Episode 18 | Fundraising FREEDOM Step 7: Make Your Difference
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
Release Date: 03/05/2020
Episode 18 | Fundraising FREEDOM Step 7: Make Your Difference
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
This step is what all of your hard work has been leading up to. You’re raising funds, asking people to be part of your team, building out your branding and the reason is that you’re trying to make a difference in the world. Once you get here, this is the time to celebrate! You’re seeing lives changed and now you get to tell people all about it and thanking everyone who took part. This is a really fun step and one that too many people miss.
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Episode 17 | Fundraising FREEDOM Step 6: Organize the Ask
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
Depending on how you’re raising funds, everyone has a demographic they serve and tend to raise funds from. There is a process for every group of people, and you need to think it through before you just go in and ask for money. You should never do a blanket approach to fundraising because you want to be well-received by every group you get in front of.
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Episode 16 | Fundraising FREEDOM Step 5: Deploy Your Team
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
In today’s episode, we are talking about how to Deploy Your Team.
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Episode 15 | Fundraising FREEDOM Step 4: Enhance Your Brand
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
Today we are on step 4 of Mary’s Fundraising FREEDOM process, Enhance Your Brand. There are so many organizations that lean on their staff for branding. They hire marketing people to design a logo or to make sure that your message is en pointe. However, in this step, I want your volunteers to have a say in what you’re putting in front of the general public.
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Episode 14 | Fundraising FREEDOM Step 3: Enlist Your Team
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
This is the step that changes everything. It’s how you go from raising thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions and so on. This is the meat of the entire Fundraising FREEDOM process.
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Episode 13 | Fundraising FREEDOM Step 2: Run Your Research
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
Research actually allows us to gain confidence. Especially if you are trying to raise a larger amount of money, this step allows you to regroup and overcome your fear of fundraising. The data and numbers are important – you want to be as specific with the data as to be believable. You want to give enough stats to show that you know what you’re doing.
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Episode 12 | Fundraising FREEDOM Step 1: Focus Your Vision
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
In today’s episode, we are jumping into Mary’s Fundraising FREEDOM process with step 1, Focus Your Vision. For today, we are talking about vision as it pertains to finance. Is it $100,000, $1,000,000, or $10,000,000? Whatever it is, I want you to focus your vision on the dollar amount you want to accomplish that you’ve laid out in your strategic plan. Get that number locked in your head.
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Episode 11 | Strategic Planning Steps 7 & 8: Tactics and Plan to Execute
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
After completing steps 1-6 of the Strategic Planning process, you should have tactics all over the place. At this point, you are ready to formulate and pull together your one-page strategy. You already have your strategic objectives finished, now all you have to do is gather the tactics you and your planning team have put together.
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Episode 10 | Strategic Planning Step Six: Establish Your Measurement
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
On today’s episode, we are discussing step six of the Strategic Planning process, Establish Your Measurement. How are you measuring the progress of the objectives and initiatives of the organization? Starting with the end in mind and setting quantifiable goals is great, but you must also create targets and get those numbers on paper.
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Episode 9 | Strategic Planning Step Five: Tighten Your Focus
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
Today we are diving into step 5 of the strategic planning process, Tighten Your Focus. This is where you start to drill down deeper and get your arms wrapped around your strategic objectives and initiatives. There are four key areas that move from internal to external – capacity, internal process, financial stewardship, client and stakeholder satisfaction – and these four areas will show up on your 1-pager (strategic plan). Capacity: If you’re a 2-3-person organization, you simply don’t have a lot of capacity to engage in many initiatives compared to an organization with...
info_outlineThis step is what all of your hard work has been leading up to. You’re raising funds, asking people to be part of your team, building out your branding and the reason is that you’re trying to make a difference in the world. Once you get here, this is the time to celebrate! You’re seeing lives changed and now you get to tell people all about it and thanking everyone who took part. This is a really fun step and one that too many people miss.
How do we celebrate with the team?
If you haven’t read the book The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts by Gary Chapman, you should check it out. In the book, the author outlines 5 different love languages which are, Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Gifts, Quality Time, and Physical Touch. Everyone has a primary love language. You need to find ways to incorporate all these love languages with your team as well as donors. Thank you notes, awards or plaques, or even hugs and handshakes are ways to show appreciation to your people.
How do we know a donor’s love language?
People will typically tell you. It comes back to running your research and drawing broad observations from minute details. If they give you a gift, they like gifts. If they give you words of affirmation, they like words of affirmation. All you’re doing is watching how they communicate with you and that will tell you how to communicate with them. I had a donor tell me once that we should have given warm cookies at Christmas time – more than likely his love language is gifts.
What can we do to make sure we are thanking people the right way?
As much as I’m trying to pay attention to everyone, it is very challenging when you have hundreds of donors. It’s just not practical. So, I make sure at Christmas I do something special for the top sponsors like maybe a gift certificate and a bottle of wine as an example. And I hand-delivered them. After every fundraiser each year, I hosted a thank-you banquet. I had a chairperson for the thank-you party and they were responsible for printing out all the plaques, every sponsor got their recognition, anyone who gave over $10,000 got a special award, we incorporated all of that.
Do you have any other takeaways for success?
Freedom means to act, think, and speak without holding back. All 7 of my steps are leading to that. We talked last week about the power money has and I know how easy it is to go down a path because you had a donor who wanted to go down a path. I don’t ever want money to control your organization. I want your strategic plan to control your organization and you just happen to need money to fulfill that plan. My steps all come back to what freedom looks like for you and your cause. And then put your head down and go to work toward that. When it comes down to it, it’s about building relationships with the right people and inviting them to feel like this is their thing too.
Resources from this episode:
Connect with Mary:
Mary’s book: Fundraising Freedom
Connect with Joel: