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A podcast for fundraisers who want ideas, examples and inspiration to help you raise more money for your charity or non-profit.
Rob is an author and award-winning fundraising trainer. Each week he and his guests share examples of successful fundraising, as well as lots of practical tips to help you apply these techniques in your own job.
Hi. This is Rob. Welcome to another episode of the Fundraising Bright Spots podcast. This one comes from a live recording at one of our long standing Breakfast Club for Fundraising Leaders events. And it features my brilliant colleague, Ben Swart, who many of you will already know, either from this podcast or from the Bright Spots training he delivers for fundraising teams in charities, universities, and schools.
Speaker 2:When we commit, I think we notice, consciously or subconsciously, we are a bit braver, a bit bolder. We do things slightly differently. Whatever the process might be, whatever the rules might be, we think slightly differently. Kate told Nicola a story of what I did, which in all honesty, I'd actually forgotten. And what I said was, my favorite thing about this lift is that every single person in it is gonna choose to vote for the NSPCC in the next staff vote.
Speaker 2:And I just remember chuckles and laughter. Anyway, what Kate said to Nicola was from 08:15 in the morning, Ben's question in his head was, I'll do anything I can to help people hear about us and want to vote. So what did Nicola do? Nicola went back. She went back to the next staff vote, and she got clearance from London City Airport and air control to put a flipping hot air balloon up with a staff boat.
Speaker 1:Ben's talk is about what happens when you genuinely commit to going after an ambitious partnership or other funding opportunity, what it does to your courage, your creativity, and your ability to persist. Here's Ben.
Speaker 2:Hi, everyone. Thank you for the intro. So I have spent the last twenty years in fundraising. Lots of that was major gifts and trusts and corporate partnerships. I'm very lucky for a huge chunk of that time.
Speaker 2:It was working with Rob training and coaching either at the NSPCC or for Bright Spots. And the last few years, my job has solely been working specifically with causes, with charities, with people. Sometimes that's a CEO. Sometimes that's a fundraiser on their own. Sometimes that's major gifts, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:Sometimes that's in a room of 500 fundraisers for a particular charity or conference. And my entire job is to try and pass on these sorts of ideas and these different tactics and ways of working. And what's fascinated me is like lots of Thou Bright Spots work, there is a pattern that emerges that we begin to notice. For me, you're going to notice on this particular talk that I do, there's a pattern that I noticed if I rewound the clock seventeen, eighteen years ago to when I first started that is different to what I'm doing now. And so for me, there's one particular habit that I can think of, that when I think early on in my career, I'm not totally convinced that I always did it.
Speaker 2:So Rob and I were talking about this and we were reflecting. So let's rewind the clock. On this talk, I'm gonna do a lot of rewinding because I've noticed when we look at things in hindsight, I think there's some things we noticed that we could have done differently or steps we took. Or when things went well, there's some things we noticed. Let's rewind the clock.
Speaker 2:Eighteen years ago, I was a major gift fundraiser, and I would love to have said that I was waking up every day with Rob's eighty twenty habit in mind. You know, I had a donor pool, hundreds of donors. I think I was aware of the ones that were more valuable, but, genuinely, I I don't think I had that clarity. And even if I did, trying to get meetings in with or progress with the billionaires or the donors that were worth so much more, honestly, I think a voice in my head said that was impossible or didn't think I could do it. And certainly, in hindsight, when I was looking at this, what it meant was if I reflected back to my first year in major gift fundraising, I was more likely to spend my time either calling, if I did call anyone because I was a bit scared to pick up the phone back then, either calling or emailing, and I could think of it.
Speaker 2:Donors who, in my major gift head, I think you call them mid mid level. They were giving like a £100 a month, £150 a month. And in all honesty, they were much easier to get meetings with. Like, get test drives. I knew I needed to do that.
Speaker 2:I found it much easier to get meetings with people who were giving a much smaller amount. And I don't think I'd ever have admitted that at the time, but without realizing it, I was spending more time there. I was more likely to invite them to an event, to a project visit. I was more likely to get a meeting with them. And I it's not to say I didn't try with the trickier, more complex donors, the ones that could be £3,000,000 and more, But in all honesty, when I contacted their offices, I think I was a bit scared.
Speaker 2:And in hindsight, I don't think that I had fully committed to even believing that it was possible. And if you're anything like me or you've done this enough time so that you don't have that same barrier that I had, but you can see it in people in your team. You can see it in people that you work with. Or maybe you were like me where you just wish they'd try the harder things. Like, there was a particular moment on a training course that Rob and I went on at the end of last year where the penny dropped for me on why one particular decision can help make a shift there, and it can make a shift on everything you heard that Rob described.
Speaker 2:Now, the best way to describe this is the training course we went on was one where you try and help people achieve impossible things, yourself and others. And there were thousands of us in this conference room, like thousands, thousands and thousands of us in this conference room. And we're on day two of this course where you've had to achieve incredible things. And by the end of day one, for instance, you're walking on hot coals, like, you're really fired up. Day two in the morning, the host, who is this brilliant presenter, he said, let do you know what I wanna do?
Speaker 2:I I wanna energise everyone this morning. There's a massive room, like 10,000 people. I wanna play a giant game of Simon Says. You know the game Simon Says? Simon Says, put your finger on your nose.
Speaker 2:Now, the host was very good at this. He was really good at tricking people into doing Simon Says and and getting people out. Like, within the first sixty seconds, like, over half of the people had gone. Anyway, you can imagine it. 10,000 people playing full out, doing Simon Says.
Speaker 2:Eighteen minutes later, there's one person on the stage in front of us all. She has won. Simon Says. She is the only person that got to the end. Now, she's standing there.
Speaker 2:She's really pleased with herself. And the teacher, Joseph, he turns to her. He has a little chat and it's almost off mic. He asks her a bit about how did you end up winning? What did you do that was different to everyone else?
Speaker 2:And she has this chat with him and he turns around and he says, everyone, I just want you to hear what she just said. She said, Joseph, when you asked who's gonna play Simon Says, at that point, I made a decision. I was going to win. I was gonna win. I wasn't gonna just play.
Speaker 2:I was gonna win. Now he turns around to us all and says, I'm interested. Room of 10,000 people? How many of you, when I said, we're about to play the game Simon Says, in your brain said, I'm playing this because I'm gonna win. That's why I'm playing.
Speaker 2:Or how many of you were like, I'm playing because I wanna I hope I win. I'm playing because Joseph said we would. I'm playing because it's an icebreaker. I'm playing because we have to. I'm playing because it's a process.
Speaker 2:We'll get through to the next bit. He said, how many of you put your arm up if you made a decision you were playing to win? And when he asked that question and you looked around, barely 17 people had their arm up to say I was playing to win. In this massive room, barely 17 people. And I remember Rob and I were next to each other, and we just had this instant moment of do you know, there's many learning points from this, but one of them is just how differently we act, how differently we behave, the different lengths we'll take when we don't hope something will happen, when we don't kind of commit to it, but when we make a choice.
Speaker 2:And what intrigues me is early on in my career, I don't think I wrote on a piece of paper, these five billionaires, I am going to meet them. Someone from my charity will meet these five. I will do whatever it I don't think I did that. Like, in all honesty, how often do I truly commit? Even if that is Rob, I love Debbie's idea.
Speaker 2:I remember speaking to you, Debbie. The three donor moves every day. How often do I truly commit to that? Especially to things that seem impossibly hard. Like, my aim today is to help us with a host of stories.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna go back in time and forward in time. I'm gonna look at things I did well and badly and others have done and look at what's happened, what shift did we notice after people committed? Because I think when we make a decision, we might be pulled to do different things. What actually happens? In fact, when you look at this, there is a pattern that occurs.
Speaker 2:There's three key behaviours that happen when we commit to something. Behaviour number one, and maybe you can think of this, maybe there's been a time in your life when you said enough is enough, This is going to happen. It could have been in your personal life. It could have been in your work life. Anyway, there's three things that change.
Speaker 2:Number one, when we commit, I think we notice consciously or subconsciously, we are a bit braver, a bit bolder. We do things slightly differently. Whatever the process might be, whatever the rules might be, we think slightly differently. The best story that brings this to life is when I met an incredible fundraiser called Nicola Bock. Nicola is Head of Partnerships and Philanthropy at Campaign Against Living Miserably.
Speaker 2:I met her when she worked at Teenage Cancer Trust. And the reason I remember meeting her first time, I was in the lobby of a bank, and I'd been invited into the lobby by the bank because we were down to the final two or three of this staff folk competition for a £900,000 partnership. And it was my charity, and it was Nicola's charity, and it was one other charity. And I met Nicola for the first time in the lobby. And you know when you meet someone and you know you're about to compete with them, you meet someone and you just go, oh, no.
Speaker 2:Like, she is so good, so determined, so smart, charming, like, assertive. You just know this is going to be a heck of a fight. And the reason I think of this story is five years later, Nicola and I got together to create a session for the Chartered Institute of Fundraising on what we learnt from competing with each other for half a decade. That was what the session was about because we won and lost against each other various times. And Nicola said so by the way, spoiler alert, I beat Nicola in that Charity of the Year race.
Speaker 2:So I won the 900 k partnership against Nicola. It was one of my proudest moments. But what fascinates me was when Nicola and I talked about it five years later, first of couldn't believe it. But then when she caught up with the head of the foundation of the bank and asked her about, like, why why how did we not win? This is what Nicola said.
Speaker 2:She said to me, you wanted it more. Kate is her name. Kate said, but Ben just wanted it more. And Nicola was like, that is ridiculous. Like, I wanted it so much.
Speaker 2:There is no way he wanted it more. I was furious. And then Kate gave a very specific example. And the example she gave was on the day of the staff vote when you get to Canvas. The staff vote started at 09:00.
Speaker 2:We were all allowed in the doors at 08:00 to begin setting up. At 08:00, I went in the doors of this Canary Wharf building and if you can imagine it, if anyone's been in a shiny skyscraper before, I got into the lift and in that lift at 08:15 in the morning are 12 or 13 other people, very professional people, very important, very serious. And as those doors close, there's just utter silence. And Kate told Nicola a story of what I did, which in all honesty, I'd actually forgotten. And what I said was, my favorite thing about this lift is that every single person in it is gonna choose to vote for the NSPCC in the next staff vote.
Speaker 2:And I just remember chuckles and laughter. Anyway, what Kate said to Nicola was, from 08:15 in the morning, Ben's question in his head was, I'll do anything I can to help people hear about us and want to vote. And Nicola in her head said, do you know, I thought I tried everything, but I started at 09:00. And I know that's a tiny little story, but my my favorite thing about this was in my head I had committed in a different way. And it did mean on the day I was braver than I would normally be.
Speaker 2:I don't it wasn't a conscious decision. I don't believe I started that by saying I'm going to, in the lift, do this thing. It just came through me because I noticed there's lots of people here. Step number two. Number one, be brave.
Speaker 2:Number two, I think you've noticed when we commit to something that you are more creative. You don't just stop after the first knockdown. You might try something else when most people don't. So what did Nicola do? Nicola went back.
Speaker 2:She went back to the next vote. But bolstered by hearing what didn't work, she didn't give up. She went back. And in the next star vote, because Nicola was like, right, what more can I do? What more can I do?
Speaker 2:I'm gonna try something else. My favourite story is she said, it's a Canary Wharf office. This is at the bank next door to this one. A Canary Wharf office. This this one was actually worth £1,500,000.
Speaker 2:She said, during the staff vote, someone who supported our charity, he ran a hot air balloon company, and so I asked him whether it was possible to get his hot air balloon to go up to the same height as the floor of bankers who I was influencing to vote with a sign that said, 'Vote Teenage Cancer Trust'. He said, 'But the problem was,' he said, 'was that because Canary Wharf and the city is protected airspace, you need to get clearance from ground control and London City Airport because they might think that it's a terrorist thing. So Nicola's like, oh, okay. So what did she do? She got clearance from London City Airport and air control to put a flipping hot air balloon up with a staff vote.
Speaker 2:Now she talked to the bank about it and she said, actually, we never ended up needing to do the hot air balloon because by the time I wanted to do the idea, the people from the bank said, Nicola, I don't think you need to do that extra step because I think they knew everything else she'd done, she'd won. Now I love this story because sometimes when I'm coaching someone or a team and we're in a competitive situation or even just thinking of picking up the phone or thinking of what more can I do, someone's some you might think, oh, well, I've done everything I can? And then I tell you Nicola's hot air balloon story. Have you really done everything? My other favourite Nicola story, by the way, is I was speaking to the head of a bank, their foundation.
Speaker 2:The biggest gift that this bank gives out is about £1,500,000 each year. Sometimes they give out hundreds of thousands of pounds, but they do give these massive grants. And I asked her, can you think of a time when a charity has really stood out to you? And she told me the story of a particular person. It was Nicola.
Speaker 2:And she said, I met Nicola just before Christmas and I must have told her how much I liked Quality Street, but I don't like all Quality Streets. My favorite one is the purple one. You know the purple Quality Street? So Nicola went back to her charity where it turned out that Quality Street had donated tins and tins to her charity for children at Christmas. What did she do?
Speaker 2:She got a box of Quality Street. She emptied it out and she filled it with nothing but the purple ones and sent that as a nice little Christmas present to the head of the foundation. And years later, the head of the foundation never forgot that. By the way, Nicola did get the £1,500,000 partnership. The biggest partnership that they give out, Nicola's charity got.
Speaker 2:Now I like this because being creative and just trying something else trying something else, it doesn't always mean for the massive one. Like, if you're sitting there right now saying, do know, I wanted to commit to just call a few more people, then maybe Naomi's story is for you. Rob has shared this story before on The Breakfast Club, so I'm gonna shrink it. But she was on our mastery program, and on day one, she decided I am going to speak to and thank more of our supporters over the phone. In fact, she decided to do a thankathon.
Speaker 2:She's from Northern Ireland. Day one, she decides she's gonna do a thankathon from this brilliant charity, Fields of Life. Day four, we hear the story of what happened after her thankathon because she got on a plane, and sitting there next to her her on the plane is a guy who, when she tells him she works for Fields of Life, he says, I know that charity. I give to that charity. And it turned out that six weeks earlier, during Naomi's thankathon, she had ended up speaking to him.
Speaker 2:And the actual story goes that the first time she called him, he didn't pick up because he didn't recognise the number he said. He told her this on the plane. But like most other fundraisers, can tell you this. When they tell me they said, I tried calling, but he didn't answer. So I left a voicemail and then I emailed.
Speaker 2:Naomi, just try it again. And I know that's lots of you are like, oh, I'll try again, Ben. You'll be amazed at the number of people who don't. She just tried again. At lunchtime, he picked up.
Speaker 2:He said, when your number called again, I thought it might be something important, so I decided to pick up. It was the best call of my day. No one has ever called just to say thank you. He later gave a bigger gift than he's ever given before. Why?
Speaker 2:Because she just tried again. So number one, it helps us be braver. Number two, it helps with creativity. And number three, my favorite example is this one. The one of the latest podcast episodes is with Sarah Taverner.
Speaker 2:Now she was going for a $3,000,000 opportunity, and the reason she's on the podcast is because it took quite a few attempts. And what I'm about to do is play you a tiny clip of the podcast because if you can picture this scene, it is the seventeenth no that Sarah has just received. 17 no's. So she has tried to get funding from this trust, a massive trust. She's tried to get funding from them 17 times in a row, and they've said no.
Speaker 2:And this year, in the eighteenth time, she's actually got them to visit her work. She's built a really good relationship with them. She thinks this is the time. This is the one. It's gonna happen.
Speaker 2:And they're waiting and they're they're waiting for the call and the email to say she's got it, and in it comes and it says they didn't get it for the eighteenth time in a row. So amazingly, yes, Sarah is at so had been at the same charity for eighteen years, but for the eighteenth time in a row, she got a no. The question that Rob has just asked her, did you consider giving up? And this is what Sarah says.
Speaker 3:Absolutely not. We're going back in there and we're trying again and we're going to kind of put everything in that we didn't include this time. We're going to expand and we're going to include more of and we're going to keep moving in that direction and we're going to build off that fantastic visit we did in Cambodia and we're going to make it even more spectacular. And you know, by doing that and maybe from losing, you know, so catastrophically at a time when we thought we'd done so well, maybe that helped to fuel the information we put forward the next time. And sometimes failure is fuel and it does help you to kind of think more clearly about what it is you want to do and what you want to say.
Speaker 3:So I feel the pain of rejection and nos almost daily, but it is, if you believe in what you're doing and you believe that it is right and it's the right next step, then pick yourselves up, dust yourselves off, crack on is my advice.
Speaker 2:Here's the thing, I love Sam's example for a whole host of reasons and I get that not all funders are appropriate to keep asking for eighteen years. But one thing that Sarah was really clear about was actually we knew we fitted the criteria. Like, we just needed to keep learning, keep trying. And just do you notice a theme with Nicola? She didn't win the first time, but winning in that year wasn't what she committed to.
Speaker 2:She committed to winning at some point with them. That's what she committed to. And so not winning was just another chance to to figure out what she could do differently. If you do listen to the podcast, you'll hear the various things that Sarah had tried to just keep going, just keep going. The eighteenth time she didn't win the partnership.
Speaker 2:The nineteenth attempt, by the way, the nineteenth attempt, Sarah wins and gets the $3,000,000 gift. It is worth listening to the episode. But there's three things that happen when we commit. We are braver. We are more creative.
Speaker 2:We just keep going. I think I think there's a time when you could ask yourself the question, if that didn't work, what more could I try? And if that doesn't work, what more could I try? And if that doesn't work, what more could I try? And there is this hunger to just keep going.
Speaker 2:You know, when I think back to this the Simon Says game, truly, when Joseph asked the question, how many of you played the game because you were gonna win, actually win, and barely 17 people out of 10,000 put their arm up? The other thing came to mind. Once you've committed to this, the number of people who've also made that decision with that level of determination, it shrinks. I think one of the reasons why I didn't win Simon Says is because I thought the odds are against me. I'm competing with 10,000.
Speaker 2:Actually, if from the very start I'd said I'm gonna win, like, I'm not competing with 10,000. I'm competing with 17. And even then, suddenly, the margins of winning are tiny. It really is the difference between choosing to pick up the phone, choosing to write that thank you card, choosing out of all of your current partners the one that it's worth trying a few more things on. Sarah Prior, the latest podcast episode.
Speaker 2:She got an extension with her partner, the biggest partner they've got, because they just tried a couple more things. They just committed. They committed. They committed. There is a quote from the philosopher, Johann Wolfgang von Goeth, which sums this up for me.
Speaker 2:Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it. Begin it now. So my question to you is, what is the thing that you could decide to try and commit to?
Speaker 2:Be okay with it being hard. Like, be okay with not knowing how you're going to do it, but decide that you're going to actually do it. Clearly, if you're on one of our mastery courses or our training course, we work hard. We spend a bit more time than this. You have the group helping you.
Speaker 2:We have strategies to make a choice on how you might do it. But even without that, I think there's some things you've heard today that you want to commit to actually do. We've got some unbelievable stories of people who have committed and the impact they've made. But crucially, 9,980 other people did not commit to win. Simon says 99% of other people will not either.
Speaker 2:Good luck making a choice. I invite you to figure out big or small, what is it that you will decide to do today.
Speaker 1:Brilliant stuff from Ben there. I hope those insights and those stories, the lift, the hot air balloon, and the extraordinary tenacity from Sarah Taverner really stick with you. If you want to listen to the full story with Sarah, I'll put the link with various other handy resources in the episode notes on our Bright Spots website. Now if you found this episode helpful and you're curious about what it would be like for your team to spend a whole day learning strategies and getting inspired with my colleagues, Ben or Linda, do get in touch via our Bright Spot website or through LinkedIn. Finally, the question to sit with is simple.
Speaker 1:Is there an opportunity in front of you right now that you've been a bit tentative about? Because as Ben says, there's something magical that kicks in when you stop hoping and actually decide to go for it. Do let me know how you get on. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed it, please, please, please share it with a colleague or on LinkedIn so we can help as many people as possible.
Speaker 1:I wish you the best of luck aiming high today. And I'll be back soon with another Bright Spots story.