You can’t surge trust: Lessons in community & philanthropy with Tim Sarrantonio

Summary

Podcast Summary — RKD Group: Thinkers

Episode: You can’t surge trust: Lessons in community & philanthropy with Tim Sarrantonio
Date: May 29, 2025
Host(s): Justin McCord, Ronnie Richard
Guest: Tim Sarrantonio, Director of Community Engagement at Neon One and Chair of the Fundraising Effectiveness Project

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Episode Overview

This episode features a lively and thought-provoking conversation with Tim Sarrantonio, a leader in nonprofit data, community engagement, and sector innovation. The discussion revolves around the necessity of authentic community, the evolution of philanthropy and giving data, and the critical lesson that trust cannot be quickly created—or "surged." Tim shares both personal and professional stories to highlight how community, vulnerability, and intentionality are the keys to addressing sector challenges like declining donor numbers and fleeting donor loyalty.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Tim's Personal Journey and Motivation

• The Importance of Community from Personal Loss
  Tim reflects on the soundtrack of his life, the transformative impact of losing his father, and how beauty and connection often grow out of pain and vulnerability.

  “Community is born in many ways through the beauty that comes through the pain. You kind of have to go through it. ... It’s that fear of vulnerability…that drives me.” — Tim, [09:06]

• Origin of Community Focus
  Tim traces his engagement work back to his time working in Chicago, initially at a grassroots worker center. His belief in community is rooted in labor history, mutual aid, and real on-the-ground connections, not just academic knowledge.

  “Community is just finding common ground on how you want life to look like, in my opinion.” — Tim, [15:25]

The State of Philanthropy: Data and Trends

• Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP)
  Tim outlines FEP as the largest U.S. benchmarking initiative on individual giving. He notes a persistent narrative: “dollars up, donors down,” and argues for rethinking the conversation beyond just money, focusing on individual participation and identity.

  “The soundtrack…isn’t dollars up, donors down. Yes, that is the same damn thing we keep hearing. How can we rethink that?” — Tim, [17:32]

• Everyday Donors Matter Most
  Most giving comes from everyday people, not high net-worth individuals or mega-foundations. The sector obsesses too much over major donors and neglects the 96.9% of donors who give under $5,000 yearly ([18:07]).

• Neon One Generosity Report
  He highlights new ways to measure affinity, suggesting scoring donors for their relationships and affinities, not just wealth. This approach fosters genuine connections and invites broader participation.

  “People chase the dollar and they don’t focus on the person and the relationship. And so, we built a feature that scores affinity…as identity really emerges as the strongest indicator of affinity.” — Tim, [19:50]

Community, Generosity, and "Reciprocal Generosity"

• Beyond Transactional Relationships
  Tim and the hosts discuss how fundraisers often treat engagement as a “series of post-it notes”—a checklist of transactions—rather than building real, two-way relationships.

  “We are not trained to lead and we’re not trained to lead with intention and goodwill. We’re trained to acquire and extract and that’s not working.” — Tim, [27:54]

• Reciprocal Generosity
  Quoting a dinner conversation, Tim emphasizes the importance of mutual giving—generosity that is reciprocal, not one-sided ([26:29]).

Technology, AI, and the Future

• AI's Role and Limits
  Tim shares skepticism over the hype around artificial intelligence, arguing that tech should support, not substitute, human connection and intentional giving.

  “Artificial intelligence can be transformative if we're focusing on the right stuff. The problem is…we’re not.” — Tim, [22:36]
  “That last mile of the marathon should be a human.” — Tim, [29:40]

• Future Paradigm Shift
  He predicts major sectoral change: “Everybody is making business decisions…on a paradigm that will be obsolete within probably…five years.” ([30:48]). This creates an opportunity for nonprofits to innovate and lead with creativity and integrity.

The Essential Role of Trust

• "You can’t surge trust"
  Tim shares a resonant insight from Reed Howard:

  “You can’t surge trust.” — [33:12]
  The lesson: true trust, essential for community and generosity, builds slowly and cannot be manufactured in moments of crisis.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Community:
  “Community is just finding common ground on how you want life to look like, in my opinion.” — Tim, [15:25]

• On the Narrative Trap:
  “The soundtrack…isn’t dollars up, donors down. Yes, that is the same damn thing we keep hearing. How can we rethink that?” — Tim, [17:32]

• On Philanthropy Identity:
  “When you close your eyes, folks, when you hear the word philanthropist, what do you see? ... It depends on the community that you’re coming from and the soundtrack that we’re playing in that.” — Tim, [21:17]

• On AI and Tech in Fundraising:
  “That last mile of the marathon should be a human.” — Tim, [29:40]

• On Leadership in Fundraising:
  “We are not trained to lead and we’re not trained to lead with intention and goodwill. We’re trained to acquire and extract and that’s not working.” — Tim, [27:54]

• On Trust:
  “You can’t surge trust.” — from Reed Howard, [33:12]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [04:07] — Tim’s Taekwondo community story and reflections on adult learning and humility
• [07:08] — Where Tim’s passion for community comes from
• [10:04] — The Chicago origin story and labor movement roots in Tim’s work
• [15:24] — Defining real community and the importance of shared vision
• [16:34] — Explanation of the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP)
• [19:33] — Discussion about donor data, affinity vs. wealth, and Neon One’s Generosity Report
• [23:41] — Role of technology and AI, and why human connection still matters
• [26:29] — The concept of “reciprocal generosity” and its cultural significance
• [27:54] — Rethinking nonprofit relationship building; leading with intentionality vs. extracting value
• [33:12] — The key lesson: “You can't surge trust”

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Podcast Tone and Style

The tone is friendly, candid, and occasionally humorous (including playful references to Taekwondo and Kermit the Frog). The conversation is steeped in empathy, curiosity, and a collaborative spirit. Both hosts thank Tim for his heartfelt leadership, vulnerability, and continued advocacy for authentic community-building and systemic change in the nonprofit sector.

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Final Reflection

The episode calls listeners—especially nonprofit professionals—to reflect on their own motivations and the true meaning of generosity. The hosts and guest encourage a move away from transactional thinking, urging the rise of communities built on real trust, mutuality, and sustained engagement.

“I hope that others reflect and ask themselves what is the true meaning of generosity in their lives. And I think that if you really look in the mirror, the answers are going to be very obvious and that’s a beautiful thing.” — Tim, [36:26]

Transcript

[Tim San Antonio]

Foreign.

[Justin McCord]

Welcome to the RKD Group Thinkers Podcast. I'm your host, Justin McCord. With me is Ronnie Richard. Ronnie, we are recording. I said this. I don't remember if I said this in the recording, but we're recording on kermit the frog's 70th birthday.

[Ronnie Richard]

Yes, we are.

[Justin McCord]

I was not expecting that.

[Ronnie Richard]

I had no idea you were going to say that, but I had the voice queued up anyway.

[Justin McCord]

Yeah, well, you know, if there's one thing that Kermit did well, it's that he had a vision and he helped bring together people around him to drive towards that vision. And so I'm not saying that our guest is Kermit the Frog, because I think if you were to line up like his Myers Briggs or his Enneagram or any other test against the Muppets, he would probably be a different Muppet. But there's something that's there in terms of our guest today.

[Ronnie Richard]

That'S. Yeah, that's hilarious. So, yeah, our guest today, Tim San Antonio, he is the director of community engagement at Neon1, which, as he mentioned, I think this was his first. The debuting of his new title there at Neon1. And he's been there, I don't know, more than a decade, doing great work. Tim's also the chair of the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, and so he helps put together the FEP report, which is a, you know, huge, huge report in our industry, really a bellwether of what's coming and what's happened and the trends that we see in the space. He's also just recently shepherded this generosity report that Neon1 just put out and talking to Tim and just his passion around this and these threads that connect between what we're seeing in this, the. The number of donors declining in this and. And his passion for building community and. And there's a direct connection there of, like, what can we do to make this better, to make. To build communities around nonprofits instead of just transactional. And that. That's really what stood out to me.

[Justin McCord]

Tim is one of the people in the space that I make a point every few months to just spend a couple of hours with. And it's because we don't agree on a lot of things, and we do agree on a lot of things. And so. And yet we still have a destination that we know that we can help each other get to. And so I think that's important to value in those around you. And so here is one of the best living embodiments of community that I think we've ever had on the podcast, Tim. San Antonio. Okay, so it's a big day. Tim, you just told us it's a big day.

[Tim San Antonio]

Is. Is. Well, which, which, for what reason? There's many big, big things happening today.

[Justin McCord]

There are many big. Well, actually, did you know that we're recording this on Kermit the Frog's 70th birthday?

[Tim San Antonio]

Okay. Okay. Well, we'll have the new Chicago Pope bless him. Yes. But he has to do it at the White Sox stadium because we've learned.

[Justin McCord]

I'm fine with that, too.

[Tim San Antonio]

And in the Kermit voice. Yeah, yeah.

[Justin McCord]

Wait, hold on. You're saying Pope Leo has to do the Kermit voice for the blessing?

[Ronnie Richard]

Yeah, I think it's. It's only fair.

[Tim San Antonio]

All right.

[Justin McCord]

It's a big day, Tim, because you just shared with us one of. And it's one of the many things that I appreciate and somewhat adore about you. You got a big Taekwondo test this evening.

[Tim San Antonio]

Yeah. So, folks, I know you're tuning in because I might talk about data or generosity or technology.

[Justin McCord]

No, we're talking about Taekwondo, but we're.

[Tim San Antonio]

Talking about a 43 year old man going through a taekwondo belt test. From his. What, his white belt to a yellow belt.

[Justin McCord]

Justin, what does that test include? What does that look like?

[Tim San Antonio]

So I have to. I have to do kind of my forms, right? So I have. I have kind of a set of moves that I have to go through. I was even practicing this at my hotel room, like last night, right? Like I'm watching reruns of Shark tank from about 10 years ago on the hotel TV. Beautiful hotel right across from O'. Hare. And the TV is like, it basically has 13 channels. I might have. Might as well have just clicked through. And one of them is just static. So I'm watching old Shark Tank and doing my moves. So you have to do kind of your forms. So you go through a few kind of sets of forms. And then there is a. I'm gonna have to do a defensive element, because Taekwondo is ultimately a defensive martial art. I have to get out of something. So. So. And my wife makes fun of me about this because. Because I was like, yeah, I can get out of it. Yeah. She's like, yeah, if you hold in a specific spot and don't move, then, yeah, you're getting out of it. So I had to do that. And then I get to break a board. I had to do hammer fist, I believe. But I am very excited. And guys, my roundhouses are getting pretty good, so I'm very proud about that. I do have a nemesis. A little bit of a nemesis. It's. It's. Maybe I should talk about this.

[Justin McCord]

No, I mean, well, we can change the names, but, like, is it. It's a fellow student.

[Tim San Antonio]

Yeah. You've got kind of like a kid. So I. Like.

[Ronnie Richard]

I was gonna say, is she 10 years old or.

[Tim San Antonio]

No, but it's just. It's. I don't know. It's just because my daughter goes to this place, so I have to be cognizant that it's, like, mainly for kids. But they have. Yeah. Awesome adult classes. But, you know, there's just every. This is what's really kind of beautiful about community building, is that you're not gonna like everybody. Right, Right. Like, there's just this kind of cocky younger. Younger, like 13 year old, and I'm like, yeah, man. Like, stop hitting it. You're not supposed to hit the thing. They're having us just tap it. Stop. Again. It's nice to hit something, but it's more important to actually be able to turn my thing thinking brain off and just focus on, like, my body. Especially because I keep eating a lot of carrot cake lately, so.

[Justin McCord]

I love it. I. Well, listen, we. We wish you the best on the test tonight. I.

[Tim San Antonio]

Thank you.

[Justin McCord]

I love that you were preparing at your hotel.

[Tim San Antonio]

I'm nervous. I'm honestly nervous. Are you? Yes. I saw them not give a belt to a kid once. I'm like, whoa, master pay. Like, you're holding the line. Right. So. No, I love that. I love it so much. It's such a great community, too.

[Justin McCord]

But, you know, it's interesting because. And this is a nice segue.

[Tim San Antonio]

The.

[Justin McCord]

Idea of community is something that, you know, you are. You have been passionate about before it became buzzy. And, you know, I have seen you for years now, like, lean into the small nonprofits around your home, like, in your actual physical community. I have seen you build community with Neon's customer base and with other technology providers and people in the sector. Like, where does that. Where does that stem from? Where did that sort of thing start that you wanted to be so, so much of a driver for pulling people together?

[Tim San Antonio]

I mean, you're getting me on kind of a reflective day, too. And I would make an argument, in some ways, Justin, you've helped kind of kick this journey off with that book that you sent me soundtracks. Because especially since January, I've been really thinking about the soundtrack of my life a lot more. And I guess this might be the equivalent of my midlife crisis. I hope it comes in the. You know, and then that implies I'm, like, a little bit further down the line. But, you know, I. I did. I did smoke a lot when I was in my 20s, so who knows, you know, I stopped drinking at least, but. And I'm doing taekwondo and stuff like that. But, like, the thing is, is that I think that I've had this soundtrack, especially 2024, I think I had a soundtrack. It kept skipping almost where I thought I would be playing what I wanted to, and then it would almost like it was broken because of infrastructural, like, parts in the vinyl almost. Right. And I think we. Trauma can warp things when it comes to even the soundtrack that we want to play. And so I've been thinking a lot about that. My father passed away in January, and that, I think, has been a very transformative moment in my life. Obviously, the loss of any parent for somebody can. Can be that. Not everybody, of course, but, like. And families are so, so difficult. But what I'm learning is community is born in many ways through the beauty that comes through the pain. You kind of have to go through it. We like to run away. We like to hide it in academics or we like to, you know, do sports talk or, you know, whatever, and not talk about things like grief or work trauma or any of that. And I think it's that fear of vulnerability, in many ways, for everybody, that. That drives me, because so I. In many ways, I would say that that real community came from my work in Chicago, which I just flew back from. And.

[Justin McCord]

Tell us. Yeah, tell us. Tell us a little bit of the Tim origin story back to Chicago.

[Tim San Antonio]

And it has to do with my father. So this is a tight narrative, folks. It's a. It's a tight narrative. So I. Look, I. I'm Tim San Antonio. I am Director of Community Engagement. New role. I think this is the first podcast I could say that at Neon1. And so, Justin, I would actually make an argument that, yeah, I might have done some stuff around community building with. With Neon clients. I ain't started yet. That is. It's going to be a completely different ballgame. We have a new CEO. There's just so much energy coming in, and that's part of the reasons I was in Chicago this week. But if we step it back, a lot of my work can be directly tied to that Chicago ethos of, like, let's just get it done right. We're going to dig in that authenticity. And that's because I had gone to school. I thought I Was going to be a trust and estates lawyer through most of my high school and weirdly, my junior high school career because my mom had that background. It found it seemed very interesting because you get to look at art and you get to look at, like, you know, all these different things. And then I immediately realized I don't want to be a lawyer. I don't want to be a trust in estates lawyer especially. What am I going to do? And so I thought I was going to go into academia and teach history. And so I went to school for that. And I was in upstate New York, Plattsburgh. So I got exposed to a lot of Canadian influence up there. I would go to Montreal all the time. My wife has a French Canadian background. So it was always kind of like borders. Didn't really matter to me. In a lot of ways. It was more like knowledge. And what does it matter? Who are we and what do we identify as that brings us together versus food. Right. I love talking about food or pop culture because those are things that can cross lines. Music, bad tv, good tv, all of it. Right. And so things that connect us have always been interesting to me. But I also have been very interested in those systemic barriers that exist. And that was what I studied. I was looking at grassroots working class labor movement. So I studied a dairy workers wildcat strike in upstate New York during the 1930s, where they were like on the highway. They're like in their old timey cars and they're shooting from the mountains in the Adirondacks, like at these farmer, like these scabs bringing milk up and down, you know, the precursor to the north way wild. A lot of it, I think, comes from the labor movement, and not the labor movement of just unions, but also all these, like, Knights of Columbus. And what we saw even during the, you know, the works progress administration, the ccc. Right. I just got back from the smoky Mountains a few weeks ago, and I was exposed again to the conservation corps building the trails originally in the 1930s. Right. Like, I think a lot about infrastructure, I think a lot about work. Right. That's what binds together. What I'm learning now is like, storytelling matters, the way you deliver matter, but it's more important to actually identify behavior as opposed to knowledge. I think this is the learning that especially I'm having over the last few years is I like to lecture people, and I got to stop doing that. And so a lot of that came from, okay, the academic structure and environment that I thought I was going to go in, but it was 2007, 8. And I applied a second round because I was going to. My plan was to live in the cornfield and just keep going into debt. And, you know, and that's because I wanted degrees.

[Justin McCord]

Yep.

[Tim San Antonio]

Yeah. I wanted to live in Urbana Champagne. That was the dream, Justin and Ronnie, to live in Urbana, champ. And there's nothing against Urbana Champagne, by the way, but it's like, you know, that was the only thing I had focused on the plan. So when I got rejected again, my dad flew to Chicago and he said, you gotta get a job, bro. And the first job I got was for a nonprofit that was a day labor worker center. And in fact, Justin, I found, because I'm insane and I have like, email stuff dating back, you know, almost 20 years, I found my first funding plan from 2008 and it says community Driven Fundraising. I made it, remember, because I bought this dumb Adobe knockoff because I was like, I have to make things look pretty. And I remember buying a bunch of stuff from Staples. That's map. I know we're recording a podcast, but folks, I have a map behind me and that's connected to the very first thing I did in Chicago. And I was even telling my friend Denise Barretto, who. Who is one of the chief people for the cta. Does awesome person. Love her. And so we were driving by this old worker center bookstore that I used to volunteer at when I was first in Chicago. Right. Nobody got paid. We all were handling things, like on commission and just like helping each other out. It's now a Laundromat or some thing. Like it's long gone, but the mural's still there.

[Justin McCord]

That's awesome.

[Tim San Antonio]

And that type of stuff just kind of compounded and taught me what real community can look like. Right. Community is just finding common ground on how you want life to look like, in my opinion. So, Tim. Yeah, sorry, that was a lot. No, no, no.

[Ronnie Richard]

I want to connect some dots here because you're talking about community and the importance for our listeners. You're the chair of the Fundraising Effectiveness Project.

[Tim San Antonio]

Yep. Also at Neon1, group representing as well.

[Ronnie Richard]

Of course, at Neon1, you just put out the generosity report. And I'm going to connect the dots here because in the latest FEP report, one of the things that we've seen, this long term trend of a decline in donors and the soundtrack whittling down of the smaller donors, the everyday donors, and in the generosity report, you go into this idea of building community and volunteering and this structure around it. Can you tell us a little bit about how all that connects. And some of the findings.

[Tim San Antonio]

Yeah. So for those who don't know, the Fundraising Effectiveness Project as a starting point is the largest and most comprehensive national benchmarking initiative on individual giving. And so if you hear retention rates, if you hear about growth in giving percentages or what small gifts versus major gift trends look like, that is the Fundraising Effectiveness Project. It is overseen by Giving Tuesday and AFP foundation, and then has a supporting steering committee that I chair that has over 50ambassadors that represent data providers, because we have 12 data providers, people like Bloomerang, DonorPerfect. Keela better unite GoFundMe Pro. I'm doing it right. Meredith, well done. Right? Yeah. Give smart by momentive. I'm doing it right. Oh, gosh. Keela. Q. Give fundraise up. Bonterra.

[Ronnie Richard]

This is like acceptance speech.

[Tim San Antonio]

Yeah.

[Ronnie Richard]

Don't forget anyone.

[Tim San Antonio]

I know. I don't want to forget the lawyer. Right. So. So. And neon one. Okay, so I got that. And we want, in all honesty, I want everybody as part of this, because then it fully represents the sector, and it does, in all honesty, represent the sector in many ways. But I think sometimes benchmarking especially could lose the nuances of the beauty that's happening underneath, and we get lost in that narrative. And so, Justin, I did name check you in my AFP icon presentation. I said, look, we got the wrong soundtrack going. The soundtrack, Ronnie, isn't dollars up, donors down? Yes, that is the same damn thing we keep hearing. How can we rethink that? How can we look at the opportunity that we're seeing, especially in the fact that 96.9% of individuals, according to FAP data, give under $5,000 annually, yet we tend to hear about the affluent. What's. What's dominating the news, you know, on LinkedIn on the nonprofit sector foundation, the Gates Foundation. All we're doing is talking about a bunch of money that likely will not filter down to many nonprofits in the United States and also will have an unclear time because of what the. The current administration is doing in terms of its. If its effectiveness. Good on them. Like, spend it down. That's great. But, like, I don't want to talk about that. That's boring to me. I want to talk about what the average citizen is doing. And that's where the Neon Generosity Report comes into play. I think it's the first step toward rethinking it because we're. I am going to give a little tip of the hat to ourselves on a feature we built that kind of rethinks scoring Right. I think scoring, especially on the wealth side, could be problematic if implemented incorrectly. And a lot of times based on experience, it is. And that's because people chase the dollar and they don't focus on the person and the relationship. And so we built a feature that scores affinity and it's based on the larger Neon1 ecosystem. So we have 31 million people who've contributed through all our Neon clients. And so if they donated to multiple organizations, we can connect the dots between that. Now, the individual nonprofit doesn't know who these people are. Things like that. Everything's protected, but it can give you a little leg up to go. Oh, they love education nonprofits just like you. And the data shows that most people are going to focus a bit on a singular type of cause, actually, or things that are very interrelated. So I think we can start to rethink assumptions about behavior, especially as identity really emerges as the strongest indicator of affinity.

[Justin McCord]

I was looking around because I had to find my copy of the book, right? Yeah. Came into my life at a time that I needed it more than I can ever imagine. And so that's why it was a gift to be able to give that and the idea behind it, which is playing out and I'm getting to watch you live it out. And that's a really cool thing to see as a colleague of yours and as a friend. In the space of, you know, we become the things that we fixate on and whatever it is that we're fixated on, that's the thing that we're going to work towards and that's the thing that we're going to end up doing and putting out. And so we all get it. We all have a choice. And this sector in particular, boy, do we like to get fixated on some stuff that can hold us back.

[Tim San Antonio]

Oh, yeah. And I had, I had, I've had so many abundance minded conversations. And look, there's always going to be the naysayers and the tear downs. Right. It's a lot easier to destroy as we can see than it is to build. And I want to get back to being builders again in this country. Okay? If I can appeal to the everyday person in the United States where I'm talking here, and this is donors, right? Even the language, right? Okay, what's a donor? Is it somebody who gave money? Like, what's the difference about that? Right? When you close your eyes, folks, when you see, hear the word philanthropist, what do you see? I know what you likely see, right? But it depends on the community that you're coming from and the soundtrack that we're playing in that. And so for me, I view this very much like we need to think of this. Like we're, it's the Big Dig in Boston and we have a lot of muck that we have to get through. But what that's done, as somebody who goes Boston fair amount, I know it's changed the nature of that city. And I just came back from Austin and what was cool was I was able to walk from Broe downtown because I was in 6th street, folks. I saw the bats. Okay, at least I did that.

[Justin McCord]

Yeah, you did.

[Tim San Antonio]

But I was able to walk from the downtown area randomly come across a farmer's market overseen by one of our clients, the Downtown alliance, walk over to the trail, scan the QR code and see a Q give donation form, which means I'm walking the path of fep. Literally, I am walking the data. And I don't think we, we do data walks enough to. And this is the thing I see, I see these traditional lists and these curmudgeons and all this type of stuff where people are like, you know, the hating on the AI and all this type of stuff. And look, my fellow tech people can be really dumb sometimes, okay? Like really not get it and overhype stuff that is distracting. But the reality is, is that something like artificial intelligence can be transformative if we're focusing on the right stuff. The problem is, is that we're not. Yeah, we're not focusing on the labor. We're focusing on the pomp and circumstance of it. And that's, that's going to lead to ruin if we embrace that.

[Justin McCord]

I mean, just to, to thread the, the whole even a little tighter here around community and FEP and the Generosity report. Yeah, the thing that hit me like a ton of bricks in reading the Generosity Report was just that the people who are in. The people who are in, they are in more. And I know that that sounds odd to say, but like, you know, recurring donors are waiting to be asked to go to an event. They, they want to be a part of community for event attendees. They want to be asked to, to take it a step further and volunteer for volunteers. They want to be asked. Like there's this, we all have this desire to contribute and so many times as marketers and certainly as fundraisers, we tend to think about a program and a journey being a series of post it notes of things that I'm doing to you to get you to take certain actions. And that's not to your point, like Living in authentic relationship, back and forth with the person that's contributing their time and talents and treasure to you as an organization.

[Tim San Antonio]

The term that I need to give. Cause I know a lot of this is just what I am really learning and also unlearning is that I can't do things alone. And one of the best articulations of that was that we had this lovely dinner at AFP Icon, and we gathered folks around a table. People like Dave Raley, Woodrow Rosenbaum, Marcus Cunningham.

[Justin McCord]

Now you got to name everybody. You started again.

[Tim San Antonio]

Now you got to go name everybody around the table. We also had our Josh, our friends and partners at Windfall. We had Christine Robertson from Impact. We had Coco and Rachel d' Souza from Gladiator Consulting, Abby Jarvis, our report writer, Kelsey Kramer. For Giving Tuesday. We also had. Geez, man.

[Justin McCord]

Now what are you finding the RSVP list?

[Tim San Antonio]

Yeah, I'm just. I'm like, just double checking.

[Justin McCord]

Okay, Ronnie, we're gonna tag every single one of these people on the LinkedIn post with Tim's podcast.

[Tim San Antonio]

No, because that kills Bill. Bill Cummings, Cherry and Koshy, Dorothy Norris all joined us. And so now we're getting distracted. I'm just name dropping, because it was actually what Rachel d' Souza said during that dinner, and it's one that I'm okay saying out loud because a lot of that was. We agreed that room's going to stay in that room. But her. And I really reflected afterwards on. She used the term reciprocal generosity. And that really kind of stuck with me. And I think there's something really powerful about that idea because so I. Again, pathways, guys. Pathways. Everything seems connected. I was able to meet up with a friend of mine who runs a small nonprofit. He's based in Chicago. It focuses on the preservation of traditional gave techniques, production techniques in Mexico. And him and I were talking. My friend Lou. Love Lou. And he was talking about. I'm thinking about redoing my website. I was like, okay, walk me through kind of what you're thinking. And we. I had talked about kind of like he was trying to almost. He was struggling a little bit, conveying the story of the nonprofit. I said, well, what about the farmers themselves? And he said, well, I don't want to, you know, exploit them. They're the heroes. So I don't want to. I don't want to exploit their. Their image. And I said, so. So why not, though? They. If they're the heroes, they should be front and center. Their voice should be front and center. And he's like, well, that, that makes, you know, I'm uncomfortable of that, basically. And I said, I said, okay, why? Right. And when we unpacked it, what kind of snapped it over for him is, is I said, okay, you don't necessarily want them to be the hero. Did you have a conversation with him about that?

[Justin McCord]

Hmm.

[Tim San Antonio]

He goes, well, no. And I said, why did you make that decision for him? He was like, oh, shit. It's like, yeah. And we do this constantly. And it's not because of usually ill intent. Most people don't do it because of ill intent. They do it because we have a soundtrack in our head that we are playing that is get this thing out, do it this way, talk about the impact. Right. Even a lot of well meaning fundraisers. We are not trained to lead and we're not trained to lead with intention and goodwill. We're trained to acquire and extract and that's not working.

[Justin McCord]

Yeah, yeah, we have to stop. That's powerful.

[Tim San Antonio]

The data's making. The data stuff. This is why I'm so focused on like the data is there to be a signal. It is there to catalyze it is there to augment. It should never be. I think Cherry and Koshy put it way better than me at an AFP Icon Catalyst event that they put on and we called it the Catalyst. And it was to some, a smaller group of executives and he was talking about artificial intelligence. He says, can I write a better fundraising letter than me? Probably. Can it be more effective at fundraising over time? Absolutely. Right. You have these robot people that are starting to talk to donors and stuff like that. He says, but is that the world that, you know, we want to live in? Is that the type of fundraising that we want, where. Where that happens? No. 90% can probably be done eventually and especially within five years by agentive.

[Justin McCord]

Yeah.

[Tim San Antonio]

Elements. But that last mile. Yeah. Of the marathon should be a human.

[Justin McCord]

And just the. I heard a. I heard a clip recently from someone who's been like a faith hero in my world. A guy named John Piper. He's a pastor up in Minnesota and he was speaking at a conference. And this was a fascinating almost mic drop moment from this guy who has led and led lots of new thinking and really well intended thinking. He read a prayer that had been generated by AI. And at face value, the language that was used, it could not have been more prairie than the. Because it uses all the right language. But the point that he made afterward was, you're eliminating the entirety of faith if you're abdicating the opportunity that you have to be as a part of this engagement. And to me, it's the same thing when you get into fundraising that like, yes, yes, let's lean on technology, let's leverage technology. Let's not abdicate the philo part of philanthropy.

[Tim San Antonio]

Everybody is making business decisions and technology decisions on a paradigm that will be obsolete within probably, like I said, five years. And this is based on the pace of change that we're seeing. This is based on the monumental changes in infrastructural government distribution. If anybody thinks that this is not going to have a major change, because they know what they're doing, they know where to target, they know where the money is. And so the reality is that there's unlocked opportunity not only in the private sector, but also in new business ventures and new approaches. And it doesn't have to be centered solely around what rich people are doing. There's so much innovation coming out of the nonprofit space. It's mind blowing to me because it's like John Carpenter movies every single day. People. It's people who need to be creative because they don't have any money. And then we are getting, you know, assault on Precinct 13 and escape from New York all the time in terms of like cinematic beauty and, you know, and people are doing badass stuff just like Kurt Russell. And so I think that, like, there's so much beauty that we miss. This is why I've kind of adopted the sunflower as my motif because it's a very resilient plant and. And it's a beautiful one. And it honestly reminds me of my sister in law. It was one of her favorites. That's not what we're doing right now. We're all working in silos.

[Justin McCord]

Yeah.

[Tim San Antonio]

And we have every opportunity to fight misinformation by focusing on trusted data. Which is why everything we did for the generosity report was done in the paradigm of how fundraising effectiveness project designs the reports. I got talked out of stupid things by Giving Tuesday. Right. I was like, why don't we do this? And I'm like, that's a terrible idea. Don't do that. And I was like, okay. Right? Because we don't want to misrepresent anything. And the biggest line. And Justin, Ronnie, I know you're gonna love this line because it's gonna stick with me for a very long time. In fact, I almost. I gotta. I gotta get the. It's only one name I have to remember, but I gotta get it. Guys. I'm a little out of sorts because I did just get Back from travel day.

[Justin McCord]

Travel days leave you out of sorts.

[Tim San Antonio]

I got the name because Reed Howard, the chief strategy and public affairs officer of Future Caucus, who I had the pleasure of connecting with and actually even being able to speak with my dad about my dad a bit with him. It's just a beautiful event, guys. But he presented his lightning talk. They had these people speak for 10 minutes on stage, like these kind of TEDx talks. Lightning talks from leading social innovators, right? Awesome stuff. Big, big, big letters on the stage. You can't surge trust. You can't surge trust. I know it's another buzzword. Trust, Trust. Trust. Trust based fundraising trust this. But think about the Pew Research center debuted some of their data at this event. It's amazing research. I can make sure you guys see that. I'll put in the. If we could put it in the show notes. It's really good. They just published it. Powerful stuff because it was generosity and our work, but it was more than that. And that's the thing we like to love and we love to intellectualize our stuff. This conversation is happening in different formats in different ways across everything. My wife just started working from home because of the monumental shifts that we're seeing in the engineering world. And she's using ChatGPT for fire protection stuff for the first time. Right? Like, this is new and this is the industrial revolution once again. And I know that's scary as hell, but I've been studying future signals for years. This is it. This is it. I'm not trying to scare people. The opportunity is there. That's the thing that they want all of us to think we don't have the power to change things. Oh, we do. And this is the time to do it.

[Ronnie Richard]

And the thing that's not new is community. And so, Tim, like, I mean, the amount of passion and effort that you're putting into tying together community and where it's places and generosity. Like, I think speaking for both of us, we just want to say thank you for all the efforts that you're doing on this and thanks for taking, you know, a little bit of your time, especially on a travel day to.

[Justin McCord]

To chat with us and a Taekwondo.

[Tim San Antonio]

Day and a Taekwondo day and a Taekwond o day. I mean, I look, I was looking forward to this. I always love talking with you guys and seeing you. Justin, especially Tim, buddy, we like, as.

[Justin McCord]

Ronnie said, your commitment to this. Like, this, this is your cause and your calling. And so we want to like, edify that and, and just tell you how much we appreciate you recognizing and leaning into that and it was there before it was a part of your title. It was there before you went through some dark spots in the the beginning and part of this year. And so we love seeing you lean into that calling and the way that you're helping lead from your seat. So thank you for being a part of that and being a part of our chat today.

[Tim San Antonio]

Well, thank you for, for giving a platform for this, this ranting and and the overall in all seriousness the community that we're building together through conversations like this And I hope that others reflect and ask themselves what is the true meaning of generosity in their lives. And I think that if you really look in the mirror the answers are going to be very obvious and that's a beautiful thing. 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 market marketing needs, visit rkdgroup.com.