#392- Fundraising Without Fear: Moving from Scarcity to Sustainability with Andrew Murphy

Mm-hmm

... one of the things that we started to work on when we first started working together was the survey strategy, and I know that the survey strategy became a real engine for you.

But you didn't just do it once and stop, so you really spun it into prison tours and dinner events, and each one had its own follow-up survey.

So walk me through how you would think about how is the survey part of a system that you built?

Yeah.

I think for us, the... because there wasn't a system-To ha-- I need some guidance.

I don't need every- anybody to tell me, like, all of the steps, but I need a starting point, and then I can go from there.

And for me, the surveys, what was so eye-opening was a donor's only as good as how much you are in relationship with them.

And so I had this great list of people, but I knew nothing about them, and I didn't really have a relationship with them.

And so there was no way they were gonna continue to support a program without that connection.

And so the surveys were so helpful because i- it gave me a beginning touchpoint to engage with them and have a reason to reach out and, and ask some more information about why do they support WEA, why do they care about WEA, what are their...

And so it just began to just scratch the surface of this idea of I have to know who's supporting our program.

And it-

Mm

... and it can't be transactional because-

Right

... people are smart, and they will know when you're trying to just give some flashy pitch so you can get a check, and then you're never gonna talk to them again.

And, and so that's where the s- the surveys were a, were a beginning point to really figure out-

Mm-hmm

... who are those people that were invested in what we were doing.

And then the second point was what do I do now? So the people-

Yeah

... have now responded to this survey, and they've given us some information.

And to what I said before, like, I don't necessarily need someone to tell me how to do everything, but I need a starting point.

And the surveys were that starting point because after that, I began to look at us as an organization and say, "Okay, somebody comes into our organization, what do they do?" I mean, we're a program in a prison.