103. Rethink Employee Giving (Part 1) - Jonathan McCoy, CFRE and Becky Endicott, CFRE

10:16PM Apr 8, 2021

Speakers:

Julie Confer

Becky Endicott

Jonathan McCoy

Keywords:

employee

people

donors

campaign

rabid fans

giving

movement

philanthropy

organization

create

gift

believers

passion

building

virtuous

nonprofit

community

matters

ignite

impact

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. Howdy, Happy Friday,

Happy Friday, everyone, can

we shoot you're completely straight. This week has been mind blowing on so many levels.

JOHN, I have not seen your eyes this wide. In such a long time, does that mean it means that you are snow that you are standing in the off? In the shock of what happens when everyone matters? And you subscribe to these beliefs that community is everything?

Absolutely. So that is a little gift of something that's a con. But we've just had some conversations and friends, we recorded them like yes, we can't wait for some of the conversations that are coming up because they're truly going to just reorient and reignite just a passion for this space and for moving our missions forward. Today, we're coming at you talking about one of our favorite topics, which is funny, we've been kind of made fun of that this is a favorite topic of ours because

nobody else loves this. And when

they were geeks out on this, we're talking about employee giving. And let me just tell you, how you're thinking about it maybe completely wrong, because it was really wrong in the way it was presented to us. And I'll tell you we had part of our story was stepping into a healthcare organization where employee giving did not exist, at least in terms of giving back to the organization itself. It was a philanthropic organization that gave to the community and through different organizations that came in and ran workplace giving campaigns. But they never had historically turned to the employees and said would you give back personally to this place. And what we found was this hugely untapped opportunity to ignite and to transform the culture of the workplace. And so today, we want to tell you a little bit of that story threaded through. And some of the lessons learned this is the start of a four week series where we're going to really equip you to make a revolutionary employee giving campaign wherever you're at.

And we talk so much about making sure that what you do and the strategies and programs that you implement in your organization are not just check the box, sort of mentalities and mindsets. If you are putting on an employee giving campaign right now, that feels very transactional, that feels very much like what we did that moving on, I am telling you, john is telling you that we have seen employee giving ignite the most incredible moments that I think we shared collectively in philanthropy. And it's because when you start with asking people who are within your family, to give back to give back at home, I'm using home in air quotes as your organization, something really magical can happen, because you're asking people who are working on the front lines, who see your miracles happening within the walls of your organization, to consider investing back in that miracle. And then when you treat them, like they're the most important donor in the room, you steward the crap out of them to a level that is insane. They feel seen, they feel heard. They feel like they're making a difference. And the collective impact of that is where the magic can really happen.

Yeah. And so okay, this was such a formative time of our life in building this campaign that really informed a lot of our ideals. And, you know, just truly what works in philanthropy and building a movement. And so today, we want to unpack those. And they may sound a little familiar because Becky and I learned so much through building an employee giving campaign over a decade, that we adopted these as our ethos as our values. And honestly, we threw the book out of a typical business plan and said, What would happen if we just employed these ideals in how we run we are for good. And so far, I would say it seems to be active, right?

I mean, when you're using your values to drive everything that you were doing, typically, only goodness can come from that. And I and I think it's important to give some context about how we went into this employee giving journey because like many of you out there, our CEO came to us and said, this is something we don't have, and it's something that we want. So we go and we, you know, sit at our computers and we're stodgy Lee trying to look at what everyone else is doing and the employee giving space we start in healthcare because that's our sector. And we don't like anything that we see. I mean, we were seeing Casino Royale employee giving campaigns luaus, and it was just something that didn't resonate authentically with us, then we started looking at other sectors and higher ed and social justice. And nothing that we saw, really felt like it would create a movement. And so we came up with some of these core values. But some of them I would say, even evolved as we were watching the journey. Go down. So yeah, I we believe that employee giving can transform the culture, or it can break one. And so we really want to get this right. And it starts with the core with those core values.

And let me say, if you're sitting in a place where maybe this doesn't directly translate, you feel like you don't have an employee giving campaign to run. This is about movement making at its core, it's about getting people aligned and excited about philanthropy and feeling the effects of philanthropy. And so you can look at that through this lens, because we're the first to tell you, once you have a breakout exceptional program, at least in the days of old, people are gonna reach out and say, Hey, would you present at our conference? Or would you give this webinar, and we did that circuit with this program that we built. But I'll tell you, every time that we would teach, we always wanted to say, it's not about the best practice tactics, you know, because it's really easy to say I want to copy and paste this and bring this over here and just replicate it, you really got to get to the core, because what's the philosophies from which you're making decisions of how you're going to grow this authentic movement, that is what is going to be transformational, not the tactics you employ. So we really want today to unpack these core values, that you are going to be true for any movement that you're starting, but specifically for employee giving.

So I'm going to start with the first one. And the first one, everyone has probably heard it 1000 times on the podcast, but it's everyone matters. And the single most important component to any ethos is the understanding that the CEO matters just as much as the housekeeper in your organization. So if you're looking at everyone equally, you can launch a campaign that shows that donor partnership is valued equitably. And so it immediately disarms. Anyone who's looking at joining your campaign are considering making a donation, it eliminates words that they've commonly heard, you know, that they're blocking out at this point, which is our campaign goal this year is x, or, you know, give to this program that our administration has told us they need more funding for I mean, we don't listen to that anymore. In but when you say things like we want as many people to get in lockstep to help our clients, our patients, our students, whatever it is that the person that you're serving, just as a means to, to pour their philanthropy together, it ignites just a different wave of a movement. So it just tells them that you care, they care about you, as an individual, they care about what your passion is. And this isn't just lip service, we saw this done over and over at our organization. So when we just asked a simple, simple question, what are you passionate about and consider making a gift there, we didn't hand down projects with our employee giving strategy, because we wanted every person to feel seen and to feel like they mattered.

I love that and is the bedrock of how we try to approach this table of the podcast, too. Okay, number two is playing the long game. And if you hear us talk about it, another thing that's quite often is this, because listen, an employee giving your employees are the most captive audience. I mean, unless they leave or retire, they leave. But that's statistically a really small percentage. These are the people that are going to be with you. On the slowest days of the year, the fastest is the year the highs, the lows. So why would you sell that relationship short? We just feel like when you create a best in class experience, you've got everyone matters at the core, you're playing the long game with your employees, because you want to cultivate that relationship. Why would you want to cheapen it, if you're thinking of it over the course of a really long period of time. So also, one of the bedrocks of monthly giving or recurring giving of any kind is just your bought into that smaller gifts are going to add up over time, you're looking and thinking about the lifetime value of a donor and not thinking about the one transactional amount of the gift. How much can you earn over, you know, years or decades of somebody giving? And think about that whenever you're designing it. So play the long game.

And I have to tell you, as some as people who worked in health care, there are people that have been in health care at the same hospital working for like 30 4050 years. Yeah, I mean, they are total lifers, which is just very strange to all of us and nonprofit because of the turnover rate and development. But if you can get them to buy in early, the long term connection and relationship is going to be rife for a planned gift. I mean, we saw that with our health care organization. We had people who had been giving to us for 510 years consistently starting to retire, but wanting to continue to have that impact and be a part of this movement. So I definitely think the long game is a great one. The next one is simplify humanize intelligent story. And you know how much we love story here on the podcast. And it's just something that we think binds us together. It's something that adds color to our lives. And it kind of gives us just a window into someone else's experience or into their worldview. And I think when you ask someone about their personal connection to their passion, it can be one of the most compelling and interesting social experiment exercises you could ever undertake. You learn about their why immediately, you start to build empathy and community, from the people who are watching that video or reading that story because they feel such a sense of connection to the person or they see something that resonates with them. And when you we all know, in nonprofit, when someone is feeling at the height of their emotion, asking them to come along and join the movement, it can be such a compelling and, and and shifting moment where you ask them to give, ask them to volunteer. And that is how you build believers out of your base. And it just starts with storytelling.

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 an 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. Thanks for teeing up the next one, Becky, they're welcome. Because it's not about just growing donors. It's about growing believers. So this is our next one is that if you get in this mindset, that you're just transacting gifts, it just you're missing the point, you're trying to set up a strategy in which people fall in love with philanthropy, fall in love with their ability to make an impact, because they've seen that. And so part of the structure that we're really advocating is that Do you have the program in place to actually deliver on people's donations, a tangible, visible, touch and feel impact where people can see the results of their philanthropy, because let me just say, when you do that, you completely change the game. Yep. Somebody goes from being a passive donor to a believer, and a believer is somebody that is going to champion this to their friends and their family and their network. And think of the connections that should know about this in a hospital, you're activating employees, they're going to be touching every patient, every family that comes through the doors, I mean, the ripple is millions of people over the course of several years. So again, if you're selling it short, you're not going to cultivate believers. So create those systems in place, so you can really make meaningful impact.

And I think believers is such a great segue to our next belief, which is cultivate and mobilize rabid fans, because it's one thing if you can get somebody to subscribe to what you're saying, to give to a campaign and to believe in it. But when they become one of these crazy, rabid fans, and I say crazy in the fondest and most appreciative way, it can create a ripple, their profound passion gets poured into this, and it allows them to go into spaces that we could never get into networks that were not a part of. And that is the beauty. We want to create and cultivate these rabid fans. And we call it like tossing a pebble into the hands of those who simply don't want to make a transactional gift. They want to start the movement. And I can think about these rabid fans that we had in our employee campaign. I mean, we had people painting, passion puzzles, and we had individuals who were so intent on making sure that their department was giving, you know, at the highest possible level or, you know, percentage wise and not necessarily $1 amount that they would come down, you know, to our booth or be calling us all the time giving us updates, I need more tips, I need more forms, whatever it is, and those are the people that can turn your movement on its head, they their passion can really find a way to ignite someone else to come in and curiously kind of cork their eyebrow and say, I don't know what this is. But based on the enthusiasm and the passion of this person, it's something I want to get involved in.

I love that because if you think about employee giving, it'd be easy to make a staff driven campaign because you're hosting it from whatever office is leading that. But the secret sauce is taking those believers and giving them a way to impact a way to step into the campaign and spread its wings. And so activating that is going to take you to the next level. So

And I actually have to say something about that. Because if you're a shop like we were, we were a foundation of 10 people, but our organization had 10,000 employees. And so there's just no way that 10 of us could get into every single space. And so, using your rabid fans to help you work smarter, not harder, allows them to do the onboarding and mobilizing efforts in a way that we could never do. Because there are so many details and make it more beautiful, because more parseltongue

and inclusive, all the things that you want to be true of your

different when your friend asked you to join or your co worker to make a gift rather than the foundation. Totally.

So one way that you, you know, create believers of this campaign we alluded to this is steward relentlessly. So this is the next one. How is this baked into your process. And by steward, we mean, making people feel incredibly proud of the gift that they made, that they see the value of it, that they have been able to touch the impact or have access to that understand that meaningful difference that it's made. But it's also just knowing your donors, we talked about everyone matters. There's some donors that want to have their name and lights. But there's some donors that want you to reach across the table and pat them on the hand and say, Thank you, this is what your gift did. And so at scale, understanding that there's different ways to reach out and connect with people and show their impact. And doing that through multi channel and all the different ways, is going to just feed this funnel. And the funnel that we talked about really is flipping that donor pyramid, and we're trying to activate the base. That's the beauty of these movements and campaigns is getting everybody involved, because the laws of multiplication and all those things just compound.

I love that so much. And I think the next one, it's our second to last one is one of my favorite ones. It's grow, disrupt, adapt, repeat. And the basic ethos of this is that we've got to constantly be listening and innovating. And we cannot be content that just because we put together, you know, a great employee giving campaign, that it's completely perfect in its form. Because the world is changing all the time, social engagement is changing, the digital tech that's available is changing how people are interfacing is always changing. And so we don't ever want to stop listening. And we always want to be able to create some space to listen wherever we are to the needs of the donors to the needs of those being impact. And finding ways to do things that are smarter. Things that are more creative in it really means taking a hard look at risk, and subscribing to the mindset that we need to not be content with the way that things are. And we have to keep pushing the envelope in the bounds of what's possible because our missions deserve that.

I love it. And the final value that we've upheld as a company, but also that we believe creates the kind of movement that we're describing today is just the simple notion, that community is everything. You know, you've heard it in our voices, and you've heard it in everything that we're expressing this campaign is going to be so much more rich and deeply impactful as more people step into it and add their own color to it. If it is just one person's execution, it is not going to have the same level of engagement of everybody having a place everybody having a voice and all of that sharing coming together. And so lean into this, you know, community is everything. And an employee campaign at its core is about creating community giving together that you're banding together on shared values to give back some this isn't

just have to say this is this is something that will create a ripple because when you start with internally, and you start asking your employees to lock arms with you in this mission, it's only going to ripple out and I we saw the the evidence of that over and over again, community members wanted to get involved board members wanted to lean in. And when you can say, you know, we have a 85% retention on our employee giving. And they're able to raise almost a million dollars to fund these projects annually. It really makes people it makes them it makes them just sit up a little bit straighter. And I'm saying that it will strengthen your other fundraising programs as result. And so employee giving is just this hidden gem of philanthropy that we just feel like so many nonprofits are missing out on the transformational impact it can have. And so this is where radical philanthropic movements can begin and we're going to be unpacking that. In the next three weeks we're going to be discussing framework, creating a brand finding your voice, writing a compelling case for support, building volunteer structures. stewarding the heck out of your people. And we're going to be exploring how do you keep innovating and making sure that you're never content with where you are, because we want to make sure that we are doing the most good for the most amount of people.

So, get ready, buckle up, the next few weeks are going to be really fun to dive in. But if you hear something today hear this, you've got to change the way that you're thinking about employee giving. And you're probably going to have to sell that up the stream to challenge your leaders on this. What are we really trying to do at our core? Are we trying to build engagement? Are we trying to raise up this uprising of people that believe and see philanthropy? Are we just trying to get to $20,000? Which one sounds more compelling, you know, play the long game, get subscribed to these ideals, because it is so worth it. so worth it

and tune in because we're going to give you a little bit of verbiage about how to sell this upstream because we think it's worthy of your leadership at the highest level, understanding how this can change culture within your organization. So for now, reset your brain. Start looking at your employees as incredibly important donors in tune in for the next four weeks because as you can tell, it is our passion to talk about employee giving. And because we want you to trust us that it truly truly matters and will make a difference. You got this friends we're rooting for you.

Thanks for listening to today's conversation in trilene, our new EGC series if you are excited to dive in further, we've linked a ton of helpful resources into the show notes page. Make sure to check it out. 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 at weird for good, calm backslash. Hello. One more thing. If you liked what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating and review? It means the world to us and Your support helps more people find our community. Thanks friends. I'm our producer Julie Confer and our theme song is sunray by Rumi boys. Boom. Thanks for being here.