How to Bend Hearts to Your Cause with Sandy Rees

There are more than 10 million nonprofits and non-governmental organizations worldwide. Nonprofit organizations account for 5-10 percent of the United States' economy and about 10 percent of U.S. employment.

Nonprofits can be a force for good in the world, whether they are organized as charitable institutions, civic leagues, social welfare organizations, or social advocacy groups. They can tackle a variety of issues, ranging from healthcare to animal welfare to arts and culture. In a world where societal problems are aggravated by the pandemic, nonprofits give assurance that there are people ready to help those who are in need.

Just in time to help you tweak and improve your year-end fundraising campaign, my guest this week is the small nonprofit whisperer, Sandy Rees. 

Sandy shows founders and leaders of small nonprofits how to fully fund their dream so they can make the difference they want to make in the world. She has helped dozens of small nonprofits go from “nickel-and-dime fundraising” to adding 6 figures to their bottom line. As the host of Fundraising TV,  she shows her students how to find ideal donors, connect through authentic messaging, and build relationships that stand the test of time, so that fundraising becomes easy and predictable.

Here are some of the topics we discussed:

• The biggest mistakes Sandy sees when people start a nonprofit - minefields to avoid
• Actionable ways that even the smallest nonprofits can adjust their fundraising strategy 
• The 3 pieces of the fundraising puzzle you need to get right 
• How to combat the dreaded "overhead myth" and raise the money that you need to accomplish your mission

Connect with Sandy:
www.GetFullyFunded.com
 https://www.facebook.com/groups/FundraisingforFounders
https://www.facebook.com/getfullyfunded
https://www.instagram.com/getfullyfunded/

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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 Mastercard, Facebook, 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: 0:02

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. All right. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the nonprofit nation podcast. I'm your host, Julia Campbell. And I am here today with Sandy Reese very, very special guest, I am so excited that you're going to benefit from her wealth of knowledge and fundraising expertise. Sandy shows founders and leaders of small nonprofits how to fully fund their dream, so they can make the difference they want to make in the world. She's helped dozens of small nonprofits go from nickel and dime fundraising, to adding six figures to their bottom line. As the host of fundraising TV, she shows her students how to find ideal donors connect through authentic messaging and build relationships that stand the test of time. So that fundraising becomes easy and predictable, something I think we all want. So welcome, Sandy, thanks for being here.

Sandy Rees: 1:50

My pleasure. I'm so excited to be here. Yeah. Well, let's begin with your story, which I know can sound very intimidating, but maybe a little snippet of your story how you really got started and came around to the work that you're doing today. Sure thing? Well, I think like many of us, I did not grow up saying, I want to raise money for a living. I want to be on fundraiser. I don't think any of us do that. We fall into it. Yeah, I think you know that. Nowadays, there are classes and courses and degrees you can get in nonprofit management things. And back when I started, none of that existed. I was doing marketing for a corporate staffing company in Knoxville, Tennessee, had an opportunity to go for a tour at the local rescue mission where I had been a donor. And I was curious. So I went even though it was in a little sketchy, sodden town was all scary to go, but in my mind, it was going to be safe, right? So I when me being me, I'm asking lots of questions. And the next thing I know, I get a call from the CEO. And he says, Hey, do you want to join our board? Well, isn't that what we do? We get anybody with a pulse. And we say, Oh, please be on our board. I didn't have any idea what that meant. And I was flattered. And I said, Sure. You know, kind of flattering, right? Looking back on it. I'm so clear why they did that, because it was kind of awful. But it was the old white guys club on their board was all older men. I was one of three women on that board. And I was by far the youngest person. By far the youngest person. I didn't really know any of that, at the time, whatever. I was just excited and realize really fast. I was in over my head. I learned a lot being on that board. And about a year later, they had a job that came open in their resource development office. And I looked at it and said, Hmm, that's marketing. I can do that. So I talked to the President, he and I agreed I had the skill set. So I resigned from the board quit my job took that one never looked back. I was in charge of what I found out later, was all the things nobody else wanted to do. Oh, yes. Yeah. Right. So my job was run special events. So the fundraising events, and then all the other events we did for the homeless. I was in charge of volunteers, which was no small task, because we had a team of 10 people per meal, three meals a day, seven days a week. 365. So volunteer, like that was a whole job just in itself. Wow. Oh, yeah. And they gave me the thrift store to run because it was failing, and they didn't know what else to do with it. Right? Just dump it on there. I knew, right? I'm the kind of person I'm like, okay, whatever, I'll figure it out. And so I did figured that all out. within about three months, I had the thrift store turned around, so we were actually making money. And I'll never forget the day I got a call from the board chair and he said, What are you doing? I'm like, excuse me, Frank. What do you mean, he goes, I just saw the finance reports. I want to know how you just had a profit of $10,000 on the thrift store when we used to be in the red. So that was fun. That was you know, that's just kind of thing that I like to do. So anyway, I was there for about a year then left. Where are you doing just out of curiosity, just little things that made a lot of sense. Little things like it wasn't open enough. So we kept it open. And more often we raise the price of a pair of pants from $2 to $3, we, you know, we started realizing when we had things like an expensive dining room set that should be selling for$2,000, we didn't put it on the floor and offer it for 200. So we just did some very simple things that made a lot of sense. And we were making a lot of money real fast. And we're also doing a better job of taking care of the homeless, because our store was downtown. And so when the homeless needed a new pair of pants, or a dry pair of shoes, or socks, or whatever, they would come in there, bring a voucher or not a voucher, and we would just take care of them. And so with the store being open more, we actually were doing a better job of making sure they had what they needed, which I was really proud of, it was kind of funny, we would have days when it would snow. And the rest of the staff was like gray, we get to stay at home. And I'm calling the store manager to say one of us has got to get in an open today, because they will need dry clothes if they've been sleeping out under a bridge. So one of us has to go open the store today for them. So that was fun. Good times, good times. So like I said, I was there for about a year then went to the food bank, that's when the skies opened, and the angels saying and I knew that this was the work I'm supposed to be doing. I really had a great situation in that my board and my boss pretty much said, here's the budget, go raise money. And I said, Great. Let me figure this out. And how hard can this be. And I did simple things like the This was in Knoxville, Tennessee, the food bank in Nashville was just a few steps ahead of us in their growth and the things that they were doing. So I would drive to Nashville and sit down with their team. And I would say, what are you doing that's working? What ideas can I take back to Knoxville and us there and I learned so much and they were great. They would like oh, here's a sample of our holiday appeal. And oh, here's the sponsorship invitation we use for our event. And here's this and here's a that, well, then that saved me a ton of time because I wasn't reinventing the wheel, right? So we grew really, really fast. There were about 1200 donors when I got there five years later, when I left it was 8500. And we had grown the the annual revenue was about 250 when I got there and it was 1.2 million when I left. So I had some fun raising money. It took a minute, it took me a while to figure out what worked through a lot of spaghetti at the wall the first year. But once I started figuring things out and got some traction, the growth was explosive. It was crazy how fast we were growing and, and I was adding team and figuring out okay, I'm not just a lone ranger fundraiser now Now I have staff. And we have this volunteer team. And we have interns and I have contractors and like all thing going on, I was super proud of that to be able to build that knowing that I did my job well. And people, eight people in our area had access to food who maybe didn't before, I was super proud of that.

Julia Campbell: 7:48

Well tell me about the work that you do right now. And what kind of clients you work with? I know actually, we became connected because I was following your work with animal shelters. So I know that's a vertical that you do a lot of work with. But what other kind of clients do you help?

Sandy Rees: 8:03

In 2005? I realized that become unemployable.

Julia Campbell: 8:08

Wait, was that no, I was unemployed. I became unemployable in 2010. Yeah, years later,

Sandy Rees: 8:14

it's not working out for me to work for somebody else. That's when I started getting fully funded. So that was 2005. So here we are, like, almost 16 years later, because I wanted to help people in a bigger way. And so the what I figured out really fast is the kind of clients that we do best with are, they're very young. I love working with founders, because they're so entrepreneurial in their spirit. They're very passionate, they're very dedicated, they just need somebody to show them the path. So work with a lot of very young organizations, and we work with a lot of people who are, they just feel a little stumped. They know what can be done. They can't figure it out from the cells. And the truth is, none of us can cut our own hair, it's really hard to see your own situation, it's so much easier to have somebody else look at it and go, Oh, what you really need to do is this, or here's the opportunity. It's right under your nose that you're missing. And my team is really good at that we're really good at systems. So when people find themselves spinning their wheels, and they just they're doing the same thing over and over. They're wasting a ton of time, we're really good at helping them systematize things so that they can better leverage their resources and their team. That's a lot of what we do. Now we do work with a lot of animal groups, mostly because we're all a bunch of animal lovers around him. So while we work with a lot of traditional dog and cat rescues, we do a lot of work with horse rescues and farm animal sanctuaries. We've helped rabbit rescues guinea pig rescues, like unique rescues. Yeah, we got a guinea pig guy. So we've done a lot of that kind of thing. We also do a lot of work with folks who are doing basic human needs. So homeless shelters, housing, food, even into things like domestic violence and some kids programs. We do a lot of work with organizations that are international in scope, so maybe they're based in the US with their 501 c three, and then they work in Uganda or Liberia or Kenya, or Guatemala, or any number of countries just making a difference helping people.

Julia Campbell: 10:14

What's the biggest mistake that you see, when people start a nonprofit? You can pick more than one.

Sandy Rees: 10:23

There's a lot. One of the biggest ones is I think people mistakenly believe that once they set up a nonprofit that the money will just pour in. Yes, and it does not work that way. Now, in 1950, it might have worked that way. If you set up a nonprofit people, people, you're doing good work in the community here some money, it does not work like that. So just because you have a nonprofit does not mean money will pour in or that people will find you or that you even qualify for grants from the gets from the get go, because it doesn't work that way. So I think that's the harshest reality that we run into is people going, oh, oh, I have to actually work to raise money. Oh, and this is harder than I thought it was going to be. Can you help me? With a lot of people who call looking for a magic bullet? Can you just give me a list of donors? And I say, No, I'm sorry, you have to build your own list of donors. Because another myth is that people think, well, I'll just read the list of all the households in the most expensive neighborhoods in town, and those people will give money if I send them a letter. Not true. Just because people have money doesn't mean they give it away. And if they give do give it away, doesn't mean they'll give it to that particular cause. Yeah. So I think there's a lot of myths and misconceptions around what works and what doesn't, you know, even down to and I know, you'll nod your head at this, some people think, Oh, well, I'll just go set up a Facebook page, and I'll just post on Facebook and the donations will pour in, right. And also, it does not work, you still have to build your audience and you have to have a good message and then has to be the right ask and the whole thing.

Julia Campbell: 11:58

You wrote a really fantastic post that I shared with all of my clients, and I'll link to it in the show notes, how to get people from your Facebook page, to become donors, or to get them onto your email list. Because I agree with you, I think that is such a huge myth that, you know, we were just really sold a bill of goods way back when when we could set up nonprofit Facebook pages, or Instagram accounts or LinkedIn, company pages, whatever it might be. And people think you just set it up and hang out your shingle. And the donations are going to come in or you're going to be discoverable or found or you'll be you'll go viral without very little effort. And as we know, that doesn't, that does not work. So I think another I would like to talk more about some of the things that maybe really small nonprofits maybe get wrong, or what are some ways that they can adjust their their fundraising strategy once they really kind of get started. And they they know who they are, they know who to talk to.

Sandy Rees: 13:01

I think there are really three pieces of fundraising that anybody has to get right. And after you've been doing it for a while, it's easier. But for really young organizations, this is what we teach. This is kind of core of how fundraising TV works. And that is you have to build a donor base of people who love your cause. So it can't just be anybody. You don't want to just go shotgun blast everybody like, oh, everybody's a donor. No, they're not. You got to find people whose heart is already bent towards your cause. When you do that, they're going to give so if you have an animal shelter or a rescue, and you go find people who think that it's really horrible to mistreat animals, they already care about the cause, even if they haven't heard of your organization. So finding when we call the right people getting the right message in place, and what that means is you can't just beg fundraising is not begging. It's not please help us. It's not we have a goal of $10,000 Please help us reach our goal. We have to inspire people to give because the truth is nobody wakes up in the morning and says, Ah, I feel like given some money away today, where's

Julia Campbell: 14:09

the nonprofit? Got my

Sandy Rees: 14:11

butt, okay, she's you know, nobody does this, your average people do not do this. So it's about it's about understanding that when you have a nonprofit, if you start a nonprofit, or you lead one, you are By default, the fundraiser and it is your job to build the inspiration required for somebody to be motivated to give just because you put an email out that says we need money does not mean they're going to get we have to inspire. If you start watching the groups that do this really well. They have amazing photos and heart tugging video and the words the copy that they use, grabs your heart, and you're like, where where's my credit card? I gotta find it right now because I got to give towards this. So that's that's the other part of what we have to do is understand that we have to find the right people. We got to have the right message and then we have to really look It's a timing, that we have to build relationships with donors that, yeah, you raise money when you have a need. But you also have to think about fundraising from the donors point of view. And if all you do is show up in their inbox saying, Give money, give money, give money, give money, that's exhausting. And they're going to unsubscribe, you have to build a relationship. So one of the things that I teach is you kind of really think about when are your asks, and when are your non asks, and what are those non asks look like? And are they warm? Do they make the donor feel gooey inside? Does it meet that donors needs to feel confident and to feel warm and fuzzy that they made a great decision to give to your organization, and that is the piece most people don't pay any attention to? All they think about is Oh, my gosh, we got to have $10,000 for our program, next month, raise money, they run around with their hair on fire, trying to raise money, when in fact, if they would back up and think about what do we need to do to give our donors a great experience, then when you do need to ask for money? It's a very simple request, it is actually not hard ask. I absolutely

Julia Campbell: 16:12

love that. So I was taking notes. So I love what you said about the message not being helped us reach our goal, because this is something I struggle with a lot with my clients, all of this, you know, the How are you showing up? When you're not asking someone to do something? That's just as important as crafting that compelling ask that's going to take someone from a prospect to a donor? And then how do you actually convey the impact? Talk about the Why don't talk about the what and the how. So you saying well, we only need five more $1,000 to reach our goal. To me, that sounds like it's your problem, and not really my problem. You know, that we have to think about our donors in that way. Maybe not as kind of callous as that. But unless there's a matching gift, I think that's the only time I would say, you know, give us $5,000, or we won't meet our matching gift or something I don't know, that might be the only case that I would really tell people that you're not going to meet your goal or that you're halfway to your goal. I think it's okay to put it in an email. But it can't be the focus of the message is just like you said, That's not what's going to pull the donors heartstrings or really get them to pay attention to get them to feel gooey, which I love that you said. And to get them to that place where they feel like they're taking that meaningful step to making a meaningful difference and a problem that they that they care about.

Sandy Rees: 17:45

Yep. So one of the things that that we kind of figured this out about five years ago, we've been teaching it a lot. And this is actually the very first lesson that we created for fundraising TV, something that we call a core number. And it's a way to express what it costs you to deliver one unit of service. And it works. It's it can be a little hard to figure out sometimes just depending on the organization's mission, and especially if they've got some mission drift going on. That can be a little hard. But let me use a go.

Julia Campbell: 18:13

I definitely want to talk about this. Because for clients that don't that can't say $100 serves five people I get excited. Yeah.

Sandy Rees: 18:23

This, this and this works. So we we work on a lot of animal organizations. And we figured this out for one of our shelters over in Cape Girardeau, Missouri several years ago. So what we do is we look we said, okay, your basic unit of service is one day and night of care for one animal. And they've got those numbers, they can figure that out. Yeah, they do some other stuff. They do some spay neuter, whatever. But we're like, nope, this is your main program. Let's figure this out right here. So we looked at, we looked at how many animals what's their average length of stay multiply that out. And we looked at the total expenses. And we did this for a calendar year, total expenses, not just direct expenses of food and medicines and vaccines and all that. But the thing that a lot of people get hung up on is there are no unnecessary expenses in a nonprofit. Or they would cut it every expense is necessary to running that organization. Even if you're paying your accountant to prepare your 990 that has to be done. Somebody's got to do it and you need it right. Even if they're paying the pest control bill for the food pantry, you have to have that that's not unnecessary. Yeah, we use every expense, absolutely everything. And we divided out so you figure out your basic unit of service, then you figure out what your total units of service you delivered, and you divide it out with the total expenses and it will tell you what it costs you per unit of service for that calendar year. Okay, so what we figured out for the shelter was$6.20 $6.20. So on average $6.20 is what it costs them to take care of dog or cat and that included food shelter, veterinary care, vaccines, playgroups, everything toys, enrichment activities, everything. So now we can turn to the donors and say your gift of $6.20 will provide all these things for a homeless dog or cat that changed the game

Julia Campbell: 20:21

that completely changes the game. So that does work. I know, there's been a lot of discussion around having those kinds of numbers on your donation page, do you find that increases the number of people that actually make the donation?

Sandy Rees: 20:35

Yeah, there's a couple of weird pieces of it that make it work in my opinion. One is people always say, Well, why don't you round it down to$6? No, 620 or 753, or 5156? Whatever it is, the weird number subliminally builds trust, because people think, oh, you crunch those numbers. You know, your numbers, you actually calculated that you know what you're doing? Yeah, it's it's a subliminal psychological thing. But people automatically trust you when they see that weird number. And the thing that I think really works about it is when you can tell somebody, it's it costs this much money to do this thing to get this outcome. Now you've taken all of the fundraising off of the organization. Now, it's not about you. It's not about you asking and being told no, it's not about it's not about your budget, your need to keep the lights on your need to pay the staff. It's about taking care of that one dog or cat for one day, it focuses you on the program, and that's where your focus needs to be.

Julia Campbell: 21:33

Absolutely. Oh, that's so good. Okay, so core number, that's definitely a great tip. Yeah. How do nonprofits best combat that? The dreaded overhead mess? And I know for a lot of people listening, a lot of my audience, they are fundraisers, they are marketers. And they tend to fall into that bucket, unfortunately. So how can we combat this? I

Sandy Rees: 22:01

have a video on my YouTube channel that actually walks through an example of this, but one of them, here's what I do. First of all, you have to understand that there's a lot of expenses that need to be calculated in with the total program costs that usually get left out because people mistakenly call them overhead. So let me go back to a food bank example, I used to work at a food bank, when you have a giant warehouse for food, you are going to have pests if you don't have pest control. pest control is a direct program expense, it is not an admin expense. And yet most people will say, well, that's not about putting the food directly in somebody's hand. So it's an admin expense. But it's not. You got to have that if your program is going to run. And there's a lot of other things as well, that need to probably be allocated to that program that a lot of people say, no, it's it's overhead salaries. So let's talk about that for a minute. Most people say, oh, salaries, that's overhead, no, if your food pantry is going to run, or your animal shelter, your after school program, whatever it is driven by people, every nonprofit needs people to operate. And there is at least a portion of almost every staff person and their pay that needs to be allocated to that program. So when I was at the food bank, we had probably six or eight people that that's all they did was deliver food during the day or pick up food during the day. That was all direct program expenses. And that's where it needed to go. So it's a matter of looking at your budget, and going line item by line item to think about where does this allocate? So I literally took an Excel sheet. When I was at the food bank, I did this, all the line items down the left, and I listed all the programs across the top plus administrative plus fundraising. And I went line by item by line item to figure out how does this allocate, either based on people who worked in the program, or if it was based in the in the building? Well, what's the percentage of square footage of the whole building that that program uses, and I'm going to use that percentage to extrapolate out the pest control and the utilities and things like that. So when you do it that way, what you end up with is a very small amount that is true overhead and fundraising expense. And if you're doing this right, building relationships with your donors, that's really easy to cover.

Julia Campbell: 24:16

Wow, I know I the overhead myth really bothers me. Also, just my own personal pet peeve. I can't stand those charity rating sites. So sorry, if you are one of the cheery rating sites listening, because that's what it measures it measures what percentage you're spending on overhead. And how can you quantify a person that is actually delivering food? I mean, you couldn't have the program without that person salary. And that requires benefits and that requires insurance and that requires all sorts of other things that I think we love them to overhead. So that's a really great tip to put it on the Excel spreadsheet and divided it up that way. Hey, there. I'm interrupting this episode to share an absolutely free training that created that getting nonprofits of all sizes, big results. sure you've been spending hours on social media. But what can you actually show for it? With all this posting and instagramming? and tick talking? Does it really translate into action? In my free training, I'll show you exactly how to take people from passive fans to passionate supporters. And I'll give you specific steps to create social media content that actually converts, head on over to nonprofits, that convert.com. Again, that's nonprofits that convert calm, and start building a thriving social media community, for your nonprofit right now, without a big team, lots of tech overwhelm, or getting stuck on the question, What do I do next? Let me show you how it's done. I can't wait to see what you create. So I mean, at the time of this recording, we are seeing vaccines roll out, we're seeing a lot of states open up, we're seeing a lot of people getting back to you know, sort of maybe a next normal quote unquote, post COVID. I we're definitely still in COVID. But what do you think changed? or What did you see change for better and change? Maybe for worse, during COVID?

Sandy Rees: 26:30

Well, I think obviously, a lot of people got real creative with virtual activities, right? Everything from our animal shelters, doing curbside adoptions, you know, and really taking a lot of their process online, which was what they needed to do. Anyway, I saw a lot of them streamline and get better systems in place, which they needed to do to hybrid events, or virtual events, I think we're gonna see more hybrid events going forward. And I think what the virtual event did for people is it forced them to think about the attendee experience. Mm hmm. You know, where before people are like, Oh, well does, we'll have a party, we'll do it in my grandfather's barn, you know, that kind of mentality, we're going to do this event, because we're doing the event, people will come and they'll spend money will raise money. That was the old thinking. And now I think people are, in general, the successful ones, when you phrase it that way, the successful ones are thinking about the attendee experience. Yes. And that really, I think, is what makes a difference in a successful event and a non successful event. Absolutely.

Julia Campbell: 27:31

So I saw a lot of transitioning to virtual. And people went kind of kicking and screaming into the virtual world into online fundraising, into peer to peer. And the other thing that I really noticed, I wonder if you had seen it, the organizations that did keep their fundraising programs going, were the ones that were pretty successful and kind of remained sustainable. Unfortunately, I saw a lot of organizations I support, not asking for money not communicating. So you know, in terms of your clients, did you see that a lot of organizations were maybe hesitant to communicate, or were they did they still continue their their programs during COVID?

Sandy Rees: 28:16

I had one or two that said, Oh, we can't ask for money right now. It's COVID. And people are hurting. And I said, Okay, wait. Yes, it's true that a lot of people are out of work. And yes, it's true. There will be people who will not be able to give but there are still lots of people out there who can. So if you don't ask, the answer is definitely going to be no. So you got to get out there and ask one of our clients had their best year ever last year and just crazy story. Now it is food pantry. And there's a lot of people say, Yeah, but it's food pantry. But they did a lot of things, right. They did a lot of things very, very right. They immediately took to Facebook to use it and leverage it as a tool. So when things first happened, and they said, okay, we can't give food out the way we used to people used to park come into the building, then a lot of people in the building they said we're gonna have to go to a drive thru model, and lots of food pantries did this. So they changed the drive thru model. The development director gets on Facebook immediately and does a live and says Hey, everybody, please spread the word. If you're coming to pick up food tomorrow, we are going to a drive thru model and here's what it's going to look like she's she is huffing through like sweating and out of breath have been through the warehouse talking about all this setting it all up. And it was really interesting because what we did not expect was the donors and the volunteers all leaned in, they all went, Oh my gosh, you found a way to keep going, I want to support you and people started hitting the donate button. Because just have that transparency, that authenticity that like this organization's brand is about do what it takes to keep our needs our neighbors fed and they leaned into their brand. And so they were coming up with all kinds of creative ways to Keep things going to keep the volunteer safe the ones that could still come. They just leaned into all of it. And their fundraising exploded. Yeah, yeah, exploded to the point that we got too late last summer, we had to have some interesting conversations about, well, Is it wrong to set up an endowment in 2020? is, uh, you know, what do you what do you do about this? Well, we need, you know, how do we communicate this? How do we message this to our audience in our community. So it was really fun to be part of that and watch them but boy, there was just something magic about them being very authentic and leaning into it that the community just ate up with a fork and spoon.

Julia Campbell: 30:37

So you know, to me, that mantra of do what it takes, do what it takes to keep our neighbors fed. That is something that really appeals to me, it might not appeal to all donors, but I know personally that the do what it takes mentality. I know that a lot of nonprofits listening have that mentality, bootstrapping, bootstrapping boot, that's a new word that's dropping scrappy. nonprofits, just, you know, doing really whatever it takes to stay open, to stay providing services, even if it's just at the bare minimum. So I know that it was a really tough year. But I love hearing stories like that there are tons of stories in my area as well. So Sandy, I really enjoyed having you today. I would love I wish that we could get together in person. Maybe sometime I'll come down to Tennessee, please, I've never been actually surprisingly, if you ever up here, let me know. But where can people follow you find you get in touch with your team and learn more about what you do.

Sandy Rees: 31:37

Our home base online is our website and get fully funded.com. And if you want to share that if if anybody was really intrigued with this idea of core number, we actually have a core number calculator on our website, where you just plug the numbers in, and it'll do the math for you. So you don't have to think too hard, which is kind of cool. So get fully funded comm you'll find tons of resources there, from blog posts, to ebooks, and all kinds of things there. We hang out mostly on Facebook. And for those who are really resonating with us Come join our community. It's free. It's facebook.com slash groups slash fundraising for founders. I think if you just search fundraising for founders, you'll find it we'll link that sir. Yeah, that's our online community. We're hanging out there providing additional resources in that group, answering questions, my whole team is in there. So definitely check that out. If you really like what you've heard today, and you want to come check out fundraising TV, fundraising tv.com. It is an online course that will walk you through this process of learning how to identify the right people with the right message at the right time to raise the money you need to fully fund your budget. It's a great little program. It has a lot of surprise and delight in it. It's delivered in 10 minute chunks and professionally polished videos. So know our long webinars to deal with.

Julia Campbell: 32:54

That's what's great about it.

Sandy Rees: 32:56

I know right? So check it out fundraising tv.com.

Julia Campbell: 33:00

Okay, well, thank you so much, really appreciate it. And yeah, I will link to everything in the show notes. And we will let people know how they can get more information on getting their missions fully funded. So thanks again. My pleasure. Thank you. Hey there, I wanted to say thank you for tuning in to my show, and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoy today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app. And you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to. And then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode. But until then, you can find me on Instagram at Julia Campbell seven, seven. keep changing the world. Nonprofit unicorn