428. Small but Mighty: How to Build Your Fundraising Strategy + Tell Your Story - Jon McCoy, CFRE, Becky Endicott, CFRE and Floyd Jones

Hey friends, are you looking for free professional development? We partner with our friends at Virtuis for the Responsive Nonprofit Summit, and we want to get you all the content for free for both you and your teams. So what can you expect? You can find 65 plus speakers across 21 sessions, plenty of case studies, framework strategies, and inspiration that's there for the taking. And one big takeaway, how to personalize all donor relationships. So you want access, head over to weirforgood.com slash RNS. That's weirforgood.com slash RNS. Hey, I'm John. And I'm Becky. And this is the We Are For Good podcast. Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions, and the growing pressure to do more, raise more, and be more for the causes that improve our world. We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising. So welcome to the Good Community. We're non-profit professionals, philanthropists, world changers, and rabbit fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world. So let's get started. Becky, new series, are you so pumped? New series because it means we get to hang out with one of our favorite humans and activate the community in addition to hanging out with our favorite humans. So it's going to be a series y'all buckle up. And he's not just our favorite human. It's like everybody loves hanging in the orbit of Floyd Jones. The Floyd Jones is in the house to kick off this little series. We're calling small, but mighty. And you know our hearts in this. We love and believe in the power of small nonprofits. They fill in the gaps across our world and step into, you know, some of the most difficult problems to solve. And so we wanted to dedicate a couple of episodes to just giving you the playbook. Like how do you build a fundraising strategy? How do you tell your story and how do you freaking activate people, you know, to go out and do the thing. We have an incredible case study coming to. So it's going to be lit. I can't wait. I feel like he used a lot of like new slang in there that keep us relevant on this that I've heard about in childhood using so well done, Dad. But we are so delighted to have back in the house today, Floyd Jones, he's the community and partnerships director at Give Butter. If you've never heard of Give Butter, you should because they're the number one rated fundraising platform on G2, powering $500 million in donations for more than a million change makers worldwide. I have used it myself. It is a beautiful platform. Floyd leaves the community teams growth strategy via partnerships, sponsorships, strategic campaigns and special events in Whonnelli. Does he bring the charisma and enthusiasm with him? And throughout his career, he has just worked tirelessly. Building social impact communities around the world from Nike to Whole Foods to NBA 2K. And we got to give Floyd's wife a shout out today because as we're recording, she is literally graduating from Columbia University where they live in New York City. So welcome back to the podcast flow, Joe. We are ready to get activated. All of my people. All of my people. I feel like I need to have a resident house and we are for good. I feel like it's like my... You're forever in the guest room. Right. Right. I mean, Floyd, we have a lot that we went to tap your brain because honestly, when we talk to you, we not only feel encouraged, but I'm like, the playbook you share just gets us all excited and feeling like we can do this. I think a place that we always want to start is that a lot of times it's easy to start with tactics and not ask the bigger right questions. What are you really trying to do? What is your goal? What is your purpose? And that's going to orient everything that follows. And so I want to encourage you, before you start planning your crowd funder, answer the question, what is your objective? Is it to get more people involved? Is it to actually raise a certain amount of money? Get clear on that and that's going to inform everything in the strategy because when you begin with the end in mind, I feel like you're so much further ahead to actually getting to that end. I know you feel me on that, Floyd. You mean I couldn't have said it better myself, to be perfectly honest? Because one thing I always say, always, always, always is that alignment determines your assignment. Alignment determines your assignment. So many people, I see that all the time, I'm in everybody's Facebook group. I'm on somebody that deserves, I'm on all the things and what do we focus on? We focus on solving the problems. We focus on, oh, I have a cut. I need to get the Band-Aid quickly, right? We don't get to the source as to why that cut even began, right? We don't get to the source of the problem. We're talking about how do you get more donors? How do you get more emails? How do you go viral on TikTok? We're talking about that before we begin the show, right? We're talking about all of the external things, but we're not talking about why do you exist as an organization? Why are you showing up to your job every single day? Why are you clocking in those hours? Why are you trying to mobilize your volunteers? We don't ask why enough. Why don't we ask why enough? I think a lot of times we're afraid of getting to the deeper question, right? Because sometimes we don't even know ourselves. Sometimes we're stuck in the motion and we're stuck going back and forth. We're stuck in the turn. We're stuck in this viral and we're stuck in this feeling of just having to do, but we don't know why we are doing what we are doing. And if you don't reorient yourself, no one is going to come around you. You're not going to be able to find the people who want to support you. You're not going to be able to find your donors. You're not going to be finding your supporters. If you don't actually get anchored and find yourself. We are not asking that enough of ourselves, John. Exactly. I feel that. I feel that. That we are for good. Yeah. I think that's such good tone setting because I can tell you that I suffered from having, you know, a board member or a major good officer say, hey, why aren't we doing the thing that the other nonprofit over here is doing it? It's like quit looking beside you and look at what you're doing within your own house. What makes you unique? What makes you special? And you know, one of the things that kind of hurts me a little bit. We are for good is we talk about all of these really big ideas and a lot of times, you know, you've got the tiny nonprofit out there saying, I want to chase a lot of those big ideas, but they take a lot of resources. They take a lot of tech. I need more staff to do those things. But sometimes if we can just find like the right fundraising strategy that works for us, for our organization, it can change the entire ballgame. So take us back to the beginning, Floyd, like talk to us about how we can find that right fundraising strategy. Where can we start, you know, independent of how large we are, how big our budget is and what our KPR's are? Where can we start? 100% well, I wanted to take one quick step back just really quick because I've been doing a lot of research randomly on psychology and just thinking about the way that we think and one of the things that block us and one term that I've been researching a lot recently is on decision fatigue. Right. And really understanding that decision fatigue is a very real thing. Right. When you have the fewer amount of decisions that you have to make the higher quality your decision making framework will be. Right. So I want you to think about that when you're thinking about your fundraising strategy. Right. So I want you to think about that when you're thinking about your fundraising strategy. And I want you to think about your budget strategy strategy. And I want you to think about your budget strategy strategy. And I want you to think about your budget strategy strategy. And I want you to think about your budget strategy strategy. And I want you to think about your budget strategy strategy strategy. And I want you to think about your budget strategy strategy strategy strategy strategy strategy. And I want you to think about your budget strategy strategy strategy strategy strategy strategy. And I want you to think about your budget strategy strategy. And I want you to think about your budget strategy strategy strategy strategy strategy strategy strategy strategy strategy. one step and when that's get success we're gonna go outward there's so much power in that. I am telling you I'm telling you because I I'm dancing over here because I see it all the time. I see give me five dollars sign my year but call my mom like everybody has a seat and I'm like this is too much like where you want me to focus you know what I'm saying so really anchoring in is going to be the most effective things because remember I say this all the time if you've been to anyone of my talks you always understand I say you are a bridge your organization is a bridge between where you are where somebody is in the in the change that they want to make in the world right you're a bridge between where somebody isn't the impact that they want to see it with humanity right you can't be a bridge with all these different windy roads we're not asking for overpasses we're not asking for detours we're not asking for all that we want one bridge leading me there. I mean it's so good and I think how you frame the corporate partnerships like I want to like lean into this because I think if you're thinking about transactional like going to get a corporate sponsor you're missing the point you described it so well that says once you have this community once you have this audience you can talk about that differently because the business has their own business objectives so if you can find that happy spot where it not only it has this world you know serving purpose but they also have eyeballs and engagement and all these other things you can bring that's where magic happens right and so can you talk to us I mean what are these important assets that we need to organize and understand as a nonprofit as we go into these kind of relationships. Come on John I feel like that needs to be my one of these days I'm going to develop a sponsorship framework or something it's on my list of things it's going to be magical right it's on my list because it's something that I'm very passionate about but I'm passionate because I realize at the end of the day everybody every organization every company has a goal everyone is working towards a specific goal right so many people get offended if they don't get a corporate donation or they don't get a corporate sponsorship and they think that just because they exist they deserve a sponsorship and I'm sorry but that's not the case and now that I'm on the other side of things overseeing a budget where I'm specifically looking for nonprofits organizations people to invest in I am not just investing typically if I could if I had a listening give me give me some budget I'll stimulate this economy okay I can invest in a couple things okay but in the context that I am in currently every single dollar has to have a purpose right every single dollar has to accomplish a mission and so you have to tell yourself you are an answer to a problem but you have to figure out which problem are you actually specifically trying to solve so when I worked at the organization where we helped and provided free sports for for youth right we one of my favorite partnerships that we worked on I worked on a few NBA 2k Whole Foods but we'll use the NBA 2k example as one right they were on a mission because their whole mission their entire mission at NBA 2k Foundation was to build these that free basketball courts across the country and they wanted to build them in areas where people would actually utilize them and they would go to good use what did we do well I actually spent the first two and a half years building these free youth programs across the country and not only were we building free youth sports programs across the country but we were also mobilizing volunteers across the country so we had volunteers who are young adults who are actually playing basketball they were also teaching the kids how to play basketball right and I was like hi we're we're a winner like if you're looking for a person in the air pick me come on samari right and so we were focused we had an answer we we literally not only could we identify where in the city they had to build their court but we also would provide the people to fill the courts on a regular basis so an actual impact could take place in that community so one of the things you have to ask yourself what is my mission maybe you're trying to provide free sports maybe you're trying to provide um healthy food maybe you're trying to build homeless shelters whatever it is what is your mission then you have to ask yourself which companies and corporate partners are aligned with my mission because guess what majority of companies have some kind of CSR budget how some kind of marketing budget they have some kind of something around that where they're getting back involved in the community so you have to ask yourself which one of these companies are in line if you don't know where to start it's called google thank you so much it might be called chat be gp at this point because let me tell you that open AI that can answer a couple things okay so you have to ask yourself which company and which corporate partners are aligned with my mission then that's step two then step three which organizations and companies and I proximate to so who do you actually have a direct link with these organizations maybe you have a few people maybe you have nobody my end and what I specifically focused on was every single time a volunteer or I'm a volunteer for my organization I said what company do you work for I literally asked that question on their sign up form and guess what I did every quarter I looked at the list of companies I'm almost targeting and I looked at the list of volunteers who and told me their companies and the moment that I found the link the moment that I found a link guess what I did I sent them a nice little email I already had a template email design and I had the design of my organization I had a deck prepared for them I said hi guess what this department handles this specific thing would you mind sending this deck to them I made it very easy for them a lot of people say oh can you get me a check and then they have no remember what I say before you are on a bridge don't ask somebody to go somewhere you don't give them a pack to get there right so I already had a deck design and ready to go so all I had to do was hit forward and then then they said for meeting for me when the meeting was set up I came in I presented and then we got the thing we got the the the check okay so it's not just a one-size-fits-all and one thing we don't even talk about is building the relationship I always say relationship first and then the revenue will come some of my biggest corporate partnerships across my career have been I've been building those relationships for over a year plus before we even get to the conversation of money right before we even talk about a fund we're building a real relationship so I actually tend to tell people corporate partners it is probably not the best place to start especially if you need cash tomorrow right because that's a catalytic partnership that you're really trying to and it has to be strategic but if you're trying to build it over time start making the inroads now because it's going to pay off dividends later. Taking a quick moment to share more about our sponsor Give Butter the all-in-one nonprofit fundraising platform that's empowering millions of change makers like you to raise more pay less and give better. Nonprofits use Give Butter to bring together multiple tools including donation forms fundraising campaigns events auctions CRM email marketing text messaging and more all for free thanks to their 100 transparent tip or fee model. As the number one rated nonprofit software company on G2 across multiple categories including donor management and auctions Give Butter is on a mission to power the next billion change makers. If you're a nonprofit school team or any kind of group looking to raise money sign up for your free Give Butter account to get started in minutes head to give butter.com to claim your free account today or follow the link in this episode's description. I mean this is 2.0 this is when we talk about you know that trend number eight is lock arms for impact it's about really rewiring your entire brain to think differently about partnerships and I love how you've given that example because what you're saying Floyd is exactly what we're seeing happen in the sector right now which is hey you're coming to the table with a lot of power and when you come to the table your assets are more than just your name or that program. You have got brand awareness in your logo you've got social media followers you have expertise you have a website and so this is really what we're talking about and in this idea of bridge is really reminding me of this conversation we had with Amory Dockerty when she came on and talked about locking arms for impact and the way that they built their got six got your six network was literally planting in these veteran communities one by one they would literally go in to like San Antonio they would align with all of their veteran services groups around there she said we would plant we would resource it was one on one and then we would go to the next city over and then we would create a bridge between those two communities and all of a sudden now the Bob Woodruff Foundation has 20 million veterans covered across the country out of 22 million you know veterans and it started one-to-one to your point it started with them saying this is the power I have that I'm bringing to the table this is what I want to do for veterans what do you bring and all of a sudden the sum of all of these parts is stronger for the beneficiary and so I love that you have brought us through all of that and I was going to say one quick thing if that's okay one is an organization also has some of the many corporations will never have and that's that community impact like you can actually go deep into your neighborhood and many companies can't afford to do that many companies do not have the capacity do not because it's not a part of their business goal so I think that's something important to note I don't think I would say is the power of not just partnering with corporations but partner with other nonprofits in your community yeah people think that it's like a cardinal sin when I say that I'm like it's not I promise you you can get bigger checks you can get bigger impact if if you have an alliance if you have a cohort of other similar organizations within your neighbor now you can actually go to a corporate partner and say I have a network of 50,000 people that were reaching because I'm linking on to other people you know what I mean not many people can say that and not people do say that right so go above and beyond and actually be willing to swallow your product for a second and do bigger impact and do bigger worst you can bring in bigger dollars and guess what donors love it when we play well in the sandbox with their other beloved nonprofit so I think that that was like a two for there that was really good okay so talk to us about the importance of having owning and growing your own list now if anyone's like hung around the we are for good podcasts for any length of time this was literally in like our first 15 to 20 episodes was you need to own and build your own list why because Facebook may go away someday all those 2,000 followers that you have amassed over the last 10 years they could be gone in an instant like having the currency of someone's email address is game changing so talk to us about some of those hacks and what people can do in that vein to sort of like build their list from the ground up I mean I couldn't say this enough it's not even just about like Facebook or any of these platforms that go away it's that when you have your own list you can also say what you want to say so I am I'm literally having like a little bit of a TikTok moment recently and one of my videos I think it was like I don't know it's like 14 or 15,000 views and TikTok took the video down and I was like hold on a second what they were talking about violate and I was like first of all I don't violate community guidelines I am community guidelines okay like you know me but then I um and obviously I messaged them and everything was fine and it got put back up and whatnot but I made me realize something so important is that sometimes we are working so hard for these followers or we're focusing so hard on getting virality but I've said don't focus on going viral focus on your values focus on what are your values why do I say that because if you have your values and they're poor to you and you have a list you can communicate that regardless of if you have a million views on something or or two views on something right who you are and like we go back to the beginning of this all about alignment but if you're in alignment it doesn't matter because your people are your people if they're on your list you can communicate with them Monday through Sunday it doesn't matter because they are your people and they are going to go with you at the end of the day when you're posting content and you're just focusing on content those platforms don't really care about you they don't care about you they care about what you are doing for them they will promote you if you're keeping people on their platform they'll promote you as long as you're keeping my eyeballs on your on your on your on on the screen for them so they can somewhere as remember that it's not just about you when it comes to these platforms we love them we're thankful they can amplify our missions but they are not really focused are built for you or your people you are built for your people so focus on building for your people through your email list i mean yep that could just be a standalone episode on its own like i think you've built an incredible case so i want to talk this is one of my favorite segments that we sometimes throw and so to get the Floyd Jones version of this is going to be so good but we love looking at the do this not that not to shame anybody out there and doing something but as we think about funding fundraising strategies what are some do this not that that you've seen do focus on going deep on one in-constream don't try to do everything like we talked about because you're not fully effective in all these areas i've seen people who are talking about oh we do eight million grants i was like some people are just not grant writers like i know that i learned that the grant writing is not my ministry and i was okay with that i passed out the time right i passed out but i'm so quick i was like why is it one a.m and i'm still writing this grant i was like this is just not aligned and so it's like why invest resources and something that's not investing back into me you know what i mean we have to get honest with ourselves and say okay if this is if this is not hitting that's okay let me take a step back and do something different but allow yourself please do go deep and don't go wide when it comes to fundraising income streams oh that was really good um and you know there's i feel like there's a bit of an elephant in the room that we haven't talked about yet and it's the power of storytelling like if you're going to build this strategy you're going to pull it all together you know we believe storytelling is the heartbeat of connection and it is the thing that will draw someone into your organization into your story into your movement so i want i would love to hear from you what role does storytelling play not only just on the fundraising side but talk about what it can do on the movement building side floyd i mean storytelling is everything it is the heartbeat of not only fundraising but why we do mission driven work i mean we're even seeing storytelling excuse me on on fort with four profit companies right everyone has to tell a story why because people don't identify with the product that you're selling they don't identify with the different donation tiers they don't identify with the next catchy uh you know slogan for your next campaign they identify with your heart they identify with other people they identify with people who they feel aligned with and that is what storytelling is about storytelling is about capturing the emotions the stories the people the heart the essence of a person or a cause or a mission and enveloping it into something that people can ingest and digest right and so that is why storytelling is so essential it's so key and i tell everybody focus on the key elements of telling a story really also is like what is the problem from a person's perspective or from the perspective of the of the of the of the area of the cause area right so if maybe you're uh animal welfare organization so talk about the context right and talk about what is this impacting in me because at the end of the day you're telling the story to another person so it still has to resonate with a person right so i would always say what is the problem and really tugging into why is it matter to that person and why is it matter to that group is going to be it's going to be essential and then the other thing i would say is make a story bite size because of the kind of environment that we're in right now if someone is going to the movies they are expecting to go to a movie and sit down for an hour and a half and some change right if they're reading an email they're not expecting a long dialogue i see some of you who give me paragraphs they give me oh watch my movie it's four minutes i ain't got time for four minutes tldr i'm learning that phrase too long didn't read right we got time for that we don't have time for that so tell an effective story and effective story does not need to be long because guess what in the age of the tick tock we're talking about i'm getting the the essence in 15 seconds or less you know i'm saying so i would say really think about that when you're trying to tell your story as well okay if you want a real life case study you got to go find the floyd jones on tick tock on instagram on the give butter channel because i feel like you do this masterfully well my friend because you know we call it syndication on this we're all about go get that long form content go sit down and have a really deep interview or video yeah there's something wrong with it at all play of that is not just to play that 45 minute video the play is like how do you take pieces of it and get so many more eyeballs so much more engagement and i feel like the way you teach is so it's so brilliant on those platforms and so i just want to put a pin in that and say storytelling to because you said this earlier this is like part of our secret sauce this is what corporations want also and these partners is that we are close to the community we are close to these stories and that is something we have to offer to of the impact that you can't just make up or you can make up and it'd be really shady but this is like real life transformation and like what a cool cornerstone and connects on values and all those things and i gotta add in here too just because story is not exactly just the story that we tell story needs to be lifted from community we need to like cast that net incredibly wide and ask we need to build cultures of asking for stories and not um and i want to be really careful about how i say this but we want to give dignity to the way that those stories are told and how and and the words that were chosen and how we use those stories and so to me there's a partnership and story too that if you're going to taking you someone's story let's do it ethically let's find a way that it can get to the greater good because i gotta tell you every time i thought i knew the story of our organization and i would go in and interview someone it would take a turn that i could have never foreseen because i didn't know what the lived experience was for that individual and that thing was the superpower of the story so let it come in let it be organic and let your community tell them why you are so special i always say you have to build with not just build four right yeah you have to build with and not just build for it we do get a campaign i give it a call give it or give back and it's one of my favorite i love that campaign one of my favorite things that i i organize and oversee and on giving tuesday of last year giving tuesday when organizations are busy we had a packed house in our event we had people literally tearing up on the call so we were giving away fifty thousand dollars and so we were giving away um awards on the call but we had people literally crying on our on our call on giving tuesday and not because they didn't win because they were supporting other people in the give butter fan you know what i mean it was so incredibly beautiful because people were telling their stories their stories are the center of the entire event right and i was like we need more spaces like this where people can be their most authentic true self and know that they have a space here know that we really are uplifting changemakers and if this is if you're a changemaker then there's space for you absolutely i mean okay my heart's full i'm feeling excited i want to get out there ask some people for some money and okay floyd you know how these episodes tend to end we want to get you a one good thing what's your piece of advice you leave for us as we kind of wrap up this first installment of small but mighty what would you leave with our audience today one good thing is start with one i think if you can leave with a takeaway for anything start with one so many people are just sitting at home thinking about well where am i gonna start and how am i gonna launch and how are we gonna get the donors and what if the donors ever you're going to match start with one and also in that just start just start you just get started just send the appeal just ask for the peer-to-peer person to join your campaign just start launching the go fund just start with that with the online facebook fundraiser just start and i promise you you will see what comes on the other side of you taking that step because guess what if problem is not that we're not getting the support the problems that we are not allowing ourselves to support ourselves we don't want to get risky because we don't want to know what happened on the other side of that risk but i always say nothing courageous happens in a comfort zone guess what there are people who need you your community needs you so you have to break the the shell of comfort and start focusing on your community just start boom start somewhere start small if you haven't checked out give butter as a platform there's a starting point for you for you and your organization and it have we mentioned it's free it's completely free so start on your list do a one good thing and know that we're going to go into episode number two on how to get activated and that is next so if you're 11 Floyd and you want to hear the second part of this and we've got an amazing case study where we're going to put all of this together stay tuned because you're just one third of the way through hey friends thanks so much for being here did you know we create a landing page for each podcast episode with helpful links freebies and even shareable graphics be sure to check it out at the link in this episode's description you probably hear it in our voices but we 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