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What the Fundraising
254: The 1% Advantage: How Small Improvements Drive Big Impact with Adam Miller
00:31:07
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- [00:00]
Adam Miller
It's more important to do the right things than it is to do things right. And we spend most of our time trying to do things right. But we may perfect doing something that's irrelevant, that doesn't matter, that nobody needs. And so it's more important to make sure you're doing the right things. And so I've always spent at all of the organizations I've worked with a lot of time on the product and the roadmap. So like, what are we working on? What's the priority? What are we doing now? What should we be doing next? And how do we be effective in doing that? Because really, that's one of the most important things.
- [00:38]
Mallory Erickson
Hey, my name is Mallory and I'm obsessed with helping leaders in the nonprofit space raise money and run their organizations differently. What the Fundraising is a space for real and raw conversations to both challenge and inspire you. Not too long ago, I was in your shoes, uncomfortable with fundraising and unsure of my place in this sector. It it wasn't until I started to listen to other experts outside of the fundraising space that I was able to shift my mindset and ultimately shift the way I show up as a leader. This podcast is my way of blending professional and personal development so we as a collective inside the nonprofit sector can feel good about the work we are doing. Join me every week as I interview some of the brightest minds in the personal and professional development space to help you fundamentally change the way you lead and fundraise. I hope you enjoy this episode, so let's dive in.
- [01:33]
Welcome everyone. I am so excited to be here today with Adam Miller. Adam, welcome to what the fundraising.
- [01:39]
Adam Miller
Thank you. Thanks for having me, Mallory.
- [01:41]
Mallory Erickson
I'm excited to dig in about all of the things, but let's start with you just introducing yourself to everyone, telling them a little bit about you and your background and what brings you to our conversation and then we'll dig in.
- [01:52]
Adam Miller
Great. So I'm Adam Miller. I'm the founder and CEO of Instill and I came to this industry by way of a prior tech company. So I was a founder and CEO of a company called Cornerstone on Demand that grew to become one of the largest cloud computing companies in the world and the largest training company in the world, having serviced over 75 million subscribers using the platform to train and develop people around the world, helping them to realize their potential. We over time had 7,000 companies, nonprofits, government entities, and other types of organizations using the platform to train and develop their people and it was very successful business. It grew from my one bedroom apartment to 3,000 employees in 25 countries, servicing people in 192 countries and 53 languages, and delivering, over the course of that time, over 2 billion courses to people around the world. So at the same time that I was working on Cornerstone, and this goes back about 20 years, I got very involved with a number of different nonprofits, Some local, some national, some global. The one people probably know the best is Team Rubicon, which I got involved with when there were three marines with an idea. And we grew that organization to be one of the top humanitarian aid organizations in the world, in the largest veteran service organization now with over 170,000 volunteers doing missions all over the world, helping with disaster relief and recovery. In that experience, that extensive nonprofit experience, working with literally over a dozen non profits, in almost all cases as a board member, in many cases as chairman, and in some cases as the founder, Scaling those non profits gave me a lot of insight into how the nonprofit world worked and how fundraising worked, but also what the challenges were with technology. Because, interestingly, one of the realities was, even though I was running this very big company that had become a public, multinational business on the board level, I was always the tech guy on the board. So that meant if somebody had a problem with their computer, they came to me. If they were trying to figure out some IT issues, they came to me. And of course, if the nonprofit was making any decisions about systems, that came to me. So I was involved in system selection, system implementation. And what I saw over time was that most nonprofits had two choices. They could either use a system that was old and somewhat obsolete, or they could use a system that wasn't really built for nonprofits. So it was modern. It was able to. To do things technically well. But it was never built with nonprofits in mind. It was never optimized for nonprofits. And so that's what we aim to solve with Instill. So in many ways, instill is my quote, unquote, legacy play, because I knew I was able to help a dozen nonprofits, but I knew I was never going to be able to help a hundred nonprofits on my own. But with, and still with a focus on helping nonprofits to maximize impact, I would have the ability to help maybe thousands of nonprofits have more impact and make the world a better place. And that's how I got here.
- [05:49]
Mallory Erickson
I was saying before we hit record, that your history and legacy and everything you've done is just incredible. I feel like you are four people in one person. So I don't really know how you did so many things concurrently. But one of the things that really struck me when I was reading about your leadership at Cornerstone, and I'm sure this was true at Team Rubicon too, is how much you as a leader are. Were agile and like, thinking ahead and really, like, I don't know, revolutionary in a lot of ways in terms of thinking about what's next. And I see something very similar in Instill. Right. Which is this dissatisfaction with this missing link between the data we have about our donors and what we can actually do with it. And I'm just curious about your reflections there, because I think right now in the nonprofit sector, there's sort of like no skill that's more important than seeing around the bend. Right. And taking yourself out of this exact moment that we're in. And so I don't know if you have any advice for leaders from your own leadership around how you do that.
- [06:57]
Adam Miller
Yeah, I mean, that really is several different questions rolled into one. Sometimes I've heard people describe me as having my head in the clouds, my feet on the ground, meaning we're trying to be visionary. We're really thinking about the future, what's possible. Right. Head in the clouds, thinking about the future, but feet on the ground, being pragmatic, being self aware, understanding what's working and what's not working, what are real constraints, what are resource constraints, maybe system constraints, and what are requirements and how do we solve for both those things? And so to me, visionary is a nice label, but the reality is somebody who's just attentive. So are you paying attention to what's happening? Are you reading about what's coming? Are you listening to your partners, your customers? Are you watching what's happening in the world? And paying attention really helps you understand what's coming next. And the more you do this, the better you get at it. So you start to be able to understand the signal from the noise. One of the challenges of paying a lot of attention is there's a lot of noise out there, so it's easy to get distracted. So one of the things, for example, with Cornerstone that we always said was, if you could think it, we can build it. So that was kind of a premise that we had that our constraint was not technology. It was never going to be technology that constrained us. It was always just going to be the ability to have the vision and to think of the right things to build. That's one precept. Another one is it's more important to do the right things than it is to do things right. And we Spend most of our time trying to do things right. But we may perfect doing something that's irrelevant, that doesn't matter, that nobody needs. And so it's more important to make sure you're doing the right things. And so I've always spent at all of the organizations I've worked with a lot of time on the product and the roadmap. So, like, what are we working on? What's the priority? What are we doing now? What should we be doing next? And how do we be effective in doing that? Because really, that's one of the most important things. And then the. The third piece of it is we want to make sure that we're understanding the impact of what we're doing. So, for example, sequencing could be very important in a business or an organization. You might have a goal of something you're trying to accomplish. How you go about achieving that goal could be a multitude of different avenues. And so understanding what is the most efficient path, what order should I be doing things in to get to that point is really important. And for me, part of it is painting the vision for other people. So a big job of CEO is to be persuasive, and it's persuading people about that vision of the future, which really is about alignment. It's about telling the story in many different ways so that people understand. And that's true for obviously your clients. It's true for your partners, it's true for your investors, but it maybe is most true for your employees. Right? Your employees need to believe what you want to do. They need to understand what is the goal, what are you trying to get to, and how do you get there. And what I find is that almost at every level of an organization, this is true for, for profit and nonprofit. Most people don't think about the goals. They don't think about their destination. They think about maybe some generical, right? I want to be successful, I want to have impact, but not specifically what they're trying to accomplish. And, and if you don't do that, it's very hard to come up with the right route to get there. So I say it's very similar to driving without a destination, right? You would never go on a long road trip and not know where you're trying to get to. That's the most important thing, is having an idea, right? It doesn't matter what GPS system or map you have if you don't know where you're going. So understanding what's next, what you're trying to do, and how to get There is premised on knowing where you're trying to go. And so that's helped all the nonprofits I've worked with be more effective by understanding what are we trying to do? How do we break that down to tasks that we can accomplish, what is the right order of those tasks? And then let's go do them. Let's staff them properly, and let's go do them.
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Mallory Erickson
Okay. There's so much you've managed to answer, all the different layers of that question. And I want to go back to what you were saying about what not to do because. Or what not to focus on. I love that. Like focusing on what's right instead of doing it right or. I can't remember exactly how you said that, but I think about that.
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Adam Miller
Instead of doing things right, you gotta.
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Mallory Erickson
Yeah. The right thing.
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Adam Miller
The right things instead of doing things right.
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Mallory Erickson
Yes. Because, you know, this correlates with two things I talk about a lot. One is like the trap of perfectionism, and that really being a stress response. And it's a delay tactic, not really a 100.
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Adam Miller
I see non profits do that all the time.
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Mallory Erickson
Yes. So there's this difference of, like, seeking excellence versus perfection, which is just this unattainable thing.
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Adam Miller
Can we talk about that for a second?
- [12:38]
Mallory Erickson
Let's talk about it.
- [12:39]
Adam Miller
I love that topic. So I agree, 100. That seeking perfection often is not somebody trying to seek perfection. It's a way to procrastinate. It's a way to put off what you're doing and usually is a sign of insecurity about what you're trying to accomplish. What I find is the most successful organizations out there are not trying to be perfect. They're just always trying to be 1% better. Always. And so as often, as said, the difference between Olympian with a gold medal in somebody that's not even on the stand is often less than 1%. So the 1% difference in this continuous drive to constantly be just a little bit better means that over time, you truly become excellent. And that's how people get to world class, by just constantly thinking about what could be better. So I always viewed part of my role as CEO or chairman as constantly looking around. I always use the boat as the analogy. Right. We're on a boat. We're in this together. We're rowing together. There's a lot of boat analogies for organizations and companies and teams, but I always think about the leak on the boat. Every boat has a leak. The question is, can you find it? And so I always thought a big part of the job of the executive team and the leaders of the organization, again, whether it's non profit or for profit, is looking for the leak. Where's the bottleneck? Where's the thing that can be better? What are we weakest at that we need to improve? And by the way, there are things you might be weak at that don't matter. And so it's fine to be weak at those things, but there are other things that you might be weak at that do matter. And you need to understand the difference between those two things and continue to improve. Like, continue to seek ways to do better, to do more. And to me, it's as simple as let's always get 1% better. So no matter what we're doing, let's get 1% better. And in the case of Cornerstone, I did it for two decades. By the end of two decades, you're really, really, really good. And that's what happened. The whole team, every part of the organization is very strong, very successful. And the same is true with Team Rubicon. We just kept getting better and better and better and better at what we did. And now we're a top humanitarian aid organization in the world. You think about that sector that was kind of a finite market with a lot of big incumbents, disaster relief. If you think about the big organizations out there, some of the biggest nonprofits in the world are in that sector. And yet we were able to break through with this idea of constant improvement, continuous improvement.
- [15:29]
Mallory Erickson
Okay, I love that. And I feel like. Well, I want to also talk about that piece around identifying what not to do, because I feel like nonprofit leaders. And this was definitely true for me early in my career where I, like, held a lot of guilt around what not to do or saying no to things. And that absolutely held me back from being able to pursue excellence in the areas I should have been for. Focused. And I'm curious about how, because I love that mentality and that prioritization. And I'm curious how you think about that in terms of how you're building and still. Because I think that's something that's really important about donor relationships and stewardship, too. Like in my coloring book for fundraisers, one of the pages says, let them go. Because I do feel like we have to have that alignment and that discernment and kind of like ruthless dedication to identifying that people are or are not our people. And even though it's hard to say that somebody is not your people, it gives you the time to focus on the people who are. So I'm curious about your perspective there, and then how that, like, shows up in the product.
- [16:39]
Adam Miller
That's right. So there's a sales book called Hope is Not a Strategy. And so often you see nonprofit executives and development teams really hoping, hoping that this person's going to come around, that their gift's going to go up, that we're going to find some bluebird donor out of nowhere to help us. Hope's not a strategy. You need to have a real strategy. And in the case of Instill, what we talk a lot about is relationship intelligence. Like, do you have intelligence about the relationship you have with your constituent, with your community, and do you understand those people? Well, and I'll just give you a really specific feature that speaks to this point. We have in inter. We spend a lot of time on interactions and tracking interactions, analyzing interactions. We have an interaction report in. One of the really basic things we show you is a visualization is who are the top five donors, and who are the top five people by number of interactions. And so what you'll find is that inevitably you're having enormous number of interactions with people that are never going to give and haven't given. And so that's an example of exactly what you're talking about, which is, don't waste too much time with a fool's errand, right? Trying to get water from stone. You know, it's not going to happen for you. So how do you continue to refine what you're doing? So you're focusing on the right people. You're driving engagement. You're getting people more involved, more engaged with better relationships, which, of course, lead to more impact. And one of the things I learned very clearly with all the different nonprofits I've worked with is that the path to engagement varies. There's not one right path. It might have been with a very small dollar donation. It might have been with one volunteer event. It might have been because you became a member of an organization you were excited about. It might be because you advocated one time for a group or because a friend brought you to an event. Any of those things could be kind of the starting point. And the way you build your engagement over time also can vary tremendously. I've seen most often the best volunteers, the most useful volunteers are often the people that become your best board members and are the most engaged and that the people who are giving the most money typically are the people who are also the most engaged. A lot of people focus solely on capacity and don't think enough about affinity and propensity and really that's more important than capacity. Because quite frankly, what I always tell fundraisers is that as a major donor myself, I didn't start out as a major donor, but I started out as a donor. And so I often will tell tech executives who are mentoring or even whole teams. Right. Younger people in the tech world that philanthropy is a habit. It's not something you learn when you retire. Right. The people that say that they're going to be philanthropic when they retire are maybe, hopefully, but naive because those people typically do not become philanthropic when they retire. I have always found that philanthropy is a habit. That habit could start when you're really young and may involve like $5 or $10. And if you're somebody who is giving five or $10 and gets successful over time, you just start adding zeros to it, but you're still giving the same five or ten dollars that's with more zeros.
- [20:48]
Mallory Erickson
I love that. I mean, I've heard so much about like, you know, university fundraising. And I remember graduating and getting a call to donate and being like, what? Like, I have no money. And I graduated around the 202008 recession. Right. So all of us were like, what? We just graduated college and don't even have jobs. But learning more about that, that habit building. Right. That the purpose is not that they think that a recent graduate is going to give a huge gift, it's that they want to start to build that habit of alumni giving. And so, yeah, I could not agree more. And I've heard more and more about the predictive modeling, removing wealth indicators completely from, you know, major gift recommendation. Because there's so many other things that tell us so much more about how somebody is going to be engaged and involved. And so I love that. I know we don't have time to talk about everything I want to today, but what do you think think is one of the other, like, kind of big myths or things we get wrong in fundraising? Either because the systems around us have been built to prioritize something that's the wrong priority. And that's kind of what instill is, is determined to help solve for or anything else that you feel like is really getting in nonprofit leader and fundraisers way.
- [22:04]
Adam Miller
Yeah. One of the big ones is not understanding the household. So a lot of nonprofits, because most CRM systems were built around a sale. Right. Which is typically to an individual. If I'm in a corporate sale, I'm going to be selling to you, maybe your team, but I don't care who your spouse is. I don't Care who your kids are. Those aren't relevant in corporate sales. So systems that were built for corporations don't understand the concept of a household. And yet in the nonprofit, it's all about the household. And because I had been on some of these boards and very involved, I would typically be working directly with the organization. A lot of times they would send thank you letters. When it got to the point later in my career where I started making major gifts and what they and they were addressed to me and they were lovely letters. But what they didn't realize is that my wife opens all the mail and so she would see that they were thanking me and not her. And that would be the last gift that organization got. That would be the end of it. So not understanding the household. You know, we worked with this school where kids were going to school and gave a major gift to the school. And then we started to be harassed for the like classroom donation thing where they're trying to get everyone in the classroom to give like $50 or $100. And literally we're getting harassed. And it's because they didn't connect our kids to us and didn't realize that we were the ones who had given this, this big gift. Again, it soured the relationship with the school. So that's a simple thing to fix. So that was one of the first things we did with instill was focus on the household in the community or in the case of a corporation, focus on who are the employees of that corporation. You know, a lot of times nonprofits will say, oh, remember to ask for corporate match. Or you know, let's encourage people to try to ask their corporation to give money. But having also been on the corporate side and being on the executive team on the corporate side, I know that most corporate gifts are based on where the employees are involved, not random. It's what are the executives engaged with and what are some of the key employees who are not necessarily executives but important or critical employees in the company. And what we find is that most nonprofits don't realize who the employer is of their constituents. Way that helps them understand, hey look, you should be talking to this corporation directly because you have 10 mid level donors from that corporation and some of them are senior and they probably can get the corporation to directly get involved. That's another example where people don't have the intelligence around these relationships to make the right moves.
- [25:19]
Mallory Erickson
Yeah. Wow. And I mean there's so much what I'm hearing in that, that through line really is around that alignment piece, like alignment with the household and the family and how they do things, like making sure that you're. Well, you have kind of like the knowledge and connection of all the different relationships at play and then being able to identify alignment with. With other institutions based on patterns that you're seeing in your database. Yeah, I love that. Okay. All right.
- [25:49]
Adam Miller
The other core insight I had just working with all these nonprofits and running these nonprofits was that because there are disparate systems for each way you interact with a constituent. So there's a donor management system, and there's a crowdsourced fundraising system, and there's a membership system, and we have a volunteer management system, and we do something else for our events. You don't get the. The holistic view of the constituent, and therefore, you are not properly engaging them because you don't understand how they're related to the community and to the organization holistically. You only understand it piecemeal. And as a result, except for the. The top people that you happen to personally know, you are not best able to bring that person in even further because you're not able to benefit from the knowledge of all the different ways that they're involved or all the people they're connected to within the organization, which ultimately is what drives engagement and drives impact.
- [27:04]
Mallory Erickson
Yeah. I mean, this goes back to that piece you were saying before around, like, relationships are just not linear. Like, they. And they don't all progress in the exact same way. And I feel like that truly is the fundraising, like, tension point right there. Right. Is how do you operationalize something that has. Something that has a million if then statements. Right. Or like, two adventure versions? And so that is, you know, I think, for fundraisers who are being held to these metrics that feel so concrete, but then they're dealing with an eco. But they're dealing with an ecosystem that is anything but concrete in terms of how people, like, move through it. Having something, like, instill that can, you know, identify patterns and give you visual ways of seeing things and surfacing the right things at the right time for you. It just makes all the difference and I think gives people a sense of comfort, like, in how you all organize moves management that doesn't feel just so like everybody's in cultivation. And I don't know what that means.
- [28:13]
Adam Miller
Right, exactly. Exactly. But we've been talking about it thus far from the perspective of building up that relationship. Right. And getting more volunteer hours, more donations, more support. But it also works in the other way. So if you think about retention, people are often surprised. Oh, I don't understand they were giving for the last five years. Why'd they stop giving? Or their gifts were going up and up and up and now all of a sudden went way down. What happened? If you understand all the other ways the person is interacting with the organization, it's extremely predictable because they've stopped going to events, they're not volunteering anymore. They're getting more and more disengaged with the organization, and that's going to result in disengagement at every level, including their donation. And so it works from both directions. Right? It works to help you identify where you should focus and how you should focus, but also where you have risk and how you can avoid that risk or mitigate that risk.
- [29:21]
Mallory Erickson
Oh, my gosh, I love that. Okay, I could talk to you forever about this, but I think folks should just go check out Instill so you can see what we're talking about. Because I feel like seeing it in real life also just, like, connects a lot of the dots if they're wondering, like, how on earth could a platform do this in a way that feels and looks really different than what I've seen before? So that should be folks, next thing to do. But Adam, thank you so much for joining me today. Is there anywhere else in particular you want to make sure folks go or connect with you or the team?
- [29:51]
Adam Miller
Yeah, I mean, you can reach out to Instill IO and you can always email me adamstil IO oh, my goodness.
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Mallory Erickson
Well, thank you.
- [30:03]
Adam Miller
Appreciate the time. Thank you.
- [30:12]
Mallory Erickson
I hope today's episode inspired or challenged you to think differently. For additional takeaways, tips, show notes, and more about our amazing guest and sponsors, head on over to Malloryerickson.com podcast and if you didn't know, hosting this podcast isn't the only thing I do every day. I coach, guide, and help fundraisers and leaders just like you. Inside of my program, the Power Partners Program Formula Collective. Inside the program, I share my methods, tools, and experiences that have helped me fundraise millions of dollars and feel good about myself in the process. To learn more about how I can help you, visit MalloryErickson.com PowerPartners Last but not least, if you enjoyed this episode, I'd love to encourage you to share it with a friend you know would benefit or leave a review. I'm so grateful for all of you and the good heart hard work you're doing to make our world a better place. I can't wait to see you in the next episode.