113. Rethink Employee Giving (Part 4) - Jonathan McCoy, CFRE and Becky Endicott, CFRE

10:02PM Apr 29, 2021

Speakers:

Julie Confer

Becky Endicott

Jonathan McCoy

Keywords:

campaign

people

employee

donors

movement

organization

love

volunteers

giving

phase

impact

freebies

gift

mission

presentation

philanthropy

rabid fans

launch

virtuous

build

Hey, I'm john.

And I'm Becky.

And this is the we are for good podcast.

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So let's get started. Happy Friday.

Welcome, everybody.

It's a good week,

it really is a good week, we are closing out season two,

season two has come to a close Can you believe it? It's cool

113 episodes in and yeah, we're just still want to always sit in the gratitude and the humility of the fact that you all keep listening. And thank you for that. It's just so important to us and really keeps us motivated to keep putting out great content.

And we know we put out a lot of content. So next week, we are going to drop a season two and review just kind of the best of the moment. So something to look forward dropping next week. And then the new season will officially start the following week. So

and hang on to the end of this episode, because we're about to tee up season three and T some of the episodes in it is going to be off the chain.

Yep. Because of the power of batching, we can tell you, there's some amazing things coming down the line

for batching. No kidding.

So this is our fourth week, and are closer to the employee giving series we've been doing. And I hope more than anything that you really catch the philosophy that drives this, this is what's really key here is that when you build a campaign around everyone matters, and that you're playing the long game, and you're really trying to cultivate believers. Those are the type of cogs that you can build in tactics, there's 100 ways you could do the tactics. But if that's your driving belief, you're gonna have truly a movement that people love and are passionate about. And that'll drive tons of revenue. But it'll also just drive this engagement that you can't get any other way.

And that engagement shows up in so many different ways. And that is what I love about employee giving. It starts with sharing story. It's about creating connection to passion points. It's about creating volunteer opportunities and movements. It's not just about the dollar amount, it's again, about movement making, because we're not necessarily trying to get donors, we are trying to cultivate believers. And from that donors come out of, you know, that sort of movement, volunteers come out of that passionate and rabid fans. And so if you can really hone in on that believer component, then that is really what's going to set your movement in motion. And so today, we're going to be talking about a little known strategy called impact lead staging, that we think is going to revolutionize the way you tee up your campaign.

So if you have been following along, you've done all the work to prep for the campaign. And so this is your moment, you don't want to mess this up, right. It's all about how you launch. And this whole idea of impact lead staging, I think it's a name we came up with, it's probably if you google this, we're probably the only ones talking. But the idea is letting the impact from past campaign or past philanthropy, drive the narrative and drive the conversation, because if you're trying to get believers to buy into what you're doing, we're trying to show that philanthropy translates into some type of an impact and using that as a trigger to launch your campaign. So this is really great for people that already have movements going on some level, you're just trying to take it up some octaves. Or if you're just building this is something that you want to build towards. So begin with the end in mind of how you want to do this.

So it's a great accountability factor, because it it completely necessitates you tracking your impact. And it emboldens you to make sure that you are spending that you are following the money to figure out how has it helped your mission, following all of that to figure out what is the story that has led to that? And so you can see how once you begin to do more than just figure out did we spend the money, but we start asking these deeper questions about how is this actually helping? Who is someone that benefited from this? And how do we get their testimony? That is where you really build believers into your mission because all of a sudden you have a face to what happened with their gift, you have a tangible outcome of someone who benefited and who would not want to compound that effect again next year. And that is what we're going to be talking about.

Yeah. And it gives you an immediate way to just quiet the naysayers, you know, people that just struggle with Why are we doing this? Why are you asking for money? If you lead in with impact, you're going to just quiet that because they're going to see exactly what the result is. There's no questioning did it go to a good purpose? It's right in front of you, right? So beginning with the end in mind, you really want to think about what is that way you want to show it If you're you know, Thinking digitally first, that's going to be in some kind of online report or some kind of online site or a PDF, where you can really show some visuals of what's happened. But it could take a ton of different forms. I mean, what makes sense for you? What are your strengths of how you can tell that story, you want to package that bundle that and literally get ready for the race, because that is what's going to be kind of proof positive that the campaign is what we say it is.

Okay, so we're going to be breaking down the six phases to launching your employee giving campaign. And I have to tell you, that four of them are in the lead gift phase. So anyone that's in fundraising, and has been a nonprofit, we all understand that there is a silent phase to any campaign that we do. And we're saying that there's actually many multi component pieces that have to happen before you actually launch your campaign. And if you think about this, in a way that is incredibly linear, in terms of this will trigger the next and will trigger the next it's almost like a domino effect. Just like it like a capital campaign or a major comprehensive campaign. So john, you want to start out with the first one?

Yeah, absolutely. You say Domino's I'm thinking this iceberg? We're building the underbelly. Oh, it is the underbelly think it's just a campaign, how did you have so much success, it's because you set it up the right way, there's so much working behind the scenes. So as we think about the six phases, the first is securing a matching gift, this could be three, four months out, or it could be even sooner than that, depending on what your timeline looks like. think creatively here, we just have really witnessed the power of matching gifts. And yes, it's on the end result of a donor thinks that more you know, funds will go to an area that they're excited about or passionate about. But honestly, why I love it is because it's a creative way to go ask for this gift. I mean, it's a it's a really powerful way to solicit to say, hey, you're going to inspire others to join you in this. And your gift is going to be leveraged in a new way. So it's a really unique opportunity. So think about auxiliaries. If you're at a hospital, think about an outside physician group that maybe it's not considered employees, or a board or somebody that's not really considered an employee, but it's close by maybe a vendor group or something like that.

I love the the nuance of that, because while we're going to be asking employees to give to this campaign, it really is a family campaign and family has a very gray tinge to it. That sounds negative, like it's very dark, but it's not. And so our board members are an extension of our family volunteers are an extension of our family. And it's like, Are there people that are sort of on the fringes? Who would want to be a part of galvanizing a movement with their philanthropy? And in our experience, the answer was always Yes, yes. And there is much money to be had on the table in that space, if you can leverage it for good. And you can do it early on.

Absolutely. Okay. That's a solid phase one. Phase Two, is executive leadership. So looking at the your organizational chart, these are people that are probably your vice presidents, and above at that level, the people that are really setting the tone organizationally, from a strategic standpoint, here's our thing, if you've listened to this series, you know, we're not bought in that you're ever going to get 100% participation. And in fact, it shouldn't even be your goal, because your goal is to get believers in the campaign and philanthropy. And so here with leadership is one place that I would put an asterisk beside, yes, because leadership is setting the tone for an employee giving campaign. They're choosing to work at a not for profit organization, and organizational mission. There's other places to go, you have to be bought into philanthropy at that level. Now, I'm not set in stone that it's got to be a certain level, but they should be giving philanthropic Lee so but I think the conversation could be a little bit different at this level, hey, you're setting the tone, we are going to take this to all staff members, you are an example. And your belief in this campaign, you are visible tangible support is critical to doing this. So we would always encourage you to get 100% support at this level. Before you move forward. It's really key that this is done. Because it's an incredibly important message with visibly And literally, that this is done before, you're going to go ask the housekeeping staff to join you. Of course, the president should be on board.

And I love that also because it provides a time for leadership to almost pause and take a step back and think about why they love the mission. Why do they love the organization in which they are leading? And I we really hope that there's a story that they'll connect with, they can identify their passion. And when they go back and take the campaign to their team. We're hopeful that they'll share that story. It's going to humanize create some vulnerability and in that space connection is made and we think that it's it's a very easy way for an employee of theirs to come alongside them and join them. So it's almost as a peer to peer piece as well. So our third phase is soliciting your foundation staff and your campaign volunteers. So this is probably about a month out and truly your foundation team, your development team. They are the heartbeat of this campaign as much As the volunteers are there going to be the closest to it, they're going to understand the ethos and the culture of what you have built. And so it seems only natural that we should ask foundations and our teams, which I think sometimes we forget about asking them and just put them in the mix. Additionally, your campaign volunteers are your rabid fans, they are your ambassadors. And they have an ability to really go into places that we could never get within our organizations by virtue of, you know, their proximity of a certain department or because they could have been a long term employee who just know a lot of people. So finding a way to really get them excited, have them giving stewarding the heck out of them after they've given and just reiterating the importance of why this campaign is different, and why they're rolling, it is so special.

And we will circle back to this because we're going to take time today to talk about the volunteers role in running the campaign. But this is a little teaser, getting their gift secured or asking for them to make this gift early is really part of that strategy. So really think that's key in phase three. Okay, phase four is your renewal campaign. So this is looking at all of you that have existing campaigns, you want to go back to your prior donors, we all know that it's reasonable that people who've given before or have a match, likely higher to give again. And so of course, we want to treat them special, this is an opportunity, you know, our strategy with stewardship is allowing your donors to feel like insiders in this. So by communicating with them first, they feel like they're first to know and get to see some of the cool things that have happened from their donations over the last year. So this renewal campaign probably happens a week out or so or maybe two weeks before you launched for the entire staff. But again, it's insider audiences who gave in the past,

and those employees are so bought in typically to the campaign. And I can think of years that we launched our renewal campaign, and it was like within 24 hours, you know, we would have a ridiculous percentage of renewals from these individuals. They know what the campaign is, over time, they are highly bought in, they've gotten their impact report, you know, a couple weeks beforehand, so their gift is fresh on their mind. And so please don't forget to ask your past employee donors for a gift, maybe about a week out. Okay. Phase five, is asking all employees and you'll, you're probably thinking, How can there be another phase after that hang in there. But this is the time that you are going to be asking all employees, it's like the public launch of your campaign, if you are going to have a capital campaign, you're coming, you're coming out party. And that's when you really start to mobilize those ambassadors, you start getting those presentations out there. And it's like very much a grassroots time where you try to saturate any part of the culture with these messages with these images. And you're just simply asking him that time honored question, what is your passion would you consider giving there

so if we can feel the snowball just getting bigger and bigger and bigger, it makes it when the campaign launches, you've got all this support people that are informed about it. But I've also bought in again this year, so it makes that step into phase five, just a lot easier. Okay, so remember how we said we have a phase after the campaign. This is the secret sauce, this is the secret sauce, you have done all this work, you have created this movement, it's been strategic, it's been philosophically aligned with your ethos of your entire organization. Don't keep it within the walls, that's really the motto here, we've use phase six as the community at large. This should be a talking point forever, every month of the year in every meeting with a donor to talk about the investment of your employees in the mission. So how can the campaign perpetuate beyond we've seen organizations launch it into peer to peer, we've seen tying into events, we've seen it tying into proposals, hey, this was half funded by employees, would you do the other half, there's lots of ways to really engage the community. So don't miss them as a phase, this could be what really lights a fire and makes your movement even bigger.

And I almost just think it's the starting point for your annual giving campaign each year. It's such a great point where you can jump from, you're always going to have impact to point back to so you can actually inspire that trust, that you're trying so hard to cultivate a see we did exactly what we said we were going to do and here was the impact come join us. That's an exciting thing that someone even outside your organization can grasp on to so that is our impact lead staging. And let me just tell you, the benefits of having impact lead staging is by the time you launch, you could potentially have 50% of all of your donors have all of your funding that has come in the door. And so this is just a more or Yeah, I feel like it was more for us at our old healthcare institution. And you've done it by employing a very thoughtful strategy that brings in more than just your employees, you have truly made this a family campaign.

Taking a quick pause from today's episode to thank our sponsor who happens to be one of our favorite companies virtuous. You know, we believe everyone matters. And we've witnessed the greatest philanthropic movements happen when you see and activate donors at every level. And virtuous is the platform to help you do just that. It's so much more than a nonprofit CRM. virtuous helps charities reimagine generosity through responsive fundraising. And we love it because this approach builds trust and loyalty through personalized donor engagement. Sound like virtuous may be a fit for your organization, learn more today@virtuous.org, follow the link in our show notes. Well, I think we should take a moment and just run through a couple of tactic things that we think are really strong. And a couple of those is really nailing down a great presentation, and activating the volunteer base to really take the movement forward and take it to all the nooks and crannies of your organization. So we've put together what we call the 10 minute to impact formula, it literally is a few steps to build a really kick bottom presentation, keeping the explicit away today.

And I really just want to encourage everybody who is thinking about a presentation like this picture in your mind, a presentation at your organization. And if you are anything like we are when we were at other organizations, they were the worst presentations of all time, it's easy to be disruptive when you come in and share a story, share something really humanizing and just follow this simple a freebie that we put out there. And you'll be able to bring really the passion to your presentation as well. It's in the show notes. Don't

miss it. Okay, I really want to spend a couple minutes just going through what do you do with your volunteers, you might call them ambassadors or something like that. These are the boots on the ground for your campaign. We set in one and the series leading up to this, you can't just have a staff lead campaign, you have to recruit a bunch of people that are passionate that can take the message forward. And the most important thing to do is how do you activate them? How do you support them through the campaign. And here is just six simple steps of what you're telling them to do when you are going through the training. Number one, everybody's got to find their passion and give if you're going to serve in this capacity, just encourage people right away, find your passion, it's so much easier to talk and ask other people to join you in a gift if you're making a gift. So it's a real easy, beginning point.

So number two would be humanize and personalize the campaign. So a volunteer is going to serve you best when they come in and connect the heart of the campaign to their sphere of influence. So they need to ask themselves what story or project resonates with them? What is it about the mission that connects with their heart. And this is difficult for some people to stand up and say this is why this matters to me. But we have watched it embolden people and they feel so empowered to share it because they see that it has resonance, and that it really touches and connects them with other people. So humanize personalize that campaign.

So if they're ready to talk like that, you're ready for step three, really, their job is to get this in front of each person in their sphere of influence. So we call it you know, make it super easy to give, are they hand delivering pledge cards, definitely before COVID they were now maybe it's setting up some personal zoom with the camera on to talk to people so they can see your passion, they can see your enthusiasm. And just make sure that it's easy for people to respond. Each organization is a little different. Maybe it's a paper form, maybe it's online. Either way, this person makes it easy for people to participate.

Love that one. And so number four is ride the campaign wave. And if I was going to put a title around this person, I would say this is your time to be the hype girl or the hype boy, this is about rallying the cause throughout the life of the campaign. It's about keeping that momentum high by continually engaging your department, people that you go to lunch with people that sit around your cubicle, whatever it is, it's like how do you keep elevating the conversation? Maybe it's Did you see that story that someone shared about their passion? Or Oh, I just saw that pediatrics just bought something I had purchased last year, you know, and it's really finding ways to get them excited and keep that conversation going. And you as the leader of this campaign, it's your responsibility to keep them engaged. So

give them a toolkit, give them share success stories, which ties into Step five, celebrate and steward them well. So create a plan, you know, begin with stewardship in mind. How are you going to celebrate those people that are really making waves and putting themselves out there and are really advancing the campaign or doing something really creative? We love using those stories to not only recognize the volunteer, but also to inspire other volunteers. They see the good ideas, people love to steal and copy good ideas. So amplify those of what's working and what's something fun that someone's doing, and they'll feel celebrated two,

great tip. Okay, final one is extend the reach. This is for looking for ways to grow the impact beyond their own department, and there's A Million Ways that someone could do this. And to me, it's really just about empowering the ambassador. So they could be recruiting, you know, other ambassadors or volunteers for next year, they could be sharing what they love about the mission in their social media platforms. Or they we've even seen some where people wanted to start their own peer to peer fundraising efforts, or maybe some crowdfunding around certain areas, whatever it is, it's like pass them the torch, pass them to Mike, and let them take it to a place that is personal for them.

Okay, I want to take just a second to talk about giving incentives because this is a hot topic I always said. And in fact, it always scares me if this is your first and only question about the campaign, because I always say go back to the philosophy before we're talking about what tchotchke item we're giving. But I do think there's a place for incentives, if they're aligned with your ethos, if it enriches the donor experience, if it doesn't cheapen the donor experience, and it aligns with your overall strategy and visibility, I will be the first to tell you, this is where I have learned and grown. I just Becky and I both thought we're altruist, everyone's just gonna want to support the campaign because out of the goodness of their heart and belief in the mission,

this is when people start patting our heads, right? Like you pour souls.

And we learned and grew through this because your campaigns get a plateau. If you have that philosophy. Yes, that would be beautiful, if everybody did that. But don't you want to have a campaign that's welcoming of people that maybe aren't ready for that level of commitment and passion, but they just want to test out, test it out, be part of the movement, and have a fun experience. So I think building in an incentive level at a really low level where people can be recognized something like a T shirt, or at the hospital, we had bad drills, something that is visible, that shows this movement building really will help you if you're thinking about building a movement in a small confined place, which sounds terrible now with COVID, right. But imagine a movement of everybody that it's part of it is wearing a shirt, how much more visible and impactful is that? You know, not that the T shirt is the end all be all, but it's a visual bowl rest presentation that really helps you grow questions about it and talking about it and just the visibility.

And the thing I love the most about the T shirts is the ability to pair it to a base level giving of support. So we set a threshold of $5 per pay period. And so what we're really asking people to do is to become a monthly donor. And we set a threshold, you know, at $5 per pay period. And if you give it that level, which ended up being $130 gift throughout the year total. And it's like people gave it that level, because it was such an easier barrier to entry. And all of a sudden we had this massive movement that was so visual for employees, for visitors that were in our healthcare setting. And it just became this movement of people are all putting this on the people who are wearing this. It is their armor that says that they are philanthropically invested in the place they work. They not only come to work every day helping to move our mission forward. But they have taken some of that income and put it right back into the organization because that's how much they believe in it. And that in itself is a very powerful, something that you can use to galvanize support.

Okay, it's been so fun to just jam through some of the things that we think build really incredible movements. But there has been some we've heard from so many people over the last few weeks, and I wanted to lift a few of the ideas from amazing folks across the country. One is Ryan, Sarah Duke out in Phoenix. She's at the Children's Hospital Foundation, she is a powerhouse in the employee giving space we met many years ago. She one of the pieces of feedback I wanted to lift from her is that remember, employees are donors, and they should be recognized, just like other donors will be recognized. She personally made sure that her campaign recognized the donor screens prints more all the places that a donor would be recognized, they folded that in. We love that because it ties into the ethos that everybody matters. Don't put employees in a different box they're gonna see that and not feel as valued or recognize Why would we do that?

So right off the bat right way to go Phoenix Children's We are here for that we got another good suggestion from Shannon Lockwood with allied arts and she says Don't forget your y. By using your y it's going to make each of your presentations more connected and more powerful. And I feel like we just said that. So we are drinking that Kool Aid. Shannon, thank you very much.

And Bridget Zorn. She has been a guest on the podcast. She is one of our dear friends here in Oklahoma City. And she really brought it home with this. She said a strong giving campaign is closely connected to employee engagement overall. And she wish more leaders especially those in HR saw the value in employee giving as an indicator of how engaged employees are and how badass they are at the organization's values. So we love what you're preaching there. And it's completely true. That is why linking these two together in such a meaningful campaign does lift all the sales building a campaign like we've described is going to build engage Because people are gonna fall more in love with your mission, don't you want that?

Okay, have we made believers out of you that employee giving needs a seriously hard reset, and we are here for it. And we just think that if you can follow, you know, some or if not all of this framework, we're talking about a cultural shift in your organization, where philanthropy is so tied to the culture and the end giving is tied to the human and the personal connections. We think this could be so revolutionary in terms of helping employees feel valued, helping them see their mission deeper than what they're doing on the front lines of where they're working. It's going to help with retention, I think you enjoy coming to work more, it just has all the fields. So please go check out our resources and our freebies. And if you're someone who wants to dive a little bit deeper, we want you to go to we are for good, comm backslash EGC employee giving campaign. And so in just get on our waiting list for our future employee giving masterclass workshop that we're going to be putting together, we're going to be dropping a ton more freebies resources, we're going to be diving in at a micro level to a lot of these topics. And we'll be exploring things we didn't even have time to talk about yet.

It's a framework that we have taught to dozens of organizations, and we've refined it and we're coming back with a 2.0 version. So if you've seen us or followed us for a few years, it's a better than ever version coming out soon. So we'd love to have you in that class. Okay, so I guess this the end of season two,

this is the end of season two, I feel like we need a confetti cannon, and a bullhorn or something. Because this has just been such an epic last four months, we have had incredible guests. I know that our hearts and our heads have grown in terms of what we've known. But let me just tell you, people season three is going to be unlike any season. Yeah, yep, it's going to be epic. So we'll have a teaser coming up for that in the next week. So make sure you're subscribed to our email which again is where for good comm backslash Hello, you can sign in your email, and you get free freebies there every single week. So do it for that alone,

we'd be remiss not to say thank you for being here.

Thank you for caring about employee giving, listen to your employees and build that family campaign.

We know you can do it. You've got this friends.

Thanks for listening to today's conversation, and our final episode of The EGC masterclass series. Don't miss our freebies and helpful resources in the show notes. Join us on May 10. For the launch of our upcoming season three, we can't wait. You probably hear it in our voices but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before. We'd love for you to join our good community. It's free and you can join today we're for good comm backslash Hello. One more thing if you loved what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating and review? It means the world to us and helps more people find our community. Thanks friends. I'm Julie Confer our producer and our theme song is sunray by Remy bourse boom thanks for being here.