The Power of Building Relationships in Fundraising

All right, welcome back to another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. I’m your host, Jake White, and today I’m hanging out with one of my good friends from Phoenix. Her name is Diana Hoyt, and Diana is a 40 -year veteran of the nonprofit space. She has been a chief development officer and a fundraising consultant, coach, and trainer. Diana has authored two books on fundraising and has provided fundraising workshops to thousands of nonprofit professionals. Today, she enjoys fundraising consulting, being a grandmother, and a stand -up comedian. So Diana, thanks for being on the Drug Prevention Power Hour with me.

My pleasure, my pleasure.

Asma, tell us a little bit. I mean, we’re obviously intrigued that you’re a comedian. That’s very unique. And I know you from the National Speakers Association. And so, yeah, how’s the stand -up comedian, grandmother, consultant life going?

You know, I am 79. I’m going to own it, you know, and I’m just, yeah. And it’s like, people are supposed to retire at my age. So rather than retiring, I decided to become a standup comedian. And so it’s just been a really interesting journey. One that I do so much that I never anticipated, you know, back, back when I was going to college and getting my degree and I became a math teacher.

That was what I was always going to do. And then all of a sudden I’ve done all these other things. I had a software company and I raised money and I write books and, and now I’m going to stand up and, and then my crazy, or absolutely enjoying my journey, That is awesome. Never a dull moment with you.  and just, I can’t wait to find out what’s behind the next door.

Yes. I love that. And that’s, I mean, I feel like life treats you how you treat it. You are looking for new things, you’re having fun, you’re making friends. Like, yeah, you’re one of my role models, Diana. Yeah. Well, I definitely want to dive into your expertise because the people that listen to this show, they’re often nonprofits. I would say almost everyone is, whether it’s a school is a nonprofit or a state entity. But a lot of the people, they run organizations and their goal is to help young people live drug -free lives. And they’re focused on building healthy bodies and brains, building positive futures. And drug prevention reaches so many different avenues. It’s suicide prevention, it’s mental health, it’s college and career readiness. It’s all these different things. So I would love to hear about maybe if you can take us through your journey real quick on maybe just brag a little, like how’s your nonprofit journey been and how come you get to be a consultant that speaks to thousands of people.

The Importance of an Online Presence in Fundraising

You know, I came into fundraising like many people of my age group. Not so much true of the ones that are in their 20s and 30s today, but there were no programs. You just got into fundraising. And as it turned out, I had done volunteer fundraising for 10 years prior to my moving into the professional field. And in that capacity had ran a campaign that raised a million dollars from just women, just women here in the metro Phoenix area. And then that was over and I had done everything I could do. And I was asked if I would apply for a job as a professional fundraiser. So I did that and worked for five nonprofits. And I’m going to take a little side note. One of the nonprofits I worked for, based here in Phoenix is Terros. And Terros was Phoenix’s first drug rehab organization. It literally back in the 60s operated out of a psychedelic VW bus. I mean, that was the entire operation was a bus and volunteers, you know, and they would drive around and talk to kids and talk. To people on the street about drugs. And if somebody was in trouble, they would throw them in the bus and take them to the hospital, you know, because that was the only thing you could do then. And so that was, gosh, that was the fourth organization I worked for. And it was quite an experience. And in terms of fundraising, I’m gonna take a little fundraising side note here. Because one of the things I think that where fundraisers fail today, especially today, because a lot of young people doing fundraising think you do it by text or email. And one of the definitions of fundraising is building relationships. And so when I went to work for Tarros, I was hired because they had no fundraising program. I mean, it was just a total disaster. And there was a lady on the records that had been making a donation every month for seven years. And I went, so who is this lady? Nobody knew. Nobody had ever talked to her. See, there’s the problem. You hear the problem right now. And so I called her up and said, why? Why do you give? And it was a small amount. We would have called her a sustaining member because she gave monthly, except most people today do it online, and she was writing a check every month. And it turned out due to a drug overdose or attempted drug overdose or attempted drug act, I’m not sure how you define it, Tarros saved her son’s life.

Wow

And so she started making this monthly donation. And we would never have known her backstory if I hadn’t called her. And so for anybody listening, let me tell you, the number one thing you can do as a fundraiser is pick up the phone. You know, and it’s interesting that I have a quote on my desk actually that Steve Jobs said, because that’s how he got where he got. He picked up the phone and a lot of people don’t know his backstory. He was a teenager. He called the president of Hewlett, Hewlett Packard and said, I want to build a computer. Do you have any spare parts for me? This is Steve Jobs calling the guy, the head of Hewlett Packard. And the guy was so interested. He sent Steve all these parts. So, you know, phone calls, you can’t always go visit somebody, but you can always pick up the phone and call them. And that’s my number one thing about fundraising advice is pick up the phone, quit texting people and quit sending them emails. Talk to them, they’re human beings. So.

Yeah. Yes. And it makes so much sense because the world works where we swing back and forth from one extreme to the other, right? So we’re obsessed with text messaging and doing things easy and fast and quick, but that makes anyone who gives you real personal attention and communication, it makes you stand out that much more. So which one are you going to remember and care about? The one who sent you a text that you can automate? And that’s really easy and you can set out a thousand at once or the one who called you, asked you about yourself, what you care about and invited you to be a part of their organization and their mission. So I think that’s such a great place to start relationships. Number one. I would argue just like you said, Diana, it’s the number one thing in nonprofit fundraising. It’s the number one thing in probably every sales position or project management, or if you’re dealing with people, put them first. Yeah.

Yeah, well, it’s kind of like, this is what you do to have a life as you talk to people. And of course, we also know that right now, because people have become so used to their phones and not talking to people is part of our mental health problem.

Yeah.

And so people look for outs and drugs become an out. They become easier to kind of bring it all down. And so, yeah.

Well, already Gen Z was one of the most risk adverse generations is they didn’t want to take a risk. And socializing was one of those. And because of COVID and them missing out on key experiences as well, it didn’t help that problem. It made us more leery of taking risks and taking social risks. So now it seems it is more scary for them to pick up the phone. It would take someone to do it with them.

Yeah.

Or to really encourage them, or when I’m in my youth group at church, is I love calling my students. Texting is easy, but if they get a phone call, that’s special. And because they have so many text messages, that can go unread for a long time. You know, they’ve got text and Snapchat, all these things. So at one point you want to communicate how they do. At another point, though, you want to do something special. That means something. And for me, that’s picking up the phone and calling them. And Diana, one thing that’s unique about most of our audience is some of them, they’re helping with fundraising, but it’s not their only job. So they are looking for ways to, if you can imagine, like Diana, you had a, maybe what if you had four hours a week to do fundraising and that was it? How would you go about doing that? and prioritizing it. Like what advice would you give if you had that person? All right, you got to do this stuff the rest of the week, but four or five hours, you’re going to commit to doing this fundraising and sustainability work. What advice would you give or maybe a process or something from your book? I don’t know. I want to let you talk about that.

Well, one of the things that I find when I go into a lot of organizations as a consultant is they don’t even have the basics in place. So I would recommend to anybody that you have to have a gift acceptance guidelines. What kind of gifts will you accept? You aren’t going to say yes to everything. There are reasons you don’t want to. And the world has changed. Does your organization accept cryptocurrency? And if you do, how do you handle it? If I go onto your website, can I make a gift through a donor advised fund? So have your basics in place. Have your website so that people can make different kinds of donations and that it’s user -friendly. Okay.

Okay.  so how easy it it? Make it very easy. So what does it do?

Easy. If a donor gets stuck, they’re going to leap.

Yeah, if it’s not easy to give to you, yeah. What’s a donor advised fund?

A donor advice fund, don’t get me started. I’ll do official, I won’t tell you my sidebar. A donor advice fund is where an individual, depending upon which fund they go to, okay, so there’s Schwab charitable, there’s Fidelity, there’s actually over a thousand funds out there. And what they are is even like with Charles Schwab, Schwab Fidelity is set up as a 501C3. So I can give, whether it’s $1 ,000 or $5 ,000 or $50 ,000, I can put it into that donor advised fund. At that point, I’ve given it to a 501C3, to a nonprofit. I take the tax deduction. So a lot of people use it as a vehicle when they need a tax deduction. You know, you sold this huge piece of property, you’ve got all this money, you put the money over there, you’ve got a tax deduction. Okay. And then over time, and it can be one year or a few years, you can say to Schwab, would you send $1 ,000 to Habitat for Humanity? Would you send $500 to the food bank? And so you are advising where you would like that money to go. Okay. That said, there are some rules and Schwab can say no. Because it’s their money, right? And there have been instances where people wanted to give the money to groups that were say anti -American or anti whatever. And Schwab can say, no, we will not send that money to that organization. So it’s not like you can do whatever you darn well please. There are some rules and I would recommend any nonprofit to go onto GuideStar, when their new name is Candid, but everybody knows them by GuideStar, and make sure their GuideStar profile is up to date and that they have done everything they need to do to at least have the gold seal of transparency.

Okay.

I just worked with a nonprofit that had no seals and in two weeks we got them up to gold. We just had to put the data in there to make it happen. But if there any Donor Advice Fund, any foundation, any place you apply for money as a nonprofit, they’re gonna go on to GuideStar and see what your data looks like. And if you’ve got the gold seal, there’s actually a platinum seal too, but it’s like, it’s a lot of work to get the platinum. But you can get to gold, I’m telling you, any organization can get to gold in a couple of weeks. They just have to do the work.

Okay. All right. And that will, you’ll show up on the directory of nonprofits. You’ll, and that’ll show that you’re trustworthy, you’re transparent. And so when someone wants to give or a fund wants to give, it will check off and they’ll say, yes, they’re more likely to say, yes, we can direct money your way.

Unleashing Creativity in Fundraising

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s something that some organizations don’t realize. I mean, I’m working with a client right now and we just applied for a big grant and I went and I went in to look at her guide star and I said, my gosh, hold off sending it in until I get you up to gold. Cause the first thing they’re going to do is go and see what you look like on guide star. You know, it’s kind of like.

Okay. And did you say GuideStar just changed to candy? Like eating candy?

It’s called CANDID. Yeah, but if you look up GuideStar, everybody knows that, and it goes there anyway.

Okay, okay, perfect. All right, so we’ve got relationships, we’ve got GuideStar. I remember, so when I started my program as a college student and then went nonprofit and was raising funds, I did find exactly what you said to be correct, is relationships were everything. So one thing that I tell people is anytime you have a meeting, with someone and you share what you do. And maybe it’s not even a meeting. You just meet someone who’s like, hey, this is awesome. I love what you do, is to get their information so that you have power over the relationship. You’re not going to wait on them to contact you, but you exchange information with them. You have their information. And then you ask this question, who’s one more person that you know that I should meet? or who’s another person who might resonate with our mission and letting them answer that question. And what it did is I was able to raise an entire salary because there was generous people in our network and they introduced me to one another. And some of the donations I got were just from that. There was a guy I didn’t even know who donated $10 ,000 off of one meeting. And it came from that question, who else do you know? And I’m wondering as far as when you do any type of coaching, if people are networking around town, they know a lot of people, are there any different strategies or recommendations you would give to say, hey, you’re already meeting a lot of people, make sure you’re doing this while you’re out there.

That’s one of the recommendations that’s always given is ask, who else should I be talking to? There’s a step after that though, is once you gather this data, is having it in a database. And, you know, Excel is not a database. In fact, I used to have a sign on my wall that said that friends don’t let friends fundraise with Excel.

Hahaha!

And because you can’t do the things, you know, that might work out if your database is 100 people, but when you get to 500, a thousand, it doesn’t make sense. So I do recommend that people get the right software. And if some of the people who listen to this are small, I mean, I do that for part of my business to say, Hey, this is who you should go talk to. But Little Green Light, it’s a great little product. Charity Proud, you got to be careful because there’s a lot of charity something around it. It’s a great little product. Donna Perfect has been around since the mid, I think they started in 1985. So they’ve been around forever. If you are a very large nonprofit, raising over two million dollars, there’s a product called Virtuous. Which happens to be right here in Phoenix. But those are all good companies. There are a lot more, but that’s kind of the scale going from small up to large with a lot of things in between. I am not wild about some of the other stuff that’s out there because in the long run, it won’t do the job for you. But they’ve got to have a database. And they’ve got to have a database that they can slice and dice and do reports and do emails out of that will connect with their QuickBooks or whatever else they’re using. So yeah, and connect with their website. Because if I go on to your website and I make a donation, that donation should drop right into that database. And from there, it should go right over to QuickBooks. So nobody ever touched it. So the data doesn’t get messed up along that route.

Okay, that’s good. Let me paint a scenario for you. So there’s a group in a rural community, tight -knit community, everybody knows each other. They’re involved in this drug prevention organization and then they’re in touch with the schools. So they have school relationships. They’re in touch with a recovery treatment center. Maybe the Chamber of Commerce. What would you recommend? Like this person, it’s a small town, they’re already in touch with people. What have you seen are the fundraising hangups of that person? And what are some things they could start doing to be successful at fundraising? So maybe some mistakes and some best practices for that kind of stuff.

I think in the smaller communities, it’s always tougher because their base of resources is so much smaller. And I think one of the things they can do is if they’re able to gather email, okay, is do a monthly. Not a newsletter. I mean, I, cause I think news people start thinking of a newsletter. They think of all this work and all these articles they have to write and everything. Do a one pager. It might even be a half a page that says, just want to let you know what we’ve been doing and do it like a bulletin. Just, just keeping people informed is one of the best things. If there are opportunities to engage people physically. So maybe you’re doing some kind of an activity or even a fundraiser, whether it’s a garage. I’ve seen small communities do big garage sales, but I worked with a client up in Wisconsin and that’s what they did. All year long, people would gather up stuff and they had this huge garage sale, you know, and, you know, and we all know the garage sales is everybody buying everybody else’s junk, but people love it. I mean.

Yeah, we love it.

Yeah, they’re funny and you find sometimes some real jewels. So doing things like that, I think it’s communicating and finding ways to engage is probably the best thing. And you can invent some really clever fundraisers that things that I worked with a nonprofit up in Flagstaff, Arizona. And this was quite a few years ago when they weren’t so big. But they did a spelling bee. And people, they put together teams and they did this spelling bee and everybody came and they had a potluck dinner. And, you know, they just, they made it fun and raised money. So sometimes you just have to step outside of the box and say, what can we do? And this was a literacy organization. So a spelling bee, and literacy, they brought the two together. And so they did something that fit their mission.

That’s awesome. One of the fundraisers I remember going to that I really loved, it was a scavenger hunt. And so I think it was put on maybe by the Chamber or the Tourism Department, and they wanted you to visit all of their places that supported them. And then it could be a fundraiser for them as well. So you make a team, you get a t -shirt, you decorate it, and then you would race around town to complete these things. And it was like, go to the dance studio and perform their choreographed dance they’re gonna teach you. And then go to this trucking company and get a tour of the truck that they just built and all these things around town that were really, really clever. And so you got to build a team, raise money, and then go out and have this really fun day and learn a lot of things. And I remember thinking, that’s so creative. I love that idea.

Yeah, you get to enjoy your community. You know, there are lots of things you can do.

Yeah, and I think people want to be showcased. Your current supporters want to be showcased and thanked in tangible ways. So like bringing people to their location. And it also encourages other people to hop on board because they know you’re going to thank them in that way and you’re going to put them out there.

Yeah, I want to go back to something I mentioned earlier, getting the gold seal on GuideStar. That gives you access to the foundation directory, which is a national foundation directory. It’s huge. So that would enable a smaller nonprofit to have access to a lot of information that they can’t afford.

So they can go in there and say, okay, we’re dealing with this issue. What foundations, you know, will accept our proposal? What dollar amounts? What parts of the country do they work in? There’s a ton of information that can help them that they might not be aware of that’s out there. So getting on GuideStar is, I mean, you know, it’s just like, it’s like the stamp of approval.

Yeah. If you’re not one of their ambassadors, you should be. It sounds like it’s an amazing tool everyone should be using.

It is. It’s been around forever. And I think in the old days of fundraising, we use the funders all wanted you to have an audit. If you didn’t have an audit, then they dismissed you because they were looking for something to dismiss you. And now it’s GuideStar. If you’re not up there and you’re not looking OK, then they’ll go, and you are automatically scratched from the potential giving. And even individuals who make large gifts or do donor -advised funds will first go to GuideStar and check you out. I even do that with clients. If you want me to help you, I want to know what you look like in GuideStar. And if you’re a total disaster, I will sometimes walk away and say, I can’t deal with it.

Right. Or yeah, you’ll get a sense of what they have in place and what work they’ve done so far. You’ll probably know how much work you’re going to have to do versus how much they have put into the nonprofit so far. So it’s probably really helpful.

Yep. So, and by the way, GuideStar doesn’t pay me. It’s just that I’ve been using it now a lot and I just more and more see the value of it for nonprofits.

Yeah, that’s good. So if you’re not on it, go check it out. Candid or GuideStar, same thing. Last question for you, Diana, is there’s a lot of different ways to fundraise, correct? Like you can go work with your network, you can host events, you can have a call blitz, you know, and call people in your database. I’m sure there’s plenty of different ways and there’s different types of things you can ask for. Like you said, people can donate miles. They can donate their vehicles and flights and dollars, and maybe they have part of their living trust or will that they can put towards your organization. But if you had to start from scratch a new organization and you had to say, here’s our plan. We’re gonna start with this type of fundraising. And then when we get somewhere, we’re gonna go to this type and this type, this type. Is there a better method or a progression of how someone should start because it just works better or it feeds off of itself?

Now, you know, a lot depends upon the organization, because I would take one of two paths. If they have a database, well, I don’t even know if I would do that. I’m going to take one path. If there’s any kind of a list of names and addresses, I would start by sending them something in the mail, one page, maybe two, but never more than that this is where this this is is who we are this is what we do and this is how we impact the community you live in. Okay just is it almost an introduction okay I did that years ago with an organization and we actually received a couple of checks for a thousand dollars we didn’t even ask for money.

We didn’t ask for any money. We just wanted to catch them up to who we were. So sometimes if things resonate, that will happen. But first, let them know that. And then invite them, if you can, to something. Again, you’re not going to solicit them. You want to engage them. You want them to hear your story. You might have a client talk to them for three minutes. This is how this works. organization impacted me. And then later there will be a solicitation. So the solicitation later may be face -to -face, which is my all -time favorite because you’ll learn all kinds of information. And you don’t have to solicit your entire database that way, but there’s select people you should be talking to. You’ll do the rest by direct mail. You’ll do some by phone.

Yeah.

And so there’s kind of a progression of doing that. But that’s kind of where I would start. Especially if you haven’t had a lot of contact with your donors, you need to kind of remind them who you are and what you do and why anybody in your community would care.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Okay, that’s good. Thank you, Diana. And for the people that are listening, I think that fundraising is one of the parts that we tend to focus on the end of a grant cycle. You know, we get frantic because the money’s gonna go and we’re gonna have to, I mean, you might have to change everything. So it can’t be, a sustained organization cannot be sustained by a grant with an end in sight.

Fundraising is so, so important. So Diana, if people want to learn more about you and your expertise, I believe you have a book that’s pretty incredible. It’s called Formula for Fundraising. And then is there any other ways that they can benefit from you? Please tell us how we can get coached by you if we need something or where to go to learn more about you.

Probably the best thing to do is go to my website, formulaforfundraising.com. I mean, that’s just the easiest thing. It’s also my email, diana at formulaforfundraising.com. And for people who don’t have a lot of time to read, I would suggest my second book, not my first book. And it’s called Securing Fundraising Success. I call it my bullet point book because it’s like 24 bullet points with some backup. It’s easier for a lot of people to read and it’s an easier reference for most people.

Okay, that sounds great. So I’m just imagining, you probably have so many examples and strategies that you’re able to, when you coach people, that’s the stuff that comes out, is these different ideas and it’s hand on, it’s tailored to their community because you’re getting to know them. Whereas right now we can talk about an overview of fundraising and stuff like that, but unless you know a unique community, what resources they have, what they don’t. That’s really when you get to dive in. So it’d be cool to be a fly on the wall, Diana, for some of your sessions and get to learn from that. And that’s why I’ve read the formula for fundraising. So I’ll check out your other one too with the bullet points so I can learn from that as well. But thank you for being on the show, Diana. This has been super helpful. I think that you will. And for anybody out here who’s listening, I just want to say this before we head out. There is most definitely someone, if not tens or hundreds of people in your community that would actually love to give you money. They are waiting for a chance to impact lives and help save lives from addiction and all the things that go with it. So if you are scared, if you’re nervous, if you don’t know what to do, I would say like take that next step, whatever it is, Relationships are everything. Reach out, do that mailer, tell people about what you do more, be unapologetic about sharing your mission because the more you share, the more you ask for that next contact, the more people are gonna know and want to give. And it’s imperative that your work is sustainable and that it goes beyond whatever grant cycle you’re in. So I just wanna give you permission in case no one has, like go. Go crazy for the funding. You need it. Your work needs it. And the people who are going to benefit from your work need you to be good at this. And if that’s not you, find someone who is great at it and bring them onto your team so they can benefit from all this stuff we’ve talked about today. So thank you again for the incredible work that you’re doing, saving lives with prevention and intervention and things like that. And we’ll see you next Monday for another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour.