12 Days of Major Gift Fundraising - Day 3: Values and Pillars

Nathan continues our 12 Day Journey in Major Gift Fundraising, with a focus on the impact of organizational values and pillars.  This episode promises to equip nonprofit leaders with the insights needed to foster a strong cultural foundation, establish behavioral guidelines, and build unwavering stakeholder trust...all important in drawing major donors to your organization.

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Transcript

Nathan Ruby: 0:00

I know you probably didn't wake up this morning excited about getting out there and asking your donors for a major gift. I get it. It's hard work. I have something that's going to help you. Every two weeks, I put out a quick video packed with game-changing content for executive directors trying to learn major gifts. In these videos, you'll get expert tips and proven strategies, practical fundraising hacks, innovative ideas to engage donors, real-world case studies and solutions and, for the first time ever, exclusive access to casual Zoom hangouts with fellow executive directors and me and Tim, who are sticking their toes into the major gift work just like you. Don't miss out on this opportunity to join a community of passionate fundraisers who are committed to excellence in major gift development. Go to nonprofitleaderonline and sign up today to receive your first video newsletter and start transforming your major gift program. I'll see you there. See you there. Welcome to the Practice of Nonprofit Leadership. I'm Nathan Ruby. Well, here we are on day three of the 12 days of major gift fundraising. I'm so glad you're here. I hope you enjoyed the first two days where we talked about vision and mission, two very important prerequisites to a thriving major gift program.

Nathan Ruby: 1:50

Today, we are going to talk about two more prerequisites, values. So organizational values and what I call pillars or organizational pillars, and we are going to cover both topics today. So we're going to get right at it and jump right into understanding organizational values. So organizational values are the fundamental beliefs and principles that guide a nonprofit, shapes the organization's culture and identity. So there's four key pieces here of organizational values. And first off is cultural foundation. So organizational values will give you or establish, let's say, the foundation for organizational culture which will influence staff, volunteers, donors and stakeholders. So basically, it says who are we as an organization, this is what your, this is what your values will create when, when you do this, all right. So cultural foundation. Second is behavioral guidelines. It is critically important that, as an organization, you understand and staff understands what values are, because those values will translate into specific behaviors and practices that staff are expected to demonstrate. And thirdly is stakeholder trust. When you have a strong and clear value statement, this will help build trust with donors, beneficiaries and other community partners, major donors. So you heard me talk about it day one and day two. I was using an example of an organization that was planting trees. That was our example for day one, day two, day three, because I kind of like to mix things up once in a while.

Nathan Ruby: 3:58

Today we're going to use a symphony as our example of our organization. So when it comes to values and a symphony, let's use two very different values, and our first value example is going to be excellence. So if we have a symphony and one of our values is excellence, then it's very easy to see where that would come out in the type of music that we choose to play, but also, and maybe more importantly, is the type of musicians that we choose. So if we are going to give an excellent delivery, an excellent show, an excellent performance, then we're going to have to select certain musicians that are of a excellent caliber. So now let's contrast that to a value of community participation. So if our value is community participation, then we want to offer as many seats in the symphony to as many different caliber of players as possible, because our value is that we want everybody to participate. We want everybody to feel that, hey, I could be part of this symphony. To feel that, hey, I could be part of this symphony, maybe even though I'm not quite as good a player as I might otherwise be, but I could still play, I could still be part of this organization, part of this symphony. So what do you think the output would be? What do you think the concert would sound like to the symphony that has excellence as their value, and compared to the symphony who had community participation as their value, do you think they'd be different? Yeah, I think they'd be very different, and I played the trumpet in high school and I loved it.

Nathan Ruby: 6:14

I really enjoyed it. I don't know if that makes me a dork or not, but I loved it. I really did enjoy a high school band, but I'm not that great and I haven't played in 25 years, so I don't even know how good I would play now. But one of my early, uh fundraising mentors uh, the, the guy who taught me how to major gift fundraise. He played in college, um, and has continued to play, and he plays in in several different, uh, several different bands and he is excellent. He is so good, he is such an awesome trumpet player and if you put his plane up to my plane, it'd be a massive difference in the quality of that plane.

Nathan Ruby: 7:02

And so the point here is your major donors. You will have major donors who get excited and value excellence and you will have major donors who get excited and value the participation, allowing everybody to play and have a greater community participation. You will have donors who value each of those, but seldom will you get one that value both, and so you have to be very clear in what your organization values are, and that is a key component of major gift fundraising. So, all right. So you got to make sure that you've identified your organizational values, all right.

Nathan Ruby: 7:46

Second for today is understanding long range pillars. Now I call them pillars. You could call these program initiatives or initiatives or endeavors. So this is basically where is the organization going programmatically in the next one to three years? What are we doing? What are we going to do as an emphasis over this time period? And so some examples of that One would be are you expanding by adding more programs?

Nathan Ruby: 8:27

Maybe you have three different programs. And so, going back to our symphony, you know we have our our annual pops concert and we do, you know, a one performance a quarter, so we do five performances a year. So are we going to? Are we going to expand by going to six performances a year or seven performances a year? Is that our growth? That's going to take more budget. It's going to be more expensive to do that? Or are we going to expand by keeping the same number of programs but by going deeper within those programs?

Nathan Ruby: 9:05

So, for a symphony, what would be? We're going to keep our four quarterly program, or once a quarter, plus our pops, but we're going to play harder music. We're going to expand the size of the symphony, I don't know. We're going to keep the programming the same, but we're just going to go deeper. Maybe that is your growth. Either way you do that is how are you defining success and growth over the next few years?

Nathan Ruby: 9:35

And this is important because major gift owners, they are looking to invest in your organization and they are not looking to invest in something that is stagnant or in something that is decaying. You have to share with your major gift prospects what your plan is over one, two, three years or four or five, whatever that is, but some number of years of what your growth strategy is, so that you can gain their interest. They will get, you can gain their interest. Now you might be saying, uh, nathan, uh, I, I joined this and you know I'm listening to your 12 days of major gift fundraising and we're, we're three days in, we're, we're kind of invested here and basically you've talked about vision, mission values and our long range programming emphasis. I thought this was a major gift series, not a strategic planning series. Well, okay, yeah, it's. These first three sound a little bit like strategic planning, I get it, but here's the key.

Nathan Ruby: 10:47

Strategic planning is absolutely essential for successful major gift fundraising and nonprofit organizations, and here's why Major donors are not just giving to your current programs. They are investing in your organization's future impact and vision, and without a clear plan, without a clear strategy, without a clear strategic plan, it becomes incredibly difficult to articulate the long-term value proposition to potential major donors. Remember, major donors often come from business backgrounds where strategic planning is fundamental. And even if they don't come from a business background, many of your donors when they get to major giving status, so when they're giving larger gifts to more and more organizations, they are becoming more sophisticated donors. They are looking for more than just a great story and emotional connection. Don't get me wrong. Great stories and emotional connection is still important. It's still incredibly important. But if they are looking to write larger checks to your organization, they are going to need more than emotion and stories. They are expecting nonprofits to demonstrate similar rigor and planning for growth and impact, as they've seen either from their business if they're coming out of the business world or from other organizations that they've given to as well.

Nathan Ruby: 12:34

Your strategic plan becomes a powerful tool for showing donors how their increased investments in your organization will drive meaningful change over time. Additionally, there's one more point here of why the strategy for your organization is so important when it comes to major donors, and that is that making sure you have your strategy right is it helps to align your fundraising goals with organizational capacity and needs, ensuring that major gift requests are both ambitious and realistic. So where does that come in? So let's say that your organization we're back to the symphony and let's say that your symphony wants to and I'm going to pick a year in two years from now wants to go to Europe to do a seven day tour of Europe and play in six different locations. All right, well, that's going to take a lot of money to move. You know, whatever the size of your symphony is, that's going to take a lot of money to do that.

Nathan Ruby: 13:42

Well, if that is part of your growth and that is part of your strategy over the next three years is to do this major trip, now you could start talking to your donors, to your major donors, about this trip and the impact it would make and how it's going to push the vision and mission of the organization. You're going to have to be able to talk about specific things. And you're going to be able to talk about specific things and you're going to be able to make an ask that is aligned with the strategy of the organization, the vision, the mission, the values. It all comes together into a major gift ask that makes sense to your major donor. And so if you don't have these prerequisites, if you don't have your vision and mission and values and at least one to three years of your program pillars put together so that you can articulate it in a comprehensive and meaningful way to your donors, you are going to struggle to maximize your major gift fundraising. Okay, congratulations, you made it through day three, the first three days of the 12 days of major gift fundraising. That is awesome.

Nathan Ruby: 15:02

Tomorrow, on day four, we are going to start getting into the nitty gritty of the major gift fundraising by talking about identifying major gift prospects. And I've got a question for you you could think about between today and tomorrow, and that is where do you think your best prospects for major gift donors comes from. Where do you think they come from? Are they, I don't know? Are they current donors? Are they donors you haven't met yet? Are they, you know? I don't know. I don't know where else to say when do you think? Where do you think your best major gift prospects come from? We'll be talking about that tomorrow. All right, thanks for being here for the first three days. I'm having a ton of fun doing this, looking forward to day four. We'll talk to you tomorrow. That's all for today, until next time.