So at what point in your career did you realize that it's really about the donors?

I'm going to say year two or three and do it.

Okay.

So, you know, years one and two, especially when you're young, like I was.

Okay.

You're thinking hotshot.

Let's learn all the marketing stuff.

Are these your friends and family or people that came to you or you had to go search for them? How did it

Where do they begin? in terms of getting that money so that they can actually do the work that they want to do?

The answer is it's not linear.

There's multiple starting points.

Fundraising is almost like a spider's web.

A spider does not catch its prey by just one part of the web.

It weaves it all together.

So there's a lot of different things that have to happen simultaneously for people to become fundraisable, I like to call it.

Yeah,

Mm-hmm.

They care about the geographic proximity of the family or the business that started the foundation, they care about environmentalism, they care about at-risk youth, they care about anti-trafficking, they care about these different things, okay? Um, so just taking all of the good science that you have and throwing it into a comprehensive, you know, proposal isn't gonna get the job done.

Build relationships with them, get to know them, ask tons of open-ended questions about the things in the world that they are trying to make right or bring about, and then that allows you to position your proposal in a way that gives it greater success of landing.

In the private funding space, and this has been true before all the government stuff happened this past year, but in the professional private funding space, they had seen a 10X increase in the number of grant applications they were receiving.

That's a lot.

This past year-

Yeah.

They know how to do the hustle, okay? And I would say, hey, get to your million, million plus point, uh, before you think about bringing somebody else in, okay? Just keep doing the good work if it's working.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, consulting with this firm right no- uh, this, uh, organization right now, and one of their new major gift officers was having a really hard time.

He started in September, which is the hardest time to start as a major gift officer, right? [laughs] Like, it's go time.

Trying to build relationships with his portfolio, and there's, like, 15 that just aren't responding.

So I said, "Have you tried texting them?"He's like, "Well, that feels too invasive." I'm like, "Okay.

Well, put yourself in their shoes.

Do you think they feel it's invasive, or are you just nervous about it potentially being invasive?" Because you get a text message, you don't want it, you delete it.

If you rebuilt the 2025, 2026 donor journey around, quote, "bespoke plus transparent," what touchpoints would you add?

Okay.

They don't talk about the donors in their communication.

It's all, "Look at..." I'm...

It's, it's November 13th as we're doing this.

We are executing on 20 different year-end campaigns right now.

When we get the initial copy back, the donor's not a part of the story.

It's, "Look at us.

It made all the difference.