You see, this incredible story is one of many uncovered by their Chatty Cat Phonathon callers during their recent “check-in” calls. I wanted to know how they took their phonathon remote, continuing to provide student employment during this crisis while also doing important work for the university.
​​​​
Here are my questions and Jamie’s answers:

"Within the Western Carolina University Division of Advancement, we’re using our best callers to conduct ‘check-in’ calls with our alumni during this quarantine time.  They are sharing the student experience and listening to the alumni experience during these short, scripted calls."​

"The callers are finding that the alumni are pleasantly surprised by the call, and many are eager to chat and share ideas, stories, and experiences. The callers flag records of alumni who are doing unique and/or front line COVID work and those are shared with me for story leads.  

I work with our Marketing and Communications colleagues on bringing the strongest of these story leads to them on a weekly basis.  Completed alumni story profiles are used on our alumni website (alumni.wcu.edu), our social media channels, and our alumni e-newsletter.  

Most of the stories that our Chatty Cat callers hear are about our alumni who are teachers, nurses, public administrators, hospital administrators, researchers, and manufacturers (particularly in areas for parts for ventilators and PPE, personal protective equipment), and we’ve had some who are specialized in unique areas like funeral home owners and leaders in cruise line sanitation.  

The Chatty Cats have also spoken to several alumni who serve on our Board of Trustees, and those Trustees have provided very complimentary notes on their chats with these students.  Overall these calls strengthen our Catamount community and allow for relationship building around a common struggle for us all.  For those alumni who have said ‘how can we help’ the student callers reference one of our student emergency funds and guide the alumni to give.wcu.edu/relief for gifts."

What software are we currently using for the call center/remote calling?

• "Guided Fundraising by Blackbaud, which is what our “Chatty Cats” (student callers) traditional use in the on-campus call center.  Our Director of Annual Giving, Jonathan Brooks, has also trained some of the other development staff on Guided Fundraising for other cultivation and stewardship purposes."

Any additional training for the remote callers besides our regular training?  

• ""We set up a Microsoft Teams site for our remote callers to use as base-camp, and the remote calling is limited to our most well-trained callers. Mr. Brooks had two ‘on-boarding’ sessions before calling began. These were conducted via Zoom. The training sessions covered a refresher on the platform interface and any updates and modifications that had been made since they were last on the phone, which had been a few weeks by then because of spring break, extended spring break, and North Carolina stay home orders. The training sessions also covered new scripts and conversation guides for these simple ‘check-in’ calls, new coding, and overall expectations regarding their remote work. We extended the remote work offer to callers who were meeting all performance metrics and did not have any policy/procedure violations on their record."

How is the supervision going? Have we had to add additional supervision tools/tactics? How often do we “meet” with them as a group, individuals, etc.? ​

• ""Supervising is going well, and other than leveraging Zoom, there has been no new technology adopted to manage the callers. They formally meet as a team once per week, and our Director of Annual Giving holds formal one-on-one sessions as needed. He is on call for ad-hoc meetings at the students request 24/7.  The callers have made 3,800 calls so far, and 1,010 Chatty Cat email follow up messages have been read by alumni as well.  503 alumni have shared updates and stories with our callers."
  

​​Will the callers do any solicitation calls when you switch over to relief fundraising? 

• "Our student worker contracts end the 2nd week of May, so we will utilize them for #GivingTuesdayNow student emergency fund work, but then we’ll run out of time."

"Yes, our development officers have each used this same ‘check-in’ call model to call through their portfolios, and most have followed these up with emails for next steps.  Our front-line fundraisers have noted the great ability to learn more about their donors and prospects with these simple calls, and have been encouraged by the donor’s willingness to really connect over the phone.  Most have been happy to have someone to talk to.  ​

​Our Director of Donor Relations is mailing handwritten notes to hundreds of donors who give unrestricted gifts as an extra touch-point during this time as well.  Our Alumni Engagement Office has partnered with Development Staff to create Alumni Zoom Socials, which we launched with our Triangle Alumni Club (Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill area) last week.  We have 16 additional Zoom social hours scheduled for the next 3 weeks to connect with our alumni."

As a higher education professional for over 17 years, Jamie Raynor gained early experience in academic affairs for several years before turning her focus and her profession to development and advancement initiatives. In her temporary role, she currently serves as the interim vice chancellor for WCU's Division of Advancement for Advancement Services, Alumni Engagement, and Development staff, also serving on the Chancellor's Executive Council. Her permanent role as Assistant Vice Chancellor includes the supervision of major, planned, and annual giving professionals in the development office. She also manages a portfolio of corporations, foundations, and individuals to secure major and planned gifts. 

Have you been utilizing the unique talents of your phonathon callers during this crisis? Why or why not? Did this case study make you feel any differently about trying it out? If social distancing measures persist into the Fall semester, how do you plan to handle your phonathon? Let me know down in the comments.

And if you liked this content, please subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising. You'll get my FUNdraising Friday emails, which are jam-packed with interesting, useful, and funny content to keep you sharp and motivated!

Cheers, 

PS - If you liked this article, you might like: 

• Is Phonathon Really Dead?
• Planning for the Unexpected
• The Only 3 Interview Question You Need to Hire Phonathon Callers Who Stay
• 10 Traits ALL Former Phonathon Callers Share
• What makes for great rapport building? Plus, a list of rapport building questions

PPS - Want to use your time isolating at home to become an All-Star fundraiser? Join me for my new course, All-Star Annual Giving. Registration just opened! All-Star Annual Giving is a fully online 12-week course with 9 modules covering all areas of annual giving strategy and execution. If you want to roll into the semester with a fully fledged plan to raise more money than you've ever raised before in your annual giving programs, you need to be in this course.

Somewhere you probably have an employee handbook that explains how to submit expenses reports and how to take days off. You need to level up from that if you want your new hires to have mind-blowing success fast. Information accelerates success!

Your new employees deserve a binder full of process documentation that shows them how to make a data request, how to enter a proposal into the database, a list of all standing meetings they are expected to be involved with, and a yearly calendar of major work events and tasks for the entire year. (Of course, customize this for the position and your office. My list was just an example of the sort of things you would put in this guide.) If you have never read the E-Myth, I suggest you read my post about process documentation here and pick up that book, along with The First 90 Days.

Technical training is also crucial to assess. Many entry level fundraisers do not have the specific training they need to truly excel in their new roles. For example, while broadly our industry views annual giving as an entry-point into fundraising, it is one of the more technical and difficult areas of fundraising to get right. Invest in training for them. Big conferences full of new ideas and innovations may sound exciting, but as a new person without the fundamentals on board, I guarantee all those new ideas will feel overwhelming quickly.

The need for an in-depth course into the fundamentals of the art and science of fundraising is why I’m fast-tracking my plans to get my All-Star Annual Giving course up and running. For far less than the cost of an average in-person conference ($597), you can get your new folks trained in the science (data, analytics) and art (writing, strategy) of fundraising. It will take no time on your part, your new hire will be off to the races no matter what area of annual giving they work in, and you'll be an All-Star manager with a goal-busting team. This comprehensive curriculum is grounded in evidence-based fundraising and designed and taught by me, Jessica Cloud. You can check out my bio here as well as testimonials here. 

All-Star Annual Giving is a fully online 12-week course with 9 modules covering all areas of annual giving strategy and execution.  You can see a draft outline of the course here. Registration opens in the next couple of weeks. The course will open in May, Sign up today to get updates.

Enrollment in the course will include lifetime access to the course modules, which include dozens of lessons. Each lesson will be presented in written and audio formats, so you can read at your desk or on your phone. You can also listen to audio lessons on your commute. Every lesson will be enriched with videos (where appropriate), downloadable planning sheets, templates and examples. Enrollment will also include access to a Facebook group with your cohort (and later alumni of the program) for support and on-going questions and advice.

Finally, your new hire will be accelerated to success by you specifically telling them that you support them and letting them know where they need to go with their questions. If your employees feel comfortable letting you know that they don’t understand something or don’t know how they can achieve their goals, you’ve won! Because that level of trust between a manager and an employee is what will enable you to jointly find solutions that work.

What does your on-boarding program look like? How has that changed with isolating for coronavirus? Have you invested in any online training for your new hires? Let me know in the comments.

And of course, questions are, as always, encouraged!

Cheers,
​
Jessica

PS – The photo for this is my daughter boarding for a big train ride to Chicago to see Hamilton! Clearly, I’m missing travel quite a bit. Also, if you liked this post, you might also like these:

• The E-Myth (Why Process Documentation Matters)
• What's Important About Personality Tests? It's Not What You Think?
• 8 Essential Skills for Success in Fundraising
• The Main Thing: My Fundraising Mantra
• Rethinking How we Train Phonathon Callers

PPS – No funds to invest in online training? For every 10 folks that sign up for my All-Star Annual Giving course, I’ll be gifting a full scholarship for course access to someone who would otherwise not be able to afford the course. You can apply here. Check out the entire course outline and other information about All-Star Annual Giving today too.

Surely you know, that non-profit and fundraising roles can be extremely stressful and that was true long before COVID-19. 

The Chronicle of Philanthropy ran an article in August of 2019 about new research showing that 30% of fundraisers plan to leave the field entirely in the next two years!

There are many reasons for this startling statistics, here are a couple: 

• 84 percent of fundraisers said they felt “tremendous pressure to succeed” in their role.
• 55 percent said they “often feel unappreciated” in their work.

I can guarantee that the "tremendous pressure to succeed" will only increase as we move through the coronavirus crisis and into the recovery phase. ​

Well, in order to be the absolutely All-Star Fundraiser I know you can be, you have to be your best self. You can’t succumb to nonprofit burnout. The industry needs folks like you to stay in fundraising. With 3 out of 10 fundraisers planning to depart the entire sector (before this crisis), nonprofits will need YOUR unique skills. So, I’m going to encourage you to take care of you.

Shouldn't we be lobbying for a better budget, higher salaries, more cooperative leadership, and more reasonable goals?

bsolutely! In order to do that, you have to be in top form. You will need even more resilience to raise amazing amounts of money while also changing an industry. I’m going to challenge you just to go just a bit further in taking excellent care of yourself. ​

Self-care has this modern connotation of it being something over-worked wine mommies do. They're looking for a "Calgon-Take-Me-Away" bubble bath. (I just totally dated myself with that commercial reference, didn't I?) 

While those sorts of indulgences and treats do have a place in a well-rounded self-care regimen, they are not the core of a self-care practice. 

It is not our grand gestures that keep us healthy in body, mind, and spirit, but the small things we do daily. You can quote me on that one. 

You need to identify small, sustaining daily habits that can be done on 80-90% of days to  help you be in the best form for yourself and others. 

To help you build that practice, I've created the Self Care Mind Map and the 90 Day Habit Tracker. (To download both files in PDF format, as well as view my entire Self-Care for Non-Profit Pros webinar, click here.) The process starts with the Self-Care Mind Map. 

Also, please remember to find beauty and practice gratitude. I have been snapping pictures of flowers every day, because I’m so genuinely grateful that I can get outside and walk. The weather has been beautiful here (whereas my brother and his family are stuck in late season snow in Colorado) and I have other friends who are stuck inside their homes for the foreseeable future. So, the best thing we can do for ourselves and others right now is to look inward and tend to ourselves like one would tend a garden, cultivating compassion for self and others. The result will be grace.

Grace for ourselves, for our families, our kids, our elders, the healthcare workers, the UPS drivers, our neighbors, everyone we interact with. And please tip your cashiers and delivery drivers very generously, as you are able. 

To get through all of this, we will need to take this extra time at home with our family to cultivate our best habits of self-care, which will fortify our body, mind, and spirit. These practices will give us the resilience we need to get through this crisis successfully and come out the other side of stronger in many ways.

If you already have a self-care practice, what does that look like for you? If you used the Self-Care Mind Map, what kinds of things did you come up with to try? Did any of them surprise you? In a couple of weeks, I want to know what benefits you've been able to garner from making some of those things habits? Please let me know in the comments below. 

And of course, if any of this stirred up questions, send me your question in the comments and I'll address it. 
​
Cheers,

The second reason that stopping all asks is bad advice is that donors often actually WANT to give during a crisis. I’ve been a phonathon caller after 9/11, ran a phonathon during the economic downturn of 2008, and did relief fundraising after an EF-4 tornado hit my personal home and the campus of the university I worked for. Donors, when they are able, rush in after a crisis and support the organizations that mean the most to them. They want to buoy you up right now. ​

Have you heard that there will be an extra Giving Tuesday on 5/5/20 to help donors and organizations respond to the COVID-19 crisis? Now is the time to be planning how your organization can participate. Here’s the info on that plan.

Zoom provides a platform that is almost as good as being there. Offer your donors Zoom or phone as options. If they aren’t comfortable with Zoom, phone is good. I’ve had two discovery visits and a dozen or more significant other major donor visits in the last two weeks without leaving my house.

Here’s how most of these meetings have gone:

• How are you and your family? Is everyone doing well?
• [If a discovery visit] How did you become involved with SKSM?
• Our top priority right now is the health, safety, and welfare of our students, faculty, and staff.
• More about our long-range plans and vision for the school
• Discussion about how their local congregations are adapting to COVID-19
• Thanking them for participating in our feasibility study and discussion of their plans for the campaign

Often folks were very concerned about the stock market and the economy in general and how that will impact the possible size of their campaign gifts. We agreed to meet again in 3-4 months to check-in in those cases. Uniformly, these donors appreciated being contacted now and informed about where the school is in its growth and development.

​(Oh, and BTW, I secured millions of dollars from these visits because I didn't stop asking. Most are verbal commitments that will be finalized later but I secured hundreds of thousands of dollars that will come in by the end of this fiscal year.)

This time is a tremendous opportunity to pivot and innovate in ways that will stretch our creativity. We can absolutely do this together!

What techniques are you utilizing to connect with donors? Are you raising funds for relief? What have you tried and what are you planning to try? Where do you fall on the debate of “to solicit or not to solicit?” Let me know in the comments. 

Comments and questions are, as always, welcomed and encouraged!

Cheers,

Jessica Cloud

PS – If you liked this post, you might also like these:

• How to Keep Donors Connected in a Crisis: Near, Dear, and Clear
• 23 Effective and Enjoyable Work-From-Home Hacks (And a few sanity savers if you are suddenly homeschooling kids)
• Curated List of Resources on Coronavirus and Fundraising
• Crisis Communication for Fundraisers (Interview with Katie Garcia)
• Planning for the Unexpected
• Self-Care for Non-Profit Professionals Webinar replay and resources
• Fundraising in a Crisis Webinar replay and resources
  

​PPS - If you found this article helpful, please comment and let me know. Also subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising so you don't miss a post! You’ll start to receive my FUNdraising Friday emails where I bring you curated information and super cool freebies exclusively for my subscribers!​​

The situation with COVID-19 changes day-by-day and hour-by-hour. Hopefully by now, nonprofits have taken steps to allow all but absolutely essential personnel to work from home. Fundraising, while essential, is a function that can be done from a home office. The big question is:

How can we keep our donors connected to our organizations in this unstable environment?

When it became clear that I would not be allowed to travel anymore for work, I fell back on a maxim I heard somewhere early in my fundraising career. It rhymes so that’s convenient and an aid to memory.

Near
Dear
Clear

In any circumstances where rapid change is taking place, we must take great pains to keep our donors near, dear, and clear. What does that mean as a guide to practical action and how can we all undertake those functions while protecting ourselves and our donors from coronavirus?

Let’s take each part of the maxim in turn:

Make sure your organization is crystal clear on its priorities. The first of which should be the health, safety, and welfare of those they serve and those who work for the institution. Repeat this often to your constituents.

However, do not shy away from honestly telling donors how this crisis is affecting your organizational needs and its finances. Your major donors and board members especially deserve the candid talk about what is needed, what might be needed, and why.

Did you find the framework of near, dear and clear helpful in thinking about how you are keeping donors connected these days? What other strategies have you tried in the last couple of weeks that keep donors near, dear, and clear? Tell me below in the comments!

Again, I hope this was helpful to you. If it was, please leave me a comment below.

Also, if you found this very helpful, I hope you’ll subscribe. By doing so, you’ll get my FUNdraising Friday emails every Friday with pick-me-ups, helpful articles, and cool freebies. Humor and a commitment to continual learning will no-doubt help us all through this crisis.

Take care and be well,

Jessica ​

PS - If you are feeling stressed and anxious and burnt out due to coronavirus, you're not alone. Because so many are facing unprecedented challenges and pressure right now, I'm hosting a free webinar on the topic of Self Care for Non-Profit Professionals. It will take place April 1st. Register today as there are only 100 spots!

Ok, I’ve got one final category of tips for those parents out there who are navigating the un-charted waters of having their kids home all day for the whole workweek. You're probably thinking "How do I get them to do their work? How can I get all my work done too?"

First, let’s be clear: this is a highly unusual situation for everyone. Remember how we need to give everyone grace. That includes kids. They absorb all the unspoken worry and fear around them, and it can cause them to act…. less than pleasant and cooperative. Be kind and give them some leeway.

That said, I would not let extreme cases of defiance and disrespect slide. Otherwise, you are setting some precedence that will cause you trouble later, especially if this situation persists for months and not weeks.

Sound like contradictory advice? I’ll cop to that. That’s what parenting is: finding a balance amidst the many paradoxes of raising little humans.

On to the specific tips:

• Time: Don’t think you have to “homeschool” all day. Working one-on-one, kids get done the same amount of work in a few hours, assuming they are cooperative. They will get done more in less time, just like you will.
• Read to them. Read one chapter in Harry Potter per night or two picture books. It’s that simple and it helps that much.
• LEGOS: hours and hours of thoughtful educational free play. If you are at Walmart getting groceries, you can get a pretty hefty basic set for $25.
• Notebooks: one large blank book notebook or journal per child will save your sanity from loose sheets of drawing paper EVERYWHERE. Turn them loose with a notebook and crayons.
• Set time for “free screens” where they can watch what they want but at other times give them a short list of choices.
• Where possible, go for walks and get exercise. You’ll need it being home all day and so will they. Listen to the birds. Teach them the names of flowers and trees. Examine fallen bird’s nests. That stuff is as important as the fresh air and exercise.
• If you cannot go outside, exercise in the house. Family dance party is always a hit. Basic calisthenics, they’ll imitate whatever you do.
• Introduce foreign language studies. Find Little Pim videos (YouTube has some introductory content for several languages) or download DuoLingo on a phone or tablet. Short of that, look up some words and make some flash cards.
• Sign Language: Signing Time is amazing and so fun! She has a good number of free resources on YouTube to get you started. Rachel and the Treeschoolers is another of her shows.
• Cosmic Kids Yoga adventures and Zen Den videos. Hard to explain just how magical and awesome these are. Try and you’ll see. I hope this lady is a millionaire. She’s got lots of yoga and meditation videos for kids on YouTube. My kids LOVE them because they are based on their favorite Disney stories or are fun stories about animals.
• I’ve been seeing a big list of free homeschool resources going around. As a former homeschool mama, from that list, I can personally endorse Mystery Science (amazing), PBS kids, Khan Academy (for math) and Typing Club. We spent a ton of time trying out different resources and discarding others. So that’ll save you some time.
• I’ll also offer that Outschool offers amazing classes and many are very affordable ($10-15).
• My favorite YouTube Channel is Art 4 Kids Hub. It’s a dad who draws with his kids and they are completely charming and engagement. They draw all the favorite characters and make it very attainable for the kids.
• Family Game Night (card games, board games)
• Family Movie Night: popcorn and something more classic they wouldn’t otherwise watch, like Singin’ in the Rain.
• We always did school in the mornings because my daughter was a morning person (I’m not). We would start with 10 minutes or so of Circle Time which just includes a few songs, dances and stretches. It’s a beautiful way to anchor their day and connect with them before turning to your work. And in this time of uncertainty, they need that. I have a tons of Circle Time playlists on Spotify if anyone is interested.
• After Circle Time, my daughter would do whatever book work or online work she needed to do that day. Depending on attitude levels and cooperation, she’d usually be done by lunch and then she could just play or draw the rest of the day.
• If you have a partner, switch out kid duties so you can work. Have one spouse take mornings and then other afternoons, making adjusting for meetings. If they are all over 5 years old, they don’t need direct supervision, so you can both hop on a meeting or call at the same time. LEGOs and Netflix will keep their attention, especially if you are limiting “free screen time”. I’m telling you; they will be so excited to watch whatever they want for a while; they will leave you alone.
• If there’s interest, I can also put together a list of our favorite educational shows on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video.
• End the day loving on those kids. Read to them and tuck them into bed. They need the unconditional love of their parents right now. They need to know they are safe and secure.

​
Again, I hope this was helpful you. If it was, please leave me a comment below. If you found this very helpful, I hope you’ll subscribe. By doing so, you’ll get my FUNdraising Friday emails every Friday with pick-me-ups, helpful articles and cool freebies.

At the end of this, I’d like to say again that I know how lucky I am to have the kind of job I have that allows me to work from home, especially at a time like this. So many don’t have this opportunity. Cultivating gratitude will help us all build resilience for this challenge.

Take care and be well,

Jessica 

If you weren’t a finance major (I wasn’t), learning the ins and outs of endowments can be intimidating.

But fear not! Endowments are easy to understand once you know some basic terminology. 

Becoming proficient with these terms is essential if you want to grow a career in fundraising. Being able to converse intelligently about endowment issues is a must for nearly all development professionals. Luckily, I worked with three phenomenal CPAs at my last job and I owe those ladies a lot, because through their patience I learned this essential information well enough to utilize it in my fundraising and to teach it to you here! 

I find that it’s helpful to explain things in terms of a household budget so I’ll give the standard explanations and then I’ll give my liberal arts definition. 

What is an endowment anyway?

First off, the main idea of an endowment is like a savings account where you never ever touch the original amount you put into the fund. Imagine you won the lottery and took the lump sum option and after buying a house and some cars and taking a big vacation, you put the remaining money into a savings account. You decide not to touch it and live off some of the investment earnings. That’s all an endowment is! 

The original amount that you put into the account goes by several names in the nonprofit world: corpus, principal, or the permanently restricted part of the endowment. I tend to use corpus most often. 

Surely it’s not that simple? 

You’re right! It’s not. 

As we all know earnings in the investment world are neither guaranteed nor constant. Thus, if you want to maintain your originally invested amount in perpetuity (that’s accountant-speak for forever), you’ll need to be careful with how much you spend year to year. 

Let’s say that the market averages 8%. You would not want to spend all 8% of your earnings that year, because next year you could earn only 3% or *gasp* have a negative return. 

This is why most nonprofits put a cap on the amount of the earnings that can be spent, often only 4 or 5%. That’s called the spending allocation. (This could be for scholarships or program support, anything that the donor and the organization wishes to fund. What the spending allocation gets used for is governed by a written agreement between the organization and the donor. I call it a fund agreement but other groups use different names for the same document.) 

Anyhow, the spending allocation is the  portion of the annual investment earnings authorized to be spent on the mission of the endowed fund. (One endowment can have many endowed fund under its umbrella. Think different scholarships or faculty support funds in a higher education context.) 

In the metaphor of you winning the lottery and putting a large lump sum in an investment account to live off of, you might earn 8% but you’ll only spend 5%. So if your lump sum was $10,000,000, you’ll need to find a way to live off of $500,000 annually rather than $800,000.

What happens to the earnings not spent?

There are generally 3 things that can happen to earnings not spent. 

1. Those earnings are held in the temporarily restricted part of the fund. Think of each endowed fund as having two distinct but inseparable parts. Each part has different rules but are invested the same way. One side is the corpus which is supposed to be sacrosanct and never spent (permanently restricted). The other side (temporarily restricted) is also called reserved earnings and that’s what it does, it reserves some earnings in case of market downturn (a year where you don’t earn the full 5% or you have a negative return). In the household concept, you make $800,000 on your $10 million invested, and then you decide to live off of only $500,000, socking the remaining $300,000 away for years when you might make less than 8%. Make sense? 
   
2. If a fund has had a string of bad years and the total market value of the fund (amount in permanently restricted and the amount in the temporarily restricted) is less than the original value of the corpus, that’s a situation called underwater. That’s bad. Almost all of the time, when a fund is underwater, there is no spending allocation. Once the market rebounds, spending allocations can resume and any additional earnings can go to replenish the value of the permanently restricted side. In our metaphor, let’s say that you’d had a bad investment manager or just plain bad luck and now your total value is $9,500,000, instead of $10 million. Well this is the exact situation you wanted to avoid because you’ve dipped into your corpus. This year though, you made 7% ($665,000) so you can choose to live off of 4% ($380,000) and take the remaining earnings ($285,000) and replenish the corpus of the fund somewhat getting you back to $9,785,000, much closer to your corpus of $10 million. 
3. Some endowments and the organizations that manage the funds take an administrative fee. This fee may go to the investment managers or sometimes to the budget of the nonprofit who the endowment is to benefit. Usually this fee is small 1-3%.  

Each organization will have an investment policy for its endowment and a target investment earnings that they hope to reach. You can see why: if you need 5% for the spending allocation, 2% for the administrative fee(s), and some to hold in reserved earnings for a rainy day (or a bear market year), suddenly your endowment needs to clear 8-10% every year for everything to remain viable and run smoothly.

Now here’s a mind bender for you: if a fund earns some returns but not all the way to your target and the total market value is over the corpus amount, you can’t give it a full spending allocation. That’s called underfunded. (Not to be confused with underwater, but seriously how could you not confuse them. This took me YEARS to figure out completely.)

Here’s the analogy: Your $10 million is still intact and you’ve banked another $100,000 in reserved earnings, you earn only earn 3%. Remember your usual allocation is $500,000. So, you made $300,000 and you have $100,000 extra without touching your original investment, but that’s only $400,000. Guess you better stock up on ramen until next year! And furthermore, it’s likely that as a good manager you wouldn’t want to wipe out your entire reserved earnings lest the situation of lower than expected earnings continue for another year. So, you might only allocate $200,000 be spent this year, leaving $200,000 in reserved earnings. That’s an underfunded endowment. 

Whew! Now my brain hurts. Let’s talk about something else. I hear about divestment. What’s that?

Many organizations with long standing endowments managed their investment only for strong returns and with little regard to the greater social good. This means some prominent endowments are invested in things such as fossil fuel companies or private prisons or other things that are actually at odds with the organization's mission in some cases. 

For instance, if you were an animal lover, and you hear from your financial planner that a significant portion of your $10 million nest egg was invested in cosmetic companies that cruelly test on animals but you’ve been making phenomenal returns. What would you do? If you told them to move to other companies that are cruelty free but to do it in a way that hopefully preserved returns, that’s divesting from companies profiting from animal cruelty. 

Conscious Investment 

Some organizations are so committed to their mission and values that they do not want their endowments to be utilized in ways that are contrary to their values as an organization. These groups can decide to invest in what are sometimes called ESG or environmental, social and good governance funds, ensuring that organizational monies are not used to exploit people’s labor, trample their rights, damage the environment, or other things that are negative. In some cases, ESG funds can be invested in companies that are not doing things the right way as part of a strategy of putting pressure on the companies as investors. This has been done successfully to influence labor disputes and to support the growth of clean technology divisions at fossil fuels companies, for example. 

Constituents including donors, program recipients, the general public, students (in the education field) can lobby and put pressure on governing boards of non profits to divest from certain areas which they feel are in conflict with the values of the organization. Leadership can also chose to divest as part of a vision for the future of the organization. 

How can I use this information as a fundraiser?

I’m going to cover that in an upcoming post “Fundraising and Endowments”. Stay tuned by subscribing. You’ll receive my FUNdraising Friday emails where I bring you curated information and super cool freebies exclusively for my subscribers. 

Do you find endowment-talk intimidating? Did this post help to demystify it somewhat? What questions do you have for me to answer in my upcoming "Fundraising and Endowments" post? Comment below and let me know!
​
Comments and questions are, as always, welcomed and encouraged!

Cheers,

Jessica Cloud

PS – If you liked this post, you might also like these:

• Culture of Philanthropy Check-Up
• Major Gift Travel Tips (Interview)
• What should your strategic plan contain?
• How to Build Rapport with Prospects and Donors
• Benchmarking: The Missing Piece of Your Planning Process

PPS - If you found this article helpful, please comment and let me know. Also subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising so you don't miss a post! You’ll start to receive my FUNdraising Friday emails where I bring you curated information and super cool freebies exclusively for my subscribers!​​ And don't forget to visit my store for transformative training and consulting products!

Imposter Syndrome.

Have you ever felt it: that deep rumbling of self-doubt?

Have you felt that fear of failure, of being “found out” and of everyone knowing that you aren’t really as amazing as your LinkedIn page might lead them to believe?

I’ve felt this way at different points over the years and I’ve known many others who admit to these feelings. Research once thought it was a phenomenon exclusive to women. Now, it seems many demographics share this particular kind of anxiety.

The gravest consequence of imposter syndrome isn’t the personal anxiety, it’s the paralysis that the anxiety engenders. The “logic” in your head goes something like this: “If I try and fail, everyone will know I’m a fraud, so let’s do nothing.”

How do we as fundraisers and professionals move past imposter syndrome and start giving ourselves the credit we deserve? How do we begin to own our expertise and use it in positive action?

I’ve been working on this blog post for years, though I didn’t know it.

I was doing research for this blog post when I had many breakdowns in college from running myself into the ground in the name of achievement, afraid to “let everybody down”.

I was figuring out strategies for this blog post when I was passed over for a promotion when I was 27 and I thought I had “failed my family” which at the time was just myself and my husband.

And I was testing solutions for imposter syndrome, as I clawed my way back to normalcy after battling postpartum depression. I felt that old familiar feeling, in the guise of being exposed as a “bad mother”.

For me, achievement and confidence have often come at the price of near-paralyzing self-doubt, anxiety and fear of failure. My job now is to try and keep the awesome and give up the unnecessary shitty feelings that have come with it in the past.

I conquered this fear when I applied for a job with the title Vice President for Advancement despite not having any six figure major gift experience yet. And then I got that job.

I conquer this fear whenever I take time to do some yoga and tend to my state of mind first, before tending to deadlines.

And I conquer this fear every time I post on this blog, since I am positioning myself as an expert in this field.

The older I get the less I care about what other people think. And amazingly I am also slowly losing that frantic worried feeling that comes with being an overachiever. I know I can and will get things done and carrying around the baggage of stressing about it is pointless. I have more confidence that I always come through for myself and my family when it matters. These are very good developments.

So, what strategies have I found useful as I battled imposter syndrome? The variety of specific tactics fall nicely into 3 broader categories: mindset, environment and action. The majority of my suggestions focus on mindset but it is also important to manage your environment and media. And most importantly, to truly defeat imposter syndrome you must take action. Let’s dive in.

MINDSET

• Get comfortable with discomfort. One thing a regular yoga and meditation practice has taught me is that there is value in learning to be comfortable in uncomfortable positions. Let yourself feel the negative feelings and let them move through you and then -- away. Basically, you do *your* work (on your own mindset) so that you can then do the work before you.
• Identify yourself as something. Don’t tell yourself that you are “working in fundraising” or “training to become a fundraiser”. Just call yourself a fundraiser. State it as a fact. Same goes for hobbies. I’m a yogi, a runner, and a dancer. I’m not learning how to do it. I’m doing it. Identify strongly with what you are doing and you’ll live up to the practice of it. Whereas you reinforce your unworthiness to yourself each time you saying you are “trying to be” something. Don't try. Do.
• Always remember "perfect is the enemy of the good". Don't let paralysis take over. It sounds cliché but those of us that are perfectionists can drown ourselves in avoidance because things won't be perfect. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained” is another good version of this sentiment.
• Don’t leave the field to those with no humility. While, as I mentioned, imposter syndrome isn’t limited to women, most of the time when I see someone expressing this feeling, it is a woman. Part of my getting over my imposter syndrome was the realization that men will apply for a job if they meet only three of the qualifications. Women will wait until they have all of them. This perpetuates men getting higher level positions because they are willing to take risks. I'm not leaving the field to men just because of my insecurity. Regardless of gender, if anyone who has enough humility to recognize where they can grow never puts their name in, only those with unrestrained bravado will get executive level positions.
• Take time for self-care. “Self-care” has become a buzzword in this day and age. It’s certainly means something different for every person. For me, self-care means taking decisive and daily steps to prevent burn-out. Burnout and job overwhelm, for me, is closely related to imposter syndrome. When I get to the point where I feel like the demands are too much and I might miss something important, the fraudulent feelings arise. Some folks might need to take a vacation or mental health days occasionally. For me, it’s about doing the smaller scale self-care steps every single day: eating healthy, yoga, meditation, running, and dance. Experiment and figure out how to care for you so you don’t get completely overwhelmed. Self-care is mindset management.
• Deeply internalize that your qualities matter more than your skills. I've also been on the hiring side of many interview processes and I can tell you ABSOLUTELY that attitude and resourcefulness is FAR more important than skills. You might doubt your skills. But, owning a positive attitude and your ability to be trainable should require a huge leap of faith for anyone. Just submit the application and see what happens. Let the employer decide if you are "qualified" or not. Push your self judgement off on the folks who should be doing the evaluation, the hiring manager. Don’t disqualify yourself.
• Remember who you might be influencing. It also helps me move when I'm stalled to think about what I want to teach my kids through my own behavior. Would I want my daughter to get hung up on feeling not worthy and therefore not take actions and risk? I preach to her to take risks all the time. When I'm confronted with my own desire to avoid risks, I tell myself it's an opportunity to teach through showing now. Even if you don’t have children, you are surely an inspiration to someone. Are you showing them positive possibilities?
• Acknowledging luck or grace doesn’t invalidate YOU! It’s true that sometimes you get a large anonymous gift or an unexpected bequest that helps you reach your goal, but those occurrences should never invalidate your contribution to the accomplishment. Recognizing the role of grace or luck shouldn’t erase your value. You have no way of knowing how far your efforts reach. Who’s to say that the large anonymous donation wasn’t motivated by someone having read your copy? Who knows whether your work will initiate a gift that will unexpectedly bless the organization 20 years from now? Give yourself some grace. 
• Realize that NO ONE has it all figured out. A friend of mine wrote me this about her experience with imposter syndrome, “What helped me the most, was actually seeing how others around me in leadership roles also didn't have the answers. I finally realized that we are all making it up as we go. At first that was scary, because I wanted to have someone to go to, but then it gave me confidence. There isn't some "secret" that I don't know, or these people aren't better or smarter than me.” So true.

ENVIRONMENT

• Keep a bullet journal. Here’s an introduction to what bullet journaling is. I was skeptical at first but all of the smartest people I know were obsessed with bullet journaling. I starting using a bullet journal a little more than a year ago and now I don’t understand how I lived so long without it. I wrote about it on my blog because I was so impressed with the process after only a month. The bullet journal allows me to put all my eggs in one basket. I have my work schedule, to-dos, my kid’s activities, my monthly budget, extended family obligations, and my daily goals and habits all in one book. I also fill in blank pages with doodles, drawings and inspirational quotes. I can look back at past journals to see how far I’ve progressed and remind myself of what I’m working toward. It’s a therapeutic practice, a productivity hack and it helps remind me to get in my self-care (healthy diet, exercise, yoga, and meditation).
• Post your mantras. I’ve written about my favorite fundraising mantra elsewhere. Another sign I have had in my office for a long time is a quote from a Prince song, Baby I’m a Star: “They say, baby, nothing comes too easy. But, when you got it, baby, nothing comes too hard.” At first, it just got me jazzed up to accomplish my goal, but over time it became a reminder of all of the other goals that had come before. Clearly, it wasn’t a coincidence that I was involved in all of those stories. 
• Keep your “happy” file. I have friend who calls his file the “Killin’ it!” file. Whatever you call it, this is where you store all of the heartfelt thank you notes from co-workers and donors. It’s where you go when you feel like you aren’t up to the task and that you haven’t accomplished much. You might find a note from a person you mentored thanking you because they got their first job. Keep a folder in your email software for this purpose and a hard copy file too. Reference it often for a pick-me-up.
• Consume self-help books. I’ve been addicted to self-help books since I was little girl. My mom taught me that just about any problem could be solved (or at least alleviated) through a book. Today, I listen to many of them on audiobook through a free library app. I like the really cheesy, hippy-dippy ones with lots of information about affirmations and visualization. I try to keep my critical, academic mind out of it when I read/listen to these books. These books help me to counter the voices in my head. If I want a dish to be sweeter, I add sugar. If I want my headspace to be more positive, I fill it with lots of positivity!
• Take a social media vacation: Remove the apps from your phone. Don’t log-on except for work purposes. Don’t get distracted when using it for work purposes. I’ve done this before for a week and it was revelatory. I had so much time to be productive in other ways and I felt more “at-home” in myself and my world. This is a way to help beat imposter syndrome because while you are on your vacay, you won’t see that acquaintance from college that recently cured cancer and won the Pulitzer the same week. Take a break from watching other people’s highlight reels and you’ll feel better about your own life. The YOLO (you only live once) and FOMO (fear of missing out) feelings are related to imposter syndrome because they (wrongly) make us feel like our lives are not as real or exciting as others.
• Limit your overall media exposure: Tim Ferriss calls it a “low information diet” or “selective ignorance”.  I don’t have cable in my house, only Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. For a long-time, I didn’t have any magazines in my house. I still don’t have any fashion magazines in my house. I only get my news from carefully selected sources that I follow on Facebook. Control how news and media gets to you. This keeps your mindset more positive (let’s face it, the news today is almost never good). When you limit your media, you also limit the amount of advertising you are exposed to, which means you will stop those engineered feelings of lack from closing in on you. I can personally attest that you’ll be more satisfied with your life and what you have right now.

TAKE ACTION

• Teach others what you know. There’s nothing more nerve-wracking than teaching what you know. There’s also nothing more satisfying than teaching what you know. Before I started training others, I wasn’t fully aware of exactly how much I knew about fundraising. Teaching is a great opportunity to move through your fear and thereby to demonstrate to yourself your expertise. Furthermore, you get to help others. Getting a thank you note from someone is the very best thing about teaching. (Add it to your “happy file”.) Teaching also puts you in a mindset of service, which gets you out of your own head and outside of your doubts.
• Take a course or get certified. Another friend, who is a professional photographer, had this to say, “I am a naturally very confident person and I still felt it quite a bit at the beginning of running my own business. I addressed it through completing a course on basic small business principles and management, becoming a Certified Professional Photographer (since my degrees were not specialized in photography) and doing continuing education every year to get better and better.” I’ve written about applying for my Certified Fundraising Executive credential (CFRE) and about the challenges I encountered taking the CFRE exam. But overall, it was worth it. I learned a ton and I’m part of an elite group of professionals, which reminds me that I’m the real deal. 
• Work on your body language.  Amy Cuddy has a phenomenal TED talk about this topic. Working on your body language can completely change your mindset, confidence and feelings of mastery. Take 20 minutes to watch her talk and implement her suggestions.
• Enter a competition. Here’s another great idea from my photographer friend, “I also enter image competitions yearly. It's a great learning experience to hear judges hash it out over your image. Overcoming imposter syndrome is all about identifying your weaknesses and facing fear.” Why not enter a CASE competition so that your work can be evaluated and hopefully validated? You shouldn’t live for this sort of external validation but if you can look at competing a platform to specifically identify your weaknesses so that you can grow, do it!
• Outrun your mind. Take action so quickly and so much of it that you don't have time to listen to the doubting voice in your head. By the time you catch up, you will have likely disproven that voice. I’ve done this many times. When the idea hits you, do it now. Don’t give the worry and doubt a foot in the door. Apply for a job that you don’t “feel” qualified for. Write an email to a potential mentor and press send before you talk yourself out of it. Start a blog and post about it on your Facebook page. Whatever you fear doing, is probably the area where you could have the greatest impact.
• Read this from Neil Gaiman: If you’ve implemented all of the ideas above and you still feel like a fraud about to be exposed, read what Neil Gaiman has to say about the subject.

This is a journey of self-validation. Change your mindset. Manage your environment. Then, take meaningful action. Do not give in to intellectual or professional paralysis. You have something important to give the world.

Fight through the feelings and do what only you can uniquely do.

It’s worth it.

YOU are worth it.

Have you tried any of these suggestions? Are there other strategies to counter imposter syndrome that I missed?

Comments and questions are, as always, welcomed and encouraged!

Cheers,

Jessica Cloud

PS – If you liked this post, you might also like these:

• Why I love being a fundraiser: Resiliency
• Sowing and Reaping
• Hey you, you are amazing
• Fundraising is an amazing career choice
• Breaking through your direct mail writer’s block

PPS - If you found this article helpful, please comment and let me know. Also subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising so you don't miss a post! You'll get my guide to Call Center Games for Free!​​ And don't forget to visit my store for transformative training and consulting products!

​Over this last year since I started Real Deal Fundraising, readers have sent me questions. I’m a believer that if one person asks a question, there are many others out there that are wondering the same thing but haven’t asked it out loud yet. So, in that spirit, I scoured my email and social media messages for some of the best questions I’ve been asked and compiled my response for all of you.
 
If you have a question you would like me to answer on my next installment, comment on this blog post or contact me here.
 
Question: What is your opinion on making a second ask in a thank you letter to donors?
 
In a letter, I'm not a fan. In a dedicated thank you call, I'm not a huge fan. In a thank you email, you can include a link and/or a PS with a passive pitch.

However, you can do some dedicated 2nd ask calls that are distinct from Thank You calls. You thank them for their past support and then pitch something different from their previous gifts. For instance, if you ask for general fund gifts in the fall, do a 2nd ask campaign for the colleges or academic departments.

Get very clear about the purpose of each communication piece you do. Stewardship should be 90-100% stewardship. Asks should be 80% asking but always with gratitude for past giving rolled in.
 
Question: What do you think about adding all students to our donor database upon enrollment instead of waiting to add them when they graduate?
 
If you have the capacity to keep that data up, it's not a bad idea. You'll have to load new students, remove those who don't stay from semester to semester and regularly update demographic info. That requires a strong advancement services staff along with a tight schedule and partnership with student data staff.
That said, if you can do it there are lots of advantages. You can:

1. Mark which students receive scholarships and link them to the funds and donors for more efficient stewardship.
2. More efficiently manage a thank you note campaign from scholarship recipients to the donors.
3. More easily query to find certain types of students so you can reach out to them and develop profiles for marketing materials.
4. Be equipped for student outreach if you want to do any student philanthropy initiatives or a senior class gift campaign
5. Also load their parents, which means you can research those parents, particularly out of state parents, who are fantastic major gift prospects. I would recommend loading parents as well and developing a parent annual fund and major gift plan.

 
Question: Do you send receipts to all donors?
 
Yes, all donors should get a receipt. In the case of online gifts, I use an auto-generated receipt sent via email after the gift is processed electronically. Those that make a monthly gift receive an acknowledgement the first time the recurring gift/pledge is set up and then a statement each January that covers the total amount of their giving for the previous calendar/tax year.
 
Question: I’m talking to our deans about fundraising for the first time ever. Do you have any advice for what topics I should cover?
 
When talking with the deans, you need to convey two things:

1. How you can help them, and
2. How they can help you.

 
You should make sure to emphasize the importance of viewing this as a partnership. So for instance, you can tell them how you can help them raise more money (phonathon, direct mail, taking them on major donor visits, etc.) but also tell them practical ways they can support you in that work (doing an alumni newsletter, encouraging grads to update demographic information, regularly sending you good news about their programs and students, responding to emails, getting their student scholarship recipients to write thank you notes, etc.)
 
I would use this opportunity to tell them you will be happy to train them to do things like write thank you notes and talk to major donors but they must also trust you when you tell them that something isn't a good idea and they need to know the limitations of your staff.
 
If you have the ability to be a bit frank with them, gently convey the sense that trust is important and that this is a give and take partnership. If you can do this, you will be further along that most shops in terms of relationship with academic leadership.
 
Question: How can I improve our percentage of phonathon gifts given via credit card?
 
Improving credit cards is a simple (but not easy) thing to do. You must prime the mindset of the callers so that they genuine expect the prospect to give via a credit or debit card. You must emphasize that credit cards are THE default payment option for everything in our world today, right down to a sweet tea for $1 from McDonald's.

After addressing mindset, callers must do TWO credit card asks, according to this formula: assumptive ask then what I call the “reasons plus reconsider” ask.

The assumptive ask goes like this: "Which credit or debit card would you like to use?" If they give the credit card on this ask, of course, no need to keep asking.

If they balk on the first ask, you simply tell them why you are asking for a credit card and ask them to reconsider. Here’s an example: "The reasons we ask donors to make their gift via credit card is that it puts your gift to work right after for the institution. It's very safe and only takes a few seconds. Would you reconsider using your credit or debit card tonight?" This rebuttal ask can be customized to the most common reasons why donors might hesitate to give on their credit card.

Callers must follow this formula without fail. It's hard to get volunteer callers to do that and hold them accountable. But, you'll make significant strides by following the formula above. You'll notice it's very natural and not pushy. Just a question and then an explanation. I’ll do a more in-depth blog post on this topic soon, particularly covering the ways that you can modify the “reasons plus reconsider ask” to make it specific to the prospect’s objection.

That's all for today! What questions do you have for me? Post a comment with your question(s).

If you are interested in working with me directly as a trainer or consultant, contact me here and let’s chat.

Comments and questions are, as always, welcomed and encouraged!

Cheers,

Jessica Cloud, CFRE

PS - If you liked this post, you might also like these:

• What makes for great rapport building? Plus, a list of rapport building questions
• The Top 3 Reasons Why Recruitment should be the #1 Priority of a Phonathon Manager
• How to Staff Your Phonathon Super-Fast: Seven Secrets to Fill the Seats
• 31 Ways to Hit the Refresh Button on Your Direct Mail
• The Main Thing . . . My Fundraising Mantra

​PPS - If you found this article helpful, please comment and let me know. Also subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising so you don't miss a post! You'll get my guide to Call Center Games for Free!