109. The Secret to Raising More Money in Small Town Nonprofits

Our guest on today's episode is my business bestie and dear friend Patrick Kirby from Do Good Better Consulting. This episode qualifies him as the first ever three-peat guest on the Growing Small Towns show, so we'll have to get him a jacket or a pin or something. But we come together on this episode, you're going to hear him launch into it. We recorded it mostly as if It was just gonna land on his podcast, which is called The Official Do Good Better Podcast. But of course there's a ton of information in this overlap kind of crossover, if you will, episode that makes a lot of sense for you guys, the listeners of our show. He talks about it kind of like that's the only place it's gonna live. He says like, where can we find you, Rebecca? We'll do the exact same thing, of course, in our show notes and give you all the links to everything that Patrick is doing, Patrick's team is doing. 'cause there's so much that you can glean from him. But today what we're talking about is really the intersection between small towns and nonprofits. And really we're talking specifically about the alignment of funding. Like how do you align your organization with the right kind of funders so that you can get the kinds of partnership dollars that, A, come with more ease, heart, and connection. And then secondly, that have some sustainability behind them instead of just always feeling like you're chasing a one-time gift or a one-time grant. There are so many things in this episode that I know are gonna be valuable to you as a cool person trying to do their cool stuff in their small towns. But the biggest takeaway from all of this is that we have to start realizing the impact of all of these small nonprofits in our small towns. I think most of us don't even realize how many organizations are doing the work, not necessarily organized as a business, but as a philanthropic or charitable organization. And these are the places that are making our communities great places to live. And so if we can help them get better at fundraising and chasing down, or not chasing down, not chasing, actually, we don't want them to be chasing. We want them to align themselves with great partners. It's going to make an enormous difference in our overall quality of life. So sit back. I'd tell you to relax, but we're way too energetic for that. So just enjoy this episode. And as always, reach out, like, let us know, let me know what this felt like to you, if it meant something to you, if you wanna talk about what this could look like in your community. We wanna talk to you. And as always, you can like and subscribe to our podcast, share it with people. We need each other, guys, more than ever. So just keep doing what you can with what you have right where you're at to do the cool things in your small town that you wanna see happen. I see you friends, and I will be watching and I will answer your questions and I will cheerlead and champion your best ideas because that's just who I am. So enjoy this episode with my good friend Patrick Kirby from Do Good Better Consulting.

Well, hey everybody, welcome to the official Do Good Better podcast. I'm your host Patrick Kirby, and of course we talk with people who are gonna help our small and medium-sized nonprofits do Good, better. I have a problem currently, which is me trying to figure out how to help and serve rural small nonprofits. There is a general sense that the money typically raised in the rural nonprofit areas is getting moved or there's a contraction of the amount of individuals who are going to give to rural nonprofits, mostly because, you know, after the, things that have happened over the last couple of years, a lot of money is moving from big corporations to urban centers. Well-deserved, well-needed, yes. However, our small flyover country nonprofits need about as much help as everybody else. And so where do I go to ask certain questions on the rural nonprofit areas? The only person I trust with that answer, which is Rebecca Ando.

Well, hi.

Hey, thanks for being here. We'll get into a lot of this because I think the whole concept of rural providers, rural nonprofits, rural businesses, this flyover country concept is so important to the communities that are doing work that are, you know, sort of desperate to keep people, uh, you know, sort of engaged. And then when there is no money, the missions kind of fall by the wayside. I'm glad that we get to have a conversation about this because you're genius in it, but you're also in it every single day. And what I love most about your perspective is that this is not a philosophical sort of I'm gonna read about it in a book sort of thing, but your whole being and your whole nonprofit itself is based on rural small towns, right? So I would like to— well, you should formally introduce yourself because I'll be— I'll do a terrible injustice to the amount of things that you do because the list of The things that you do are, are, is longer than, right, what they probably should be, number one.

Yeah, for sure, that's absolutely certain.

But Growing Small Towns is your nonprofit. What on earth is it and how are you serving the rural community?

So Growing Small Towns, I founded this organization and the intention originally, so I spent more than a decade and some change in organizational development. And I still do that. I still do that kind of consulting. So you go into companies and like, what does that really mean? Basically, it's just literally I've rewritten and resaid this elevator pitch 10 bajillion times, right? But essentially I wanna help companies prioritize their people in a way that actually lets them walk that talk out, right? Because everybody says, oh, people are our biggest asset. Everybody says that. Very few companies actually do the hard work because it's very hard work. It's messy because people are messy and humans are difficult, and yet humans do all the stuff. So I love working with companies that actually desire to dig into those difficult conversations. It's my favorite work. So I'd been doing that work for a number of years. I'm back in my hometown. We're actually recording in the little village of Oaks, North Dakota.

Is it a village?

It's not. It's bigger than a village. We're bigger than a village. 1798 was our population as of the 2020 census. So that means 1798, in case that wasn't clear. Just under 1,800 people, right? Small little town. I grew up here and I had been— I was gone for like a decade. I had come back and frankly, my kids have gotten old enough where I really started thinking more about like, what kind of community do I want to live in? You know, I had lived here for a long while, right? But when you're in the thick of it with kids, that's like you're just surviving, right? So, oh my gosh, sorry, this is such— it's such an arc. Like most things, but essentially I went, okay, how do I take everything that I know about organizations and what makes organizations strong and healthy, full of leaders that are impassioned and engaged and excitable and all that thing, all those things. What about what I know can translate to communities? Because communities are simply organizations full of people. And if we have engaged and passionate, excitable, enthusiastic people in small towns, what would that look like? So that was my big, my big vision. And I, I started with the intention to basically create 3 pillars of programming, and I still feel really locked in on those 3 things because, you know, for me it was, okay, what would make my town a better place to live? So the first are just robust, healthy small businesses. So not necessarily like, how do we get the next big giant manufacturing place, but how do we attract really cool people with really cool skills that want to do really cool businesses in my little town, right? Make them cool, make them niche, make them awesome and unique, right? So that's the focus. And what does that mean? Like, I'll help them however I can. And that's what I have been doing is just paying attention, like, who's coming to me? Who's asking me for help? What do they need help with? Where are the gaps? And it turns out, Patrick, there's an awful lot of gaps. The second is a focus on the promotion and like the nurturing of an appreciation of arts and culture. High art is how rural people still often think about the arts, meaning that this thing to be observed and not to be immersed in, like we go and we watch stuff happen instead of like actively participating in it and basically weaving art into the fabric of who we are. And I just want more of us to get those opportunities and more of us to think about it that way because it also helps number one, right? Because there's an enormous intersection between the arts and business. I don't think we're there yet, but we're working on it. And then the third is just general people development. Like, you're a person, Patrick. I am. You, you are such a person. And then if you get better at conflict management, let's say, and you're in a town of 1,800 people where you show up at work, that conflict management skill benefits you, benefits your employer, benefits the customers that work with you. Then you're probably on a committee or two or You know, maybe you're part of a church, maybe you're not. You're on stuff. Small town people, we're on stuff. And so to me, it makes a lot of sense if we want all of those organizations to get better, we help the people in supporting, volunteering in, leading in those organizations to get better. So that's the growth of small towns that I care about.

There's a couple of things. Number one, full disclosure, we've known each other for a decade. For dang near a decade.

Yeah, because we met when we were 12.

Yes, yes, we are youthful. One of the things you've always been doing is this, is this people development. And, uh, so now that you're in a small town, and then two things that really stick out as far as growing small towns, which is your organization's, you know, sort of the entity as a nonprofit, is the gaps in services and the things that you're trying to provide, right, or trying to recruit or sort of develop in these small towns and the amount of stuff that people are involved in.

Yeah.

The nonprofit realm are the gap-filling organizations filled with people trying to do that good work, boots on the ground, making the community better, which is where you and I sort of have mentally merged into figure, okay, how on earth do we have a conversation? That sparks creativity and interest and try to reduce the amount of burnout of those who are doing the work, filling the gaps, and especially in towns that do not have a built-in support system.

Right.

Or fiscal support system that urban centers do. Right. And that's why I find our conversations on a regular basis so intriguing is that we're trying to come up with or discuss and at least bring up or bring to light some of the struggles, some of the worries, and some of the solutions that I think you and I have come up with.

Right.

And I thought that would be kind of an interesting topic for today is try to really figure out what on earth are these rural small nonprofits that are really trying to figure out some significant gaps that the government is not doing or the local community is not covering because either they don't have the ability to, or they've not thought of, or they're not creative enough to do. Like, that is a thing. And you're having a conversation about it, like, just 2 seconds ago, right, in your building here, right, on food scarcity. Maybe we can start with this, which is your pulse in the rural nonprofit community, these small nonprofits. What are the struggles currently? What are their worries currently? You know, sort of looking at an upcoming recession for a significant amount of time, it's looking like What keeps them up at night?

I think about this all the time, especially as of late, given the conversations that we've been having. I feel like when it comes to a topic as dire as food scarcity, like we were just talking about, I think the things that keep them up at night is just the enormity of the challenge, the enormity of the problem. And the reason, like, our local community can't, can't or won't fill it at this point is because the enormity of the problem itself is hard to articulate. So I think it's just getting their arms around. And again, something like food scarcity, or really any of those basic needs, human dignity and pride becomes a major barrier to the beneficiaries of these intended programs actually accessing it. So I think that's what keeps them up. I mean, I, you know, again, I'm not— that's not the core of my nonprofit, but in talking to them, it's just— and then it also— we just keep going, there has to be someone out there with money. I mean, that's it. So, and then we, we— then we start looking to the government, right? And we start looking to foundations, we start looking grants, we start looking in all these places, and then I think we lose, we lose sight of the fact that giving's always personal.

Yes.

Especially with those, uh, core service, those core basic need organizations. I think that's what keeps them up. Then when we talk about the, um, the quality of life organizations like our arts councils and, um, oh, like we have one of our, one of our child, well, childcare would be a, a, a necessity. Let's just focus on anything related to the arts. Oh, like another good one here in Oaks is we have a— it's called Bear Creek Rough Rider Association. So they like, they have like equestrian stuff and they do rodeo stuff, right? But they're a club, they're an organization, they're a nonprofit. I think what keeps those guys up at night is the fear. I think the fear of the money, the money running out is the fear. And I think what they end up doing is they keep— they diminish or minimize the importance of the mission of like the gap that they actually fill. They see themselves as just a nice to have, not a necessary to have. Because I, I'll even tell, I can understand entirely. I just said it upstairs, like everything I care about, and not care about, but everything I'm trying to do in my organization, it can't happen if people aren't fed. So it's really easy, I think, to get into this weird comparison, especially when it comes to fundraising, where we're like, well, my, you know, what I do is an It's not actually as important as that. And I, from my position, thinking about my community, how do we make this community better? I would argue that you need, we all need to quit doing that. Like if your mission isn't enough to get you excited about what you're trying to do and you don't understand the important role that your organization plays in making your community better, then that's where any of us need to start, right? Yeah. We diminish, we diminish the value of what we're doing because it's not as important air quotes, as something like food scarcity.

So this, this brings up a thing I think a lot of people listening who run small nonprofits will relate well to this, which is that's a people mental block.

It is, right?

So your whole experience doing people development is, is honing in on that scarcity, almost reference and mindset, right?

I know it is.

You might have talked about that, but it's not, is it?

I mean, because it's what people do.

I know. And I think you separated it really greatly, which is the nice to have and the needs to have, right? So the equestrian group that you referenced, the nice to have is, well, it's adorable, but if it goes away, nothing really changes or is bad about our community. That's their mindset, right?

Right.

It's nice. I mean, we really like some money, but, you know, it's not as important as X, Y, and Z.

Right.

And that, that leads to fundraising in the freewill donations or the trading 20s with the butter braid bit and the pizzas, et cetera. That's where your needs, the nice-to-haves are.

Right. And so what everybody does, and again, everybody, is they create a form letter and they all look exactly the same.

Yep.

And I'm not just— so anybody listening to this, like, I'm not disparaging those groups at this point. They don't know differently.

Exactly.

And so, and furthermore, maybe their form letter gets them exactly the tiny amount of money they're looking for every year. But what they're not doing is they're not growing.

Nope.

They're not augmenting their core services. They're not thinking differently. They're not being creative about what they could do differently. Yep. They're not making their asks personal, which just kind of goes back to this giving is personal thing, right? So when I, and again, when I look at it from, it's amazing how this whole conversation just weaves all 3 pillars of my particular programming together. Because a small business, I wanna help them get better. Well, if you're gonna work with me, one of the things we're gonna talk about is the kinds of things you want to support philanthropically in our community because you're gonna get every single one of those form letters. And if you don't have a filtering system to figure out what it is that you give a crap about, you're gonna feel like an asshole, you know, 'cause you can only, you only have so much money. Every year you're not, I mean, you're probably not sitting down and thinking, okay, this is about how much money I'd like to budget towards these things. Why aren't we doing that? And then furthermore, not just saying how much money, but what things. Because if we would all do that, Patrick, there's enough money to go around. The whole scarcity thing completely goes away because the truth is the equestrian group, like the rodeo group, people's lives would be less if they weren't here for the people that need and love that thing. So that's why, like, even quality of life organizations, you freaking matter. So quit acting like you don't matter. Quit acting like you can go away and we'll all just be fine. Because the people that love your services and use your services or attend your events or whatever the thing is that you do, they wouldn't be okay without you.

And the food scarcity groups, right? So the food banks, the emergency food pantries, those, those are the needs to have, right? And so their whole projection is we don't need, we can't do the things we're doing for $5. Right, you need that $5,000 check, and they get it because they position themselves as if the kids don't eat, the families are worried about this, right, mental health, anxiety is affected, blah blah blah, and they go through the motions. Where the rodeos or the arts councils, they don't say that. And every one of these organizations have such a value. Oh, I know, don't say it out loud. So what I love about your organization is, yeah, you're teaching businesses how to navigate giving, or you're having them navigate, you know, how to engage in this in the community. What I love about partnering up and chatting about this is that you are now forcing the nonprofits to figure out that their form letter that everybody else is doing is not personal. Pick up the phone and call them and make a relationship. And we talk a crapload, and we've— for the last 2, 3 weeks, it has been nothing but alignment. Yeah, aligning in the community, aligning with the business, aligning with the individuals who are your super fans, your cheerleaders, and having them go out on your behalf. How important is it in the rural community for that alignment to matter and what groups are doing it really well? And then again, we kind of use the ones that aren't, but like, what, who's doing it extraordinarily, like, great? And I love, if you're watching the video, it's the slow head shake of like, I don't know, I don't know. And that's the point. Like, who's doing it well?

Well, so let me tell you, so we're talking specifically about rural places, right? Like rural small communities. Okay, I've been in an audience listening to you speak before, and you one time said, and you've said it a few times, the robots are winning. And I'm always like, the robots are not freaking winning. And I get all like huffy about it. Well, here's why. So in small towns, town of 1,800 people, I know the kinds of things that a Facebook or an Amazon algorithm would kill to have.

Yes.

Like, I know, I intimately know these people. I mean, a lot of them, right? That's the kind of thing, like, we sit— if you're a nonprofit in a small town, you sit on a gold mine of information, of knowledge, and it's intimacy. So if giving is always personal, well, good on you. You, like, you have a personal connection with all these people. Here's what we do with that instead. Instead of being like, oh my gosh, we're perfectly aligned to follow Patrick's beautiful framework and make amazing asks, Instead, we go, I know this, that, or the other thing. We hand-select the data to help justify why we think they won't say yes to us.

You know the difference?

We decide for them.

The difference between the robots is the robots will ask you every time, you want to watch this?

Every time. Want to click here? Yep.

Hey, you must like this. Click here. And in small towns, in the rural areas, they do the passive, well, I don't want to offend anybody by making that ask, or I don't want, I don't, I'm going to feel really bad about this, or.

So what's really super weird about it, and I'm just going to say it, we are totally comfortable with assuming they won't give because we're afraid of offending them by assuming that they will.

Yep. It is an epidemic in the world. Now we, so one of the things that I've been saying a lot in talks and in conferences is this particular statement. And if you're listening and you're a small nonprofit and you are worried about offending people by asking them for money, it is a— the story that I tell is that a board member told me this once, and it was very offensive, and I nearly cried because it was just a bit, right? But he told me, how dare you assume they don't want to donate to us. How dare you assume for them that they're not interested in giving? So if you are in this position, if you are a small nonprofit, if you're rural, if you know all the intimate details about that person and you know that they're aligned correctly, but you're gonna pass on it, how dare you assume they don't like what you're doing?

Right.

Until you ask them and engage them and say, you know what, I've got my interest elsewhere. Good. Now you know. Now you can help others sort of align with that individual person. But how dare you not? And what is it about the rural area that is— is it just the fear of offending people? Is it the way that we've always done it? What is that thing?

It's cultural, I think. Like, there's a humility and a modesty baked into our culture to our detriment, though. Like, I mean, this isn't one of those things, like— and I don't say these things to be disparaging. I want to help fix this because there are such So I'm just gonna give an example. Um, just this last weekend, we have, uh, a chapter of PEO, which is Philanthropic Educational Organization. It's an international charitable organization, and we have had a chapter here in Oaks forever. I've never really understood exactly what they do. I'm digging in a little bit more now. Haven't seen a lot of form letters, solicitation from them or whatever, but they did a fundraiser these last two weekends and they built two escape rooms. Which was just like the raddest fundraiser. And I, I went kind of crazy about it. Like, it's just so cool to see people do something completely different. And I sat them down, two of the women down, two of the women that actually each created, like, their families created one of the rooms or each of the rooms. And listening to them talk about it, like, all it was was me asking them a few questions. They lit up about what this organization has done and the impact that they've made. Nothing in a form letter can articulate that. 'Cause again, it's about people, right? Like I think about Growing Small Towns and I've got, I've got partners on board. And before I had a building, before I had a, like before I had anything, it was me just talking about basically a world building with them. Like, this is the world I wanna live in right here in Oaks. Do you wanna help me create that? And I got partners from that. I mean, there's no way you can articulate what you and I are talking about in a letter. So what they end up doing, and I've noticed this too, because I've been paying attention now since you and I have been really talking about this. It's like I get a letter and I read it, and what they say is, here's your tiers. And they're super cheap, by the way.

Always.

I mean, just like, literally, like, how many of those do you have to— how many of those do people have to say yes to for you to pay for the cost of mailing these damn form letters out?

How many people? How many people live here? 1,800 people, right? So at $10, that's a crapload of letters that you need to have everybody say yes to, to even make a dent in whatever you're trying to fundraise for in the first place, right?

So what I've noticed is they're like, here's the levels, and then it's like, here are all the things we do. They just— it's just a laundry list of the things they do.

Yep.

And an organization has a heart and a soul. And the doing is a manifestation of that, right? But so we never get that, like, what are you here for? Mm-hmm.

What are they here for?

You know what I mean? Translating, like, doings, activities into inspiration and hope and optimism and that whole, like, world-building thing. It's just, that's what's missing. It's missing.

And they know they do it. And they know they do it. They do it every single day. They either feed individuals or they're doing, they're executing all the time. They don't talk about it. They don't brag about it. Oh, I didn't celebrate anything. That is an awful thing. Then we talk about that, you know, this— anyone's listened to this podcast before, we talk about it all the time, which is like, you have to celebrate. People want to be associated with winning teams. One of the things that you said was really interesting is a couple months ago, and you, you get form letters all the time, right?

I do.

I'm assuming because you have a brick-and-mortar building, that's right, you are now on the chamber list.

You bet.

People just know the address. You said something interesting. Up until a month ago or a month ago-ish, you had never been personally asked to give anything outside of a letter that was dropped off in your mailbox. You'd never been asked.

And I've lived here for 14 years.

I want people to understand it because when you're looking at your mailing list and it's an end of year or it's like you've got an event coming up and you've got, okay, got my mailing list, whatever. There are people on that list like Rebecca who have never been asked for money. Can you tell the story, like, when you actually did get asked? Because I want to know what happened. Yeah, I think everybody needs to know what happened.

It's really fun, actually. So I got a phone call, and it was a young girl that I have— like, they're close family friends of ours, you know. She's in high school. She's a senior this year. So I pick up her call, right? Because it's—

of course you do.

It's Jaycee. It's like, so I'm gonna talk to her, right? So she— I pick up the phone, I'm like, hey Jaycee, what's going on? And she's like, she's like, Becky, I'm in jail. And I went, uh, I said, who put you in jail? You know, like, I knew she's like not physically in jail, right? I didn't— and by the way, I didn't know this was going on this day either. This is as cold, like, as out of the blue. It's not because she's a dear friend, right?. But as out of the blue as anything, like interruption in the middle of my day. Yeah, right. Like I was going places, I was doing things, pick up Jay's phone call. I'm like, hey, Jaycee, what's going on? I'm in jail. Okay, who put you in jail? And she's like, Dickey County Relay for Life. Now when it comes to what I've been asked to do, I've been asked to emcee events and speak at events. I've spoken at the Relay for Life. I've never personally contributed money. I bought a luminary. Like I've done that, right? Because I have somebody I love that I lost to cancer., but that is the extent of my involvement with this organization, Patrick. Jaycee says, so I have a goal that I'm trying to reach to get out of jail. And I said, what's your goal? Okay, so here's like, again, talking about like the things that you've tried to teach people, or like I say try, you've taught them, but whether or not they believe you or do it as a whole is everything. But you're like, you gotta know what you're raising and you put the number out there and then you ask them to help. So that's what Jaycee did. She unbeknownst to her, the beautiful little fundraiser that she is. She said, I need $500. And I said, oh, okay. I said, so I can just kind of give you any amount? She goes, well, whatever, whatever you feel comfortable with. And I'm like, oh, I'll give you $100. And she's like, are you serious? She was like totally shocked because I think she's probably getting $25. Sure. But so can you imagine the difference? Even alone, I mean, no matter what, she called me and I immediately gave them my credit card and gave her $100.

Right.

They raised a boatload of cash that day, by the way. I talked to the lady that organized them, and again, it was students, which let me just say, like, our organizations, get— do that, get students involved. It's also really cool to get students used to talking on the phone. Yeah, yes, she had to pick up the phone and call me, and she sounded just— she sounded great. When I got off the phone, I was like, oh, that's awesome, and I, I like felt really good about it. And that isn't even remotely just alignment with the organization. Oh my gosh, if you couple personal connection and alignment with the organization, you'll get more than $100, right? She didn't do anything out of the norm other than they used ambassadors to raise money. It was like a little telethon kind of thing, right? So yeah, it's just that it was such an interesting, clear case study of like the personal connection Matters.

The frustrating thing that I have about rural and small nonprofits is their lack of, like you said, conviction to need to have. That also equates with the dollar amount they ask in the first place. So one of the things that is the most frustrating is if there is a very big need and a very big price tag to the need, right? A building, a new firehouse, a new school, a thing, some big thing, right?

Hospitals are common for our rural places. Yep, yep, yep.

Or even even if it's like in that, let's just say $100,000, right?

Which is the biggest number, which is the biggest number in rural areas.

Let's just say quarter million.

Let's—

for a quarter million, because that's—

yeah, you put it in terms of a million, it's a— yeah, it's a big deal.

So you've got a project that's a quarter of a million dollars. You go to have your local fundraiser and you're like, okay, well, this is what we're going to do. We're going to invite people in, we're going to have some sort of thing, and then we're going to ask people for money. You know damn well that it costs you a quarter of a million dollars. And your ask is, can you give either a $10 or a free will donation?

Yeah.

And you have—

or they say any amount.

Any amount will do. Any amount matters. Now, we all know any amount matters. Sure, if you had an unlimited population to draw from or you didn't really care in the timeline in which you were supposed to build these things. What you do is you cheapen the need out of the gate By offering at a maximum amount you're offering is this small pittance. I am not saying $20 to a family who doesn't necessarily have to— this is not what I'm talking about.

It's not a value— it's not a value judgment on that at all.

It is if you have a quarter of a million dollar project and you say whatever you can give is fine, as an example, $12, you are now making it an okay thing to go, okay, well then they only need $12. They don't need my big gift, they don't need anything else. You are just trying to get as many people to give you $12 as possible rather than to fund the whole damn thing in the first place, right? And what I love about what your story is— here's the amount, it's $500, right? That's what I'm gonna say. And it's like what you feel comfortable giving. That's different than, as an example, $10, or that example, other people have given me $5.

Mm-hmm.

Because you don't mention that so that you automatically assume if she didn't tell you what your average gift was, you'd be like, oh, that apparently everybody's giving $100.

She actually told me later, she goes, most people were giving $25.

Exactly.

But if she had mentioned $25, she said that to me.

Oh, $25 is expected of me.

Then it puts it in my head where instead this was just like, oh, I totally wanna help.

Yeah.

Here's $100.

You're not distinguishing your nonprofit in the way that you should be distinguishing yourself about what you, like, again, like you said at the top of this interview, which You val— you matter. It doesn't matter if you're an art group or you are a social group or you are an equestrian group. You matter. And the people who are participating, it matters. Their community, it matters. And if you don't believe it, you end up in this, well, now nobody gives us money. Now I feel like nobody cares about us. Because you don't care about yourself. You don't position yourself as mattering because it's— you're in your headspace.

Yeah, it's like self-esteem. It is, right? I mean, it's the same thing. So, so if you become apathetic towards the mission of your organization, then you should expect your donors to follow because they will.

As some— this is so— it's a great transition because this is where your expertise, I think, can be leveraged to those who are in their own heads about this, which is, as somebody who has developed people, as somebody who's been in a business where people are corporate toxic culture that you've walked into, which I know you have. We've talked about it. We're not going to mention names, but there are some places where you walk in, you're like, what in the hell is going on here?

You can feel it.

You feel it.

It's very woo, but yeah, I look and I'm like, oh, I can't breathe.

So what kind of steps from your experience can nonprofits do with their leadership team, with their volunteer corps, as just— and not even like revolutionary stuff, baby steps in order for them to get their head right, or at least their head a little better when it comes to believing that what they do is a difference maker, especially in these rural towns?

I would look for the evidence of how amazing they are. That's where I would start. Like if you—

Impact.

Yeah, like if you aren't feeling awesome about your organization, at your next board meeting or next committee meeting or however you're organized, sit down and say, prep them too, say come to the meeting prepared to talk about One example or person you know from our last year of work that raved about their experience, that shared what they— yeah, think like arts in particular, right? And then I would say if you have zero stories, then the next thing you focus on is how the hell are you gonna collect them? Because clearly you're not collecting them, right? You know, because you're impacting people. And then I would, again, I'll just keep going down the decision tree here. If the answer is, well, we don't really have any stories to collect, we're asking people, but people aren't telling us anything, then you need to start looking creatively at how you might tweak your programming. Ask all the people that came to all your stuff and said, how could we be better? Yeah. What would you like to see? How could we be different? Innovation doesn't have to be like a completely newfangled idea. It could be a literal tweak to what you're doing. But again, if we just keep asking the same 10 people that come around our table, you're not likely to innovate from the inside, right? You gotta have some either outside perspective, maybe you and your group, you go and you attend other people's events and you pay attention through this lens of what are they doing differently?

It's scary. It's scary because you don't want an answer that's negative.

Of course not.

So, but right, and so you avoid it at all costs, but it's terrible for your nonprofit. It's terrible for your decision.

It's absolutely terrible for your nonprofit.

How do you get over that besides just telling people to get over it?

Well, I, I think it always comes back to like, how is that working for you? I mean, you know, so if you're, so if you're in your head about this, I Yeah, I want to say just get over it. But I also just want to say, well, what's the risk of doing nothing?

Yes.

I mean, that's like the question I constantly want to ask in our community is just so we're so damn afraid, whatever the fear is, if it's fear of feeling like we're actually failing because other people are killing it and we're not killing it, sometimes that's a fear, like fear of really falling short, fear of pissing people off, fear of embarrassing yourself, fear of offending somebody when it comes to asking or whatever. But we never stop to say— so we are, we're super great at like worst case narrowing all those things out, right?

Like, oh, if we do this, this will happen and oh, this will happen.

We never ask ourselves what happens if we sit right exactly where we're at in a year from now, where are we? And then further in a year from now, where's our community? I can't help people get over it other than just to challenge them with that line of thinking. Like you're stuck, right? So your choices are either to stay stuck or to try something new and really hold space for a lot of iteration. It's what it has to be. You have to be willing to try something different. Yeah. If what you're doing's not working.

We have, uh, an adage we use, and again, you probably heard on the podcast too, beforehand, if you want money, ask for perspective. If you want perspective, ask for money.

Right.

And, and asking people what they think about your nonprofit, what they think about your community, what they think they would do in your position. If money wasn't an object, what would you do and what would you help us with? If we had an open forum to suggest what programming we could expand to help our mission, whatever, what would you do? The engagement there might come, you know what I wouldn't do is this, this, this. Great, that's good insight.

It's awesome insight.

You now know a little bit more about your community, your donor, your supporters, the people who don't support you. You now take all this information, you can make better decisions and you're a better nonprofit, you're a better organization for that.

I think what's interesting about this is that in the case of a lot of these nonprofits, I think that we're talking about specifically in small towns.

Yeah.

I think if you were to ask people what they think of your nonprofit, they would say, I don't.

Yeah. They don't think about you at all. They don't even know. They don't even know.

They don't know. They don't know enough to care. And so that's apathy.

Yeah.

That's indifference. And that's worse than being hated for what you're doing.

Sure is.

Because it's like a non-feeling feeling.

Yeah.

Right. So if that is in fact what you covered, then you've got to really look at, okay, well, how are we communicating? Where are we showing up and how are we showing up?

Yeah.

How do we communicate with people? If it's through your once-a-year form letter, you got some work to do.

You have a lot of experience in communicating that to small businesses too, right? So small business will show up and go, well, hey, this is what we do. And you're like, oh, nobody knows who you do, what you do.

Yeah.

Where you're from, what your whole goal is and mission. And one of the things that I really intrigued about is your you know, sort of cornerstone bigger businesses that serve the rural population. And the reason I asked that is because it's some of the similar work that you're doing with People Stuff. But you're also diving in and you've asked some really interesting questions with the leadership team is not only what your value system is, because I think a lot of businesses don't know what their value system is, right? And once they figure out their value system is, all of a sudden you've now turned and you've been asking some of the questions like, okay, so what are you doing with that? For the communities that you serve, right, in the rural areas? And one of the fun things, you're like, you either get a deafening silence of like, um, give them money, right? And that's it.

We wait until they come and they tell us they have things they need.

Yep. Which is either rare or it's just a form letter pile that you got to comb through, right?

Right.

So walk me through kind of, because, because we, you and I have been talking a lot about this, and I think we've got, we stumbled across like a super passion between us on what that is for the near future, right? But what's the reaction for these businesses that serve small rural areas? What's the reaction once they figure out, oh, we've got this wonderful passion project? My guess is they're like, well, how do— what do we do with it? And what's your steps about this? How have you walked through this situation, I guess?

So again, we talked about like company culture, right? Which is your values, things that you— that drive the way you interact with each other and the interact with the world at large, your stakeholders, your customers, whatever. If you don't have that, then you're missing an enormous— you're missing an enormous differentiator, especially from a talent management standpoint, right? Okay, so that's kind of the work I do.

Yep.

Like, period. That's what I do. Now, again, because we've been talking about nonprofits so much, I, I am asked to help and support nonprofits a lot in small towns, because technically one of the things that I do is community development, right? Those are the folks always coming to me and asking for help. So I started, you know, we started thinking about, okay, well, what's the next level differentiator, right, in this incredible talent war?

Yep. Where—

and furthermore, with millennials coming into the, like, in droves, like, the boomers are on their way out. Sorry, boomers, you know, but they are— you are— you're gonna retire in this.

Why'd you point at me when you said—

I didn't. I'm sorry. I do that. They're kind of, kind of, I'm kind of, kind of be scary. So this millennial generation and then Gen Z, even the younger kids, right? Kid, their kids, I'm sorry, their kids coming into the organizations. And there's this trend of social consciousness. This generation, this youngest generation is more socially conscious and more contribution focused than any other generation previous. And now our folks listening to this may be like, oh, you know, I call bullshit, right? Because they're like, they're entitled and they don't care. The truth is they just finally get all of our dismay that life is about more than just working, and they care about work being meaningful. So the next generation of this recruitment differentiator is being the kind of company that really understands how to beautifully, honestly, and genuinely steward their corporate philanthropy forward in a meaningful way.

Yep.

So when you ask me like, how do I talk about this? That's what we talk about is first of all, if I look at your website and you have like a community tab, which many of them do, right? I will click on that tab, I will read it and I will say, what the hell does that mean? Right? Like, what does that mean? Yeah. Like how, how, how are you? Because again, if you and I know, and I think we all know if we really think about it, that Giving is personal. I believe, and I think you believe too based on all these conversations, that corporate giving can be personal.

Sure.

And the best corporate philanthropy is personal. So I wanna engage these companies in conversations about that. I think about some of the organizations I've worked with when they are a strong larger organization. When I say strong, I'm just talking that they have some, they have some financial success. They have sustainability, they've got some strategy, they've got some innovation and creativity, and the people that work at that organization, they are positioned differently to help.

Yeah.

And again, I'm like such a fan of stewardship, right? Like if you have a gift, I wanna help you figure out where and how you can give that of yourself. Because when you do that, I mean, and again, if our communities can figure out how to help people plug into where they can give the best of themselves, then this place feels like their home. So I wanna help companies steward their goodness forward, and we do that by helping them make it personal.

Then the best part about that too is that if you're a nonprofit and you are now watching this happen, you can align yourself so much better with businesses and you don't have to chase for the sake of chasing and ask for these grants that don't have anything to do with what your programming is.

And you waste all that time, all the time and effort.

And what I love most about this as a game plan is to really shore up how businesses give, the way that they feel about it. But then you get to have the nonprofits finally feel aligned rather than in this beggar mode constantly. It's now they have a partner. And they shared not only their resources with their, you know, financial resources, but their leadership resources, their talent resources, right? Their community resources where you're now keeping talent because these are individuals who are going to stay in their rural or small towns because they believe that what their business is doing matters to the community in which they lived in. So they don't have to go and flee to these big urban centers or to other places in order to find a satisfactory feeling about where they work.

Right.

So you as the nonprofit now are a conduit within the not— within the for-profit realm of making their employees feel engaged. Right. And do you know how much of a win that is for your nonprofit when you feel like you finally figured out that you can go and make a phone call to a VP or a CEO of a company of the organization that is funding you because you're refunding them the value that they really need to make their culture brilliant.

This is like my big wish and dream is that in a community like mine, every single business would be perfectly matched with a nonprofit or two, right? And in the sense that like no form letter and no form letters ever go out again because we don't need them because we know exactly who our supporters are. We know exactly the organizations that care about the kind of work we're doing. And then there's also this beautiful opportunity for like co-creation of new things and the company gets to lend a part of that. That's, I get, I mean, I get like talk about Pollyanna, like that's, but I think we can make steps to it to start to achieve that.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think when there's nonprofits listening here, like, well, that seems way too big and way too rash and bold. I don't know where to start with that. You might not, but it starts with a conversation. It starts with an openness. It starts with a facilitated coffee or whatever with the local business to say, hey, listen, what do you This is the question. What do you want?

Yeah.

What do you want out of your giving? What do you want out of your solicitation? It's asking the question to the businesses rather than just sending them a letter going, I need, I need, I need.

The question you and I talked about once was just simply asking the question was, when was the last time that you made an investment that made you feel so good that you would do it over and over and over again? Because it's a feeling, right? Philanthropy is a feeling. It's the feel-good feels. That's why we do it. That's why we do the work. And businesses will be able to answer that. And by businesses, I mean a physical person. This is the other mistake I think nonprofits make, frankly, is we talk about businesses as in like a nameless, faceless business, right? There are freaking leaders making those decisions. What's the matter with you?

Yep.

Get back down to the humanity of this all. And the only way you do that is by learning what that person cares about. And you, again, you could walk around being like, well, I know, I know what they think because I saw 'em once at a bar. I mean, like, that's like legitimately how we handle this stuff and you could do that, you're not doing yourself or your beneficiaries or the people that need you to show up tomorrow, you're not doing them any favors.

No. And I think that's the best advice that you can give to a nonprofit is just make sure that you know that this is personal and asking them, that's the best question to ask, which is when's the last time a gift made you feel really, really great?

Like you're so freaking good.

Yeah. You just went, you just got out of the office and said, gah, I wanna do that every single day? And then that's where you start. If you're a small nonprofit, that's the conversation in which you start.

And if they say, gosh, I don't know, then it's simply a matter of looking at the person and saying, we can do better.

How can I help you? Don't you think?

Like, we, we all deserve better. Yeah. Because giving, since giving is personal, and I'm sorry, but you know, when you give to a form letter, you don't actually feel that good about that at all. We have literally made it easy for giving to become apathetic. Yeah, in small towns. And when it's apathetic, it's an enormous jump from apathetic giving, like, oh well, whatever, it's the gift, blah, blah, blah. And really what happens, I think a lot of times is you just, you leave it there. Like, we get 'em at home, we get 'em here, I put 'em on the counter, I kind of look at 'em, I kind of think about 'em. There's nothing compelling me other than just like, oh, I haven't missed the deadline. I'm serious. Like, it's, there's, there's nothing in there that's connecting to me as a human or my heart for giving. I have a big old heart for giving. A lot of people do. Ultimately, if they're going to give, they have a heart for it. So I think it's just getting back to the basics. And I do think we've talked about this a bit. I think that COVID just robbed us of a lot of this because we're out of practice at just being humans.

So true.

We're this weird stilted— we're still hybrid versions of our— and that humans are meant to do this. We're meant to sit down face to face, You're meant to look at each other. You're meant to ask hard questions of each other. And I just think in small towns we can do this. This is— it's not that big of a lift. I think this would be way harder in a bigger city.

Yeah.

But for some reason we put all this stuff in our heads and we're just making it that much harder on ourselves.

I think that's the most brilliant thing ever too, is that when COVID took away our ability to be personal, and near each other, the route to start is back to basics. Yeah, picking up the phone, right? It's face to face. It is handwritten thank you notes. It's all of that.

Yeah.

And once you get really good at the basics, people are going to remember you because they're— you're the ones not trying out the, you know, the super sexy high-tech technology that's going to put a barrier of a computer in front of you again. And don't let the robots win. How about that? Don't let them win. Yeah, knock it off. And there's nothing that a Computer program or a system is going to do better than you passionately talking about why your work matters.

Right.

And what those businesses or those communities can do to make that a reality. There's nothing that, that can be replicated, that personality stuff. If you're a small nonprofit and you're thinking about that, you're like, that's where I think you can get back on your feet or realign yourself of like, where do I need to get my head right? That.

Well, and I've had the, heard the argument, like, do you really think it's realistic for people to do all of their fundraising face to face? Like that's time consuming and it's this and it's that. And I just keep saying, well, how's your form letter working for you? You know, yeah, of course it takes more time. Mm-hmm. So the whole idea of like, where do you start? Start with the people that you already know love what you do. There's gotta be some of 'em. And if they aren't capable of giving, then you ask them who they know. I can't tell you, like, that's how I built Growing Small Towns. It was just the next connection to the next connection to the next connection. And I met some of the most freaking incredible people in the last year.. And it was because of that question. Like, even if they just championed the hell out of the idea and didn't necessarily write me a check, people are more than checks. And so when we walk around acting like, well, we just need all this money, you know, it's like, oh my gosh, you know, you need people to care enough about you that they want to write you the check. Like, it's, we can't compel people to do that. That's the other thing with companies. Like, we've talked about that too, right? We want our companies all want their employees to engage in giving.. And so they walk around and they say, hey, I'd really like it if you'd give $10 to this charity. It's our charity of the month, right?

Yep.

Well, they'll do it, but that's compulsion, not commitment. And so I just think there's so much room for this conversation and I think it'll benefit everybody. It'll benefit the nonprofits, it'll benefit the businesses, and it ultimately benefits our small towns because we have more aligned leaders, we have more strategic thinkers, and then like those leaders are possibly volunteering or serving on boards for some of these nonprofits. It's like the Norman Rockwell days of yore, Patrick, just in the sense that, you know, everybody knows each other and we actually are committed to helping each other grow.

Yep.

But it all comes down to personal connections.

All of it does. Speaking of personal connections, if somebody wanted to get a hold of you and they wanted to go either get your services and/or check out what you're doing, where on earth do we go to find this?

They can go to growingsmalltowns.org.

Yeah, that's it. That's the only place that we—

well, I mean, I'm on Facebook, I'm on LinkedIn, RebeccaUndem.com, and that's where kind of like my speaking and consulting stuff lives. But I'm on both of those places.

As always, we're going to have our, uh, links deluge in the, uh, in the notes and comments. I think this is such a, um, first of all, thank you for the conversation. I think this is one of those the back to basics, we can be good humans, just make an ask kind of reminders that are not said enough. I know we try to say it as much as possible on this podcast. But if— but you need to tell yourself that over and over again. And if you're a small nonprofit, even if you're not even in the rural area, if you're a small nonprofit, you're a medium-sized nonprofit, you're feeling lost, get back to the fields. Get back to the, the reason why you did this in the first place. Get back to making an ask. Make it personal. Do all the things that we were talking about today that makes— you're probably nodding and going, yeah, we need to do that again. Well, then do it, right? And then call Rebecca if you have any questions on that whole thing. And if you're a big business and you're just listening to this, you stumbled across this on iTunes and Spotify and everything else. Oh yeah, call her too.

You should call us. Yeah, for real.

And then we'll talk about it.

But it's the most excited I've been about an idea for quite some time, just because like there are kind of 3 places that we look for funding, right? We look to the government. Yep. I'm just gonna say it, the government will never stand in your corner like a champion because the government can't do that. They have to be equitable and they have to be fair and they have to be nonpartisan. And they have to be diplomatic. Even though there's definitely sources of funding available through the government that, I mean, can make sense, but if that's where you're spending all your time, you're missing the freaking point of giving again, right? Second is large foundations. Foundations do decent work. Oftentimes though, they have very much their own priorities. Now, if your priorities align with those priorities, beautiful, good on you. Yep, chase it down, right? But again, I think we end up looking at them like they're going to be the savior to us. They're gonna come in and they're gonna save us. We don't need a savior, but I think corporations and big companies that have an alignment of values with what we want our communities to look like, they can be that hero. And that's why I just think it makes so much sense. We can actually pair— it's like ultimate matchmaking.

Yep.

I mean, that's what it is. It's helping them get clear about what it is that they wanna be a part of, what they wanna see ushered, stewarded forward. And then helping them put their dollars where their mouths are, right? Put your money where your mouth is. If this is what you say you care about, then let's find the organizations that fund that or that do that.

It's gonna be a fun adventure.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah. Oh, it's gonna be so fun. We'll make sure to update you on all the fun little conversations because I think that the conversations that we're gonna have with businesses and nonprofits while we kind of walk through this.

Tons of learning.

Oh man.

Mm-hmm.

We'll be back. It's gonna be great. Hey, thanks for joining me. Yeah, appreciate it.

Thanks for driving down to the big village.

The big village, Oaks, North Dakota. We'll see you again here on the Official Do Good Better Podcast. Thanks for, uh, listening. Thanks for watching. Remember, get in the show notes, click on everything Growing Small Towns. And then, by the way, if you haven't subscribed to this podcast, for shame, get on there and do that. And then immediately go back to the links and then go check out Rebecca's podcast, check out her speaking, check out everything she's doing at Growing Small Towns. We'll see you later here on the official Do Good, Better podcast.