How to be an Effective Funder with Sybil Ackerman-Munson

Do you know what type of funder you are? How can you make sure your money is being put to good? Do you understand who you are donating to? Make sure you’re the right fit. Today we’re talking to donors and funders, and we’re talking to the nonprofits about how to connect with these types of individuals

Full Transcript

Transcript for Sybil Ackerman Munson

Hey, welcome to the show. I’m here today with Sybil Ackerman Munson, host of the “Do Your Good” podcast, and a whole lot of other cool stuff. Sybil well, how are you doing today?

I’m doing great Travis, thanks for having me on your show. I’m excited to talk about all this stuff.

What are we going to talk about today? We’re going to talk to donors and funders, which we don’t do a lot of, even though these are some of my favorite conversations specifically where you get into things like, how do you know what type of funder you are? How to make sure your money is being put to good? How to understand who it is that you’re giving to donate to, what to look at, and what to look forward to? Make sure you’re going to be the right fit, and then we’re also going to talk a little bit to the nonprofits about how to connect with these types of individuals.

If you could give us a little bit of who you are and what do you do?

Yeah, totally. I’m on a soapbox to help donors give their money away effectively because I worked in the nonprofit world as a nonprofit person who had to raise money for over a decade. And then I switched over to work for funders. And for over a decade, I have been working for donors, helping them give money away to well-deserving nonprofits. And I’ve sat in so many different trustee meetings and worked with so many different donors around giving strategies that I started seeing patterns in how people were doing things. And I have seen times when they do things well and I have also seen times when they were wasting money and leaving money on the table, and it stressed me out.

And so that’s why I created my new business called “Do your Good”, which is all about teaching people and donors how to give money away effectively. And I also am supporting nonprofits and helping them approach donors in a way where they can maximize their pitch and raise money.

So I will just give you some perspective on the kind of folks I work with I’ve helped. People give away over $45 million in donations, both large and small, so both smaller donations and super large ones. There are strategies you can give money and make a difference no matter how much money you give away.

And I also really work a lot with donors to help them collaborate with other donors on an issue they care about so they can be more effective together.

So, there are just so many things I love to talk about related to this work, and I’m happy to answer questions. Travis, I feel like you might want to talk about some specific pieces. used on your audience.

How to evaluate a nonprofit

One of the big questions that I get asked is how do I know If this nonprofit is doing what they say they’re doing?

That is a really big deal. There are a lot of strategies you can use to make sure that you know that the nonprofit’s doing what they have said they’re going to do. Because first of all a nonprofit is going to come to you and what they’ll do if they’re any good at their job is they’ll try to pitch to you what they think you want to give to them. So that’s going to be a problem for you because you might not get down to the real nitty-gritty of what they’re doing.

Let’s say you love watching birds. They’re going to try to talk to you about how they work on bird issues or if you love to plant trees or if you care about global warming or if you care about houselessness they’re going to try to angle their pitch to you based on any of those things. Now that’s a good thing if the group is working on those issues, but it’s not such a good thing if they’re trying to just get money from you and you’ll waste money, valuable time, doing that.

Here are some tips and tricks I have for the donor to make sure that you can give money to a nonprofit you care about. Now the first thing is for you to sit back with yourself and journal a little bit on four key points.

I want you to journal about who you are as a person. If you want to give money away, a lot of the first mistakes I see is that a donor will say I want to give money away, have a little extra money to support the nonprofit world in our community, but I feel like I should be giving money to like the big heady issue like homelessness or climate change or something like that. That’s a big mistake. You shouldn’t do that first. What you should do is sit down with yourself and say what are the things I care about? What speaks to me? Because there’s a do-good nonprofit doing something connected to no matter what it is you care about.

There are good people out there. So, sit down and journal and think about what is it that you do in your daily life? No judgment there, what do you do in your daily life? Write that down.

Then think about what your hobbies are. What are the things that you do as a hobby that make you happy? It could be anything for me it’s running, and I love horseback riding. You write it down then the next thing that you want to do is sometimes you might have things you do in your daily life. You might have your hobbies, but they’re also might place you love to go or something you like to do that you might not do every single week, but that gives you rejuvenation in your life. As for me, I love going riding and going camping on the coast. In Oregon, it’s amazing and I take my horses there. We gallop down the beach. It’s like Oh my gosh, I don’t get to do it. When I do, it’s such a great thing. And if I’m trying to relax, I bring myself my mind back to the beach, right? So that’s the thing to do is think about that and then the last thing.

Last but not least, think about what it is that keeps you up at night. What do you worry about? What’s the challenge that you think about a lot? OK, and write that down for me when I did that exercise on myself, I found I had tons and tons of things right. I have a lot of hobbies. have a lot of interests. I’m sure you do too as everybody does.

If you write all this down, you’ll find a through-line of things, and for me what happened was I love my family. I love my kids. I care about the thing that keeps me up at night is climate change and I have a whole lot of other things I want to do and care about, but I realized I know a bit about the climate change issue, and I know a little bit about my kids and so I ended up donating to in nonprofits that work with youth on climate change. But for any other donor, could be any number of things.

The reason I’m going here is when you ask me like how do you monitor and make sure that the nonprofits are doing what they’re saying? What they’re going to do is the only way you can tell if the nonprofits are doing what they’re saying they’re going to do is if you’re giving it nonprofits that are a part of you that you know about because you care about because it’s something that.

You’re doing it in your daily life because it’s something that you think about, and so that’s the key. Then you’ll know if that nonprofit is not working on the issue you care about because you’ll know about the issues so well because it’s connected to who you are.

OK, so that’s the first thing. And then the second thing is a lot of times people ask me how do you monitor? OK, you’ve figured out who it is you want to give to. You sort of can tell if they’re aligned with your interests. But how do you over the years make sure that they’re continuing? That nonprofit continues to be aligned with your interests because another big mistake that can happen is you start giving and then you just sort of get busy with daily life and then you aren’t as connected.

Even if it’s a nonprofit, that’s sort of doing similar stuff that you care about what you do. I love this idea because it’s just so much fun.

Every year a lot of times folks do New Year’s resolutions. I’m going to do this or that every year. What I suggest is you treat you’re giving like a New Year’s resolution. You write a little note to yourself at the end of the year, and you say, OK, I just gave it to XYZ Group. This is why I did it. This is what motivated me to do it. This is why I was so psyched to do it.

But write it down, write it down either on paper or on your computer, and then put it away in an envelope. Stick it in a drawer or a file on your computer, don’t look at it for a little. But then the next year when you sit down to write your New Year’s resolution about the groups you gave to and what motivated you to do it, open up that envelope that you wrote the year before to see if it’s if you still have the same passions and interests as you did last year.

You might be surprised. I’m talking to you about this because I do sort of a more in-depth kind of conversation, which I called dockets, with my trustees who give away multi-millions of dollars. So what they do is they’re a little more formal. Usually, it’s a Family Foundation with family members, not just one person or outside experts that are on the board, and so they do. Dockets where they do detailed assessments of the issue they care about, but they check in with themselves twice a year, three times a year, and I organize all that.

I do lots of in-depth reviews. Of the nonprofits and then I talk with the trustees to make sure that we’re still in line with what their interests are, and so you can do that in an intense way where you hire an intermediary like me to help you do that analysis. Or you can do it on your own in a much simpler way, which is literally to write yourself. A letter, say this is what motivates me.

So that’s a super helpful way to do it. I do want to talk to you too about the three different types of donors, and if you’re a donor to home in on which kind of donor you are so you can show up for the nonprofit the right way.

But let’s stop there about like. What do you like? Make sure you’re monitoring and watching. Are there any other questions you have about that part?

I’ve got tons of questions. I haven’t even gotten started yet.

Good, good Travis.

Why is it important to be aligned with their cause?

Not being in alignment with the things that you care about is a mistake.

Yes,

What happens that tells that person that that’s a mistake.

What happens if it? If you think you’re if you’re giving them things, you think are out there. But not really.

What happens to the process? I want to give for World Peace, even though it may be, I don’t care about it. Now, if you’re listening to this be like Travis, you don’t care about World Peace.

I’m not talking about me talking about hypothetical.

But Travis, I love it. The thing is that you were just talking to yourself about that part of World Peace. I work for a foundation. One of their goals is to end the war and World Peace. I’m living that question.

Let’s talk about that a little bit because even your self-deprecating thing where you said, “oh people would be like oh, you don’t care about World Peace.” See, that’s the little judgy thing we have in society. Right, and so you feel guilty a little bit because you’re not giving to that area, right? That’s what I want you to get rid of and the reason why I feel so strongly about this is that I’ve been working on working with donors for so many years, and I have seen this situation where people go. “Oh well. I feel like I should be working on World Peace. So, therefore, I am going to and you know nothing about it. World Peace is like how to get.”

None of your friends care about it. Every day when you’re waking up in the morning and thinking about what you’re going to get done that day, there’s nothing about World Peace in that. Today I mean, maybe you’re peaceful, but the strategies around World Peace. There’s nothing you’re dealing with daily on that issue now is a side note.

The foundation I’m working with that works on World Peace. They are working on it every day and it’s part of their life and that makes it OK. But if it’s not, do not work on it.

Right?

Why? Why?

Yeah, OK.

Why not?

Yeah, I’ll give you a story. I’ll give you a story about it. I’ll give the big picture.

Not the big picture, why not is you will have no idea whether the nonprofits or funding are effective, and I have seen that happen. And So, what will happen is you’ll give grants to these nonprofits. They’ll be happy to take the money, but you’ll have no idea if you’re giving a nonprofit that’s working on it 100% or not. I’m going to give you a story about the problem here.

When I was in the nonprofit world at the beginning of my nonprofit career, I worked hard, and I didn’t talk to funders very much. And I did a ton of work on a lot of issues. The people who are good at fundraising from different nonprofits took my work and raised money based on my work. I know this because I ended up getting a job at one of the nonprofits that were raising money based on my work, I became a staffer there and read the proposals that they were submitting to the foundations and the proposal were based on work that I had done at a different nonprofit.

OK, so if you are somebody who’s a donor, there’s no way you can parse through that unless you are passionate about the issue you’re working on, and you know the people who are doing the work, then you know to give your money to the place where the people have their heads down or doing the work.

And if you care about it, if it’s something you’re doing every day in your normal regular life, if it’s a place you care about or an issue you have been thinking a lot about and reading about, then you can suss that out.

You literally can give money to the wrong nonprofit that way, and then it’ll end up having you waste money because if you’re giving to a nonprofit that’s not doing the work, then what ends up happening is you notice, they’re not meeting their benchmarks, they’re not doing this in that. What’s going on? And you get frustrated and then you stop giving altogether, or you’ve just thrown money out the door. So that’s just one example of the challenge there.

'Should' is holding people back

I wanted to bring it back to something you said, and I’ve been in the Navy. I was in the Navy for 22 years.

I know how to cuss. I can. I’m fantastic at it. But of all the skills that I have, that’s one I can do without even knowing I’m doing it.

But I have found a few things that I feel are worse than cuss words, and you said one. And I’m not mad at you, but you were bringing it up in the light that I agree with. You feel like you should be giving or working towards something like World Peace. Should. I think is worse than cuss words should just and nice are my three least favorite words. Oh, I should be doing this, should.

Yeah, yeah.

We got to; we’ve got to be more of who we are. If we’re always worried about the things that we should be doing, we’ll never get where we’re supposed to be.

Well, not only that Travis, I agree with you on the should, and if you’re saying should in your giving strategy then you are going to be wasting money. Most likely you just aren’t going to be as kind.

Acted to what’s happening and like I said before and I want to repeat it because I think it’s so important. I’ve told my kids this over and over whatever you care about, amazing nonprofits are doing good work.

Let me use horses as an example because I’m a crazy loving horseback riding person. I have not personally given in this area. Because when I’ve done the work my work on this, I end up focusing on climate change. However, I see a path in my future of potentially doing giving more in the horse area because, OK, I love horseback riding.

I love trail riding, I do it for my pleasure, however, there are some amazing nonprofits out there rehabilitating horses that are off the racetrack. Working with formerly incarcerated individuals, or even within the prison system to support prisoners who are then working and taking care of horses and animals. And it helps them come back into society in a positive way. Horses are wonderful for therapy for children with disabilities.

There are just all these cool nonprofits doing amazing stuff out there, and so that’s the kind of thing it’s like. And I know about horses I know about the issue, and I have thought a lot about OK Sybil, maybe I should be doing that too that, climate change might be. Is something important, but you know this is also important, so that’s the kind of conversation I’m having with myself that I want to share with you.

Because I think it’s the kind of conversation that’s important. If you have something to give back, especially with any funding you might have to think about that a lot.

How does someone determine what type of funder they are? Why does it matter?

How do you determine what kind of funder you are?

And before you answer that, I already know what type of funder I am because I know without a doubt the number one most important thing to me in nonprofits is sustainability and I know this because that’s what I care about. That’s what I talk about. That’s what I harp on what I get into these conversations is sustainability and my opinion, at least for me, is that if I’m not going to give. And I’m going to give to a nonprofit and they’ve got one person running everything. I know that they’re not sustainable.

I know that if they’re not working on developing their craft and learning about this stuff, listening to podcasts, reading books, going to conferences, and learning how to do nonprofit work, they’re not sustainable. I, in my opinion, if you’re not paying yourself or working towards paying yourself in the nonprofit world, I don’t believe that you’re sustainable. And why would I give to an organization that might not be around next month because the founder of the executive director refuses to train anyone else on how to do the work.

Mm-hmm yeah, so you care about the nonprofits that you’re funding year after year, you want them to sustain.

And that’s one thing I talk a lot about is in my experience, there are three different kinds of funders. A sustainer, campaigner, and launcher funder. I’m going to give you an overview of the three different types.

And then we can get into detail about each one, so that hopefully your listeners if they want to be an effective donor, can think about which category they want to focus on, and I’ll talk to you also about like why that’s. So important. If you don’t do this kind of work, then you also could be wasting money and time on both nonprofits in your own time and get disillusioned.

I want you to keep giving. Right? The difference between a sustainer, campaigner, and launcher is a sustainer cares about a nonprofit because it fits completely in line with what they want to do in the world. A sustainer donor cares more about the particular nonprofits that they’re funding.

Even if you think about it you might care that you’ve done all the work and that nonprofit is working on an issue you care about, but you’ve it just is sort of defines who you are as a person, this group, or a couple of groups that you’re funding.

That’s a sustainer donor. You want to fund that group, or groups over and over again, year after year. You’re completely committed to them. A campaigner donor cares more about changing a societal norm. They’re worried about an issue in the world. They care more about that like homelessness or climate change than they do about anyone particular nonprofit.

And again, I feel like there’s a lot of judgment that you put on yourself if you’re a campaigner donor, but you say Oh no, no, I care about sustaining year after year. You have to be true to yourself if you care more about moving the dial on that issue. Then it’s a different kind of giving strategy, and the nonprofits must know that right up front.

It’s worse if you say I care so much about this issue, nonprofit, but I care about you too.

But then you start meddling with the nonprofit and saying, well, can’t you work more on this part of the homelessness houseless issue or climate change? Because you know, I see this in this, and I read an article here and here and I’m a sustainer donor. No, no, just own it. If you’re a campaigner donor you want to move the needle. On something and I can talk to you about strategies to own it and do it.

Well, rather than mess it up and then the third kind of donor I see is a launcher donor. A launcher donor is similar to a campaigner donor because a launcher donor cares about moving the needle on a particular issue. They care about that more than anyone nonprofit. However, the difference is a launcher donor is more like a venture capitalist. In the business world, they love filling gaps. They love coming in and funding something intensively for two, three, four years, maybe even starting a whole new nonprofit because a particular issue isn’t covered to move the needle on something a particular part of that, like maybe there’s not enough communications or media strategy around moving the needle on an issue.

Or maybe there’s not enough grassroots advocacy. Or maybe there’s not enough scientific research. There might be a gap there, and so this person wants to come in and they want to fund that gap and help the whole community move the needle on an issue by doing that. It also might mean they like to add money to a particular nonprofit they’ve been funding so that nonprofits can start a whole new arm of their work.

OK, so those are the three different kinds of donors. I feel strongly that it’s important that if you’re a launcher donor, that you’re clear also with the nonprofit you say, OK, I want you to tell me nonprofit.

OK, here’s the issue I care about. I know you’re working on this issue. What’s the gap that needs to be filled? They’ll tell you the nonprofits are experts. They know what the gap is like, Oh my gosh, but you have to ask them because a lot of times the nonprofit will want to talk to you about what’s in their strategic plan and try to find all those pieces. And then they’ll say it, and then you’ll say, OK, cool, so let’s talk about how we can fill that gap. How can I support you? Usually, it means to as a funder, you’re going to be collaborating with other funders.

You also ultimately, if you’ve created filling in a gap, you’re going to want to fill in a gap in a way where over time, sustainer funders will come in because you’re only going to fund as a launcher funder two, three, four years. You want to support the nonprofits to create a budget and a plan that’s going to bring in this standard funder so you can see how sustainer, campaigner, and launch.

Funders when it works well, all work together super well. If you don’t identify yourself as one of that three upfront and say this is how I want to approach the kind of giving I’m doing, then like I said before, you can make it confusing for the nonprofit and for yourself. And over time you can get disillusioned. You’re not clear on that part.

Yeah, you see this a lot in leadership where they have a certain thing that they care more about than another thing. And then, depending on the type of leader they are, if they’re putting their efforts into this area, whether or not they’re a micromanager, which may or may not is helpful to who you’re trying to support.

Yep, Yep, exactly so I’ve seen it happen a lot where and it’s happening. Uh, even more recently where people are trying to say donors are trying to say we want to fund and do multi-year grants and we want to support the donor and we want to do that. That’s wonderful.

The problem is, and the missing piece is, that all of the donors are saying that, but they’re not approaching it the same way. Because if you’re a campaigner funder and you say that it means that you’re interested in a nonprofit that’s working on that issue. So you need to say that to because what will happen is a whole bunch of nonprofits will come in and see the general interest that you have and not understand why you’re not giving to them, or it’ll get confusing and they’ll spend time on it and then they’ll get grumpy and the community does talk and you know the community that’s working on things and you don’t want to be one of those donors communities.

Oh my gosh, we have to go through so many hoops for that person. And who knows if we’re going to get funding from them and they’re so unclear and I have to tell you, I’m sure I’ve done this for so many years. I’ve made those mistakes before with my donors and luckily, I have good enough relationships with some of the nonprofits I work with where they’ve been able to tell me.

I’ve been like Sybil; you know this isn’t working that well. But that’s because it’s been years and I was from the community that I now fund, right? So, it’s a lot of people that I’ve known and known as a nonprofit partner too.

The importance of feedback

I’m glad that they’re able to tell you where you might be deviating from the vision.

I am a huge fan of feedback and a lot of people like, really, I’m like, oh yeah, I try to mess up as much stuff as possible because I know I’ve got more humility than ego. And I know that I can’t possibly be doing it all right.

So, if you’re listening to this and you’re like Travis, but I need to tell you something please? Please tell me if I’m doing something that just drives you crazy. I promise I’m not doing it on purpose unless your name…. is just kidding…. I’m not going to put a name in there I don’t.

The vast majority of people don’t try to intentionally antagonize somebody. The vast majority of people, if they’re doing something that bugs you, they have no idea that it bugs you. None whatsoever. And if you don’t tell them you’re the only one suffering. You’re the only one suffering. Do them a favor. Be nice to yourself and make sure you’ve given the feedback necessary to make your day better. If you don’t, you won’t be suffering.

Yeah, and that leads to some thought there is an important thing that I created a little mini-course on this, which is to support donors in staying out of what I call a funder bubble. Because I agree with you, Travis, funders must get feedback, but they don’t get feedback from nonprofits enough.

And what happens is if you’re a founder year after year after year, and you haven’t been in the trenches with the nonprofits before, you can lose touch because nonprofits just won’t tell you that you’re approaching them wrong. That kind of thing.

And like I’ve said before, nonprofits have I’ve been lucky enough that they’ve told me. But I’m sure they haven’t told me all the time, and so I sat back with myself. And also, I observed some things with some of my clients and I put together this mini-course like I said which talks about how you as a donor, can purposefully I think donors have to purposely work hard to keep themselves out of that funder bubble, and it means putting yourself in slightly uncomfortable positions where people don’t necessarily think of you as a funder so that you can remember that things aren’t always so peachy.

First, before I get there with those tips and tricks, I want to tell you a story about why I’m so motivated about this is, I was in the nonprofit world for a long time and I was doing a lot of coordinating with lots of other nonprofits around really hard issues.

At one point I was a lobbyist working on environmental issues. And those are not easy issues, right? And people disagree all the time and I was trying to. I was leading a court, a coordinated group. Environmental organizations and conservation groups and others. And we were working on all these things and not everybody agreed on a strategy. Not everybody agreed on things and so every day I would be navigating these things. I love doing that stuff.

That’s what I love doing trying to work with people navigating through heart issues and trying to get through to the other side and finding compromise, but I was doing that, and then one of the funders who had been funding. Some of the work, not the lobbying part, but some of the public education part.

They came to me and said Sybil, would you be able to run my foundation? And I said I’d love to, and so that’s how I started being a donor. As I was a full-time executive director at one family fun. So, I moved over there, and I had about two weeks transition between my nonprofit job and then this job, and I left that job, the nonprofit job, went into my office the first day I walked into my office at the foundation job. I turned on my computer. I opened up my email. And every single email is “Sybil how are you doing? Life’s great, I can’t wait to talk to you. Let’s go have coffee”, there was not a single like “Sybil what are you doing with that policy I don’t agree with? We don’t compromise too much blah blah blah blah. Let me talk to you about this.”

Don’t get me wrong, I loved being in the middle of all that, too, because it’s so important, it’s how compromises are made is honest, good conversation and so when I walked into that office I’d entered on my computer and saw that I said to myself, Oh my goodness, this could be dangerous because I can’t just get happy emails. I have to know what’s going on and I have to make sure that the Community knows that they can still get funding even if they make mistakes.

I’m going to make mistakes too, and I need to hear it from folks, and so that’s why you know I’ve always kept that in the back of my head as I move forward. And that’s why I created this mini-course because over time, you know, I’ve started working for many, many different funders, and the original foundation that I was the executive director for is still. I still work for them. They’re my client now and now I’ve watched so many different meetings like this and some folks I work with. Unfortunately, they’ll be in a meeting, and it’s been so many years that they’ve been donors and they may not have ever been in the nonprofit world themselves. You can see it happening where they like, come in and they say something and then everyone sorts of realigns to that statement. So, you never actually get the information from the nonprofit about what they’re working on. That kind of thing, and so that’s why I created this mini-course to talk about it.

We can talk about my strategies in a second, but I want to stop. There to see if you have any thoughts just about the big picture, because. I’ve got tons of thoughts.

Does it sound just like the podcasting world, is this similar to running a foundation?

All your communication is happy. Everyone wants to talk to me because I’m a podcaster they’re excited to see me. That’s one of the reasons I love podcasting so much, but it sounds like in the foundation world that those rosy comments are just really masks for what’s going on. You’re not getting all the information you need to be successful to make good decisions. I find that it’s really interesting.

I run a couple of mastermind groups where people don’t want to talk about their problems, their struggles, their road bumps like somehow, they’ve never had one before or you won’t like someone if they’re going through something. I don’t understand it.

My life has been a rollercoaster. Some of those are high. Some of those speedy downfalls felt like there was barbed wire on one of the tracks. I don’t know.

There’s always something going on and it can’t possibly be a rosy picture all the time.

When I was on the nonprofit board, we came up with one of our donors saying something they wanted us to change what we were doing to receive these funds and we told them right up front like we were happy to. Take your money. We’re not happy to change. Who we are and what?

We do good for you if you want to support us. We need help in these areas if we have to change what we’re doing. It doesn’t sound like you support us. We’re on board with this vision and we turned away a significant amount of money because the money wasn’t enough to change who we are as people.

But here’s the thing, and I love what you’re saying. And let’s flip it on its head to the donor side. That another thing that can be a real challenge though is over the years if you’re a donor and you’re not getting that feedback without meaning you can start feeling like what you’re saying is always right.

So that’s the other thing that’s dangerous about it, where you can come into a room, you can say, oh, I’ve read a couple of articles. I feel like the gap is this that we need to fill or that and what happens then is I appreciate your story where you push back on the donor, but that doesn’t happen that often.

And So, what can happen too is that the nonprofit will either try to make it work and then we’re sort of circling back to the beginning of our conversation. They’ll start to try to make it work, and then over a couple of years, it won’t. And then the donor will get disillusioned, and the nonprofits will get grumpy.

And that kind of thing will happen.

And so, let’s talk about some strategies for the donor to make sure that they stay real.

This sounds exactly like leadership in any organization. Yeah, when I was leading sailors and doing different things in the Navy, I valued highly valued real feedback. I had a couple of grumpy bosses, not too many were human. I had someone who asked me a question. It’s like you know, Sir, I don’t know that. Let me get back to you on this. And he was like I’m not happy with that answer. I was like well, which answer would you prefer? He’s like, well, I’d like you to know the answer.

I was like that would be great, but any other answer that I would give you has been me lying to you.

And if you’re OK with it. Receiving lies as opposed to hey, you know, I’m not sure about this, let me go check, then eventually people will stop giving you feedback altogether. You’ll surround yourself and all you’ll see is North and South head nods. You’ll never get the feedback you need to be truly effective.

Right, right? And this is, I appreciate what you’re saying. It’s this is not being a high a person who’s giving money away and being in this bubble I’m it sounds like it is it? It could be a problem in a lot of different leadership issues. Leadership situations.

It can be challenging here because if you haven’t as a donor, done the work to make sure you’re giving in areas that you know something about, then that’s the added whammy because you’re in a funder bubble, you don’t know the issue.

If you haven’t picked the right issue. That’s a real problem. So really doing it badly? Yeah, I appreciate that. Tell me more things. Do you have anything more you want to say before I get in the tips and tricks?

How to Provide Support Instead of Creating Roadblocks

I can cover this in a lot of different ways. I had a great commander, Mark Brophy. He brought us in and on the first day, he outranks me by a couple. He’s got much more experience than me. You know there’s we have this thing in a lot of organizations called organizational charts. Normally it’s the leader at the top and then it gets more and more the further you go down. He drew this out for me and then he flipped it over. He’s like I don’t run this as a normal organization chart.

I’m not the dictator, I have it the opposite way where I’m on the bottom and you guys are you guys know how to do you the job, I’m here to support you, to remove roadblocks and then make sure you have the tools that you need to be effective. He’s like if I’m not doing that, I’m not doing my job.

My job is not to lord over you. You know, and we’ve got too many people in leadership positions that feel like they’re still doing everything. They remember when they were the admin person, and they know how to do it. Here’s the deal. I don’t want to give you the answer of how I did it, not because I’m withholding, not because of anything crazy, but if I tell you, I can either tell you what to do or how to do it if I tell you what to do, and how to do it, I’m not getting anything new. There’s not a chance that I’m going to solve a problem in a new way. If you have to do it the way that I dictate that you, do it.

Right, right? The only way we can solve some of these unsolvable problems is if I give you the space and the trust for you to go out and come back and solve this on your own. I’m not saying I won’t help you; I’m not saying I won’t guide you; I’m not saying I won’t give you feedback or speak from my experience. But if I’m telling you exactly how to do it. It then we’re not. There’s no chance we can.

That’s perfect, yeah, yeah, completely. I appreciate that, Travis. Yeah, so let’s talk about some of this because I love that and it’s a good segue into what I’m thinking about because there are two sides to this.

One is how can you keep yourself, your personal experiences real enough so that you just keep grounded and keep reminding yourself that like you’re not always right but that you’re in the middle of it and you’re having a great conversation. And then what are some great strategies for how you want to like approach nonprofits so that you can get the most out of your relationship.

Let’s talk first about ways to just remind yourself of things to do so that you stay out of that fund or bubble and keep putting yourself in position in various positions so that you remember what you what, what it’s like to not be a funder, right?

The first thing I want to say about how to do that is, you know Travis, you said you were on board. Get yourself aboard. Of an organization that you like and care about. However, it might be an organization that you’re not already funding so that they don’t necessarily think of you as a funder person, but it’s an issue you care about.

Are you getting your feet wet and if you don’t have the time to do aboard service, a lot of organizations have wonderful volunteer opportunities? Where you can do things on your own time, they might have outings or webinar series or other things like that. What that allows you to do is if you go in there, not saying you’re necessarily going to fund the group, but you go in and you start learning and listening and you hear what other people are saying in those forums people won’t think of you, necessarily as a funder because they’re working through lots of other things. It’s not a meeting that you’re having individually with them, so that’s a great way to get to know in a group an organization, the other kind of thing you can do is think a lot about the time you’re spending.

If you’ve done the good work where you’re funding. Is something that you already know and care about. Put yourself in a position where you’re in leadership. Moving that issue forward, if you can. So, let’s say you’re engaged in your kid’s school, volunteer at the PTA, or maybe help coach you know. Help the couch with your kid’s soccer or get in their rough and tumble, you know. So again, in a situation where it’s something you’re doing, something you care about, but it’s not that. Typical funder rolls it’s more like because then what happens is you know people get grumpy with you sometimes and if you’re in a stressful situation you can be like this is good.

Remind yourself this is good and then the last thing is, and I think you said this before Travis, it’s really important to also acknowledge your own mistakes, not put yourself down but acknowledge them. And so that when you’re in, when you’re in these situations where you’ve put yourself in uncomfortable positions or you’re just learning and you’re not already seen as a funder, always acknowledge your own mistakes and get in there again in the weeds.

That way for me, let me tell you how I’ve done that. I volunteered to be on the Oregon Board of Forestry, so it’s a commission that is appointed by the governor. And the Senate, when in Oregon, and I did it in my volunteer time. And that Commission relates private forest practices and state forest practices and also works on some wildfire issues and other things. It is an intense place to be. No one remembers that I work for funders at all. It’s there’s a lot at stake, right? It’s regulations for the whole state, and Oregon grows a lot of trees. And I did that purposefully for eight years so that I could always remember that.

You know, this is an important place to be in that way. And now the other thing I like to do is facilitate meetings. And I do this for my clients for funders, so it is a little bit of still a funder bubble. But The thing is if you’re facilitating meetings and helping organize conferences, people do forget that you’re a funder because we’re working through problems together and thinking it through, and sometimes it’ll be very stressful, and people will be grumpy with me.

I’ll try to figure it out and I remind myself no, this is where I want to be exactly where I want to be because I need to make sure that I’m supporting people in all the diversity of it, you know, so that’s the first thing is how do we as funders make sure that we’re stepping out of the funder bubble and then the second part of this conversation that I want to have with you is if you’re a funder and you are having that straight up one on one conversation or group conversation as a funder more formally with the nonprofit you care about. There are some key tips and tricks that you need to think about there to make sure you get the most out of your conversation and I have in my mini-course I have like a whole bunch of different strategies and ideas. But the number one thing that I want to emphasize is that it’s really important to listen 1st and not necessarily come into the meeting with your idea of where you want to go and say that first, you might come in with a strategy.

Here’s what I care about. Here’s what I want to do. You might tell the big picture. I care about the X issue. I’m a campaigner. I want to move the dial, so definitely do that, but then don’t necessarily tell them the solution. Yeah, find out from them what they see as a solution. That is the most important thing. And then Mull on that. And think about it and think about how you can help them.

But that’s key. Now again, I have lots of other little things, but I don’t want to overwhelm your audience with different pieces because I think that’s the most important theme about how to come into a meeting. And make it effective. Oh absolutely.

knowing you, Travis. You’ve lots of questions.

Well, your strategy for meetings is great. It’s the difference between setting your intentions versus setting the expectations or the outcome of the meeting, which you don’t have control over. When you set your intentions and you know that you plan on going in with potential solutions and listening, you can control that if you go into the meeting. Expecting them to just do whatever you say. Good luck having other people read your mind. What do you’re wanting to do?

Travis, can I tell a story about that? I have motivations behind all my stuff based on real life. There was this one meeting I was at where my gosh still makes me cringe. It was the topic was jobs and green jobs. So, like renewable energy jobs, that kind of thing. So as a topic that was that there were about four or five different funders that wanted to learn from the region experts on this issue. So we called a meeting with the nonprofits and these four or five donors and I helped facilitate the meeting, and one of the donors I invited to come. One of the people who wanted to give money to this cause. This person came into the meeting. And they came in really quickly like they were a little late. They come and sit down and they missed the whole agenda or the welcome, right? So they just come in and sit down and then they said OK, green jobs. I just read an article. Yesterday,

Just that’s one of those cuss words, Just.

I just read an article by an X&Y person on this issue, and they said that this is the solution, so let’s talk about that. He didn’t say that that that part. He just said they said this is the solution, right? Mic drop.

OK and first of all the people in the room, the nonprofits, were just like, what is going on here? So they had to answer that question and then the other donors who didn’t know a ton about the issue. They just wanted to explore in general. They were just not able to have a voice at all and the whole conversation was around this one theory of change from this one article from a person who hadn’t done the work upfront to see if this was even an issue that they knew anything about themselves and they wanted to come in acting smart.

So after the meeting, the nonprofits came to me and they were like “what just happened?” Like I know that author and I don’t agree with that author at all. And this isn’t that is not the solution, but we couldn’t really talk about the real solutions and so I had to have a whole another meeting to really like actually to figure out what was going on and to talk with the other donors about where to go. And luckily, I knew the nonprofits well enough that they could pull me aside afterward and talk about it, and so then we were able to right track it, although that gentleman who came in. That idea was grumpy and didn’t end up. Funding the work but. That’s OK, I mean, but the problem is like they were just grumpy in general then and they pulled out of some of the climate change work and the jobs work because they just felt like, oh, I can’t find anything that’s fitting my thing.

Why isn’t everybody?

That’s another big thing I talk about in my courses. That’s fantastic that he got out early and didn’t drag it on for you. That’s true, I think I helped make that happen, but that’s one thing I stopped going to my courses. If you’re a funder and over the years you start going, why isn’t everybody? What, why is it when I mentioned something no one is doing what I’m saying and it’s not happening I’m frustrated because it’s not happening because you know everything, I’m saying people are just not hopping to and doing it for you. Then I usually see it that way.

But The thing is, is like if you start feeling frustrated because the community is not going to where you’re going, it doesn’t mean that the community doesn’t know what they’re doing. It mainly means that you might be in a funder bubble. It might mean that they’re they can’t tell you that they’re what the real strategies are because you’ve been approaching the meetings and the conversations in a way where you’re already coming out with the solution. To the problem, rather than identifying the problem.

So that’s the key. So yeah, this is so much fun to talk to you about all this stuff, Travis.

Presenting solutions instead of only problems

I want to know if you mentioned to your clients, which I’m sure you do to go get on a board and not as a funder role. Tell me about an experience or feedback that you’ve gotten from a client that’s gone and done this. What kind of insight did they gain that they didn’t formally have?

Well, there are a lot of different pieces to that.

The first insight that they get is they really can see firsthand when a nonprofit is struggling, and they can have much more empathy for that nonprofit.

In particular, one place when a nonprofit one time when a nonprofit is well, I’ll just use one example and nonprofit when a nonprofit is vulnerable is when they’re having a leadership transition.

So when an amazing executive director that everyone loves or director of a program that everyone loves ends up leaving, which happens, how does the board then navigate the transition? Especially if it’s an executive director. And I’ve seen this happen on a few occasions, and I’m thinking about one in particular where one of the trustees that I work with who’s on the board of an organization that’s had some challenges after a wonderful executive director left. They’ve had a few new ones come through and it’s been tough and so that means then that when nonprofits that are coming to this.

Trustees Foundation for funding is going through a trend. A mission in that trustee is much more open to the challenges that that nonprofit might be going through in that transition.

So sometimes a foundation or a donor. When nonprofits going through the transition will withhold funding because they’ll be nervous. But this foundation, this trustee did the opposite. They said let’s lean in let’s support this. The group as it’s going through the transition, but maybe they and they had good advice on things to think about. How to make it? It works, so that’s just one example.

I love that example.

It’s valid too because I mean, historically speaking by averages, nonprofits are a high turnover job, a high turnover industry. I got the pleasure of interviewing Craig Hanley who is an expert in that he runs a call center in Mexico. Call centers historically have a high turnover rate.

He wrote a book called Hired to quite inspired to stay and he talks about the way that he builds a culture that even though it’s a high turnover industry historically that he’s helping them achieve their goals and their dreams and the way that he treats them as people.

Someone else needs to hear This, you know, treat them as other humans, changes the whole dynamic and his turnover rate, I think is the lowest in the industry and the people that do decide to leave to chase their dreams.

All credit him with the way that he treated them in their situation and their dreams so. I think executive directors are in like an 18-month loop. You can hardly get to know where everyone in the organization at 18 must let alone do anything spectacular. But we’re expecting people to come in and revolutionize the fundraising of the whole organization within six months.

You don’t even know all the board members’ names yet we’re talking. Right, right? Give some people some leeway, some wiggle room, the grace that you would expect to receive. Feel free to extend the grace to people in those situations.

And then, let’s say you’re this is another place where it’s important to decide if you’re a sustainer, campaigner, or launcher funder. If you’re a sustainer, funder the story I just gave, I think, is relevant to you.

Most likely because you care about that organization. You want the health of that organization to stay, and so if you’re serving on boards, maybe only one of the many nonprofits you fund, or anything else but you’re serving on those boards, you really are getting or doing volunteer activities. Getting a good feel.

For some of the challenges, and so that means makes you a better funder because you understand it. If you’re a campaigner donor or a launcher donor, the stories I want to tell are more personal. So being on the board of forestry, for example.

I work for some of my client’s campaigns donors and some of them are launcher donors. I also work for sustainer donors, but the campaigner donors that I work for being on the Board of Forestry helped me and helped me to remind me how hard it is to move the needle on an issue that you care about so usually.

When you care about something that’s a big issue and you want to move the needle on it, it takes time to make those changes, and it takes time because for good reason you want to have compromise compromises key. You want to be able to hear everyone’s voice. You want to figure out what are the key things we need to keep and what are the things that we can gift and it’s not so easy. Clean through line kind of stuff. And when you’re a donor, if you’re only hearing. The happy stuff. And Oh yeah, we can get this in this done within a year or two years and it doesn’t happen; You can get disillusioned unless you are putting yourself in positions where you’re seeing how hard it is.

And you’re seeing some of the key heart challenges. And even if it’s like you know when I’ve worked for campaigner funders that worked on so many issues, not just forestry issues, but it’s still a great reminder so that I can. Just I still it. Helps me stay a little fresh.

Those things, and if you’re a donor, there are ways to volunteer for commissions, take volunteer for this kind of places because people need you. And so, to you know, to serve and to be part of those things. So that’s another keyway for your campaign or donor to be part of the mix as well.

Paychecks and collaboration are required for nonprofit success

Especially with those campaigns, the reason they’re still there is that people haven’t solved it yet. Right? Right, it’s going to take the time that might take generations you mentioned earlier about helping funder collaborations and when you’re dealing with some of these bigger issues. Because that’s required people like oh, I want to have nonprofit impacts 1,000,000 people.

But I don’t want to pay myself even if it takes a dollar to impact all those people, it’s going to take you $1,000,000 to get it done like money is required for these things. So how do you help funders collaborate with other funders and find each other, and work towards some of these issues?

Yeah, I believe so strongly in that, and one thing that I’m starting to do a lot of, is work with donors that have similar interests and help them form collaborations? And there are so many different ways to do it, but I’m, for example, right now I’m working with founding donors who want to find something called renewal philanthropy. Which is an organization that is working on survivor-driven change and these folks are focused on ending injustice around the world, and they specifically are focusing on supporting kids who may have been victims of slavery or abuse and then supporting them through school, everything, and then those folks become the changemakers in their community to stop slavery.

To stop all of those things that they experienced and it’s so inspiring to me. And when I first started working with this group, it was a couple of donors and they said, you know, we’ve been funding this for years and years, but on our own. We want to compare notes with other donors. We want to think about, you know, there’s we don’t know at all. So, let’s think about how to make things work better together.

And I’m also right now working with some funders who are worried about wildfire. Wildfires are increasing in intensity in the United States and around the world, and donors have been funding a lot. A lot of these are emergencies, right? And so, they’ve been funding in their place and they’re all saying, well, how can we maybe collaborate Better because there’s about to be the United States a lot more public money going towards helping communities here. And as philanthropists, we may not have the dollars that public dollars have, but we have nimble funding, and we want to be sure that we’re not duplicating efforts. We want to be sure that we’re aligning on strategy, so I’m working on that right now we’re going to have a conversation there. And I’ve interviewed a bunch of donors to think through, do they want to have a more formal collaboration, Or maybe, it’s as simple as just making sure they’re meeting every month to talk about what they’re doing and comparing notes.

There are a lot of ways funders can work better together, but the first thing I have is a little mini-course on this as well for donors to think through how to fund. Sybil’s got a course for everything.

I try to.

I’m trying every time I have an idea, I try to make it make a little money.

And I say minicourse because they’re short. They’re easy for people to digest and think through the first thing again. I’d like to reiterate when I’ve created these collaborations from scratch, I realize more and more than the successful ones are when the donors come in and they’re all in line about whether they want to be sustainer, campaigner, or launch your donors.

So, for example, the renewal philanthropy group, they are focused a lot on sustainer kind of donating. So, they come at it. They have groups they care about. They support them year after year around the world and they want to collaborate more together to understand and support them. Various nonprofits together on the wildfire. One that I’m working on that’s a problem that all of these foundations are trying to solve. I mean, you can never solve wildfire, but they’re trying to like it. It’s a societal issue where they want to think about policies that will be helpful to the communities so we can respond well. So, they’re a little bit more on the campaign are donors.

But they’re all together on that. There was a collaboration that I was trying to start from scratch, and I kept hitting dead ends in the beginning because I wasn’t as clear. I sort of was like come one come all on this specific collaboration and it was around the environment, and I had sustainer donors, campaigner donors, and launcher donors all sort of jumping in and it imploded in the beginning until I wizened up and realized no-no-no. This is a group I think that’ll be better suited towards sustainer-type donors and so then we sort of rejiggered it. And now it’s launched as a sustainer donor group of people who want to fund groups year after year and think through things now, they care about environmental issues.

They want to move the needle on some of those things, but the main thrust is around, you know, sustainer doing donating. So that’s the first piece of it with collaboration, but you can get, so it’s I’ve seen so many. Amazing things happen through collaborations when with my clients when I’ve participated in donor collaborations, it’s really about relationship building and so like for example.

In Oregon, one of my clients I work a lot on habitat work and I was at a conference for collaboration in Washington DC and I met a donor who was we were just having coffee and he was sort of like civil. I want to support local land trusts and I want to collaborate. With local donors, and I said, well, I’m working with some local donors out here and that conversation essentially brought in multi-millions of dollars too. Our region because we were able to connect the dots. And we never would have.

If we hadn’t been at that collaboration. That funder collaboration where we were talking and able to sort of strategizing together about some gaps that we wanted to fill and connect the dots between donors. So, the magic that can happen there is amazing, and this renewal philanthropy works.

I’m doing Survivor-driven change. It is so fun. Because of the three founding donors. They didn’t know each other before and we brought them together in this conversation, and now they’re really good friends and we’re going to have our first conference next year, and it’s great.

They’re having meetings on their own to try and strategize, and over time, if you’re together, you can make a difference in the issue you care about so I can keep talking about that, it’s so fun. It’s so inspiring. I just collaborate.

Resistance is required for growth

See, I love what you said there you said I tried to do something, and it sucked so we tweaked it and now it’s better.

See more people need to be willing to share that little bit of the story that says I didn’t know what I was doing when I started. And then I figured it out because the goal was more important than the details. Yeah, I wasn’t a world-class podcaster when I started podcasting. Some people might think I’m still not one now, but that road bumps those speed bumps didn’t stop me from getting to where I needed to go.

Yeah, and honestly Travis, I think I never would have come up with my sustainer, campaigner, and launcher idea if I hadn’t run bumped into that roadblock on that one collaboration. I was telling you about it because it made me realize, Oh, there are different kinds, you know? And it’s all OK.

You don’t have to be one or the other. That you can be. One of those three, but just name it.

Yeah, name it. It’s OK, it’s OK to name it.

I know that I come off as really rough and maybe even a jerk to a lot of people, but it’s because of certain things I don’t allow people in my life that are not abundant thinkers. I don’t allow things in my life that violate my boundaries. I immediately say this is my boundary and don’t cross it. I’m not interested in it, you know. This is my boundary. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care how much DNA we share; you’re not allowed to treat me that way.

And so, I have very hard points in getting to know myself, but I’m also always going to be me. You’re always going to get Travis unless I’m tired, then you probably want to be around me, but there’s not a facade here.

I’m not pretending to be anybody and am I going to mess stuff up. I’m going to say the wrong things. Yeah, you can probably bet on it like what I’m going to be there. I’m going to be out there and be trying to be doing something like we’re going to be interacting. You love the fact that you’re trying and you’re doing things and you’re willing to share where things are a little messy. And if you listen to Joan Gary Podcast, I hear a rumor that nonprofits are messy and OK, yeah totally is.

What's the quickest way through a problem?

I always travel towards challenges. It’s sort of fun. And then it gets too easy. I’m like, oh this is boring, yeah? Are you Familiar with buffaloes and charging the storm?

Oh no, uh, tell me.

There’s a whole talk out there. There are two kinds of herds on the plains.

One is cows and one is Buffalo because when the storms come, they run away from the storm and what that means is they spend a lot longer in the rain, but when a storm is coming to the Buffalo turn in the charge of the storm spending the least amount of time. Getting wet.

Interesting, that’s interesting.

Yeah, so you have to ask our donors out there. Are you a Cow or are you a Buffalo? I want to know let me know.

I’ll be like. I can’t believe I’m admitting it to you, Travis. But I’m a cow-like a turn. I run away from danger, and it ends up being a lot. I am getting a lot wetter.

Drop a comment. Send me a message. Image or say I can’t believe you would want people to identify as a cow or a Buffalo. You can identify as whatever you want to do now, so it might as well. Pick animals as well.

That’s great I haven’t heard that before and I love that analogy, so you should give me the information more. I want to read that.

Read about it, but if it’s a talk I want to know about is a thing. It’s not my thing. I’m stealing the thing. I cannot take credit for it, but I’ll find it. Herewith you yeah yeah.

OK, cool.

Large or small, donations add up to great things

Yup, if you’re out there and you want to make an impact and it’s not happening in your area, if you and 100-year friends get together at 84 bucks a month, you can have a $100,000 foundation that you can give. Away money every year.

Oh, I love that that yeah, that is such a great point. There’s a group in my town called 99 girlfriends and they pool money and then they give grants together. And it is the coolest thing.

Yeah, 84 bucks too much for 200 people at 40. 2 bucks, or 400 people at $21 a month. 21 bucks a month gets you $100,000 in the foundation and gives away money to impact your community locally. Every year you don’t have to go crazy with it. If you have enough people with the right vision and a couple of bucks, you can make a big impact.

I love that I have an episode on my podcast that is about that too. Like all the different cool ideas you can have to maximize your money to help the groups you care about.

That’s awesome, I did a little research during the episode and Rory Vaden has a YouTube talk about Buffalo charging the storm.

Oh great, I can’t wait to listen to it. Yes, I can’t wait for people to hear this episode and connect with you.

Wrap Up

That’ll be awesome. Where can people connect with you?

So easy. Find me you can find me at sybil@doyourgood.com so my business is called “Do your good” for obvious reasons. Now that you’ve heard from me, you can find me on Instagram or Facebook at the handle. Do your good. All one word you can just my emails on there. It’s really easy to find me as I said. Sybil Ackerman-Munson. I have a podcast that I publish every week and you can find it on any of the streaming channels. Do your good or my name Sybil Ackerman-Munson so I’m looking forward to talking to your listeners to read to having them reach out to me and talking about all this stuff that I live, eat and breathe.

Thanks for being my guest today and dropping massive knowledge bombs on all of our different funders on how they can and do you.

Good thanks so much Travis, it’s been delightful.

Sybil Ackerman-Munson Bio

Sybil Ackerman-Munson is a Philanthropy professional with over two decades of experience working with donors to establish best funding practices that will help them to avoid costly mistakes and instead make a true and impactful difference in the world.

She has helped donors give away over $45 million in large and small donations throughout her career.

Sybil has worked with almost every type of charitable funder from smaller family foundations and public charities to individual donors. She has an active and prosperous career working with philanthropists and is eager to share her constantly evolving and up-to-date strategies that are fresh and insightful.

Connect with Sybil

sybil@doyourgood.com