← What the Fundraising
What the Fundraising
273 - Behavioral Science for Better Donor Conversations with Cherian Koshy
00:34:36
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Foreign.
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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 Mallorykson.com z e f F Y.
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When someone has an affinity towards the work, they care about animals or the arts or healthcare or they have a strong affection to their alma mater, whatever it might be, they see something about themselves that they want to live out and they will find a way. Generosity will find the way. So they have this future tense about themselves that they want to live out and it's the better version of themselves.
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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, 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 and to help you fundamentally change the way you lead and fundraise. I hope you enjoy this episode. So let's dive in.
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Welcome everybody. I am so excited to be here today with my friend Cherryan Koshy. Cherian, welcome to what the Fundraising.
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B
Thanks so much Mallory. It's so great to see you.
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A
It is always good to talk to you and every conversation we have I learned something, think about something differently, end up quoting you later. And we have a super, super special conversation today because we get to talk about your upcoming book. So before we get into all of that, just tell everybody a little bit about you, even though I feel like you need no introduction but sort of like what brings you to our conversation today and then just give us a little peek about the book.
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B
You are too kind. I appreciate you and your friendship so much. Well, so I have been fundraising for almost 30 years and so this book came out of a lot of frustration for me and it was because. And my colleagues will laugh when they hear this, but they will remember me, like, pacing down the hallway when we got gifts that we didn't know why they came in, or we would have responses that we didn't understand, or we would not have responses to things that we didn't understand. And that drove me down a rabbit hole of like, why do people do what we didn't expect? And trying to figure out what drove donors to make decisions. And it led me down the path of behavioral science and taking a class at Harvard Business School and doing a bunch of research both inside of our sector and outside of our sector, putting all of these things together. I did workshops and webinars to help people navigate the same things and learning along with people testing things inside of our organization. And one of the biggest learnings that I found was that it was really hard to find all of this stuff. And my goal with the book is just putting it all in one place. So it's not a book that's my musings and my learnings of working this out as much as it is a literature review. It's almost 270 pages and 40 pages are source citations. So it is really like for those people that are steeped in the work and feel like they're experts in, it's the opportunity to have all of the research in one place and to be able to say, from 1960 to 2005, here's everything in one place that they have as a. Ready?
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A
Okay. Amazing. And maybe before people, while you're sinking into this episode, you should just go wherever books are sold, your favorite book buying place, and order. Neuro Giving the Science of Donor Decision Making. You can send me a thank you note later, but you're going to want to by the end and then you're going to be busy. So I'm just telling you, do it now. Trust me. Okay, so one of the things I want to ask you about kind of right off the bat is we're going to talk about the psychology of donor decision making. But I want to talk about what is maybe misunderstood here. And I'm curious if you think, is it that we misunderstand why donors and how donors make decisions, or is it that we just don't consider it because we get caught up in how we do things or how we've been taught to fundraise and we don't necessarily put ourselves back in that seat and really like fully think it through? Or is it that we, we misunderstand and we believe something that actually Isn't true.
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B
So, yes. And I mean, I think you and your work does a lot around how fundraisers are in a different place and need to get into a different place around their own thinking. And that is absolutely true. I think it's also the case that fundraisers may be misunderstanding how donors are thinking. And so the science indicates that most people are. They start out as generous. So there's studies that indicate that pre linguistic babies will get woken up from naps and they're hungry, and they put them into a room with an adult who will drop a strawberry. And so the kid's hungry, they'll pick up the strawberry and give it to the adult. So they've done this over multiple studies. Meta studies indicate that kids will demonstrate empathy and altruism and generosity. Now, there's lots of things that come into play and as people grow up and they think that people will take advantage of them and cultural dynamics that come into play. But the whole point there is that we start telling ourselves stories about what it means to be generous. And then as fundraisers, we carry our own baggage. And you do all of that work as well. But we then start to create all of these other barriers around what the nonprofit's supposed to do and how we're supposed to transact gifts and what that looks like that makes it so complicated for someone to just do what they most want to do. And we make the assumption that wealthy people are generous, which is absolutely not necessarily true. And we go after the wrong people rather than seeing people who have a deep affiliation or affection to the cause and engage them. And what I come back to, and what the science comes back to, is that when someone has an affinity towards the work, they care about animals or the arts or healthcare, or they have a strong affection to their alma mater, whatever it might be, they see something about themselves that they want to live out, and they will find a way. Generosity will find the way. So they have this future tense about themselves that they want to live out, and it's the better version of themselves. So if we can tap into that, that identity alignment model, then we can actually get out of our own way. We can actually do less work, sort of, and make it possible for them to be generous in the way that they want to be generous. So I think it is truly a yes. And it's. We've been misunderstanding and we've not necessarily understood the donor's perspective in this work because we've overcomplicated it. And when we see instances now, like where people start a fundraiser of their own or they're helping people individually. There's all kinds of examples where people are being generous on a day to day basis. So there's plenty of examples. Everyday generosity that cuts against the current.
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A
Okay, so.
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What is like when you think about from that vantage point, the fundraiser's role? Because, and I don't know if this is something that you've ever said before, but because of where I sit in the sector, I've always been uncomfortable with conversations that are sort of about how little you actually have to ask for money. Only because I think it breeds fundraiser fear. Right. That you should just be able to go build relationships be and the money is just going to come when it's supposed to come, you know. But I also really appreciate what you're saying. There's this like push, pull here right around how do we facilitate the right environment for money to move, for people to identify inside of them where their deep passion and alignment lives. How do we facilitate that process without being obsessed with the money in a way that like breaks, breaks all of these things? So talk to me about that from the sort of like identity and trust perspective on the donor's side. But then also I know you have a chapter in the book around like the science of storytelling and emotional engagement. And so my guess is there's some connective tissue between those things. So talk to me about that.
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B
There's so there's a lot of things to unpack there and what you said, and I want to be clear about one thing. We can't just create relationship and then assume that dollars will come to us. That's very much a faulty assumption. So actually my daughter helped me out with this example that I'll just show on the screen for those people that are listening. This is a remit card that I got in the mail today and she colored out like the name of the organization. But it's a remit that doesn't have any indication of how much to give or how much will help. And the reason why this is problematic and it expands now from like small gifts to very, very large gifts. Donors don't necessarily know how much will help or how much generosity will make a difference. And so the fundraiser's role, to answer your question, is to guide the donor on the journey of generosity. It's to help them understand they care about the cause, they want to be generous. But what does that journey look like? So it's to help them see what their generosity could do at different levels or where their engagement with the community could do something. And it might not even be a dollar amount. It might be a volunteer activity. So I want to make sure that we're clear on. There's essentially, and this comes back to behavioral science in a lot of ways, around nudges that people may have heard of, around anchoring and priming and those types of. But it's our job to provide a recommendation to the donor once we understand what they are trying to accomplish. But also on the kind of caveat side of that, it may be the case that what the donor wants to accomplish is not appropriate, is not aligned with what the organization's trying to do, what's best for the community. So at some point we may find a disconnect between the organization and the donor and we may just say this is not the right fit. And that's okay. So that may be our recommendation as well. But to your other question around identity and storytelling, the biggest issue that I see is that we talk about storytelling at a very high level around, you know, the idea that we should tell stories. And stories are very important. Don't get me wrong, stories are the most ancient way of transmission of values, of being able to create memories that transmit between people and across generations. So storytelling is very powerful. However, sometimes fundraisers think that any story is a good story or that any emotional story is the right story to tell, but that doesn't necessarily connect to the right story for the donor at the right time. And what I mean by that is sometimes people feel like we need a tear jerking story because that will drive the right emotion for the donor to make them give to our organization. But in reality, that not all donors need or want that type of story at the time that they're thinking about giving. It's really about understanding what is the donor's connection to the cause. So the way that I think about that is what drew the donor into their affinity to the organization. It might be nostalgia, it might be that they were helped by that organization or they have some community tie to it, or there's a moral belief that they had that pre existed their own family relationship to giving or generosity, any number of things. And then whatever that is to where they are in the present and their current relationship to the organization. And then where do they see their relationship to the future of the cause related to the organization? So if we keep telling very sad stories, what happens is actually a concept called compassion fatigue, which is very different from donor fatigue. Let me be very clear. Compassion fatigue happens when our brains essentially shut down and say, my brain can't handle all the sad news all the time. I just need to move away from this because I can't process all of it. And it's not to say that I don't care. It's just that I need relief from the concern. And we see that a lot of times from fundraisers as a profession, but from care workers, from, like, medical professionals, where they just. They can't be in that space all the time, and therapists, all those types of professions. So that's a real psychological phenomenon that has to be addressed. Where trust comes into that is where donors need to understand. We also sort of oversimplify or try to. I don't want to say hijack, but sort of try to shortcut trust in organizational settings. Everyone knows in personal situations that trust happens by consistency and vulnerability. Those two elements are critical to trust. If you and I only spoke once a year, we wouldn't be as good a friend. But we talk pretty regularly and we know about each other in a reasonable amount of depth. Like, I know things that happen in your family. I know, like, other things that are at a sufficient level of depth that there's a reasonable amount of trust between us that's at a personal level. For my other friends, if I didn't show up in their lives and we didn't talk about personal things that on a consistent level and a level of vulnerability, that wouldn't be a trusting relationship. This. It's not the exact same thing with a donor, but we can't just show up once a year with a donor and be like, hey, I remembered your birthday. That's not a trusting relationship. And where that plays out with organization sometimes is where we think that a personality can broker that trust for an organization, where the person stands in place of the cause and it's attaching the personality instead of attachment to the organization, because if they're trusting the person and the person leaves, then they're not really attached to the organization. So there's a number of nuances around trust that we have to really unpack as we think about this entire process. So it goes into a lot of depth around identity and trust and storytelling that what this all comes down to, Mallory, is sometimes we are unintentionally creating barriers for our community, for our stakeholders, for our donors to engage with our organization. And we don't really know that we're doing that. And if we just step back and we audited what we were doing and we were more intentional about the decisions that we were making, then I think we'd have more opportunities to Create longer, more sustainable relationships.
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Have you all heard about Zefy? I've been excited to learn about this new platform and all they're doing to support fundraisers like you. I recently heard about a fundraiser who used Zefy for an event where normally fees had eaten up hundreds of dollars. Instead, they kept it all. That's because Zefy always covers credit card and transaction fees. So 100% of what you rate raise goes to your mission setup. Takes less than 15 minutes. If you want to be like the 50,000 nonprofits already using Zefie and have more of what you raise, go straight to your cause. Start fundraising today@malloryerickson.com backslash Zefie. That's Malloryerickson.com Z, E, F, D, F, Y.
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Okay. Wow. There's so much in there for people to unpack, and it's just so incredibly valuable to sort of like, walk people through that experience. And. And I think, you know, one of the things I'm wondering about in hearing you kind of like, talk about all these components is and tell me if I'm wrong, maybe I'm pulling the wrong kind of, like, insight out of here. But what I'm hearing underneath all of this is, like, how much opportunity as fundraisers we, like, really have and not in. But, you know, it's interesting. Like, I feel like sometimes when we think about understanding how somebody else's brain works, like, I've had many people over the course of my life tell me, I'm very grateful you're on the good side because, like, you thought about all these things from a way that was designed to manipulate people or get something that you wanted that was actually bad for another person. Like, knowing all this knowledge could be used for evil. And there is a part of what you're. I love what you're talking about. Right. Like, I'm. You and I, we are friend geeks around all of this stuff. But I. And something I experience in my work sometimes, too is like, when we talk about some of this, like, what drives action, what drives motivation. Like, people can get a little uncomfortable sometimes that they're doing something wrong by knowing that and, like, leveraging that information to inspire giving. And I think you're just like, tackle this one because. Hit me.
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Yeah, this is in the introduction. It's. There are several times in the book to the point where my editor was like, okay, we get it already. Where I. This is not a hack. This is not how you use the book. There's a whole section around ethics. And so truly, if the book is not for people who want to try to manipulate donors or who want to find these shortcuts or hacks to get people to do what they don't want to do. Because there are little things that you can do to get people to make a short term decision that will benefit you, but it won't work in the long term. And the reality is that if there are people that are going to try and use any of these tactics in a way that manipulate people, they'll see through that relatively quickly and it will become transparent. And so I, I sort of explain in the book why that will happen and how that will happen. And so my hope is that folks will certainly use this for good. I also indicate where technology and especially artificial intelligence is going the wrong direction. And I see there are places where we have to be on guard for how this could be misapplied and misused in that case. But the truth is that there is science, there is data around what we ought to be doing in the right way, because this is how all of our brains work. This is how we make decisions. And so it's not about dumbing it down. It's not about moving someone to make a decision that they wouldn't already make. That's why I start with the principle that if people are generous and they're aligned with your cause, and they have an identity that they want to see for themselves in the future, then what we are doing is encouraging them to be their best selves, to make a decision that would most benefit them and to do that in an easier, frictionless way. That's what they most want, is to create a legacy to help other people. And that's the best version of themselves. So as a fundraiser, that's the most exciting part of our jobs, is to help someone live out that opportunity for themselves. That's what I would love to see people get out of this work and this book and the research that's that is still coming, right? There's more research out there that's happening in this space.
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Okay, I love this. What do you think when you were starting to do either the research that sort of inspired you in this whole topic or for the book? Like, I know when I started writing the book I had an idea of where I wanted to go, but all the research I did around the book, I learned new things. Like that changed some of my, like, argument for you in either that, like early research around this or for the book. What has surprised you the most? Like, what's something where you're like, wow, this would have changed everything. If I hadn't understood it 30 years ago, oh, geez.
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B
I mean, I think this. This would have changed. Like, having all of this in one place would have changed so many things for me. And it's interesting that, like, as I go through it, I would have tested more, I would have tried different things. I would have written things differently from the start. I think the biggest thing that I would have done differently, though, is when people do appeals, when they write things or even when they talk to donors. Well, let me separate those two things. When people write things, they often approach the behavioral science, because people talk about behavioral science in terms of, like, these nudges, especially ones around urgency. Like, you have to create urgency. And our whole world, our whole sector is around urgency for the end of a calendar year or the end of a fiscal year. And what the research indicates is that a lot of times we're talking about urgency from our own perspective, the organization's perspective. We need you to make, like, a decision by the end of the calendar year. But that's not necessarily the donor's urgency. It's not what matters to them. So, like, kids need backpacks or, you know, whatever isn't what's holding them back from making a decision. There's something else behind that that's holding them back from a decision. It might be something related to trust. It might be something related to the giving vehicle. It might be any number of things that we have to unpack. And we're making assumptions around the timing for, like, end of year or something like that. So that's one thing. The second thing is actually around the words that we choose to use and how. And we were talking about this last week in person. Like, we don't necessarily think about the words that we use when we're having conversations with donors in enough seriousness or enough practice that we should. And because of that, we may inadvertently create barriers because we're not as prepared as we should be for the conversations with our donors. And there are all kinds of examples around individual conversations where the language that we choose, the phrasing that we choose, all have intentional or unintentional implications on how a donor perceives the work that we're doing. And so I really appreciate the work that you're doing with Practivated because that gives donor or gives fundraisers the ability to practice those conversations before they're in a real life situation and get that feedback. That's literally something that I wish I had 30 years ago. If I had that 30 years ago, I would have Made fewer mistakes, bar none. Bar none. Like, I went into a lot of donor conversations 30 years ago and said something that I should not have said and immediately knew, oh, I shouldn't have said that. Or I walked out of that conversation and the donor was confused. And I didn't know that the donor was confused until well after. And had I practiced or had I known that that would have confused the donor, I could have done something different. But this is the opportunity that we have at this day and age to be able to work in a sandbox environment, to try it out, to use the knowledge that exists of what should the language look like? What do those words mean? And be able to get feedback on it.
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Well, thank you for those kind words about practicing. And, you know, I just want to say, like, I wish that the words didn't matter so much. You know, like, it's interesting, like, running proactivated. And it is the tool I wish I had too. Not even just for the words, but just the whole, like, how it would have changed my energy, my ability to connect my openness to those conversations. Like, I mean, it would change everything for me. And yes, I would have slapped my face a lot less, like, leaving donor meetings, you know, I, like, was forever that emoji with the woman slapping her face, you know, like, oh, man, I can't believe I said that.
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Every single person has been there in their personal life, in their professional life. Everyone has been there.
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Yes. Yes. And I wish it wasn't so easy to ruin a moment, you know? Like, I think there's, like, this part of me that, like, hates that it's that easy to, like, break something like that, you know? But it is. And I think your research around how much it matters what we say and how we say it is, like, was something I really needed to read and be reminded of because I think there's a part of me that, like, just feels like it shouldn't be that way, and that's not fair. And life is too dynamic. And why can't we just give everybody the benefit of the doubt? But it just isn't how it works.
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Yeah. And I mean, so a bunch of chapter four talks about the neuro linguistic implications of, like. Our brain makes these microsecond decisions about the words that we hear and thinks about them in a way that we don't even consciously process. And so in those moments, we're not giving people the benefit of the doubt, even if we want to give them the benefit of the doubt. The brain's already decided, and it shades how we think about the rest of the conversation. So what I talk about with leaders all the time is you may have the benefit of 30 years of experience, like you and I have gone through this process. We have the benefit of having made those mistakes. But do your other teammates have that same benefit? Or are you throwing them into a baptism by fire of having to learn it by trial and error of going through a meeting with a donor to figure out how to say what to say and experiencing it in a real actual situation where a donor gets confused, where a donor doesn't understand, and that risks trust, it risks relationship. That's not what you want. No one wants that. So they need the coaching in advance. They need the practice in advance. They need to understand the science in advance. That's what all of this is about.
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A
Okay, wait. Can I ask you one more question?
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Yeah.
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Because. So I just had this light bulb moment. It's interesting because a lot of times we'll hear people say, like, if, you know, when we're talking to them about practivated, I'll ask them, like, what are you doing right now to like, put in. Help your folks, like put in these reps and, and build this muscle memory and this practice and their language and find their voice and. And they'll say, well, we have them try to start with the lowest stakes donor conversations. And I think that's how I maybe would have talked about it. And I don't actually mean lowest stakes, like lowest capacity. I think sometimes that's what leaders mean. Sometimes what they mean are the people who they think are going to give them the most grace. And. And what I'm hearing you say is, like, that's not a thing. Because people don't always decide consciously whether they're giving grace or not.
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B
That's right. That's right. That's exactly right. So even a quote unquote friendly donor is not actually able to make that decision consciously. So you're like, if we're in a real situation with a real donor, they're processing that information as a real donor, so they don't have the ability to not react words to those phrases. The only way to do a real role play is with a real person who is acting as the donor and not being the person. Right. Like not being the donor in that situation. So if you and I were role playing, that's one way of accomplishing it. But the challenge with that is there, it's scripted, right? Like you know exactly what the other person's going to say. There's no dynamic element to it. Even if there is, it's just you have an expectation around it. Right. Like it's fixed. Right. So I'm going to say what I'm going to say. You're going to say what you're going to say. It's assumed. So there's only so much time that you and I can do that roleplay. But if it's a real life situation with a real donor, the brain moves faster than the mouth. The brain is going to make those decisions. That's what heuristics are all about. Those brain chemicals are firing prior to the mouth making those decisions and prior to the the conscious decision occurs. So with all due respect to whoever's saying that, I don't believe that and it's not actually true.
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A
Yeah, I mean, I think I believed it for a period of time. Okay. I could talk to you forever. Other than people going buying the book again, please. I'm going to tell you one more time. You can send me a thank you note later. Cherry and Koshy Neuro Giving the Science of Donor Decision Making. Is there anything else you want to leave folks with? Where can they connect with you? Et cetera.
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B
So Neuro Giving Book if they want to pre order the book and there's a bunch of preorder bonuses for people that pre order the book and anybody who listens to this podcast, there's a special pre order bonus for them that's not available to anyone else. Just for being fans of Mallory Erickson.
- [32:58]
A
Oh my gosh, you're so amazing. Thank you for this conversation and for all the work that you do to support fundraisers and fundraising and all this research and just pouring everything into this for everybody. So thank you so much.
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B
Thank you for having me on. Thank you for all the work that you do and thanks for being my friend.
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A
Yeah.
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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 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 Formula Collection. 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, hard work you're doing to make our world a better place. I can't wait to see you in the next episode.
- [34:23]
B
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.