in my opinion, quickest, most seamless way to establishing a foundation that would be the least amount of sort of paperwork and least time-intensive for you. Julie, what do you think? You know, I love that, Hannah, and the Southern Arizona Community Foundation is incredibly strong, and it is, it is Tucson, it's either Tucson or Yuma-based, I can't remember, but I love that approach. My first thought was get a hold of an attorney in CPA, which, you know, yeah, absolutely. But I believe that what you just said is magical because you will have stewardship parameters that are tried and tested and true, versus you trying to figure this all out because I would assume, name withheld, you are going to still be engaged in a successful business. It's, you know, maybe at this point you're gonna be able to stop everything else that you're doing and just focus on this. I mean, there might be some shared responsibilities, and it's a Herculean task to do this well and to do it legally and to do it successfully. So I love, love, love what you're proposing here because I think it's really wise. Let somebody else that's run the marathon tell you where the hills are, you know? I mean, definitely. Yeah, super cool. Okay, we're off to a good start. Hey. I love that, I can't, I'm name withheld, let us know how this journey works because we wanna know, and then we want you to declare who you are. Okay, Ella from Palo Alto, California writes, you had a guest on the nonprofit show who said that the average major gifts officer, only stays in one position for an average of 14 months. This can't be true. Did I hear this correctly? You did. Well, yes. You did. I mean, it's a crisis, but I would say, Hannah, this is not just something because of the great resignation or because of the COVID pandemic. This is a statistic that we've been hearing for a long time. I first heard it from AFP, an AFP conference, and at that time it was 18 months. I would say this was in the early 2000s, and I remember clutching my pearls, gasping, saying, my God, that's horrible. What are you saying, Hannah? Same, yeah, the statistic used to be 18 months, so it's a little terrifying that we've shortened that, but it's for multiple reasons. In my experience, what I've seen is, one, I think, with our small and medium-sized nonprofits that decide to take that step to bringing on someone who's supposed to be focused on major gifts, they can have really unrealistic expectations right out the gate, right? So they hire someone with a really incredible major gifts background, and they think, oh, that person's gonna bring in all the donors they were taking care of, right? Those are their people. That's 300 new donors we're going to have making $20,000 gifts each, yeah. And that is not the way it works, right? Those of us in the sector know that hopefully you create beautiful relationships with every single one of your donors, but those donors in that relationship belongs to the organization you're working for at that time. Occasionally, it's a really beautiful thing that people will follow you because they love you so much, but it is not the rule, it's the exception. And in addition to that, what I see at our community-based organizations, so when I say community-based organization, I'm talking about our small to medium-sized nonprofits, not our hospitals, universities, the larger institutions. At the CBOs, you see a major gifts officer, perhaps a small team of say six, right? Development staff, major gifts officer, and their portfolio is 3,000 people. Wow, okay, that's what I was wondering. I was going to ask you that question. What does that portfolio size look like? Because they're the only person trained to do the work. And I mean, think of, do the math on that, right? 3,000 people, how many days a year do we work? It's impossible. So there's a lot going on there. There's, you know, I think our fundraisers need more support and ongoing professional development, which means the employer needs to make investments in their people. I think there's also, you know, in the nonprofit sector, we're always racing to get really important work done to take care of the essential needs that sometimes we neglect to put systems in place that are going to make our lives much easier and more sustainable in the long run. So, you know, I think that's, there's multiple reasons why that's happening. So you see a lot of this turnover because folks in these major gifts roles, sometimes it's the organization saying, we've been investing in you for a year and we haven't seen you double our money. Right, right. Which can be really unrealistic, right? Go ahead, Julia. So let me ask you this. When you're saying this, I've got two questions for you. Are you seeing folks leave the sector or the profession of being a major gifts officer or in fundraising? That's my first question. And then my second question is, is this a function of us or say you're a professional fund development, you know, you're in that part of our sector, starting out first and foremost, maybe even in the job interview with what those expectations are because it seems like there's a lot of misalignment to expectations. Yeah, absolutely. Am I seeing people leave the sector? No, I don't think so. Good. But what I am seeing, yeah, what I am seeing though is people leaving the smaller organizations to go to the higher paying smaller portfolio jobs at hospitals and universities. And, you know, because I do think that especially folks who are working in the, you know, direct service, homeless services, food banks, youth development organizations, a lot of those folks are experienced a lot of burnout after the last, what, 22 months now. So, but I think I'm seeing people stay passionately in the nonprofit sector. They still want to be change makers. So the second question, and this is kind of dovetails, meeting expectations, when does that occur? Because you're right. I think there's a lot of, you know, tapping of the foot that says, hey, we brought you on and you haven't done anything. And yet I hear from so many people, Hannah, and I'm sure you do too, that say, yeah, you know, I left or I moved on and they still got the benefits of my work. No, these things came in, but I was never credited, if you will, for them. Right, yeah. Building good relationships takes time, right? In my coaching practice. So when I'm working with coaching clients, we do a lot of sort of interview prep, career progression work. And in that, I'm always saying to them, you're not just being interviewed, you are interviewing them. So you have to go into this with your list of questions around what their expectations are. Is there debt that the organization currently holds and you're gonna have to dig out of a hole and fund the budget and move towards a campaign or whatever the circumstance might be, right? How much of a revenue increase are they expecting after a year one of your tenure, right? Questions like that. So you make a decision that's informed in reality, right? Because a lot of that stuff, I learned the hard way. You know, I would take a position and find out after I was firmly in place and then you're ice skating uphill. I love that. Well, I appreciate your candor on that because I think that's true. And so much of everything that we talk about on the nonprofit show from board service to CEO performance, it seems to me, Hannah, it boils down to expectations. And so often, if we could chat about some of these things up front, then maybe we could dispel some myths and also have some problems. But, okay, let's, our time's blown by. I've got to get to another, woo-hoo, name withheld in Tampa, Florida. This may be an odd question, but how long do you think it takes to become a strong fundraiser? I'm new to this segment of the nonprofit sector and I'm getting frustrated and even concerned that I'm going to be successful. Wow, great follow-up question to what we were just talking about. Yeah, this hurts my heart a little bit, but I get it, I get it. How long does it take to be a strong fundraiser? It's not an odd question, but it's kind of depends on what you have deemed success. Okay. Okay. Again, to me, it's all about mindset and systems. So if you don't have either yet, the answer is as long as it takes to put those things in place, it could be months. Okay. You know, it could be not to over-promise, but a 10-week intensive, like the cause-selling-accelerate cohort that I'm about to be leading. You know, I would say you have to give yourself at least a year of really intensive attention to anything to become really great at it, right? I think that's anything in life, from fundraising to dancing, you know? It's, if you're going to be expert, you have to give yourself some time to build expertise. Yeah. What do you think, Julia? I think Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours, you know, to expertise has always been something really interesting. I met him years ago and had lunch with him when he was, I don't want to say he was a nobody, because he always had the spark within him, but he, I remember he told me that, the 10,000 hours, and I remember thinking, oh my God, that's a lifetime, you know? But then to go back to what you just said, Hannah, and you said that, I think three times during this conversation, mindset and systems, or you actually think you phrase systems and mindset, think about that for name-withheld. If you've looked at this and then you started attaching commitment and hours and time, you know, I think you're right. Yeah, you might not need that 10,000 hours, but I think the concept of mindset and systems, because I can see this person spending a lot of time on that hamster wheel of self-doubt that never gets you anywhere. It just beats you down. So maybe applying some of that energy to a process would be strategic. I also want to say you can be effective before you consider yourself an expert, right? I love that. I think you're right. You can move a needle on a mission before you're like, you know what? I'm one of the leaders in the field on this. Like you can do a lot of good. So, you know, give yourself some grace, name-withheld. I love that. That's, you know, effectiveness is a word we bandy about so much in the sector. I mean, yeah, that's cool. That's like super good. I love that. Okay, let's get on to Bertho from Houston, Texas. I've been hearing more about the culture of philanthropy and I don't think I fully understand it. It seems to me that all nonprofits should be invested in this approach, but is the culture of philanthropy something specific? Okay, go for it, sister. Oh, okay. The culture of philanthropy. How do I want to try to briefly define this? So, can all nonprofits be invested in this approach? In my opinion, absolutely yes. Obviously I'm a little biased, right? I've spent most of my career in fundraising. The culture of philanthropy is really about everybody in my opinion. Everyone understanding that in our society, in America, right, we are capitalists, it takes money to make money. Philanthropy is how we generate money, the resources we need in the nonprofit sector to do the work we do to fulfill our missions. And the challenge that I've seen with all, most of the organizations that I've worked with is that there's a lot of people who get into the sector because they have very negative feelings about money, about wealth, about capitalism in a lot of ways. And so there can be this sort of like, no, no, no, I'm not a fundraiser. I'm not involved in fundraising. What I do is direct service. Right. And I, you know, I'm always preaching to my students and clients that the honest of responsibility and the influence that's really powerful lives with the fundraising professionals, right? If we walk into a space and we're like, you know, giving out orders to people who are doing direct services, the really important mission-based work with clientele about, you know, what's required of them in order for us to take care of our donors, that doesn't feel good. But if it's a collaborative effort and we're a community of care and our donors are as important as our clientele, as important as our staff member, as important as the executive director, as important as a board member, we're all in this together. There's a very different sort of culture you start to build. And in my experience, when it's a very healthy space where people start to really appreciate good stewardship, not just of the donor, but of the staff, the team. Right. It becomes really magical if everybody feels like they have this role in paying things forward. I love the way you phrase that. And I would say that a lot of times I hear people from the program side kind of disdainfully talk about the social nature or what the work is of the fund development team. Such as, well, they only just, all they do is go out to lunch, to fancy lunches or all they ever do is look pretty and ask for money, but I'm doing the hard work. And then there's this sense of it's their job to get us the money so we can do our job versus this sentiment that says from the parking attendants to the facility staff to all the way up to the board chair and everything in between, it's all of our responsibilities. We're all actively engaged in promoting our cause and getting that funding. And I don't know, Hannah, it seems to me such a basic concept, but I don't know, I don't see a lot of it. It seems like I see more and more siloed approaches. Yeah. And I think the fastest way to break through that, the lack of culture is to make sure that the people who are responsible for the fundraising, everybody from your development assistant to your CEO, that they really get what the staff to a program delivery does on a daily basis, right? There's gotta be this like mutual empathy and understanding. Yeah, those are the organizations that I think. Do better. Yeah, I like that. I think that's really smart. I think that's really, really smart. Okay, one more quick question because I wanna talk about the cause selling accelerate really quickly. Our CFO is going to retire. And let me get this up on the screen for everybody to see. Our CFO is going to retire in Q4 of 2022. That seems like a long way away, but it's not. How long do you think it will take for us to find a replacement? It seems like this might be a super hard position to fill due to the great resignation and all. Yeah, I think that we're looking at an easy, easy, easy, you know, six to nine months just to even get the pool of candidates, especially for CFO work. I mean, I know from talking to, you know, some of our community leaders and stakeholders that are dealing with the financial part of the nonprofit sector, they're struggling to get people. And there's this aging out. It's not that people are leaving because they're dissatisfied. It's literally they're aging out. So yeah, this is gonna be tough. Start working on it now. Absolutely. Yeah, I would say start working on it now. And while you're recruiting, first and foremost, consider working with a headhunter. There are some really quality folks out there in great firms that do nonprofits specifically headhunting services. And I'll tell you, they can be worth their weight and gold because that process can be, are really, yeah, it takes a lot of time and effort. The other thing you might wanna consider is start working on a plan B in addition to recruiting for this position. And what I mean by that is there are some really great firms out there that do finance and accounting work for nonprofits and can be your temporary or part-time CFO if necessary. At the organization I was with most recently as chief development officer, we ended up going that route because we ran into so much challenge with recruiting in Los Angeles for our CFO. So that's just a tip that might come in really handy because I would say, like you said, Julia, at least six months for the search. Oh yeah, your part-time controller, which is one of our sponsors, I think they do interim CFO placement and the staffing boutique does head, I don't know if you're supposed to call it headhunting anymore, but that's what I call it for the nonprofit sector. But yeah, I think you gotta jump, jump, jump on this. And then it is okay to be out there in your community saying, hey, everybody, just to let you know, we're looking for this great fit and keep pushing on it because this is gonna be a tough thing for all of us. So yeah, good luck, Shelley, and let us know how that goes, because that's a daunting thing. Okay, this is the meat and potatoes of today's episode. I want to know, we've been talking about the cause selling accelerant. I wanna say behind your back, because we've been like, whoa, it's great, it's great. But you, my friend, are actually the cohort leader, right? Yes, yeah, super excited about it. Yeah, talk to us about it. Sure, so this will be my fourth or fifth, I should have looked before I came on today, but my fourth or fifth cause selling cohorts, but this is the first national one. So I'm really excited to be leading a group of nonprofit professionals from all over the country. Of course that means it's completely online. 10 sessions starting February 8th, Tuesday mornings, or mid-afternoon, if you're on the East Coast, we'll be meeting together via Zoom. It is very much an experience that is on par with being in a classroom with me. So that means there's nothing passive about it. And that's because it's an accelerated experience. There's gonna be a lot of information, a lot of opportunity to do case studies, a lot of me sharing my what not to do stories that are so valuable to people who are new to the fundraising profession. And then in addition to getting me as your leader in the cohort will also be bringing in some really incredible guest speakers, including a very exciting philanthropist that I can't talk about just yet, but you'll have an opportunity as a professional fundraiser, nonprofit sector leader to ask the hard questions that you've always wanted to ask of your donor to somebody who is out there cutting checks right now. So it's a really great experience. And beyond just the education and the continued learning and the professional development, you build up your network, right? You make friends in other cities that you can hopefully lean on for advice in the future. So I can't say enough good things about the experience. I always get really beautiful notes after these cohorts from people doing incredible things. So there's a short application process and it's really a minimal investment for the experience. So anyone who even might be considering, you know, being a part of it, I'd say get your application in as soon as you can. And I promise you, you won't regret it. So Hannah, it seems like this is designed for somebody who's not right a new start, that somebody that's been in the process and maybe has a higher level of responsibility. Am I reading that right or is that? So I would say cost selling accelerates is appropriate for somebody who's been in the sector for a long time but is new to fundraising. Oh, okay. Or somebody who has been in fundraising for a while and really wants to expand their career into major gifts or they're looking to become a CDO or a director of development or perhaps even an ED at some point, they just wanna make sure they have a really good understanding of how to do great relationship building and donor management work. So. Okay, cool. And about how many folks do you see are gonna be in this? Like what, do you have like a number or how, what does that look like? We tap the group at 30 because we wanna make sure, you know, 30 people in a Zoom room is pretty, with a lot of people. Yeah. So that's where we cap it and hopefully we'll get to that. I'd say we'll end up between 20 and 30 people but yeah, we do a lot of breakout work. And again, it's not a passive experience. I'm very much a cameras on educator on Zoom. I love it. Well, you know, it's been great to have you on and talking about this and it gives me a better picture definitely to what's out there and what's gonna be going on. Here's Hannah's information. Reach out to the philanthropycoach.com. Great, great opportunities to learn from a master and for somebody who really knows how to be successful and when to be successful. So super cool, Hannah, to have you on today. Again, I'm Julia Patrick. You're at Ransom, the nonprofit nerd. My trusted co-anchor will be back with us next week. Again, we wanna thank all of our presenting sponsors who are with us day in and day out and to remind you that Fundraising Academy really stepped up to be our official sponsor of ask and answer because they really believed that that was one of the things that we needed to be doing is listening to what our community was saying and the questions that they were asking. So I wanna give a specific shout out to them. Wow, Hannah, this time has flown by. I am so appreciative to get your genius on the nonprofit show. I suspect we will be seeing you again. I would love that. It's always a pleasure. So thank you so much, Julia. Oh my gosh, it's been a lot of fun and we like to end every episode with this reminder. Stay well so you can do well.