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Hey, you, It's Rhea Wong. If you're listening to Nonprofit Load On, I'm pretty sure that you'd love my weekly newsletter. Every Tuesday morning, you get updates on the newest podcast episodes. And then interspersed, we have fun special invitations for newsletter subscribers only and fundraising inspo, because I know what it feels like to be in the trenches alone. On top of that, you get cute dog photos. Best of all, it is free. So what are you waiting for? Head over to riawong.com now to sign up Foreign. Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I'm your host, Rhea Wong. Hey, podcast listeners, it's Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. So gather around, friends. I have a little story to tell you. Earlier this week, I was on the phone with a prospective new client, and they came in real hot. And one of them said, well, we need new major donors. I mean, we want to meet people like Mr. Beast, and if you can't introduce us to people like that, then I don't think that we're the right fit for each other. To which I responded, you were absolutely right if you think that anybody can just call Mr. Beast and get you money, we are absolutely not the right fit for each other. And the thing is, as crazy as that story sounds like, why can't Mr. Beast give us money or, you know, fill in the random rich person? Oprah, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mackenzie Scott, whatever. If that is your strategy, I gotta tell your friends, that is actually not a strategy. It's fantasy with good branding. So today I'm gonna show you why Find Rich People fails as a matricus strategy, why your pipeline feels murky, and the exact exercise to replace hope with a real plan. So I have been in the nonprofit field for my entire career, more than 20 years, and I've spent the last eight of those years working very closely with nonprofit leaders on major gift strategy. And more often than I would like to admit, I see that the strategy, quote unquote, that a lot of folks have, is built on hope and vibes and not actually on data. And so what that often looks like is we have random acts of cultivation, like, oh, we should cultivate this person now. And I'm going to come up with a random list of activities that they might enjoy. Or we have a list that we inherit. I mean, how many of us have inherited lists of hundreds of names of people? Where it came from, we don't know where they got the information, we don't know. Maybe it was purchased. Maybe it came from the depths of the CRM system. Maybe it was passed on from some other previous staff member. But there's this idea of, like, we should reach out with no specific reason why we're going to reach out with these people or any kind of information about their capacity, their propensity, their engagement with us, nothing. Or we take meetings and there are no clear next steps. Or we have a portfolio, quote, unquote, that's basically a wish list. I mean, I was talking with my friend Cindy, who was a major gift officer for a long time, and she said, day one on the job, she was handed a list of 200 names and told that was her portfolio. No context, no relationship. Just here these 200 names go. And what that means is by the end of the quarter, we're in a place of who's wealthy, who can save us. So right now, if you're listening to this and you are a major gift officer or frontline fundraiser and you can't explain why you're cultivating someone right now other than the fact that you think they have money, you don't have a strategy. You have hope. And I like to say hope is not a strategy. The reason why we hang on to hope as a strategy is because we know in our minds that major gifts are important. We hear this all the time. We look at the Giving USA data. We know that 74% of all gifts given in the US are disproportionately given by individuals. However, major gifts are often important, but not urgent. What I mean by that is that it's often not our major gift work that pulls us into crisis mode. It's usually the grant report that's due, or the upcoming grant application, or the gala that's happening or the campaign that needs to get out the door. But the major donors, the major gifts that really move the needle are not the ones that are grabbing your attention. And yet when they slowly walk out the door quietly, without your noticing, by the time you notice, it's usually too late. And the truth is, the fires scream louder than your major donor pipelines. And so when we are relying on the wealth screen as our data point, it's because we're working under pressure, right? It's the expectations of our upcoming payroll or our end of your budget, or because the board says so. And so, our brain growls for capacity because it feels measurable. But when we get into the mode of let's just get in front of Mr. Beast thinking it's your scarcity brain or your survival brain looking for rescue, I think the biggest mistake I see is People who get a list of names and maybe they've done a well screen and they see capacity. But capacity, the ability to give, is not the signal. So here's what I'm going to do is I want to define the difference. Capacity is what someone could do. Signal is what they're actually doing. Let me repeat that. Capacity is what someone could do, right? Sure. Oprah could write you a million dollar check. Mr. Beast could give you a million dollars. Sure. But the signal is what they're actually going to do. And of course, I know everyone is out here saying, well, I know someone who received a big check from Mackenzie Scott after one phone call. And for people for whom that happened, I love that for you. But that is not a strategy. That is essentially the equivalent of winning the lottery. It's wonderful when it happens, but that is not actually based on a real plan and a real system. So when I'm thinking about major gift potentials in my pipeline, there are five things that I'm thinking about. And capacity is only one of these things. So the first is capacity. Do they literally have money to give? When I'm thinking about capacity and I'm thinking about major gifts, major gifts come from assets not of income. So people who've demonstrated that they have a DAF or a family foundation, are interested in donating real estate or stock, or have a qualified charitable distribution or want to give a bequest, these are people who are in major gift territory. But we still have four more things that we need to look for in order to qualify someone as a potential major gift prospect for us. Affinity. Have they demonstrated that they are interested in our cause area? So this person that I spoke to earlier this week, they were in a cause area that had no relation to anything that I've seen Mr. Beast give to in the past. So there was no evidence that Mr. Beast cared about this particular thing, and certainly not in this particular geographic area. Then is engagement. This is incredibly important. So, sure, we can talk about Mr. Beast, we can talk about Oprah, we can talk about all the things. But has Oprah or Mr. Beast or whomever ever showed any kind of inclination that they were engaged with us? Are they on our email list? Do they open our emails? Do they click through our emails? Do they come to our volunteer events? Are they friends with a board member? Have they showed any engagement whatsoever? Like, obviously, you're not going to ask someone to marry you if they aren't even willing to go out on a first date with you. And this is the mistake that I think we all fall into. So let's use this dating analogy as an example. Maybe I see this hot person and I'm like, oh, this person is definitely going to want to marry me because they're really hot. Okay, maybe you're not their type. That's affinity. Maybe they're not interested. Engagement. Fourth thing. Timing. Is the timing right for them? Maybe this person just got out of a relationship and they're not looking for anything serious. We know that timing is everything. So even if all of the other things are true, maybe they have money to give, maybe they even care about your cause, maybe they've shown some interest. But if the timing isn't right for them, I don't know, maybe that they have some health issues, maybe they're moving, maybe, I don't know, little Bobby's going to college, I don't know. But timing is everything. And then finally is permission. Have you actually received permission from them to reach out or engage them further? So if you are over relying, if you're over indexing on capacity as the signal for whether or not someone should be in your portfolio, capacity without the other signals is just a rich stranger. And here's what happens when we spend a lot of time, money and energy chasing rich strangers. You are burning your staff time on low probability outreach. You're frustrating your board. Why are we doing this? You increase your reputational risk, like asking them to invite their rich friends. And finally, your revenue forecasts are off because they're not based on movement, they're based on vibes. Hope fundraising creates random outcomes and chronic anxiety. Okay, But I have a plan for you. So here's what I'd like you to do. I want you to listen to this portion and then I want you to pause and go and do it. So step one, I want you to pick your 10 people. You're quote, unquote, kind of cultivating right now. So these are the ones who are living in your head. Your inbox, your vibes, your CRM system. Pick the 10 that you think that you might be cultivating. Then I want you to make a list. We're going to score them on signals, not just wealth. So I want you to create a simple grid. 01 to 2. Zero means no, one means maybe, two means yes. Super simple. All right, here's what we're going to do. We're going to have our list of 10 people. And across the top, if you're using a spreadsheet, you can, you can name your columns capacity. So the capacity is, do we have reason to believe they can give at our major gift level. If you have not yet defined your major gift level, I would define it as a top 10% of your individual giving minus outliers. So for example, if you had one very large request or one very large one time gift, I would throw that off because that's going to mess up your averages. But in general, think about it like the top 10% of your individual giving. So one capacity. Do we have reason to believe they can give at our major giving level? This is usually where people are looking at their wealth screen data. They're looking at past donations. They may even have done some Google stalking and looked at, I don't know, real estate records or past political donations. Or you're looking at LinkedIn and you're looking at their, their professional status. So that would, that would be one. First zero, one or two, then affinity. What evidence says they care about this mission? Zero means none. One means some. Two means yep, squarely there. Three. Engagement. What have they done recently that shows interest? And what I mean by done recently is done recently with you. So does it look like they're on your email list? Do they open your emails? Do they reply to your emails? Do they come to your events? Do they ask you questions? If none of these are true, that is a big fat goose egg, friend. One, you can give yourself a one if it's sometimes, yeah, they sometimes reply, they sometimes come to events, they sometimes open the emails. Two is like they're all over every email that you send. They are opening, they're coming to the events, all the things. Okay, then the next piece is timing. Why now? What's changed or what moment are we in? So if you don't know this, that would also be a zero. But timing could look like, hey, maybe they just had a liquidity event, maybe they just got a promotion. Maybe they're really moved by something that's happening in the news. Right? So that would be a timing reason. If you don't know, probably a zero. One is maybe. And then finally permission. Have we asked for or received consent from them to deepen their relationship? If no, it is a zero. If maybe give yourself a one and if yes, that is a two. Now look at your score. If you have capacity only that person is not in cultivation. They are a name. They are not on your top 10 list. So once you have all of these, you sort them into three buckets. Bucket A is act now. This is high signal. So these are folks who've demonstrated engagement and affinity, they've given permission or you think that they might give permission. These are folks that you can outreach this week. Bucket B, warmup some signal, not enough. So maybe they have affinity, maybe they have capacity, maybe they've been lightly engaged. You could have a single building touch. So that could look like an outreach, that could look like a survey, that could look like sending them content, that could look like a nice touch point. Your goal is to open a relationship for a conversation. And then Bucket C, if they've only shown capacity or there is no other evidence, they go back into the general communications until they raise their hand, until you see other indicators. Now let's look at your Bucket A for a second. For every single person in bucket A, you should be able to answer the question why them? Why now? Why us? Why them? Why now? Why us? And if you can't answer those you're not cultivating, you are guessing. Now, I want to talk about this thing, this concept I talk about ad nauseam about, which is consent. I really believe in getting people's consent or permission to be able to advance them in the process. I think the mistake that a lot of us make as fundraisers is that we add people to our caseload or our portfolio without actually ever asking their consent to do so. It's a little bit like when I was single in dating and I would get asked out and because I wasn't really clear on like, is this person asking me out as a friend or is this a proper date? And so there was just a lot of confusion. So what I'm proposing to you is that you get consent before you ask, before you consider someone to be in your case, so that there's no confusion and it's absolutely transparent. There are a couple of permissions that I want to share with you. The first permission is the permission to outreach. So I know a lot of you send out a lot of emails asking people for coffee and you often hear crickets. There are a couple reasons why that might be true. One is that they don't know your intention. So the reason likely that they are ignoring your emails is one, they're busy, everyone is busy. But two, they don't know what you're asking, they don't know what you want and they fear that you're going to ask them for something but before they are ready. So the first permission that I want you to think about is creating a permission for outreach. It looks like, hey, name, I'm reaching out because you've supported X for Z number of years and I'm grateful. I have no idea if this would Be of interest to you. That is what my friend Laura Friedrichs calls the face saving line. I have no idea if this of interest to you, but would you be open to allowing me to buy you a cup of coffee so I can learn what you care about and what drew you to us? And this is important. This is not a solicitation. However, if it is a solicitation, you have to say this is a solicitation. But if it is truly not a solicitation, you could say, this is not a solicitation. This will lower the temperature on their distrust. Now, once you have that conversation and it seems like you're aligned, and it seems like you've gotten permission for all of the other key areas, capacity, affinity, engagement, timing and permission, then you want to get permission to add them to your portfolio. So that looks like. Do I have permission to create a plan for us to get to know each other with the understanding that if and when the time is right, we'd co create a funding proposal together? If they agree to see the plan that is a step forward. If they agree to do the plan, then and only then are they in your portfolio. The reason a lot of us skip this step is I think there's a real fear of rejection. Because there is a fear of rejection. What ends up happening is you. You spend, I. E. Waste a lot of time chasing after people who are not a good fit for you, who either don't have capacity, aren't interested. We're never going to be major donors in the first place. So if you come from a place of being respectful, transparent and consent focused, the time that you spend with people will be a. A much higher return on your investment of time because you've allowed people to opt in. The biggest other leak that I see is that people don't hem up the next step in the meeting. So what it looks like is maybe you have a nice coffee or maybe you have a nice cultivation visit and you don't say, oh, okay, what is the next step? And you literally have to pull out your phone and say, how about this date at this time with this medium? So every single conversation that you have, you never leave a conversation without date, time and next action. Because if you do, you're just going to have a lot of someday maybes and all these open loops will make you crazy. So I'm going to bring this all back to Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast is pure capacity. In this example that I shared at the beginning, the person who was suggesting Mr. Beast to me looked solely at the amount of money he was giving. At no point did this person consider whether or not Mr. Beast was interested in this particular cause. Clearly Mr. Beast was not engaged with them whatsoever. They have no idea about his timing and obviously they did not have permission. So this is why it's delusional. This is why it's delusional to think about Mr. Beast or some other random rich person as your strategy because you're trying to skip the signals and jump to the outcome. And the better question that you should ask yourself as you look at potential list of prospects is who is already raising their hand in my universe? So if you're listening to this, I beg with you, I plead with you to heed me. Stop fundraising like you're buying lottery tickets. Instead, build a signal driven pipeline. Now if you're liking what you're hearing and you want to learn more about a consent based fundraising system, I recommend that you go to my website, riawong.com, register for my newsletter and you will get information about upcoming webinars that I do to train people on consent based fundraising. I'll see you next week. And remember, Mr. Beast is not coming to save you. I'll see you next week. Hey fundraisers. Looking to nail those big fundraising asks? Check out my big ask gift program@riawong.com bag. Say goodbye to uncertainty and hello to confidence with my program. Get expert strategies and personalized support to secure those game changing donations. Don't let fear hold you back. Join me and take your fundraising to new heights. We're enrolling now at riawong.com bag. That's riawong.com bag. So if you like big asks and you cannot lie, I'll see you in the program.