[REPLAY] Setting Your Fundraising Mindset with Rhea Wong

This episode is a replay to celebrate the launch of Rhea's new book, Get That Money, Honey!: The No-Bullsh*t Guide to Raising More Money For Your Nonprofit!  

 Do you ever feel icky asking for money - or just downright scared? Does this prevent you from raising the amount of money you need for your nonprofit? There may be emotional and mental blocks that hold you back from being an effective fundraiser.

In this episode, Rhea Wong joins me to drop some "truth bombs" about fundraising mindset and gives us some strategies to help us get over the limiting beliefs, assumptions, and stories that are holding us back from reaching our true potential. 

Over a 12 year period as the Executive Director of Breakthrough New York, Rhea grew their fundraising program from about 200K per year to $3M in 100% private donations annually.  This included funding from institutional foundations, corporations, events, and individuals.

Rhea made all the mistakes so you don’t have to. Now she is on a quest to teach others what it takes to succeed - because the world cannot wait for important change. 

Rhea's e-newsletter is one that I read every single week (check it out for adorable photos of her lasa apso Stevie Wonderdog), and her podcast and free weekly trainings are a must-have resource for fundraisers. 

Here are some of the topics we discussed: 

• Why major gift fundraising sounds so scary - but it's simpler than you think
• Why she is on a mission to destroy "the pitch"
• Fundraising a just a math problem 
• How to determine if you are an Asker or a Guesser
• The limiting beliefs, assumptions, and stories holding us back from raising more money 

A Rhea Wong quotable: "It's only weird if you make it weird."

Connect with Rhea:
Rhea Wong's website
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rheawong/
https://twitter.com/ConsultingRhea
https://mailchi.mp/rheawong/book

Do me a favor? Rate, Review, & Follow on Apple Podcasts (or your podcast player of choice) - it helps this podcast get seen by more people that would enjoy it!

About Julia Campbell, the host of the Nonprofit Nation podcast:

Named as a top thought leader by Forbes and BizTech Magazine, Julia Campbell (she/hers) is an author, coach, and speaker on a mission to make the digital world a better place. 

She wrote her book, Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits, as a roadmap for social change agents who want to build movements using engaging digital storytelling techniques. Her second book, How to Build and Mobilize a Social Media Community for Your Nonprofit, was published in 2020 as a call-to-arms for mission-driven organizations to use the power of social media to build movements. Julia’s online courses, webinars, and talks have helped hundreds of nonprofits make the shift to digital thinking and raise more money online. 

Clients include GoFundMe Charity, Meals on Wheels America, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. 

Take my free masterclass: 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media Content that Converts

Transcript

Julia Campbell: 0:00

My friend and fundraising superstar, Rhea Wong just launched her first book, and it's called get that money, honey, the no BS guide to raising more money for your nonprofit and it's fabulous. It's part workbook and part love letter to fundraising. And it's full of actionable strategies that you can use and start implementing today. Based on RIAs. 20 years of experience in the trenches, raising millions. You can get a copy on her website, real long.com or on Amazon, Barnes and Noble wherever books are sold. To celebrate the books launch I'm rereleasing RIAs interview that we did last year. So take a listen and be sure to get the book. Hello, and welcome to nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell. And I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the nonprofit nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently Find Your Voice. Definitively grow your audience and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie, or an experienced professional, who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people and create even more impact, then you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of nonprofit nation. I am incredibly excited for today's show. I have real long, and I was lucky enough to be on Rheas podcast the nonprofit lowdown in December 2019 to talk all things nonprofits and social media. So Rhea has such a fantastic bio. I'm going to read it to you. Over a 12 year period as the executive director of breakthrough New York, she grew their fundraising program from about $200,000 per year, just 3 million in 100% private donations annually. This included funding from institutional foundations, corporations, events and individuals. And what I love about RIA is she made all the mistakes so you don't have to. And now she's on a quest to teach others what it took her over a decade to learn because the world cannot wait for important change. Her newsletter features regular truth bombs for executive directors and fundraisers, as well as adorable photos of her Lhasa Apsos Stevie Wonder Dog, which I love that name. Welcome Rhea.

Rhea Wong: 2:43

Julie, it's so good to be here. Thank you for having me. And I will say for the newsletter, it's worth joining for just the dog photos. I know a lot of people

Julia Campbell: 2:51

do join for the dogs. I mean, be really happy.

Rhea Wong: 2:54

I mean, get the highlight. You gotta give the people what they want. You know what I mean? You do?

Julia Campbell: 2:59

So let's begin with your story, which I know can sound intimidating. But how did you get involved with the work that you're currently doing?

Rhea Wong: 3:08

Yeah. So, you know, a little origin story here. But basically, I was a 26 year old executive director, right? Very common story, no formal training like, okay, fundraise. Have fun. You know, here's, here's your email go.

Julia Campbell: 3:23

So when we image people and do programs and do marketing, right,

Rhea Wong: 3:27

exactly. Budget manager board, by the way, we're six years old, right? You don't know anything. Of course at 26. I thought I knew everything. Anyway, neither here nor there. But I remember the first day on the job at Google. What does an executive record do? Google was, how do you fundraise because at that point, I had done like, a charity fundraiser for like, AIDS research. That was it, like, didn't know anything. So you could imagine it was a long and hard slog to try to figure out what I was doing. What I had going for me was I was a good writer. I had a good cause I was raising four and I'm a pretty, pretty affable person, good personality. Literally, those are my three assets. So I was like, okay, really

Julia Campbell: 4:12

figure this thing out. empires are built on those three assets.

Rhea Wong: 4:16

Listen, you got a nice smile, you can talk to people, you can make it work. But I you know, lots of trial and error, lots of failure, lots of bombed, you know, funder meetings, lots of board meetings that went awry, you know, all the things. And so when I stepped down as executive director at the end of 2017, I had not intended to be a consultant at all, I actually had joined a tech firm that didn't work out. I was like, Oh, this is not my jam. And so one thing led to another, and I started consulting with other EDI friends who were like, Oh, you're free. I have a project. So one project led to the next project, next project. And it wasn't really until last year that I was like, let me just focus and double down on fundraising because I was doing all sorts of I was like strategic planning, yes, you know, talent management. And I was like, okay, all this stuff, I don't really care about them. You know what I care about, I care about money. I care about driving without money, can't do anything without money. I realized I was successful in fundraising. But it wasn't an overnight success. Like I mentioned, it took me over a decade to figure out how to raise that much. But I also think so many EDS and so many, frankly, senior development, people are brought into the job without any training in how to actually do the job, right, especially EDS, especially founders because they start the thing, because they have this great idea. I call it hugging the panda bears. But then they don't realize that their job is actually to fundraise. And they're never really given any training and how to do that. So I started the fundraising accelerator specifically to accelerate people to get them up to speed to start doing, specifically major gift fundraising, because that's where the money is. But it's the scariest thing because it's it's not formulaic in the way that foundation money is or corporate money. You know, with foundation money, it's like we get it, right. There's an RFP you do the proposal, you have the site visited, like, we understand that dance, major gift, fundraising, anything could

Julia Campbell: 6:18

happen. It also sounds very scary.

Rhea Wong: 6:21

It sounds very scary. It sounds very scary, too, because I think we all have baggage about money. So whether or not you're raised with a lot of it or not a lot of it, we all have this emotional baggage about money. And when you're doing major gift fundraising and talking to individuals, it's very personal, it's very vulnerable, you're looking someone in the eye and asking them to give of their personal resources to an idea. And that can feel really scary. But even more so if you have this baggage about money that you really haven't exercised. And actually, I wish I brought it with me I have a mug with one of my sayings, which is, it's only weird if you make it weird. Oh, right. I

Julia Campbell: 7:03

love that.

Rhea Wong: 7:05

So we walk into these ads. And we've already made it weird in our heads. And so then it just like comes out weird. And you don't actually get the ask out because you're all like freaked out in your critical mind drama. Anyway,

Julia Campbell: 7:17

I absolutely love that. Because one of the very first pieces of advice I got when I started public speaking, was don't go out there and say, I'm really nervous. I'm tired. You know, I haven't had coffee. This is my first speaking engagement. Don't ever start a webinar that way. Don't ever start a public speaking, don't ever start a meeting that way, because it sets the tone. And it makes it weird for the other person and it makes you angry for the audience. I need that on a shirt. I absolutely love that. It's only weird if you make it weird. It's no way that weird. It's not going to be weird. To me, but major donors, they're used to being approached, they're used to being talked to, they're used to being thrown investment opportunities and pitches, and other nonprofits are used to talking to them. So if you make it weird, it's going to make them feel weird. And then it's also just going to set the tone for the entire relationship. So wow, I love that.

Rhea Wong: 8:12

Okay, so the thing when you said pitches, and I am on a single woman mission to get rid of pitches, because I feel like nonprofit people have been, I don't know, we've been like brainwashed into believing that we have to have a pitch and a pitch deck and whatever. I have never raised money on the back of the pitch deck. Like there's no magical combination of words that you can say to someone that will get them to open their wallet or their right, right. It's a conversation. Yes. And I think I mean, I can blame Silicon Valley for this. But like us, people don't think about investing in nonprofit, the way they think about investment opportunities. It literally lights up a different part of their brain in place at the same part of their brain that is reserved for family. So it's a conversation. And it's a relationship, not an investment opportunity, right. And so when you approach it in a transactional way, then people think of it as a transaction. It's not a transaction. It's a relationship. So that's thing one. And then thing too, so I use dating analogies all the time. So do I

Julia Campbell: 9:19

love that I love your recent email was all about a dating analogy.

Rhea Wong: 9:24

Yeah, Jonah helper was on my podcast, but even before Joe and I was using dating nowadays, but like you would never go into a first date be like, Okay, I'm going to tell this person all about me and like, why they should? Why they should date me and why we should get married. It's like,

Julia Campbell: 9:38

okay, but you probably not succeed very well. Yeah, totally. A single

Rhea Wong: 9:43

reason. I know. I like to read my resume my first date. Yes. And so you know, I think the same holds true with major donor asks like you have to have a conversation you have to warm it up. Also, when people think about major donor They're usually like, Okay, well, when do we get the check? It's like, okay, slow your roll, like you actually have to develop a relationship first, right? And so I think when when we approach it in, it's like transactional, like, give me the thing, and I'm going to talk all about myself. It's like it does not set the right tone for the kind of partnership and relationship that you want to have.

Julia Campbell: 10:19

So you wrote a great email recently, with the subject line, fundraising is just a math problem. And I think we talked a little bit about this, we create so much drama around the fundraising process, but you say it really boils down to a simple equation. So can you do that?

Rhea Wong: 10:37

Yeah, so it's just a math problem. Asks minus nose equals yeses. So the more asks you put out there, the more nose you're going to get. But the more yeses you're going to get? And the better you're going to get at asking. And the better you're going to get at ask and the more you will, or the less we'll take it personally, right, because I think there's no way to do this work without being told no. And I think a couple things here, I think, number one, it's not personal. I think, if you take every No, personally, you're going to get burnt out very, very quickly. Right? At the end of the day, they're not saying no to you personally, Julia or no to your idea. They're just saying it's not for them. And like, that's right, no, not for me. Not right, not the amount, like not my thing. That's fine. And I think, you know, your job as a fundraiser is just to create this amazing party, and then see who wants to get invited. That's it. Like, that's what the job is. And some people don't want to come to your party. That's cool. There are lots of parties going on. Don't take it personally.

Julia Campbell: 11:39

I love that analogy. So I was I was listening to a business podcast, and one of the women said that she had taken her daughter and the Girl Scout troop to pre COVID, to the grocery store to sell boxes of Girl Scout cookies. And the girls were very nervous and shy, and they didn't want to talk to people. And they were just so nervous about rejection. And so she said, Well, your job is to get 100 knows, I want you to get 100 nose today. So obviously, the more people they ask to get those 100 nose, they sold out of their boxes of cookies, they Yeah, you know, they created records, like a state record for boxes of cookies sold. And I love that analogy. Like for business and for fundraising, your goal is to get to a certain number of noes, because that means you're making a certain number of asks, and you can't get to the yeses without the nose. So I love that equation. I also love the concept that you talked about in an email of askers and guessers. This one really rolling with me. So tell us a little bit about that concept and how it relates to nonprofit

Rhea Wong: 12:52

culture. Yeah, I'm so glad you asked that. So I so this is I'm going to give a shout out to my friend kithara who told me about this. So basically, it was this Atlantic article, where it was like an advice column. And the person wrote in she was like, Oh, my husband's like, college buddy, who he hasn't talked to in years, you know, emailed us and asked if he could crash on our couch for two weeks while he was in town. And I was like, super offended by that. And like, you know, but but I feel bad like saying no, but whatever went on and on. And the response was, oh, there are two kinds of people in this world there asters and guessers. askers are the people who are just asking, there's that like, they might get a no, but they're just asking in guessers are the people who ask only after the no, the answer is going to be a yes. Wow. Right. So they're the people who are like trying to, you know, do it around the edges and like are very opaque and they're, you know, it's all subtext and like they're reading the signs and reading the tea leaves. And so if askers are asking askers it's all good. If guessers are asking Despres, it's all good. The problem is when you get asters and guessers together, because they are coming from two very different cultures. And so if you get an aspirin, a guesser together, the guests are will think the Aspers, like rude and presumptuous, and like, well, how dare you? Because I would never do such a thing. And the asker thinks of the guests as like, super passive aggressive, I don't know what you're talking like, just just speak plainly. What do you want? And so I think, where we as fundraisers getting, and I think a lot of it has to do with the way armchair sociologists here, but the way in which women are socialized, we're socialized, generally, I think to be guessers. Right? Like, we have to just like guess, at people's intentions and like, we want to like make sure that we're taking care of it before they even have to ask and like anticipating everyone's needs and did a visit there. Yeah, 80% of the fundraising field is women. So I think there's a very strong guests culture. Yeah. And ironically, a lot of the people that we interface with are coming from a strong ask culture. So while they personally might be guessers, but like they're coming from finance are coming from or they're coming from tech like these are very sort of four Right, say what you got to say, kind of cultures. And so I think as guessers or as fundraisers, we overthink it, right? We like to do what I call procrastinate learn where

Julia Campbell: 15:11

we grasp to learn. Yeah, I do it too.

Rhea Wong: 15:14

We all do it, but we're like, I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna, like research this person, right, I'm going to create a profile. And if I do enough research, I will find this magical combination of words that will unlock this, or you could pick up the phone and just have a conversation, right? Because I think we make so much about, you know, trying to guess at what people will want to do or kind of guess at whether this is a fit or trying to guess what their assets are trying to guess if they want to be involved? Why don't we just ask them,

Julia Campbell: 15:44

I just had a client call with a lovely client, who I love well not name. And I'm sure if they're listening, they will know that I'm talking about them. So sorry, in advance. But we were talking about how the events department at this particular organization, creates events, and then tries to force people to come to them, they don't actually create events that people want to come to. And they have never asked their donors or their constituents or their stakeholders. What kind of events do you want to see from us? So I love that idea of I mean, they're so they're obviously guessers, rather than askers? Because askers would say, send out a survey or call people on the phone or say, what kind of events do you want to create? You know, what do you want to learn more about what interests you what fires you up? I think that is so interesting. But that really, that leads me to my next question. What are you know, some some other common assumptions and limiting stories that hold us back? And do you feel like it's this culture of you know, it you said 80% of fundraisers are women? Like, how can we overcome these gender norms? And all of these things, this kind of bullshit that we've been told our whole life?

Rhea Wong: 17:03

Yeah, well, before I responded tonight, oh, sure. Go back. Go back. Yeah. So the one thing I wanted to say to you is, I think we have to take a page out of the for profit world, like I can't visit a single website without being asked, Would you contribute to a survey? Mostly? I say no, right, right. But you have to ask, and some percentage of people will say yes, and you'll get valuable information from that. And not just for research purposes, but literally to engage with, do you want to be involved? Chances are, if they've taken the time to answer your survey, they do want to be more of Yes. Are you prepared to make a gift? What are we doing? Well, what could we be doing better? I mean, it's just like, you need the data to improve instead of like, I feel like so many nonprofits sit there with this crystal ball. And they're thinking about all these like weird ways to gather data, like back in analytics, and like, why don't you just talk to people like a human? Yes. Yeah. So

Julia Campbell: 17:58

anyway, there's an askers. It's just such a great theory. I love it.

Rhea Wong: 18:01

Yeah, one. The other thing is, I think people are also like, oh, well, we don't do this gets here the question about limiting beliefs like, oh, well, you don't want to bother people? Uh huh. If they don't want to answer you, they won't answer.

Julia Campbell: 18:13

Our job is to not bother people. But our job is to communicate our mission. That's our job is to raise funds to raise awareness to get people on board. And that involves, and I always say this, that involves a little bit of attraction and repulsion. You're going to offend people, you're going to get unsubscribes, you're going to get people that say, they don't want to hear from you, you're going to get the nose. Right, if you're doing important work, that's just sort of, you know, that's sort of part of the just par for the course.

Rhea Wong: 18:46

Well, and I think, you know, the work that you do with social media is really interesting, because at the end of the day, people engage on social media, because they want to know more about you, right? They want to hear more, they want to learn more, they want to maybe be engaged in like that your job is to go from like that white point of the funnel of like, okay, I'm going to like opposed to actually like, Is this somebody who wants to be more deeply connected to our organization? If so, how? But you're never going to know if you don't ask the question.

Julia Campbell: 19:14

Exactly. Know Exactly. I think that I really also think that we are just like you said, unfortunately, there's not a lot of official training that goes on in college or in professional development settings around fundraising. So we have conferences, we have webinars, we have a lot of different societies, and affiliations and associations. But what happens so often is your program officer, like you said, you want to hug the pandas, and then all of a sudden you are elevated because you're good at your job. You're elevated to this role where you have to get wildly out of your comfort zone, which was pandas and you want to I mean, you probably want to just go back to that you want to revert to something comfortable And now a word from our sponsor. I'm here to tell you that this podcast episode is sponsored by my newest free training social media in 20 minutes per day, this is where I give you my exact framework and process to schedule and organize your time, so that social media does not take over your entire day. And to do list, watch the replay for free at social media in 20, that's to zero the numbers to zero.com. And be sure to tag me on social to let me know what you think. That's social media and twenty.com. Thanks for listening, and enjoy. So something else you talk about? And I'd love to get your sort of perspective on this. How can the sector better cultivate more of a diversity of fundraisers, and more executive directors, more fundraisers more directors of development of color?

Rhea Wong: 21:06

Oh, man, Julian, give us the million dollar

Julia Campbell: 21:08

check as you write about it. And

Rhea Wong: 21:11

well, what's awesome is in my accelerator, I have majority folks of color, and I didn't do that on purpose. But you know, I love it. And people have found me, obviously, resonated. I mean, I think a couple of different things. And actually, I can share a white paper that was put out by cost effective about this, which is pretty interesting about not being able to attract and then retain folks of color in the center. But a big piece of it, I think, has to do with the amount of training that we're offering and intentionality that we are paying attention to the people who we're bringing into the into the work, like no one grows up as a little kid, like, I wouldn't be a development director when I grew up, like we don't even talk about what that even means. Right? So I think, to your point about, you know, being more transparent about what is this job, because actually, I think in some ways, it is related to sales, but they don't have sales majors in college either, which is like a critical step of business. So I think that might change over time. But I think we also have to create fundraisers anyway. So I think being able to be more transparent about what this job actually is being more transparent about the difficult dynamics in the job, because I think, you know, when you're coming up into relationships of money, power, privilege, race class, I mean, it's a very complicated, right. And to pretend that these dynamics don't exist, does not do anyone any favors. And I think to be able to have those conversations, frankly, and to be able to support fundraisers of color, especially young fundraisers of color into the profession will do a lot. I mean, what's interesting is you do see young folks of color entering sort of the beginning stages of fundraising. So that's a lot more transactional, it's like, database manager or grant writer, where we start to lose people is in the relationship development with major donors. And I totally understand that it's not comfortable to walk into a room where you're the only person of color talking to predominantly older white men, right, some of whom may have some very, shall we say, antiquated ideas about race and socio economics? You know, and so what we're asking fundraisers of color to do is to step into the situations where they experience microaggressions and personal harm, and putting themselves in the line of fire in order to get the resources that their organizations need. So short of like large systems change. I don't know what the answer is, except I think in the short term, we can provide more of the support, provide more of this training. And frankly, you know, I can't tell you the number of times on the phone with people about my accelerator, and it's like Greg Ricker group, right. Yes, yes, yes. Like this is exactly what they need. And then I tell them the price, like, I don't have that on my professional development budget, and I'm like, okay, okay. Number one, this is not a professional development. Yep. fee. This is investment. This is like the same as if you're investing in a CRM, you're increasing the capacity of your organization to fundraise. So that's thing one thing, too is, why are we not investing in our people? Like if we're saying that we need to raise more money than we need to? It takes money to make money. And so I think that's a big piece of it as well. I mean, some other limiting beliefs that I think that we have as a sector is that there's not enough money out there. Okay. We are living in the richest time in human freakin history. Okay, millionaires,

Julia Campbell: 24:40

by the way, had a banner year last year, I was really, there are more billionaires. There were more billionaires created and there was more wealth generated in 2020 than any other year, which is so very insane to me.

Rhea Wong: 24:55

Yeah, no, totally. But look, the stock market is an all time high. Amid all of this federal money coming out people are doing well. I mean, not everybody, of course. But like, in general as as sort of like big picture, jobs are being created. So like, don't tell me that there's not money out there, there's more than enough money. So I think first, we have to just really get that in our minds, like, there's more than enough money out there. My job is to find the people who want to be part of this. If we start from the place of actually deeply believing that there is enough, and that I'm enough, and that what we're doing is creating real positive and needed change in the world. And I think we approach the whole thing differently. It's almost like, again, to go back to the dating analogy. When you were single and trying to get a date and no one wanted your number, you were like, I'm going to be single forever. The minute you get into a relationship, and everyone wants your number, yes, that's because desperation is a stinky perfume. And you have to bring the right kind of energy to it, right. So if you come from a place of like, I am awesome, all we're doing is awesome. You should want to come to this party, is the whole thing.

Julia Campbell: 26:03

I absolutely love the metaphor of I'm throwing this really awesome party. It's not for everybody, it might be for you Come on in, and see if this is your people, see if this is your your ideas, your values, your beliefs, your ethics, see if this is for you. So it's just, it almost is more relaxing that way, if you think that way, because you're not trying to bang down people's doors and force people to pay attention to you

Rhea Wong: 26:30

know, the thing is that you can't convince anybody of anything. Having worked with children my entire life, like Oh, that's right, you can't make them do anything. Yeah. All you can do is open the doors. Give them a little taste. It's like, you know, it's like when you go to Costco and they have little samplers, you just give me a little sample. You want to buy this thing. It's delicious. But some people will say no, and like, that's okay, maybe it's not their thing. And you're right, it takes the anxiety out of it cuz I feel like we're so anxious and we're so white knuckled and we're like oh my god, if I don't like close this donor, this is the end this is it forever. But it's not because, as we said before, there's plenty of money out there. So it's never the last owner. It's never the last gift.

Julia Campbell: 27:13

I don't know if you read speaking of that, the scarcity mindset you're talking about Nell Edgington, she wrote a book called reinventing social change, girl

Rhea Wong: 27:23

I have now on my podcast she's the best

Julia Campbell: 27:28

Yeah, so I love the talk of abundance mindset. I think that it's been so frequently talked about on podcast, I listened to business podcasts and Business School and like you said, you know the for profit sector, although What's so funny is whenever I say for profit, my husband just says business. Just say business. Like that just means business. So but

Rhea Wong: 27:52

he nonprofit means business as well. That's the thing. That's true guys, and

Julia Campbell: 27:56

crazy that we define ourselves from what we're not. Yeah, well,

Rhea Wong: 28:01

the thing that I tell executive directors and aspiring EDS all the time is like, Oh, you're starting a small business, you realize that, right? I mean, there's like, no two ways about it. It's like, No, but I'm here for like the mission. I'm like, yeah, yeah. But you're starting a small business.

Julia Campbell: 28:17

Payroll, you still have to answer your elders.

Rhea Wong: 28:20

Well, and the thing that blows my EDS minds when we do the work is I say, you know, 65 to 80% of your time should be spent on fundraising. And what what, what, what? Whose job do you think it is, if not yours, to bring resources into the organization? Well, I started it because I really like, love kids. I really love panda bears like, yeah, I get it, I get it. And I love that. That's what you love. And that's not your job. Your job is to hire other people to hug the panda bears.

Julia Campbell: 28:49

So I want to tell you about my first director of development job. When I, we moved to Virginia, we're from Massachusetts, right after we got married. And I started a job out of domestic violence shelter. And honestly, my office was in a different building from everyone else. They were moving buildings, but I got stuck in the old building, somehow, no one would talk to me and the executive director would barely meet with me. She's very lovely. By the way, she's very, very stressed out and busy, but she would barely meet with me once a week. So it really was a case of oh, we just hired this outside person. They're going to somehow go make magic and never speak to us again and somehow resolve this money. And it was exactly the case of that. The executive director had been a program director, working in the trenches, working the support groups, working the hotline, working in the shelter. She was so good at her job. She was elevated to executive director where she had to HR and facilities and people and all this awful stuff that he hated fundraising was a huge, huge challenge. So what I actually I wanted to bring this back to talk about your fundraising accelerator. As we wrap up, because what I think is so interesting about it is that a lot of the fundraising programs I see out there are for development directors, and then the leadership programs are for executive directors. So I love that this is a fundraising program for executive directors or leaders who definitely don't have the skills and the confidence. You know, they don't they maybe don't know where to start. And I love that it's a community too. So yeah, yeah. Tell me more about sort of what gave you this idea? How can people find out more about uh,

Rhea Wong: 30:36

yeah, yeah. So I mean, the idea is a simple one, it's kind of obvious, because I wasn't Edie who needed to fundraise. And I think a lot of EDs, like the one that you described, it's a very common story here, which is like, I don't really like fundraising, or like, I don't really want to do it, or like, I'm gonna hire a development director, like magical money will come to this. How do you think that's gonna happen? Exactly right? Because I think, you know, when I hired my development director, I told my board like, Listen, this person is going to come on board. And that just means that all of us are going to be working on development way more, because this person will have bandwidth to actually manage it all. But that doesn't mean that she will take care of it, she will put you to work. So if you all don't want to work harder on fundraising, we shouldn't hire her. Like that's full stop. And I think it has to be the media's responsibility. It has to be the board's responsibility. And there's no person in the world who's going to come in and make magical money, like I call the development fairy. The development fairy is not going to come and wave a wand and money is going to fall out of the sky. They are merely a facilitator of getting the fun like the real frontline.