The Year-End Ask:

All right. Okay, we have some people filing in. Okay, so good afternoon, or I want to say for some of you, good morning. I know it’s noon on our part, but welcome to the year-end ask: practical language, smart follow up and closing the gift presenting for us today is Mallory Erickson Read More

All right. Okay, we have some people filing in. Okay, so good afternoon, or I want to say for some of you, good morning. I know it’s noon on our part, but welcome to the year-end ask: practical language, smart follow up and closing the gift presenting for us today is Mallory Erickson Mallory is the founder and CEO of Practivated an executive coach fundraising consultant and host of the What the Fundraising podcast she’s dedicated to transforming the nonprofit sector by helping fundraisers move beyond transactional approaches to build lasting mission-aligned partnerships through her Power Partners formula. Mallory has trained over 60,000 fundraisers, blending executive coaching, behavior design, and strategic fundraising. Her book, What the Fundraising, explores how shifting away from a scarcity mindset leads to greater impact and sustainability. At Practivated, which Mallory founded in 2024, she continues to drive innovation in fundraising through technology, coaching, and science-backed strategies. So, if you’re ready to fundraise with confidence and alignment. Mallory’s work is for you. So before we begin, just a few housekeeping items. As always, the webinar is being recorded. It will be sent to all registrants in the next few days. If you have questions, please add it to the Q and A section so that it’s seen. If you add it to a busy chat, it could easily be missed. We also have one of DonorPerfect’s SDRs here with us to answer any DonorPerfect questions you might have. So Jonathan will be popping into the Q and A if questions are if he’s needed for some of those questions. So with that being said, Mallory, you are all set to get started.

Amazing, Lori! Thank you so much. Thank you so much to the whole DonorPerfect team. I’m so excited to be with you all today. Happy Wednesday! Although I keep getting the date wrong, it’s one of those weeks that feels like it’s a little bit different. But tell me, some of you have already started. But I love an active chat. Okay, so like I think that is what makes a webinar super super fun. So tell me where you’re calling in from. If you want to share something about your organization, or if you want to share your favorite like GIF or JIF, however you say that word. Just love, love, love, love connecting with everybody in the chat, and we have a jam packed session today because we are talking about the year end ask. And holy moly, it’s November, so we have two months. We have two months left, and this is a great time to be thinking about this, to be talking about this, and to be working through maybe some of the things. Oh my gosh, you guys are amazing in the chat. Some of the things that feel sticky this time of year. So I would also love to know if you want to share in the chat what you feel the most nervous about when it comes to the year end ask or talking to your donors right now, because I can keep that top of mind kind of as I start to move through this content. So I’m so grateful for Lori for that incredible introduction. I don’t think you need additional intro into me. Except the one thing that I’ll say is that I became an accidental fundraiser actually first as a managing director and then an executive director. And I would love to know. You can just put a little why in the chat if this applies to you. How many of you also identify as an accidental fundraiser? I had a lot of ideas about what fundraising is was going to be like, and it was quite different. And I call this my impact report fake phase, where I felt this pressure to put on this appearance like I had it all together. Everything was perfect, but the reality was quite different, and it was a constant hustle. I ended up developing chronic pain and completely burning out, and getting to a point where I was like, a year from now, I cannot be fundraising this way anymore. I either need to figure out an entirely different way to fundraise, or I think I need to leave the nonprofit sector. And I knew I didn’t want to leave the nonprofit sector, and so I ended up getting executive coach certified, trained in habit and behavior design and design thinking, and all of those frameworks came together fundamentally changed the way that I fundraise, fundamentally changed the way that I talked to, met with, raised money from donors, and not only did I start to raise a lot more money, but I started to love fundraising. So everything that we are talking about today is from inside those frameworks. So the end of your fundraising can feel really good to your donors and really good to you at the exact same time. Okay. The other thing that I want to like sort of call out here that I you know that. Really relevant to my story is that I know how much at end of year and end of year fundraising can leave us feeling depleted and burnt out and discouraged and all those things. But actually, a relationship first year end ask can leave you energized. It can leave you feeling good, and so we are going to talk about what changes that for you and for the donor, so that you can end this year raising more money, but also feeling good inside your body and not burnt out and not depleted. Okay, are you with me? Can you give me a little why in the chat if you are here for this? If this is why you are here, you’re like yes, Mallory. Please tell me all the things. Okay, so Lori mentioned before that I have created a tool called Practivated that helps you practice donor conversations, get feedback, etc., in a simulated experiential learning environment.

One of the things that we have learned recently, I analyzed 2,500 donor conversations inside Practivated, and one of the biggest things that stood out in this tool, and sorry, in the feedback, I very much appreciate all the practiced love in the comments. Y’all are so sweet. One of the things that I really that I’ve noticed is that warm isn’t the same as asked, and a good meeting is not the same as asked, okay. So often, and I want to know if you’re willing to tell me. I know we’re at the beginning of our relationship, some of us. But if you have walked out of a donor meeting and you’ve been like, “Oh my gosh, that felt so good. That was so fun. That was so nice. That went really well,” and then you’re like, “But wait, what’s the right next step? What do I do now? And where is this relationship going?” And you still don’t necessarily have that clarity on where the relationship is going. You’re like, that felt really good, but what’s supposed to happen next? I’m not sure. Or maybe then you follow up, and you don’t get a response, and you feel ghosted, and you’re like, wait, was that a good meeting? And then you start to loop, de loop, and think through all the things, and second guess yourself and all of that. What’s actually happening is that in the architecture of the meeting, in the meeting that you’re having, you’re having a warm, nice meeting that felt good, but that is not the same as commitment, right? This happens. I call this the donor friend zone, okay? Which is that we have gone out and we have just built relationships, which many of us were trained and taught is what we were supposed to do, but we have built that sort of warmth. Maybe we’ve built that trust, but that actually doesn’t lead to commitments, to gifts, to fundraising unless we architect into those conversations some really important skills and flows and motions, and two of the places we see in all of our data around all these donor conversations where this starts to fall apart in conversations is around ask effectiveness and structure flow and transitions. So we’re going to talk about those two things specifically today, as fundraisers, as people, people, we are excellent at connection, but we stall at commitment, and we need to talk about this in a way that is not about being transactional. Okay, this is not about being cringy, transactional, like salesy fundraisers, whatever that means. It’s about being intentional and clear and specific, and relevant in ways that move a donor from connection to commitment. Okay, are you with me? Is this resonating? Does this sound true for you? I want to know that I am sort of like on track with where you are at. Okay, thank you so much. So, whoo! All right, you guys are the best in the chat. This gets me going. This pumps me up. Okay, so before we get into all of the nitty gritty of the meeting architecture and all that stuff, if you are new to me or to my work, I’m gonna make you talk about some brain science for a moment, okay? And I promise I will not get too sciency, but we need to talk about how stress shows up in our body and in our brain, and actually sabotages us from being able to bring through a lot of our skills. Okay, so one of the things that I just want to sort of like acknowledge. So if you think about something like curiosity, okay, and you could be like, I’m a really curious person, or maybe you’re a real relationship person, or you have a high EQ, right? And so you’re like, oh, I have these transferable skills to fundraising, but then you’re like, hello, why are they not transferring to fundraising? Has anybody experienced this? Because I know that I definitely did. Everybody was like, “Oh my gosh, you’re going to be such a natural fundraiser. You’re a relationship. You’re a relationship person.” And then I was like, “Okay, but like, where where are those? Where are those skills, right? Why could I just talk about this so clearly in this way?” But now the moment I have to talk about money, it feels like the floor is falling out from under me.

Okay, this is because. Our skills, like being a people person, having a high EQ, curiosity, all those things, are actually a combination of three things: a trait, which is sort of like a natural quality about us; a behavioral skill. Do we have the skill to do those things? And then our state, our state, and whether or not we are in a suppressed state, which is what happens when we’re in stress, we are in a suppressed state so that both our traits and our behavioral skills can actually not come through. When we are going to make an ask, when we are going to talk about fundraising, are a different part of our brain comes online. Right now, we’re in this webinar. We’re feeling good. I’m transferring knowledge and information all up into your prefrontal cortex, and you are like, I am all in. Okay, but how many times have you gone to a webinar or gone gone to a training and maybe felt that way, and then you go back to your office to take the action, and all of a sudden all this resistance comes up, and you’re like, wait, maybe I, maybe I shouldn’t do that today, or maybe this is a bad time for this, or maybe I’m not ready for blank, right? So if you have that happen, that’s because you went from being in your prefrontal cortex to your back brain starting to come online, your amygdala, okay, and that is connected to your nervous system, which means your fight, flight, or freeze response, okay. And fundraising has been scientifically proven to increase our stress response through things like uncertainty and ghosting, rejection, pressure to meet targets, overwork, power dynamics. Now, I’m not saying all these things so you can be like, “Oh man, this is the worst job ever,” because it’s not actually. It’s an amazing job when you get to bring out the best in people, and it is sacred, important work. But we have to know that elements of it naturally increase our stress response and ultimately chronic stress and burnout, so that we can design fundraising strategies and personal strategies to be able to mitigate these things and respond to them. Okay, we need to know that these are natural, right? Because for so long, I was sure that I was a bad fundraiser because I was like, there’s no way that good fundraisers feel like this. You guys, spoiler alert: this is true for everybody. Okay, because this is biologically natural. Okay, this is biologically natural. Okay, now maybe you are not ready to um to you know be all in on what I’m telling you right now. So I’m gonna I’m gonna ask you another question. Have you ever noticed that sometimes there’s a task that’s like a two to five minute task that has sat on your to do list for a few weeks or maybe a week, right? And you’re like, and if you’re really really really honest with yourself, you know that that is actually not a long task. But for some reason, we never have time to get to it. Well, so I will ask you another question to get curious about: Is it possible? I don’t mean to call you out. I’m calling myself out too. Okay, so don’t worry. But is it possible that some of those things that are sitting there are maybe more related to vulnerable tasks. Things that might involve rejection, might involve some new hard news, might involve getting ghosted. Right, the phone calls, 100%, So normal, okay. So normal, and we say, “Oh, I don’t have time. I didn’t have time to get to everything.” And you guys, I’m not saying that you do not have too much on your plate. You absolutely do. What I am saying is that the things that we often don’t find the time for, or don’t choose to spend our time on, tend to be the most vulnerable, tender components of our work, and those are the parts of our work that move our missions forward. That those are the parts of the work that raise money, and our body starts to push back and create some avoidance there. When it’s like you guys, you all know how to raise more money. Okay, you all know how to raise more money.

I’m going to give you a bunch of details around ways to do it in ways that feel good to you. But you all know if you ended this webinar and spent the next hour making phone calls, you would raise more money. Okay, right? Like, am I right? Am I right? Am I right? Okay. So we know. You know. You know what to do, right? We’re going to talk about the things that are going to help you do it. Okay, you don’t need to architect these super fancy, intricate, like you know, fundraising strategies. You need to do the core work that we know builds relationships. Builds connection, builds community, and invites people in to do something meaningful and make the change that they want to see. Okay, the the last thing I’m gonna give you two more quick tips here around stress and stress management, and then we’re gonna talk about the architecture of the ask. Okay, so I also want you to know that fear can be super tricky. Okay, fear can be super tricky. So if you are on here and you’re like Mallory, I’m never afraid. I never don’t do a thing. I’m first of all, that’s amazing, and you should probably teach a teach a class on that. But I also want to offer that maybe fear is disguising itself because fear can sound like compassion. Oh my gosh, they have so much going on right now. I this just isn’t a good time to reach out to them. Or fear can sound strategic. We should wait until this campaign is farther along before reaching out to them. Or fear can sound like loyalty. They’ve already done so much for us this year, right? Like we shouldn’t ask for more. Okay, these are all examples of fear. Now, does it mean that these things could also never are never true? No. But do you know the difference between intuition and fear? Fear is finite. We definitely shouldn’t reach out to them right now. Like they have so much going on. We definitely should wait for blah blah blah. Fear is binary. Right, wrong, etc. Okay, intuition is curious. I wonder if this would land better for them if we brought it to them after we did blank. Okay, so if you are, you know, saying like, okay, well, sometimes these things are true. Yeah, sure, sometimes these things are true, but a lot of times these things are fear. Okay, a lot of times, these things are fear. So I want to, in addition to bringing your sort of consciousness into some of these, like some of these kind of like tricky cognitive things, I also want you to know that fear and stress and all those things they live inside our body, right? They live inside our body. And I always say to people like you have one nervous system. Okay, you have one nervous system. You don’t get to have your like work nervous system, your family nervous system, your caretaker nervous system, and your whatever. Like we get one nervous system, okay, and we bring it. Yeah, I kind of wish I could compartmentalize my nervous system too, but it doesn’t really work that way. Okay, so we bring our body with us into everything, into all these donor phone calls, into all these donor meetings, into sitting down and writing that donor email. Which means we need tools to address and support our nervous system in the work that we’re doing. And this goes back to those things we know that that fundraising naturally increases our stress response. So we need tools to downregulate to end a stress cycle. Now, first of all, let me tell you, stress is not bad. Okay, we need stress. Stress is an important part of being human. It drives us to take action. It drives us to make decisions. I think if we didn’t have stress in our lives, we would be like potatoes. Okay, so we’re not potatoes. Stress is an important thing. The issue with stress is that we need the stress cycle to end. You cannot get trapped in stress. So two different ways you can think about nervous system regulation. One is down regulation. Those are things like deep breathing, bilateral tapping, box breathing, grounding exercises. Okay, those are examples of of stress. Those are examples of stress management downregulation techniques.

Okay, the other type of regulation techniques are up regulation. So I don’t know about you all, but I know that sometimes I have been told to take a few deep breaths, or meditate, or calm down, and I have felt like when I’ve tried to do that that I’m going to explode out of my body. Okay, I’m like, oh my god, this is making me more anxious. When that, if you have ever experienced that, that means that what your body actually needed in that moment was upregulation in order to downregulate. That can be like something like going for a quick walk outside, listening to your favorite music, and dancing around in your office for a moment. You might have noticed when Lori was doing her introduction to me, I um I actually stood up my desk and pushed my chair out of the way. I was like, I need a little bit of upregulation. I know my energy is going to come out of me on this call. I don’t want to be trapped in my seat. Okay, so you want to think about and you want to think about these tools, somatic tools, as a toolbox. You want to try different things at different moments. Did it work? How do I feel? Do I want to try something new? And I’m going to drop actually. DonorPerfect helped me put together last year a 30-minute stress management course that drops a ton of cognitive tools, a ton of somatic tools that are all about like tiny little one-minute things that you can be bringing into to do right before a donor meeting, after a donor meeting, to help you transition, y’all. If you think stress management is a nice to have, let me tell you, it is the number one thing impacting your fundraising success. It is the number one thing impacting your fundraising success is your stress response. Because when stress is activated, you are losing your prefrontal cortex capacity for connection, curiosity, innovation, collaboration everything that makes a great fundraiser is actually taken out of our brains. Okay, when we are being driven by stress and chronic stress, so dealing with the stress response happening in your body is the best thing that you can do for your fundraising. Okay, so I will get off my little soapbox right now. But the but before we walk into the to the architecture pieces, the last thing I want to say is before you have donor meetings or before you make donor phone calls, you need to give yourself buffer time. You need to give yourself buffer time. It does not need to be so huge, but I would recommend 15 minutes, even if you can take five minutes to do some nervous system down regulation. Go for a quick walk, change your location, etc. You need to end a stress response and set intention for the meeting ahead, okay. So make sure as you’re planning your meetings for end of year that you are giving yourself buffer time. Maybe you need to drive to the location 15 minutes early, and then just like sit in your car for 15 minutes. Whatever it is, okay. Whatever it is, do not book donor meetings back to back, please. And please do not book a donor meeting back to back with an internal meeting or whatever that is. You need to give yourself time to set intention and to set and to set your nervous system up for the conversation. Okay, are you with me? I need a quick sip of water. Tell me how you’re doing in the chat. Is this resonating? Is this making sense? Are you ready to start to talk about specific language you can use. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Let’s talk about. Oh, the link isn’t working for you. Is the link working for anyone else? Not working for anyone else. No, it’s not. This is silly. Why is it working on my computer? Um. Okay, you guys, this is so silly. Okay, let me see. Um, let me see. Can you let me know if that worked? Um, for anyone. Otherwise, we can ask. Um. Oh my goodness, you guys! It might be because we sent so many people there at the same time. Okay, let me see. Let me see if I can fix that later for you.

Um, because it might be just that so many of you went there at the same time, and my my website was like eek. So we can also make sure DonorPerfect sends it out in um in the post email. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind doing that too. But let’s just see if it sounds like some people got it. It got stressed. Oh, I overwhelmed my own website. Okay. All right. So let’s talk about language that invites connection and generosity. And I’ll also actually for you guys drop. I’ll drop my LinkedIn in the chat as well. And so for some reason you have issues. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, and then I’ll make sure y’all get the um that stress thing also. Okay, not that stress thing, that stress management thing. I’m not going to give you more stress. Okay, let’s talk about the language that invites curiosity and connection. And I actually have another resource for you here as well because how many you how many of y’all are doing campaigns for end of year is that the stupidest question I could possibly ask right now? Because one of the things I wanted to, I was going back and forth about what I could, what I wanted to focus on during this webinar, and one of the things I realized is that there are all these components around campaign readiness and how that integrates with how you’re making the ask and how you’re having these donor meetings, but I didn’t have time to focus on both that and what we’re going to talk about today around sort of like the architecture of the meeting itself. So I created this resource through Proactivated around that gives you a campaign readiness scorecard, which is a great a great tool for evaluation and like a short little evaluation for you and your team with some suggestions on what you can do to really increase readiness across your team for those campaigns. So let me know if that link doesn’t work, but I dropped that. I dropped that in the chat as well. Okay, so let’s talk about end of year meetings and let’s talk about end of year meetings and who you’re meeting with and how you’re meeting with them, etc. Thank y’all also in the chat for just telling me all that. So one of the things, if you have not yet identified, okay, here are the donors that I want to be meeting with for this end of year, and you know I have particular sort of like asks or amount that I’m. Planning to ask them if you haven’t already identified that list of donors. One of the things I just wanted to call out is we often select those donors based on folks who have given you know large amounts in previous years that we’ve met with in previous years that maybe gave a surprise large amount last year. The other kind of like list I wanted to add in here for you is the donors that keep showing up. If you have a donor that gave like three times this year, even in small ways, right? But to different campaigns, different asks, different things going on. I really, I really recommend that you. I really, really recommend that you that you invite them into a conversation because that shows that you are really top of mind for them. Meredith, I know I think we broke my website sending so many people um to it at once because it’s just my little like coaching website. It sounds like it works for some people and not others. Connect with me on LinkedIn and I’ll make sure that you get to it once I am not on this webinar. I can fix whatever happened to my poor little website. Okay, so don’t worry, I got you. Okay, so the architecture of a year-end meeting, right, is you’re setting up the meeting. We’re going to talk about how you sort of like open honestly, both through your invitation to have that meeting in the first place, how you kind of like get to that discovery around their their interest, share opportunity, make the ask, and then agree to the next step. Right, because we again, what we saw inside all this proactivated data was the way that there was warmth and trust building and connection and all of those things.

But it wasn’t it wasn’t moving into commitment because of problems with ask effectiveness and and structure, flow, and transitions, and specifically around defining next steps. Okay, and one of the things that you’ll see in the architecture of all of this is that each step in this process invites permission from the donor for the next one. That permission to meet, to talk about investment, to talk about the organization when those things are happening with transparency on your end, one of the things that one of the things that is so important is that one of the things that is so important. I’m getting distracted by my website not working, so I’m gonna put that away. One of the things that is so important is that one of the things that feels better to you as the fundraiser is when you have that donor buy-in and that donor permission for the next step because then everybody’s going into that with eyes wide open and excitement about what we’re actually there to talk about. Remember how I mentioned that that you want time before every donor meeting to like get your head in the game and bring that consciousness in. So these are the five questions I want you to ask yourself before you go into every single meeting. Okay, what kind of a meeting is this? I’m totally happy to share my slides. What kind of a meeting is this? Like, what did I what did I say this meeting was about? What am I hoping to accomplish inside this meeting? What are the goals? What are my actual goals of this meeting? And please do not say it’s to build a relationship. That is not a goal. Okay, there is no clarity there, and no ability to evaluate whether you achieved that goal or not, or if it will have any impact on your fundraising whatsoever. So, what are the goals? Is the goal to evaluate whether or not they are really aligned with your organization and to qualify them as being really aligned through good discovery? Is the goal to invite them to give a match for your Giving Tuesday campaign? Is the goal to get them to double their investment from last year because you believe they care a lot about X, okay? How are you going to prepare? How are you going to get ready for this this conversation? What do you need, etc. And then how will you listen? What are you going to listen for? How can you bring your curiosity to that? And then what will you ask? Okay? And one of the things I want to make sure of is that you don’t look at this list and you’re like, oh my goodness, Mallory, I can’t schedule any meetings until I figure all these things out for every person. No, no, no, no, no. I want you start scheduling meetings literally the moment that we are off this webinar, okay? Because you know how you’re going to figure out these five things when you have that meeting on your calendar. You better believe that you are going to figure out these things, okay? So I want you scheduling first, okay? What do you mean by how we listen? I’ll talk about that, Natalia, in a little bit more very specifically, okay? So one of the things your donors, the other thing I want to sort of like, you know, reset here is your donors want belonging to the right group. They want connection to who they are. They want positive memories with you, and they want proof that their involvement matters. We have started to talk about these things in our sector in these really sort of like robotic ways, where we’re like, oh, like they want to see an impact report. No, they don’t. What’s like no. They don’t. What they want is proof that their involvement matters. The purpose of an impact report is to do that. Okay. The purpose of an impact report is to show them that they belong to the right group. Is to show that people like them do things like this. That is the point of the impact report. The impact report is not the point. Okay.

And that is how I want you to think about all of your year-end invitations, the meetings is like how are you showing them that like people like them do things like this that they belong to the right group that aligns with their identity that they feel connection to who they are. Okay, this is how people make decisions. Okay, this is how people actually make decisions. They make decisions about who they are and who they want to be. Okay, that is what is giving. Is what makes it relevant. We’re going to talk about that in a little bit. Well, here we go. Okay, one of the one of the most important things that you can do as a fundraiser, both in you know personal one to one invitations, but also in your like you know larger marketing campaigns and in the meetings themselves is be is answering two questions. Okay, that creates relevance for the donor. Why then and why now? Why are you reaching out to them specifically today? Okay, and why now does it matter for you to have this conversation, or to make this ask around this gift, or to get them involved in this campaign? And let me tell you, you do not need to create new programs. You do not need to fabricate deadlines for every single one of you on this call to be able to answer why then and why now, you know why now is so important for your organization, okay? And it doesn’t have to be related to growth in your programs. It can be related to the moment that we’re in in society. Oh my gosh! Like our wait list for these services has gone up 5x, okay? That is a that is a why now okay and the and the why them should be related to behaviors or engagement you’ve seen from them help them know that you see them okay that you see them why them why now help them know that they are in the right place and that you are talking to them okay when you are both in terms of emails and in terms of the meetings, I want you to be super transparent about what you are talking about. Okay, what you are there to talk about? Why? Two main reasons. One, okay, one is that you are encouraging them to to be to feel safer in their body when we are not transparent. When things feel like sort of guarded or in mystery, we’re like, “What do you want?” Right? I don’t know about you, but whenever anybody like texts me or DMs me on on LinkedIn, like hi or something. Hi, Mallory. How are you? My like immediate reaction, unless they’re like a really good friend of mine, is to be like, “What do you want?” Right? Because I’m like, “What? Can you just be like clear? Like, what am I getting myself into?” Right. So your donors, the more clarity you can create around why you want to meet with them and make it really relevant. Okay, so no, the the the just to answer Debbie your question in the chat around meeting in person, the goal is to get them to or invite them to want to hear more. Right, we are not doing ourselves and our nervous systems or our donors and their nervous system any service by pretending we want to talk about one thing and then talking about a different thing in the meeting, because then you are going into that donor meeting the whole time, being like, okay, like how do I transition into blah blah blah blah blah, right? Like, what clues am I looking for that allow me to now start to talk about money, right? That isn’t going to feel good to you ever to be like looking for that moment the whole time, and it’s not going to feel good to the donor. So this transparency of why them, why now, does it make sense for us to meet? Right is really important. And the other thing I want to say is some of that language. I wanted to give you crossover language that you could use. Some of the things are probably going to be used in mass marketing that where you aren’t trying to meet with everyone, right? But your goal is to create relevance and urgency around getting a meeting on the calendar.

If we are talking about this one-to-one ask, okay. The other thing I really want to encourage is that transparency at the beginning of a meeting. So something I often say at the beginning of a meeting is is I know that you know I know that like I’m loving hearing about you know how your kid’s school year is going and I really want to talk about that trip you took this summer to Croatia. I’m wondering I’m feeling really nervous about the thing I mentioned over email about talking about. Our end of year campaign and what’s really like relevant and top of mind to me right now, and I want to hear about how you’re thinking about you know environmental restoration in the community based on what you’ve seen over the last year. Would you mind if we just like talked about that stuff for a little bit, got it out of the way, and then we can get back to all the all the like more personal stuff? I think the reason that I want you to, and that language isn’t going to be for everyone. That’s my language, right? And just by sharing that piece of vulnerability, by just saying I’m feeling nervous about this, right? I’m opening up this opportunity for connection with them. People do not perfect, y’all. We think we need to be perfect. No, perfectionism, perfect, actually breaks trust, and the things that help us put our guard down and connect more deeply are us being human. The other thing I want to make super clear is that talking about money is not the same thing as being transactional. Okay, let me. I’m gonna say that again. Talking about money is not the same thing as being transactional. Being transactional means we only care about money, okay, or only caring about money, and we do that. We can have meetings where we don’t even talk about money, and we are being transactional because the whole time we’re only looking for things that have to do with the amount of money they might ultimately give us that is actually still being transactional, even if you didn’t talk about money in that meeting. Okay, but to care about the donor, to ask what they really care about, to think about how, to ask how they’re thinking about something based on what they’ve seen in the news around X, Y, and Z this year. That that an intention of creating belonging and connection for them and community that is inherently non transactional. Okay, so exactly, Leslie, I love what you just said. Right, if you’re calling a donor, the donor knows the purpose of the call. Right, your goal is to find where their passion is for your organization. Right, so if you haven’t already done discovery with them in another meeting earlier in the year, then you have to sort of consolidate those into the ask meeting, right? So Leslie led me perfectly to my next number, right? Get curious before you get to a number or before you get to an ask, right? You really want to understand. You really want to understand. Like you could have supported so many things this year, but three different times you showed up for us. Like, tell me about that. Tell me about that decision on your end because it means so much to us. And I would just love to learn more about what’s really been resonating with you. Okay, so make sure curiosity is really driving your understanding. So then, when you do ultimately invite them to participate in a way it is aligned and intentional to what they told you they already cared about, right? I think we get scared saying a number or making an ask because we’re like, oh, I’m trying to convince somebody to do something they don’t really want to do. Incorrect. And by doing good discovery, getting curious, asking these questions, etc., we are also creating space in our nervous system and regulation in our nervous system to know that no, we’re talking about something that we both really, really care about. Okay, okay, you guys. Gosh, I put so much content in here, which is not new for me, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna move on to number three in a second. Yes. Okay.

Number three, I want to talk about building regulation through reps and muscle memory, and I want to be super clear because sometimes people like, oh, of course she talks about that because she built a tool that helps people do that in private, and I’m like, no, I built a tool that helps people do this in private because I’ve been talking about this for five years. Okay, so readiness. There is a huge difference. You know how we talked about the beginning of this webinar. We know what to do, but maybe we’re not doing it. Do you remember that? Can you give me a little why in the chat if you remember that whole conversation about I know what to do. That thing’s been on my list. I’m avoiding the phone calls, but I am not doing it. Okay, so that space between knowing what to do and actually doing it. What closes that gap is readiness. Okay, you do not close that gap with more knowledge. You do not close that gap with more data. Okay, because honestly, if that closed that gap, you would have closed the gap by now. Okay, what actually closes this gap is readiness, and what readiness is is the combination of skills, confidence, and muscle memory at the same time, so you need to do repetition. You need to do practice around how you do these conversations and get feedback on them because that’s how you ultimately build readiness. And for those of you who are like, “Oh my gosh, Molly,” but I’ve called so many donors before. I’ve had so many donor meetings before, et cetera, et cetera. Can you imagine if we said, you know what, you guys, LeBron James, he’s such a good basketball player, he doesn’t need to practice anymore, or Simone Biles, she is the best gymnast in the world, so she doesn’t need to practice anymore. We would never, in a million years, say these things, okay? And the same thing is true for us. What are they doing? They are doing drills. Practice drills around certain moments in games or on the beam that feel particularly sticky, right? So that they can create fluency, so that when the game comes, they have the muscle memory to pull out of that toolbox where they’ve now actually it’s not not all up in their prefrontal cortex, they’ve integrated these skills and knowledge into their body. Now, one of my least favorite sentences in the entire world is “prep is practice makes perfect.” First of all, we’re not trying to be perfect, okay? We’re trying to be humans. Thank you. So, preparation is actually is actually not about perfection. It’s about regulation. It’s about what allows you because through those reps, through those reps, you’re actually activating your nervous system a little bit, and then you’re getting through it, and so that is getting like integrated into your body. Okay. The other thing is practice and repetition rewires your brain, okay? Neuroplasticity, my friends, okay. Practice repetition with immediate feedback rewires your brain. Now our brains rewire whatever we’re practicing, and if you are not practicing ahead of time, you are practicing in the moments with donors, okay? So either way, you’re going to rewire your brain, and you just get to decide how you want to rewire that. Also, I saw a lot of folks earlier talking about neurodiversity, and and I think there were folks talking about justice sensitivity or rejection sensitivity. So I’m neurodivergent. I talk about that publicly a lot, and one of the things I also really want to sort of like double click on here is that this is also a big part of you know one of the one of the things about neurodiversity in general is that you might have or being a highly sensitive person is that you might have kind of more neuroplasticity or faster regenerating neuroplasticity, which can mean that you have high rejection sensitivity, but it also means that you have the ability to build intentional neuroplasticity in the other direction and heal that faster than most people. Okay, so you can through repetition and practice and feedback, you can actually really rewire how you show up to every single donor meeting right now. Okay. The other thing I want to make sure you know is that you don’t want to practice. You don’t need to practice a 90-minute donor meeting. Okay.

You don’t need to practice like going to lunch, whatever. You need to practice the stickiest moments, the stickiest moments that feel so clunky and uncomfortable during every conversation. Maybe it’s that transition from talking about personal stuff to how you’re going to talk about how you’re going to move into impact and talking about the organization. Inside Practivated, we have a scenario called from friendly to fundraising, where you get to practice that exact transition. Or maybe you want to practice, like, okay, when this donor asks me about blank, blank, blank, how am I going to respond to that? Right. So pair up. If you don’t have a, if you don’t, if you aren’t already inside Practically, I know we have some folks here who are, but pair up on your teams. Find people you can practice with because again, if you don’t get your reps in ahead of time, you get them in the moments that matter most. And let me tell you, it is harder than ever to get donor meetings. Okay, it is harder than ever to get donor meetings. So you do not want to waste those conversations. That is what anyone who tells me I don’t have time to practice. I’m like, what you do not have time for are meetings with donors that do not move intentionally forward in ways that feel good to you and your donors, that is what you absolutely do not have time for. Okay, so please, please, please make sure you are not practicing in the moments that matter the most. Okay, all right. Now let’s talk about some of the architecture of closing the gift and making the ask in the donor meeting. Okay, all right. I love you guys. I know I’m I’m dropping some hard truths, but like what I want more than anything is for you to have the best end of year of your organization’s existence. So I want to be really honest about what what holds that back and what you can do differently to truly change your results and your outcomes. Okay, so let’s talk about the architecture of Ask. So one of my mantras for Power Partners when I first created that course was that great fundraising isn’t an ask; it’s an offer. Right? It’s about partnership. It’s about opportunity. It’s about inviting people to be a part of and do something that they want to do to make their world a better place. This it is sacred work, and it is incredible. It is incredible to invite people in this way, right? I feel like we take for granted sometimes that we live impact-driven lives, and for a lot of people, the way that they get to feel the sense of identity and belonging is through how they how philanthropy moves. Okay, and so this is an invitation based on everything you discovered when you were getting really curious. Right. Your goal then is to position your ask from that place. Okay. And again, you’re answering some of those earlier kind of pillars that we talked about as well. Why then? Why now? Why this? What impact? Okay. And then what that would do? Right. What that would do. And then you are silent, okay? And we’ll talk about that in a moment, right? But that is when you’re moving towards that architecture of the ask. These are all of the things that you have that you have that you have done. Yes, the yellow things are crooked, but thank you so much for that feedback. I really appreciate that. I’m sorry it’s been distracting for you. Okay, that’s good to know. Okay, so the ask is also a series of yeses. I feel like sometimes, I feel like sometimes we think when we’re like imagining getting rejected, we’re like, which by the way is also a scenario you should practice. Okay, with your partner, of course, I’ll share my slides. When you’re practicing with a partner, practicing practice hearing no and surviving it, and figuring out what you say next. That was like the third scenario I put inside Practivated, even though it happens very, very rarely. Because if they’re having the meeting with you, they’re probably not saying no. But I put it in Practivated just so people could realize, like, you will survive. Like, it’s okay, you will survive, but our fear of it holds us back from so many other actions.

Okay, the ask is a series of yeses. Okay, they’ve shown clear interest. You’ve heard it during discovery. Okay, then you’re asking, well, would you like to know more about that project? They say yes. You get permission to move for the next thing, can I share? Then you do that. Then you say, “Can I share what we’re looking for in investment to really make that possible?” They say yes. Then you’re getting to the actual ask, right? When we imagine rejection, we imagine just like throwing a number out there, and then the person says no, and we’re like, “That’s not how it works.” There are all these gates of permission that you are getting towards that actual number that is not coming as as a surprise that is not coming out of nowhere. Okay, the other thing that you want to do in the other thing that you want to do is make sure that you’re positioning the amount based on that discovery work. So a question I love to ask early on is you know tell me maybe you have wealth screening data or whatever affinity screening data they call themselves now and so you know what a what a gift size that aligns with their ability already is if you don’t know that and you don’t have that data during discover you can be asking questions like tell me about the most meaningful like philanthropic partnership you’ve ever had with an organization, like what did you what did you do? What felt so good about that partnership, et cetera, et cetera. Through questions like that, you will understand a little bit more about sort of the the financial level, at least that they might have the capacity for. I really like to anchor people’s involvement and be honest about the program budget, and then what we’re looking for. Looking for also, let me be honest with you. This is not a quick yes, right? Like some of you are having these end of year ask conversations after a year of cultivation. I’m not suggesting that your entire. Although I actually did have a client the other day first meeting get $140,000. So I actually don’t think that that never happens. And this is a small organization under a million dollars in total in total annual fundraising. But what I will say is that for a lot of you, you are you are building towards this ask. For some of these meetings, you’re doing all of this inside one meeting, so I’m trying to give you architecture that you can use depending on where you’re at with your donors. Recognizing that there’s 625 people on this call, and you’re at different places and have done meetings in different ways with all of your donors. Okay, so I’m just sort of trying to give you some suggestions around how I would sort of like architect that, right? And so when you get to the final stage of that, that’s really where you are actually making that ask, right? And then after you, and then after you do that, after you put something in front of them, you ask them a question: How does that feel to you? Does that align with that your your appetite for involvement this year? Whatever your question is, and then and then, my friends, you are silent. Okay, I actually think this moment is the hardest fundraising moment in the whole shebang. Okay, so here are some suggestions. Okay, take a drink of water. I love that. Remember, we talked about nervous system regulation. Ground your feet to the floor. Start counting as you wind your consciousness around your feet. You can. I used to dig my nails into my leg, like you know, and like count backwards, or I’d pick like a a spot on the wall to. Look at right, but you are silent. Hold the space, okay? Hold the space. Regulate your nervous system. Co-regulate your nervous system. This is a really important part of this from a regulation perspective. Is that regul? We are always co-regulating with each other, right? You all know when somebody walks into a room super stressed and um and then everybody is stressed because that person was stressed right. The same thing happens with calm. Right, we co-regulate with each other. Okay, so if you start to freak out or get panicky or whatever, that energy is transferring.

Your energy is always transferring. So everything you can do to stay regulated, to stay grounded in those moments is really going to help you. Okay, and then be prepared for whatever answer is going to come up. Okay, like there are and whatever it is, your goal is a next step. Okay, your goal is not to necessarily like you know overcome the objection. Yes, if they’re saying something and you’re like you know would it be wow I thank you so much for giving that feedback um you know I would it be okay if I explained a little bit more about that that might add a little color to the situation and then we can like you can decide if you still feel that way or not, and if not, that’s totally okay, right? But it’s to make sure that no matter what, no matter what you are you are naming the next step, right? Because what we want you to leave with is a defined next step, right? No matter what, we want you to leave with a defined next step, and so if that is the next date, if that is if that is like you know okay, like I want to make sure that you have time to you know think through this with your partner. What would you think about putting something on the calendar like two weeks from now, just so we have like a check-in date. And you know, if you both want to come, I’d love to answer any questions at that time. Does that feel like a good next step? You just want to make sure that you are you are leaving with that next step. Randy, I hear you. It is a lot of information. You’re going to get the slides. I I’m sure you’re going to get the recording, and um and I’m going to give you a few other like resources so that you can sit back digest if you want to watch it again or if you want to look through the slides at a different time. But the other thing I want, and we’ll do this in one second, is I want you to um I want you to know that you don’t have to do every single thing I said. For each of you, there are going to be parts of this presentation that really resonated. That you’re like, ooh, that’s where I think it’s breaking down for me. Do that thing, right? Like, do that thing first. Okay. Donor behavior is a response behavior. We always say things like, “Our donors like blank, blank, blank.” Our donors respond to us. They respond to us to our energy, to our questions, to our invitations, to how we do those things, and we are the primary drivers of donor behavior. And I don’t say that to put more of a burden on you, but to recognize that you have more influence than you think to inspire inspire the type of generosity that you want to inspire this year. I’m going to drop this again around campaign readiness. If you are feeling whether you’re feeling overwhelmed with this information or not, I would really, really, really highly recommend that you use this because what this will do is give you a starting place for your organization. Okay, this is going to give you a starting place for your organization. It’s going to do a little bit of an assessment around where your organization is at and where you could best start at some of these things that we talked about, and where things might be kind of like falling through for you. And then, if you only do one thing differently because of this hour together, I would love for you to share in the chat like what’s one thing? What’s one thing you are going to do differently because of our hour together? Is it about being more transparent in your invitations, making time for regulation? Is it about how to make changing how you make the ask, regulating? Make my first ask. Yes, who said that, Tiffany? I love that. Practice, practice more. Yes, practicing the ask 100%. Making time to practice. I love this. I love this. Okay, so one thing you don’t have to do everything right. I want you to take one piece from this that you know.

You know, because when I said it, something in your body was like, “Oof, that’s me, right?” That’s the thing I want you to make sure you start to do, right? You don’t need to do all of it. Look, at the beginning of this webinar, there were like 800 of you on here. Okay, I wanted to give you a lot of information because that one thing is going to be different for everybody. You’re in different organizations across the world, right? Doing different things. I wanted to give one thing that everybody could take away, and that can be different for everyone. Okay, that can be different for everyone. All right, Lori. Maybe we have time for one for one question, and and I’ll drop my LinkedIn again if you want to connect after this. And the last, the very last thing I’ll say is, you raising more money does not have to be in conflict with feeling better. In fact, when you feel better, you do better and you raise more. So your experience through all of this and coming at fundraising from an experience that feels authentic and grounded and meaningful to you is what is going to feel better to your donors too, and that is what is going to help you raise more money.

Okay, I mean, we have some questions. I feel like a lot of this was answered, but there is it came in as anonymous, and this person said, “I’m new to my organization, about two months, and I’m the first dedicated fundraiser at my org. How do I approach the ask when I’m still doing introductions?”

Yes. Okay. So, I think one of the pieces to this is around dis is around discovery, right? So, if you’re meeting with people and you have that hour together, what you’re trying to do in that meeting is to discover what they care the most about. Why are they there? Why have they been involved? And then to start to ask for permission to see if they’re ready for you to move that relationship forward, even if your relationship is new for them, right? So you can say like, “Hey, you know, I know I’m just getting to know you as like being new to my position, but I also know you’ve been involved with this organization for a few years. Are would you be willing? Like, would you be interested in hearing a little bit about what we have going on at the organization right now, and and seeing if you are interested in getting more deeply involved? Right. I think some of our some of our like hesitation there is because we historically in fundraising have attributed people’s giving with us, right? Like they’re giving because of our relationship with us. Now, our their relationship to us is really important in terms of trust building, etc. Especially for folks who are new to the organization or who haven’t given for a while to the organization. But if somebody’s been giving to the organization for a while, your job is the facilitator of their relationship to the organization, not the facilitator of their relationship to you. Right? Your relationship is there to preserve trust with the organization, to ensure transparency with the organization, and so their relation they are not giving you money into your pocket. Right? They are giving to an organization that they know and they love, and you are becoming a new facilitator for that. But I don’t forget that because I think that’s a really that’s where we sort of like tell ourselves we’re too early, and maybe that’s true for somebody who hasn’t had a history with the organization, but it’s not true for the folks who have been involved for a long time.

Okay, let me see here. Somebody ask about cold calling. How do you how do you warm someone up to a call, or how do you go about cold calling someone?

Yes. So you, well, first of all, if you are making cold calls, I highly recommend you partner up or like go on Zoom together as a team. Everybody has a different call list. You mute your Zoom, and everybody starts making calls on their phone while they’re looking at each other over Zoom because cold calling is hard. Okay, it is really hard, and in fact, in political fundraising, when a when a political candidate has to call donors, they have something called call times, where somebody’s job on the campaign team is literally to sit next to the politician to just make sure they make those phone calls. That’s how scary making phone calls are okay, just to like normalize that okay, and then when you’re making cold calls, this is so organization specific that’s a little bit hard for me to answer. But I think you know it depends on number one, are you cold calling people who have given before, or like somehow you got a list from something that will depend on like sort of like how you warm them up, right? I think giving value. And clarity around why you’re calling as soon as possible is also really important. So again, like, hi, I’m so and so from this organization. Do you have a few minutes to talk? It’s like about what you know, like you’re gonna get. So just saying, like, I’m calling to thank you so much for your last gift and to introduce myself. Like, do you have a minute, right? So that transparency and clarity at the top is also really important, just like with the other architecture.

Okay, I I love that Zoom idea. I mean, I know that we’ve done you know work sessions where everybody kind of is on Zoom, but you’re just doing your own work. But that is it. It that should be something that a lot of people,

yes, people try body doubling. I mean, it’s a big neuro, like it’s a big ADHD tool that I’ve used for a long time. But I have found with fundraising, it is incredibly important for all of these vulnerable, sensitive tasks.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. I mean, we do have some. We have additional questions, but we’re after time right now. So

feel free. Feel free to send me questions on LinkedIn. If you downloaded the campaign readiness, we’ll make sure, Lori, that folks can get that stress course once I reboot my website from them.

Yeah, we’ll we’ll get that we’ll get the link added to the email. So

you’ll have other you’ll have other resources for me, and I just I’m so grateful for the work that you all do. I know that this this time of year is hard. Just know how important it is that you are taking care of yourself throughout this time, and and we’re cheering for you. And thank you to DonorPerfect for giving me the opportunity to speak with you all today. I’m so grateful for them and everything they do for the sector and for this community. So love on your DonorPerfect people too, because I’m I’m so grateful.

And we are grateful that you took the time to spend with us today. It’s always great when you are presenting. So thank you so much, and thank all of you for joining us today. We hope that you leave feeling confident, prepared to make the most of your year-end fundraising efforts. Like Mallory said, I know it’s very difficult to do and very stressful, of course. But thank you for joining us, and I hope that we’ll see you in some future webinars.

Bye, everyone.