Episode 50: A Nontraditional Approach to Donor Cultivation - The Program Officer
Funders aren’t obligated to renew your grant. Learn how to turn a one-time award into a recurring stream of revenue by building a strong relationship with your Program Officer.
LINKS:
Nonprofit Ready
Constant Contact
NONPROFIT SPOTLIGHT: Equality Now
Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to On Air with Amber Wynn, where nonprofit leaders learned to fuse passion and commitment with proven business strategies to create long-term funding, impact, and sustainability. And now here's your host and resident Philanthrepreneur, Amber Wynn.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hey fam, it's your girl back again. Talking to you, continuing our a Nontraditional Approach to … Series, and this week we're talking about A Nontraditional Approach to Donor Cultivation using the Program Officer. We've talked in the past about donor cultivation. Donor cultivation is when you prospect a potential donor, right? Somebody you think might be interested. Their mission, their personal credo aligns with your organization and you start to form a relationship with them with the hopes of making them a recurring donor. That is donor cultivation. Donor cultivation is when someone or an organization gives you money. You don't just leave it there. You nurture that relationship. You send them photos, you send them thank you letters, you form a relationship, you invite them to your events. Cultivating that relationship. A lot of times nonprofits mistakenly think that a funder is supposed to give you money, and so they just write for the money and once they get it, they think that's it, but that's not how it works.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
When you get money from an organization or an individual, it's about a relationship. It's about them believing in the work that you do. And so you've got to let them know what it is that you're doing. You've got to let them know about the successes, and you've got to let them know about the challenges. In this episode, we're going to talk about a nontraditional approach to donor cultivation using your Program Officer. Once you've been funded, you will be assigned a Program Officer, and we're going to talk a little bit more about how to leverage that to your benefit. When we come back after this one small break, we're going to jump into a Nontraditional Approach to Donor Cultivation, the Program Officer.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
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Speaker 2 (03:49):
Welcome back. You're On Air with Amber, your resident Philanthrepreneur, and today we are continuing our series A Nontraditional Approach to ... And we're talking about donor cultivation and specifically we're going to talk today about the Program Officer. As I mentioned before the break, the program officer is the person who is assigned to you once you've been awarded a grant. Now, a lot of people are afraid of their program officers, but I want you to think a little bit differently about this, okay? I want you to think about your program officer as your bestie. They should feel like they are your ambassador, and the way you get to that starts even before you submit an application. Having been a program officer, I can tell you upfront I look at how potential grantees approach me. For example, I was responsible for the screening process.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Meaning if you had submitted an application and you had questions, maybe there were issues with the portal, maybe there was questions you had about the application, the questions, the guidelines, whatever. So if a person reached out to me and said, Hey, I'm Joe Blow, and I don't understand this question, then I'm now having an interaction with them. I have had potential applicants just snap at me and be like, well, this is a dumb question, obviously da, da, da, da, da. Or if I gave them a reply, I had to be impartial. So I can't give you the answer, so I'm going to give you the answer that I needed to give you so that I'm impartial. Well, that doesn't help me. So if you think that the program officer who's going to be responsible with engaging with you on a monthly basis after this grant is awarded, is not looking at how you are talking to them now, then you're mistaken.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
I will tell you now, when I was a program officer and I'm engaging with these people and they're rude and disrespectful, I mean rude. Everybody has a bad day. I didn't let that bother me. But if you just came for me and I had people come for me, right? If you just came for me, I'm going to make a note whether it's mental, if I write it down on a post-it, because there's always more applicants than there is money. So if I see that you are a nuisance, that you're combative, trust and believe your name ain't going to make it into the yes pile, I am going to legally find a reason to eliminate your application, trust and belief. And if I can't, I'm never going to do anything illegal. I'm going to make note that you are a difficult client. So it starts before you even submit.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
You always want to be respectful. You always want to engage with your program officer with the utmost of respect and consideration. Start there. Secondly, after you, you are awarded, know that it is the program officer's responsibility to do site visits and to do reports. What you want to do is always turn your reports in on time. Don't make your program officer chase after you. Don't turn in late reports. That is extremely important because the program officer is responsible for reporting to the Board; your progress, your challenges, and if you're late, then guess what? They can't do their reports. Why is that important when it comes to donor cultivation? It's important because you want to, once you get that grant, be funded again. You want recurring money. Now, some institutions make it so where you can't get funded multiple years in a row. They'll say you have to skip a year and then you can reapply again.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
What you don't want to do is whether you have to skip a year or you don't, you don’t want the Funder to say, I will never give them another check again. And if you are late and if you don't submit the documentations that you need to submit for your reports, if you know it's always a problem, they're not going to refund you. Again, you want to leverage that little bit of advantage that you have already being an awardee and a grantee. You want to leverage that so that you can continue to get funded. When I was an Executive Director, I made sure that I loved up on my program officer. I always reached out to her once a month to let her know something good. I found something good about our program. If a client's story, something, some good news because invariably there would be some bad news that I have to report to her, and I wanted to balance that out.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
The second thing, I always turn my reports in early. Why early and not on time? Because a program officer may be managing 10 20 portfolios. She gets mine early, she can knock it out, gives her time to do all of the other ones. I know she appreciated that. Secondly, I always made sure that I gave her more information than she needed. I did success stories. I made sure that there are metrics because I knew that she would be reporting that out to her board. So worst case scenario, she could say, Hey, with this organization, they graduated these many youth, they placed these many, I gave her things that she could report out on. She didn't have to figure it out. I made her job easy. And guess where that got me? That got me to the end of the year when the organization had extra money and they wanted to give it to another organization.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Guess who they called? They called Amber. They called Amber. Why did they call Amber? Because she knew that I could spend that money in the last three months of the year, and she knew that I could provide her with the documentation for spending that money, and she knew that I would be able to turn around and report in the last three months of the year. Why? Because I had done it successfully throughout the year. But she's not going to call you if she's got an extra $25,000 if you don't turn in your reports on time. You can't manage to provide receipts. She's not going to give you that extra money. So quite often, I would always be on the receiving end of that type of generosity. It was not by accident, it was by design. When you are that type of grantee, guess what's going to happen?
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Program officers, they tend to swim in the same pools. So people are saying, Hey, we're looking for an organization that - then guess what? The program officer is going to say, you need to check out Amber, listen, they've got an amazing program. And then guess what? Because I've given her all of the success stories and all of the metrics. That's what she's going to be regurgitating to these other potential funders. She graduated X amount of youth. She did this with the extra money that we gave her. Then she's going to say, and she's an amazing grantee. She always turns in her reports on time, early actually. She gives me success stories, like you want to fund her and they're going to be like, Bet. And she's going to be like, Bet. So when we talk about donor cultivation, don't think small, think reach. The program officer has access to other potential funders.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
They have access to the Board. The board may say, Oh, we're going to go in a different direction. Which organizations should we keep in the portfolio? Or we have this additional money, which organizations should we give money to? Your program officer should be your biggest supporter, your biggest ambassador, and if you cultivate that relationship, they can open doors for you to other types of resources. So don't sleep on the program officer. Don't mistreat the program officer. Don't be a crappy grantee. Get your paperwork in on time, get your reports in early and make sure that you check in with your program officer monthly and give them really good news. So I wanted to share that with you because people think once you get the grant, that's it. They're going to give you the check. It's not guaranteed. It's not guaranteed that they're going to fund you another year.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
You've got to work at it. And the key to being successful in cultivating that relationship with your program officer is to make their life easier. That's the key to everything. When I say your Board; make their life easier. Your staff; make their life easier. Do things, put things in place that's going to make that person's life easier? All right, I can go on and on and on, but you get the gist of it. A nontraditional approach to donor cultivation is leveraging your relationship with your program officer. All right, so we're going to break for a minute, but when we come back, we have a question from Melissa out of Rancho Cucamonga. When we come back.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
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Speaker 2 (13:55):
Welcome back. You're On Air with Amber, and now it's time for Ask Amber. It's the time when you get to ask me your burning questions. I want to make sure that the information that I give you is responsive to your wants and your needs. So you can hit me up on all of my social media. You can leave an audio question or you can DM me, you can type me an email. It's up to you. Ask Amber, is your opportunity for me to specifically answer your questions? So let's hear our question for today.
Speaker 5 (14:33):
Hi Amber. This is Melissa calling from Rancho Cucamonga. We're building out our organization website. What type of things should we include?
Speaker 2 (14:48):
That's a very good question. Listen, the first thing that a funder is going to do is, Google you. And so your website serves as the first impression of who you are. Most people, when they build out their website, they do it from a marketing perspective. I'm going to encourage you to do it from a funder's perspective, right? You want to make sure that you have a couple of things on your website. One, you want to make sure that your organization's URL and email addresses are.org, not.com. Dot com stands for company .org stands for organization. You want to make sure that your mission is on the homepage. You want to make sure that you have program descriptions. What is it that the organization, what do you do? When do you do it? How often, and where? You want to show the impact. You want a funder to see, right on your website, the number of clients that you've served.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
What was the solution? Did you increase something? Graduation rates, did you decrease something? Drug involvement, right? You want to have an events page, but your events page should have pictures of your program in action. A lot of times, organizations will have these pictures holding up certificate; that doesn't show what your mission is. Do not put those on your website. Those are called staged photos. You want pictures of you doing whatever your mission is. Next, demographics. If a funder is on your website, they want to make sure that what you're doing is in alignment with their funding goals. So they want to see who your target audience is and what are the geographical service areas that you serve. So make sure that's on there. And then the last three things, you want to have a board member's page because the board is responsible for the vision of and fundraising of your organization.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
So a funder wants to see who your board is, make sure that their names, titles, affiliations, and experience, experience related to your organization is on there. Last but not least, you want to have a physical address, not a PO box. If you are a public charity, unless you're just doing referrals, a funder needs to know that the public can access you. So if you just have a PO box and you have a form for them to contact you, they can assume that you're not a real nonprofit because no one can access you. Likewise, you need to have a business telephone number on your website. Sometimes people will have a PO box and a form, and that's it. No telephone numbers, nobody to, are you a public charity then? So those are the things that I would recommend that you put on your website.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Make sure that it's funder responsive because that's going to be the first place that a funder's going to go and check you out. That was a great question, Melissa. Thank you for that. Now it is time for my favorite time of the episode. I know I say this every week, but I mean it. It's the time that I get to a spotlight on a nonprofit that's doing the work in the community. And this week we are going to focus on Equality Now. Equality Now aspires to be a truly anti-racist, intersectional, and feminist organization that actively challenges racism in all forms of discrimination in our own organizational structure and through their work? Let's take a look at Equality Now.
Speaker 6 (18:26):
I am happy to be here, honored to be here, to help make this world a more just an equal place for girls. They are our future. They are our hope. And we have to know that that means it could be a brighter world.
Speaker 7 (18:45):
How to raise a girl?
Speaker 6 (18:47):
It's hard to raise a girl in a world that keeps pushing them down.
Speaker 7 (18:53):
So raise what you can. Raise your expectations, raise her expectations. Raise your sights beyond the here and now and imagine a fairer future.
Speaker 6 (19:02):
Raise questions that demand answers and challenges our elected officials to raise their game.
Speaker 7 (19:10):
Raise your voice so they can hear you.
Speaker 6 (19:13):
Raise the roof in celebration of those who stand tall against inequality and raise your hand to join them.
Speaker 7 (19:23):
Because together we raise more than girls, we raise a generation with the power to change the world and lift it to the stars.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
That was powerful! Equality Now. That's dope. So to support this organization, please visit their website at www.equalitynow.org. I'm telling you, nonprofits just make a difference in this world, and I'm so honored to be a part of this sector and so honored to be number one, your biggest cheerleader. Number two, yeah, just there to support you. So thank you for that honor. Now we are moving into the last part of our episode, which is Mindset Minute, and it's where I share with you just some thoughts that I have, some random thoughts, some not so random. This week's Mindset Minute is about including one member of your target population on your board. So typically I say to you, you want high powered seasoned people on your board because their purpose is to set the vision and to fundraise. Oh, that's true. But you also want to place a person from your target population on your board. So if you're serving homeless people, unhoused people, I apologize, unhoused individuals, you want to have a person who is either currently in that situation or recently just overcome the circumstance.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
If you are serving teen moms, you want someone who is currently going through the situation or who has been through the situation. Why? Because, and I am so guilty of this, you think you know, but sometimes you're so far removed or as an organization, you look at things differently. You look at things logistically. You look at things based off of funding. You look at things, but it's not from the perspective of the individual that's going through it. If you have a person who is unhoused on your board and you say, okay, well, what we want to do is we want to go out on Saturdays and we want to give out sandwiches, that person will have some insight and say, no, what you want to do is give out socks. We always have people coming and giving us food, but really what we need are socks because it gets cold.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
That's something you wouldn't have thought about. Why? Because it's not a lived experience that you have, right? For a mom, a teen mom, they're like, well, what we need to do is talk to them about better choices. And the teen mom might say, well, what you really need to talk to 'em about is loving themselves, because usually we get into the situation because we're looking for love. And it just gives you insight that you wouldn't normally have. And when it comes to logistics and it comes to delivering your program, it's important that you are successful. And if you have somebody who is actually in the population that you're trying to serve, they can give you that real time insight and information. And yes, you want them to be a voting member. You want them to have a say because you want their experience to matter.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
So when you're thinking about recruiting for your board, make sure that you include at least one member from your target population to sit on your board so that they can give you insight that you normally wouldn't have. All right, so that is it for this week, a Nontraditional Approach to … And it was Donor Cultivation, utilizing the program officer to expose you to more opportunities. We're going to have a couple of more in this series because really the way that I deliver my consulting services, my nonprofit services, it is in a nontraditional way. My goal is to get you closer, faster, more efficiently to your end game. And a lot of times that traditional route, it won't get you there. Well, it'll get you there, but it's going to take you a long time. I'm about getting my nonprofit leaders to the place of sustainability quickly, but not so quick that things are raggedy.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
So we go about it the right way, which is building out the infrastructure. But instead of going this traditional route, like, oh, you've got to do the prospecting, and then you've got to send out the letters, and then you've got to meet with them, and you got to do lunch every Saturday. Let's leverage what we have. Let's go straight to the program officer and let's maximize that resource. So I'm looking at things from somewhat of a different perspective. A lot of that has to do with the different sectors I've been in. As an entrepreneur, you got to be ahead of the game. You've got to be innovative. So some of these ideas stem from all of the different sectors that I've been in, and I leverage them to help get you to your endgame sooner. So thank you for spending your time with me this morning. If you are so inclined, please subscribe if you haven't already. And if you can, think of a nonprofit leader who could use this information, be sure to share the episode. Thank you for spending your time with me, and I will see you next week. Bye.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe and leave a review on iTunes. Head over to www.amberwynn.net/podcast for the links and resources mentioned in today's podcast. See you next time.
