Episode 205: Partnering with the Easy Referral Agents or the Correct Referral Agents
I'm so appreciative for you this time and any time that you take a few moments, minutes of your day to join me, Randall, on this edition of Around with Randall. I have watched over the last several weeks as we move towards the end of year, but this would apply at any time frame where gift officers are looking at what they need to do to finish out the calendar year, which brings us to: how do we make this easier on ourselves? Are we doing all of the little things that could make it more obtainable to reach our goals?
This brings us to the importance of referrals. All too often, we have become more isolated, more dependent on just ourselves when it comes to bringing gifts to fruition. What I'm realizing is that we're not leveraging the importance of including others in the conversation, particularly at the front end, and getting people engaged in philanthropic conversations about possibilities.
So, what am I talking about? I'm talking about boards. I'm talking about clinicians and faculty. I'm talking about data. What are the things that we're doing to get us in front of the right people to have the right conversations to elevate the philanthropic conversation?
Where would we start with this discussion? Well, we should start with why it's important. Is there data out there to verify that what we're looking to do to have these referrals has value? And I'm not talking about anecdotal data; I'm talking about statistical data, studies, things that can be proven. Here, we don’t talk about these kinds of stats enough because the answer is, in our world that we're talking about today, how do we leverage others outside of maybe each other inside of the foundation office to be a part of what we're trying to accomplish for success?
Let's start with boards. A study done by the Sanford Effective Philanthropy Lab found that 40% of major donors who were introduced through an opportunity or organizational effort via a personal connection, like a board member or volunteer, had their giving increase by that 40%. Fidelity Charitable Study revealed that 71% of major donors are more likely to engage with a nonprofit if introduced by a trusted advisor. BoardSource research found that 78% of organizations receiving major gifts in excess of a million dollars attribute their success to board referrals. The Lilly School of Philanthropy found that peer-to-peer solicitations increase gift closure rates by 25% when the referral comes from a volunteer board member. CCS did a study showing that prioritizing board and volunteer referrals leads to a 15% increase in average gift amounts. Data from the Giving Institute found a strong referral process increases major gift success rates by 20-30%. That's staggering from a board perspective.
Are we leveraging the right people? Do we have the right people? Are we getting the right kinds of referrals? We'll talk about that here in a moment on the tactical side.
What about clinicians, faculty, and internal people? Engaging them can be incredibly challenging, which we’ll discuss shortly, but a robust clinical or faculty referral program is valuable. For instance, the University of Wisconsin Foundation reports that grateful patient programs see a 26% increase in major gifts year-over-year when a physician makes the referral. The same holds for faculty when we have universities or others involved in the process.
There are also non-human elements here because this is about pipeline development. A study by FreeWill found organizations that employ a robust prospect management process and embrace the latest technology are 23% more likely to close and secure major gifts. This study links these major gifts to what we discuss often on this podcast: transformational levels, not just a dollar figure, but the emotional core of the donor wanting to make a difference.
All this is to say that we need referrals to be successful. Why am I doing this podcast? Because what I'm finding is that we are taking shortcuts in the process to make it easy for us to partner with people instead of really fighting for the people that we really want, or maybe more importantly, need. More work on the front side to have the right board members doing the right things and the right clinical, faculty, or organizational partners would go a long way. If we spend a little more time on the front side and believe in the right data, that work in the beginning will leverage greater success down the road.
We don’t always do this well. Sometimes, I think the choices we make for board members tend to be more about their choice than ours as staff, yet we drive a lot of that. Decisions about which clinicians we work with lead us to ask if we have the right people. Often, board member decisions are afterthoughts. We need 12 members, so we find someone, or get our best friend, or clinicians we know best.
Let me give you some practical examples. Recently, I had a client identifying their best clinician partners for a healthcare organization’s grateful patient program. They brought a list of doctors they believed would yield the best opportunities. Our data analysis showed different clinicians had better opportunities based on patient types and alignment with hospital needs. When we presented this data, the foundation’s office realized their list didn’t match our analysis. I suggested focusing on doctors with the highest potential, rather than those they could easily contact, to ensure the best connections. It doesn’t mean we discard other clinicians, but are we trying to get to the best people?
Another example involves a client where we discussed board representation. Along similar lines to the physician example, we discussed if their board represented the community. I argued that spending more time upfront to find the right people helps produce better results later.
From a personal perspective, in the middle of my career, I took a job as head of external relations at a school I didn’t know, in a new community. I quickly saw this was a tightly knit community. Trust and connection were essential to access the right level. I recruited a retired school coach, a beloved figure who wasn’t as connected in retirement, for a paid volunteer role. His job was connecting me to people he had once coached, who were the very people I needed to reach.
He had gone to school with the other people that I needed to be speaking with. He was known by the people before he went to school, before he became a student at this institution in the early and mid part of the 1950s. The people in the graduates in the 30s and 40s, who were obviously much older, knew of him. I said, “Come on board. I'm going to pay you $2,500 a month. All I want you to do is get me in the door with these people. You're going to travel with me. We're going to do this together, but your entire job is to help me get access.” Think about the referrals that came from that. When he picked up the phone and talked to a classmate or someone he coached, he was a legendary figure who could literally pick up the phone and say, “I'm coming there. I'm going to bring someone and I want you to meet him.” The conversion rate of us getting in front of people went up exponentially.
I mean, it’s hard to explain what our trips were like to California, Arizona, Florida, Texas, Chicago, and New York. We'd be there four days and have five appointments per day, all because he could pick up the phone or send an email and say, “Hey, I’m coming and I want you to meet somebody,” and they would drop what they were doing. That’s a referral agency.
What are the challenges with doing it this way, making it more difficult, really looking for the right people, and not settling for others? Well, number one, it takes longer. There's no question. It just takes longer to do. Number two is that you have to actually ask for help. It’s hard sometimes to admit that we can’t do everything ourselves. We're hired, particularly if you're a leader in a nonprofit listening to this or a board member, maybe you want to push in a little bit and have the conversation. It’s hard for leaders in any organization or any part of our economic world to admit, “I need help.” There’s a sense of not entitlement, but that you're supposed to know everything. This is about the essence of laying bare, laying on the ground, “Look, I need help here. We need help.” Sometimes that’s hard to do.
Number three is you have to trust someone. Are they going to be willing to help you in the way you need to? Can you build the right relationship to help you with those referrals? And number four, we have to be willing to do this differently. We have to look at what we do and be willing to admit the way we’ve always done it isn’t the right way of looking at it and doing it in the future. You add those four things together: It takes longer, you have to ask for help, you have to trust, and you have to do it differently. This creates a lot of natural resistance to doing things in a better way.
So, what is it that we're really talking about? This is the formal tactical piece of this particular conversation. There are three things we have to think about, and they’re really by three areas. Let’s start with boards. We have to get the right board members. In episode 197, I really get into this in detail—the timeline and how you identify the right board members. Not these ones, but the right ones. All of this comes down to two things, which you can hear in detail. Number one is the social networking mapping of your community, however you define that. Do you have tentacles, the right board members, in all of the different social gathering places your community represents?
And number two, do they clearly understand what you’re asking them to do? This is not just, “Hey, come to a board meeting and sit for an hour, have lunch, finish a moment, and leave.” This is, “We want you to carry a portfolio. We’re going to track what data you have in terms of who you’re connecting us to. We’re going to create a metric system that we’re looking for two to four, six people per year that you can introduce us to.” Doesn’t mean they’re going to make a gift, but if you have the right social networking, you’re into the parts of the community, and number two, you have the right job description and you're tracking that data. Very open as to what this is. That’s how you get the right board members.
Then, I would recommend, as a kind of conclusion on the board or volunteer side, you could include campaign management into all of this. This is episode 13, where we talk about why you need proper orientation and how to prepare them for that first meeting when they walk into the room. So, boards is the first tactical piece.
The second area is clinicians. This is more complicated. Now, many people will focus on healthcare, but I’d advocate this includes faculty and other frontline employees in your nonprofit, no matter what sector you’re in. Are you doing this with the people you know, or are you doing it with two other factors? Number one, are they the right connections? Do they have access to the people in your community who can make the biggest philanthropic difference? This means you need to do some analysis. This goes back to the story I was talking about earlier with a client who was like, “Well, we’re working with these physicians,” and we showed them the data. “We don’t know any of these people. Who’s going to be better in the long term?”
Number two is alignment. Many times, so if we’re in education, if I have a particular faculty member that reaches out to me when I was, let’s say, in law school—now, there may be one or two left teaching, but they’re retired possibly—and they say, “Randall, we want to…” well, I’m going to give to the law school. If you're trying to get me to give to the med school, that’s not going to work. So, they have to be connected and aligned. In healthcare, as we talked about a few minutes ago, we know 80-90% of our grateful patients and families give to the area of their care. So, if you’re working with a cardiologist, do they have cardiology needs that the organization is prepared for, that there’s a plan they can spend the money on? This alignment issue is sometimes overlooked.
So, this is a high-level discussion inside this particular podcast, but if you want more detail about doctors, nurses, care technicians, and mid-levels like P.A.s, that’s episode 140 about the trust with clinicians and how you build that. The other thing is with clinicians, how do you communicate with them? That’s episode 69. So, there’s a lot more detail inside those particular podcasts.
The third area that we have to think about, and this is the third tactical piece, is data. We have to trust data from prospect management and the people that are trying to help identify the right people for us to talk to, to embracing artificial intelligence. The longer I do this, the more I’m impressed by what I get out of using artificial intelligence or having clients use it. If you want a greater detail understanding of AI at nonprofit levels, which is kind of the leader in this space, you can go to my episode number five on AI as a high-level overview. But we’re watching many gift officers almost be repulsed by the fact that AI is guiding them to certain people. “Well, I know who people to see.” This is no different than the referral pieces from the board and from the clinicians. Do we have the right people?
This is all about pipeline development. If we’re not using data and data analysis in AI to a high level, we’re leaving opportunity on the table. And that’s a change. That’s hard.
So the tactical pieces are: Are you using your social networking through your board and through your community with your boards? Are you leveraging your internal players—clinicians, faculty, frontline workers, and nonprofit staff—who have connections to people that might be interested in supporting the organization? And are you using data to a high level?
I've titled this particular podcast "The Easy or the Correct Referral Patterns, Actions." The reason I did that is because it all ties back to what we started with. Are we doing what's easy on the front end, which leads to more difficulty later? Or would we be better off doing what's harder at the beginning to leverage huge, meaningful moments on the back end, which ultimately lead to relationship building and, eventually, soft asks and soliciting people who want to make a difference in ways that align with both their passion and our mission?
I’d highly advocate that we spend more time focusing on how we can be more effective with the people who give us the referrals. This allows us to avoid making transactional decisions on the back end when we don't have the right people to work with.
Don’t forget to check out the blogs at Halifelenethropy.com. There are two to three new posts every week based on things I see, read, and experience—maybe something for you to think about. If you'd like to get in touch with me, email podcast@halifelenethropy.com.
I truly believe in what I do here, and I could pursue many different things. I could practice law or teach, but I love the nonprofit world. It fills the gaps between corporate and government, addressing issues and needs that might otherwise be overlooked. What you do every day helps fill that gap, whatever it might be in your community.
Don’t forget, some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, and some people wonder what happened. You are someone who makes things happen, and you’re doing it for the people and places that wonder what happened. There is no better way to spend a career—making a difference and changing lives.
At the end of the day, I hope you can look in the mirror and say, “I know I’m a part of that process, and I’m making a contribution.” I may not know you personally, but I know that if you show up and do your very best every day, you’re making a real difference.
We’ll look forward to seeing you again next time on the next edition of "A Round with Randall." And don't forget, make it a great day.