Latest / The Nonprofit Podcast / Ep 203| The Uncomfortable Reality of Sustainable Fundraising Nobody Mentions

Transcript

Ep 203| The Uncomfortable Reality of Sustainable Fundraising Nobody Mentions · The Nonprofit Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: When was the last time someone at your work actually looked at you?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't mean, how's the spring gala planning coming along?
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Or did that mailer even land?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Those are questions for a function, not a person.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean you, the actual human being doing all the work.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: And if you had to stop and think about it, if your brain went a little quiet, stay with me because this episode is gonna be for you.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: The Nonprofit Podcast, powered by DonorBox.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, welcome back to the Nonprofit Podcast.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Britt Stalker, your fundraiser coach here at DonorBox.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Each week we bring you practical information, clear insights, and inspiration to help you raise more, reach further, and take your nonprofit to the next level.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Today, we're not going to be talking about strategies.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: We are going to be talking about survival.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: During the pandemic, I've told you this.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was an executive director holding everything together, or at least I was trying to.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: I had staff, we had thousands of unhoused families we were working with and providing direct services to.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: And my kids were at home because schools and everything had closed.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: I was not just caretaking and teaching, but I was working and leading a human service agency.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody was asking if I was okay.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Why I bring this up, I look back and I think about it, my board was stretched thin.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody knew what they were doing.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: There was so much uncertainty.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I look back, and some of this was me because I didn't ask for help.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know how.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: I convinced myself that in an executive director role, holding it together was part of the job, right?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: If I even showed a single crack that I was struggling, the whole mission would just collapse and my team would lose faith in me.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I felt completely alone in all that.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I kept thinking that meant that I was failing.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: And if that is where you're feeling you're at right now, I bet everything that I have that you aren't failing either.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: The ground is moving, right?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: This job, it has never been about just one thing.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Most of us, when we're talking with our fellow peers, we joke about this, right?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Where we call ourselves nonprofit generalists with other assigned duties, even toilet scrubbers included.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: But lately, the expectations have become, I don't even know.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know the word.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think impossible just isn't strong enough.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: You're out there, you're writing those appeals.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's urgency, but you don't want to sound like a sinking ship.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: You get pulled into the last-minute coffee meeting with a major donor, and you're there trying to read the room.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Is this person ready to give or are they just being polite?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then you go home and you work until the wee hours because there was a grant, RFP, that was just posted less than two weeks ago.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And somehow the deadline is just tomorrow.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's just your Tuesday.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the anxiety right now, it feels different, doesn't it?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Federal funding is changing.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Tax considerations from the one big beautiful bill are evolving too.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know about you, but I keep hearing leaderships telling, you know, their staff, well, hey, go find it somewhere else.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Build that individual giving program, pivot, do it fast.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And while you're at it, don't let the donors see that we're all just a little bit scared.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not just a few of us anymore.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: This anxiety, which is a whole different level, it is happening in the whole sector.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about the masking aspect part of it, right?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: I know if you look at conference lineups right now, burnout.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: That topic is everywhere.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Some people, including some of the folks sitting on those speaker RFP panels, they're they're telling us that we're talking about it too much.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: And hey, I actually agree with them, but I think for the wrong reasons, because the fact that we're talking about it, it signals something.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's telling something that is real that is happening on the ground.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: And should we dismiss it, that would be tone deaf too.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think we should be talking about the actual weight of it.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Right now we're treating it like something to easily be solved instead of a fundamental shift that is happening in our sector, right?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: And in fundraising, we are expected to always be on, even when we're running on fumes.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: What do we do?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: We push through, we show up, we smile, and it compounds, it piles in ways that we cannot even clock until it happens to us too late.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about this word alexithemia.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: So there is actually a term for part of what's happening here, alexathemia.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's basically difficulty identifying or describing what we're actually feeling.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I stumbled across this term in Nicola Noble's work.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: She writes about this lately on her LinkedIn.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was the light bulb moment for me.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's especially common for neurodivergent folks, which yeah, includes me, but especially for women.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think about all the fundraisers in the nonprofit sector.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: You can be completely running on empty and have no idea until you've already crashed.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: By the time this signal reaches your brain, where you're like, help, help, help, a good night's sleep or a hot shower, it isn't gonna fix it.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: The part that is so fascinating to me is that this masking, it doesn't just cost you, it costs your donors and your organization too.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: And what do we know about fundraising, about stewardship, relationship building?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: The actual engine, the core of our jobs is that people, for it to work, they need to believe in us, right?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: They need to feel the realness, the passion of it.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: When you are that depleted and you don't even know it, there's a flatness that starts to happen, right?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Not because it's just there's nothing left to give, but you're trying to perform connection while you're running on empty.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Which brings me to where do these tools come into play and where where they don't?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: AI, I have a couple of thoughts here.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: N10, they recently dropped a report showing that about 60% of us are already using AI for workflows, automations, for helping to draft some personalized appeals.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: I get it, I use it.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: When we're stretched thin, right?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Anything that lifts the weight, it feels like a little relief.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: But it's not the AI that's the problem.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's it's this depletion that we're talking about, right?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Alexithemia.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: When you're depleted and you don't even know it, that's exactly when we start handing things off to AI that the tool was never meant to hold.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not talking about our calendars or our schedules.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about our voice, our story, the reason why we exist, the reason someone actually decides to give.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing a lot of this, right?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing the emails, they're becoming more perfect, polished, and completely dead inside.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: There really is a flatness going on, and donors are starting to feel that.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, they may not be able to name it, but they know something is off.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: And this is so problematic because the whole sector runs on people believing in people.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: That flatness, sure, it's gonna save us a couple of hours in the short term, but I wonder what it's gonna cost more in the long run that we just can't get back.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: So let's reframe and get to the positive aspects of this.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: What actually works?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna call these fundraisers modern fundraisers.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: The fundraisers I see actually staying thriving and sticking around in the nonprofit work, the true nonprofiteers, they're gonna be the ones that don't disappear because it's not necessarily that they're really good with AI prompts, right?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Or they have a better strategy or a better tech stack.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: They're the ones who get honest early about what this job actually costs them.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: And they speak up and they have those boundaries.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: I saw the actual return on impact of this, of what I'm talking about recently, where I was coaching a fundraiser.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: They made a point to spend real time on the ground with this community.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: He was out, he got outside of the office, he had a routine visit with a long-term donor.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's a kind of meeting most people would kind of autopilot through.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: The donor started talking about his father and what the organization had meant to his family for 30 years.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: And because my nonprofit client was present, right?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: He wasn't just performing.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: He sat, he didn't, he didn't try to optimize a moment.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: He sat there in silence and he and he let that silence fill the void.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of captured a humanness, that unproductive human moment that AI couldn't capture, right?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it led to one of the largest gifts that they've ever received.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: You can't use AI for that.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: You can't prompt that.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: You just have to be human enough to let it happen.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're out there figuring this all out in real time, it's okay not to have it together.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, here on the pod, we love to leave you with one practical thing.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm not gonna throw out a framework, but I would say pick one moment this week where you normally push through and instead pause and breathe.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: I know for me right now, I have an over-scheduled calendar.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And hey, I will tell you, I feel a little bit overwhelmed right now.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: For you, again, maybe it's taking that long way back to your desk after a donor call that went pretty bad.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Or sit in the car for that extra five minutes.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Let yourself feel the weight of it instead of immediately jumping to parent or partner mode and trying to fix it.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Just let it be real for a minute.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: We're all in this together.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you want support doing this work in a way that actually feels sustainable, I'd love to talk to you.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: I work with fundraisers, nonprofit leaders one-on-one to help them find that ground again, right?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And to get away from the cliff that we were kind of referring to in the beginning of the episode.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna drop the details for my coaching program in the show notes.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Take a deep breath, and I will see you next week.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for being part of the nonprofit podcast community.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Your work matters, and we are honored to support it.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: If you've enjoyed this episode, share it, leave us a review, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, take that first step and stay inspired.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: That warm feeling when you help someone, it's not just happiness, it's fulfillment.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we believe it should be available to everyone, from frontline heroes to first time fundraisers.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Our tools empower you to help others.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is our mission.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is Donorbox, helping you help others.