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A
You're listening to the number one podcast for nonprofit leaders getting your nonprofit fully funded. This is the Fundraising Masterminds podcast. You know, they say, oh, we can't find anything. And I saw. I'm like, okay, where are you from? And I Google their town, and I type wedding event venue. And lo and behold, there's two or three that pop up, and it's like, well, what about this? Oh, that's way too expensive, you know. Well, how much is it? Oh, it's 25 a plate. I'm like, the average is 45. You know, like, they're like, oh, my goodness, that's ridiculous. You know, and, yeah, we wrote down, like, three common objections is, number one, there's no good venue. Number two, they don't have any volunteers, and number three, they say, I can't find anyone to come. Does that sound like the abundance mindset to you?
B
Doesn't sound like that to me, no.
A
Well, welcome back to another episode here at the Fundraising Masterminds Podcast. We've got a great episode lined up for you today. No surprise. We're going to be talking about Vision dinners. Absolutely. But actually, what I love about this episode is I get to address one of my number one reasons for why people on the phone say, well, you know, I get the whole Vision Dinner thing, and I totally am on board. And it sounds amazing, but it will work for everybody but us.
B
Yeah.
A
And the reason why is because great.
B
For big cities, people in big cities.
A
Yeah. They. They assume, I think when they're listening to us, they assume that we're working in Chicago, New York, Louisiana, Texas, you know, Houston, Dallas.
B
Yeah. Big cities.
A
And they think, oh, of course they're raising a hundred thousand dollars, you know, because, I mean, they're probably working with the best of the best. And, you know, we're out here in Timbuktu, right. You know, middle of nowhere, you know, with farms and, you know, population of 300 and so row culture. There's no way that the perfect Vision Dinner is going to work for us.
B
No.
A
You know, we're the exception.
B
Right.
A
Ironically, we've actually found this to be quite false.
B
Yes, absolutely.
A
And actually, I would say probably most of the people that are in our program are what you would call, in quote unquote, small towns.
B
Right, right. That's right.
A
I would say majority of them are, you know, and so we wanted to address on the program today just some misconceptions of this whole mindset, because it really is kind of like part of the scarcity mindset.
B
Yes.
A
And I Don't know if our listeners remember, but I remember talking about scarcity mindset versus the abundance mindset. We talked about that long time ago. Yeah, it's like episode three or something.
B
Yeah, right, right.
A
But talk about the mindset here of how people can get sucked into this. We're in a rural area.
B
Oh, yeah.
A
It's not going to work for us.
B
Yeah, well, Jason, you know, I mean, it comes out to the little guy. You know, we, we get the, the, the table scraps of everybody else. You know, surely these dinners that are working are Washington, DC, Chicago, Houston, Lo. Like we talked about, they couldn't possibly work. And if I could get some people out, they certainly would not give. And if I could get some people out, we wouldn't have a facility that could handle this many people. And if I get some people to agree to do things, they wouldn't want to be a table host. Not in a small community. Small community. They hardly know anybody in there. So there's just a million.
A
Everybody knows everybody.
B
Everybody. And how can you fill multiple tables when everybody's asking the same people? Yeah, there's just a million reasons why things don't work in rural communities. And that's, that's the mindset. But you're right, Jason, you hit it on the, the nail on the head. It is definitely a scarcity mentality. It's the woe is me. I don't have what other people have. God doesn't bless us as much as the others. And they, they forget that God owns the cattle on the thousand hills. And if he wants a dinner to happen and succeed In Orangeburg, South Carolina, population 13,000, he make it work.
A
Yeah. Well, speaking of Orangeburg, population 13,000, you actually helped an organization in that town.
B
Yeah.
A
Can you tell us a bit about how that went?
B
Well, I'll be happy to. In fact, we. I was asked to more than a decade ago, asked to do a dinner for child evangelism fellowship, a very effective child evangelism fellowship in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Well, I have to explain to you what Orangeburg, South Carolina looks like. It's one of those cities where I flew into Columbia, South Carolina, which Columbia itself is no huge metropolis. But then I started driving and driving and driving and driving and the land started getting flatter and flatter and flatter less homes. And I've reached a point where we could almost see a stop sign in the city. And the major attraction seemed to be the one stop light that they had in the entire city. And I thought, whoa, okay, this is going to be a challenge. And I had just such a privilege of meeting the staff, saw that they were doing some amazing things in the lives of children in public school. And I said, got to do a dinner for these guys. Got to get some money raised for them. So we went out and said, let's find a place. Well, there is no Hyatt. There's no Hilton, there's no Marriott. There's no Holiday Inn Holidome. There is no major facility for doing a dinner. All there was was an old renovated theater that they had knocked out all the seats, took out the staging, and took out the curtains and opened it up to just a plain room with round tables. And we. For two years, we did our dinner in that. Sit in. In that location. And we probably went from 150 to about 250. We maxed it out at 100. 150 people. Yeah, sorry, 150 people to eventually 250 in those two.
A
Okay, I thought you meant you raised 150.
B
No, no, no, no. We raised more than $150. Yes, for sure. In fact, we were closer to 150 to $170,000. It really blew a lot of these people away. By the time we did the second year dinner, we were over $200,000 that had been raised in that little city that they said, people are not going to come to our event. People are not going to buy into this strategy. People are not going to give.
A
Yeah, well, actually, we had a similar ministry that we worked with in California. And let's see, my memory is fading. I think it was fall of 2023.
B
Right, right.
A
Or no, we were. We trained them in spring, and their dinner was fall 2023. Okay, so it was in a small town, Grover Beach. You know, the population of grover beach, there's 12,000. You just happen to know that.
B
Right? I actually googled it, Jason. 12,619 people. Yeah, all. I'm sorry, One of the people died yesterday. 12,618.
A
Yeah. And I mean, that was one of the questions. I remember talking to the executive director, Tracy, on the phone, and that was one of her concerns was, you know, hey, we've been listening to your podcast for a while. We get the model, we understand it, we're excited about it, but will it work for us? We are special. We. We are in Southern California. It's very small town, very small community. I don't know if we can have, you know, do everything. Everyone. You know, it's really interesting is when they join the program. I just find this to be really fascinating, but it's like we're telling them exactly what to do step by step. And it seems like people are always trying to come up with a justification of why they can't implement what we're telling them to do.
B
Right. I know.
A
And then when you really push it and you say, well, is there actually a venue in your area? Like, let me go on to Google, because I've literally done this before.
B
Right.
A
You know, they say, oh, we can't find anything. And I saw. I'm like, okay, where are you from? And I Google their town phone, and I type wedding event venue. And lo and behold, there's two or three that pop up, and you look at the pictures and it's like, it's beautiful, round tables. I mean, it's not like an amazing, incredible building, but it's like, it's decent. It's gonna like, well, what about this? Oh, that's way too expensive, you know. Well, how much is it? Oh, it's 25 a plate.
B
Yeah.
A
I'm like, yeah, the average is 45. You know, like, they're like, oh, my goodness, that's ridiculous. You know, and, yeah, it's like, like, what? No, this is what. This is the model, you know, like. And so now you're fighting them on, like, you know, justification of everything that we're doing. It's like, well, I thought you joined this program so that we could teach you, you know, how to raise a hundred thousand dollars, you know.
B
Right.
A
Penny pinch, you know, $10 here and there. But I. I mean, some of the common objections that we get, and we wrote down, like, three common objections, is, number one, there's no good venue.
B
Right.
A
Anywhere in our town or remotely close, which I always say, so nobody gets married in your town at all.
B
Right. Right.
A
You know, but number two, they don't have any volunteers or any support system, so how could they possibly pull off of a dinner? You're gonna have to have servers and waiters and ushers, and that's just. We just don't have that kind of staffing available. And number three, they say, I can't find anyone to come, or no one would be interested. Or, you know, we've already tapped out our base.
B
Yeah.
A
You know, so we. Everybody knows everybody here, so they'll just be asking.
B
It'll be mass chaos because everybody asking everybody else.
A
So does that sound like the abundance mindset to you?
B
It doesn't sound like that to me. No, no, it doesn't.
A
I'm kind of scratching my head going, you Know, doesn't the Lord want us to live by faith and to trust him and to, I don't know.
B
It's, you know, it's awful hard for God to overcome a venue issue. It really is. And volunteers. He's had a little trouble, you know, over the years feeding 5,000, you know, turning water into wine, you know, so that it would seem like this is an insurmountable challenge.
A
Yeah. And a lot of that is just there. They really don't want to do it. Maybe they're saying they want to do it, but, but they, they just don't want to, I don't know, put the effort in or, or they're just looking for excuses. I don't, I don't know.
B
Jason is stinking thinking. You know, I just, I see that so often that people just get in a downward spiral. They, they can't make payroll, they can't bring in money, they can't decide on long term plans. So everything keeps spiraling downward. So any idea of reversing course just is not appealing.
A
No, that's totally true. And it is a mindset thing because you can recognize the stinking thinking people. Yeah, there, there's a breed and you there to say, yeah, and you know, there's people, we get on coaching calls with couple organizations and you can recognize the stinking thinking right away. And, but then there's other people who are more faith oriented and, and believe that God can do anything and they're more optimistic. So.
B
But if you're a chosen fan, always remember Matthew and Thomas. Remember how now God had a major transformation in their lives. But you remember how negative both those two were in, in the first, first few seasons.
A
Well, let's unpack some of these objections. So the first objection we wanted to unpack was there's no good venue. Now, I already kind of addressed that a little bit where I said, you know, there may not be a Hyatt Regency Hotel in your location or there may not be a Marriott, you know.
B
Right.
A
But like I said, there's probably people getting married in your community and there's.
B
People playing golf, Jason. And if people are playing golf, they've created a country club. And even in some of the smallest rural communities, there's people who want to play golf, there's people who want to be members of a country club. And you know, it might not be able to handle more than 150 or 200 people max. But you know what, that's a great first start to do something.
A
And we're not saying if you can't find a Marriott. Then you can't do the perfect version dinner.
B
That's right.
A
We just say we prefer those venues because there's. There's certain negotiating power that we can have there. But you really can do the perfect vision dinner anywhere.
B
Yes.
A
You know, we. The core principle of it is just you want to select a location that would be a nice date night feel. So that obviously would be different in, like, Chicago.
B
Yeah.
A
Versus, like, middle of nowhere.
B
Yeah. With very few. Yeah. Well, and you said it, Jason. I mean, honestly, people are getting married every weekend.
A
Yeah.
B
And they're not just getting married in, you know, under a gazebo. There's people who actually are getting married at small wedding venues. I've got a colleague and his wife that started a wedding chapel, a wedding facility in a very rural area in Texas. And they are killing it because they are the only game in town. And this facility that they created with their own hands is beautiful. So there are those kind of places.
A
And I mean, the town I live in is fairly small. It's not like super small, but it's, you know, there's no enough. There's no Marriott.
B
Right.
A
But there's three decent locations that qualify that would be considered date night material. Would be considered nice. Yeah. So let's talk about the second objection. So the second objection that people typically say is, I don't have any volunteers. I can't. You know, I. I was actually so sad story. It's a family friend who is running homeless shelter ministry who is constantly struggling with funding in your town, in your hometown or in my hometown.
B
Okay.
A
And they know what I do. They know that we raise, you know, millions of dollars for nonprofits.
B
Right.
A
And they have this whole mindset of, oh, well, it works for them, but it won't work for us. You know, we're different because our city is, blah, blah, blah. It's different. And. And one of their excuses was this one. Well, even if we could do it, even if it would work, we don't have enough people that, like, there's no way we could pull off a vision dinner. Because. And I always say, well, do you have four people that love you that could put in, you know, five or ten hours a week into helping? Do you have board members? Do you have more than, you know, two board members?
B
Right.
A
You know, well, then you can pull off a vision. Exactly. You don't need a lot of people. You just need, you know, really three or four committed people to the idea, and you can pull it off well.
B
And once the ball Gets rolling. You mentioned Flywheel and one of our later or earlier sessions, once you start getting a few volunteers, those people will help you get more volunteers. And then those people will multiply and multiply and multiply. So, you know, if you start out with 10 table hosts, each of those are bringing 10 people. Well, those are all potential volunteers and can all plug in in a role in there. And then those 10 have friends. So that is definitely not an excuse.
A
We always talk about when you're trying to get people interested in your organization. We talk about we want to find people that would be willing to give of their labor.
B
Right.
A
Their influence, their finances and expertise. It's not just finances. So the Vision Dinner provides a great opportunity for people in the community to get involved with their hands. It gives them something to do.
B
Yeah, yeah. You know, well, people are looking for things to do. And of course, you think about kids today. I mean, most teens have to do volunteer hours. Some college students have to do volunteer hours. Now, that doesn't mean that they're going to fill every role that you have. But how about usher? How about greeters? How about registration workers? You know, you can get some of those and they get service hours.
A
Well, especially like, we work with a lot of Christian schools and private schools, right? And you know, people often say, well, you know, we, you know, the parents are tapped out with the school and the tuition and when there's no one that would be willing to help us, you know, because they're already busy. And I'm like, well, what about the students? They would love to help out with greeting and ushering and things like that. So we've already kind of thought through all this stuff. I guess that's my point is our system accounts for rural areas and areas in big cities. It works all over. I mean, you do over 300 vision dinners for crew every year, and it's in every place. Right. So the beauty of the perfect Vision Dinner is that it's a system that works. It's like, do you ever, like, notice that there's only McDonald's in big cities, but there's never McDonald's in a small city?
B
Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Right, exactly.
A
They work, right? Yeah.
B
Wherever people. Right. People want a hamburger.
A
Right. And so I mean, the. To say, like, well, McDonald's franchise only work in large cities. It's kind of ridiculous.
B
Yeah.
A
It might make more money or might need more, you know, so there's. I think there's a limit in expectations. Right. Like maybe you can't raise a quarter Million or a million dollars, you know, through a vision dinner in a town of 10,000.
B
Right.
A
But you would be surprised how many people.
B
Yeah.
A
Can write a big check in a small town.
B
That's right. Well, it's the millionaire next door. It's. It's the. You know, the Sam Walton who drove a pickup truck and didn't look like he had two nickels to rub together, but at one point in time, he was the richest man on the planet.
A
Right.
B
And so there are those kinds of people in every urban community.
A
Yeah. So the last objection is we can't find anyone to come. And this one is the funniest because it assumes, I guess, that you know every single person in the community, and you know what they would say. And to me, that just feels like you're just putting God in a box. You can't possibly know everybody. You might know a lot of people. You might have a lot of history with people, but just throwing something out there, you'd be surprised at how many people might jump on board when they hear about something really exciting happening in their community. And we always say in this program that every organization has needs, but very few have exciting opportunities. And let me tell you, in a small rural area where there's hardly anything going on, and then you've pulled together this amazing event in the local community, and the word gets out, I'll tell you, the whole town's gonna show.
B
Well, that's the way the Orangeburg dinner was. We instantly became the number one dinner that everybody wanted to go to because we employed the strategy of having a great meal and a great program, great music, and it immediately became the best dinner.
A
Yeah. You remember that small community in Southern California that we talked about? What did you say? Population 13,000 or something?
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Grover Beach.
A
Yeah. So they came to us a year ago because they were struggling to raise over 30,000. I might have been 40,000 at their most.
B
Wow.
A
They took our training and they raised over 150,000 right after. It blew their minds. It blew their mind out of the water. And I'll tell you, they did their dinner in a renovated barn. Okay. So it wasn't a. It wasn't like, you know, wasn't that Ritz Carl? They had to improvise. There wasn't a lot of venues available. In fact, the person who allowed it to happen there, it was a. It was a person who had been supporting the organization, and they donated the facility for them. So they. They had a.
B
A big barn, so no rental fee, which was.
A
Is a huge Then they ended up finding a local catering and which normally, you know, we don't like to do catering, but I mean, if you got no options.
B
Right, Exactly.
A
You kind of have to make it work, improvise. So, you know, they, they sent pictures and they, they decked it out with fancy lights and had backdrops and, you know, they implemented as best they could the information that we gave them. And, and quite honestly, like, you know, I'm not saying pick and choose what we tell you. You know, we, we tell you this is the ideal path, but, you know, you want to imp. As you can. And then obviously the program itself is the bread and butter. It's the secret sauce that makes it work and that you can reproduce anywhere.
B
Anywhere. Yeah.
A
So it's, it's really just implementing the best you can.
B
Yeah.
A
And then the program is really the, the secret sauce that makes it all work.
B
Yeah, that's right.
A
So in a sense, the location and the food and the. All that stuff is kind of relative to where you are.
B
Right, right, right, right.
A
So if you live in Northern, in Chicago, you're going to have a different expectation of what a fancy date night is.
B
Yes. Right. You know, Cal, Illinois. Right.
A
So anyways, we just wanted to talk about this because, you know, we're two weeks away.
B
Yeah.
A
From our next class starting. And, you know, we are talking to a lot of people on the phone and this is one of the things that often comes up. So we just thought this would be a great time to just address this concern that people have and, and just to say, you know, if you join the Perfect Vision Dinner mentorship program starting in two weeks, you know, we can't obviously guarantee how much money you're going to make, but we can tell you pretty certainly, most people that join the program raise over a hundred thousand on their first dinner, no matter where they're at. And so in fact, actually, last semester, I don't know if you remember this guy, there was a, A small. Very, very small. It might have been population like 300.
B
Yeah.
A
I don't know. Do you remember Mark for Life? It was a. I think it was a pregnancy center. The guy, he. He ended up having a baby, and not him, but his wife had a baby. And they weren't really on the calls. They, they joined the program. They were into it.
B
Okay.
A
But then they had some personal things happen. They weren't sure if they were gonna do it, but then they ended up pushing through at the very end and they just kind of gave it their best shot. Yeah, right. They didn't raise a hundred thousand like they thought, but they raised, like, three times more than they did before. I think the most that they raised before was. It was like 5,000 or something. And I think they raised like 40,000.
B
Wow.
A
You know, which for them, they were like. They were just like, this is amazing.
B
Yeah.
A
You know, and then. And then when they saw that it actually worked, then it gave them fuel for next year. So next year they're like, okay. You know, we had. This year, we had these personal things happen to us. We weren't able to focus on it as much, but we're all in. So I remember debriefing with him, and he was just like, yeah, you know, it was totally fine. You know, we. We. You know, it was our fault. You know, we were the reason why we couldn't focus on it like we wanted. But they still were like, this model is amazing, and we're gonna do this going forward. And they were really small. And the cool thing was he sent me the photos of, you know, their venue. And they had one venue in the whole town that I think they had to jury rig a little. And they, like, hung some lights and did some things. And the. Even the venue itself was like, I don't think we can get, you know, more than 100 people in this room. It was so small. And they. They did some creative things and they. They made it work, you know, And. And people were showing up in gowns and. And black suits, which is really uncharacteristic. Yeah, it was like, this is like a Southern, you know, like. Yeah, people don't have. Have suits kind of thing.
B
Right, right, right.
A
You know, and they just. They did the best they could and dressing up, and people just had, like, the biggest smiles on their face. And. And he was like, this is amazing.
B
It's great.
A
It was one of the best events that they had. So I love it. Another kind of objection that's kind of similar to this objection is people say, well, you know, rather than doing like, the whole big dinner thing, you know, I think it'd be better if we do, like, smaller dinners.
B
Yeah. Multiple small dinners.
A
So, like, rather than doing the whole biggest big thing, you know, because, you know, it's not going to work for us anyways because we're a small, so why don't we just do like a, you know, two or three small dinner parties? You know, we can have, like, 25 people. We can do it at our house, or we can. We can do it at the church or. And then. And we can. We can still apply the same principles. You know, the principles. But what do you think about that?
B
Yeah, I'm not a big fan of that, Jason, to be honest with you. I just, you know, I do like small dinner parties in an appropriate setting when you have a collective group of major donors. And the expectation is that collectively you already know pretty much before you get there that you're going to be raising this amount of money to achieve a goal. If you really want to begin to grow and to see a real spark, a catalyst for your development efforts, you've got to go all out. And what I mean by that is that get a private venue, serve a nice meal, even if all you've got. And I, I remember doing some events with some crew ministries that we had five, six, seven tables worth of. Of people. And these were, these are rounds of six and maybe even some eights. So it wasn't a whole lot of people, but it was enough of a catalyst that it would. It. It was just that spark that got that bonfire going. And we raised way more than we ever expected in some of those cities. Cities. And saw just a tremendous amount come from that. So I, you know, as much as I do, like, in certain circumstances, small dinner parties, I'm. I'm not excited about that.
A
Nothing really quite replaces the perfect vision.
B
No, it really does not.
A
And, you know, when I get on calls with people, I often say the perfect vision dinner model is a part of a bigger vision for your organization. So we're not, we're not just trying to. To raise a bunch of money so that you can, you know, have money in the bank and then just go back to your old ways.
B
Right.
A
Because that's like, you know, giving an alcoholic a bunch of alcohol and hoping that their problem goes away.
B
Right.
A
You know, you know, I don't know if that's a great analogy, but no, you know, it's like you gotta, you gotta have some reformation. You have to have some mindset shift. So if, if you have stinking thinking in your organization, then the stinking thinking needs to be rooted out and it needs to be replaced. This is a biblical concept.
B
Oh, it is.
A
Paul talks about this in the Book of Pruning Back. Yes. You know, he talks about, you know, putting off your old nature to put on the new nature. And so it's. That kind of idea is we want to, we want to start to train you on the right ways of thinking and show you how you can implement that through a vision dinner.
B
Right.
A
But then we also have other programs to help you continue that. So a lot of our development system is based on these three words, win, keep, and lift. And, you know, we want to win new people to your organization by getting them excited, and then we want to keep them through cultivation, and then we want to lift them to higher levels of giving. And we have those three kind of pillars are what we base our three programs on.
B
Right.
A
So we have the Perfect Vision Dinner for the win. We have the winner's circle for the keeping, and then we have Major Donor master for the list.
B
Yeah.
A
And so all three of those complement each other. They all complement each other and they're all part of a bigger ecosystem. So we want to move you through now. You know, the Perfect Vision Dinner is the best place to start. You know, so if you're like, oh my gosh, this sounds like there's way too much to this whole fundraising masterminds thing. It's like, okay, you don't need to know how to do everything. So we just, we usually just say, how much money are you raising? Less than 100,000. If the answer is yes, then you can benefit from the Perfect Vision Dinner. Or are you raising the same amount of money year over year over year over year and you can't grow? Then check. You can benefit from the Perfect Vision Dinner. And if you're not sure, then you can go to our website. Or there's a QR code on the screen where you can scan this QR code and it will take you to a 14 question survey. And we'll ask you 14 questions and give you a score based on what you're doing and you can kind of see for yourself whether what you're currently doing would benefit from the Perfect Vision Dinner. But Jim, I'm super excited about the Perfect Vision Dinner class. It's starting in two weeks.
B
The mentoring program.
A
Yeah. October 28th.
B
Yeah.
A
Is when things are starting to believe that, that.
B
Yeah.
A
It's already two weeks away.
B
Yeah. And. And the spring is always the better of the seasons. I mean, we tend to see more dinners, we tend to see more money raised. There's just something about coming out of the winter and entering into the spring that people want to come to dinners and they want to hear about exciting things.
A
Yeah. So if you are interested in this program, scan the QR code on the screen or go to fundraisingmasterminds.net and if you have any questions at all, we have a team of people that would love to answer. We actually do answer our phones. We're not like, you know, an AI robotic company like so many people out there, you know, like we, we will answer your phone, we will call you back. We want to talk to you, and we want to explain to you how you can use the Perfect Vision in our mentorship program to take your organization to the next level. So don't be shy, pick up the phone, give us a call, schedule an appointment, and let's talk about how you can benefit from the Perfect Vision Inner Mentorship program. It's a 20 week program starting October 25th. We're going to take you all the way through Christmas and all the way through the new year. It ends last week of March, and then you're going to do your vision dinner in April. And so this isn't a program where we, you know, teach you all kinds of stuff and then let you go on your own. We're gonna walk you through the process step by step. We're gonna guide you through it and we're gonna help you accomplish this thing.
B
We've got a three legged stool. The first is through videos and a notebook that is amazing, has 300 points of things that need to get done. Number two, we have weekly reports. We call in as a group. Once a week, we meet as a community. And then we have an app that allows everyone to ask questions as a community. And Jason and I are out there responding to those. So that three legged stool makes for success.
A
Yep. So head over to fundraisingmasterminds.net, check out the Perfect Vision Dinner. We've only got two weeks left. Sure. Space is filling out. I haven't checked with my team yet today, but the last I heard, you know, we're starting to get close to filling out. So don't wait. I know a lot of people wait. And you know, you do have to typically get board approval for joining the program. And so don't wait to get that process started. Apply, get your application in, get the conversation going and get in the pipeline with us. And let's talk about how we can take your organization to the next level. Well, there you have it. How to host a successful vision dinner in a rural area. We hope you enjoyed the episode and we look forward to talking to you soon. Take care.
B
See you later.
The Fundraising Masterminds Podcast: Episode 67 Summary
Title: How To Host a Successful Vision Dinner in a Rural Community
Release Date: October 16, 2024
Host/Authors: Jim Dempsey and Jason Galicinski
In Episode 67 of The Fundraising Masterminds Podcast, hosts Jim Dempsey (Speaker A) and Jason Galicinski (Speaker B) delve into the intricacies of organizing successful Vision Dinners within rural communities. The episode primarily challenges the prevailing scarcity mindset that many nonprofit leaders in smaller towns adopt, believing that strategies effective in big cities are unattainable in less populated areas.
Jim opens the discussion by highlighting common objections faced by rural nonprofits when attempting to host Vision Dinners:
Both hosts argue that these objections stem from a scarcity mindset rather than actual limitations, encouraging listeners to adopt an abundance mindset instead.
Jim and Jason share compelling success stories that demonstrate the viability of Vision Dinners in rural settings, effectively debunking the myth that such events are exclusive to large urban areas.
Orangeburg, South Carolina: Speaker B (04:10): Jason recounts organizing a Vision Dinner for Child Evangelism Fellowship in Orangeburg, a town with a population of 13,000. Despite initial concerns about venue availability and community engagement, the event exceeded expectations:
Notable Quote (06:25):
Speaker B: “We raised more than $150... in the second year dinner, we were over $200,000 that had been raised in that little city…”
Grover Beach, California: Jim discusses a similar initiative in Grover Beach, a small Southern California town with a population of 12,618. Despite lacking traditional venues, the organization successfully hosted a Vision Dinner in a renovated barn, raising over $150,000—a significant increase from their previous annual fundraising of $5,000.
Notable Quote (07:22):
Speaker A: “They raised over $150,000 right after. It blew their minds. It blew their mind out of the water.”
The hosts methodically address the three primary objections rural nonprofits often present:
No Good Venue:
Lack of Volunteers:
Difficulty in Attracting Attendees:
Notable Quote (10:11):
Speaker B: “It is definitely a scarcity mentality. It's the woe is me. I don't have what other people have...”
A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to the importance of adopting an abundance mindset. Both hosts emphasize that believing in the potential of rural communities is crucial for success.
They draw parallels to biblical principles, referencing Paul's teachings on renewing one's nature to support a transformative mindset shift.
Notable Quote (27:13):
Speaker A: “Paul talks about this in the Book of Pruning Back. Yes. You know, he talks about, you know, putting off your old nature to put on the new nature.”
Jim and Jason outline the comprehensive support systems their mentorship program offers to ensure the success of Vision Dinners in any setting:
Perfect Vision Dinner Program:
Winning Strategies:
Mentorship Program Features:
Notable Quote (25:09):
Speaker B: “I've got a colleague and his wife that started a wedding chapel, a wedding facility in a very rural area in Texas. And they are killing it because they are the only game in town.”
Speaker A (29:19):
“We're going to take you all the way through Christmas and all the way through the new year. It ends last week of March, and then you're going to do your vision dinner in April.”
The episode wraps up with an urgent call to action, encouraging nonprofit leaders to join the Perfect Vision Dinner mentorship program starting October 28th. Jim emphasizes the limited availability and the need for prompt action, especially regarding board approvals.
Notable Quote (31:24):
Speaker A: “Head over to fundraisingmasterminds.net, check out the Perfect Vision Dinner. We've only got two weeks left.”
Jim and Jason reinforce the effectiveness of their system, assuring listeners that with the right mindset and support, rural nonprofits can achieve fundraising success comparable to their urban counterparts.
Listeners are encouraged to leverage the insights and support offered by the Fundraising Masterminds to transform their fundraising efforts, irrespective of their community size.
For more information or to join the Perfect Vision Dinner mentorship program, visit fundraisingmasterminds.net or scan the QR code provided in the podcast's video format.