Nonprofit Expert Episode 25 – Lessons from a Fundraising Pioneer

DonorPerfect Ad 00:03
Welcome to Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect.

Robbie Healey Host 00:13
Thank you for joining us. It’s my pleasure to welcome you to Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect, and in this series of Read More

DonorPerfect Ad 00:03
Welcome to Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect.

Robbie Healey Host 00:13
Thank you for joining us. It’s my pleasure to welcome you to Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect, and in this series of conversations we’re talking about respect and relationships and resources and how successful development programs are mindful of all three and make sure that they are properly structured and resourced for success. I’m so excited right now to introduce you to Birgit Smith Burton. Birgit and I met each other through AFP and we share having served she currently and me in the past having served as a board chair of AFP Global. Her body of work is much more broad and extensive than that and I’m going to ask her to share with you a little bit more about her professional journey and the role she’s had and the things she’s working on now. So, first of all, Birgit, thank you so much for joining us.
Birgit Smith Burton Guest 01:16
It’s my pleasure, I’m so glad to be able to share this space with you. You don’t know that when I used to see you, when you were the global board chair and you would be up on the stage at the podium, I thought what job is that? That is so huge and important and I could never be that. And you set the bar so high that, you know, I thought that. You know I thought it’s not possible, but you have been so kind in how you’ve supported me and been just a role model, so I just want to thank you for that.
01:55
My journey as a fundraiser, you know, like many of my contemporaries, you know, I stumbled into a career. My contemporaries, you know I stumbled into a career. But what I’m most proud of it’s my first 11 years where I worked for the United Negro College Fund. They were hiring novice fundraisers or those that had no experience as long as you had a college degree, and UNCF, you know, helped us learn fundraising and that’s where I cut my fundraising teeth per se.
02:30
And then I was hired by Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and I was hired as the associate director for foundation relations, which was something I couldn’t even imagine that there was a job for a person who was the second in charge when it came to managing the university’s foundation relationships.
02:56
But I was kind of glad that they didn’t hire me, as they originally intended to serve as the first director of development for Georgia Tech and Emory’s joint biomedical engineering school, because that was really kind of scary to think that I would be raising money for biomedical engineering. So I just retired from Georgia Tech after 25 years. Oh, and let me also say that while at Georgia Tech in 1998, when they hired me, I was the first frontline fundraiser of color that Georgia Tech had ever hired. And so, kind of going back to my fundraising roots of you know, starting my career working for the United Negro College Fund, I did decide to create the African American Development Officers Network, aado, which connected me with the fundraisers in what’s called the Atlanta University Center, which are the historically Black colleges and universities in Atlanta, not far from Georgia Tech.
Robbe Healey Host 04:04
And that’s certainly grown so much. That’s grown so much. Talk a little bit more about that.
Birgit Smith Burton Guest 04:09
Oh yeah, from 20, yeah, from 25. So I reached out to my counterparts at Morris Brown, clark, atlanta University, spellman, morehouse and, you know, invited them to join me in creating this network. So there were about 25, 50 of us and we would meet annually at Georgia Tech. And now, 25 years later, the network is nearly 4,000 members strong across the country and in Canada, and 85% are fundraisers of color or those in the fundraising profession, and the remainder are allies and talent managers.
Robbe Healey Host 04:55
Your work’s not done, that’s for sure. Not at all, and what you’ve been talking about, of course, is relationships, because none of that would have been possible without relationships, and you wouldn’t have stayed at the fund that long, you wouldn’t have been involved at georgia tech that long had you not been really really good at relationships. And I know, when we were talking earlier, you mentioned four key elements that are necessary for healthy relationships trust, credibility, accountability and transparency. And of course, I’m sure there are others. But talk for a little bit about trust, accountability, credibility, transparency. Why are they so important? How do they play out in individual relationships?
Birgit Smith Burton Guest 05:47
Sure. So, yeah, my title you know, as Associate Director for Foundation Relations. Then I became the Director of Foundation Relations, the Senior Director of Foundation Relations, the Executive Director of foundation relations. But you know, core to my work with private philanthropic foundations and many of them were family foundations, so we’re dealing directly with the family which was the source of the primary source of the money, was trust and credibility, and strong relationships cultivate trust and we all know that donors are more likely to give when they believe in your organization’s mission and see that you’re accountable and transparent. You know, one of the things that I didn’t say that I feel is interesting, particularly, robbie, with smaller organizations, is that your own and individual fundraiser’s own financial support of an organization is viewed by a donor or a prospective donor as being really key to their belief that you believe in the mission and the vision of the organization. And I didn’t note that earlier, but when I worked for UNCF, our president of the organization would not invite individuals to serve on UNCF’s board solely because they were representing, you know, a major corporate gift. They had to bring their own money, make their own gift to the organization as well. So you know, if you, if your company, gave $100,000 to serve on that board. You also had to make a gift. You know your thousand or $5,000 gift and it shows, you know, a strong level of commitment. But trust and credibility is important and I’ll give you an example that I can actually share.
08:11
It was public, it was in the news about a gift that was made to Georgia Tech. It was made by a Georgia Tech alum, His name was Tom Dupree Jr and he made a $20 million pledge to Georgia Tech’s College of Management and at the time you know the, the business the company is company that he was the chairman of was doing well and the stocks were around twenty eight dollars a share, were around $28 a share. By the time it came time for him to make good on that pledge, the stocks had decreased to somewhere around I think it was like $1, maybe a few dollars a share or maybe even, you know, 28 cents a share. I know it had dropped significantly. He couldn’t make good on that pledge and it hit the news and it was a big deal in the news.
09:10
And the reason I mentioned that is because that did cause some, you know, depending on how you read that news report, it did cause some trust issues with prospective donors or those who were already donors in. You know being able to trust the university in that. You know had we carefully vetted that gift and we had announced it, made it so public that we put his name on the school’s College of Management and then had to take it off. So you know that’s just an example of how you know publicly trust issues can impact. You know donors’ interest in giving.
Robbe Healey Host 09:53
You raise a very interesting point and of course that was a financial reversal that I’m sure he didn’t have any way of predicting, nor would he have wanted to predict, but regardless he couldn’t fulfill that. I think the other thing that has caused some real trust issues with donors is the recent issues around social justice, and I don’t know about your experience, but in my experience right now, boards are more and more willing to have critical conversations about what is our naming structure? What’s our naming policy? Who’s going to decide whether a naming can be awarded? Are there any circumstances where we would strip a naming from a building? And, if so, who has to decide that? Do we unilaterally, have the right to do that?
10:42
And I think it’s a sad commentary, but an important one for us to really understand that when we accept a commitment from someone, we’re connecting their brand to our brand, we’re connecting their reputation to our reputation. End, we’re connecting their reputation to our reputation. And the analogy I always love is imagine this beautiful flat piece of paper and you crumple it up into a ball. You can straighten it out again, you can flatten it out again, but it’s never going to look the same. So, repairing your reputation, do you ever get it back to where you want it to be, and I hope, in the case that you’re describing, people could understand he didn’t intend to have this financial crisis in his life, but I think that that issue of credibility and respect is so interconnected and boards are more willing to have those conversations, and staff who in the past may have heard, well, if we have a crisis, we’ll deal with it, then are in a position to say let’s get out ahead of this, so if we have a speed bump, it doesn’t become a crisis.
Birgit Smith Burton Guest 11:54
Well, absolutely get out ahead of it, because you never, you know you’re not able to anticipate of it, because you never, you know, you’re not able to anticipate. You know what might happen to someone financially. Or you know there was a building named for Bill Cosby’s wife on the Spelman campus and it had, you know, the Cosby name on it and you know it was a women’s center. So I recall, when you know the situation, you know revolving around Bill Cosby and you know his legal issues and you know public trial, what Spellman faced with, what they should do with that name being on that building. But I will say in closure on that that you know it wasn’t Mr Dupree’s, you know fault. They did accept, you know his explanation, and named a scholarship in his honor with the money that he had already pledged and paid up to that point. So there was resolution.
Robbe Healey Host 13:02
And that’s good, because I think you I can only imagine you want to keep a strong relationship with a donor, even when they have a reversal, and I think we saw a lot of that in the mid 2008, 2009, where people had very difficult time and the charities that were the strongest at the end of that were the ones that maintained the relationships with the donors, whether they could give it that time or not. So relationships are not about the cash. Relationships are about the engagement with the mission. Do you have any other thoughts about that?
Birgit Smith Burton Guest 13:37
Sure, so I think about advocacy and ambassadorship and a couple of the organizations that I’ve been involved with. One was named for civil rights icon, reverend Hosea Williams in Atlanta, georgia. His organization started out as Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless. It’s now Hosea Helps. He established the organization because he had come out of a restaurant with a fish sandwich wrapped in wax paper and a man who you know was without a home to live in asked if he could have the sandwich and Reverend Williams gave him the sandwich. And the man ate the sandwich and the wax paper all at the same time. And that impacted Reverend Williams so much he started the organization Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless and I got involved with the organization I don’t know, maybe about a decade or so after he started it because his daughter and his son-in-law had taken it over, and so I served the organization for 17 years on the organization’s board.
14:53
But what I really learned by engaging with people in the community, some really big financial contributors to the organization but also some modest givers you know the $100, the $200 donors who, when they would spend time with the organization serving people during the meals of Thanksgiving and Christmas and during the Martin Luther King holiday and they would meet the people who were many times Robbie, no different than them, and they realized that they could be a paycheck away from being in that same circumstance, just being able to engage and be involved with the services that the organization you know is responsible for providing. They turned from just donors and volunteers to advocates, so they would be down at City Hall you know lobbying, you know for at City Hall. You know lobbying, you know for. You know more resources and you know legislation that would impact those who find themselves, you know, facing food insecurity or are unhoused. And so I really learned that, beyond the gift, as you said, you know just the transaction of making the donation.
16:26
I was involved with an organization that they actually created a board name. Instead of board members, we were called the organization’s ambassadors. And one other organization was the Center for Black Women’s Wellness wellness. You know learning how to get people to reach into their own circles of influence and find out that they had connections with people that could actually, you know, serve as in an advocate role. That would really help to advance the mission of the organization. So those relationships are huge and very key to helping these organizations oftentimes advance.
Robbe Healey Host 17:26
You raise an interesting point about working collaboratively and you might agree. There are always the hierarchies on paper and then there’s the way people actually engage with each other and sometimes that fluid engagement is fine, Sometimes it can get sticky. So when you had a situation like Hosea Helps, where people took on new roles and responsibilities, did that evolve to have someone trying to coordinate those people doing lobbying at the statehouse or beyond? How did that work? And I’m imagining it was a pretty scrappy organization without a lot of extra people to take on those roles.
Birgit Smith BurtonGuest18:14
How did that?
Robbe HealeyHost18:15
evolve.
Birgit Smith BurtonGuest18:15
Well, you know, good point, because truly I can tell you now the staff is still very small. I’m going to guess maybe about 25 people. But the volunteers, like I’ve seen, the volunteer list is 5,000 and 6,000 and 7,000 strong right that come out and help. And so when they’re organizing everything from, you know, helping to distribute clothing and provide medical assessments, you know there are volunteer coordinators among the volunteers who have the expertise and the knowledge who willingly step up and help to coordinate, you know, with the volunteer coordinator from the staff. But they’ve got the expertise that and the connections that you know.
19:07
I recall one time going down to, you know, to the city hall, you know, during you know, one of the what is it? The council meetings to actually sign up to speak during the meeting to, you know, advocate for, you know, certain grants to be given to the organization as well as to be aware of money that needed to go out into the community through other organizations. So I mean we know, you know, have both of us served as volunteers that oftentimes an organization without the volunteers and without the volunteer leadership and the volunteer you know volunteers that step up to coordinate the organization would never be able to do that you know on their own. They don’t have the bandwidth or staff to be able to organize that.
Robbe HealeyHost20:17
Have you in your own practice encountered a place where that fluid engagement between people at different levels or roles became a challenge that you had to navigate? Because I think most of us in this kind of work occasionally somebody wants to talk to us about something and it may not be the most appropriate point of entry. How do you navigate those things in your practice?
Birgit Smith BurtonGuest20:39
You know, robbie, I mean this can be challenging and it can be touchy, because I actually developed a really I actually developed a really really strong relationship with a major donor’s wife who actually it was his ex-wife who actually was extremely philanthropic. As a matter of fact, for 20 years she gave anonymously through a fund that I was only one of a few people that knew she was the money behind it. But in establishing this relationship it became just a little bit problematic because she valued the relationship with me and she would actually call that might be well, not might be, but that for staff that you know were managing the foundation, you know might see it as a little bit kind of circumventing them. Do you know what I mean?
Robbe HealeyHost21:47
And so so she had staff working helping her distribute her fund. Yes, yes. And they would see that as somehow going behind their back.
Birgit Smith BurtonGuest21:57
Well, it just not going behind their back. I mean, they appreciated and acknowledged and understood that it was her money, she could do whatever she wanted to do, but there still was an appropriate process. Whatever she wanted to do, but there still was an appropriate process. And so, you know, I was governed by the appropriate process in terms of completing the application, submitting the proposal you know all of the steps that were required to, you know, solicit the funds. At the same time I had developed a really good relationship with her and she would call and sometimes share some information that might have. It wasn’t that she was breaching any confidence, she was sharing her own thoughts and opinions and that kind of of informed me sometimes to make some decisions that might have been contrary to what the process was or what the foundation staff might think.
23:00
So I’ll give you a very simple, small answer. They might, the foundation staff might say that the limit that you can ask for is $100,000. I’m just throwing out a number for the sake of conversation. They might say the maximum you can ask for is $100,000. And she might tell me you know I really like this particular program and what’s happening yes, you should ask for a quarter million, ask for $250,000. Do you know what I’m saying? And so that would be hard because the staff is saying no, the cutoff is $100,000. But the person who holds the purse strings, whose money it is, is saying $250,000. So how do I do that? I don’t want to upset staff because I, you know, have a good relationship, but I also don’t want to miss out on $150,000 more. So you know what I mean, and it would be a careful, you know, sort of avoiding landmines in. You know, kind of sharing information but not, you know, disrespecting the process and giving the impression that I’m circumventing the process.
Robbe HealeyHost24:21
Right, yeah, I think anytime there’s a private foundation with a living donor, rules can be suggestions and it’s hard when you’re the staff person. It can be very hard. Yes, you also shared a scenario with me where you did some consulting work at Clemson where an interesting group of people wound up helping a donor see their potential.
Birgit Smith BurtonGuest24:49
Do you want to share that one? I was asked by a good friend to come in and give some advice and counsel to a small development team that was mostly consisted of fundraisers who were not diverse. There was one African-American fundraiser on the team and they were challenged with, you know, working with their particularly African-American alumni, and brought four Black alumni to sit in front of the development team and they could ask any question they wanted to ask, respectfully. And so they did. And these four alums one, he had graduated from the university in the late 60s, the first African-American to earn a PhD, and he was no holds barred. He was telling it like it is. He said don’t call me, don’t come see me if you aren’t African-American, because I don’t feel that you care what my interests are, what I want to, you know, to fund at the university. And right now I’m not feeling the warm fuzzies. You know about supporting much. And, robbie, you should have seen them. They were taking notes frantically. Don’t call him, don’t go see him. Oh, my goodness, you know they were traumatized. They were like never we’re not going to. You know, send him a note. You know they were traumatized. They were like never we’re not going to. You know, send them a note.
26:36
And the interesting thing was that he and one of the other panelists, a younger woman who was probably 50 years, his, you know, younger than him they got in a little bit of a banter about you know methods of soliciting. He said don’t ever text me or email me. And she said don’t send me anything through snail mail because I don’t check my mail more than once every three weeks. And he said that’s what’s wrong with your generation. And so they had this little bit themselves and they both were African-American alums of Clemson, and so it was a good conversation. People learned a lot.
27:13
And a few weeks later one of the senior development officers called me and said you’re not going to believe this, you know, but Mr So-and-so just made a half million dollar pledge to the university and you’ll never believe who asked him. And I said tell me, you’ll never believe who asked him. And I said tell me. And they said some of his classmates who are, you know, high level, you know executives, when he attended the University of you know racist treatment and you know from students as well as advisors.
28:10
And then they invited him to join them in making the pledge and he said he felt that they cared about him and what his interests were, and really his you know his disappointment and his you know gruffness was based on his hurt. He had just been hurt and he just needed someone to apologize for the hurt and then care about what his interests were. And so you know, I just find that interesting that you know, if you take the time and really understand a donor’s motivation and what their interests are, you can not only secure the gift, but maybe secure a gift multiple times bigger than you ever imagined. So I love that story and I love how surprised everyone was that he actually turned around and made a gift to the university.
Robbe HealeyHost29:03
When you’re telling that story, I’m reminded of that, saying that we’ve all been taught when you ask for money, you get advice. When you ask for advice, you get money. That seems like a classic case of listening to him getting his advice, and of course, there was no guarantee that you would get a gift that large, but at least he would feel heard, he felt heard, and you know I’m not calling him the Grinch, so please nobody listening.
Birgit Smith BurtonGuest29:31
I’m not calling him the Grinch, so please nobody listening, I’m not. But remember when the Grinch’s heart, that day, when he saw, you know them, and they were all singing Bahudore and you know dancing around and they said his heart grew 10 sizes, that day I feel like his heart grew 10 sizes when they said we’re sorry, Now I’m going to cry, Let me stop.
Robbe HealeyHost29:55
So I have two more questions for you before we finish. Imagine for a moment you’re at the beginning of your career. What is the best piece of advice you could have given yourself and the worst piece of advice you could have given yourself? Start with the worst, the worst. What do you wish nobody had told you? Because it wasn’t good advice?
Birgit Smith BurtonGuest30:16
Oh, that the road was going to be curvy and filled with rocks and and potholes and difficult to navigate because I’m Black. I was told that by a college advisor who told me so the crazy thing about that, robbie, is it was an advisor in a musical theater program that I had made it one of 15 people who were selected for the program over out of over 800 that auditioned for it. So the good and bad of that is, if he hadn’t told me that, I wouldn’t have left the major and maybe I would have made it to Broadway. Maybe not, but I ended up in fundraising, which ended up being the right career for me. So that bad advice, you know, turned into this, this great career that I’m in. But the reason why I wish he had never told me is because that stuck with me for a while, not just because I left the program, but that stuck with me for a while.
31:29
And having parents who lived through the civil rights movement you know who you know had challenges in their lives as an only child of them. If they had known that’s why I left the State University of New York at Fredonia they would have grabbed me by the collar and marched me back and told me to finish out my degree but I’m just saying the worst piece of advice, because that really that stayed with me for a long time. And how about the best, the best, exactly who it was, but who told me that I should really consider a career in fundraising. And I really didn’t know that it was a thing. But I decided, you know, with being hired by the United Negro College Fund, that maybe this was this, you know, was something that was new, although I remember the president and CEO of the Southeastern Council of Foundations in Atlanta. He said that his mother told him that he would have a more respectable job If he other than fun as a fundraiser since he had chosen fundraising.
33:11
Excuse me, he’d have a more respectable job if he played piano in a bordello than being a fundraiser. I’m glad she was wrong, right, but that you know. She told him that in like the I don’t know 60s or 70s. And so by the time I got into fundraising in the late 80s 90s, it was turning into a really true career and in 1995, in Buffalo, new York, I was making $50,000, which was a decent salary in 1995 in Buffalo, new York.
Robbe HealeyHost33:36
Yeah, it’s interesting how stereotypes influence our perceptions of ourselves. But yeah, I think I discovered you and I have one more thing in common my calling and fundraising was discovered by a mentor. I had no idea it was a thing or that I could do it, so bookends, afp, global Chairs and mentors found our muse.
Birgit Smith BurtonGuest34:00
Robbie, I can’t believe. I said I don’t remember who told me that. Shame on me. You know it was Charles Stevens. I wondered about that. Yes, but how am I sitting? I’m just tired. I’ve been on the road for three weeks. But I mean he. I mean you know, some people directed me, but he was the one that said stay in it and you can make a career out of it.
Robbe HealeyHost34:21
Good for him. I’m glad he did. I’m glad you listened Me too. So thank you very much for joining us. I’m sure your lived experience will be inspirational to many people, and I’m grateful that you carved out the time to do this with us today.
Birgit Smith BurtonGuest34:39
Well, thank you for inviting me.
Robbe HealeyHost34:41
Oh, you’re welcome, my treat, my pleasure. So this is part of Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect in our series Relationships, resources and Respect.
DonorPerfectAd34:56
Thank you for listening to Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect. For more information and a special offer, visit donorperfect.com/podcast.
00:00 / 35:12