How To Ask People For Money

0:01 This program is designed to provide general information with regards to the subject matters covered. This information is given with the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial, legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek the services. Of competent professionals before applying or trying any suggested ideas. Hello, and thank you for tuning in to a Sharp Outlook on pay for HD Radio and Talk or TV. I am Angela Sharp. Your host our arm chair discussions with industry experts will give you the steps, tools and information to be successful in business and to prepare you to be your best self.

0:54 Hello, I'm Angela Sharp, and welcome to a Sharp Outlook. We're going to have them one of those shows that you're going to need some paper, You're going to need a pencil, because we have some real golden nuggets to give you today that's going to help you ask people for the money. Nonprofits typically work towards goals that benefit the public. These goals might include advancing education, leaving poverty, or promoting health. Nonprofits often need to engage in a range of activities to ensure they have diverse revenue streams.

1:35 This allows them to remain financially stable and continue working towards their mission even if one source of the funding fails through falls through. It's part of the complex and challenging world of the nonprofit finance. In twenty twenty six, fundraising is defined by a shift toward intentional giving, where donors prioritize trust, transparency, and meaningful local impact over mass market appeals. The donor cloud includes people that are ready to give. What is the donor cloud? It refers to the ecosystem of supporters surrounding an organization, ranging from core insiders to those in broader digital networks. Our guest today will be providing information on this method of giving and how to tap into the money flow. Our guest today is Daniel Johnson from Next Level Nonprofits dot US. Daniel is the founder and chief consultant of Next Level Nonprofits also known as Next Level Nonprofits US, a consulting firm based in North Carolina as of twenty twenty six. As work centers on coaching nonprofit leaders and business owners to build sustainable organizations. His core methodologies include the five levels

3:07 of Sustainability, which He's going to go through a framework designed to guide new nonprofit leaders from dy do it yourself mode to long term impact. The Sustainable impact cycle, one of four mindsets of encourages leaders to adopt to ensure their mission remains viable. Strategic fundraising specializes in He specializes in helping small nonprofits secure unrestricted funding, which we all know how much that is needed, moving them away from a reliance on shoe string budgets or inconsistent grants.

3:49 His executive experience, he is a four time nonprofit founder and former executive director advocacy and leadership. He previously served as the national director for the People Against the NDAA, grew a nonprofit to ten thousand volunteers, and held leadership roles as Students for Liberty and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. He's been very involved in nonprofits. Daniel has been featured in outlets like CNN, The Chicago Tribune, in the New York Times for his work his impact evaluation and nonprofit growth.

4:31 And I would like to invite Daniel to the show now, and we want to hear about all these wonderful, wonderful opportunities that are available, but they just don't know how to ask for the money. Thank you for having me on angeln and I really appreciate being able to come on the show and talk about a challenge that whether you are a nonprofit leader right now or you have experienced in the past, a fear and a not understanding how to ask for money. I want you to learn one of the most powerful skills that you can to create change, which is to get other people to give you money to actually make that change happen. If you're a nonprofit, you probably currently are relying on grants and maybe a fundraiser. Things that stand between you and the person you're asking for money, whether it's a grant application, whether it's the food that they purchase, an auction that they buy, and stand in the way of you developing the relationship with the donor that leads them to give you the unrestricted funds. If you are an individual listening to this show and looking to raise money, you probably fear talking to people about the cause that you care about. Whether you're a board member of a nonprofit or whether you're trying to raise a GoFundMe. You probably post it on social media. You may have told a few friends and family about it,

6:02 but you're really not sure. How do I respectfully, ethically and effectively ask the people around me who I think might give me money for money? And that's we're going to cover in the show. Oh absolutely, you know you mentioned board members. I know a lot of times the board members, you know, kind of take on the ambassador role and they contact their contacts and reach out to assist the nonprofit that they're on the board. So that makes me ask the question when you select a board, should should you know what kind of connections that the board member has so that you know they can be a major factor in the in the fundraising and be effective in fundraising.

6:58 Well, let's let's speak to that for a second. Whether you're sitting on a board right now or you're a nonprofit leader who is looking at selecting a board to help you with your fundraising. Remember that there are three top fears in life. They are death, public speaking, and asking people for money. So in most cases, you're probably not going to be able to find a board who wants to go out and ask for money. Maybe you'll have them watch this broadcast and learn how, but in many cases your board is not going to want to go out and ask for money. So who you're looking for to join your board or your advisory board are people who have connections in the community, people who believe in your cause, people who provide something interesting to the organization and bring some expertise or skill set to the table, maybe even potential donors. But I wouldn't go so far as to think that your board members are going to raise money for you. In most cases, that is what makes nonprofit stuck. It is assuming that they're board members with no training, no skills, are going to go out and just ask for money because they have it or because they know people who do. It's not how this works.

8:07 And what your board members are most likely to do is help make connections and then you step in and ask for the money. Okay, great, great, Well that that kind of takes that off the board. And like, let's explore this right. This is why so many nonprofits introduce trinkets into the conversation. What's a trinket. A trinket is something that you offer that's not the impact that your nonprofit is making, or not the impact of the cause on the world. To try to entice somebody to give you money. A trinket could be an item at an auction. A trinket could be a fundraising dinner.

8:58 A trinket could be a bake sale. It is something that says, we don't believe enough in the impact we're making as an organization, and we don't believe that's worth money, and therefore we're asking you to buy this thing and we'll take a little bit of money off of it. When you set your board in a position where you expect them to fundraise for you instead of you learning that skill yourself, that's the kind of fundraising that you're going to end up with. And trinket fundraising raises trinket money. Right, that's not going to meet the mission for the year. That's definitely for sure. Oh my goodness. Well, you know, some of the people you know that began their fundraising, they usually kind of rely on past donors, and so they go out and they try to find digging through files and stuff, who was giving money five years ago, ten years ago, fifteen years ago. You know, they're going way back into files, you know, to find those laps donors, you know, to see if they can reactivate their interest in the mission alignment. What do you think about that?

10:15 I think past donors are some of your best people who can give you insight on the organization, who can give you insight on why they gave in the first place, and who might have been dropped off and people stop contacting them. Maybe that's why they stopped giving. Those are a great place to start looking for potential donors as long as you approach them, right. Okay, so they should circle back and try to find those. Well, think about it, right. If you're in business, your best customer is who the person who's already purchased from you, That is your best customer. Right. If you're in nonprofits, these are people who have already given, which means they've already qualified themselves. They've already indicated their interest in your cause.

11:06 Now you need something to inspire them to give again. You need something to excite them, to get them off their chair, to show that you're not the same organization that let them lapse last time. But past donors are right up there with current donors as this is where you would start looking in your donor cloud. Okay. So, so some of your projects are reached through like peer to peer. You know campaigns where eighty percent of contributors are often new to the organization. This also includes corporate partners and employees through payroll giving and matching, gift programs and things like that. You know, are those good?

11:56 Are those programs helpful? So here's here's how I want someone who is not asking people for money. Right, so, they're going after grants, or they are holding fundraisers or whatever. They're not asking people directly for money. And in a time when federal grants are no longer as reliable as they were, are exploring this area to start asking people for money. The first thing you need to do is identify your donor cloud. Now, your donor cloud are is the name we give to the people around you who love what you do, and if you were able to give them something inspiring to be a part of something specific, they might be willing to give to your organization. Your donor cloud includes, first and foremost, the people you and your board members know.

12:46 You and your board members know. It includes your current and your past donors. It includes the vendors that you work with as an organization and the companies that you do business with. It includes the the connections that each of you has into the community. There's a number that represents the number of connections that most people have at least and it's called Dunbar's number. Dunbar's number says that the average person can only remember the names of one hundred and fifty people. But that's one hundred and fifty people. And so if you have a board of three plus U in many cases, small nonprofits have a bigger one board of three plus U. And you know, we usually do brainstorming sessions with those boards to come up with their donor cloud. You'll come up with between forty and one hundred names. You add that to your current donors or your absolute best people to go and talk to about raising money, and your past donors we're your second best people. You should have two hundred to three hundred names if you've been around for a few years as an organization, that you can start engaging and involve in the mission of your organization. If you're able to develop two or three hundred in your average donor cloud's probably around two or three hundred names. You're able to developed two or three hundred names, and only ten percent of them give you one thousand dollars or more. Guess what you just raised twenty to thirty thousand dollars on your

14:18 first campaign. I never thought about that donort cloud being people that are already in your circle's that's very interesting. Can I relay an experience? Because we just had this ice storm, right, this icemageddon or whatever it was going to be. Right, So in Raleigh, we were supposed to get the worst of it. I mean, we were supposed to get half an inch to three quarters inch of freezing rain. Power was going to go out. Everybody was going shopping. Well, I thought we were prepared. We had a propane heater, we had food, we had water. We bought a little of milk because we have three kids, and my god, the screams if we could not get milk.

15:05 But we realized a day before the storm was supposed to hit, Oh, our propane tank doesn't fit our propane here. Uh oh, So now I have to go find one. And the first thing that I did was, you know, looked around at Amazon and all these different places where you thought it would be, and it wasn't there. Right, And then I put on my big boy boots and as ashamed as I was of the fact that we were not prepared for the storm, as the man of the family, I went door to door in my neighborhood and started asking people if they had a propane tank. And this tells you one of the most important things about why you start with the people closest to you.

15:50 I started with the neighbors who knew us, and all of the fear and shame and doubt that I had about like asking for a propane tank for my family, because clearly we were unprepared. Right, is the same kind of fear and shame and doubt that you have as a fundraiser, no matter what kind of project you're working on. But when I started going to the neighbors who knew me, they were like, Oh, it's you, and they were happy to see me. Oh yeah, I'm gonna call my husband, we'll see if we have one. And the relief that that brought and the confidence that brought to go to the next neighbor and go to the next neighbor and eventually we got We got the propane tank at a store they were able to find some. But like the confidence that that gave me was the thing that enabled us to be able to ultimately get propane for our family.

16:40 And that is why it is so important to start with your circle, the people who know you and the people who will give you the freedom to fail when you are starting to fundraise. Right, Oh wow, that is a great story. That is yeah, yeah, because when you get ready to start out, you are going to be nervous, You're going to be almost petrified. And if you just you know, yeah, contact those people that know you, that care about you, that are friends, They're going to help you ease yourself and to the point where you are comfortable you and you actually can feel that boldness to go out there and just you know, say this is my appeal.

17:23 You know. And what do you think about mail to mail? I mean sending out mailers and things like that. Do you think that's good way of advertising? I think it's good if you know what people respond to. In most cases, when an organization starts to ask pools for money, if they don't know what people respond to. And when you don't know what people respond to, you want to get an answer as fast as possible because that's what's going to determine whether your message works right. And the fastest way to know how people respond is to go talk to people. You know why, because they're responding real time you're pitching them on your project and what you want and what the impact you're going to make, and they're listening, and you can hear when they go oh yeah or mm hmm, or or they tune out to they kind of like start looking at their watch or you know, waiting for the time to leave. You can't do it's hard to do mass messaging well until you've done the one to one messaging. And so yeah, absolutely, a direct mail email, all of these tools can drastically level up your messaging as an organization and your donations as an organization. But until you've done the one to one, the engagement, the looking people in the eye and asking them the questions, it's hard to know what to write in those letters, and it's a lot harder to raise a significant amount of money. Most organizations when they send out their first appeal letter lose money. Lose money on that first appeal letter. It's designed, it's to acquire donors, it's all of that, which is great, but until you

18:55 know what message to put in that letter now, instead of learning within a week what your messaging is because you talked to seven, eight, ten people in a week, instead of learning within a week what your messaging is. You have to send out four or five different letters and you might learn over six months. Do you have six months to wait to figure out how to raise money or can you just start talking to people now? Yeah? Yeah, some I know when I was controller, CFO director of finance for some nonprofits, they even went so far as to try to buy like donor list and things like that and invest in that. But without you know what if that donor list has a specific type of nonprofit they want to give to, You're not going to be able to know the difference. They're just going to send you a list because you paid for it, and a good portion of those are not going to be bring about any kind of response whatsoever. Is that an option, buying donor list or should you build your own?

20:03 I think it's an option, But I really want people to separate fundraising from marketing. Buying a donor list is marketing. That is just like buying an email list. Right, you're trying to add people as prospects to your donor list. And if you're at the point where you've run through your donor cloud, right, you've contacted, you talked to the two three hundred people inside of your cloud and you've gotten those who are going to be aligned and excited with the mission involved with what you do. Until that point, it doesn't really make a whole lot more sense to add a bunch more prospects. Once you get to that point, Sure, add more prospects, bring them into the same system you set up when you did your first campaign. But my advice to people who are looking at their grants and it's not enough for the year, and they're looking at their fundraisers and people aren't going to them, is to go back to what actually worked in the nonprofit sector from day one, which was sitting down with real people offering real impact and asking them to be a part of it.

21:06 Right. The one thing about giving most people are I guess you have to identify what's their why? Why would you want to give to this particular program? How do you identify the why? So we'll get to that in a second, but I really want to answer a burning question that anybody who's listening to this show is going to have, which is okay, Dan, So I'm going to go to people who I know, or to my who my board knows, because they're going to be nice to me, right but I also don't want to take advantage of those people. I don't want to feel like I'm begging. I don't want to. The last thing I want to do is go to my you know, former coworker and you know, get on my knees in front of them and ask them for one thousand dollars. Right, what do I offer? There's a statistic that you have in the show notes, which is really good, that sixty seven percent of donors are looking for impact with the capital I And this is something I want people to recognize. Fundraising has changed. Fundraising used. The initial part of fundraising started as we're going to show an urgent situation and ask people to give from their heart for that urgent situation. Urgent need based you know, Sarah mcloalin with the puppies in the cages and stuff like that, right, because very much we're pulling into heartstrings for a one time gift. The second phase that it went through was people realize, well, we don't just want the one time gift from the donor. We actually want to know them,

22:39 we want them to give again. And now we've moved to relationship based giving and a lot of today's fundraising advice is based on relationships based giving. The problem with relationship based giving is relationship based giving is trust based, and trust in anything in society has gone down massively over the past ten years. People don't just belie leave it when you tell them you're doing good. They have too many thoughts of charity scandals and things like that running through their head. What we are at now is impact based giving, which to me is a good thing. It's a good thing for the donors of our sector to be moving from. You know, this is urgent to I like you to are you doing any good? Because the nonprofits who aren't won't be able to stand up to that, and the nonprofits who are will get elevated.

23:26 I love that. I love that for our sector. But this is an important thing to catch on to is you cannot. You can a little bit, but it's not going to be as effective to activate the donor cloud to just be like, my organization's doing amazing things. Do you want to be involved? Right? What instead you need to do is build what we call impact projects, exciting things that these potential donors could get engaged with. Make a small bet on your organization and see the fruit of that. Bet come to life. Yeah, so you should. So you're saying you kind of like are going to bring some kind of statistics as to what it is that you're wanting to accomplish and what you're really going to accomplish and the impact that is going to bring, and we'd love you to be a part of making that impact happen.

24:29 Is that what I what I encourage people to do is I encourage people to come up with three impact projects. Why three because when you're going to activate your donor cloud, you don't really know what they're going to be into, what they're going to be excited about. You have ideas, but you're not really sure. And the principle of sustainable impact is that you need to be making an impact that is both actually helping the peop you serve and is going to be regularly funded by donors. If you do not have both, you cannot make that sustainable, You cannot make that long term. So we encourage people to come up with three impact projects. What's an impact project?

25:14 An impact project is like a pilot project for nonprofits. So there are three key factors in an impact project that we want anyone who's trying to raise money to follow. The first, this project should deliver impact quickly. You want to use this project as a launch pad to get donors to donate on a regular basis to your organization, to get donors to invest in the staff and the programs in those unrestricted funds you want. And this project thus needs to deliver the impact you're talking about quicker than normal. Now, in our experience, the projects that make that raise the most funding deliver impact in ninety days or less after the fundraising is been concluded. But it needs to be fast. The second, it needs to be fairly small. We tend to advise organizations to throw out their first impact project at fifteen thousand dollars. Why because fifteen thousand is one of those you're serious about this, but it's not too crazy. So no matter whether you're brand new to it or whether you've been running this for a little while and it's just a small pilot, fifteen thousand tends to be the sweet spot. You can go up to twenty five and fifty, but we tend to find fifteen thousand to be really good. Remember, the goal is to activate your donor cloud. The goal is to get these people excited and engaged in what you're doing.

26:41 And if you raise that the price of the impact project so high that it's going to take you six months to a year to actually raise the money for it, you are defeating the point of engagement. You're defeating the point of that quick impact. You're making it more difficult for you to keep these people once you get them. So number two is has to be low cost. And number three, and this is very important, it needs to make a numerical impact on the people you serve. Think about how people buy stuff. Right when somebody buys from me, right, so they jump in the first fifteen K program. Our commitment is that we're going to help you raise fifteen k.

27:27 It's a very specific dollar amount. When you go on Amazon, when your buyers go on Amazon, you don't go on Amazon and you're like, I'm going to buy this thing and maybe it'll do something for me. That'd be cool, maybe it'll work. I don't know. No, there's very specific promises that if you do this investment, this is what's going to happen, and that is how nonprofits have to frame their projects. We're going to help four veterans go through intense PTSD therapy and use their PTSD below to manageable levels. We're going to. One of my favorite examples of an impact project is a leady named Abby Wonderful Woman.

28:12 She is the nonprofit director of a domestic violence shelter or a domestic violence organization. Right. She experienced domestic violence. She was a Basonic violence volunteer. She wanted to create a shelter in her county. There is no domestic violence shelter in your county. It's going to cost about two hundred thousand dollars. She had been trying to raise money for this for two years. Nobody would give because you're new and it's two hundred thousand dollars. There's just there's not enough trust built up there yet. Right. So what we did was, in the course of ninety days, we developed a project called Wings to Work. She came up with the idea, which was that we identified a smaller problem that women who were at a shelter in a neighboring county. We're timing out so you only get sixty days to stay in the shelter so they can help other women. If you cannot get independently on your feet within sixty days, odds are you have to go back to go back to your abuser, right, And many of these women had professional skill sets, but they didn't have the connections, they didn't have the certifications that they needed in order to get employment. And so she launched this project, talked to twenty people, raised fifteen thousand dollars, and there are now right now as we speak, three women in cabins in Washington State who are getting their certifications, getting connected with employers and do not have to go back to their abuser. That's the kind of projects you

29:43 fell it. Wow, yeah, definitely. You know. The one thing I recall is when you're trying to raise money, you have to come up with kind of like the needs story, the story that really I identifies what the true need is. Instead of just saying I have this nonprofit. You know, we have this amount of budget and we need to raise some money. Give them the whole purpose of what's going on in the first place. There is a story behind the reason you even have the nonprofit. What is that story? It should be a story that yes, it's filled with passion, it's filled with you know, not only the passion and you're wanting to do this, but it has a complete thought process involved as to what you actually are going to achieve, so that it does kind of build that trust. We have this need and this is what we're going to provide, and this is how many people we have already reached and been able to, you know, help their lives, change their lives, move them forward. You know, right now, there's a lot of need out there and we need to help one another. Neighbors helping neighbors, and sometimes we're going to have to have some funds. Let's put that into

31:15 a story that everybody is like, heck, yes, I want to be a part of that, because you know, if it wasn't for the grace of God, it could be me. So just you know, having that right story, how do they get the story? How do they identify what's the right story? So the focus for today is going to be on how to ask people for money, and while telling a story is an important part of it, since it's not the main focus, what I'm going to encourage people to do is we do have a stunning story framework. This is the way that you kind of open up your conversations with donors. Stunning Story Framework is available on our website Next Level Nonprofits dot US if you go to Next Level Nonprofits dot Us, hit that contact button, say hey, I want the Stunning Story Framework. I will give you the Stunning Story framework that helps you take even if your nonprofit. You know, we have a lot of nonprofits that have multiple moments that they decide. It wasn't like they're sitting in a in a bar one day, like the American Revolution and they're all just like, all right, we need to do something. It was very much. There are many moments, There are many complicated reasons you start at the nonprofit. This Stunning Story Framework is going to walk you through and teach you how to create a story that potential donors will listen to. So if you want that framework, it's not necessary for this particular conversation, but if you want that framework, you can find it next Level Nonprofits dot Us. Just send us a contact

32:45 we'll send you the Stunning Story Framework. Oh wonderful, Thank you so much, because I know that you know, even part of the asking, they don't know what to say. You know, how do they start the conversation is really really. Well and that that one is actually relates to a previous question you asked, right, and that that hits on the third part of this, Right. I remember I said that there were three pieces asking people for money? Right, First, identify your donor cloud. Second, figure out what you're going to ask them. Third, go and ask these people and excite these people about getting involved. So this is step three. Right, we've now, if you've been listening to this broadcast and you've been taking notes, you know you need to identify who you and your board members know. You know that you need to develop some projects that will get to people in your donor cloud excited. And now you're like, Dan, Okay, how do I start asking people for this? Like? How do I do it in a way in particular? How do I do it in a way that's ethical? How do I do it in a way that doesn't make me feel like I'm begging?

34:02 Right? And we use there's there's many different ways to do this, but we use a method called AVA. This was developed through my own fundraising. When I started fundraising, I I started nonprofits. Really, I wasn't into fundraising, didn't like it. Last thing I want to do is ask people for money, ask people to volunteer all day long, but money Nah, no way. And I had somebody tell me, Dan, you realize that when people give you their time, they're never going to get it back, right, They only get one chance that once that day is gone, it's over. So you're asking people right now for something that they're sacrificing for you they'll never get back, but you're afraid to ask for something that they can replace tomorrow. And I went, all right, okay, fair, you have a point. So I started asking people for money, right, and I was constantly trying to avoid the actual ask. I would want to talk about literally anything other than money, and then just hope that you like functue the potential donor into wanting to give you money. And I kind of accidentally developed this framework that seems to work incredibly well for helping

35:34 someone both build up the confidence and build up the understanding of your donors so that you can actually ask for money. And this is the AVA framework. So AVA stands for Advice, Vision Ask. Three phases that you go through with your potential donors that help you develop the understanding of what they want, develop the understanding of whether they're interested in your project, and make it a natural match toward the end, if there is one. So the first phase is advice in the advice phase. You know that there's an old saying and fundraising if you and you can try this yourself. If you ask for money, you'll get advice. If you ask for advice, you'll get money.

36:33 Hm hmm. And there's there's kind of a simple psychological reason behind this, because when you ask for someone's advice, you're showing that you care what they think. You're inviting them to be a part of something and to help co create something. And what are people most likely to give to Well, the projects that the involved in, right, the projects they help build get them giving you advice is one of the easiest ways they can help build your project. So when you're asking for money, you take your three projects and you go to at least fifteen people in your donor cloud who you actually want their advice, Like, don't fake it, don't just be like I want your money, so I'm gonna pretend that I care what you have to say that go to people who you actually want their advice on this project, and they're going to give you advice on those three projects, and they're going to tell you which one of those you should run with.

37:43 You will know by the time you talk to the sixth or seventh of those people, which of those projects you're running with, And now you have something powerful and fundraising. You have a donor validated project. You have a project that people have already said, yeah, I'm in interested, this is something I would give to So instead of running out in the wilderness with your idea and hoping it works, you're now going out with an idea you know people are interested in, and now you just have to get volume. Does that make sense. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah. So the first piece of AVA is advice. The second piece is vision. Once you've selected a project and you know, we help you put together a proposal that is actually kind of a written proposal that people can read through and tell some of the story that you were talking about with the project. Right. Once you developed a project and you developed this story, then the next step is vision.

38:48 You are going to go out and find out what kind of people are interested in this kind of project in your cloud, and what kind of people are excited about what you're doing. This is fun because you've already had the advice conversation, which means you know, so many people are excited and those people you just asked for advice. Guess what, They're the first on your list for your vision conversation? Right, you know they're in Right? You got to remember your your Steve Jobs from Apple here. If you had known Steve Jobs when he was creating Apple, would you have wanted Steve Jobs to look at his list of people who he could be asking to invest in Apple? See your name and go, Nah, Angela, wouldn't be interested, wouldn't care? Right, you'd be mad at him.

39:40 He saw my conference this, But instead of offering an investment that's going to make them financial wealth, you're offering someone who was experienced domestic violence themselves an opportunity to make sure that never happens to somebody ever. Again. What kind of amazing, astounding opportunity are you offering right there? So you then identify the next group of people in your donor cloud who you're gonna have to start having vision meetings with. And in this meeting you learn about the donor. What are you interested in? What do you care about? We have a whole script, a whole outline we go through that helps you walk through this meeting.

40:20 But you get an idea of why would they care? What's the benefit they get? Out of the project. That's how you do this ethically, if you know what benefit they get out of the project, and then you just get to excitingly offer them the opportunity to do so. Right. Absolutely, you do those vision meetings, and my god, you are high as a kite on those vision meetings. And at the end of those vision meetings, you mean you very very clear with these meetings, both the advice and the vision you are not asking for money in either because you have not yet determined until you're done with those what this would would motivate what benefit this potential donor gets out of being a part to this project. This is how you do it ethically. Once you have identified that benefit, once they're excited over the moon, you ask permission to bring a proposal to them in then ask meeting.

41:13 If you follow that three step process of advice and then vision and then ask, they know you're asking for money. You know you're asking for money. They're excited about the project. You're excited about the project. The only thing that's left is to iron out the details and get the check. Yes, absolutely, and. That's how you ask people for money. Yeah, that is really cool. Okay, Well we have this whole like group of people gen Z and millennials. Now, you know, one thing I have noticed because I you know, surf the the WAYLB a lot, because I've got grandchildren and they seem to not have one ouncil problem putting up a GoFundMe. I'm moving to a new apartment, send me some money. I'm doing this since they seem to have a totally different attitude about just you know, at any time, Hey, I need some money, send me some money.

42:23 Is that real? Is that? You know? Is that how they function? Is that how you were able to reach them? Or you know, how do you get that next generation to be givers into something of value? So for most nonprofits, the people who are going to give you money are people who have entered the phase of their life where they have that money right right right. So there might be some people who are millennials on that list. I mean, millennials are starting to get pretty old at this point. There are some people who are millennials on that list. There might even be some people who are gen z on that list. For the vast majority of what we work with, you're going to be asking individuals who have kind of peaked their career already and achieved what capitalism has to offer, but then look at the rest of the world and want to give back.

43:20 But in my generation, there are lots of people who do want to and are excited about giving, and the most important thing for my generation is a sense of community. Really, getting millennials to give is the same concept. You still have to have the impact project, you still have to have the exciting thing that they're getting involved in. There's still that actual transfer of value, but there's also this sense that there's a lot of other people around me who are doing the same and that gets into you know, it goes beyond asking people for money, and it gets into your kind of fifth phase of sustainability, which is creating a donor community. Creating this sense of not only am I doing this, not only am I doing this with you, but I'm doing this with you and you and you and you and all these people around me.

44:18 Creating that community is where you start to bring in some of the smaller recurring donations things like that from the millennial crowd. MM And so when you get your donor cloud, is there an expectation that they're going to be recurring or is there something you need to do to keep them recurring. This relates to one of the most common questions that I get asked, which is, Okay, Dan, so I believe you that my current donors and my past donors my best people. How do I ask someone for money again? Like?

45:03 How long do I have to wait? It's usually the question how long do you have to wait to ask for someone for money again? Well? Okay, let's compare this to business. If you buy something from me and I give you a promise, how long do I have to wait before I ask you for money again? Mm hmm. Throw out a guess, angela, how long How long do I have to wait? If you buy something from me and I give you a promise, how long do you have to wait to ask again? Oh? I would say six months. When I delivered. When I deliver on that promise. Oh, when you deliver, then you can ask again.

45:44 Right away Amazon right If you buy stuff on Amazon and it doesn't show up at your house, guess who you're not buying from again? You You can ask someone for money once you've delivered the impact you promised the last time you have money, and once you've shown them that you've delivered that impact you know, you can't just do it and then not show them. You do it to show them, and then you can repeat the cycle, ask them for advice on what they think the next phase should be, right, and then then you can turn one time one bet donors into recurring donors and then you get your unrestricted funding. Then you because you've proven yourself to them with your organization. Once you've proven yourself, you can go to that person and give you thy twenty five hundred whatever that's going to be one hundred, two hundred and fifty dollars five hundred dollars a month donor.

46:44 That's really smart because that's going to set up sustainability of your organization. But you have to prove yourself. First, right right, So oh, I asked this question here. If you have proven yourself, do you kind of like send them like a little letter or a flyer or something showing the results of what or the impact that was made and then you know, kind of give a little nudge. We have another project coming to even expand on what we've already accomplish. You know, if you would like to give here are the options something like that.

47:28 I know that's what happens to me. I get in the mail all the time. I do tend to like a gap between telling them what the impact is and then asking again, so I encourage people people this is a fundraising mentor of mine said this to me, and well, there are more complicated frameworks. I think this is the simplest one. People give for three reasons. They get for the head, for the heart, from the guy. Some people give from the guy. They just they see it and they're like, I gotta do something about that. Boom, here's money. Some people get from the head. I have reviewed your impact and I've reviewed your stats, and it looks like you're delivering the real impact that I want. Here's the money, And some people get from the heart. You've told me this story. I you know, I'm heartrended by it. I am really excited about this, and they give you money. It is important once a donor does give, to identify which one of those they are primarily and then deliver them the impact along that line. So that might let's say, for someone who gives from the heart, you might have one of the recipients of your money send them a letter telling them how much it mattered to them. For someone who gives from the head. You might send them the stats.

48:57 You might send them the improvements on performance of your workforce development. You might send them how frugal you were with the money. In addition to that, and for someone who gives from the gut, you might send them an instance that happened while you were just a story that happened while you were doing this project that just illustrates how important it is. But I like to separate that a little bit from and can I have more money? I do it personally with asking for advice on the next project. You can do it by sending them the impact and then a month later telling them, hey, we have this new project cooked up. Let's talk, or a month later sending them the ask for money. I do like there be a little bit of a gap so they can revel in the good feeling for longer than thirty seconds before you ask for their wallet again. I don't know how you feel when you're scrolling through your mail and you're just like, oh, that's such an amazing story.

50:01 I look, they're asking for money again. I want you to have a little bit longer, to have that good feeling. Give us a little break. Yeah, you have training sessions that provide all this information and more. How can someone be a part of your training sessions because you know, it's like customer service. Everybody says, oh, do customer service, but they never get trained and then they're upset because you know, the customers are complaining they need training the same thing here. So how can the audience get in touch with you to attend your sessions and you know, book some coaching from you at next level nonprofits?

50:49 Yeah, I think a great way to get to know me is to attend one of the sessions. In each of the sessions, we don't just teach the concepts. We also answer, like help walk at least a couple organizations through how to implement it for their organ their specific organization. So I've got a session coming up actually this week on Thursday, the twenty ninth, at noon Eastern, We're going to have beat the Wave. If you are a nonprofit leader who always plans to do more fundraising this year, but then the wave of all your other responsibilities comes up and knocks you over, this session is for you. We are developing quarter by quarter fundraising improvement plans so that you can develop a better fundraising plan going into twenty twenty six, so you can go. You can go to that session. I'm going to give you the link Angelus.

51:40 It'll be in the show notes and people can use that. And then if you want to know when the sessions are coming up, go to next Level Nonprofits dot us and sign up for an email list. You get on the email list, I send you one email a week usually and it starts with a story, so you're always going to get real stories from the field, real stories about fundraising, sometimes real stories about my life, my kids, my dog, And they're always going to have a fundraising lesson and usually a resource attached to it. And you can get on that newsletter at next Level Nonprofits dot us. Oh great, well, Daniel, I just wanted to say, I hope they took all their notes, and if you didn't, then you need to contact him so that you can go to the sessions. You can get trained, you can get coaching, and because I know you need the funding to be able to do the work that you're wanting to do out there in the communities. This has been wonderful.

52:42 I appreciate you being on a Shark Consulting is on every Monday at eleven am Eastern time eight am Pacific time. We always bring great guests like Daniel to be able to help you be your best self and be successful and what you're doing. So until next time, stay informed. I want to thank you for joining us on a sharp outlook. We have been informed and energized to take the next steps. We have posted links to websites and videos to learn more on today's topic. Please join us again next week for another thought provoking conversation right here on key for HD radio and Talk for TV. Listen to the podcast on all the podcast apps, and until next week, stay informed.