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The Fundraising System with Matt Bregman | Nonprofit411 · Nonprofit411 Podcast

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Hello and welcome to Nonprofit411, where we dive into resources and strategies that help nonprofits not just survive, but truly thrive.
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I'm Sarah Barton, your host and fundraising advocate.
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Each episode, we bring you inspiring conversations with experts in fundraising, sustainability, and best practices to equip you with the tools and confidence you need to make a real impact.
Hi.
Welcome to today's episode of nonprofit 411.
I'm thrilled that you're here with us today.
If you're new here, I'm Sarah Barton, your host and each week on nonprofit 411 we have conversations with nonprofit experts who offer practical strategies and inspiring stories to help nonprofits build sustainable funding and stronger communities.
Whether you're here to learn.
Be inspired or simply recharge.
I'm so glad that you've joined us.
So let's jump in today.
I'm excited to welcome our guest, Matt Bregman founder of the fundraising system.
And he's going to have a great conversation with me about his experience and some of his expertise.
So welcome.
Thank you.
Glad to be here.
Yes.
I'm so glad you're here.
It's, it's a beautiful day.
I'm in West Virginia.
I'm not sure where you're at.
So it's actually a pretty nice day here for winter.
So it's rainy in Montclair, New Jersey, but I'm sitting inside.
So I don't mind makes me feel better about being inside all day.
That is true about the rain.
I do appreciate that too.
So I'm going to start with my favorite question, which is what is your favorite hobby? Well, I guess if I had to say what my favorite hobby is, I would say it's watching films.
And it's a hobby that I have not gotten to practice nearly as much as I would like in the last 22 years since my first child was born, but my son will soon be going off to college, and I think that I will have more access to the TV and more time on my calendar to go to, to art movie houses, so I'm looking forward to getting back into that.
Oh, that's fun.
Are you into sci fi? It looks like sci fi on your back panel.
No, I know.
It looks like sci fi.
Now what's behind me is a small poster for Alphaville, which is a Jean Luc Godard film from the sixties.
That's kind of like a make believe science fiction movie.
And they just do closeups of neon signs in Paris and make it seem like it's the future or something.
It's very It's a little, it's a little quirky and great.
Oh, I love that.
I love that.
In college.
I had I only had PBS.
It was my only television station and I had a VCR.
And so like, I don't know why, but for some reason my mom recorded all of the episode, all of the movies, the Oh, Planet of the, from Planet of the Apes.
So the, the originals.
Right.
So, when I was really bored and there was nothing on PBS, I would watch Planet of the Apes.
Simply because it's what I had access to.
You must be an expert.
If I ever need a Planet of the Apes expert, I know who to call.
Yeah, it was just mindless noise in an apartment where I was by myself, really.
Right.
So can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and about what got you into nonprofit work and fundraising? And where you are now.
Sure.
Well, you know, I always, I always really wanted to do some kind of public service work from the time I was in high school.
I was always interested in politics and activism and as I got older, more and more in, in culture.
And you know, I went to school and I was college and I just sort of imagined that at some point there would be some sort of divine intervention and I would find myself in a, a you know, a gainful career, but that didn't happen.
And so when I graduated from college.
The only thing I could really do was to go work for an organization I volunteered with in college, and I went to work there for a couple of years.
And while I was working there, we never had any money and people would always say, Oh, well, if we had a development director, then we'd have more money.
And I didn't know what a development director was.
I'd never heard that term.
This is, you know, the late 1980s.
It was my impression and people seem to think that a development director was a rich person who had rich friends and they went to parties with their rich friends and they would ask their friends to give money to your organization.
But the problem is that these development directors apparently wanted really outrageous 40, 000 a year, which just seemed obscene to us.
So we couldn't afford them.
So I volunteered to do it with the caveat that I had no idea what I was doing, but I would do it for a discounted price.
And then I started.
Studying it and going reading books about fundraising and going to seminars and trying my best and I'd always been a good writer.
So writing grants was the part that came easily to me, but at the beginning, it was so hard.
It was really, I felt like I was it was something in between trying to win the lottery and trying to become a movie star.
It just seems so impossible that I would ever get a grant.
Sometimes I would get a rejection.
The day after I sent the letter, I would think, I don't think it's logistically possible to get a rejection the next day, don't they? Doesn't there have to be a day in between where they open the letter and then bring it back to the post office? But somehow it was like they were waiting at the post office with the rejection letter.
And then one day we got, got a grant.
And it was just the most thrilling feeling in the world to actually successfully get a grant after all those attempts.
And I, as they say, I've been chasing that feeling ever since, you know, it was such a great feeling when it actually works.
And I started to realize what made sense.
And and then after a while, I realized I had a marketable skill.
And at that time I was getting more and more interested in culture in New York city and, you know, being able to participate in the things that I was surrounded by.
So I really wanted to work in a cultural organization.
And I did that for a while.
And and it's been great ever since.
Awesome.
Yeah.
So I've never, I don't think I've ever interviewed anybody yet who was like, well, I knew exactly I was going to do this.
Everyone's an accidental fundraiser, right? Yeah.
Right.
There may be, you know, it may happen now.
I mean, there are people going to school and studying it.
So it could be a different thing.
But I think certainly for people in my generation, it was something you fell into.
Yeah, but it's great.
I'm glad I found it.
My story is very similar to yours in that I came out of college, got a job.
with a development department of a university.
And, but I didn't have any, I didn't have any guidance.
I think about that.
That's, you know, my organization provides training on how to do fundraising and grant writing because I didn't have any guidance.
I didn't, I, in your story about like submitting the grants, like, yeah, I didn't have any idea, but I figured it was a numbers game.
And if you submitted enough letters of of intent.
or grant applications.
One of them would stick.
Yeah, no, it's funny about learning by doing because I heard so many different stories when I was starting out.
Like, you know, people would tell me, well, it's never going to work because these foundations only give to people they know and other rich people.
And if you don't, if you're not a rich person, they're not going to give to you if you're not.
You didn't go to the same, you know, college as they went to or other people would say, well, you have to have lunch, you know, if you have to get a lunch meeting with all these people and, you know, it's like 25 years old and trying to get lunch meetings with foundation, but, you know, it didn't make any sense really.
And I, I, you know, I thought, oh, am I doing this wrong? You know, you'd hear all sorts of different stories and then in time I figured it out.
And that's one of the reasons something I really love doing is teaching about fundraising.
And for a long time, I taught a class called a Crash course in fundraising at the support center because after I finally figured out what was going on, I would go to all sorts of, you know, conferences and.
You know, presentations and people would always ask the same very rudimentary questions over and over again.
And I thought I'd really like to just take to have a class where I just answer all of these very rudimentary questions for people so they can, they can jump over, you know, 2 years of trial and error and just understand some basics of how all of this works.
So, you know, so it's great once you, once you have your sense of, of how the whole industry works and what makes sense and what doesn't, it all seems like common sense, but at the beginning it's mystifying.
Yes.
Yes.
I agree.
I agree.
And you learned that the donors are passionate people, just like the people that you're working with within the nonprofit, right? Yeah, absolutely.
Especially, you know, there's one story That really was a really changed my mindset, which was that there was a foundation that we were applying to.
And I was telling the person from the foundation about how where I live.
There was all these caps.
If I wanted to go into the city in a cab, how I could get in the cab.
And she said, Oh, well, I, I never take cabs.
I only take Ever take the subway and it suddenly occurred to me, this is another person just like me who's working at a foundation whose job it is to give money away in the most you know, practical, effective way possible.
She's not.
She isn't the money.
She works at the place that gives away money.
I work at the place that gets the money to do good things.
We're, we're sort of partners in this and it's not, you know, it's, it's, she's not the aristocrat and I'm not the peasant.
So, that's, it was a silly little thing, but it really was one of those things that crystallized in my mind.
I love that.
I love that because it's advice that I give people.
I'm always like, just call them on the phone and ask them if they're interested in what you're.
What you're doing, because it's a great, easy place to start.
And I'm like, they don't bite.
I've never had any of them bite or be like, I don't want to talk to you.
Usually they're more than happy to tell you you know, what they give towards and what they're interested in funding, because you're right.
If they're working at an organization and they're tasked with.
Very specific types of giving typically.
And so it behooves them just like it behooves the nonprofit to be able to communicate what that is.
Absolutely.
And it really behooves the fundraiser to spend three minutes making a phone call rather than thinking by spending two weeks.
And it's just writing the perfect letter about, you know, how your food pantry is going to help more people in the county in the coming year, only to find out that, well, this foundation only funds, you know, animal shelters in the different states.
So you just wait for two weeks.
It doesn't matter how good the letter is.
It's not what they're interested in.
So just find out and then you know, take it from there.
Yeah.
So tell me about the fundraising system.
What is it? So the fundraising system is really about the very things that we're talking about.
What I have felt for a long time is that so many well meaning organizations Are doing good work, but they hire fundraisers who are well intentioned, but don't really have the experience to know how to organize their time, organize their processes, create a strategy that's going to be effective.
And so they just spend a lot of time spinning their wheels.
So, you know, you're a small to medium sized organization.
You can't afford to hire someone who has 20 years of experience and fundraising.
You know, it may or, you know, your setup just doesn't make sense for someone with that level of expertise.
They may be more interested in a larger organization that can pay them a higher salary.
So you hire some smart, young person young or not young, someone making a, a, a change in their career, it, it could be any number of things, the person maybe doesn't really exactly know what they should do when they are desperate for someone to help guide them, someone to answer those kinds of questions, you know, how do I decide what foundations to pursue, am I really supposed to have lunch with these donors, you know, do I just answer Ask them all, call people up randomly and ask them for a million dollars each and hope they'll give us, you know, 1, 000.
Like, what am I supposed to do? And I think that by providing people with a systematic approach to fundraising and saying to people, okay, let's take a look at what are your assets.
What do you have to offer? What are the opportunities really available to you? And how can you approach that in a strategic and systematic way that I can help those kinds of organizations to be much more effective? They don't have to hire me to be full time and pay me benefits.
They can hire me for a few hours a week or they can hire me for You know more than that, but just for a couple of months or something whatever makes sense for them So that I can get their fundraising staff and their other staff prepared and capable of doing a good job without having to feel frustrated and at a loss and they don't have anyone to turn to.
I think, you know, a lot of organizations, the executive director themselves doesn't really know how to supervise their Development staff and they just probably wish I would just wish I had someone who really knew what they were doing just to help supervise the staff because, you know, they're, you know, they may be really smart and, you know, Ernest and working hard, but they just don't know where to place their energy.
So that's the role that I want to play.
So I come come in with, you know, my background.
I come up with my expertise.
I have support staff that can also help to do a lot of the work if the organization doesn't have the resources to do that work.
But more than anything I can guide that person and I can provide them actually with templates and systems.
So, for example, a lot of organizations just don't have a systematic way of saying, okay, what, how many, how much money are we expecting to raise every year for this coming year from foundations and how much from corporations and how much from major gifts and how much from annual giving and how much from our event and how are we doing in terms of each of those things? And if it's all just sort of in your head and on note, in notebooks and on 17 different spreadsheets it feels chaotic and it makes your whole life feel anxious.
And so there's a projection spreadsheet that's very simple that I can show people how to use and even help them to fill it in.
And that way they can track on a week to week basis, how are we doing? It seems very simple, but A lot of people just don't have that, that very simple system in place.
So I can help them to establish that.
Yeah, I've learned the same thing.
Like, you know, I think that fundraising, because many of us have been accidental fundraisers, those who do not yet fundraise don't know that there are very predictable systems that you can put in place that can help you manage your donors and move them through a process of giving, you know, try to move them from their first gift to their second gift.
And then ultimately to ongoing giving, you know, that we can you know, farm our own data and find donors that can give more or people who are aligned in that alignment.
It's, it's the first place I start.
I was actually just speaking with someone today and they said that they just did their first giving camp, their first giving Tuesday campaign, you know, which is their first fundraiser ever because they just became a 501 c three.
And She, she, we said, I was surprised cause I told her to never say no for your donor.
Right.
And she said, I was surprised cause it was all members who gave, you know, and you don't, we oftentimes are hesitant maybe to ask the people that have utilized our services to give, but you know, that's such an important part of that.
Of that system that even even if they've utilized our service, we ask them to to join us in our work.
Yeah.
And so much of it really is about feeling good about what you're raising money for, you know, you're not, you know, there's so many different aspects, obviously, to fundraising, but you know, part of it is, is realizing, I just want to be very honest with people about what we are trying to accomplish.
And how much money it's going to take and how their, their support can help us get there.
It's not about me wanting money for myself for some, you know, selfish reason.
It's all very transparent.
We, you know, we're trying to accomplish X.
It's going to take this much money.
This is how much we already have.
If you can contribute any part of that, it will help us to accomplish our goal.
And if people are interested and want to do that, then they will do it.
And if they're not, then they can say no.
And that's absolutely fine.
It's absolutely up to them, but there's nothing wrong with asking them because what you're doing is worthwhile.
If what you're doing is not worthwhile, you shouldn't be asking people for money.
But, you know, assuming you're asking people for a worthwhile project, there's absolutely nothing wrong with asking people to support it.
And the people who know you best.
Are the people who are most likely to support you.
I mean, that's a it's a such a simple concept.
And yet so many new fundraisers don't really understand it.
They sort of imagine that there's some world of rich people out there who, you know, have lots of money and could give support rather than saying, well, you know, we really need to start with those people who know us and care about us.
Those are the people who are most likely to support us.
And if We think there's someone who would care about us if they knew us, then we'd better get to know them.
But going from you know, I don't know this person at all and ask them for a big gift almost never works.
I mean, there are some exceptions, but it's rare and You know, that's the sort of thing people can waste a lot of time on just chasing after all sorts of things that don't make any sense.
I sometimes tell people it's like, you know, if you're single and you wanted to, you know, find someone to date you know, the thing that makes most sense is to You know, think about the people, you know, who can make an introduction to someone that, you know, they think you might be interested in.
There's, you know, online dating.
You see where there might be a connection, you know, picking up a fashion magazine and saying, well, here's the, you know, a lot of really beautiful people.
I'd like to date one of these people.
You know, is not that likely to be successful because.
Those people, you don't know those people and you have no way of knowing if you have anything in common with them.
And it's very hard to get access to them.
So, but that's, you know, that's.
And so it seems ridiculous, but that's exactly the way a lot of new people in fundraising approach fundraising.
Let's get a list of the Forbes.
List of the richest people and let's write them each a really good letter and maybe if we write them a really compelling letter, they'll just be sitting you know, bored and wondering what they should do with their time and read the letter from beginning to end and decide to give us a million dollars.
So, you know, just helping people to understand these very fundamental issues and then make a plan is what I'm always trying to do.
Yeah.
Oh, there's so much of that.
I, I remember when I started I do not know how many board members told me board members and coworkers said, well, just write to the Gates foundation.
Like that, the Gates foundation was their solution every single time.
And I was like, I have written to the Gates foundation.
However, I can tell you that this is probably not going to happen.
Yeah.
No, I know.
And it's a funny thing also that, you know, we never, one of the things that's hard about being a fundraiser is you don't want to be the person who says no, just like you, you said earlier, you know, you don't want to say no for your donors.
And so we don't want to be seeming like, well, I've given this guy 10 good ideas, right to the Gates Foundation and right to Warren Buffett and right to You know, Oprah Winfrey and, and right to Jeff Bezos.
And, you know, I keep giving him ideas and he every time he says no, he doesn't want to do it.
So you have to make a decision.
Okay.
Well, how can I do this as quickly as possible and get it out of the way and satisfy the board member? But at the same time Educate them on what is really much more likely to be effective and show them that I am doing.
I have a plan.
I, you know, so I think that if you don't have any plan, then you wind up just having to respond to every crazy suggestion like that.
And it just wastes more and more of your time.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's one of the frameworks that I teach is, I mean, it's the steps framework and you have to strategize.
It's the first, the first one.
And we're going to be really intentional about who we engage with.
Not because other people won't be interested, but because this is like the steps, right? This is actually the steps to get to where we want to go.
And so, yeah.
I really appreciate what you said there.
For me, I'll tell you something that has been ringing just as a fundraiser, a word that we don't use all the time.
I, I think we probably use it more in our sector of the nonprofit world than others, but the word stewardship, you know, fundraising is stewardship.
And I learned, I was listening to Chuck Bentley this weekend and he had, he said, redemptive stewardship is when God uses a faithful steward to restore what is broken.
And I just thought, man, for her work in the nonprofit work.
world, right? So many nonprofits, that's kind of what they do, right? They are able to restore or support something in our communities that is broken.
And so when we think about stewardship and inviting people into that, It's so beautiful.
Like that's a beautiful picture.
Cause I feel like especially when you're newer in this profession, it, it feels like you're just asking for money.
When you're new, especially.
Right.
But I think as you grow in the profession, this idea of stewardship in that we're inviting people in to help us with something broken is a really beautiful picture of that.
Like, just something that's been on my mind, you know, stewardship.
Yeah, no, I, I absolutely agree.
And you know, it's funny also about this issue of fundraising and asking for money because So much of what we do is not asking for money.
I mean, the vast majority of our time is not spent asking people for money.
It's really about doing exactly what you say.
It's about building those relationships and authentically meaningfully bringing people into the community of the organization.
And and then when the time is right.
To ask for a gift, then you're in a very comfortable place to ask for a gift.
But if you're just doing nothing but going out and asking random people for gifts all the time, of course, it's a very, very uncomfortable feeling for the fundraiser.
It's a very uncomfortable feeling for the donor.
It's not going to be effective.
I think that's why people are so scared of it.
And people who don't understand fundraising.
Unfortunately, even some of those same board members who tell you to, you know, right to the Gates Foundation think, well, you know, why are you just asking people for money all the time? What are you doing with all of your time? If you're not asking for money and who are all these other staff people in your department who aren't asking people for money? It just seems like a waste.
But you know, it's like, I think if you'll forget the sports analogy, it's like saying to a quarterback, You know, why are you just throwing passes all the time? Well, you know, you have to practice, you have to work out, you have to get sleep, you have to sometimes hand the ball off, you're studying, learning plays.
There's a million things that go into it so that when you're actually on the field and a receiver is open and you can throw them a pass, you're prepared to do that.
But, you know, in the same way that a quarterback doesn't spend all week throwing passes, a fundraiser doesn't spend all week asking people for money.
A lot of other things that you need to be doing as a fundraiser.
And that's, I think that's something that people don't understand.
And then if they're not asking for money, well, what are they doing? So, that's another thing that I try to help people with.
Everything should be intentional.
Everything is in the interest of as effectively as possible.
Gathering the resources for your organization, but it's but it needs to be done thoughtfully and intentionally and and stewarding those relationships and and making sure that the organization as a whole is engaging those donors as partners and as respectful and appreciative away as possible.
Is essential to all of this, and that really needs to be your attitude in fundraising.
You know, I've spent a lot of time in the last few months working with the Honolulu Museum of Art.
And when you're in Honolulu, which I'd never been to before before this consultancy you know, there's something people call the Aloha spirit, and I thought, you know, the Aloha spirit, this idea of sort of well, welcoming and being welcoming.
Open hearted and courteous and transparent and friendly and generous is really in a way what fundraising good fundraising is.
The Aloha spirit is really a great way of describing the way I think we all should be approaching fundraising.
Yeah.
And they do it in Hawaii.
I've been to Maui and they do it so well in everything that they do.
And I think, you know, I think actually in Japan, you know, when you give gift giving every part of the gift giving process, like, so if you're just, is really intentional and hospitable and out of grace for the other person.
And I think the Aloha spirit is similar to that and that, you know, and I love that.
That's, that's a great, that's a great recommendation.
Well, so can you let our listeners know how they can learn more about you and find you on the web if they would like to? Absolutely.
So I have a website, thefundraisingsystem.
com.
So www.
thefundraisingsystem.
com.
And you can also find me, Matthew Bregman on LinkedIn.
Feel free to email me at Matt at the fundraising system dot com anytime or reach out via LinkedIn or, or the form of my email on my website.
You know, something you know, and I just always want to tell people is that If you hear this and you think, well, I'd like to reach out and just I have some questions, but I don't know if I want to engage very, very happy if you work for an organization that's doing good work.
I'm delighted to talk to you for free and I'm not going to make a sales pitch if it seems like, you know, it would make sense for me to work for your organization.
That would be great.
If not, that's absolutely fine.
Happy to talk to you.
Give you my thoughts.
And and I know so many other.
Consultants have that same feeling and so don't don't be shy about reaching out.
To me or to others who might be able to be helpful.
If nothing else, you know, I like the sound of my own voice.
It's fun pontificating is I always say it's easy to talk about fundraising than to do it.
So I'm always happy to talk about it.
So people should feel free to reach out anytime.
I love that.
Yeah, I think, you know, sometimes Transcribed For many, I know as a consultant, I'm coming out of the nonprofit world.
I have a nonprofit spirit.
It sounds like, you know, you have a nonprofit spirit.
Many of us in fundraising have this nonprofit spirit that we, we also just want to serve.
And that was our goal.
And so like, yeah.
So I love that you invited everyone into that because I definitely invite people into and a final piece of advice that you think everyone.
Needs to hear before we exit.
Okay, a final piece of advice Would be always try to maintain a, a generous attitude.
In terms of fundraising, so in the same way that I said, I'm happy to talk to people about fundraising.
I think you should always be happy to talk to people about your organization, whether they're interested in giving you support or not.
And, you know, it's air on the side.
of being overly generous with people.
If someone says, well, you know, I can't give right now, but maybe I'll give later, you know, don't treat everything.
Don't treat it like a transaction, treat everything like a real authentic relationship.
And.
It's fine if you get burned sometimes and someone says, Oh, if I could, you know, come to your event for free, maybe I would give and they don't give.
That's fine.
That's not going to happen very often.
Much more likely people will just to, you know, who are well meaning will appreciate the fact that you are open minded and generous and Sincere.
So, you know, don't feel like you need to be hot throat and transactional and on your guard.
Be trusting and open, open minded and open hearted.
And I think good things will come from that.
Yeah.
Where, where the energy flows is where the money goes, actually.
Yeah, I always say, so I have stickers.
I don't know how many times I've mentioned them on the podcast, because we definitely all seem to have similar philosophies, but mine says not a shark tank.
It's a coral reef.
Right.
And so, absolutely.
Right.
Yeah.
That's great.
So, well, thank you so much for joining us and to our listeners.
I thank you for joining us this week.
I look forward to having another conversation next week.
And if you need to reach out to either myself or Matt, we're both happy to talk to you.
Have a great week.
Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Nonprofit 411.
I hope you found today's conversation as insightful and inspiring as I did.
Remember, building a healthy nonprofit requires a holistic approach.
There are many resources available to support your staff, and we're dedicated to helping your organization access what it needs to thrive.
One key to creating a thriving organization is a diverse fundraising strategy.
While grants are an important part of that strategy, they're just one piece of the overall puzzle.
If you're looking to strengthen your grant writing skills as part of this bigger picture, I've got a resource to help you get started.
Download my free grant writing guide packed with practical tips and best practices to help you craft proposals that align with your overall fundraising goals.
You'll find the link in the show notes.
And as always, if you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with your fellow change makers.
Let's work together to build a vibrant nonprofit community.
Until next time, keep pushing forward and making a difference.
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