Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 283. The Impact Arc Framework: Behold the Power of Staging - Jonathan McCoy, CFRE and Becky Endicott, CFRE

Transcript

283. The Impact Arc Framework: Behold the Power of Staging - Jonathan McCoy, CFRE and Becky Endicott, CFRE · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Jonathan McCoy: Today's episode is sponsored by feather feather provides digital marketing tools and strategies for nonprofits of all shapes and sizes, including the Humane Society of North Central Florida. Stick around for the break to hear how feather power their $300 digital ad campaign that raised nearly$6,000 In just one day. Hey, I'm John.
• 0:20
  Becky Endicott: And I'm Becky.
• 0:21
  Jonathan McCoy: And this is the we are for good podcast,
• 0:24
  Becky Endicott: nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:33
  Jonathan McCoy: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:42
  Becky Endicott: So welcome to the good community, where Nonprofit Professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:52
  Jonathan McCoy: So let's get started. Becky, what's up,
• 0:56
  Becky Endicott: it's been a hot minute, since we've had a Friday series, I'm so excited to be back.
• 1:02
  Jonathan McCoy: I'm just feeling the excitement, new series is in the room. And this is a topic that's really close to our hearts. And I will say you know, we have kind of trouble putting names on some of these things.
• 1:11
  Jonathan McCoy: Because today we want to unpack a series called the Impact arc, which is, you know, spoiler alert, well, we've named this, but it's really kind of like the secret sauce to we're for good.
• 1:21
  Jonathan McCoy: It's like this thing that we just do, really intrinsically like it just happens. And we realized that when we do this, it leads to crazy results, whether you're applying it to a campaign, or whether you're applying it to an event, or maybe even I don't know, launching a podcast, it's all the same idea. It's this whole idea of the impact arc. And so we're going to take the next few weeks and bring you along for this, my friends, because we want you to have incredible launches and have the secret plan for how to do that incredibly well.
• 1:49
  Becky Endicott: I will just be completely transparent and vulnerable in this moment and just say, as we were trying to frame out this series, have you ever had something that went well in your nonprofit shop? And you're like, how did we do that?
• 2:02
  Becky Endicott: Like, how did we let it break down? Yes. Why did that work?
• 2:06
  Becky Endicott: Was that, you know, sort of a special moment in time, or is there a formula here and we really took some time, and dug deep into the roots of the way that we build campaigns, the way that we connect with people, and impact our like, was sort of the Phoenix that emerged from all of these ashes we were trying to make sense of. And I just think it's personal. This is a personal Friday series for us.
• 2:30
  Becky Endicott: And if you're here, I'm just so glad that you're here because you're about to get the we're for good secret sauce, and the impact arc. And it's only three episodes, this is going to be a three Friday series, we're going to pack the punches with you very, very quickly if you're a pro member, lucky you because we're gonna roll all this up into a really kick butt handout, and we're gonna live coach on it and pro at the end of the month.
• 2:56
  Becky Endicott: So stay tuned for that as well.
• 2:59
  Becky Endicott: Yeah,
• 2:59
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, so let's just give a little context. If you're new to the show, or maybe new to Becky and me. Hi, we're so glad you're here. First of all, you know, we had been working alongside each other for coming up on 20 years. And in that time, you know, we have been fully in the nonprofit space. So Becky hired me as her intern at the higher ed organization that we were at.
• 3:18
  Jonathan McCoy: And then we made the jump to healthcare, philanthropy. And if you've heard us talk about this, that was a rocky time in life, because we just had a different experience there. And not that we didn't love the mission and the people, it was just harder.
• 3:30
  Jonathan McCoy: And there wasn't a lot of people that really understood what we were trying to do from a philanthropy perspective. And so there's a lot of education, there was just a lot of like, you know, doing the hard work to get things started. And it was a real formative time of our career. And we spent a decade there here in Oklahoma City. And during that time, we really realized what's really core, you know, it was a time of reframing what works in philanthropy, what works in creating movements, what works and raising money.
• 4:01
  Jonathan McCoy: And it was all through this lens of this employee campaign. And if that sounds unusual, it should sound unusual, right? So when we walked into those doors more than 10 years ago, there just wasn't a holistic understanding of why does the foundation exist? Why does philanthropy matter here within these walls, and we had this kind of heart searching moment to say, if we're going to go out in the community and ask for the community to partner with us and to support projects here, we've really got to get aligned on the inside first. And this is a little bit of that story of how an employee campaign really reimagined our belief in philanthropy. And if you hear us talk about it, we're really passionate about what this does.
• 4:39
  Jonathan McCoy: But it also taught us so much about philanthropy is you just make those first hard asks and you lay the groundwork to build something that swells over time.
• 4:46
  Jonathan McCoy: And that's kind of where it is, you know, is the beginning place of starting that employee campaign.
• 4:52
  Becky Endicott: So I think everybody can probably relate to go build a thing when your leadership comes in and says go build a Gala, go build a peer to peer fundraising campaign, whatever it is. So John and I did the thing that all of us do when we're told to go build, the thing is we started our research and we started trying to explore what is the best practice in this, we called some of our peers, we went to conferences, we sat in on sessions. And I have to be honest with you friends, like, it ain't pretty, it was not pretty what we found.
• 5:24
  Becky Endicott: And it really didn't resonate with us. I mean, the things that we were finding were just these really kitschy themes like a Monte Carlo theme or a Hawaiian theme to your employee campaign, there's people telling us that you, you know, should grab a rolling cart with chocolates and pledge forms and make rounds with nurses. And they were putting the wrong KPI at the front, they were really focusing on the money, you know, rather than the participation or the story or the empowerment of the actual giver. And they were using top brass to lead the effort rather than starting at the bottom and building a movement that swells from the ground up. So after we had all of that data, we went back to the drawing board, really, with a blank sheet of paper. And we dreamed of what we were really going to try to do. And that was really about building a culture of philanthropy. And from that point, we decided, let's put our core values in here. And let's start with the core values. And once we know who we are, what we want this campaign to be, it's going to lead to something much bigger.
• 6:29
  Jonathan McCoy: Yeah, I mean, in the core values that we pinned out, I mean, I distinctly remember coming into your office and just like penciling these out on a white sheet of paper, that many of them have stayed the same, some of them have just morphed as they become more and more specific, super tired,
• 6:42
  Becky Endicott: we don't have that piece of paper, we could like frame that and put it
• 6:46
  Jonathan McCoy: the other day actually be I found one of my journals, and it's like some of our notes around this meeting.
• 6:51
  Jonathan McCoy: So I'm gonna keep looking. But the big ideals that we knew wanted to hold true, I'll just call out a couple, because we talk about them a lot on the podcast is that when you're starting with a blank slate of people that don't necessarily get what you're doing, you don't really, you're not really going to look for donors, you're looking to grow believers. And if you greet believers, believers show up differently.
• 7:11
  Jonathan McCoy: And we knew that because when you believe in something, it changes how you invest your money, your time you open up your you know, wallet, and your phone to contacts and all these sorts of things. And so we just thought, if we design a campaign that's built around that, that encourages people to not just passively engage in something.
• 7:27
  Jonathan McCoy: But to fall in love with this idea that philanthropy really power, something like we could really be on to something that was one of eight core values that now power we are for good, because we saw it actually translated into work. And let me give a little bit of context, when we launched this thing, there was just 300 of 10,300 out of 10,000 employees were giving to this campaign. So to give that context, you know, just after a few years, that 300 With a lot of these values and the principles, we're going to teach through the series, it jumped to 3000 people, which was a huge number. I mean, it changes from one out of every, you know, 30 people that you pass on the hall to one out of three, you know, and that is a massive difference when you're talking about building a culture that understands what's happening in philanthropy. But more than that, the approach that we're going to take you on built stories, you know, it transformed people's perspective. And when that starts to happen, the impact doesn't just become the thing that you built, it becomes what happens in the hearts of people that want to plug in and want to connect that want to do the next step. And so, you know, it really gave us this powerful vessel to say, what do we have here? And, you know, I think people looked at us and said, That's cute. You've built this really disruptive.
• 8:46
  Becky Endicott: I said, it's cute. Nice. Right? And we're like
• 8:52
  Jonathan McCoy: that, too. I mean, yeah, like, what was this?
• 8:54
  Jonathan McCoy: Was this just lightning in a bottle? You know, is it just because it's employees? And nobody actually would care about the way that you're doing this?
• 9:00
  Jonathan McCoy: But we're like, no, like, I think it really is something here because we realized, we were asking the wrong question.
• 9:07
  Jonathan McCoy: When we first set out in that door, you know, to go figure out how to implement an employee campaign, we were asking the question, how do you start an employee campaign? Like, that's what I would have Googled?
• 9:17
  Jonathan McCoy: That's what I was calling.
• 9:17
  Jonathan McCoy: That's the conference sessions I'd be attending, when actually the bigger right question of this entire thing censored us and grounded us, because the bigger question was, how do you start a movement? You know, how it really isn't about the giving. It's about what is a movement look like? What definitely looks like creating belonging, and it definitely looks like creating an infrastructure where people feel seen, appreciated, valued and can input into this. And that's categorically different than just checking the box of building another employee campaign, which could have tactics up the wazoo.
• 10:25
  Becky Endicott: I agree with you and I want to make sure that if you're someone who's taking notes in this podcast session, we're about to get into the impact arc but I Think something I want you to write at the top of your notes is not that are we asking a better question? It's that we should be asking a bigger question. I mean, John, you said that so beautifully. I think sometimes we get so narrowed in our focus. And we get into the heart of tactics in our organization that if we just backed out, we've zoomed out, and we ask bigger questions, we can find that we're not just going to impact the ONE Campaign, the singular tactic that we're looking at, we can impact everything. And that's really what the impact arc is.
• 11:09
  Becky Endicott: And it's going to center your values on your mission. And from that, you just can build a plan.
• 11:13
  Becky Endicott: And it's just a way to activate and the principles that we learned here are what created the impact arc. So this is the formula we want to start to unpacked with you today. And here's something I really want everyone to understand. The impact arc isn't about hoping for success. It's about hedging for success. It's about growing the story. It's about growing impact, we saw it working on employee giving, and then we applied it to our gala. And then after we applied it to the gala, we saw the net of our gala increased 10 times. And that was just the financial output of what happened at the gala. The connections that were made, the seeds that were sown, the the conversations that were ignited that continued into whether it'd be a tour of a facility, whether it would be oh, I want to go meet with this physician now. Or oh, I'm really interested in that dream that your researcher is doing. It just started to germinate all of these seeds. So you've heard us say many times, the campaign is not just a campaign, the podcast is not just a podcast events just don't have to be events. When you look at them, singularly, they will live in a silo. But when you start to zoom out, and look as everything is interconnected, that is where the real magic happens. And so that's what we're going to start to unpack here. And we saw it happen with our podcast, it gave us this lens to people doing incredible things, and it opened the door, you all have heard it here, we've met incredible people, we don't look at any conversation as a one off conversation, we look at as the first conversation that we had with an individual who brings something valuable to our community, we pull them into panels, we pull them into other content, we pull them into connections that we make with you all out in the Uyghur in the do good space. And so I love this concept about the impact arc, I'm so excited to unpack it. And John, you got to talk about this iceberg component that you saw. And you actually put together this really great graphic, I'm sad, we're on an audio platform, but we'll put it into the handout that we're gonna give to all of our pro members. But it's really a different way of looking at the impact that we can have through the lens of building movements talk about that for a little bit.
• 13:35
  Jonathan McCoy: Well, I mean, I love icebergs, let's just be very clear. And I just love the visual of them. And if you've never seen the kind of cutaway cross section of an iceberg, you know, the little tip at the top, which is usually gigantic, let's be clear in real life, you realize that is very much just the smallest aspect of the iceberg. And I feel like I use that analogy a lot, because there's so much hidden below the surface, that that's how I felt all the time in my nonprofit career, you know, being an annual giving, that is very tactic driven and campaign focused, and you're always, you know, on to the next thing and thing, events and all this stuff is really easy to look out in your community or at you know, people that are doing having a lot of success, and just seeing that top level success that they're having. And thinking that you can just mimic that.
• 14:20
  Jonathan McCoy: And the problem is when you just mimic what you can see, you're often going to miss the things that are actually guiding the principles, the depth, the vision, the mission behind what's maybe powering that from underneath. And that's definitely been our truth and how this all threads together as you think about what Becky talked about asking bigger, better questions. Like, I think that's so solid, because if you don't, you're just going to create a litany of tactics. And that's what everybody's the first to tell you, when actually the conversation needs has been 90% of the time, getting right underneath the surface. And that's really what this conversation with hope is going to push you into. So let's think about like how this really plays out. There really is a difference of what development 1.0 says, compared to when you really infuse the impact arc framework and thinking to create a 2.0 effect. One point I would say, of course, let's define a goal. Let's review the data.
• 15:21
  Jonathan McCoy: Let's get an understanding of our audience and brainstorm strategies and craft that campaign plan and build our fundraising toolkit. And then we're going to launch but what happens when you employ this method? You're probably going to get some donation Since you're probably going to renew some donors, and then you're going to celebrate, that's a real typical how you build a campaign singular one and done. But we know we can do better. Because remember, our bigger question was not just how do we execute a campaign? Our bigger question was, how are we trying to create a movement because the movement has all those tentacles that we're really wanting to embrace.
• 15:54
  Jonathan McCoy: And so if you start there, you start building bigger and you build better. The impact Ark is going to walk you through a framework that puts a different lens on this, that takes you to a 2.0 effect. When we're talking about really building a movement. There's bigger questions, it goes from, how do I create an employee giving campaign to how do i revolutionize a culture of giving? Or maybe even how do I have a successful gala with change to how do I leverage an event that creates ripples across multiple areas and ideas and like really start something that lives beyond that one night, it's all about building bigger and building better.
• 16:32
  Becky Endicott: So if you kind of are channeling that development, 1.0 model, if you're doing what John says, if you are building bigger, if you're building better, if you're asking those bigger questions, this is what's going to happen. If you apply the impact arc, it's going to create a development 2.0 model that adds all of those development 1.0 things, we're still going to define goals, we're still going to review data and do all the pieces. However, it's going to do the exact same thing. Plus, it's going to bring you a lot more money, it's going to give you crazy retention numbers, it's going to help you gather story, it's going to help build rabid fans and believers out of your mission, it's going to take your stories beyond your walls, and push it out into the community are serving and give you the power to say not only as our mission so powerful, we believe in it that we've our own people have invested their hard earned income back into the mission because they see the power of the miracles that are happening within our own wall, won't you join us that is a very powerful thing that an organization can say when it's soliciting externally. The other things it does is it makes every donor feel valued in seen. And I think that is one of the things that I love the most about this is there's a complete democratization of the person who gives $1 feels as much as the Rockstar employee who's been there for 40 years and is able to give 100 hours of PTO. And it's going to threaten humanity and authenticity, it's going to find people wherever they hang out in physical places, or digitally, it's going to keep the fundraising going on long after its launch. It's going to give you stories to talk about impact throughout the year. And ultimately, it's going to give you the granddaddy of all benefits, which is building believers. And so as we're walking through the impact arc, and I know this is a lot of tone setting and teeing up that we're giving you but we think it's important because there's got to be a mindset shift and the way that we have been taught to work, which is, and I'm a product of this, that 1.0 model, it really helps you elevate your thinking. And it challenges you by asking yourself what makes something really work, what makes it stick, what makes something wildly successful. And so today, we're not going to talk to you about going viral, because that involves algorithms, timing and luck. But today, we want to talk about that formula that builds that certainty that we're talking about that takes you from hoping for success to hedging for success. So we got to introduce the impact are have we watched enough? I know I feel like we need some almost music, the rocky music I'm running up the stairs. But it's only three little steps. And it's three little words. And number one is staging. We're gonna be walking through that today. Number two is storytelling. And number three, is syndicating.
• 19:35
  Jonathan McCoy: Hey, friends, this episode is presented by virtuous and they just happened to be one of our favorite companies. Let me tell you why.
• 19:39
  Jonathan McCoy: You know, we believe everyone matters. And we've witnessed the greatest philanthropic movements happen when you see and activate donors at every level. And here's the thing, virtuous created a fundraising platform to help you do just that. It's much more than a nonprofit CRM.
• 19:55
  Jonathan McCoy: Virtuous is committed to helping charities reimagine generosity through responsive fundraising, which is simply putting the donor at the center of fundraising, growing giving through personalized donor journeys and by helping you respond to the needs of every individual. We love it because this approach builds trust and loyalty through personalized engagement. Some like virtuous may be a fit for your organization. Learn more today and virtuous.org or follow the link in our show notes.
• 20:24
  Becky Endicott: Hey, friends, are you ready to take your digital engagement to the next level to kind of feel stuck about where to start? Let us introduce you to feather feathers and amazing tech startup focused on making nonprofit outreach more impactful by connecting you to your audience wherever they are online, from fundraising to program awareness, they've got you covered. And rather than telling you, we just wanted to show you for years, the Humane Society of North Central Florida has participated in a local online giving day called the amazing give. It's a competitive landscape for donations. So in 2021, the Humane Society knew they needed to stand out in order to maximize donations for$300 in ad spend their retargeting ads brought 119 visitors to their amazing gift donation page and generated nearly $6,000 in donations in just one day. With feather a small amount of ad spend can go a long way, learn more about their solutions for nonprofits@feather.co. That's feather without the last e.co.
• 21:19
  Becky Endicott: Now let's get back to this amazing conversation.
• 21:28
  Jonathan McCoy: Okay, so staging storytelling, and syndicating we're going to take you no time to unpack these. But we really want to camp out for the rest of time today, talking about staging. And y'all, this is like one of our favorite topics. So really, why though, is because it's all about beginning with the end in mind. And so staging does this really magical thing that I will say is baked into a lot of strategies when we talk about fundraising. So if you are familiar with a traditional capital campaign, I'm kind of putting in quotes. The silent phase is this really important part of your campaign, I mean, you're, you know, gathering those first leadership gifts, you're figuring out what your case for support is, you're really refining that messaging, because by the time you want to go public, you got to have so much support to get to that phase. This is a concept that's applied all the time in the campaign world of big P philanthropy like that. But it's not talked about a lot in the smaller things that can be completely revolutionary. And like, don't miss this. Because by adding a staging component to anything that you're creating, you are hedging your success. So what staging really looks like from a practical sense, it is lining up and informing people like getting your communications plan really tight with how can I unpack this in a way that builds excitement, that gets the right people notified in advance so they can be a supporter and an advocate to you, those believers can know how to show up and plug into the plan, but also does allow you to have the space and time to have this bigger dream, your conversations with the visionaries who are going to help take this whatever you is you're launching, and to make it into something so much more incredible, as a result of that phase. And so in its actual, you know, percentage wise, I don't know, what would you say, Becky, it's like 30% of the pre launch,
• 23:20
  Becky Endicott: pre launch is got to be like 30%. But the event, the moment the launch, that's like 1% of what we actually think the movement is.
• 23:27
  Becky Endicott: And I think that so many people think that it's, you know, 100% of the app, we're all working toward the moment, but we think that that is like 1% of the piece of the pie.
• 23:40
  Jonathan McCoy: Yeah. And so that staging is so critical. So you can come out with a really confident launch. And then what happens after launch, we're gonna give you a lot of ideas of how you thread things together to really make it magical and live beyond and have life beyond when a campaign or an event or whatever it is that you're launching can take take place.
• 23:59
  Becky Endicott: And I mean, I want to talk about that moment that 1% It feels like the apex to us, and I just want to like put my mom arms around everybody out there right now, who has ever work toward launching a very big thing in your nonprofit, whether that's an event, whether that's a you know, a capital campaign, whether it's a digital campaign, or maybe just even a stewardship, something, you feel the exhaustion after the launch I could think of after many galas, I mean, I felt like I had three days to recover. And we want you to recover because we're a company that cares about your mental health and balance.
• 24:34
  Becky Endicott: But I do think that you need to have some intestinal fortitude to know that this is a marathon, and that if you're really intent on building movements, there is so much that's going to come after that the before and the after. And I love that you kind of you know hearken this to being a little bit like the silent phase of a campaign, John, because I really think that's genius. But I think staging is going to be so intuitive to all of you out there because you know what staging is? Its cultivation. It is setting up your cultivation with intentionality. And it's looking about cultivation way before the event. Certainly, there's a lot of cultivation at the event, but the cultivation runway afterward. I mean, we think that's like 70% of the game. And so I want to break down some of these components of staging. We're gonna throw research back in there and understanding data that this is not just going into your CRM and kind of extracting out Who's our top donors? Who's who's given to the to this event? In the past?
• 25:37
  Becky Endicott: It's bigger than that. We're looking at behaviors, where do our people hang out? Where are they? Are they coming to us through email? Are they giving gifts? Are they mailing them in?
• 25:46
  Becky Endicott: Are they giving them through our social channels, that is going to inform the movement that you're going to make and where you're going to actively be hanging out. Because there is not a one size fits all model for building a movement. It really is about finding your people, wherever they are in the data. If you're looking at your website, your data analytics or Google Analytics, it's going to tell you where you need to be pointing the CRM is important, asking the person who manages your social accounts that needs to be in there, talk to your receptionist, what kind of phone calls is she filming, you know, who's walking in the door, all of these things are going to help inform this, I think you need to assess. And this may be one of the most key things that we say, assess prior impact of your project or your campaign in the past, communicate that out in that pre launch staging cycle. We don't want to ask anybody to come and join us with another gift or come to an event. If we haven't communicated what the last event or the last campaign or the last gift gave. And I'll tell you that gives them incredible warming effect to a donor that says, oh, yeah, I did get to that. And that's cool that that happened. That makes me feel good. I want to replicate that feeling. All of a sudden, they're warmed and ready for that 1% moment. The next thing you should do is map out your assets. That would be everything from what kind of photographs Do you have an images, stats, scripts, videos, email, key messages, quotes, logos, whatever it is, there are so many assets that I don't think people think are assets that are part of your content, and storytelling strategy, all of that can be weaved in to tell the story of your movement. Our next one is gather your people.
• 27:32
  Becky Endicott: We are mighty nonprofits, and we rise above as people who work in this sector piling onto our shoulders. That gets very daunting. And until we bring in rabid fans who not only can offload the work, but they give amplification to the message in a completely new and unique lens, they have a different lived experience than what you're giving with your key messages. It's personal to them.
• 27:57
  Becky Endicott: And personal equals connection.
• 28:02
  Becky Endicott: Because when people start to see themselves in stories, that's when they stop scrolling, that's when they click on the link, that's when they want to get involved. So gather those rabid fans. And we're gonna give a great story and example about the Queen, Nancy Brinker and Coleman, who did a great job with this with staging. And then the last one I'll kind of go over is tell the story. What are you trying to accomplish? What do you need from volunteers, from donors from people in the community specifically, and then outline your expectations and the time commitment so that people know exactly how you want to pour in so that there's no whammies. And then if they love it, and they have a great time, and they're pouring into it and power them further, but start simple, outline your needs and allow people to raise their hand and say, Yeah, I want to get on board with this, it will be a very powerful union, that will make your movement so much bigger than what the staff can propel during that launch.
• 28:59
  Jonathan McCoy: Oh, my gosh, I love that you called that out.
• 29:01
  Jonathan McCoy: Because I do think there has to be a paradigm shift of staff lead is only going to get you so far. I think
• 29:09
  Becky Endicott: of that iceberg.
• 29:09
  Becky Endicott: Again, it's gonna get you the tip of that iceberg only,
• 29:13
  Jonathan McCoy: exactly. Like you can control a few things, how big ever your team is, that's how much you can control.
• 29:18
  Jonathan McCoy: But figuring this out, moving beyond staff has got to be the goal. Because that's where really movements that make a difference, like, come alive.
• 29:25
  Jonathan McCoy: And we've just completely seen that. So I want to talk a little bit to about staging just in a real practical sense, if you're fundraising, really getting the solicitation sequencing, right.
• 29:37
  Jonathan McCoy: And for our example, that we said we wanted to create a movement in our organization, then we really had to think about what is the organization that we're trying to rally here?
• 29:48
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, it started with first having conversations with our Foundation team. I mean, you know, I think this is often overlooked that what's the culture happening right there in your office? Are you giving the dignity and the opportunity for people those absolute closest to have a full, incredible experience and be the first to know in that, so they can go on to the next phase, which in our case was leadership? You know, from our standpoint, we wanted the leaders to not just be the first to give and kind of being setting the tone for that for the organization. But also just it makes sense that we're trying to get thought partners and culturally change the dynamic of an organization and so of course, the natural next overflow would be to make sure that the leaders get there A real heart and soul of what this could be. And this whole phase, it's hard for me not to separate out that you're trying to reach audiences before they have preconceived ideas, you know, at least for us, you want to be the first to set the tone, and to help express what the goal is and what it looks like. And so by doing this in a really thoughtful way, you're gonna have so much more success, it's gonna lead to so much more engagement as well, then that next layer is going to people who've already given you know, so we have a leaders in place.
• 31:03
  Jonathan McCoy: And then we want to go to people who are already recurring donors who have already supported your mission and launched to them first. And then only then, are we really ready to launch the movement. So how so much of this work has happened behind the scenes, and it's getting that messaging, right? But it'll pay off dividends, if you really are thoughtful of communicating in the right order with people so that they see feel seen, appreciated, valued, all the things that kind of Becky's threatened together to. So this is also a great time to be testing your messages. We talked about this a little bit, but figure out what lands figure out what your questions are, because you're trying to refine everything before you go out and waste a ton of time or money or marketing, saying the wrong things. And part of this process too is you start that stewardship process immediately, you know, you as you're launching, you're also getting to start the good vibes rolling of gratitude, and thankfulness as people kind of pour into their next step, which may be volunteering or taking that next action with a peer. So so much here's unpack was staging. And it really is a mindset. And if you get the mindset that how am I going to stage for this to do the bigger, better question.
• 32:10
  Jonathan McCoy: Like, it changes everything,
• 32:14
  Becky Endicott: it really does change everything. And I have to just uplift something that you said that I just think is so powerful. And I want to give an example of how it played out for us. When you stage in this sort of cadence, order of closest to your mission, internally pushing out starting with your internal staff moving to leadership, moving the past donors and volunteers, then going to the core audience that you're actually trying to solicit, I can tell you, when we did this with employee campaign, the day we launched, we ended up having almost half our campaign goal in hand or sometimes over, before we ever even launched, we had it in the queue. So already we have stories, to celebrate, we have people that are getting stewarded that are already a part of the campaign. And so rather than it just being like, in our case, the 10 of us, at the foundation of you know, an organization of 10,000, we actually had probably about, you know, 1500 to 2000 people who are already giving. And so that provides a momentum, that is just something that you can ride. And it's going to give you attention and purpose to just focus on that one audience of new donors or recurring donors who still haven't re upped yet.
• 33:34
  Becky Endicott: And that focus is going to give you so much intentionality where you're not feeling like your hair's on fire, because you're doing all the things during the campaign, it's really just going to be fantastic that you can live in a moment where you have intentionality. And people feel empowered. So okay, stepping off my soapbox on that, because we got to give some examples. And I'm gonna break down an event example of how we apply this at our gala. And this is really again, back to that adage that we keep saying is how do you make the gala or the your event become more than just an event.
• 34:07
  Becky Endicott: And I would say the 1.0 model of this was we would send out our sponsorship packets, we would ask the same people over and over to our gala, we would have almost the same message every single time they came to the event. And then we'd have a great we'd spend a lot of money on a band and people with diets.
• 34:26
  Becky Endicott: And when we got back to the heart of worship, psychology, we got back to Mission. We started with storytelling and was staging. And we really started thinking about how do we lead someone into a movement where we can tell them about something that was really specific that we're working on. And then we decided to theme our events we instead of just saying give to this general fund of which you know nothing about, we decided to say hey, this is the burn Gala. Next year is the stroke Gala. The year after that is the cancer gala the year after that is pediatrics so we are literally rotating in story after story. Person, humans, physicians, grateful patients in each of those care areas. It is incredibly inspiring night, but we use the night and across the board. It wasn't just an annual giving an events event, our major gift team I remember being a major gift officer. I had a list and there were connections that I make and of course you're going to go in and you're going to cultivate your people but it becomes less about out, Hey, I'm so glad that you're here. You know, and, and welcome and how's your family doing? It's, hey, those things plus, I know you have a passion for this. Let me introduce you to a physician who's working on something really cool for that. They talk they meet, we sit them next to each other at the table, you know, they're hearing the story.
• 35:55
  Becky Endicott: They're feeling inspired, you know, we would create seeds for let's take this conversation to the next level. Should it be, like I said before a tour next, is it a, hey, let's put a luncheon together? Is it a, hey, let's zoom call with a couple of other Doc's who are doing this who may also be interested in this work or a board member, and you start to see the connectivity. I'm using Mike my fingers are moving around like it's electric, because something electric does happen, when you use the event, to sort of create launch to all of these plans and ideas that are already going in our portfolios that are already going up on the KPI board. It's you're putting him on fire in your staging, to be awakened once that event is over.
• 36:43
  Jonathan McCoy: Oh, my gosh, that example. And it just keeps going and growing. And he adds so much color to something that could just be a pedestrian like event, you know, it just gives so much more meaning?
• 36:55
  Becky Endicott: It certainly does. It felt more to us. And I mean, we took it from a $300,000 Gala, you know, that had the same probably 400 People coming to a $1.2 million Gala. That is the most successful fundraising event, we think, in the state of Oklahoma was our little Health Care Foundation event. And it's because people felt the meeting, they were holy warmed, and then they got plugged in after and they wanted to keep coming back.
• 37:25
  Jonathan McCoy: So good. And that rotation that is like a hack for whatever your mission is to just showcase. So it's not the same event year after year.
• 37:31
  Jonathan McCoy: Okay, I mean, we got to bring it home with one more case study.
• 37:34
  Jonathan McCoy: You know, this this season has been really incredible with so many guests, but there's one that just really shook us when she shared her story. And that was Nancy Brinker, the founder of Susan G. Komen. And this was such a heart wired conversation was episode 249. She came on the podcast, and I won't share her whole story. You need to hear her in her own voice. Go back and listen, it will miss your heart is beautiful. And just the love of the sister that just runs so deep for her. But you know, when she was first organizing what now the Susan G komen Race for the Cure, which is everywhere, right 1000s of people have participated, probably millions of people have participated, they raised more than a billion couple billion dollars. This was pre social media, which is so fascinating.
• 38:18
  Jonathan McCoy: You know, she had this vision that she had this dream of women running with swords wearing pink, and then translated that to say, hey, we're going to show up at this place in Dallas at said time on a Saturday. And they just got busy calling. I mean, their staging looks really old school. If you think about it. Now there's no social media couldn't talk about breast in public, you couldn't talk about cancer word, you say the word.
• 38:42
  Jonathan McCoy: They had this work ethic to get on the phone with their friends who called their friends who called their friends. And Nancy told us that the morning of the race, you know, they still weren't sure how many people were going to show up. It's not like they had the tech to know who had been registered or something like that. And she said, when those cars started coming, I can just picture this morning like early dawn break, and you see these headlights start coming there. When the car started coming into the parking lot race site. She knew that she had something. And then we had something that we could not just communicate. But it's something we can translate and grow. If you know about their story, they since sintered story, they sent her the personal, the individual, the meaning the purpose, and it lead to something that grew beyond anybody's wildest imagination.
• 39:35
  Jonathan McCoy: And it started with those initial staging calls this, you know, working behind the scenes, so that that first event came out that led to everything that follows. And I think Nancy's story is just a beaming example of what's possible when you invest in this phase, you know, when you take the time to do that, right? So have
• 39:55
  Becky Endicott: we made believers out of you. And step one of the impact arc, there is something that is truly magical to be held in the staging component. We hope you're starting to wrap your mind around this concept of how to think differently about how we approach our work, how we approach building cultures of philanthropy, and building movements within our missions.
• 40:18
  Becky Endicott: So stay with us. This is step one of a three part series we're going to be unpacking storytelling, which naturally is my favorite component. Next week, we've you know, we've talked about it a lot on the podcast you can put Storytelling into our search engine and find a ton of podcasts about that.
• 40:36
  Becky Endicott: But we're really going to be talking about storytelling through the lens of the impact arc. So stay with us. And we're going to have some great worksheets for all you pro members that you can get in your handout as well.
• 40:48
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, thanks for hanging with us. I hope this really sparks conversations that is really the intent of every time we lift a series for you is that it would be something that you could just rally around with your friends in the office or maybe friends you find that we're for good community, because together we really feel like we can create such impactful movements together. So thanks so much for being here.
• 41:07
  Becky Endicott: Yeah, we're rooting for you guys. Keep going.
• 41:10
  Julie Confer: Hey, friends.
• 41:10
  Julie Confer: Thanks so much for being here.
• 41:12
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• 41:32
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• 41:35
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• 41:43
  Julie Confer: Thanks friends. I'm our producer Julie confer and our theme song is sunray by Remy Boris boom