Episode 122 | Effective Stewardship with David Baker - a podcast by Mary Valloni
from 2019-08-05T04:30
David Baker is a recovering lawyer who has provided comprehensive fund development services to nonprofits, social service agencies, churches, and libraries for over 20 years. David has raised hundreds of millions of dollars through major gift efforts. He has consulted with organizations in California, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Georgia, Tennessee, Utah, Arkansas and more for capital and endowment campaigns, comprehensive fundraising efforts, planned giving, development professional recruitment and coaching, charitable interest assessments (aka feasibility studies) and board training.
What is stewardship?
Stewardship is basically doing the donor rightly, or how we treat them. The problem is when you’re a smaller organization, stewardship tends to get dropped. But you can’t go from a $25 one-time gift to an entire estate without the stuff in between. Instead of taking a transactional view with people, stewardship is about honoring the person and treating them as a human, not an ATM. Organizations need to develop a bigger process than just thanking donors and sending them information.
What is a planned gift?
A planned gift is literally a gift that requires planning. What’s the state of the family? Are theretax consequences? Is there a charitable interest? You need to determine the donor’s needs as well as the charity’s needs so it’s a win for everyone.
What is the most ideal situation to go from the $25 to a planned gift?
How can we use databases to our advantage?
It starts with an audit conversation. What are you doing now and what do you actually need that you haven’t been able to do? Online giving; how does it tie to the database? How simple are the gift forms? Then you put a system in place that includes workflows. The system should track your campaign, data points you want to capture, and the reports you want to generate. Your reports will only be as good as the data that is entered; you should hire someone to serve in this realm. David and his team use Salesforce, which free to begin with up to 10 users.
What does fundraising freedom mean to you?
When you can start seeing your donors as people and they know you – this is where the freedom comes from. Getting to the point when get long gains takes work but is fun!
Find David Baker at givingdesign.com.
For more information about Mary Valloni, visit maryvalloni.com and to download our free Fundraising Freedom Roadmap, go to maryvalloni.com/roadmap.
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