Episode 182: The Questions in Relationship Development | Stewarding for the Future (Part 5 of 5)
The fifth and final section in the relationship development series will dive into stewardship. How do you track your stewardship efforts, what levels of engagement are appropriate and what are the tactics you can start using today?
Welcome to another edition of Around with Randall, your weekly podcast for making your nonprofit more effective for your community.
And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett. It's such a pleasure to have you join me, Randall, on this edition, Around with Randall.
We take the last step of our great questions in the relationship building process, really looking at stewardship, we started all the way back. When we talked about how do we get into these conversations and we talked about calls and quals as I kind of try to entitle them, making those calls, having those visits, the cultivation, solicitation and closing. Today is stewardship, our final fifth of five on how to really engage and what things you should be asking yourself to engage at a higher level.
Really only three big questions here in stewardship, but I think they're really important ones. One more philosophical that I think can have a huge effect on how you look at what you do in stewardship and then the other two are a little bit more tactical. Let's jump in.
The question I want to start with is the philosophical one and it's simply this, do you realize that stewardship as a name, as a category, is almost a misnomer? Some of you might be saying, what's he talking about? Stewardship has always been as described in our education for those who had a formal education, maybe philanthropy certainly as a learned experience.
Structure is the end of the journey and I've always wondered why we think that. It's always been mysterious to me because if we steward correctly, we actually are doing something that we've already done in terms of a category or thought process, but we're just doing it differently.
Stewardship should be for not all gifts and maybe it is the completion of a journey for someone who wants to be philanthropic. But for many, stewardship is cultivation and where we fail is in the knowledge that are most likely donors, time after time after time, study after study after study, date a piece after date a piece after date a piece tells us that our most likely donors are the ones who've already given to us.
And so the question becomes if you view it only as an ending point and not as a maybe a stepping stone in a more complete deeper relationship based on their passion, based on the fact your mission meets with their passion, then while you're doing is leaving dollars on the table and you're not allowing people to make the kind of emotional investment that they want to, to really make the difference that they're trying to get to.
So how should we look at this? I spend more and more of my time with gift officers and certainly in stewardship process thinking about it as a requalification conversation that we when we steward either formally or individually, so formally, organizationally, individually in terms of what a gift officer or someone one person can do, which we'll talk about here in a moment, both of those should be spent or consider the thought process of how we would qualify people back into a new cultivation for another hopefully larger, more impactful gift.
And as a part of this process, there are some things that are data driven. If you are seeing too many lie months last year, but unfortunately not this, that's a term it's used all by the annual giving teams, but it should be important to all of us. If someone's given to you last year, why aren't you engaging with them? And that's the same as side months, some year, but unfortunately not this year. So they gave some year in the past, but not this year. If we know that our most likely donors are our past donors, our current donors, people that have given to us, then we need to be engaged. So part of this is how do you figure that out? Who are the people that you should be prioritizing?
Well, if you have people that have given and they let's say screen higher, you want to engage them at a higher level. Maybe there's more potential there or someone who's given a $5,000 gift and they haven't given it again this year. Are you interacting with them? Are you having conversations with them? Or they made a gift or have an estate gift, possibly from the past and you're not, but a lot of time with them. All of these things are even in the plan giving example, places where you should be getting or thinking about or hoping for or trying to develop another gift in the conversation. A new gift. Also, we should be running reports statistically. On when pledges end, are you going back to those people? Obviously if they pledged a capital campaign gift or a large gift, are you having discussions? Maybe you don't get, let's say someone made a $100,000 gift, they're paying it over four years to $25,000 a year. You may not get $25,000 a year, but if they're that engaged with you, could you go back and talk to them about $25,000, $10,000? They may see it as a discount. We're seeing it as a connection.
All of this is really an important philosophical question because if we aren't always thinking about qualification and I'll give you one other example, are people showing up at events and you're like, why are they here? They're looking for something. Maybe someone even says something verbally. What's going on? What's the next greatest thing? They're looking for something. Does that mean they're going to make a gift? No. But the qualification process, the owner should be to try to engage them and find out what they're thinking, what they're feeling, what they want. And in doing so, what you'll find is people will self-select into this qualification process, which by the way is a lot easier than the first qualification when you don't know them. If you've built a relationship, you can ask more engaging, personal, direct questions because you know them. There's a respect, a rapport that should be developed where it has been developed in the conversation. So the philosophical question that I think we all need to think about whether it's an organizational wide stewardship effort or an individual gift officer taking on us. We're going to talk about those two here in just a moment. Are you understanding, do you realize that stewardship isn't the end of the journey? It's a misnomer if you do. That for some, it's just the first of many steps that they will go through if we really want to get to transformational giving, that emotional, passionate engagement with our mission.
Question one. Let's pivot from the philosophical and get into the tactical. What is it? Maybe some things you can do. And I gave you a few of those with live months and side months and reporting, but let's get even getting further into it. The second question is, do you have, at does your organization have a formalized strategy or chart of stewardship? When I do trainings and conversations about stewardship, I always use kind of three big examples. And they're always in a chart. And I'm sorry, I'm process oriented. I like to kind of know the check marks are we getting things done? But I see a lot of smaller organizations, shops of two or three or four people thinking they have to try to equate stewardship like a university that has 275 people and you don't. So this chart strategies all based on the concept of what things should we be doing at gift levels or the kinds of gifts that are being given? And a simplistic chart can be one that says anybody above a thousand gets a call from the chair of the board. Anybody under a thousand gets a letter and a call. Maybe let's say between a hundred and hundred dollars and a thousand dollars from the chief domain officer, the chief executive, depending on the size of the organization. And everybody under a hundred, we make sure they get a letter that says how appreciative we are of them.
You would think, well, that's pretty, isn't that everyone does? You'd be surprised how many times I've walked in the center and there's no process. Well some people get a kind of a call, why do they get a call? And you can add layers to that depending on the size of the organization, the time you have, by the way, I don't, I'm just going to be blunt. I don't ever want to hear someone say, we don't have any money for stewardship. Did you know that 80% of the non-profits in the United States have ten thousand dollars or less to spend on stewardship? It doesn't have to cost. It has to be heartfelt.
So part of this list or chart organizational, why it could be over a certain dollar amounts, we have naming opportunities. And that fits into some type of categorization that's been approved by the organization to put their name or a plaque on something. It could be as, hey, you get newsletters or some type of lunch with the CEO or the C suite or you can do as much as you want and make it very simple. The medium level gets into more complicated things like they start getting invitations to certain events. They have an opportunity to have private time with certain people. Maybe they are, by the way, a basic stewardship thing, just take notes to a board meeting and have board members say, hey, thanks for your gift. Intermediate, back to intermediate, might be more detailed involving, okay, now we've got to do recognition at certain levels. And we have annual reporting standards and things of that nature.
The large organizations, their chart looks like, you know, it's 20 columns across and 40 columns down. Warning to endowed shares and what kind of recognition they get, what kind of press releases we do. They have access to certain things. If it's a big enough gift, let's say for a university, maybe they're invited to football games in a box at a certain level or they have private time with the dean or the hospital CEO, then we're into real naming, depending on the level. And there's a process one would go through for naming, we're naming buildings or atrium or entrances, departments, endowed shares. All of those things are really detailed. But what I want to get across is you do not need to have a 40 down list of stewardship and 20 across of all the different levels. You could be now dealing with, we treat the million dollar donor different than the $500,000 different than the 250 different than the 100,000. That's kind of that gift level going across. You don't need that if you're a small organization. The question really is driving to the thought process of do you have an organizational plan? Do you have a formal strategy to steward that's repetitive and easy and fits your budget? But the most important thing is, is it heartfelt? Which positions us right to number three.
So number two, does your organization have a formal strategy chart process to steward donors on a regular basis? Third and last question. Do you, I don't care if you're a gift officer, a board member, a physician, a faculty member, whoever you are, do you personally steward? All too often, particularly in larger organizations, if we go to question from just a second or two back to two and you've got this big chart of things we do, there seems to be a concept or thought that the individual gift officers now off the hook of stewarding. Well, they do that. That's in the chart. And I want to look at them and say, are you not legitimate? Are you not interested in the actual relationship? Isn't that the fun part? Individual stewarding in philanthropy and a foundation development office, advancement office, however you want to look at it. I always thought about it not equating to but aiming at stewarding the relationship I have with my wife, not as important. The boss is always the most important thing I think about and engage with every day. She's the best. But the thought process is very similar. How I steward my relationship with my wife is based on communication, and trust, and emotion, and appreciation, and a level of interdependency that comes from a lifetime of caring. Now you can take all of those on steroids and get to what's least I hope and think of is a great marriage. But if you take them at raw face value, this is what we're aiming for with our donors. But if you take them at raw face value, this is what we're aiming for. We're looking at the relationship that we're looking at. Two is just calling. Can you call and talk? How you doing? What's going on? And you learn about their life. About their relationships. Children. Spouses. significant others. How's everybody doing? I worked so hard to keep a mental list. Of the people I deal with. Like my insurance agent. He had a shoulder surgery. I'm always asking him as we go through renewals about the house and the car. In terms of insurance. How's the shoulder? He goes, I can't believe you remember. Because I care. What are you doing to care for the people that are making it possible? Reorganization to not only survive, but flourish.
Three. Give them something to see that they don't normally get to see the behind the scenes stuff. The best one I ever was involved with happened earlier in my career when I was working in a private secondary independent schools. I was in a private secondary independent schools leading philanthropy there and was our reunion weekend. And this was a very traditional unbelievably historic school with alums who had gone on to do incredible things. It was a stepping stone. And the one thing that I knew that they relished more than anything else was based on the stories was time. Reliving time that they had when they were at the school. So in alumni weekend, I started it four hours early instead of starting it on the phone. Instead of starting it on the Friday at noon with the lunch, I actually started at 8 a.m. for those that wanted to. And I took them and I paired them with a current student wearing a similar uniform that they wore. And they went to class with them. And the emotion at that lunch changed instantaneously that first year. Because I was studying their emotional connection. And that led to some very large new gifts or repeat gifts. Because I was getting them back into a place where it meant something to them personally. You have a lot of those kind of opportunities. What can you get them to see and feel that they normally wouldn't if they were just in the general public. They wouldn't have access to again. I don't have to cost you any money.
Number four - cards. Are you sending cards? I'll give my mom credit for this studying relationship. In college in those first couple of years, I thought I was ready to go to school. But it turned out I probably should have waited a year. First year two were academically were fine. But I just wasn't ready emotionally. But I remember distinctly getting cards for in September for. Honey for a rush of Sean on the poor. I'm not Jewish and neither is my mom. All the cards said was I love you. I'm thinking about you once you know it. Proud of you. I still have those cards. You can go to Dollar Tree and get two cards for a buck. The organization won't pay for it. You pay for it. Get all kinds of cards thinking of you graduation, birthday, Monica Christmas Mother's Day. Whatever it is and have a box full of them in a drawer and just keep pulling them out. And sending cards thinking of you. It makes all the difference in the world in terms of what people think of you and the relationship that you have. The final one is probably the most powerful. And that's where you get the donor to meet the recipient of the good that has been done. The gifts that have come. I've done this in healthcare. You have to get permission. But people who gave immense amount of money for research or for a particular area that they re-help rebuild. And I bring the patients in and let them tell the story of what this meant to them. I don't ever talk about dollars. I don't talk about well they made a million dollar gift. They made a five dollar. They made a gift. They wanted your life to be better. I'd love for you to enter the issue to them. Man, you talk about studying people and keeping them involved and engaged. May cost you a cup of coffee. Whether it's videos or the calls or the behind the seat tours or the cards or meeting. None of those costs very much money. They have everything in common when you think about the authentic nature, the emotional nature that brings. So the third and final question is in was. Was it is? Do you individually steward? Number one is your strategy in a chart?
Number two, are you realizing, excuse me, number one is realizing. Are they, are you realizing that stewardship is really cultivation? Number two is organizationally, do you have a process strategy chart?
Number three is what are you doing individually? What I'm hoping is is we can elevate stewardship not to be the end of the journey for a lot of people. But maybe the first step in many and that we get to grow and build into the future of more deeper, more meaningful, more passion-driven, transformational relationships, allowing people to make a difference for the things they believe in. If you want to get a hold of me, it's podcastedhowletflantspeed.com. Don't forget to check out the blogs. I'm seeing a lot more traffic. Two a week try to get those out. You can get an RSS feed right to your inbox into your front door. Always that you can continue to learn much like if you're spending a little time with me here today on the podcast. I really appreciate you and what you're doing in your community. I tell when I speak that if I believe in gratitude and I do entirely, that I need to finish more often with thank yous.
And so thank you for what you're doing. You may most likely not in my community, but you're making a big difference. Don't forget my favorite saying: some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, then there are those who wondered what happened. Being someone who makes things happen is a lot of energy, but it's worth it. It's affecting people and things that are wondering what happened. I don't know a better way to live a life professionally person if you're not thinking about how do I make the world a better place. The length of ease and about money is about love of mankind. We think about how we can help others more often inside our family, inside organizations in the world in general. The world's a better place. And not just in totality, but for your individual perspective as well. I'll look forward to seeing you and being with you next time on the next edition of A Round With Randall. Don't forget, make it a great day.