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What the Fundraising
269: Beyond Passion: The Art of Leading with Skill, Not Just Spirit with David Rhode
00:30:58
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This episode is brought to you by our friends at Zefy. I have been excited to learn about Zefy and what a game changer it has been for so many organizations. Plus, the platform is 100% free. They even cover credit card and transaction fees. You can set up donations, sell tickets, and manage your donors all in one place. And it only takes 15 minutes to get started. Start fundraising today at Mallorykson.com backslash Zeffy. That's Malloryerickson.com backslash Z E F F Y.
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Ask the hard questions which I encourage people to ask, which is have you ever raised money before? Have you ever done this before? If you were to raise money, how would you go about doing it? And how could I be of help to you in order for that to be easier for you? But like really just making it, putting them in the spot of saying, oh my, wait a minute, you have to ask other people for money. Yeah. I can't just write you a check. Well, if you write a enough check yourself, I guess you don't have to. But we want to make people understand that it doesn't all have to come from them. They can reach out naturally to people that are in their personal and professional network.
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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. I'm uncomfortable with fundraising and unsure of my place in this sector. 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 find fundamentally change the way you lead and fundraise. I hope you enjoy this episode, so let's dive in. Welcome everyone. I'm so excited to be here today with David Rhode. David, welcome to what the Fundraising.
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Mallory, it is so great to be here. I'm delighted.
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I'm so excited for our conversation that is long overdue. Why don't you start by just telling everybody a little bit about you, your work, and what brings you to our conversation today?
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Yeah, I've been in the nonprofit sector for a little bit more than 20 years. I started as a founder and Ran an organization for 15 years. I also do some consulting on my own, which is mostly CEO mentoring and coaching. I work with a group called PenPAC, which is all University of Pennsylvania alumni that are engaged as pro bono consultants. So I'm the deputy director of that organization, and I help really work with our nonprofit clients to tee up consulting engagements. And I also teach at the University of Pennsylvania. I teach nonprofit branding and nonprofit consulting, and I really enjoy that work. So got a lot of different perspectives, and a lot of those ended up sort of being the impetus for the book of mine, that which we'll talk about shortly. So I come here with a lot of different energies and perspectives, and I'm really delighted with my ability to kind of help support leaders who are doing so much of the heavy lifting in our sector.
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Yes. Okay. I actually want to dive right into the book because I feel like that last piece that you said there leads really nicely into. So the title of the book is Passion Isn't Enough, A Practical Guide for Nonprofit Leaders. And even in the title alone resonate a lot with the theme of the book. As somebody who fell into the nonprofit sector, thinking I would end up going back to law school or public policy school, ended up really falling in love with the nonprofit sector, but driven by my passion around education policy and change, initially learned trial by fire for so long, and a lot of that I led to my burnout because I really came in just thinking that my passion for these causes could be enough to propel me forward and maybe being misled a little bit by some early success, that it was enough to give me the energy for a while to do the work that I was doing. And I'm neurodivergent. So I also have this sort of justice sensitivity component that I think fuels some of that, like, passion gasoline. But talk to us about, like, what you've seen throughout your career and supporting organizations that really led to the importance for you of putting this content together in the book. And what's the underlying idea that you want people to walk away with?
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Sure. I. I think I can speak from my own perspective. I was very much like, you got into the sector passion driven. Learned the hard way that the skills that I had, which were many but weren't exactly a perfect match for the nonprofit sector, that there are things that I. You always. You don't know what you don't know sometimes when you get in. And the passion piece can be a positive because it certainly people respond to your passion, your energy that attracts board members, that attracts resources initially. And So I think those early wins, you can kind of feel like, I got this, I'm good. And then the more you get into the role and the position and the more time progresses. And the reason for the book is that being successful in this role involves being skilled and competent and confident across an array of areas, functional areas. And so it's very unfair. And we've seen the job descriptions for executive directors with 28 bullet points, like, but at the end of the day, in a small organization, you are the one everybody looks to to be successful with communications and fundraising and board development and hir and on and on and on and developing a budget. And so it's my opinion that we need to be patient with and supportive of our leaders and give them the necessary training so they can be successful in all these areas. And it's not going to happen all at once. And the book is just a simple guide that sort of breaks the job down into its component parts and is very accessible from a conversational perspective. And then each of the chapters finishes with actionable next steps or how they can kind of put one foot in front of the other to gain a little momentum when they face some of these challenges for the first time.
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What do you think are some of the biggest, I don't know if like myths are the right way to say it, but like surprise challenges when they start to sort of come out of maybe that early honeymoon phase, like, what are some of the first signs perhaps for a non profit leader that they have been riding on passion when they might need to develop some of their like tools or skills in these other areas?
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Yeah, great question. The area where I see it first rear its ugly head is around board members. So a lot of times people get excited about the work that we're doing. They're like, I'd love to help you, I'd love to join your board. And then we're flattered by that. We say these terrible words, yes, sure, or whatever was, hey, instead of saying, well, I'm really delighted to hear you're interested, let's have a conversation about what being a board member would involve and what those expectations might look and feel like, where you would go through the time, maybe the financial commitment and the other elements of that job so that when they come on board, they know what to expect and we know what we can expect of them and then we can revisit those things over time. I didn't do a very good job of that upfront. And a lot of the leaders that I've coached since have Sort of struggled in that area. So I really have a really clear roadmap for that. I want them to. I have a three page document which outlines the roles and responsibilities. It's easily adaptable to any organization. And then I had a conversation and I went painstakingly line by line to make sure they understood what being a board member was going to involve. And then on the other end, I'm an advocate of evaluating our board members on an annual basis. How do they do against the basic things that they come to board meetings? Did they make personal gift, they introduce us to somebody who might be a prospective board member? Did they attract other financial resources? Did they come to our events, did they see our programs, whatever those things might be for your particular organization and see how they're doing? We don't need 100% score for everybody. What we need to do is make sure people are engaged in a meaningful way and, and they've got their head in the game and they feel comfortable because a lot of board members just don't have that comfort level on making those introductions, whether it's fundraising related or not. And I know so much of your work is about giving people the chance to practice and kind of work out things and develop our skills. And so, you know, we have to be really mindful that even if people want to support our work, they don't always have the skills to do so either as board members. So part of our responsibility is to coach them up while we're coaching ourselves up. And so that's the area where I see it kind of come like that's the most common challenge. There are many others, but that's the one that I think of first.
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Yeah. And one of the things I'm hearing in there is, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong or if this is too big of a stretch, but I think about some of the things that led to me not asking harder questions or holding people accountable, or even creating structure around certain relationships and commitments and things like that. And so much of it came from insecurity that I felt around the value that we were offering. Felt feeling like I was trying to get somebody to do something they didn't really want to do, or I was just so grateful that they wanted to, like, say my organization's name. I was like, even if you do that once a year, like, it's worth this. And then obviously it was like sinking me in other ways. But I really didn't know how to reconcile that inside myself in a way that didn't at the time. That didn't have me sort of in a reactionary mode, just saying, okay, yeah, that sounds great. Because I just wanted to. To, like, be done and close the deal or get somebody to join the board. So talk to me a little bit about that and. And the, like, inner awareness and work that's required to execute on some of the stuff that you're talking about there.
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Yes, and yes and yes. So I think insecurity is a very important word. Insecurity or discomfort in talking about money, where that could come from, personal baggage and other things that have happened in our lives or who knows what. And yes, we are grateful that people want to support our work, and so we don't want to upset them or ask too much. But at the end of the day, we're doing ourselves and our organization a disservice. We're undermining our own work if we don't put the big cards on the table, which is without money, we can't help people. Without money, we can't hire staff, we can't do the work that we're intending to do. And we really need our board help push us in the right direction and lead us. And so we're going to work in partnership to do that and ask the hard questions, which I encourage people to ask, which is, have you ever raised money before? Have you ever done this before? If you were to raise money, how would you go about doing it? And how could I be of help to you in order for that to be easier for you? But, like, really just making it, putting them in the spot of saying, oh, my, wait a minute. You have to ask other people for money. Yeah. I can't just write you a check. Well, if you write a big enough check yourself, I guess you don't have to. But we want to make people understand that it doesn't all have to come from them. They can reach out naturally to people that are in their personal and professional networks. And so I think we do have to just kind of get over ourselves a little bit, and we have to just. I have undermined myself early in my career, and I've gotten over that. And I think what I got over was the simple notion I felt I had to sell people on my organization. And later on, I felt that that wasn't what I was doing. What I really was doing was sharing this opportunity with them and trying to make a match. If the what we're doing matches with the kind of things you care about, then you're going to want to get involved. And getting involved can mean a bunch of different things, including supporting us financially. But I didn't feel like I had convinced them of something. They, I had to just bring them in close enough so they understood our work, understood our impact and if I did a good enough job of that, they would then say things like, well, how could I help? Or what are things that are coming up that I could support? Or like, you know, there's, there's natural ways that these conversations go if we don't get too wound up and to kind of undermine ourselves. So I think that that piece is very real and I think what we need to do is bring it up and, and so it's on the table. We don't like have to make it the elephant in the room. We're going to have conversations. A lot of times doing it in a full board setting is I think the wrong setting. I think those happen one on one more effectively. We can talk about it at the board level, but you're not going to get people to talk about their insecurities at their own challenges in front of other people. They're not going to want to do that. So I think we could talk about it at the macro level with our board. But then as an executive director we're going to really engage our board members. We have to open them up one on one so they can tell you where they're stuck and you can help them get unstuck.
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Wow. Okay. There is so much there to unpack. And I appreciate, I mean I always appreciate people saying the quiet part out loud or like what's been true for them in their own experience. And I think one of the things, and I'd be curious like any of your kind of tactical recommendations here from a like self coaching perspective. Right. Like I feel like I've done a ton of work over the last 15 years that have really changed how much self deprecating I do or how much I sort of let myself off the hook to say harder, more uncomfortable things or to just work through discomfort that comes from vulnerability, you know, and definitely when stress is high, when I feel worried about something, when I. My scarcity mindset creeps back in because we're all surrounded by things that are sort of constantly trying to reinforce these ways of being that you're trying to teach these, these alternate pathways around showing up and. But I'll still get off calls sometimes and be like, oh no, like I didn't do it. I should have said blank. And I didn't because in the moment I wasn't totally aware of My discomfort in the situation, I thought I was just doing something that felt really good, but what I was actually doing was avoiding the discomfort of saying the harder thing is there. Like, how do you think about from that, like, coaching and consulting perspective, or if you have any strategies that you recommend for folks that help them kind of hold true to the practices that you're teaching them even in the moment as they're building that muscle.
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Yeah. So the actual skill or tactic that I employ, and it gets back to this notion of not feeling like I had to do the selling, is I became more comfortable asking questions of prospective donors and just listening. What is it about our organization that's attracted you to our work? What is. Do you think we do? Well, for organizations that you do support and have supported over, like, whatever those questions come up with five to 10 questions that can be your question. And donors will tell you what they care about. They'll tell you how they want to be communicated with. They'll tell you the kinds of things they're struggling with, whether it's their own budget or their timetable or whatever. And so once they let you in, and they will, because people like to talk and they like to, you know, tell you how they go about things, because that's just human nature to a certain degree. And then we could play back to them. Well, you mentioned this, and let me tell you what. One of our programs that specifically really been doing a great job of that, or one of the programs that we're trying to grow, and one of the reasons I'm here today is hoping that you might be the kind of person that would. Would help us lead this kind of growth. And that's going to take some more resources because we want to hire a new person to help do X and Y and Z. And they're going to say something like, do you have any idea how much money you're looking for? Or whatever? We're looking for $100,000. We're looking for four people each of that might be able to come up with $25,000 to help us do X and Y and who knows what. But the point is, the questions become the security blanket. It becomes the way of opening them up. It becomes the important way of just learning what motivates them and how they think. And so it just then makes our job as a fundraiser more of one of connecting the dots versus trying to, like, close them. And so I feel like if we ask questions, we will be more successful and we will be more comfortable and we can listen better. The second thing I think tactically is you got to make a buddy or two. Like, one of the things I've heard in the process of writing my book was nonprofit leaders feel the job is a lonely job. They don't have a lot of other people to talk to. There's only so many things you can go to your board with in terms of your own vulnerabilities, say, might apply to your staff. So finding other nonprofit leaders that you could have a virtual coffee with or go out and have an actual adult beverage with or whatever that you could talk to and say, how do you handle this? And what you'll realize is everybody struggles with these things to a degree, but just hearing sometimes other people struggle with it makes you feel less like it's a problem that somehow unique to you. Now everybody goes through the same nonsense. And so that's actually also comforting. So I think going through the process of finding a few professional peers that can just let your hair down a little bit and talk through some of these challenges, and then coming up with your list of questions that you can ask when you're in front of donors will ease some of the discomforts that we have. It's. These aren't like one size fits all band aids, but I feel like that's. Those are good steps in the right direction.
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Okay. I love all of that advice, and I want to talk about that, like, kind of question asking, insight gathering piece a little bit because something that I have been hearing so much recently. Well, okay, there's sort of two sides to this question. Something I've been hearing so much recently is around if the fundraiser had realized how to really dig into why I was the most aligned with this institution. There probably could have been a million dollar gift, but we stayed kind of surface level. And I've been giving a hundred thousand dollars, but it's like, not the thing that I really, really care about. And nobody asked me, like, about my mom's cancer treatment. Like, they think I'm here because we had our baby at the hospital. And I'm curious, like, for your advice around some of that, like, insight gathering, question asking that can really lead to more of that transformational giving. And there's a sort of second layer to this question, which is something I've been hearing a lot recently is. And we're seeing people practice this a lot in practivated, which makes me know that this is a pain point that they're experiencing is they've developed a close relationship with a donor, and so they actually feel like a level of friendship or Closeness that makes them feel a little bit uncomfortable or asking questions that feel like they're on the hunt for information that would then get them to propose a different type of involvement. So I'm hearing this from fundraising managers a lot like our fundraisers, they have these great portfolios. They're maintaining those donors and those relationships. But we know that that donor has the capacity to be giving a half million dollar gift. And the fundraiser is giving a lot of reasons why they won't ask for more than 100,000. What we really think is rooted there is that their relationship feels so close that they don't know how to kind of transition that into more of an impact driven relationship. And I hear everything that you're saying around like the shift in thinking from like thinking about it from the orientation of like just asking for money. These are major gift officers that clearly know how to ask for money. But then they get to this like depth in relationship with where things are stalling because they don't know how to hold that relationship. The closeness of that relationship and the impact conversations in tandem. So I'm curious about your advice like around these types of issues.
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It's interesting, I think we seek this closeness, we seek the relationship and then it's interesting when we develop the friendship we feel like maybe we're almost violating a trust by taking it to a different level. And I just again, I think it's a lot of negative self talk. We kind of get ourselves into these things. I like to try to figure out ways and I know this is maybe answering your question a slightly different way. I would just go back to what's the last time that donor has like experienced our programs? Like I would love to get you in to see what we're doing firsthand. It's really, I know you've been involved with a long time and you get a lot of our updates and I really appreciate the opportunity that we began had to become a little bit more closer over the years. And your support's been amazing. I really want you to see what's happening because there's, there's some other things that are going on where it's going to take some leaders to kind of take the organization to the next level. And so I think you can kind of give them some hints and direct messages that say what you've been doing is great. And we're looking for people who are going to be willing to step because we have some really amazing opportunities and if they can see the work you're doing and experience touch it in some way that makes sense for them, then they may be inclined to say I love this and like I want to do more of it and whatever. Is that possible with everybody? And is everybody going to have the time and wherewithal to do that? No, but I think that that's an important step. And I think the second thing is maybe it's not a capital campaign, but you could almost sort of like frame it as a capital campaign in a way to say the X that you've given in the past is something that we don't take for granted. It means so much. I want to talk to you about what it's unlocked for us as an organization. That impact is really special and we're trying to raise an additional X amount of money to do whatever it is. And I'm wondering, you know, look at adding to what you've already done in a way that could help us achieve not just what we've done at this level, but take it to the next level. So I think you can, without even putting a specific number, say, would you be open to. And you know, we're looking to add and, and then they'll tell you, I can't do it this year because. Or it's interesting because I had a three year commitment with this other thing, but that'll be ending and now I'll have some more flexibility or. But I think we have to find ways of just there's like you don't ask, you don't get. Like you've got to find ways to put the agenda item into the conversation and then read them enough to know if this is something you can pursue further. But I get them to try to experience the organization and I would try to reframe the previous gifts as almost like a sustaining gift and that you're trying to add to it because the organization's at a different moment than it was at in the past.
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Yeah, I love that. And I wonder if there's like something like. As you were doing that kind of like moment of role play. I was thinking about like there were some of my donors from one of my last organizations that came to my wedding. You know, they were. Because I was so close with them and what I got to talk about in all of our time together was like what mattered to them the most in the whole world, you know, and what they worried about and what they cared about. And just like hearing you say that I'm thinking about how did I transition from talking about their kids to talking about our organization. But actually, really everything about our relationship was Rooted in impact. Not always impact for my organization, but like the life they were trying to lead, the decisions they were making about their kids, the what they were worried about that was happening in our local community, this news story, they heard about that. And so actually so much of that relationship because we were so values aligned and we were so. Because that had been what had been a part of building that intentional relationship from the beginning. It actually, like, wasn't strange to talk about the impact of the organization and then be able to say, sometimes, hey, you know, like, I'm sharing this thing because this is like, top of mind for me and what we're. What I'm dealing with over here at blah, blah, blah. And then their interest and excitement. I would be like, oh, I wasn't even necessarily prepared. That would be the thing that we're working on that you're the most excited about. Does it make sense for us to put some, like, intentional time on the calendar to go over that program and sort of like what we're looking for there to make that possible? We could set aside some, like, kind of sacred time for that. And it just sort of like naturally ebbed and flowed in and out of those conversations. The same way if you were talking to a friend or somebody you were close with about something, they got excited and you would say, hey, do you want an introduction to that thing? Like, I know somebody over there. Do you want me to, like, make an introduction to help you out? But you're right. Like these, like, the self doubt in our head. All those things, like, get in the way of maybe these more natural ways that we know how to be. We just, like, disconnect from.
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That's right. I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. We care so much about the organization and the results, and so we want to script this conversation. And I don't know, there's this great quote, like, I don't know which boxer said it, but, like, everybody has a good plan until you get punched in the face. You know, like when you're in a donor conversation, it's rarely going to go to script. So let's not put ourselves into that mindset. Like, it's going to go tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick along the way. It's not that linear. It's much more organic. We have to be open to that ebb and flow that you're describing. And I love the fact that you were like, why are you involved so much philanthropically? Like, what are you trying to do with your family and. And what kind of legacy do you want to leave? And what kind of goals do you have and what kind of impact do you want to make? And I'd love to learn more about that because I feel like we've gotten to know each other, but I don't know that I've ever asked it this way. And I just want to understand more about, like, what's behind that because it's so. It's so special. And I feel like I'd like to learn more about that because I just, I don't think that I've taken the time to do that. So would you mind talking a little bit about that or. Or, you know, for organizations that you've gone from X to Y, like, what changed? Like, how did you decide to do that? How do you go about making your decisions? I' I don't even know if we've talked about that. Like, so you can be a little bit, like, it's on me, like, I probably should have and I'm sorry that we didn't get to it, but I just think that, like, we talk to people all the time. Like, we don't have to make it so hard. And I just think we. It's just like we put all of this weight on ourselves and I think that, like, it would be better if we didn't. And we could just go in there and say, I'd love to talk to you about our organization and, you know, I'm so delighted that we got to spend some time together and here's what's going on and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't have an agenda for today. I mean, if you want to talk about any of these things more, I'm happy to do it, but I know that we've only got a little bit of time and we can set up more time in the future, just like you said. I mean, but again, I think we just, we feel the weight. We know the stress the organization's under. We know the real story about why this gift is so important. And I just don't think that that's healthy for us in terms of self care. And I also don't think like, that kind of, maybe desperation kind of comes through in the wrong ways. So I feel like if we can somehow just become people and not fundraisers, like, maybe we would have a little bit more of a natural conversation. And yeah, we know what our jobs are and, and we know why we're in front of them. But people, not to organizations, and that's a person right in front of us. So let's talk to them like a person that we know.
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Yes. Okay, that's the perf note to end this on. Tell folks where they can go to connect with you. Buy the book. All the things Wonderful.
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It's David Rhode R H O D E find me on LinkedIn. That's the easiest place. I love to connect with people through that platform. Passion Isn't Enough is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble and all places that books are sold online. And I love to hear from people after they get the book and I make a general offer, which is if any organization buys this for their entire board that I've agreed to, I'll zoom into a future board meeting and talk to them and just answer questions or do whatever to try to show my appreciation for them buying the book, but also because they've made a commitment to professional development for themselves and the board and I want to be part of that journey. So yeah, that's me and that's the book. And I'm so glad, Mallory, that we've had a chance to chat a little bit today. It's been great.
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Me too. Thank you so much for joining me.
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Take care. Be well.
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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 Mallorykson.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 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. You and the good hard work you're doing to make our world a better place. I can't wait to see you in the next episode.
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Fundraising is hard. Every donor conversation carries pressure and most fundraisers are expected to just figure it out through trial and error. That's why we built Practivated, the first ever AI powered donor conversation simulator. Made just for fundraisers. It's a safe, judgment, free space to practice your pitch, refine your storytelling, and build the confidence that drives real results for your mission. Because conversations move missions forward. With Practivated, you and your team can practice anytime. Get real feedback instantly and walk into donor meetings ready, not rehearsed, but prepared. See how practice changes everything. Try practivated today at www.practivated.com and start building confidence. One conversation at a.