← Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
Leading with Purpose: Mike Richey on Transforming Fundraising and Inspiring Impact
00:50:57
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I never, I never was on a track to get to a certain position. I just enjoyed the journey that I was on so much and the people that I work with, my colleagues, and the higher purpose of what we were trying to achieve with students and research and public service that I was all about. What was my goal? To improve myself. How do I get better? And by me getting better, I never. Jobs opened up, opportunities availed themselves and I've had a lot of young people that I hired late in my career and I tried to have a personal sit down meeting with them when they joined our staff. And I did some management by walking around to encourage people. That was my mantra as well. But I wanted people to understand. Do your work, understand, make yourself better, be the best you can be, be great and good. Things are going to happen to you financially, they're going to happen to you professionally, they're going to happen to you socially. It's going to just build your whole life.
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Hi there, I'm Kevin Gentry and welcome to the Going Big podcast where we'll explore some of the strategies that can help you transform your effectiveness by 10xing your fundraising. Each week we'll sit down with some of the most influential business leaders, CEOs and nonprofit visionaries to talk about leadership, the power of giving and how you can make a real impact. If you want to make a transformational change to the cause you're working on, this is the place for that conversation. Also, take a Look at our website, 10xStrategies.com that's T E N X strategies.com for lots of free marketing and fundraising resources. And be sure to sign up for the free weekly fundraising tips. Now let's dive in. Well, ladies and gentlemen, this really is a special treat to welcome Mike Ritchie. Today, Mike is a is one of the best known, best admired, most well respected fundraisers, I think not only just in university fundraising, but in the whole broader concept of philanthropy. The longtime head of philanthropy at the University of Kentucky, Mike, it's just such a treat and I've been so honored to get to know you over the years and every time we have a conversation I learn a lot and I know our listeners are going to learn a lot today too. So I'm just going to just lead off with a question. What is philanthropy? What is giving and why do you believe there's a joy about it?
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Well, so many people believe, Kevin, that philanthropy is giving of your financial resources. I look upon it a little bit different than that. Down through my years of service. Philanthropy means more than that in fact, 10 years ago while I was at the University of Kentucky, we were very intentional and we changed our direction and nomenclature from an office of Development to an office of Philanthropy. And it was one of the first initiatives of its kind in the United States. And why did we do that? Because to me, philanthropy is the love of humankind, but it's expressed in really three ways and they're known to everyone. It's the giving of your treasures, it's the giving of your time, and it's the giving of your talents. And I've had the privilege to watch people in local communities and across state organizations who really epitomize that they've given of themselves, of their time, of their talents and their and their treasure. Some can give more financially than they can of their time and vice versa. There's people who give a lot of their time and talents and very little of their resources. But I think that represents the, the heart of philanthropy and who we are and all of us together. And it's what I tried to convey in my work.
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Terrific. Well, Mike, I mean, you've got an incredible story. You were a student at University of Kentucky and you stayed. And now it's been 50 years since you were a student and you've raised hundreds of millions of dollars. Help raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the University of Kentucky, from everything from student scholarships to academic buildings to important new initiatives and programs. Again, we had a lot to learn from you today. But in your judgment, what inspires somebody to give? I'm so glad you already tried to tackle the misunderstanding about the terms development stuff. But in your judgment, what really motivates giving?
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Well, I think there are several factors. And you know, if you go to the book, it will tell you about recognition, it will talk about tax consequences, it will give you those factors. That was never on my page. I was more concerned about engaging people who had a heart for who we were. Maybe we're a product, we're a graduate. They had a family association. From a degree standpoint or from the service standpoint, they were people who had a desire to engage in helping others, to do that for people that they may never know, and also to advance a cause and an impact. I had the privilege to work with a land grant university, which is, I call it the People's University. Late in my career, they sent me across the Commonwealth of Kentucky because I'd been in all 120 counties of our Commonwealth often. But they sent me on a speaking engagement to biz with chamber of Commerces and the nonprofit organizations and communities to talk about the local community. And I was able to talk about UK's impact on all of these local communities because of my background, experience. The donors that I worked with understood that and they understood the research we did to impact people, the public service we provided through extension programs that we did, and also providing for the basics undergraduate experience and graduate school experience. So I think all of that was very, very important as we came together. I think we also, and I don't think you can underscore this enough, I was always concerned about building a good team and taking care of that team as we were embarked upon doing philanthropy and alumni engagement at the University of Kentucky, because one person couldn't do it themselves. It took a team, a family of colleagues to do that as well.
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Well, I want to go back on that in just a bit and. And that's another reason you're so well admired. I hear that from your teammates a lot. But going to the giver, this very generous person. This is the Going Big podcast. The premise is that the people are inspired by big vision. Is that your sense? What do you think causes a generous person to think big and want to go big?
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I do think that big donors are interested in making changes in the organizations that they support. Yesterday I had a telephone conversation, Kevin, and it was from an organization that works statewide in our commonwealth. They impact about 24, 25,000 young people a year. They're trying to expand that to maybe reach 30, 35,000. They're not a university, that's a camp type structure. So I've been on the phone with this person and I was talking to them about having a big idea. I said, there's two things you need to do to be effective in this fundraising area and to understand your donors. They want to know what is the big idea. Your organization hasn't come together yet to identify what that big idea is. But these people have the resources and the capacity to do that, and they want to do that if they can help you reach more people, impact their lives. So they. It's a win, win situation. It's a shared vision. They're depending on you to come up with that big idea, and they have the big resources that can come together to do that. And I said, I think it's, it's kind of a combination of, of those two things is, is having that big idea. I learned that at the University of Kentucky. I started out 1984, 40 years ago, putting together the first fundraising program in a college. We had academic colleges, agriculture, engineering, et Cetera, But I was the first one to do that. And we had nothing in place. No annual giving program, no major gift program, no legacy or program, no marketing program, no communications. And so I had to embark upon developing a program from scratch there. But later on in my career, really about 2008 or 2009, I had the idea to create that big idea program it's called, I called it a principal gift program. And it came up with ideas that we had never thought about before because we had a billion dollar campaign and we were successful in that. But no gifts were really above a million dollars. So I brought 15 universities to our lecturing campus and spent two days exploring what is a principal gift program, these five and these 10 million or $20 million gifts. And nobody thought we could do it, but we decided we've got to have big ideas. So one of the first big ideas, and I'll stop here because I know you want to ask some other questions. But the first big idea was how we could use private support to help fund academic buildings at the University of Kentucky. To that particular point, we used state funds to build out our facilities or recurring general funds within the university system. But we did this. And I knew that also a principle of big giving, you need to have an early win. You've got to build momentum. And so I realized that we could do this with our school of business because I did predictive modeling. And I realized that we had the resources there to raise the 70, 75 million dollars to take to build out what we needed to do for that facility. And it took a process of time. We went to these donors. I had identified about 20 key donors from that school that could help us. And I engaged them in talking about the big idea and could we do this? And some of them were not sure we could do this. They were waiting for the state to come in and do this. But we embarked upon it. They said, we'll give you a chance. And people bought into it and we raised that money and it started the momentum factor for many other academic buildings to be built on our campus. It was a big idea. And it continues, and it continues. And we were able at the end of my tenure to bring in nine figure gifts which were very, very significant. So big ideas do carry the day. And, and that's something I think that people need to focus on and they need to think big. I do believe donors are looking to us to help them identify ways they can have impact. Because we see it every day. We're walking our campuses, we're walking our institutions, we're seeing the opportunities, and I think they want us to have an open, honest dialogue about how together we can work together to achieve something great. Hear, hear.
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Wow. Well, you know, there's that old adage, you've heard it, that there's no shortage of resources. There's only a shortage of ideas for those resources, and that's counterintuitive for a lot of people. But. But I think you. Not only have you hit the nail on the head, but you've demonstrated it through results. And ladies and gentlemen, if you're at all interested in any way in raising resources for cause that's important to you, there's a lot of wisdom here in this conversation with Mike Richie. So get out your notepad and be ready to listen to it again and again. Mike, I know you've got a number of just very inspiring stories of major benefactors who got behind a big initiative. Is there. Is there one that stands out that you feel like you could talk about, one that's, you know, relatively public already?
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Well, there's. There's more than one. We've had a lot of good journeys with our. With our donor families and also to impact our students and the people we serve. I think the one that comes to my mind, and it's on both sides of the recipient as well as the donor, is that we had a donor who funded a major scholarship initiative that we had identified at the university. It was called the lead scholarship, and it was an acrostic le a d s leveraging educational affordability for developing success. And, Kevin, what happened here is, and I have to give credit to Eli Capolito, the president, University of Kentucky. And you've got to have a great leader to raise these big gifts. And he is truly a great leader. I enjoyed so much working with him at the end of my tenure. I love the man to pieces. But we realized, and our people at UK had researched, that students who had financial debt above $5,000 from one semester to the next were at a high risk of dropping out of school, regardless of whether they were a straight A student or they were C student or somewhere in between. And we were very concerned about getting. Keeping these students enrolled because of retention. We wanted to go to a 70% graduation rate. We knew that was critical. And so we created this program where students didn't really have to apply for that, but we provided scholarship for students above this category of $5,000 or to a lot of it. And so, anyway, I went and shared this with a donor couple, and they were really interested because they were both first generation college students. They had both worked their way through school, they had started a major business from scratch and they had really built that up. And they knew what hard work was and, and what a college education meant. And so they came in and knew what debt was like too. And so they came in and they gave $10 million. We used monies from, generated from those funds to provide scholarships to a number of students. The first year was about 40, 45 students. We had a reception for those students at Maxwell Place, the mansion for the press that lives. And the donor was there and we had one young lady and we just said, just kind of serendipity does. Do any of the students want to share a comment? We didn't prep them beforehand. And a young lady said, raised her hand and very sheepishly started talking and she said, I'd like to say something. And she said, and she got very emotional and tears began to stream down her face. And she said, I received this scholarship I didn't know that I was going to get. And I called my mom down in western Kentucky and I said, mother, you don't have to work three jobs anymore to keep me in school. I've just received a scholarship of such and such amount. You can let go of one of those jobs. I think we were all in tears, Kevin, by the time that left. And the donor absolutely was enthralled with that kind of experience. I think that was very, very important. I will tell you, since that time I worked with another donor at the very end of their life. And they also gave a very significant sum of money for this program. And 112 of our 120 counties were impacted by having students be funded from this person's generosity. I was with the person one month before their death three years ago, and I sat with them and I sat and they were in a nursing home and they were in an easy chair and really not very mobile. And I sat down on the Audubon in front of this person And I said, Mr. So and so, you've given so much, you've done so much, but I believe this may be your best gift. And the person got very, very emotional and said, I think you're right. That's what really is fulfilling, Kevin, when it comes to this business. It's not about raising money. It's not about just how many dollars you can bring in at the end of the year. It's about the impact and the help and the service that you're giving to other people. And the donors understand this and I've also understood this. This is another phenomenon about working with big donors. And I think sometimes our people don't want to work this way because they're afraid, are afraid they'll fail. The only way you're going to fail is not do something, you know, make a mistake by not doing anything. Yeah, don't do that. But this person was very special. And I think it would have been a, an injustice had I not approached these people about the opportunity to make an investment in these, in the lives of these young people. The worst thing they can say is no or not now, or I need more information. But if you know your donors, you have a pretty good understanding and you have a dialogue before you get to that stage, I want to say another thing. I'll jump into a lot of things, but people ask me all the time, when do you know to ask for money? How do you ask? I can't tell everybody. Every person is our audience of one. But I know when you're there and if you have time to build a relationship, which I had over 50 years, you know, and it's natural. And people said, how do you, who have so little financially, ask people for so much? I don't know. I just think it's natural because we have a shared vision for what can be achieved.
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Mike, I mean, I'm so glad that you put in terms of a win win partnership, and, you know, you're providing something to the donor they couldn't do on their own, but you couldn't do without the resources they provide. And I mean, what a beautiful way to convey that. And you and I were Talking about Doug DeVos having been on a previous episode of the podcast, and he said, you can't win a race unless you get in it, and so you gotta get in there. Well, you talked earlier about building a good team, and we're talking about partnership. Another key element of the partnership is that team. In your judgment, over the years, what are the characteristics, the traits, the habits of a good fundraiser?
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What.
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What makes a great fundraiser or what makes a fundraiser great?
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I was asked this question last week by another person. They called and asked me the question. I'm looking to hire some people. What are some of the attributes you look for? And again, maybe doing it a little bit differently than others. Kevin? I want people to have a passion for the organization, for my organization, to have a belief in that organization, to want to be a part of that organization, to see the good that comes out of that organization. I think passion for that, and I mean, that is Sincere, I think also integrity. Our dear friend Jerry Panis used to talk about integrity being an impeccable integrity being the numb number one characteristic of a. Of a fundraiser. And I believe that. I believe that you have to live it and you have to believe it and it's part of your soul. And I think passion and integrity. I think you have to have somewhat of a giftedness in this area to love people and to understand helpfulness of other people. It's service orientation. I think it's also not seeking to just build your own success, but it's really esteeming others better than yourself, promoting others, promoting your cause. That's very good. I think you've got to be. I want somebody who is very disciplined, somebody who can work independent. Someone is not afraid of a 247 commitment because we've got to facilitate the donors where they are and when they are. I think someone that understands that it is a process, that it's not a transaction, but it's a relationship that leads to these gifts. I want somebody to have just a love of people. I mean, there's so many ways. I think there's another side of it too. I want the colleague to know that we are their chief cheerleader, we're their chief supporter. You know, I had a number of employees, I had MID management people that they reported to. But there's some other things that I was very appreciative of in my career that I think tie into this, how to be successful. Because you've got to provide an environment for people to be success in your organization. We had. We did a lot of different things. Number one, when I took over, I started what was called the Terry B. Mobley Awards Program. Terry was my predecessor and. And Terry had been a basketball player at the University of Kentucky, had been there for a long time. But I went out and I raised some easy money from some people that were very much close to Terry. And we create these awards. And annually we would provide a professional, a senior professional in our organization with a monetary stipend and a recognition, plaques on the wall, et cetera. I had a new person, less than five years experience that we recognize, we recognize support staff, we recognize volunteers, they realize. And we had an annual function, we recognized, had Terry come back to it. And it was very much team building. Secondly, we took it upon ourselves twice during my time as the leader to do a remuneration study to make sure that our staff knew that. We surveyed every single position financially and we moved everybody to the midpoint. And that was very important. And Then we developed and encouraged them to have strategies, a two year strategy for their own personal development and where they want it to be. And I'm so happy that I even had administrative coordinators who got their degrees that are now in philanthropy, running stewardship programs and other activities because we built that culture. Thirdly, the university did an annual survey of satisfaction with their work. And we were always new. K is a big place. We were always among the top two or three as far as our total 90/ percent approval ratings of what we were doing, the confidence, were we perfect? No, we weren't. But people knew our heart and we tried to do that. And then we had projects to give back to the community, volunteer in the community, food banks, et cetera. So we tried to epitomize giving ourselves rather than what others were, were asking others to do. Kevin. So I thought that was important and that was the culture we wanted people to come and be a part of. And I think you've got to fit the potential employee with that culture. And the employee needs to understand that's the culture they're looking for.
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Well, as Peter Drucker said, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Well, well, Mike, this is, this is really great in so many ways. You know, there's a lot of turnover in, in development and philanthropy. There's some burnout. What, what are you, you touched on a little bit, but do you have any advice for somebody? I mean, do they, you talk about a two year plan, maybe a five year plan. And I mean, how do you, how do you, how do people really so understand and identify their passion and build their professional life around that in the way that you have?
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Well, it's a, it's a great question, Kevin, and let me address it maybe two ways. Number one is where does a person want to be positionally in 2 years or 5 years or 10 years? What's their long range goal? But secondly is what do I, where do I want to be as a better philanthropy officer in two years or five years? And what does I, do I have to do to make me better? I'm a very unusual University of Kentucky Wildcat. I never was on a track to get to a certain position. I just enjoyed the journey that I was on so much and the people that I work with, my colleagues, and the higher purpose of what we were trying to achieve with students and research and public service that I was all about. What was my goal? To improve myself. How do I get better? And by me getting better, I never. Jobs opened up, opportunities avail themselves. And I've Had a lot of young people that I hired late in my career. And I've tried to have a personal sit down meeting with them when they joined our staff. And I did some management by walking around to encourage people. That was my mantra as well. But I wanted people to understand, do your work, understand, make yourself better, be the best you can be, be great and good things are going to happen to you financially, they're going to happen to you professionally, they're going to happen to you socially. It's going to just build your whole life. So I was really concerned about having contentment in my own life and making myself better. But then I also work with a number of young people, a number of colleagues, or they came in and it was, it was kind of a me mentality. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way, but I'm trying to be honest here. And they came in and they wanted a job. They're interested in working with philanthropy. And in the first two months they came into my office, where do you see me in two years? Where do you see me in the next month? And I've tried to tell them, look, much of my success was longevity. And I found passion in what I did. And if you find that passion coming back to that for the third time, you find that. And you never have to work a day in your life. I mean, I pinch myself even. Kevin, I had a wonderful career. I enjoyed every single day that I went there. I was happy there, I was excited there because I knew it was purposeful a career. And could I have gone elsewhere to make more money? Could I have maybe pursued, hey, I need to go to this university for this experience, this university, to just build myself up, to see where I could be. That wasn't my goal. My goal was to make a difference in the lives of people. And good things happen. Now I want to be good. I want it to be good. And I'm driven. I had an organization after our first billion dollar campaign, come and interview me because we were the first university, excuse me, in the first ever campaign to exceed a billion dollars. And I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about the next campaign and the next step. And they looked at me and said, you're not satisfied with status quo. You're looking for how you get better. And I think that's what leadership does. You want to be having a vision for what's next out there. But on the question I think is taking care, having a purpose of making yourself better. Then where do you see me in the next three years to be in dispositions of vice president or associate vice president. I think those things will come by making yourself better.
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Ladies and gentlemen. I think you want to note because he, Mike said it very quickly, but the fact that Kentucky had one of the first big campaigns compared to all these other state universities and others in the United States is pretty amazing. I do think, Mike, you bleed Kentucky and so go into the passion. The fact that you've been to all 120 counties in Kentucky multiple times, that that really connects to how you've been so, so successful. Well, continuing along, what about sort of how did you learn philanthropy? Did you work with any consultants or any educational programs or any particular mentors? Do you have any advice about how people listening might continue to grow in their own knowledge and understanding?
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I had a number of great mentors and yes, when I started in 1984, we had been recognized in the associate dean for instructions office where I was director of student relations as one of the two outstanding programs and student services among land grant schools. And so the dean called me to his office and said, we've been given permission to start a philanthropy program and we've drafted you to be the person to head it up. So I started in a barred office with a part time secretary and I said to myself, what have I done? I also realized in this business, Kevin, and I think every situation is different and you have to tailor your program to meet the opportunity of your clientele. The people that you're going to be working with and agricultural people, and they're, they're great, and they're great on our campus. But they're asset rich, but cash floor, cash poor, flow, cash flow poor. And so what I did early on within a year is I realized I had to build a program based upon legacy gifts, upon deferred gifts. And so I avail myself. I found out that there was a program in Memphis, Tennessee by name and Robert Sharp started the Sharp Institute. And it was Robert Sr. And I went there and had eight seminars and I really engaged with him and he talked about developing relationships with people, the very things that are so critical. And taking a view of five to seven years, you know, to develop a program, two to three years and developing a right relationship with individuals to get to that point where you can ask for that significant gift. And I came back and put that program together just for the school of Agriculture out of block 16, 17 colleges. In the first billion dollar campaign we had, we realized $73.6 million from realized bequest and trust, 36.8 million. This is the interesting 36.8 million came to agriculture, 36.8 million for the rest of the university. One egg only represented 6% of the alumni population. Had we done this actually as a university, It'd been another 324 million. When I took over. We certainly embarked upon developing a legacy program and a mailing program, marketing program. But. But he was sincere. Jerry Panis and Jerry Lindsay, Bill Sturteman, the Institute of Charitable Giving Act. I'm giving. They're just giving them a plug. I went there early and I engaged Jerry Panish, had him on our campus two or three times. Sturtevant on our campus two or three times. Jerry Lindsay was an in your face mentor to me that I really benefited from. But I learned so much about the big gifts, mega gifts, how to get them, how to be purposeful in what we did. So that was really key and important as well, I think. Also, I had a great leader, more than one, as a. As a mentor. I had them in agriculture with two people called John Robertson and Oren Little, but also Eli Capilouto, who was the president who came in at 11 until my retirement. He's still there. Eli Capilouto was a great mentor to me, and not just what he said, but how he lived and how he dealt as a leader in his respective responsibilities. So I've learned a lot. And then I've always tried to read. I've read a lot. I love biographies, and I love to read about great achievements. And I've just finished one by John Reinhart, whom I do not know, called Gospel Patrons, which talks about patrons being the people who are behind the scenes who financially support the person, people who are on the front lines to make great things happen. And that's what I feel a great philanthropy officer is, is someone who is a patron and. And a donor is a patron who makes great things happen. So I've read a lot of biographies. I love leadership, and I think leadership is really critical. My job, without a foundation to operate with, was as much about leadership and. And figuring things out for how we could be successful as it was in the nuts and bolts of philanthropy.
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You know, Richard Vigory says the world truly craves leadership. And well, well said, you know, to mentors and those who are listening who've received my. Or subscribe to the fundraising tips I send out every week. Know that I've quoted Jerry Panis and Jerry Lindsay and Bill Sturtevant and you and others many times and had webinars over the years. But, you know, it was John Von Cannon at the Heritage foundation in Washington, D.C. a phenomenal guy, tremendous fundraiser. Introduced me to Bill Sturtevant. He said, you know, I think you want to get to know Bill Sturtevant. Bill Sturtevant took the time to really introduce me to Jerry Panis. And then Jerry Panis introduced me to Jerry Lindsey. And Jerry Lindsay, of course, introduced me to you, Mike Ritchie. And that's another good, important role of mentors to be thoughtful in that. That regard. Well, Mike, you know, you've done all this stuff at the University of Kentucky, but I know that your faith is very important to you. You're been a president of Gideon' that you what, what tell us a little bit more about you and outside of University of Kentucky and what really motivates you?
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Well, what motivates me is trying to make a difference. In fact, if you've ever picked up one of my calling cards or you've ever received an email from me, at the very bottom has been this caption has been there for decades, and it says, you cannot choose the time in which you live, but you can choose to make a difference while you live. Have always done that in fulfillment? Probably not. Is it something I aspire to do every day? Yeah, it is. And you know, it's interesting you mentioned my faith. And honestly, Kevin is the driver of my life, has always been. And I'm a Christian. I make no apology for that. And I spend the first hour of every day I've done it throughout my life in the Word, reading the Bible, thinking through things. And it's made all the difference in the world. Faith is everything. And, you know, believe it's in acts where there's a scripture that says David served the purpose of God in his generation. My desire is to serve the purpose of God in my generation as long as that is. And I want to help all people, whether they're Christian or Muslim or Hindu or whatever. I want everybody to be loved. And I think you have to respect people for who they are. And that's been kind of my mantra of operation. Yes, I served as president of Gideon's International. I've also served in many state organizations. I've been chair of some foundations of youth organizations like the Future Farmers of America or the ffa, and very involved with that organization and in others, you know, I'm open to anybody who might want to call me and hey, how do I get get to this? I do think there's a something, you know, you want to make a difference. You will be honest with people. I was Speaking to a group of foundations, faith foundations, back in August. And you'll appreciate this in Louisville, Kentucky, that come in for a national meeting. And they had me come down and speak for a whole morning, about three hours worth. I think they got tired of me after about 15 minutes, but it's okay. But one of the people, and I'm from a deep southern state, and the person raised their hand and they said they have a question. Because I had been talking about big gifts, big ideas, big donor prospects, etc. And how to work with them. And this person said, I just want you to know I'm really frustrated because I had a donor that I have really gotten close to in our organization. They're, they're strongly a man of faith and they're Christian and we want them to do some things. And this person just recently gave $30 million to another major university in our state. And I went and I asked him why. I said, well, I can answer your question before you even say the answer. I said, you didn't have a big idea. He said, you're right. And I said, every one of you in this room does not have a big idea. And neither. None of them had it. So it goes back to that as well. But you know, faith is very important. And I think our faith organizations feel like it's almost dirty sometimes to ask people for big gifts, but I think they have to do those kinds of things for meaningful, for meaningful causes. I'm working with an organization now that might require several tens of millions of dollars. But I said that's what we need because that's what some of the people, you've got them out there. In our state alone, we've got 760,000 people of my denomination. You can't tell me that there aren't 100 people that will step up and do something big time at these multimillion dollar levels. They don't know who they are, and I don't know who all of them are either, but they need to start on that journey. But faith is important to me. And again, giving is important to me. My wife and I, since we've been married, have always been not only a tithers to our church, but giving well above that to other organizations. And we find that to be important. And you know, Doug Lawson's written a book and it's a book that I would invite all the people who watch this podcast to get and it's called Give to Live. And Doug Lawson, a Methodist minister, formerly wrote this book and he'd done some research and here's what he said. He said the people who are donors, people who are philanthropic and who give of themselves in ways that are faith based, live longer, more peaceful life than those who do not. And I believe there is truth in that. So we, I think giving, I think the third thing, being a volunteer. I believe I was a better philanthropy officer on and a university employee because I knew the cost of volunteering, the time it took. And let me also say I learned from leadership from those organizations that I could take back to the university and vice versa. So it was symbiotic. It was really good, and I learned a lot. And I am a student of leadership. I said I love to be study biographies, but I love leadership. I love reading, like Lincoln's Team of Rivals, how he worked with people who had differences of opinion and yet they loved him at the end of his life. They thought he was a buffoon to begin with. And, and I think that, and I, and I would encourage that. So I want to be a person of faith, but I want to be a person of substance. I want to be the real deal. One of the greatest compliments I ever received at the university was the president. And he, he told me, he said, mike is my Kentucky soul. Is Kentucky soul. That's who I am. It's. I don't. I'm not all that great, but I have a soul to make a difference, and I've been prospered. And I think people who are happy and people who are blessed and people who have faith, they don't get pessimistic. They don't deal with the negatives. They deal with the, with the, the opportunity to change and do things differently. And I think that's important. Kevin.
- [41:14]
B
God bless you, Mike. Ritchie, this is, this is awesome. Well, I think I want to have you back. I think our audience is going to want to have you back. I. It's time to wrap up. And I, and I do that generally with two final questions, the first of which is what advice would you give a younger version of yourself today? That is, if you could give advice back in time, what would you do any differently or do more of?
- [41:41]
A
I think I would. If I had known what I was going to do in my career, I would, I would have tried to prepare myself better. I think I would have become a better student of life. I think I would have studied people and I would have tried to study vision and leadership. I would, I would try to come to an understanding of change. I think I would understand something I didn't learn for A long time, Kevin, is that, that things are in our work, in our field always changing and there's new opportunities and new challenges. I read a little book, a little parable called My Iceberg is Melting. And it talks about the fact, and it talks about this penguin community that was in the Antarctica area and this, everybody thought that they were fine living on this iceberg. But there was one person who was very kind of studious and he was kind of swimming underneath the iceberg and he saw a crack and he came back and said, our iceberg is melting and we're going to have to leave this iceberg. And, and you talk about the calculated risk that you have to take in order to do that, the formation of your strategy. You know, where are you going to go? How are you going to make the adjustment? I think I would want it to be a little bit student of that, understand the process of leading change. I think that's important. I would encourage people to learn how to lead change in this. And I think I would always encourage people to realize that they've got to fit their program opportunities for, for the potential that they have and within the, the culture that they live and to be successful. And I think also, and I was this. I just loved every part of my organization and I think becoming a student of that organization, understanding its history, understanding its tradition, understanding what makes the difference and would be good. I think also I would encourage people to volunteer outside of their organization they're working with, understand what it costs, what it takes to do that. I think thirdly, I would live with integrity and I don't know how much more time, but, you know, integrity makes a difference. A gentleman that I work with and he was a multimillion dollar donor to the University of Kentucky. He's now deceased. And I was so close to him and I knew all he was giving. I knew the major six organizations. I knew UK was number one, but I knew the other other five. And there came a time in our, in our relationship that I said to him, so, and so would you like for me to help you determine your strategy for the next step, the foundational step? And I said, you know, he said, but that's not all uk. I said, I understand that. So I worked for a period of two or three years. The person told me everything they were worth. I knew what they were worth. And I developed the grid based on what they were telling me. I went back two or three times. If this is not right, let me know. I always ask permission. May I talk to you about this? May we do this. And this person has since passed and made a very significant gift at the end of the life. And the succession organization that's managing the person's assets said to me back in December, just a couple months ago that what we did was the most meaningful gifts that Mr. So and so ever made. You don't get better than that. It comes back to integrity. I will. This individual, he had made a $13 million gift and to the university, and we have paid for what we were doing and still had three and a half million left that he owed. And I called him, I said, you don't have to give this last three and a half million. Well, Mike, I've made a pledge. I was going to give you the 13. I said, we don't need it. You keep it. We don't need this. He was blown away. A month later, he gave us five million. So anyway, he saved three and a half. But it comes back again to integrity, and I can't underscore that enough. And then just being happy with yourself, are you going to make mistakes? Yes. But people don't remember your mistakes unless it's the same mistake over and over. Kevin but they remember your successes. And, and the third thing it's not about, Jim. You're in an organization. You're working in a field of opportunity where you've got other people that are going to be out at the forefront for the most part. But that's okay. You're the person that's helping to stir the drink, to get things done. And that's exciting and it really, truly is. So that's what I would say.
- [46:22]
B
All right, well, my last question, you, I mean, you've, you've covered this throughout our time together today, and you just covered it a lot in that question just now. But just to sort of wrap up, summarize for our listeners who are trying to think and understand how they might go big, what sort of final advice or encouragement would you offer?
- [46:42]
A
Mike I would have a good relationship with your leader, who is your leader that you report to on our campus, make sure you are in sync together, that you're hooked together. And I would have honest conversations and I would even, sometimes you have to guide them, you know, to say, look, we've done this, but we can do more. I really believe we can do more. And, but what would be your big idea? And I would ask your leader, what would be the two or three things that would be transformational for your organization? And then I would say, what would that be? What is that big Idea based on those comments that you could have, what would it cost? Then I would identify people and I said to this person yesterday, you need to identify 25 people. You're not going to be able to ask them for money this year, but you need to start that process. Who are the 25 people that you believe can help you achieve the goals for your big idea? And I would know and I would start that relationship. And then I think I would engage these people pretty early on, once you kind of really got a good thing in place. And I would go to them and I wouldn't ask them, say, look, I'm not coming to ask for money. I want to come to talk to you about something that's important to the present. But I want your input, I want your idea, I want this to be a win situation. And I would go to them and I would ask permission to ask them some questions. Here's what we're thinking about. How do you feel about that? I would ask them open ended questions. I would get them thinking, now, I didn't come to ask you for money, but if we go forward with this, where do you see yourself? But you can start gauging their genuine interest. But I would go to the, your boss, the leader, and ask them their idea. Then identify two or three big ideas. You can't do them all, but start with one that you can be successful in the big mo, the big momentum. Building momentum is very important because it starts that domino factor, Kevin. It really does in fundraising. And then I would engage these donors and let them know how much you appreciate their time. And look, you're looking for three to five people who can fund that big idea to really make it a reality. You really are. If I was doing a $10 million campaign, I want to get 80, 90 million, 8 or $9 million. When those top donors before I went to everybody. So I want everybody to be a participant. But you got to understand this out of our gifts, and we sometimes had 35,000 gifts a year. And every gift's important, Every gift's important. But historically, as we got into the late stages of the campaign, the $2.1 billion campaign, Kevin. 47, 48, 49% consistently of our money came from the top 25 gifts. 85, 86% of our money came from the top 200. All gifts are important. They, and some of these downline donors will become the top donors later on. They're all important. And you got to work hard to stewardship people and to let people know the impact they've made, they're making a difference and that you love them for it.
- [49:43]
B
Wow. Mike Ritchie, I hope you'll come back. We're going to have to have you back. I know. Based on folks reaction. I'm going to watch this a couple times just to make sure I absorb it all. Mike Ritchie, awesome. Great to know you. Great to work with you. Thanks for joining us today.
- [49:56]
A
My pleasure. God bless you, Kevin.
- [49:59]
B
God bless you, Mike Richie, thanks for listening to today's Going Big podcast. Hopefully you were inspired to go big for your cause. Remember, this is all about transforming your effectiveness by 10xing your fundraising. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe or leave a us a review at iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also catch this episode on YouTube and also there are lots of resources available to you at my website, which is 10xStrategies.com that's T E N X strategies dot com. You can sign up also for our free weekly fundraising tips. This is all about helping you get to those the root causes of some of the biggest problems in society today by transforming your fundraising and your effectiveness. Thanks again. We'll see you again soon. Bye.