Let’s Talk About AI (And How It Can Help Us Do More With Less)

Summary

Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast: Episode Summary

Title: Let’s Talk About AI (And How It Can Help Us Do More With Less)
Host: Brooke Richie-Babbage
Guest: Scott Brighton, CEO of Bonterra
Release Date: July 29, 2025

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of the Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast, host Brooke Richie-Babbage delves into the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data analytics for nonprofit organizations. Joined by Scott Brighton, CEO of Bonterra, a social good software company, Brooke explores how nonprofits can leverage these technologies to amplify their impact while conserving valuable resources.

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Understanding Data and AI

Scott Brighton begins the conversation by clarifying the distinction between data and AI, essential for nonprofits that may feel overwhelmed by technological jargon.

Metaphor for Clarity
At [03:26], Scott uses a relatable metaphor:

“Think about data as the fuel and AI as the engine or the vehicle.”

He further distinguishes between classic AI (machine learning and pattern recognition) and modern AI (large language models like ChatGPT and agentic AI that can perform tasks autonomously). This foundational understanding sets the stage for discussing practical applications.

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The Critical Role of AI and Data in Nonprofits

Brooke and Scott address the "why" behind integrating AI and data into nonprofit operations, emphasizing the unique challenges nonprofits face, such as severe resource constraints.

Resource Constraints Highlighted
Scott highlights the stark difference between for-profit and nonprofit resource margins:

“The average nonprofit has to run on the equivalent of 80% margin, right. Give away 80% of its revenue.”
[06:23]

He explains that AI can simplify operations, allowing nonprofits to perform complex tasks with fewer resources. This is particularly impactful for smaller organizations that lack extensive tech teams.

AI as a Simplifier

“AI is actually simpler and easier than classic software... AI agents... can do work on behalf of human fundraisers.”
[06:54]

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Practical Applications of AI and Data in Fundraising

The conversation shifts to how nonprofits can utilize AI and data, focusing on fundraising strategies such as donor acquisition and retention.

Finding New Donors
Scott introduces Bonterra's Optimized Ask tool, which analyzes 500,000 philanthropic transactions daily to identify successful fundraising practices.

“We on average increase the average donor size by 11%, which is transformative.”
[12:37]
This tool leverages data patterns to optimize fundraising amounts and outreach methods, making donor acquisition more effective.

Enhancing Donor Retention
Addressing donor retention, Scott explains how AI can predict donor churn:

“One of the things that we can see in the data is early indicators that suggest that a donor may be at risk of churning before they.”
[16:45]
AI assigns a health score to donors, categorizing them into green, yellow, or red statuses. This allows nonprofits to implement targeted engagement strategies to retain valuable supporters.

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Impact Report Insights

Scott discusses the 2025 Bonterra Impact Report, highlighting key findings that can guide nonprofits in enhancing their strategies.

Resilience and Consistency
A significant insight from the report:

“63% of nonprofits give up after one grant attempt with a given funder... the winning amount of success with an individual grantor is 1.24.”
[26:38-26:49]
This data underscores the importance of persistence in fundraising efforts, suggesting that multiple engagements with funders greatly increase success rates.

Donor Behavior Patterns
Another notable finding:

“Roughly a quarter of people gave after a year... treating those folks as sustainers can increase their connection with the organization.”
[27:05-27:57]
Understanding that not all sustainers give annually allows nonprofits to tailor their engagement strategies more effectively.

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Leveraging Bonterra’s Tools for Strategic Advantage

Scott elaborates on specific tools Bonterra offers that harness data and AI to empower nonprofits.

Fundraising Coaches
Bonterra's fundraising coaches provide conversational insights and automated task execution:

“You can ask it for insights into what's going on in your donor base and it will present reports.”
[23:09]

Grant Match
An upcoming tool, Grant Match, helps nonprofits understand the funding appetites of large organizations by analyzing their grant data. This enables nonprofits to tailor their grant applications more effectively:

“It works for both sides... insights into what a funder is looking for.”
[30:45]

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Conclusion and Resources

As the episode wraps up, Brooke encourages listeners to explore Bonterra’s Impact Report and consider trialing their AI-driven fundraising tools to enhance their nonprofit’s effectiveness.

Accessing the Impact Report

“The impact report is available on our website. So that's bonteratech.com.”
[33:11]

Invitation to Engage
Scott invites nonprofits to join their private beta for fundraising coaches, emphasizing the mutual benefits of such collaborations.

Final Thoughts
Brooke concludes by encouraging listeners to leave ratings, subscribe to her newsletter, and engage with the provided resources to continue their nonprofit leadership journey.

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Key Takeaways

• Data as Fuel, AI as Engine: Understanding the foundational roles of data and AI is crucial for leveraging them effectively.
• Resource Optimization: AI simplifies operations, allowing nonprofits to achieve more with less.
• Strategic Fundraising: Tools like Optimized Ask and Fundraising Coaches provide actionable insights to enhance donor acquisition and retention.
• Persistence Pays: Consistent engagement with funders significantly increases funding success rates.
• Tailored Engagement: Recognizing diverse donor behaviors enables more personalized and effective engagement strategies.

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By integrating AI and data analytics, nonprofits can not only streamline their operations but also make more informed, strategic decisions that drive greater impact. This episode serves as a compelling guide for nonprofit leaders eager to harness technology to amplify their missions.

Transcript

[Brooke Richie Babbage]

So I want to ask you a personal question. Do you read my newsletter Leadership Forward 321? Because if you don't, I really think you'd like it. If you like this podcast Every week I send a short newsletter that you can read in five minutes or less designed to help you lead more strategically and with less overwhelm. I share a three part micro lesson on a timely leadership theme that you can apply right away, two concrete resources that I stand behind and a quote or reflection to inspire and motivate you. I'm going to make it super easy.

[Scott Brighton]

For you to sign up.

[Brooke Richie Babbage]

You can text the word impact to 66866 and I'll add you to my list. Enjoy the episode. This is one of those rare episodes.

[Scott Brighton]

Where I invite someone into my proverbial studio to have a conversation that feels really top of mind for the leaders that I'm serving today. I'm talking about a topic that just keeps coming up real talk about using data and AI to actually scale your impact. My conversation is with Scott Brighton, the CEO of Bonterra.

[Brooke Richie Babbage]

Bontera is a social good software company that helps nonprofits, charitable foundations and socially.

[Scott Brighton]

Responsible companies raise more, give more, and get more for their missions. And they're the sponsor of this episode. Scott and I have a great conversation about something that seems like it wouldn't be interesting but is super, super important data and about doing well by doing good. I hope you enjoy.

[Brooke Richie Babbage]

Welcome to the Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast. I'm Brooke Richie Babbage. I've been in the social impact game for 25 years as a social justice lawyer turned two time nonprofit founder and leader turned growth strategist and coach for leaders around the country. I grew my nonprofit from me and an intern in a tiny closet to a high impact seven figure organization. And along the way I learned so so much about how to build an organization that has real impact and how to do it without burning out. In this podcast I share the nuts and bolts of all of it so you can do that too. We dive into the mindset, strategies and tactics of how to scale a high impact organization and how to do it in a way that's truly sustainable.

[Scott Brighton]

Hi Scott, great to see you.

Hey Brooke, great to see you. Fantastic opportunity to have this conversation.

I've been very, very excited about this conversation. As you probably know, I help organizations scale their impact in a way that's sustainable and what we are going to talk about today goes to the core of that. Specifically how nonprofits can be intentional and should be intentional about leveraging Data and AI to increase their impact in ways that don't constantly put their teams in sort of constant risk of burnout and overwhelm. And so I'm really excited about this. I could go on forever about why this topic is important, but I want to start with sort of the what of it all and just make sure everyone listening is on the same page about what we're talking about. So let's start with what do we mean by data and AI? They're often used in the same sentence. They are not the same thing. And for many of my listeners who don't feel data comfortable or data forward, why don't you walk through how they relate to one another so that as we're talking today, folks can have sort of a working definition in their heads.

Yeah, be happy to. I think sort of a simple metaphor to use would be to think about data as the fuel and AI as the engine or the vehicle.

And.

And when we talk about AI, also, there are sort of different types of AI. There's classic AI, which would be sort of machine learning, which is looking for patterns in large amounts of data like ChatGPT or. Well, and then there's modern AI, which is large language models like ChatGPT and their application, which is the sort of new concept of agentic AI, which is where AI is able to perform tasks autonomously or semi autonomously on behalf of a human, huging large amounts of unstructured data.

Yeah, I hear that, and I get very excited. What I think a lot of people hear that and their minds sort of explode. What I love, and we're going to get more into the nuts and bolts of this today, is that you guys think a lot about and have tools that really help nonprofits apply those tools, apply those vehicles without having to know all of the stuff that you just said. Right. So. But I did want to sort of start there. I love that. Thank you for that. So that's the what now? Let's go to the why. Yeah, I'm excited about this conversation. You're excited about this conversation. Let's spend a little bit of time with why this topic is actually so important for nonprofits, even if they don't feel comfortable with data and AI and talking about it. Why it's so critical that they be thinking intentionally about data and AI now.

Yeah, well, you know, Brooke, it's an interesting time in. In my industry, software, because what we're seeing is sort of an evolution where software is going to change dramatically and you're going to move from this sort of classic model of a, of a human operating with a user interface, a screen to something that candidly is actually much easier and simpler, which is a autonomous or semi autonomous agent that will be able to provide advice directly on data and even execute tasks based on that advice in consultation with a human. So in some ways AI is actually simpler and easier than classic software. Because the problem that nonprofits struggle with, and as you know very well, is there is no more resource constrained industry in the planet.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right.

[Scott Brighton]

An average, a for profit enterprise that's running at say 35% margin is considered efficient. The average nonprofit has to run on the equivalent of 80% margin, right. Give away 80% of its revenue. That's a lot of resource. And so how having needing to learn software, needing to input data, needing to support software, it takes time and resource that nonprofits don't have. AI agents on the other hand, which candidly in the long run may replace software, just interact with fundraisers like humans and can do work on behalf of of human fundraisers. And so while it may seem sort of mystical and mysterious now, I actually believe it's going to be much easier, much simpler and have a bigger impact or as certainly as big an impact on the nonprofit community as we'll have on the for profit community.

How close to that are we? Right. Like I know for a lot of the nonprofits that I work with, even ChatGPT, which I love and have baked into my own business from top to bottom, even thinking about use cases for ChatGPT other than, you know, write this email for me, which there's a lot of back and forth about, that can feel foreign or difficult. The idea of this agent, the semi autonomous agent that I can talk to, communicate with, give tasks to. Sounds wonderful.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Scott Brighton]

Are we going to be there in any time soon enough to make that feel like something nonprofits should invest in learning about?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Scott Brighton]

So I think it's essentially here we are going to be shipping this summer. In fact, we're entering a private beta on this right now with our new agentic fundraising coaches. And, and what these fundraising coaches have access to is for our customers, they'll have access to your individual donor data and philanthropic activity, it'll have access to the broader bontera philanthropic activity, which is 500,000 philanthropic transactions every single day. And it will have access to the knowledge of our best practice coaches and it will be able to derive from all of that answers to questions. But also ultimately what is coming is proactive suggestions. Hey, I've identified this cohort of your donor base that I believe can be converted into sustainers by running the following programs. We're going to be there in months.

Oh, that's amazing. And I know we're going to talk very specifically about how to use, how to think about data and AI for finding new donors, for retaining donors. So we'll get to dive into that. But that's really exciting. Let's. Let's talk a little bit about how different size organizations can think about data and AI. You know, I know that funding is really, I'm going to say, tumultuous right now. It's very uncertain, irrespective of the size of the organization. How relevant is what we're talking about for, say, small and growing nonprofits and also larger nonprofits that maybe have a tech team that's doing okay with software?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right. Yeah.

[Scott Brighton]

I think, you know, back to AI simplifying thing, I think things. I think the impact is actually going to be more pronounced for small organizations, because.

I agree.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Scott Brighton]

You know, because as we talked about back to software, my wife runs a very small nonprofit here in Austin. There's four of them in total. Anytime she has to spend energy on the software or how to do something in the software, it distracts her from spending time with her constituents.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right.

[Scott Brighton]

That's right.

AI changes that because now the agent can do the work and it amplifies the. The capacity of the nonprofit rather than consuming some of it. Yeah, I think. I think the impact is going to be truly extraordinary for small nonprofits in particular.

So let's talk nuts and bolts. Let's start with how this can actually work for some of these small nonprofits. So one of the core areas in fundraising is finding new donors, finding donors, getting them to pay attention to you, bringing them into your world. What are some specific ways that data and AI can help with that? Part of the sort of fundraising process.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Scott Brighton]

You know, part of the magic of AI is in all of those transactions that we see.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right.

[Scott Brighton]

In those 500,000 philanthropic transactions we're seeing every day. There are a ton of insights in there about practices that are being successful with different types of constituents. And so really you need structured data. So you should be capturing data on the philanthropic transactions that are happening and who they're happening with. That data needs to be captured. But once you're capturing that data, we can complement that data with this broader Bonterra wide data set to look for those success patterns and then try to replicate them. You know, one. One interesting example is we have found via a technology we recently launched called Optimized Ask that if you look at the behavior of certain types of donors and you use insights from transaction data to optimize the amount of money you ask for in an outreach, we on average increase the average donor size by 11%, which is transformative.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right.

[Scott Brighton]

And that's again, it's just looking for patterns of behavior and then trying to replicate those with new supporters.

One thing that I really love about what you're saying is that I think a lot of times when organizations, nonprofits think about data, they think about tech generally, they think about AI. It feels additive. Right. It feels like some new thing that now they have to learn on top of all the other work. Right. And I want to lift up two things you're saying. One that how you are working already and encouraging nonprofits to work with data and to think about AI is that it both replaces manual repeatable tasks and it is baked into the work. So I think that's the first thing that I want to highlight.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Scott Brighton]

And then the second thing is tools are always. And as someone who software company, I know this will resonate with you. My husband does as well. We talk about this all the time. Tools are only as good as the processes they are helping you.

That's right.

Sort of optimize and maximize. And so you're talking about how to use data in ways that nonprofits should already be doing. Right. We should be capturing who our donors are. We should be capturing when they gave and how they gave. And the reality is most small nonprofits can't. Right. They don't have the manpower or the time to maybe they have the spreadsheets, the Google spreadsheets, maybe CRM, but actually looking for the patterns, actually figuring out what can what we have tell us about what we should be doing better. That next strategic step is just a little bit beyond their capacity. And so what I hear you saying is there is one of the core sort of our sources reasons that this is so powerful is that it will actually give them access to analysis that will help them be strategic in ways they just couldn't before.

Exactly. Insights. Right. Pulling insights from the data as opposed to just collecting data and supporting workflows. That's what we're trying to enable and where this really gets powerful. Brooke is back back to resource constrained nonprofits. You know, one of the trends that, that we're all very aware of in our industry is sort of fundraising concentration over over many decades, fewer donors that are doing more and you know, at least part of that I expect is is been created by the Nonprofits themselves, because it's simply easier to manage fewer donors.

Yes. If.

If you add a gentic capability now all of a sudden you can make decisions at scale that enable you to optimize behaviors and create personalized experiences for this long tail of small donors where there really is, we believe in the data, enormous opportunity, our job as a software company. And the thing that I've learned now being in this industry for a couple of years is we have to make things much easier than it is today because of how little time and resource nonprofits have to deal with our technology. And I do believe agentic AI is going to be the unlock for this because it simplifies things so dramatically.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Scott Brighton]

It allows people to do more tasks with fewer people and less time.

Exactly.

And tasks that are strategic. I love that. So we talked a little bit about sort of new donors reaching new support donors. What about donor retention? And we're going to talk about your impact report in some detail in a moment. But I know from my reading of that report that one of the things you shared is that donor retention numbers are going down. I think we've seen that in our sector, and especially because fundraising is so uncertain right now, diversification is. Everyone's talking about finding new funders and donors. Keeping the donors and supporters you have has to be front and center for nonprofits. How. What are some concrete ways that data and AI can help nonprofits, small growing nonprofits, do that piece of things?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Scott Brighton]

Well, I mean, one of the things that we can see in the data is early indicators that suggest that a donor may be at risk of churning before they.

Oh, that's fantastic.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Scott Brighton]

Like, how can you. What is that? That's amazing. So I don't even know that I would know what to look for.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Scott Brighton]

And to be honest, it's not really something that you sort of think about top down. It just sort of emerges from the models themselves. And if you were actually to look at what data is pretty predictive of that, some of it would probably make sense, but other parts may be curious.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right.

[Scott Brighton]

And so what that ultimately enables is creating, in effect, a health score for all of your donors. Which ones are green, which ones are yellow, which ones are red, based on those predictive indicators. And for those that are red, what you need to do is implement intervention activities or engagement activities that try to change the trajectory of what's going on in that relationship. And with big donors, you can do that personally. With humans and for small donors, you can launch, you know, some of the agentic AI programs We've talked about to engage with those donors in a, in a personalized way.

What this sounds like to me, that I think will be a helpful analogy for a lot of the folks that are listening. This is the kind of work that organizations do with their programs and their program evaluation all the time. Right. If, say when I ran my organization, it was a youth community justice organization, we had specific outcomes and every young person that came into our ecosystem was on a journey. We had this planned relationship with them and when they got off the path, right when the journey was going awry, we would course correct using our data. What I'm hearing is that these types of tools are thinking about data and what it can do for you in this way allows you to systematize and concretize this exact same kind of relationship with your donors. What is the journey they're on, where are we going together, when have they deviated from this path, when are they less engaged, etc. Right. So using outcome data to make decisions about what needs to happen next, that's.

A great, that's a great way to think about it, right? That there's a, there's a donor journey that you're trying to orchestrate, right. Where maybe someone comes in as a occasional volunteer and then a small donor and then a larger donor and then a sustain.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right.

[Scott Brighton]

And yeah, there are a set of things that we can do that can facilitate the progression along that journey. And being able to do that by looking at the data and understanding when someone's ready for that progression and that kind of outreach and asking for more money or asking to become a sustainer, it's all there in the data for sure.

So you've talked about two things that I just want to sort of lift to the surface. The first is you've referenced the fact that a number of the tools you're talking about have access to this broader database of best practices of trends. That sounds really exciting to me. I spend quite a bit of time with data, so I can see sort of immediately why that's awesome and really important. Will you break down for us why having access to this broader database of trust trends, best practices, what other folks are doing, data from, not just your organization, why that is so important and how that can be helpful.

[Brooke Richie Babbage]

This is the first time I felt like our organization's future isn't resting entirely on my shoulders. I can breathe. After years of running on instinct, I finally feel like we have a real structure behind us. Working with you helped me to step into a next step version of Myself as a leader, it's been a total shift in how I see my role and what's possible for our organization. That's how one leader described our work together inside the next level nonprofit. And it's only one of the things that we do inside the program. At the core, I help leaders diagnose what's making growth feel chaotic, and then we work together to fix it. Whether it's refreshing, a strategic plan to be more of a fundraising driver, redesigning the right team, activating your board, building an individual donor program from the ground up. If you're over $750,000 and feeling like growth is making some part of your organization break apply, and let's see if.

[Scott Brighton]

You'Re a good fit for the program.

[Brooke Richie Babbage]

You can [e-mail] nextlevel nonprofit.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Scott Brighton]

You know, the interesting thing about the power of AI is there is sort of this more data is better element to it, and the answers just get better and more precise and more reasoned the more data you have. And so it's certainly one of the things, you know, we work with both nonprofits, you know, tens of thousands of nonprofits, but we also work when have software that we sell to large funders. We help corporations, foundations, give money away.

And.

And so the combination of those, all of those insights, all of those transactions just gives us better fidelity on the pattern. So more data is always going to be. Is always going to be better because the models just get smarter as a result.

It makes the patterns more robust.

It does, yeah.

I gave this analogy to a friend of mine. We were talking about AI the other day, and I said, when I was in graduate school, one of my professors was like the foremost expert on urban poverty, and he'd read every book. He'd written half the books. Right. And so if I asked him a question, just in his brain, he had access to so much information that he could draw from and see patterns and connections. So this is just that times a million. Right? Right. That that insight and expertise is there. So the other thing that you've referenced is you talked about just a few of the tools, specific tools that you guys have that do some of this. What are one or two examples of? Because I know you guys have quite a few awesome tools. What are one or two or three examples of specific tools that you guys offer that do some of the things we're talking about here?

Yeah, so there's sort of an interesting evolution. So we have fundraising software, helps you raise funds through any number of fundraising channels. Individual Giving events, grants. You know, there are simple things that we embed in our software that are based on classic AI things like the optimized asset we talk about. Make sure you're asking for the right amount of money. Make sure you're going through the right, right sequence of contacts. This particular type person never answers the phone. So contact them via email in this sequence.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right. It'll have those insights.

[Scott Brighton]

And then we're adding to that now the coach, which will be able to take all of these insights and interact with you on a more conversational way. You can ask IT advice, you can ask it for insights into what's going on in your donor base and it will present reports. And then the third stage, which will happen later this year and next year, is actually semi autonomous agents that then can execute fundraising programs on your behalf. So the coach might suggest, hey, let's, you know, here's 100 donors that we think are convertible into sustainers with the following program. We recommend running that program and then you'll have the ability to actually execute that program via these gentic fundraisers who then do outreach to the individual donors. And so that's the progression that we'd see. So today it's all of these tools that give you better insights. We're adding the coaching and then we're going to be able to execute on the coaches recommendations if you want them to.

This is really exciting. So the last thing I want to talk with you about is your impact report. Yeah, so. So just, just recently in May, you guys released your 2025 Runtera impact report. I have loved going through it. It's beautifully designed. I think that the sections are. I'm a design person. I like engaging with things that look and feel good. Yes, it's easy to use and I think the insights are really incredible. Talking about sort of data, I would love for you to share what are some of the most significant findings that came out of that report for you guys? And how might nonprofits use those findings to actually do their work better?

Yeah, one of the things when we. There are lots of reports that have sort of dimensionalized at a macro level what is going on in the social good realm, how fast it's growing, growing donors. And we really wanted to get underneath that and sort of understand behavioral patterns of nonprofits that we're seeing sort of disproportionately better success than the industry average. There are lots of sort of individual nuggets in the reports. But if I were to pull out sort of one theme that I think resonates with me certainly is sort of the value of resilience and just sticking at it and being consistent. You know, one specific example of that is 63% of nonprofits give up after one grant attempt with a given funder. And what we find, yeah, it just didn't work. I'm done.

Yeah, yeah.

But what we found in the data is actually the winning amount of success with an individual grantor is 1.24.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right.

[Scott Brighton]

So just being a little bit more resilient in terms of, okay, that didn't work. Let me try again. Can yield disproportionate success. We see that same pattern in converting donors to sustainers.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right.

[Scott Brighton]

And how. And being willing to continue to ask the other. The other interesting thing that we saw was, you know, while the average time between gift was about 270 days, roughly a quarter of people gave after a year. And, you know, in the. In the nonprofit world, we think about sustainers as someone that gives year after year after year and sort of this arbitrary calendar thing. But not all givers. You may think of yourself as a sustainer, even if you're not giving every single year. And so that's really interesting. Building those relationships, continuing to treat those folks as sustainers, can actually increase their connection with the organization and keep them giving, even if it's not on an annual cadence.

What I love about both of those examples is, is that knowing that data can actually and should actually change in really concrete and meaningful ways what your strategy is.

Exactly.

So there's lots of data that says, oh, you know, 67% of donors continue to be donors. Great, that's really good to know. Doesn't necessarily tell me what I should do other than, you know, steward really well. But knowing, for example, that 1.24%. Did you say? Or 1.2 takes 1.244 touches on the ball. Yeah, exactly.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Scott Brighton]

Means I might be much more likely if I get that no to pick up the phone and say, hey, got to know, what can I do better next time? That's so meaningful. And a lot of the fundraising work that I do with the folks that I. I coach is honestly around mindset. Right. The strategies and the tactics are there, but the it can feel very personal. And getting no's is hard.

It is very hard.

And so having the data that reminds you, wait a minute, it may not even be a no. Right? That the fact that they haven't given in the last 12 months may not actually mean what I think it means. It makes it less personal. It makes it less about mindset.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, and I can't. We spend quite a bit of time with large funders.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right.

[Scott Brighton]

In fact, I had dinner with the executive director of a foundation that represents a tech billionaire who's trying to give away billions and billions of dollars in his lifetime. So another 20, 30 years and she is struggling with how to give that much money.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right.

[Scott Brighton]

And so it is interesting how it's sort of the inverse problem over there. And, and so, you know, to your point, picking up the phone 100, you know that that resilience does. Does work and it does matter. And it's. It isn't personal. It's there. These folks on the other side are, are frankly trying to work on the same problem that the non profits are.

So before we wrap, I actually want to ask about that because that is one of the really interesting things about the data for me, the data that you guys collect and how you use it is that you actually have robust data on both sides.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Scott Brighton]

Do you find that the data that you have around funders and how funders move through the world is helpful to, or can be helpful to nonprofits and how they move through the world? What's an example of sort of that relationship from that. In that direction? Right. From funder to supporter or to organization?

Yeah, no, it's a great, It's a great question. And the answer is yes. I mean, one of the things, for example, that we're shipping later this year, something called grant Match, which we can understand, for example, the appetite of a Fortune 500s company by virtue of looking at the data of the types of. Of grants they are funding versus the ones they are not funding. And those insights can be translated into grant construction for the nonprofit that wants to apply for funding from that particular organization. And the funders like that as well.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right.

[Scott Brighton]

Because they're struggling with, oh, my gosh, I'm getting all these grant applications. I don't have time to review them. If we can help match, you know, it works for. It works for both sides. And so those insights into what a funder is looking for. Absolutely. Can help the nonprofits decide both which ones to apply for and what elements of their work they should particularly emphasize.

I think this is just making me think back to when I first started fundraising in the early 2000s for my organization. And all of this was really old school. Right. So you would look at the impact reports and the donor and the grantee reports for the foundation that you were interested in. You'd look at the 9 90s of the folks that they funded, you'd have a spreadsheet and you'd try to see what language they use and where's their overlap. And it was very manual and took a lot of time. And it meant that if I'm a funder, a huge percentage of the grants or proposals I was getting didn't use my language.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yes.

[Scott Brighton]

Didn't sort of highlight the part of the, the issue I cared about 100%. Yeah. And it also means that the organizations that had the staff or the capacity or the know how to do that kind of deep dive research and sit with the spreadsheet, they were at a distinct advantage. Right. Because they could personalize it. So there's a leveling of the playing field also that I think is inherent in what you're saying. That just as a social justice person at heart, I love love in our sector. So I, I have loved this conversation. I love geeking out about this stuff and I love how concrete and specific some of your examples have been. Thank you for being here with me. Where can organizations find the impact report? And what else would you like to share with folks?

Brooke really enjoyed the conversation. Ton of ton of fun. Thanks for having me on. The impact report is available on our website. So that's bonteratech.com also available on our website. For those that are interested in trialing some of these fundraising coaches that I've described as part of our beta program, we would love to have you and love to have your feedback and so you'll, you can also get access to those fundraising coaches there as well.

Oh, that's really exciting. This is really great. Thank you so much, Scott.

Thank you Brooke. Pleasure.

[Brooke Richie Babbage]

Thanks so much for joining me this week. If you enjoy this podcast, I would love for you to leave a rating and a review. I read every single one and they really do matter. I also share extra tidbits and resources.

[Scott Brighton]

Building on what we talk about here.

[Brooke Richie Babbage]

In my newsletter, Leadership Forward 321. You can sign up by texting the word impact to 66866. And finally, definitely check out the links and resources that I mentioned in this Episode@brooke ritchiebabbage.com Backslash podcast See you next week.