‘Message nerd’ explains what nonprofits get wrong about communication

Summary

Podcast Summary: RKD Group Thinkers - "‘Message nerd’ Explains What Nonprofits Get Wrong About Communication"

Host: Justin McCord (with Ronnie Richard)
Guest: Tom Ahern
Release Date: March 26, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the fundamental principles of effective nonprofit communications with renowned copywriter and self-proclaimed "message nerd" Tom Ahern. The discussion blends practical donor communications advice, storytelling, and reflections on how the best in the field succeed. Tom shares war stories from his decades in the industry, common mistakes he sees nonprofits making, and why the basics of human connection remain unchanged, even as media and technology evolve.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Tom Ahern’s Unconventional Path to Nonprofit Communication

• Background: Tom started in marketing and PR before moving into tech, then opened his own ad agency, and finally entered the nonprofit fundraising world circa 2000, thanks to his wife’s consulting work.
• Quote [07:43]:

  "My wife had been a consultant to nonprofits since 1985 ... she asked me if I could write a direct mail letter for one of her nonprofit clients ... I was a trained sales copywriter and I've sold all sorts of things successfully." — Tom Ahern

2. Lessons from Commercial Marketing

• Tom brought the value of offer-driven, headline-focused marketing into nonprofit fundraising—rare at the time in the sector.
• Quote [13:18]:

  "Everybody could go to boot camp for newspaper ads. We would have much better communications coming out, much better offers, for one." — Tom Ahern

• He emphasizes the importance of learning from advertising greats like Ogilvy and real-world direct response campaigns.

3. Common Mistakes Nonprofits Make

• Organizations copy each other's mediocre communications instead of thinking about the donor’s perspective.
• Most small nonprofits lack the marketing skills found in commercial sectors and often operate with little guidance.
• Quote [26:48]:

  "If you don't have good headlines, you're absolutely, totally ba ba ba ba ba ba bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep. So you have to learn how to write a good headline. That is the basic skill of news publications." — Tom Ahern

4. The Fundamental Challenge: Speaking to the Audience

• Many nonprofits focus on talking about their own programs and accomplishments instead of addressing what their donor cares about ("insider" vs. "outsider" language problem).
• Quote [33:38]:

  "Your target audience is everything you have. That is your wealth. That's your goal. That's your treasure. You need to think about them a lot ... You're talking to yourself as a buyer, not as a seller." — Tom Ahern

5. Headlines Matter More Than Anything

• Writing a good headline is the "basic skill" that separates effective communications from noise.
• Most training focuses on writing essays, not selling or engaging audiences, leaving a skill gap for nonprofit communicators.

6. What Hasn’t Changed in Donor Communication?

• The "two and a half" things you have to work with: words, images, and personality ("life").
• Strong, attractive personality in your messaging cuts through the noise, regardless of channel.
• Quote [23:18]:

  "You only have two things to work with...words and you have images. Now digital brings life to it, which is that half. So you have two and a half things ... any attempt at communication...will penetrate most deeply if it has strong personality." — Tom Ahern

7. The Evolving Role of Technology and AI

• Discussion starts lightheartedly with urban myths about AI and EM dashes, but pivots to real nonprofit leadership concerns about AI’s tactical and strategic impact.
• Quote [05:12]:

  "I hear from our clients and other leaders that the use of AI...it's a board level conversation." — Justin McCord

8. Optimism About the Future

• Tom is not concerned for the future of fundraising itself, because generosity is a persistent human trait.
• The risk is not in donor behavior but in nonprofit organizations miscommunicating or failing to address what really matters to their audience.
• Quote [32:28]:

  "People are innately generous. Is this something I've observed? Yes. Is it something I know from neuroscience? Yes...So I don't worry about [fundraising]." — Tom Ahern

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Copying Communications Mistakes [17:33]:

  "Each charity, when they were presented with the communications problem of how do we do a newsletter...they would borrow from some other charity ... if we tell everybody how great we are, we will raise a lot of money because they'll reward our...success. And they couldn't write headlines worth a lick."

• On Boards and Agency Partners [28:50]:

  "They work very hard not to make mistakes with their clients. They learn all the time. They are learning operations ... The rest were poor dears are doing this themselves, often with a board that is everything but helpful."

• On What Constitutes Real Communication [30:27]:

  "Communication means you're getting a response. That's my definition."

• On the Inheritance of Wisdom [36:44]:

  "There are greats that have come before us and then there are people who are coming behind us who expect us to carry forward important lessons and...hand off this torch of fundraising and the art of it to them."

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [02:19] — Introduction of Tom Ahern and lighthearted discussion on punctuation, AI, and writing tools
• [06:43] — Tom’s career trajectory: from PR and tech marketing to nonprofit fundraising
• [11:24] — Personal evolution: learning from industry greats, difference between commercial and nonprofit marketing
• [15:18] — Adapting commercial strategies to nonprofit direct mail; lessons learned
• [19:34] — Milestones in digital fundraising and the shift in donor engagement strategies, e.g., using URLs after Katrina
• [22:48] — Core principles that have persisted in donor communications over the decades
• [26:10] — The big reveal: Most nonprofit newsletters are “built to fail” due to poor headlines and insider focus
• [31:19] — Responsibility of the communicator; the pursuit of clarity and understanding
• [32:28] — Tom’s optimism about donor generosity and the key to successful fundraising in the next decade
• [36:44] — Passing on the torch and lessons to the next generation of nonprofit communicators

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Style and Tone

• Conversational and humorous—plenty of friendly banter and metaphors ("garlic salt" becomes a recurring metaphor for shaking things up in communications).
• Direct and pragmatic—Tom doesn’t sugarcoat his views, calling out weak headlines and the passive copying of poor donor communications practices.
• Instructive and reflective—the episode is a blend of anecdote, practical advice, and reflection on what makes fundraising communication truly effective.

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TL;DR: Actionable Takeaways

• Headline mastery is critical: Learning to write strong, engaging headlines sets apart effective donor communications.
• Think like your donor: Avoid “insider” language and focus on the audience’s perspective, not your own programs or achievements.
• Inject personality: Regardless of channel, personality (the “life” in words and images) carries a message further.
• Don’t just broadcast—communicate: Strive for engagement and response, not just transmitting information.
• Embrace old and new: The medium may change (from direct mail to digital), but the psychological and tactical fundamentals remain the same.
• Stay curious and keep learning: Great practitioners set themselves apart by constantly learning, experimenting, and passing on their wisdom.

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For nonprofit professionals and "message nerds" alike, this episode is a reminder that getting the basics right—structure, audience-centricity, clarity, and personality—matters more than ever, no matter how much the landscape evolves.

Transcript

[Tom Ahern]

Foreign.

[Justin McCord]

Welcome to the Arcadey Group Thinkers Podcast. I'm your host, Justin McCord. With me is Ronnie Richard. Ronnie, I didn't smack.

[Ronnie Richard]

I'm impressed. I'm impressed. Well done.

[Justin McCord]

I just did. Dang it.

[Ronnie Richard]

Listen.

[Justin McCord]

What a thrilling conversation we just had with this guest. Someone who brings a wealth of experience

[Tom Ahern]

and

[Justin McCord]

I feel re grounded in some of the principles of communication, period,

[Ronnie Richard]

honestly. Yeah, I mean, our guest today, Tom Ahern, calls himself a copywriter or message nerd. And it almost took me back a little bit to college courses that I had when I started in journalism, some of those, like, truly foundational pieces and aspects of writing that you sometimes take for granted, and you don't think about how it works into the communications you do today. But Tom, you know, it was really fascinating for him to kind of take us through his path of how he got started and how he got into the nonprofit space, and just some of those lessons he learned, really, about just how we communicate human to human and headline to headline.

[Justin McCord]

And so for the message nerds, the communication nerds, for the. For everyone that listens. I saw you raise your hand. For everyone that listens or watches this, that has to write in their career. This is an important conversation to. To listen to and to really dial in on how headlines matter. And it makes me think of even the simple principle of bottom line up front, you know, the bluff method of communication. And so, without any further delay or ellipses or EM dashes, here is Tom Ahern on the Thinkers podcast.

[Ronnie Richard]

Tom, I want to start with a simple question out of the gate. What are your feelings on the EM dash today?

[Tom Ahern]

The EM dash?

[Ronnie Richard]

The EM dash. I want it to be clear on which one.

[Tom Ahern]

Yeah, we're not. Dear audience, we're not speaking about the EN dash. We're speaking about the EM M dash.

[Ronnie Richard]

Correct.

[Tom Ahern]

Much longer. I don't have feelings about it. I use it from time to time. Why that question, Ronnie?

[Ronnie Richard]

Okay, I'll frame it this way. With the growth of generative AI today and ChatGPT, everyone seems to think when they see an EM dash that that means it was written by AI Lord.

[Tom Ahern]

I hadn't heard that urban myth yet. And maybe it's not a myth. Maybe. Is that a true indicator?

[Ronnie Richard]

It's what a lot of people think now. And I will say from my perspective, well, yeah, writer. It drives me crazy.

[Tom Ahern]

A lot of people think a lot of things we've discovered since social media took over the world, and they're not all. Is it true? I'm asking you guys. You're Professionals, you know the answer. Is that a true indicator of AI, the md?

[Justin McCord]

I, I don't believe that it's true. I think that we look for reasons to either push a positive or negative perception of generative AI. And, and what may have started as one person's experience has become, you know, a headline that, that others want to run with. And because we live in like an algorithmic state. Yes, it becomes easy, Right. For that to be the case that

[Tom Ahern]

was left out of the Constitution. But it's true. In the United States, we live by an algorithm. We.

[Justin McCord]

We do. We do. And it's. Ronnie, I love, I love that even just as a starting point, because you have been my editor for years now and you know, the EM dash and the ellipses are two of my favorite writing tools, you know, and so for

[Tom Ahern]

better or worse, let me ask a question. So the people listening to this, we talked about that. Directors of development and leadership. So why would they give a flying pigeon about AI? We need to address their pain.

[Justin McCord]

Well, I think it's a great point. I think the reason why is that there is discourse. There are wars and rumors of wars. There are pressures that leaders face.

[Tom Ahern]

And,

[Justin McCord]

and so I hear from our clients and other leaders that the use of AI, both at a high level into the tactical level, it's a, it's a board level conversation. And, and so, you know, why would

[Tom Ahern]

the board get involved in tactical beep like AI?

[Justin McCord]

Well, why would the board get involved in, in tactical beep at all? Right. I think that it's, it's the nature. It's the nature of, of those relationships which are, are complicated, to say the least.

[Tom Ahern]

Complicated? No. Neurotic? Yes.

[Justin McCord]

So complicated and neurotic. Those are interesting ways to even think about fundraising overall. And so, you know, Tom, you have been in this space since 1980, not

[Tom Ahern]

in this space since 1980. 1980. I was just getting my first, you know, full time job in something related to marketing, which was public relations. That was not an. Well, it happened to be a state agency. So I worked with nonprofits. We were not, you know, we were a government agency. And then I went into a big technology firm for five years where the contracts we were bidding on were worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And from that I opened up a small ad agency and we did quite well. And, and then around 2000, fundraising came in the door for me.

[Justin McCord]

How did that door open? What was the entree?

[Tom Ahern]

Right. Well, my wife had been a consultant to nonprofits since 1985, and I. It was kind of funny when she came home, because, you know, it's like, I'm going to set up a consulting business for non profits. Yeah. The first thought is, well, that's a great way to go broke. They don't have any money. Why don't you consult with people that have deep pockets at least. Anyway, she did. She was quite successful and, and around 15 years into her career as a consultant, she was speaking internationally and blah, blah, blah. She asked me if I could write a direct mail letter for one of her nonprofit clients. And I thought, I don't know, maybe I, I've written plenty of sales letters. I, I was a trained sales copywriter and I've, and I've sold all sorts of things successfully. And so I thought.

[Ronnie Richard]

Had you done direct mail before?

[Tom Ahern]

Well, that's what I meant. Okay, yeah, yeah, no, I had done direct mail. I had been trained in direct mail. Direct mail was where you get your, your scars and where you get your real knowledge and you, you worship response rates and all the good things that are so important. KPI's leadership. Those are, you know, response rates. That's a KPI. Anyway, so I, you know, I, the first stuff I did for the non profit world, I did for free. I had no idea, you know, whether it would work or not. Time, it must have worked. Okay. I got better and I got specific fundraising training from people like Mal Warwick and, and Jerry Panis and Martin Lundy. That consulting firm.

[Justin McCord]

Yeah, yeah, those are, those are some of the greats. Like those are amongst the pantheon and the, the nonprofit direct marketing.

[Tom Ahern]

Oh, I can go higher than that. I can go up to Jerry Huntziger, who I subscribed. During the 1990s, Jerry Hunsaker sold a monthly course in how to do direct mail fundraising. And I, I bought that course. Now you can get the very same thing for free on sophie.org all his lessons. It's like 80.

[Justin McCord]

Really?

[Tom Ahern]

Yeah. Oh my God, what an asset that is to our industry because it's all free and generously so. They, they really don't, you know, they ask you for support, but they don't make a deal of it anyway.

[Justin McCord]

Yeah, yeah, you've, you, you have this connection. Even over the last 26 years, you have this connection to the world's best donor communications practitioners.

[Tom Ahern]

I do.

[Justin McCord]

What, what have you learned from them? What are like, what are the lessons that stand out that, that these are the things that separate good from great in donor communications.

[Tom Ahern]

We all read the same books. That was the first tell we, you know, you, I started getting invited to Speak at AFP chapters that, you know, the local chapters. Then I got bigger, and then I got bigger. And. And the reason for that was I seem to be the only person that I met in fundraising who had ever been a marketer. I mean, a commercial marketer who. Who lived and died by sales. I mean, some people had that in their background a little bit, but they weren't students of it. I was a student of marketing. The tactical side, not the research side. Yeah. I mean, I basically just. If somebody came along and told me something that sounded 51% true, I just run with that and try it. You know, I didn't need 100% proof anyway.

[Justin McCord]

I. Golly. Okay. So here's what's fascinating and why it. It gets me excited to hear you just share those examples and, and even your.

[Tom Ahern]

Your path.

[Justin McCord]

I learned direct response by way of writing newspaper ads. So direct. Direct response newspaper ads.

[Tom Ahern]

Yes,

[Justin McCord]

that. That were.

[Tom Ahern]

That is. That were best stuff.

[Justin McCord]

Right.

[Tom Ahern]

Everybody could go to boot camp for newspaper ads. We would have much better communications coming out, much better offers, for one.

[Justin McCord]

Yes. And inspired.

[Tom Ahern]

Equal parts an offer. What is the structure of an offer? You know, how valuable is that headline? Whoa, it's really valuable, et cetera.

[Justin McCord]

And it was under a gentleman named John Spoelstra, who was an executive in the sports world and a master direct marketer in terms of using direct response print ads to sell tickets. And so he took me to school off of equal parts Ogilvy. And so studying course, the work of Ogilvy. Right.

[Tom Ahern]

That was one thing. You know, no matter who you met, if you were both discussing Ogilvy, you knew you had found a soulmate.

[Justin McCord]

Yeah. And. And then the other part was the Peterman catalogs and, and studying those. And so that's. That's. It's so interesting because it. It is in its own way. That was my boot camp in the early aughts.

[Ronnie Richard]

So.

[Tom Ahern]

That's true. I mean, you know, people. I. Yes, all of the above. Peterman is a particularly interesting example. I mean. Yeah, it is a cultural thing. Through friends too.

[Justin McCord]

Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tom Ahern]

So anyway, you know, you basically study the tides going in and out of culture and. And try to fit your messaging in there somehow. So it floats rather than sinks. Right.

[Justin McCord]

Yeah.

[Ronnie Richard]

So, Tom, when you're making this move into starting to work on fundraising and starting to write for fundraising direct mail appeals, what sort of learnings did you take from the marketing side and the commercial side that you brought into it? And then on the flip side, like, what is. What Were some of the things that were different that you had to sort of adjust and adapt to.

[Tom Ahern]

It was interesting. Right. My wife Simone told a story. We co wrote a kind of standard text on fundraising called keep your donors and it's a big fat book that is used like in college classrooms sometimes and so forth. So a lot of people have encountered it, whether they read it or not. Well, it's a big thick book. We, we knew we weren't going to have kids, so we built a house together that had, was built around two home studios basically. So we had home offices in 1988, before home offices were very, you know, they were still weird. The IRS didn't even know what to do. And anyway, so I'm up in my office on the top floor and she's in her office on the second floor and, and she described me thumping downstairs with a direct mail appeal from some charity that she worked with in my hand shouting, who are these people? What do they think they're doing? This sucks. Which you heard a lot in our household. I started analyzing donor communications as a, as a self training operation as well as trying to provide a public service, taking marketing principles and applying them to what I was seeing. And so I started looking at, you know, dozens, then hundreds, then eventually thousands of pieces of donor communications. The, the, the light bulb for me went off when I had about 60 donor newsletters in front spread around on the floor because I was going to be doing a talk and they were all the same and, and they all were horrible. They, they borrowed, they had what, what I perceived at the time was that each charity, when they were presented with the communications problem of how do we do a newsletter that, that goes out to our supporters, they would borrow from some other charity. You know, well, this is what they do and we'll do it too. And the principle that was seen to be operational was that if we tell everybody how great we are, we will raise a lot of money because they'll reward our, be, you know, our success. And they couldn't write headlines worth a lick. Now they're, they're publishing a newsletter and the, the market is right on the edge of the Internet, interrupting everybody's life. You know, we're talking 2000, 2005 and the Internet is about to actually, the polar ice cap is about to melt because in 2007 Facebook goes public and the smartphone is introduced by Apple. Boom.

[Justin McCord]

Well, and even like rewind just a second. As you said, 0405, the tsunami and Katrina and the launch pad that those like the launch Pad for those into digital. Even in the early days where it was, you know, your, your website was a brochure and then like.

[Tom Ahern]

Was that 2000 45505?

[Justin McCord]

Yeah.

[Ronnie Richard]

Oh, five.

[Tom Ahern]

Yeah. Well, that was the first time. I think a lot of the country said we're not as smart as we think we are.

[Justin McCord]

Yeah, that's. I remember that because I was working in minor league baseball at the time and we had a, the team that I was with, we had a pitcher who was from the New Orleans area, Ronnie's from the New Orleans area. And we had led electronic outfilled walls where you could display advertising. And we did a fundraiser to support this pitcher and nonprofit organizations that were going into Katrina. It's the first time I remember using a URL in a strategic way in terms of what that looked like to drive response.

[Tom Ahern]

In what sense? Because Justin, I mean, give me a picture in my head. What do you mean?

[Justin McCord]

Well, so we were using again, 2005, we were telling people in stadium to go to a URL to make a gift in support of Katrina relief efforts. And prior to that, I don't remember using that in direct response when we would refer to the print ads that I would do prior to that were far more call in.

[Tom Ahern]

Right. Yeah. Okay.

[Justin McCord]

Versus URL oriented.

[Tom Ahern]

We're in a transition period there where people are beginning to weave this into their behavior and this is. And this. They want to help. That's what happens with every natural disaster.

[Justin McCord]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tom Ahern]

You know, I mean, it was amazing to me. At one point I was down in, I don't know, Australia, I guess, and speaking to people who. From the Red Cross, from all over the Pacific Basin. Right. So Australia, Asia, blah, blah. And they were talking about the response to the Haiti earthquake. And if Red Cross was. Money just poured in to Red Cross the. From all over the world because of the Haiti earthquake being front page news, you know, such a long time, people really wanted to help so they would find, you know, the Red Cross, that was the top brand. So anyway, that was, that was when things started to get interesting on the digital side of donor communications.

[Justin McCord]

What do you think has stayed the same in donor communications through these waves of the launch and maturation of web and email and social media? What stayed the same in that 20 year period? Because it's easy to understand that channels are where things may be different, but fundamentals. Right?

[Ronnie Richard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tom Ahern]

Listen, that is fascinating question because I, you know, you try to simplify this for people that I do a lot of teaching. So you try to simplify and make it. Make it as easy as breathing. How do you do effective donor communications? Yeah. Well, you only have two things to work with. Well, two and a half. You have words and you have images. Now digital brings life to it, which is that half. So you have two and a half things to work with and, and life. We, you know, to use a shorthand for life, let's call it personality. Right. So your. Any attempt at communication. You. I, I believe it will penetrate most deeply if it has strong personality. Obviously strong and attractive rather than strong and repulsive.

[Justin McCord]

We're seeing more and more like

[Tom Ahern]

go.

[Justin McCord]

Going well, well beyond the line is now a new version of driving awareness and response. I mean, it's, it's true. Like there is something to grabbing and shaking. Right. To. To help.

[Tom Ahern]

You don't know.

[Justin McCord]

Yeah, right. I mean, it's the same thing I

[Tom Ahern]

do until you try it.

[Justin McCord]

When I open, When I open my spice. When I open my spice drawer and I take the salt out or the garlic salt, and it's all, it's, it's, it's just compact. And so you gotta really. You gotta really get vigorous with it in order to, to get some air and some separation and to get a good dose out of it, so to speak.

[Tom Ahern]

Okay. Just some way you don't land this metaphor because, because you, you, you now have garlic salt. In the midst of our.

[Justin McCord]

Really imagine. Imagine Ronnie's life

[Tom Ahern]

straightening out the warm.

[Ronnie Richard]

I'm confident he'll land this.

[Tom Ahern]

Oh, yeah, go ahead. I see the goals come down, but wow, one of them just fell. Yeah.

[Justin McCord]

Things. If things stay the same.

[Tom Ahern]

Yes.

[Justin McCord]

Then we get compact and you have to break things up or at least challenge the status quo. Now how you do that. There's, there's, There are people that have scalpels and there are people that have machetes.

[Ronnie Richard]

I want to get back to.

[Tom Ahern]

We were talking about a little do with flood racing.

[Justin McCord]

Let's get, let's get back to garlic salt. Should we get.

[Ronnie Richard]

No, no, we'll go back a little before the garlic salt. I want to take us back to this moment. You have all the, the newsletters laid out on the ground and you're looking at them and you're having this moment where you're.

[Tom Ahern]

They're.

[Ronnie Richard]

They're all the same. They're all copying off of each other. You've described donor communications as built to fail, right? What, what are some. I think that was like a hint of it. Like what are. What are some things that you see often, some common mistakes, some things that too many organizations are relying on and making these mistakes.

[Tom Ahern]

Well, before I start, Ronnie, let me just point out that we did a webinar for this January and the webinar itself takes an hour and a half just to explain the basic principles and the question and answer. We run a, what we call a all you can eat question and answer. We bring in a guest expert and that person will answer all your questions until the very end. Once that went four additional hours. Wow. We didn't, I apparently taught them nothing in the first hour and a half, you know, presentation. They still had four hours of questions in January for newsletters, they had only an hour and a half of course, questions. So let me point out first of all that if you don't have good headlines, you're absolutely, totally ba ba ba ba ba ba bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep. So you have to learn how to write a good headline. That is the basic skill of news publications. That's it. And that's all I have to tell you. And you know, you're, you're bringing that to a, to an audience of fundraisers. And they're going, I didn't go to journalism school and I don't know how to do that. And you don't. I mean, we, we're mostly taught how to Write like in 10th grade English. And what are we writing? Essays, book reports, crap that, you know, is not meant for a public audience. It's meant for a teacher who's got a, you know, all too ready red pen. The, the thing that I would say crystallizes the major problem of donor communications outside of the major agencies. You guys do not make mistakes with your clients. The major agencies do not make mistakes with their clients. They work very hard not to make mistakes with their clients. They learn all the time. They are learning operations. And so we'll put them aside. That's. That services about, I'm going to guess 90, no, 3% of the nonprofits in the world. The rest were poor dears are doing this themselves, often with a board that is everything but helpful.

[Ronnie Richard]

So they're flying in the dark is what you're saying. Essentially, like they, they, they do not

[Tom Ahern]

know how to sell. They do not know how to write a headline. They do not know how to put together an offer. We were talking about offers in magazines and newspapers. That's where you learn communications. Until you learn those skills, you're not communicating, you're broadcasting. Communication means you're getting a response. That's, that's my definition.

[Justin McCord]

Message sent, message received. I Mean, it's. It's no different, Tom. I've got a. A 17 year old and a 15 year old, and. And I. I tell them, bless your heart, all the time, like, just because you said something doesn't mean that you communicated.

[Tom Ahern]

And do they listen to you? Dad,

[Ronnie Richard]

I say the same thing back, I think.

[Tom Ahern]

Let me tell you. Yeah, right.

[Justin McCord]

So. So it. It is. It is. And. And I was taught that it is on. It is on me as message sender to ensure that message recipient can understand what it is that I am, that I'm sending. Now, I can only control what I can control, but, like, there is a pursuit of clarity in that, that. That escapes us.

[Tom Ahern]

Their entire life is learning. Now I forget how awful school was and so forth. And then listening to your parents. Come on.

[Justin McCord]

Yeah, right. Right, man. Yeah. So. Okay. So. So given, you know, given the space that we're in, are you. To what extent are you optimistic about fundraising versus. To what extent are you concerned about fundraising?

[Tom Ahern]

Oh, I'm not concerned about fundraising at all. I am not. What was the first part of that question?

[Justin McCord]

Well, to what extent are you optimistic in terms of the future of fundraising? Not now, but five years from now, ten years from now?

[Ronnie Richard]

Is the garlic salt container half full or half empty?

[Tom Ahern]

Thank you for bringing it all together. Thank you.

[Justin McCord]

Yeah.

[Tom Ahern]

Ronnie, my answer is, first of all, people are innately generous. Is this something I've observed? Yes. Is it something I know from neuroscience? Yes. Is it something that I see all the time in huge numbers? Yes. Yes, yes. So I don't worry about. Well, I. Maybe. Yes. Maybe I'm not paying enough attention to the. The operative word here. Is fundraising in trouble? Well, if it continues in its merry ways. Yeah. The. The thing I discovered when I had all those newsletters spread out was they don't know what. How to talk to their target audience. Your target audience is everything you have. That is your wealth. That's your goal. That's your treasure. You need to think about them a lot. And when you're doing communications, you are the. You're the avatar for that target audience. You're talking to yourself as a buyer, not as a seller. And I don't mean to make it seem more esoteric than it. Than it is. Basically, you know, a couple of beers and you can get to that sweet spot of believing you're the actual target audience. I do it all the time, pretty much every day. I am my own target audience. But if you don't think about your target audience, which is exactly what I was observing all These news letters, all the communications, the hundreds, then thousands of things I looked at the, the, the single, the front, the front of the parade of mistakes was that they wanted to tell you about their stuff, about their programs. For instance, it's like, I don't care about your program. That's what insiders care about. Outsiders. And this is the, this is another thing that the non profit world just, they don't even talk about it, much less, you know, they. Insiders and outsiders. Totally different language. Yeah, totally. And, and they're going, yeah, but I don't sound like that. And you're going, yeah, that's the point. It doesn't sound like you, you know, whoever that is.

[Justin McCord]

Yeah, it's. Oh, man. The more things change, the more they stay the same, Tom. Like the human nature.

[Tom Ahern]

This is human nature. I forget which famous writer says it, but said it. But some smart ass back in the 20s probably, you know, that, that there's no human desire stronger than the need to edit somebody else's writing or however it goes. And we are all guilty. You know, the best technology we have, the thing that separates us from the squirrels outside in my yard, is that we can write, we can talk, we can express, we can converse, all of these things. And the people who are good practitioners, that is, they raise enough money, they meet their goals, they are within parameters. Those people like you, they don't make real mistakes.

[Justin McCord]

There's, there's a lot of wisdom in that. There's a lot of wisdom. And, and it just, it strikes me, you know, Ronnie and I have lots of conversations of the, the place that we are and the opportunity that we have both through the format of this podcast. But then in our everyday work that there are, there are greats that have come before us and then there are people who are coming behind us who expect us to carry forward important lessons and, and to be able to hand off this torch of fundraising and the, the art of it to them. And I, I feel like as a part of this conversation today, you have even reminded us of a couple of the important torches that we get to carry and have the responsibility to hand on to others.

[Tom Ahern]

Could you pass me that garlic salt?

[Podcast Announcer]

Group Thinkers is a production of RKD Group. For more information, including how you can partner with RKD to accelerate growth for your fundraising and nonprofit marketing needs, visit rkdgroup.com.