Philanthropy and how Strategic Donors Leverage their Giving

Cecilia:

All right, uh, thank you everybody for being here. It is a privilege to be at Napa Institute again. And I also want to say, Napa is an embarrassment of riches. I know that there is a lot of wonderful programming that’s happening right now in other places, so we truly appreciate you choosing to be here with us today.

Forty-five minutes is not nearly enough time to do justice to the topic of how can donors best help nonprofits through their giving, but we’re going to do our best to get through it.

My name is Cecilia Diem — I am the moderator of the panel today. I am the Director of Donor Advisory at Anvil. If you are not familiar, Anvil is a professional services firm. We strengthen civil society by helping mission-driven enterprises flourish — or in layman’s terms, we do consulting for groups who share our values, many of whom are in the room. Thank you, I see you. It’s great to see you here.

So without further delay, I have the great honor of introducing our panelists this evening, who I’m sure many of you know.

Here to my left: Sean Fieler. Sean is one of the leading Catholic philanthropists of our age — although I’m sure he wouldn’t say that. Also the CIO of Equinox Partners, he’s given tens of millions to Catholic causes and to political causes over the last 25 years.

I was putting together my notes and I wanted to give a quick overview of board service and so forth — but we only have 45 minutes, as I said, so I’m going to skip over that and simply thank Sean for being here with us today.

Next we have Steve Zabilski. Steve is the CEO of the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust, which is, I believe, the largest private foundation in Maricopa County — or at least one of them?

Prior to taking the reins as CEO about 18 months ago, Steve was the President of St. Vincent de Paul Phoenix for 25 years, where he grew it into the largest council on the globe.

And finally, here is my boss — the Swiss man — Jeremy Beer. Jeremy is the co-founder and executive chairman at Anvil. He is a well-published author and serves on the board of many grantmaking institutions as well as nonprofit institutions, which gives him a wonderful and sort of unique view of both the fundraising and the fund-giving side of the equation.

So with that, please join me in welcoming our panel.

All right, and I will kick into our first question. This one’s really for Sean and Steve — Jeremy, slightly different one I’ll ask you later.

So, what would the two of you point to as the most common mistakes of donors — philanthropists — who want to see nonprofits grow effectively?

Philanthropy Mistakes in Nonprofit Giving

Sean:
I’ll say one. One mistake I’ve made repeatedly — and I now try to make less often — is: you find what you think is a great idea but not quite the right leadership in a nonprofit, and you try to compensate for that shortcoming.

And probably one of the worst ways to compensate for that shortcoming, I found, is to over-circumscribe — over-define — the gift. You say, “Here’s this brilliant social entrepreneur. They’ve got this great idea, it’s amazing vision. There’s this incurable flaw somehow in the way this organization is managed that makes them habitually do stupid things, and therefore I’m going to define this grant in a way that’s going to solve that.”

In my day job as a money manager, if you see that — you know, there’s a great business and the management’s got a problem, you’ve got a governance problem — it generally doesn’t work out that well.

My experience is: if you have to tell the person that you’re donating the money to what to do with the money, it’s probably not the right person.

If you know that space that that social entrepreneur is in — the leader of that apostolate is in — you think you know that better than that entrepreneur in that space, having looked at it for an hour, a day, a week, a month, or whatever it is — again, you really want to go back and question whether that’s the right person to be leading that apostolate or giving money to.

If, with much less experience and less time invested, you think you’ve had a really fundamental insight into what they’re doing — they themselves haven’t — and sometimes you can have a set of experiences where you have an angle that they haven’t seen, or you can help shape what they’re doing in a way that makes sense.

But if there’s some big shortcoming in terms of the way they’re directing their nonprofit, it’s usually… not.

Invest in Leadership and Capacity, Not Just Programs

Steve:
Ditto. No — at the end of the day, when you invest in an organization, you’re investing in the mission and the idea and the vision — but really, truly, you’re investing in the leader: the leaders, the board of directors, the CEO, the management team.

And if you have confidence in them — you’re exactly right — you do not need to micromanage. You do not need to tell them what to do. You do not need to tell them, “Here are all the measurements I want.” You say to them: “What are your important measurements? Share them with me.”

I will also add to that — and this is a little bit different — if you really truly want to see the organization grow (and that was one of the words you used in your question), then I would really seriously think about not investing in their programs.

Every dollar you invest in a program is a dollar invested in a program. But instead, invest in their fundraising. Invest in their marketing. Invest in their development efforts. Invest in their outreach.

If they can tell their story to more people — if they can, you know, you can give them $25,000, let’s say, to go buy food, and then they have $25,000 in food and they give it away — and that’s good. But you haven’t really grown the organization.

You could take that $25,000 — that same amount of money — and invest it in a direct mail effort or invest it in a part-time grant writer, and that $25,000 could become $50,000, $100,000.

The whole concept of “multiplication philanthropy” — it’s something Harvard Business Review wrote about in 2012. I mean, this isn’t brand new — it’s just that so few people do it.

So the idea of: if you like the organization, you like the leaders — completely agree with that — and you want it to grow: invest in their fundraising. Invest in capacity building. Invest in multiplication philanthropy. Not just simply in their program.

Celia:
We didn’t pay Steve to say it — that’s incredible. Thank you, thank you both.

Common Pitfalls Nonprofits Face When Trying to Grow

Jeremy — quickly from you, from a nonprofit perspective: what are the most common pickles that nonprofits fall into when they’re trying to grow — they’re trying to grow well?

Jeremy:
A lot. You know, I mean — you have to have a…

What I’ve seen — a common one is: we want to grow, but there’s no plan. There’ll be a number — it’s snatched out of the sky — and said, “We’re going to be a $10 million organization,” but there’s no realistic strategic plan for getting there.

So I think that’s one. And usually that’s when it comes down from the board, or maybe a kind of visionary CEO type who’s like, “Hey, it’s our 100th anniversary coming up — we should do a $100 million campaign!” You know, we have 12 donors. It doesn’t matter, we’re going to do it.

So there’s got to be a certain level of matching vision with a certain measure of realism, I think, that’s important. You see that not get done well.

And I think the other is — just to piggyback on what Steve said — I don’t think enough of us on the nonprofit side are assertive enough in asking for help with capacity building. With fundraising. For a gift toward that. With people who really believe in what we’re doing, who trust us, who are on our side.

We keep going back to them for the same program gift — or a bigger program gift — rather than investing in the engine.

And I know this can be done, ’cause I had breakfast this morning with somebody in this room who did it. I was like, great, this is awesome — this gives me my anecdote for today.

She said — I told Brenda, Brenda Morris at Cristo Rey Network, your chief advancement officer — I thought this was great. You guys did a new big strategic plan and you didn’t wait for a donor to come to you to invest in your go-at-it plan, the fundraising capacity you’re going to need to do this.

You went back to one of your donors — and if this isn’t true, don’t correct me because it’s a great story — you went to one of them and you came up with the idea: “Hey, you ever thought about investing in our ability to raise money? Go to acquire more donors?”

Really, donor acquisition really is a thing — you really need it.

And they weren’t thinking that way at all, you told me. But because you had trust and credibility with that donor — they gave you that kind of gift.

So I don’t — I think we’re maybe not creative enough in that way, and assertive enough in asking for that kind of giving sometimes. We think there’s something wrong with investing in fundraising — which would never happen in the for-profit world. You know, like, “I don’t want to invest in your sales and marketing.”

No one ever says that.

Steve:
I would add to that, Jeremy, too—do you actually penalize? I mean, it’s part of—fundraising is part of administrative expenses, which is part of overhead. And one of the measurements that people commonly use is overhead.

And this organization has a 10% overhead, and this organization—oh my God—they have 15% overhead. We can’t fund them. We’re going to fund the 10%. So, I mean, that takes real courage to say, “I’m going to step out and actually increase my overhead in the short term because I think I can benefit this organ—I’m confident I can benefit this organization and grow.”

So that’s really courageous.

Cecilia:

That’s great, thank you. It sounds like both trust on the part of the philanthropist—you want trust in the leadership—and then the leadership, nonprofit, needs to trust that the donors will respond to the request that they actually need, not what they think they want. That makes sense.

Okay, I’ll go into it. All right.

There’s no one way to leverage giving, but there are some common themes, right? So we’ve talked about capacity building. We just talked about investments in fundraising, marketing, databases—all the terrible overhead stuff.

Sean, I would love to hear from you. Tell us about some of the ways that you have sort of strategically leveraged the gifts that you’ve made to the nonprofit support.

Responding to Real-Time Needs and Avoiding Overplanning

Sean:
So, I think sometimes there’s a tendency of philanthropists to make a mistake of going into a meeting and trying to figure out some area where they want to develop expertise, and then they are going to orchestrate the solution to whatever is the grand problem that they define. And they can get—I think they have a real epistemological problem. It’s really usually hard to know what’s going on, even in a pretty narrowly circumscribed field.

We’re going to do, you know, healthcare in Africa, we’re going to do, you know, C-sections. And as a donor, I think to the extent that you bring too much baggage to a particular problem or opportunity that you’re trying to get involved in, you can prevent yourself from being responsible for things that just come over the transom.

So for me, I would say some of the most impactful—I think—gifts I’ve given have had nothing to do with any prep work I did or meetings I had. It was just picking up the phone. And for whatever reason, they were calling me at that particular time, and they had a particular need. And I knew in context—I knew enough about what they were doing, I knew enough about the problem they were trying to solve, knew that they were honest, they had a plasma problem, it was a short-term funding need.

And with this, you know, donation, it could really set the institution or the apostolate on a different path.

Actually, Father Dan O’Ming is here, and he’s exhibit A. So we had—we never met—and a friend of a friend introduces us. He had just taken over a school that had to be reformed. The student body—and I’ll get some of the numbers not precisely right—I think he lost half the teachers and 40% of the student body. He was converting the existing school to a classical school.

But he had to meet payroll that summer. And it wasn’t a lot of money, but there wasn’t—like, he didn’t have a whole thing set up. He didn’t know how to use money. He didn’t have fundraising. And he just upset half the families. But he needed a check.

And it was great—I gave him a check. And now the school’s off and running. And I had no a priori strategy of doing this in New Jersey. So I think just—philanthropists can harm themselves and their effectiveness if they have too many preconceptions about what they’re going to do, and put yourself out there, and then are able to respond rationally.

Again, I think of it a lot like my job—I buy and sell stocks for a living—is that sometimes the market doesn’t offer you what you want. Sometimes it offers you great opportunities in ways you didn’t imagine. But when that great opportunity shows up at your door, you have to have some capital and ability to think through the opportunity. You can take advantage of it. And I think this is a great example of a way to give a highly leveraged capacity. That would be the opposite, I think, of the way most philanthropy thinks about it.

Removing Operational Burden from CEOs

Cecilia:
Absolutely. Responsiveness—so important. That’s great. Steve, how would you answer that question?

Steve:
Well, I remember one gift in particular. I was on the other side of the gift. This is when I was in a role at St. Vincent de Paul, and this was eight or nine years ago. A foundation came to us and asked us about what it is we wanted.

And I was struggling with just the demands on my time as a CEO. I was in charge of the finance, and I was in charge of the accounting, and I was seeing the legal and the leases. And we have 400 employees and dozens of trucks and dining rooms—and it just—it was taking a lot of my time. And I said, “The thing we really need more than anything is if I had an assistant CEO—or CEO, an associate CEO–type position.” And they funded it. At first, they were a little skeptical and we really had to make our case. But they funded it.

And that allowed me, as the CEO, to spend—I’m not going to say 100%, that would be a lie. I don’t want to lie in this room—so, but 90% of my time in the community: raising money, having breakfast with donors, lunch with donors, dinners with donors, attending different events, giving them tours. And I didn’t worry about the legal and the financial and all that day-to-day stuff.

And that was just—it was transformational. You know, we talk about St. Vincent de Paul Phoenix growing so substantially—you could really point to that being one of the key—When people say, “Well, how’d you do it?” And there’s no one answer, but that was a big piece of the puzzle. The fact that we had an assistant that took anything that was not capacity-building fundraising margin off of my plate.

And it’s a little bit hard, because there are times when you see things and you go, “I’d do that differently,” but I can’t get involved. Or, “I’d do that,” but— But if you have that discipline, you know, the bigger yes, the bigger yes on what you’re trying to do.

The CEO’s Role in Growth: Letting Go

Cecilia:
You said the other day when we were talking about this that if you’re an all-in CEO in the growth of your organization, the best thing you can do is to not be the CEO anymore. In that you have to stay away from a lot of your staff—your daily, weekly staff—you can’t go to—

Steve:
Yeah, well, I’m sure every CEO here is—But then you’re frustrated because you see something and go, “I want—” and you—you have to step back and just say, “I have the confidence in my team and my people.”
Somebody once said that management is the art of knowing how and when to live with suboptimal outcomes.

Effective Philanthropy Require Strategy, Not Just Money

Cecilia:
Jeremy, from your perspective—and here both as a, you know, as being on grantmaking end—what are some of the most impactful—I’m sorry—very impactful. I can’t believe you—don’t say the word synergy, I’d be G on the spot.  So let’s say effective—what are some of the most effective transformational gifts that you’ve seen?

Jeremy:
You come back to kind of a theme here a little bit. I’ll say most of them have been the sort of either unrestricted gifts or gifts that really are aimed at capacity building.

But there are some things you have to make sure you have, I would say, that we’ve learned.
Going to take back—what is—If you impose sort of, “I want to help you guys grow, build capacity,” on a leadership team—it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work.

You have to be all-in. Board, your leadership team together. Learned that. The other one that often doesn’t work—I call it the go get ’em, tiger gift.

Which is the, “Hey, go—you need a major gift officer.” “We do, yeah, we do need a major gift officer.” “Great!” But if it’s just for an MGO and there’s no file for the MGO to work, there’s no plan, there’s no clear expectations—we all know in here if you’re on a board or know other board members—Sometimes expectations can be wildly out of whack with what’s actually possible.

Remember: building relationships with donors. So the, “Hey, go get ’em, tiger”—that doesn’t work, you know, if they’re not supported. That’s how we burn through MGOs every 18 months.

So—but I think I have seen very intelligent gifts that help spur willing and ready and able leadership teams to grow organizations.

One of them is a philanthropist that we’ve known for a while was making gifts encouraging, “Go get more $10,000 gifts.” Kind of his thing.

And organizations really didn’t need that. They needed to just raise their own sights and help raise their supporters’ sights to a different level of giving.

And for a very—pretty smallish amounts on the philanthropist side—$50,000-type gifts, was able to turn that into hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional revenue simply by changing the game a little bit that the leadership team was playing. And changing the game for their donors and where the sights were at. So I thought that was a particularly smart way of giving—that work for organizations are very kind of like main room, probably are one to five million, if I’m not mistaken.

Steve:

Jeremy, didn’t he do that as a matching gift?

That was the point of it. It was: if you take the $50,000 and if you got a certain number of $10,000 gifts, or so forth. It was wonderful because you could go to a donor and you could say, “Bill, José, I’ve got this tremendous opportunity. I know you love our organization. And if you could give us a $10,000 gift—not everybody can do that, for some people it’s easy—but I can get another…”

And it really worked well. That was an invitation to reach out to people and call them and not feel like I’m bothering them or I’m badgering them or I just, you know… It was really something exciting.

Diagnosing What Nonprofits Actually Need

Cecilia:
Okay, thank you. One of the biggest challenges of being a [grantmaker] would be doing the diagnostic on… You know, someone comes to you and they say, “We need $250,000 to launch—we want to take our program to a city,” or, “We want to expand our food,” or, “We have this opportunity to buy IT,” to buy…

Figuring out if what they are asking for is actually what they need or what they think you want to fund. How do you go about figuring out if they’re actually asking you for their greatest need, or if they’re asking you what they think you want to fund?

Sean:

Yeah, I—so I guess, so for me, one of the things I felt like was helpful was being on the inside of a couple nonprofits. And so you see what that meeting looks like from the perspective of the nonprofit.

Serving on the boards or giving small amounts of money and getting involved in a nonprofit’s stuff, I think gives you… will give you a lot of conviction about how it is that nonprofits see their donors and their larger donors.

Why they’re likely to put a great deal of effort into pitching you something that they think is the fun—especially if you’re a larger donor. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, that they’re going to appeal to what they think will be appealing to you in the meeting. I don’t think that’s a deception; I think that’s just a reality of sales and fundraising.

But I think, you know, philanthropy is one of those areas where it’s really hard for—I think—the donors, the philanthropists in particular, to be honest with themselves.

People give away money for a lot of different reasons, all particularly good. And you can see that in… There’s a lot of vanity donors. But I think even donors that aren’t vanity donors or status donors—like the, you know, the guy giving money to Harvard, right?

So, you’re doing something there. You’re trying to buy something other than…

You’re trying to buy—I think you’re trying to buy a little morality, instead of actually trying to help the institution in some meaningful way.

They obviously have more money than they need. But I think it goes often deeper than that, in terms of trying to manage—and this is from the philanthropist’s perspective—your own motivation and your self-awareness.

Why are you giving? Are you giving to that nonprofit because you want to maintain the personal relationships you have with people there?

Is it because you think you will be well-seen by your peers? Is it because, you know, they keep telling you how tall and handsome you are, that you want to keep giving to this particular apostolate?

So I think there’s an honesty issue on the part of the nonprofit in how they’re asking, but I think there’s a much bigger honesty issue on the part of the donor in terms of why they’re making the gift.

I think you’ll be a much better donor if you can figure out how to be honest with yourself. And if you think about your donations in some kind of stewardship goal—so you have responsibility not just to yourself but to God in terms of how you’re allocating money.

And if it’s really going to upset your best friend that you’re no longer giving them money because they don’t need it, that’s a decision you have to make, even if it’s going to be socially steep.

Navigating Institutional Giving

Cecilia:

From the grantmaker side, it’s a little different with institutional giving because there are so many different people involved in the relationship.

You’ve got a BR officer, BR admin, you’ve got the board, you’ve got the CEO. There’s a lot of different people touching every decision.

What does that look like for you all?

Steve:

Well, I come back to the earlier comment that Sean made, and that’s: if you have confidence in the leadership, if you like the organization, if you like the mission—if it’s something that your organization is supporting.

Our trust doesn’t support climate change, we don’t do save-the-whales—that’s not where our… we don’t do those things.

But to the extent that you like the mission and you like the leaders—we’ve really become a listening organization. “Tell us what you need. Tell us what the important measurements are. How should we collectively determine whether or not this is something that is successful?”

And, you know, you’re right about the word “synergy”—overused. The word “partnership” also. But in this sense, it really is.

We’re learning together. We’re taking chances. And we actually have one of our trustees who says, “If every grant we make works out, then we’re not doing a good job—’cause we’re just playing it safe.”

He was a loan officer and he said, “The best loan officers aren’t the ones that never have a bad loan.” Now, you don’t want to have too many—you, he points that out to me a lot: “We don’t have that grant, Steve…”

But, um, you know, you’re willing to take a chance. And even if it doesn’t necessarily work out the way you hoped, there’s a learning there, and you can take that and better.

Avoiding “No Surprises” vs “No Risk”

Cecilia:
That’s great. One of our clients, Char Foundation in Philadelphia, they described this as: it’s not that we want a “zero risk” grant portfolio, it’s that we want a “no surprises” BR portfolio.

So we want to know when we’re making the bets. Jeremy, what advice would you give to nonprofit leaders and fundraisers about how to balance what’s going to appeal to that particular donor and what they actually need?

Jeremy:
Yeah, so obviously it is a balance. Although I would say maybe it’s a threshold.

To the point about listening—I mean, you want to take the attitude: you are there to serve the donor. You are there to serve them in accomplishing what they hope to accomplish with their resources.

Now sometimes you play a vital role in helping them determine what that is—we all know that, right? People may have a very kind of vague idea of what they want to accomplish, or not consider a certain thing that they might want to accomplish, like saving a classical school in New Jersey.

So I think a kind of service-and-listening mode is important.

But then it is the—having done that—“Okay, this is what they care about. I know that. I’ve built a relationship. I know that their heart is on A and B, not so much on C.”

Then, is there a way that A and B work for what we need as well? That is where the art of nonprofit leadership comes to fruition—the rubber hits the road.

And if you honestly can’t find that connection, it really isn’t the gift you should be seeking—at least not at a very high level.

But oftentimes you can find that.

And then I think also—I mean, these guys, tell me if I’m wrong—laying it in front of the donor him or herself or themselves:

“Hey, you really want lights—new lights on the baseball field, I get that. Joe’s a fantastic pitcher, going into his junior year here. But we made a commitment in our strategic plan to lots of other donors—we have to finish the science first. Can you help me square the circle? What do you think?

“As you understand, I’ve got to be good on this, make good on this commitment.”

I know sometimes that’s a very real scenario—you get offered C.

Maybe just bringing it up to them—now sometimes they’re so crazy, you can’t do that. But most of the time, not. I think that’s fair to say.

Risky Bets That Didn’t Pay Off

Cecilia: Sean, can you tell us about some—maybe just one—what you look back on now as having been maybe not a failure, but a risk that didn’t pay off?

Sean:
The loan officer… baseball is probably a better metaphor than—you know, hitting is a better metaphor than a loan officer for me.

I think that some of the biggest mistakes I made—and I’ll do it on a no-name basis, because I think that probably wouldn’t be appropriate—so, I had an idea of something that, you know, this would be a great apostolate if it existed. And I found somebody in a related field or similar field who had the expertise to execute on this fantastic idea that I had.

And then I approached—this happened three times—I approached these various individuals, and I said, “This is a great idea. You’re the person to do it. Here’s a check. What do you think?” And not surprisingly—like everybody here is like—not ever…

Basically, what happened every time was they said thank you, they took the money, right? And then the execution on the overarching idea—I would say uniformly—pretty much not great.

My experience is that some of the efforts succeeded. Some just failed quickly. Hiring an entrepreneur is kind of an oxymoron, right? You need that person to actually have that on their heart. Some people that have a lot of depth of expertise aren’t entrepreneurial and can’t actually manage a startup in a way that’s effective. That’s most people.

And I think the other issue was: the ones that were successful, that kind of fell into this category, that entrepreneur did have a vision and they did execute on it. But it was, let’s say, parallel to the original vision I had. So you wind up with something that is successful in some terms—but certainly not in the terms I had originally hoped.

And that was the more successful of the three that I started this way. So I would say this would be the most challenging aspect of philanthropy, in my opinion: if you have the idea and you think you’re going to recruit the leadership. That, I find, is much harder than finding somebody who’s actually already doing something and help.

Philanthropy Begins with Listening

Steve: I would say—from Stephen Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People—talks about the importance of seeking first to understand, then to be understood. A corollary to that in philanthropy is that we listen to give. We don’t go and sell the gift. We listen.

Good philanthropists—or good people who be and raise money, working with philanthropists—they listen to them. They listen to them. What’s important to them?

And the mistake I’ve made so many times—I’m embarrassed, I’ve had to go to confession about it—is, you know, I knew there were people in the community, people of means and had wealth, and I wanted to sell them on my idea. This is my idea. And occasionally, that would work. But oftentimes it just wasn’t important.

You know, we’re building a homeless shelter for older adults, and they would say, “Well, that’s nice, Steve, but our heart and soul is in children’s education.”
“Yeah, but this homeless shelter for older adults is the only one in Phoenix.”
“That’s nice, Steve.”

And you just wouldn’t realize—I was forgetting the idea of, I’m there to help them discover their philanthropic needs. I wanted them to help me with my particular budget issues at the time.

And I just think we have to remember that: we’re there to listen, not there to impose our will upon donors.

In fact, I’ve told our development team at St. Vincent de Paul, where I worked for 25 years: the only way you could get fired—the only way to get fired—is if a donor called and said they were being badgered by one of the development people. “They were putting pressure on me to give.” If I ever got that phone call, you were gone. Because that’s not in the donor’s best interest. That’s not what we’re trying to do here at St. Vincent de Paul. We’re trying to build God’s kingdom through philanthropy.

And that didn’t happen very often. Didn’t happen.

The Worst Things Nonprofits Can Do When Asking

Cecilia: Jeremy, what is the worst thing that a nonprofit or an apostolate can do when it comes to asking?

Jeremy: I guess Steve was talking about one of those worst things right now, right?

Yeah, it’s hard to narrow down just one, isn’t it? I mean, one of the worst things you can do is: not ask for money.

There we go. You saying that is certainly one of them. It’s not everybody’s problem, but that is something. It’s really hard. I’ve lived it. It’s hard to get to the point where you’re comfortable making the ask. That may be the worst thing.

But then of course there’s the opposite—this is a very demanding and golden mean, right? The opposite problem is asking all the time. Every time you talk to somebody. Every time you see them on the street. You know, the “walking ATM” issue.

So I think the worst thing is just: not asking.

And then I think too, what I see is: you have to have—it doesn’t need to be in your five-year strategic plan—that big vision. Big is good. So you have to really be able to get good at casting a vision that is compelling and exciting and makes sense. It’s rational—to speak Sean’s language. It’s got to make sense.

But I think—you don’t have to fund all that right away—but I think sometimes people come in too small. Too small. Coming into a donor and saying, “Help us build our reserves,” is not a big vision. That’s not going to get the—that’ll get you maybe go-away money.

Start, Listen, and Test

Cecilia: Great. All right, this is our final question before we open it up. I’d love to hear from each of you. So, the question for you all is: what advice would you give to other donors, especially those who maybe are just starting out or just entering into it? What would be one piece of advice? I’m sure there’s a lot. You could probably write a book.

Sean: Who’s this for?

Cecilia: This is for all of you. We’ll start with Sean.

Sean: I don’t—I mean, get started. Right? So don’t—go get involved in a particular apostolate, nonprofit. Roll up your sleeves. Get a seat in terms of how the board works. Maybe it’s going to be super dysfunctional, and you’ll learn that. Maybe it’ll be high-functioning, and you’ll learn that.

But I think it’s hard to be good at giving money away unless you’ve practiced. Right? So I think the worst idea would be to—you’re 80—and then imagine, having never really given much away, that now you’re going to magically figure out how to give your money away intelligently. I think that would be the worst way to do it.

I think start small, practice, get involved.

Steve: I would say fund what brings you joy. What gives you that sense of joy and meaning in your life—for which God created you. What is that?

Those are things we think about at night and when we’re alone. What are those things? Those are the things you want. Find the good organizations, the good leaders.

I guess the thing I would add to that is: don’t be afraid to fund the administrative/fundraising efforts. The multiplication philanthropy. I promise you, you’ll be in the minority to do that. Most people don’t do that. A few more today than 10 years ago, but you will be on the leading edge of philanthropy if you do that.

Only as a fun fact: fewer than 7% of grant foundations in the United States report any kind of capacity building in their 990s. And that’s not even with individuals.

Jeremy: So I can’t beat what these guys just said. I would agree with that.

And just to piggyback on something Sean kind of hinted: I think, since you’re looking to find really great leaders to invest in, a lot of test giving—probably at the beginning—would be a great idea.

People who don’t treat their $100 donors well typically aren’t all that much better at $10,000, etc. So I think a lot of testing—who’s good? Who calls you and thanks you? Who writes you and thanks you? Who is good enough to look you up and find that you’re someone with capacity they should be trying to reach?

That’s a good sign. That’s a great sign.

So I think—I would obviously fund what gives you joy, what you feel called to give to, what God is calling you to. That’s obviously to try to discern spiritually.

But once you’ve done that sort of work—finding the great organizations—do some testing.