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!

Greetings!

You might be asking yourself, where in the world has Jessica been?! Real Deal Fundraising hasn’t had anything new since early May!

Well, I’ve been doing two important things:

1. I’ve been raising a LOT of money.

​Our year ended with three big fundraising events in New Orleans. Those events were breakaway successes for our organization. For the entire fiscal year, we tripled overall fundraising, bringing 301% more dollars than FY16. We’ve implemented a new fundraising model this year and I plan to share the details about it with you on this blog soon. (Here's me and my hubby at our Gala celebrating the success of this year.)

2. I’ve been recharging my own batteries.

​I revamped, redecorated, and organized my office. I went to a three day yoga retreat. I spent quality time with my husband and kids. I re-dedicated myself to my health. I worked on some work planning and worked on my thesis a bit. (I’m graduating with my M.A. in English Literature in December.) But those things were NOT my focus.  (Below you'll see me after completing my very first 1 hour long run and then me and my favorite girl at yoga in the park.)

And here’s the amazing thing: things have been happening and coming to me.

I got an inspired idea for our fall direct mail and email campaign. My thesis revisions went much more smoothly than I expected. And I have ton of ideas for this blog and for the community I want to build around it in the future.

To that end, I have a few announcements:

• First, I’ll be doing only monthly blog posts this year. I want to focus on consistency and quality rather than volume and then burning out and going dark for months. My posts will be long form and filled with useful info you can apply to your fundraising plan. This will also give me more time to publish more instructional e-books and engage more deeply with those of you who contact me with questions.
• Now is the PERFECT time of year to turn your attention to phonathon staffing strategy. To that end, I’m putting my e-book, How to Staff Your Phonathon Super-Fast on sale for 25%-OFF. That's only $37.50 for this essential guide. The coupon code is AUG2017 and it is good through the end of August. You need access to these innovative strategies now to get staff with incredible young fundraisers as quickly as possible for maximum dollars raised! This 57-page guide is absolutely crammed with actionable information, templates, formulas, and samples ready for any phonathon manager to implement immediately. Here's the best part, this guide not only teaches you how to staff up fast but how to KEEP the great callers you hire for as long as possible so that you move into an upward spiral of positive results and get off the hamster wheel of perpetual caller turnover.
• Lastly, I have a (very) limited number of spots open this year for consulting jobs.

If you feel your department could use a tune-up or needs some specific help, please contact me and let’s talk about it. I absolutely love teaching fundraising and it appeals to a different side of me than my “day job” work.
​
Here are some of the things that I can help you with as a consultant:

• Conducting bench-marking studies and development audits
• Facilitating the strategic planning process and drafting tactical plans
• Analysis of you institution’s culture of philanthropy
• Copywriting assistance for direct mail, planned giving materials, and major gift proposals
• Development of annual giving, social media, and day of giving plans
• Training for new development staff
• Policy creation and procedural documentation

I can look at one aspect of your program (phonathon, major gifts, etc.) or at your entire shop. I could do the analysis via distance (looking at reports and interviewing your staff via phone or video chat) or I could come to you in person. I do have a full-time position though and need to schedule early and work everything together seamlessly.

I’m excited about this new opportunity to continue teaching and helping institutions reach their fundraising potential.

Contact me here and let’s chat.

Cheers,

Jessica Cloud, CFRE

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

• Goals versus projections
• What should a strategic plan contain?
• Planning for the Unexpected
• Conducting a Benchmarking Study
• My Exhaustive Event Planning Checklist

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!​​​

I guess you could consider this a motivational poster of sorts, but I think it was actually a very early meme. These two sentences have become my fundraising mantra. Something I repeat to keep myself focused and to cope when things get rough.

Because I’m both a nerd and a yogi, I looked up “mantra” in the Oxford English Dictionary. The term “mantra” comes from Sanskrit and the root words mean basically: "thought support" or device to support thought and action. This is exactly what this simple sign has been for me throughout my career. Even the repetitive rhythm of it helps in its function as thought support.

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. Raising money is the main thing.

Let me tell you the story of this mantra:

To give credit where it is due, the original sign was created for me by Mark Nelson, who was the Treasurer for the Libertarian National Committee (the Libertarian Party) in 2004-2005. So, he was a board officer for the organization I was working for at the time.

I was the only full-time fundraiser for the national organization and I was only 23 years old.

Their theory was to hire smart young people who would be “cheaper” salary-wise for the DC area. The exchange was that I would get a ton of valuable training and experience and they would get energetic labor.

However, I was overwhelmed and I think Mark sensed it. I was managing a conversion from an antiquated custom donor database to Raiser’s Edge. I was producing a monthly newsletter for our recurring donors. I was helping to plan the national convention and scouting locations for the next convention. I was recruiting and training paid callers to renew memberships via phone and managing our intern program. With the help of a consultant, I was managing monthly direct mail campaigns and planning fundraising events. Then, because the LP was a political organization, staff frequently got pulled into controversies and political discussions. 

I’m tired and anxious just typing about everything I was called to do.

As treasurer of course, Mark had a keen interest in keeping me motivated. On a trip to our DC office, he walked in and taped the sign to the wall above my computer monitor and explained what it meant.

The “main thing” meme helped me to prioritize my work and keep my head on straight. It also reminded me that the officers of the organization supported me in my main role.

My job as a fundraiser is revenue generation. Everything else must fade in comparison.

When I left the LP, I took this simple sheet of copy paper with me and posted it in my new office at the University of South Carolina. This concept continued to keep me focused as I was hiring 110 student callers per semester to raise $1.47 million via phone annually.

When I took a job as behind-the-scenes project manager with RuffaloCODY (now Ruffalo Noel Levitz), I would see the sign and feel sad. I knew then that I missed frontline fundraising. I missed chasing down a dollar goal. It helped me navigate my career back to raising money.

At some point in changing offices, the original paper got ragged and I disposed of it. But, when I was at Southern Miss and we tripled our annual fund income in one year, I recreated the poster for some of our gift processors who were overwhelmed and wanted a reminder of how their work connected to the big picture. It became a bit of an office-wide mantra.

Now that I’m back at a small shop, I think of this mantra often. I try hard to “stay in my lane” and keep the focus on fundraising. There is much to do, the need is great, and it is easy to feel like you are never doing quite enough.

But, the main thing . . . is to keep . . . the main thing . . . the main thing.

And, raising money . . . is the main thing.

At any organization, you will be asked to do many mundane things (I collectively call them TPS reports). These include: expense reports, submission forms, demographic changes in database, meetings, etc. Do these things, but strive to automate those tasks as much as you can so that they don’t distract you from the main thing: raising money.

At some organizations, especially those that are not organizationally mature, fundraisers will get pulled into political discussions and controversies. Continue to come back to mission and how the main thing (fundraising) supports that mission. When people around you go low, you go high. Keeping focused on raising money is the high road.

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. Raising money is the main thing.

What’s your fundraising mantra? How do you keep yourself focused?

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

Cheers,

Jessica Cloud

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

• In praise of being deep in the job chaos
• Where’s the joy in your fundraising plan?
• Fundraising is an amazing career choice
• Applying to be a CFRE
• The CFRE Exam

 
 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!​​

What if I told you that there was a source of annual fund dollars out there that could cost you 18 cents to raise a dollar and raise those funds very quickly in a short period of time?
 
And what if I told you that you probably were not currently utilizing this particular source of revenue for your institution? You would be interested, right?
 
Let me tell you what the secret source of revenue is . . . Facebook ads.
 
Yep, Facebook ads. Believe it or not, I recently did a test in which I ran Facebook ads for year-end fundraising and the cost to raise a dollar was as low as 18 cents.
 
In all honesty, this test grew out of the fact that I work for a very small shop and I’m the only fundraiser. I needed to come up with a calendar year-end giving campaign for our social media. Last year I spent a lot of time crafting unique messages to be used for each day in December. This year I was just running out of time and had no real creativity left in me.
 
So instead, I decided to craft three very targeted year-end promotional messages and boost them significantly with Facebook ads. I had a little bit of extra money in my budget that I re-purposed in order to do this. Not a ton. I'm talking less than $1,200 to experiment with.
 
So I divided my ad dollars up between three boosted ads. The first two were to promote general giving. One was targeted to those outside of our normal constituency on Facebook (people who don’t currently like our page). The second I boosted specifically to people within our community (who currently like our page).  
 
The third leg of this campaign was a specific boost to encourage our constituents to become “sustainers” (recurring monthly donors). All three of these campaigns were successful.
 
First, our campaign outside of our normal constituency reached over 44,000 people who may or may not have ever heard of the school before but had our affinity with the religious community that we serve. We also garnered 14 new page likes.
 
In the general year-end giving part of the campaign, over 500 people clicked on our giving website. We got 24 gifts out of this campaign, totaling almost $5,000. The results came out to only $0.18 to raise a dollar! This was revelatory to think that we could not only do public relations and communications work, developing our constituencies on social media, but at the same time raise some serious money
 
The monthly sustainer campaign was also quite successful. We did not spend very much on that campaign, only about $100 but we got 4 new sustainer donors. These new donors represent $65 monthly (or $780 more per year). That doesn’t even fully represent the lifetime value of those monthly donors. If you just take the first year of value from those monthly donors then it was 34 cents to raise a dollar for this micro-campaign. I would argue it is well worth it when you consider that most of these donors will roll on from year to year as ongoing monthly donors
 
I was surprised that something like Facebook ads could actually work for fundraising. I think my bias against it is because we want these digital mediums to be a free way to reach people. We know they have power to reach people but don’t want to pay for it.
 
And yet, we know that mail and phone are worth the investment. Why are we not willing to invest real money in the digital mediums yet?
 
Facebook (at least) is here to stay. It’s a reliable way of reaching people and we should start thinking about Facebook (and other forms of social media) with the same mindset we use when we think about phone to mail.

Namely, that you have to spend money to make money.
 
We need to start being smart about spending part of our fundraising budget on social media. Run some tests. Look at them with an eye to return on investment. Track the same kind of statistics that we track for phone and mail fundraising, including cost to raise a dollar.
 
If you haven't been utilizing Facebook ads in order to grow your constituency on Facebook and raise real money, I would encourage you to undertake a test. Maybe run your fiscal year-end campaign or use it around a day of giving or some other point of urgency.

​You can gain new donors, new Facebook fans, and real money. You can do all those things to the tune of 20 cents to raise a dollar. I would argue it is worth the investment. Can you lobby for a little extra money in your budget ($500 or $1,000 or $2,000) to experiment with this medium? If it works, put it into your plan for next fiscal year.

Do you already do Facebook ads? If not, is this something you could try? Let me know how it goes.

As always, comments and questions are welcome and encouraged!

Cheers,

Jessica

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

• 5 Steps to Promote Your Video
• All About Giving Days
• The 30 Minute Fundraiser
• Crisis Communication
• Getting Communications and Development Staff to Function as a Team

​
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!​​