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Nonprofit Lowdown
#400 - 8 Years, 400 Episodes, and the One Thing I Got Wrong About Marketing
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Hey, podcast listeners, it's Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. Today is a special day. Today is my 400th episode of Nonprofit Lowdown, which is bananas. I did not expect to be doing this eight years later when I first hit record, oh, those many years ago. So some of you have been here with me since the beginning, and I want to say, in the immortal words of jz, you could have been anywhere in the world, but you're here with me, and I appreciate. So, in honor of the 400th episode, I wanted to do a little bit of a reflection, a little bit of a look back at what I've learned and what has changed in the last eight years since our very first episode aired in 2018. Frankly, when I hit record on episode one, I could not envision that I'd be here eight years later doing this still. And honestly, I didn't even think we'd make it to eight episodes. So the fact that this is still here, and I hear from a lot of you every single day that this has helped you in some way or that you learned something new. And that is why I have kept going for eight long years. My podcast would be like a little human. Anyway, let's get into it now. What I want to say is a lot of you don't know me personally, but just know that I have shiny object syndrome. I fall in love with a new idea, I get really excited about it. I throw myself all in. I buy the courses, I buy the books, I buy the apps, I buy all the things, and it just fizzles. And so, to be frank, the fact that I've kept this project going for eight years is unusual, but it's because, actually, I love it. And I've heard from a lot of you that you love it, too. And so that is the thing that has kept me going. A little bit of an origin story In 2018, in September, I started this in a lark. I was a big podcast fan myself, and I thought, hey, I might try starting a podcast. And this is before everyone and their mother had a podcast. So I feel like I was pretty early into the. In the podcast game. At the time, there was no strategy. I didn't have a content calendar. I didn't have anything other than a cheap microphone and a dream. And frankly, the reason I started the podcast, aside from the fact that I personally enjoy podcasts, is that I had a lot of really great friends in the nonprofit sector, and we were all so busy. It was one of these things. You see your friends, you're like, yeah, yeah, we'll catch up, we'll have coffee, whatever. Guess what? Never freaking binned. Because we were all so busy. And so I decided the best way for me to get actually in front of my friends and have a conversation is to stick a mic in their face because I had a publishing schedule. So what happened? Over time, those guests became friends, those friends became an audience, that audience became a community. And that, my friends, is you. And so I just want to say thank you for tuning in over the last eight years to hear me and my thoughts and my guests about the business of nonprofit. And frankly, I started this podcast because I remember what it was like to be an ED back in the ancient days before AI and YouTube. And I remember feeling so alone. And I remember feeling like I didn't know what to do. I had so many things coming at me, and I just, it felt like I was treading water. And so I wanted to create a space where you didn't have to feel like that because the work that you do is so important, and yet it's also so incredibly lonely because, frankly, nobody teaches you how to do this stuff. So I was hoping that with my podcast, I would make you feel a little less alone in the noble work you're doing. So I'm going to walk you through four things today. I'm going to talk about what has changed in fundraising over the last eight years. And, friends, we have had a whole global pandemic. We have had a whole launch of AI. We have seen all of these IPOs. Things are different than they were eight years ago, but there are things that are never going to be different. There are things that stay the same. So we're going to talk about that. I'm going to also talk about the trends that I'm watching now. So I have the great privilege and honor of getting to interview some of the smartest people in the world on fundraising. And so I'm going to talk about the trends that I'm watching personally. And then I'm going to talk about the one trend that I resisted really hard. And frankly, I was wrong. I was wrong. This is not something that you'll hear me say very often. I wonder if my husband will take a recording of this and play it over and over again. But yes, I was wrong, and I admit it. So let's get into it. All right, let's talk about the last eight years and the things that have changed the most in fundraising, aside from the fact that we had a global pandemic, two presidential administration Changes, a couple wars that were started, A federal funding landscape that has been completely gutted. The launch of mainstream AI, the launch of media like YouTube, Instagram, et cetera, further fracturing our attention. And now Most recently the SpaceX IPO with other high with other high flying IPOs to come. So what does that all mean for our nonprofit folks out here? Number one, I think expectations have changed dramatically. So what I mean by that, back when I was an ed, it was enough to maybe send a newsletter once a year or I talk to lots of my clients, they send newsletters maybe once a month. Then the touch point in November and December counted as a relationship and we could expect the gifts to come in. No longer friends, those days are dead. Donors expect transparency, they expect real impact and they expect to be communicated with in the same way that other for profit brands are communicating with them. Which is to say often and briefly. 2. I think we are drowning in data. I've heard this once, I thought it was quite astute. It was. We're drowning in knowledge, but we're starving for wisdom. And so with the rise of AI, we are seeing a proliferation of all kinds of data. We can run reports on every data point from here to the moon, but it doesn't actually mean that we're paying attention to the right things. Ironically, I think with the proliferation of data we are feeling even more confused than we ever did. It's just that it looks prettier now and we can get it faster. We can be confused faster with AI. 3. The money has moved. So for any of you who've been listening to my to my podcast about DAFs or donor advised funds, this is the thing that you need to be paying attention to. In 2026, Das, back when I was a lowly ED, DAFs were a pretty specialized vehicle for wealthy donors. Now they have gone mainstream and especially now with all of the new wealth being created by AI, DAFFs are the name of the game. In the last three years alone we have seen an increase of 75% in people opening DAFs, which says to me that if you're not paying attention to DAFs and people who have DAFs and creating a strategy around DAFs, you are going to be left out. So it used to be a niche vehicle. Now it is the most important vehicle in individual gift fundraising. And finally, trust cratered. So donors stopped trusting institutions. And even though we've seen that donors still trust nonprofit organizations, I would say that trust overall is at an all time low. We don't trust facts, we don't trust media, we don't trust experts, we don't trust our politicians. And so in a world of skepticism, we as nonprofits have to work twice as hard in order to earn the trust of our donors, in order to earn the right and the privilege to partner with them. So that just means that you have to work harder for the same result that you used to get 10 years ago when trust wasn't as much of an issue. So it also means that you need to create relationships for the long term and you need to have proof, because people are not going to believe you just because you say so. We are in a skeptical and cynical age. We need receipts. So let me tell you a little story about Bob which will illustrate this point. Now, back when I was an Ed, I got a random phone call from this guy named Bob. And Bob said, oh, I heard about you from a couple that I was on vacation with, and they were raving about your work, and I want to meet you. I'll be in New York. Let's meet at the Four Seasons. Now. I didn't know Bob. Bob didn't know me. I didn't even know who these people were who talked about me. In fact, I asked him, and he didn't even know. Anyway, we met. It was a bit of a strange meal. That's another story for another day. But we sat down at the Four Seasons. My board chair and I, we chatted with Bob, we talked about his trip to New York, and then, frankly, he did leave us with the bill, which I thought maybe we just got stiffed by a con man. But now, shortly after that lunch, Bob wrote a $50,000 check out of the blue. I'd never met this man, really. We'd had one lunch, and because of the fact that he met me in my board chair, and there was a degree of trust there, there. And there was a warm handshake from somebody that clearly he trusted. On vacation, he was able to make the significant investment, and he ended up making a $50,000 gift for many years afterward. The thing that I want to underscore here, that it was one lunch, it was a $50,000 check. But at the time, I did not have a playbook. At the time, my strategy for Matrix was meet rich people and eventually ask them for money. And so. But the thing that's still true and still holds, that it was a conversation and a connection between two humans. At that point, having met Bob, it wasn't the algorithm that got us together. It wasn't a wealth screen. It was simply one human Talking to another, picking up the phone and reaching out. So no matter how much things have changed the ask, the relationship is still a conversation, a genuine, authentic conversation between two human beings. It's not a transaction. The donors that you're talking to want something to happen in the world. They have desires, they want meaning, they want purpose. And you, as a fundraiser, are there to connect with them as an authentic human being who also has wishes and desires and meaning and purpose. And together you seek to build something that something greater than either of you could achieve on your own. That will always be true. I want to tell another really quick story. So recently I was in Turkey with my husband and my mother in law. She turned 80 years old. This was her birthday trip. Anyway, we were walking through Ephesus, which is an ancient town, and I was reading I'm a big history nerd. So I was reading all the plaques and there's this beautiful monument that was actually donated by a wealthy merchant and his wife. So even the ancient Greeks had to fundraise. The point is, this man who donated this money for this building that was now in ruins, probably could not imagine that his name would still be seen thousands and thousands of years later by moi. But the desire to be seen, the desire to leave our imprint on the world, that is donor psychology, that is ancient. It is never going to change. So the lesson that Bob taught me, and it took me years to learn, is that the relationship will get you the lunch. And that was the part that I was good at. But the system and the strategy holds the relationship after the lunch. So if you don't have a playbook, if you don't have a strategy after having the lunch, there's no there. Then it just ends up being like, that was nice. Frankly, you could still have the magic human moment and still fumble the gift afterwards. Or maybe you get the gift, but it doesn't continue because you fumbled the moment at that time. As an Ed, I had a relationship. I could do the lunch. But what I didn't have back then, what I do have now, is the system to understand how to move someone from that was a nice lunch to a $50,000 giver over multiple years. And frankly, Bob deserved better than me fumbling around, hoping, fumbling around making up a solution at that time. So what I want to say to you, and one of the things I've learned over the last 20 years of being in this sector is you have to be prepared, you have to have a plan. Don't leave the Bobs on the table. Giving is good for the giver. And when you don't give a generous person a path forward based on trust and goodwill, they go somewhere else. All right, let's change tax a little bit. Here are some of the trends that I see coming to us. Ready or not, here they come. So buckle up. 1. Trust based philanthropy. Thank you, Mackenzie Scott. Let's call this the Mackenzie Scott effect. Less oversight, more partnership. I find it very interesting too, thinking about how women give versus how men give. And so I've been thinking a lot about the fact that some of the most generous givers out here, Mackenzie Scott, Lorraine Powell Jobs and Melinda Gates, are giving big. They're going deep, they're going in for the long term partnership, and they're trusting their recipients to do the work without a ton of oversight. And I think that is going to be the trend that we see. 2. I said it before, I will say it again. DAFs are the default. They're not the exception. And you have to know how to receive them. By the way, take a look back on episode 399 for some solid tips on how to position yourself for daft givers. 3. We are currently, right now, living in a time of tremendous transfer of wealth. Right now, the baby boomers are passing the wealth that they have frankly hoarded down to the younger generations. And so your donor, your high net worth, high capacity donors now are most likely going to be younger than they've been in the past. So right now is the time for you to build the relationships with the younger generation. And number four, the overhead myth is finally dying. I don't know that it's completely dead. It's like a dragon that will not die. But for the longest time, we were all beset by this myth that we weren't a good nonprofit if we spent over a certain percentage on admin and over a certain percentage on fundraising. Hopefully, this is now dead. And that impact matters a lot more than these arbitrary percentages of overhead, quote, unquote. So what that means is that for a lot of us, we've kept our overhead, our capacity spending artificially low because we're afraid that funders or donors would be turned off by this. Again, completely arbitrary percentage number. So if you're listening to this, you have my permission. Now is the time that you should invest in your infrastructure because your infrastructure is going to be the thing that keeps you around in the long run. Strong infrastructure will be the thing that keeps you healthy in the long run. And finally, I wish I didn't have to say this, but I think it's true. We have a talent crisis, ladies and gentlemen. Now, it used to be that the tenure of a fundraiser, the tenure of a development director was something like 18 months. It is now probably more like 15 months. Every time a fundraiser leaves, an angel loses its wings. We need to A, recruit our fundraisers better, B, train them better. And by the way, I think there's this fallacy that if you train, if you hire a fundraiser, you're not going to need to train them any further, that they should, quote, unquote, already know. Nobody already knows. And in fact, I see this as being the number one problem, is that there's a lack of investment in ongoing education for fundraisers. And then the third thing, why aren't we retaining them? And we're often not retaining them because we are asking them to do impossible jobs without any systems or support. I did a whole podcast about fundraiser burnout. Go listen to that. But point is, if you are a leader out here, if you're a board member, if you're an ed, heck, if you're a development person yourself, hear this. You need to stop the bleeding. Because every single time someone walks out the door, they take their relationships with them, they take the institutional knowledge with them, and you start back at zero. And in fact, you probably lose about two to three years worth of traction on with your donors because you've lost their point person. This is probably the number one thing that I see in non profits that if they could solve this problem, would go a long way towards solving a lot of the other problems. Okay, finally, I want to talk about the thing that I got wrong. Yes, Sometimes I got things wrong. So this is the trend I resisted. And it is this. It is the power of social media and content. Real talk. I was resentful about that because I wanted to believe, like, I know a lot of you believe that doing good work was enough. Right? I just believe. It's almost like when I was a staff member and my mom told me, like, don't worry about a raise, just do good work and you'll be recognized. That did not happen. So I wanted to believe that if I just did excellent work and I got the results for people, that recognition would come, that, and that fame and glory would come, that everyone would know my name. I wanted marketing to be the thing that you have have to do if you were good enough. Sound familiar? I wanted the world to reward substance over visibility. And if you're listening to this, I am willing to bet mostly all I have on the fact that you are probably under marketing. And here's the thing I want to say about this. I was wrong. I was wrong. I wanted to believe that the good work was enough. And that is incorrect. So say this with me, doing good work is not enough. I talked about this recently, that there was a study that was, that I cited recently that when it comes to success, only 10% is your performance, 30% is your image, which means a whole whopping 60% of your success is due to exposure. Who knows about you? Who's talking about you? Who do they know what you're doing? And for anyone out there listening, if you've ever said a board meeting, we are the best kept secret in fill in the blank geography, you're not doing enough marketing. Whether we like it or not, marketing and being out there and talking about the work and being a spokesperson and being on the platforms and creating good content is necessary. It is necessary. It is the thing that will keep your doors open. Because hear this. The best program in the world that nobody knows about will lose out every single time to the mediocre program that has a megaphone. I wish it weren't true, but there it is. They will outraise you every time. And I know a lot of you care so deeply about the work, but what you're really doing is what I call shining the diamond in the dark. Right? You think that if you could just tweak the program and just get the numbers a little bit higher, somebody will see all of the good work and the money fairy will sprinkle money down upon you like magic. Nobody knows about you. You must change that. And so if you're listening to this and you think it's unfair, it is. I didn't make the rules, but it should make you angry enough to want to pick that megaphone up yourself. So when I think about marketing, because I also under market, I also don't tell enough people about what I do. But here are the five truths that I have come to accept as true in this world. 1. Attention is the new scarcity. Here's how life is different. Eight years ago, life was busy. Eight years ago, it is even more so today. Between all of the different platforms fighting for our attention, all of the different streaming options, all of the ads coming at us, all of the AI, our eyeballs have become more valuable than ever. Watch time is valuable. So it is important to know what people are paying attention to. So it's not about necessarily being the loudest. It is about being the most relevant and the most human. 2. Personalization at scale is now table 6. What I mean by that is 8 years ago it was enough to say, oh, I'm dropping in someone's first name in the subject line. Isn't that personalization? I wish that we're in this world of AI where we can personalize to such a granular degree. Having the excuse of we are too small as an organization is not going to cut it anymore. And so what we need to be thinking about is how we can leverage these new tools like AI, like various platforms like LinkedIn to personalize and customize at scale. That is a new name of the game. It's a little bit like if you've ever had a conversation with someone about something random, I don't know, cat beds. And then all of a sudden Facebook starts showing you ads about cat beds. I feel like Facebook is going to show me ads about cat beds after this conversation. That is. It's creepy for sure. But it is also now the new reality of the level of customization and personalization that people are that come to expect. 3. Own your audience. I cannot underscore this enough. What do I mean by own your audience? So I know a lot of you are out here hoping to go viral on social and you have the. Your TikTok dances and whatever you do. But the thing that you want to be clear about is that you must build your email list because that is asset that you own. I think it's a great idea to have a strong social media presence, but at the end of the day, you can be cut off. And if you're cut off from that, you have no business. And so I'm always thinking about, how are we, how do we own the attention as opposed to building on borrowed land? Okay, this is a big one, folks, and I know a lot of you will feel resentful about this, but content is the cultivation. What I mean by that is we are now at a stage where donors are self cultivating and self soliciting. Nobody wants to meet you for coffee, nobody wants to take a phone call, nobody wants to come on a site visit. What they want to do is they want to do their own research. And the way they're going to do their own research is they're going to Google you, maybe they'll YouTube you, maybe they'll look at LinkedIn. But you have to create enough good content in order to help people to help themselves on this on ramp. We're no longer in the era of reaching out to cold audiences, the audiences. And perhaps this is true. Just think about your own behaviors. Right? Now, when you're thinking about donating or when you're thinking about buying something, I'm sure the first thing you do is you look at reviews, right? You look at the website. You then make a decision and your donors are doing the same thing. So what we need is high quality content that validates that you are going to be a good bet for them. And then finally, authenticity beats polish. Now, one of the things that you might be thinking is, I can't produce content because we don't have a podcast studio or we don't have a video whatever, or I don't have a fancy editor, et cetera, et cetera. Forget all that authenticity bit. Look at this right now. This is my iPhone. I have a crazy setup. I have a handheld microphone, and I'm talking to you like we're friends, right? You don't need the fancy. What you need is the sincerity. You need the authenticity. You need people who want to genuinely connect with you and your message and the work that you're doing in a way that feels real. Especially now with AI, everything feels so fakey fake. So actually, zigging while everyone is zagging, going a little low tech is probably going to be your best bet. And if your question is, how does AI fit into all this? AI is a force multiplier. AI should never replace the human. Our skepticism is such that we doubt even the images that we see, we think is an AI generated. And so what I want to emphasize to you, dear listener, is zig while everyone else is zagging. Resist the use of AI to create content. Use AI to amplify the content. Now the origin story comes back around. Remember when I said back in 2018, I started this podcast on Lark? What I actually did, without realizing it, is this is the first piece of visibility marketing I ever did. Years before I actually admitted marketing was the key to sustainability, I was already doing it. And maybe that's true for you. I meet people every day who I end up working with, who said things like, I've been listening to your podcast for years. I don't. I didn't know who they were. I didn't have a relationship with them. But they were watching, they were waiting, and hopefully they found enough value in my content to think it was to take a leap of faith to work with me. So the irony is, I was building this podcast eight years ago, doing the very thing I was resisting, which was marketing. And so for me to be able to do it for eight years, it's because I felt that my podcasting was about connecting, not about marketing. Marketing was like connecting and having good conversations to people. That was a thing that really lit my fire and I'm continuing to do it eight years later. So as a wrap up, if there's one thing that you can take away from this, from the person who has a hard time sticking with anything, the person who resented marketing, the person who thought good work should be enough on its own. Start before you believe in it. Show up before it's a strategy. The consistency is the strategy. Okay, so let's wrap this up. Four things I want you to walk away with. 1. People still give to people they're not going to give to AI robots. You must protect the human relationship above every tool that you own. 2. The relationship is necessary but insufficient. You have to have the relationship, you have to have the connection. But you also have to layer on top a system and a strategy because making friends is enough. You have to move them somewhere. 3. Doing good work by itself is not enough. Visibility is the thing that is going to get you sustainability over time. Doing good work is not enough anymore. Visibility is not vanity, it's survival. And 4N4 start before you're ready. Consistency compounds. So what I want to challenge you on Dear Listener is picking one platform this week and just execute. Show up on it as a human being. Talk to your people like their other humans. Hit record and ship it before it's perfect. Done is better than perfect. So if you want to go a little bit deeper on the system I didn't have when I met Bob, you can find it in the show notes below or in the description if you're catching this on YouTube, which again was something I resisted. And in closing, I just want to say thank you so much for joining me for 400 episodes. It's been a blast learning with you. And here's to 400 more. If you've enjoyed this, share this with one fundraiser that you know who needs to hear what I have to say today. And in the meantime, let's get that money, honey.