Using Technology as a Complement to Your Fundraising

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93: The People Behind the Products: Using Technology as a Complement to Your Fundraising with Tim Sarrantonio

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“Every single person in the world could be aware of your non-profit, but the reality is that you’ve got to work them down into toward community building.”

– Tim Sarrantonio
Episode #93

Overview

In this episode of What the Fundraising Podcast…

Have you met people in the fundraising space who think tech is a silver bullet? And because of that, they invest a lot of time and resources in making decisions around the tech adoption and fail to anticipate the implementation of the tech solution. It’s quite common, and the truth is that I was guilty of it as an Executive Director too. But we need to start talking about technology differently, as a facilitator and support system, with fundraiser enablement at the center of the product. And that’s exactly what we’re diving into today.

In this episode, Tim Sarrantonio, Director of Corporate Brand at Neon One, shares his insight into the sector, and the new Neon One CRM elements that he is particularly excited about. While Tim has been at Neon One for 10 years, his journey in the sector began as a grant writer. Today, he shares nuggets of wisdom to help make fundraising easier with technology, and how to make the fundraiser’s job easier with training, support, and community. Neon One is all about Connected Fundraising and in this episode we get to dig into what that means and how that impacts the product, priorities, and process for continuous growth and improvement.

Please note: This episode is a part of a very special series called The People Behind the Products. More than ever, nonprofits care about the company behind their technology and service providers. What’s the underlying mission and vision of the company? What do they stand for? And how are they thinking about the sector and serving nonprofits? This series is an opportunity to get to know some of my favorite nonprofit technology companies so that the next time you’re making a tech decision, you can understand a little bit more about the people behind the product. There is no sponsorship or industry money behind the production of this series and the editorial content was at the sole discretion of the What the Fundraising team.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

[02:36] Getting to know Tim: Tim is the director of business development at Neon One. His journey started with grant writing at a day laborer center in Chicago.
[04:50] Understanding generosity experience: Tim defines generosity as time, talent, treasure, and trust. He believes generosity experience is when you focus on a person and not their money, work them into community building, and make them part of the story.
[06:28] Connected fundraising is an internal framework Neon One has adopted for the community-driven process of designing a generosity experience. It comes with three rules, namely:

[09:08] The role of tech in fundraising: Tech should never have the role of a silver bullet in fundraising. It should complement other core drivers and needs of the fundraisers, organization, and donors.
[12:57] Friction and frictionless donor conversations: When a donor decides to give, the giving experience of accepting that donation should be frictionless. But friction can be a very important element in a conversation between a potential donor and a fundraiser when they are figuring out if there is alignment in their priorities.
[14:06] Donor Centrism versus donor primacy: Donor centrism puts a donor at the center of a piece of communication coming from a nonprofit in an effort to motivate them to contribute to the cause. It can be as easy as tweaking marketing copy with empathy for the reader. Donor primacy is centering a donor in the work of the organization or shifting priorities and programs because a donor asked.
[16:38] Dealing with scarcity mindset: Scarcity mindset is one thing that makes fundraisers make some desperate moves. All their efforts are directed towards a revenue line, and they forget to build relationships with donors. To address scarcity mindset, Tim advises employing a generosity experience approach, using technology for donor identification, and listening to the community on what to prioritize.
[21:28] Learn more about Tim and Neon One

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Tim Sarrantonio

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Learn more about Neon One and sign up for a demo here.
Take my FREE Fundraising Superpower Quiz.
If you’re looking to lift your nonprofit to that next level, my Power Partners Formula offers a step-by-step plan to get you there, including how to identify the right partners and design the right campaign. This free masterclass offers a great starting point!

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TIPS AND TOOLS TO IMPLEMENT TODAY

Always look at technology as a tool to make fundraising easier, not a silver bullet.
Shift your focus from money to people. When you focus on people, you build relationships, making it easy for you to invite them to invest in the organization and the work you are doing together..
In fundraising, you can focus on donor centrism in your communications and marketing, that’s about awareness of your audience and speaking directly to them, but you want to avoid donor primacy which is often what happens with donor-centric fundraising.
A scarcity mindset will always drive you to chase every shiny object you see and make you do things that aren't right for your organization. How can you embrace a generosity mindset that leads you to feelings of more abundance?

FAVORITE QUOTES

"Every single person in the world could be aware of your non-profit, but the reality is that you've got to work them down into toward community building."- Tim Sarrantonio
"Connected fundraising is an internal framework that we've adopted for that community-driven process of how we design generosity experience."- Tim Sarrantonio
"Psychologically, people want to give, and they'd rather actually give than buy crap."- Tim Sarrantonio
"It doesn't matter how many shiny objects your board throws at you or how many discussions about CRM reconciliation with the finding. If you don't get the people talking to each other about it and get on the same page, none of that matters."- Tim Sarrantonio
"Connected fundraising offers a really important framework for playing the long game." - Mallory Erickson
"When a design is executed for technology companies, there's an underlying sense that they think the fundraiser is dumb and can't figure it out themselves. They're like, let's make this as easy as possible." - Tim Sarrantonio
"Just because it's easy doesn't mean it has to lose sophistication." - Tim Sarrantonio
"Diversity is just representation of different voices. But what those voices aim to do can be inclusive, and that's what the community does. But ultimately, it's about equity." - Tim Sarrantonio

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I teach nonprofit fundraisers to bring in more gifts from the RIGHT donors… so they can stop hounding people for money. Fundraising doesn’t have to be uncomfortable.