Small Nonprofit: Fundraising Tips, Leadership Strategies, and Community-Centric Solutions - an education journey for your donors with Aneil Gokhale

an education journey for your donors with Aneil Gokhale

11/08/21 • 41 min

Small Nonprofit: Fundraising Tips, Leadership Strategies, and Community-Centric Solutions

Are your donors on the same page as your organization when it comes to understanding the work? Often, we think that there is this great divide between us and our donors - one that is not easily bridged. But Aniel Gokhale at The Toronto Foundation has been creating programs for donors to go on a learning journey to better understand how they can change how they give to align with their values.
What might be considered risky - engaging your donors in conversations about justice, equity and a redistribution of funds - has turned into a very successful fundraising campaign and community building initiative.

Myths that Aneil wants us to walk away from:

Younger generations don’t give. In fact, younger generations often are excited to give but want a little more than just writing a cheque. They want to learn, be involved, and stay engaged. Think of how you can create a community of supporters and bring them along on a learning journey.
We have to tiptoe around tough topics with our donors. It can be hard to challenge your donors beliefs around philanthropy, but definitely not impossible. Aneil has leaned on research their organization does as well as understanding the intentions of donors and their values, to broach topics of privilege and power, as well as funding organizations that have historically been underserved by philanthropy.

Aneil’s thoughts around bring your donors on a learning journey.

You don’t have to be big or well resourced to bring your donors on a learning journey. Now is the time to have important conversations about equity. The world is going through changes and the status quo is being challenged. Your donors want to align their giving with their values but might not know how. Your donors also see you as the expert, so share your knowledge and experience.
Let your experts lead the way. The Toronto Foundation ensured that their new equity priorities were driven by populations they wanted to serve and support. Remember that you are the experts and your donors want to learn from you.
Now is the time to ask! Younger generations care and they want to be engaged in philanthropy. They expect to be focused on justice and equity and they want to be involved. Your donors are likely committed to their community and feel connected to the work they support.

Favourite Quotes from Today’s Episode

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“It was this idea of actually building out a learning journey and taking your donors on an experience where they're giving more than just that sum of money, but they're actually going out there and they are learning a ton of things about this topic that they care deeply about. So we basically took that concept and created a learning journey here in Toronto, focused on resilience, focused on really just trying to make people understand what the needs were in our community and really trying to underscore how they could make a difference and make an impact.”

Resources from this Episode

The Good Partnership

Toronto Foundation

Aneil on Twitter

Email Aneil: [email protected]

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Myths that Aneil wants us to walk away from:

Younger generations don’t give. In fact, younger generations often are excited to give but want a little more than just writing a cheque. They want to learn, be involved, and stay engaged. Think of how you can create a community of supporters and bring them along on a learning journey.
We have to tiptoe around tough topics with our donors. It can be hard to challenge your donors beliefs around philanthropy, but definitely not impossible. Aneil has leaned on research their organization does as well as understanding the intentions of donors and their values, to broach topics of privilege and power, as well as funding organizations that have historically been underserved by philanthropy.

Aneil’s thoughts around bring your donors on a learning journey.

You don’t have to be big or well resourced to bring your donors on a learning journey. Now is the time to have important conversations about equity. The world is going through changes and the status quo is being challenged. Your donors want to align their giving with their values but might not know how. Your donors also see you as the expert, so share your knowledge and experience.
Let your experts lead the way. The Toronto Foundation ensured that their new equity priorities were driven by populations they wanted to serve and support. Remember that you are the experts and your donors want to learn from you.
Now is the time to ask! Younger generations care and they want to be engaged in philanthropy. They expect to be focused on justice and equity and they want to be involved. Your donors are likely committed to their community and feel connected to the work they support.

Favourite Quotes from Today’s Episode

Post your favourite quote on social media to share with us!

Resources from this Episode

The Good Partnership

Toronto Foundation

Aneil on Twitter

Email Aneil: [email protected]

Support the show

Previous Episode

using digital marketing to SCALE with Adora Drake

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Have you ever wondered how your small organization can leverage marketing to build an audience, raise more money, find volunteers or even find service users? I'm sure you've looked at the big organizations and their advertising, whether it be online or in-person and felt a little bit of envy - “I wish we could invest in that.” Well today's guest, Adora Drake, is going to bring her experience in marketing to the level that small nonprofits can actually implement.

Myths that Adora wants us to walk away from:

You need a big budget. The good news is that a lot of online engagement can happen for FREE! If you follow Adora’s SCALE model, you can build community and drive them to action organically, without a budget.
Big ads are the goal. The days of billboards and TV infomercials for nonprofits are limited (or at least, not the goal for small shops). Instead, focus on digital marketing where you can better track results and have a clear picture of who you are targeting and what actions they take because of your ads.

Adora’s SCALE method:

Social Media. You can’t be everywhere, so start by understanding the persona of who you are trying to reach and connect with. Where would they hang out online?
Content. What type of content will engage your audience or target persona? Think of it as an exchange. Often we assume we’re asking people to give to us, but we forget we have things that they value. Be consistent in your content.
Audience. Now is the time to grow your audience, leveraging the insights and engagement you’ve built with your persona and how they have been engaging with your content. You can run ads to target people based on their interests.The platform algorithms can help you find more people!
Lead. Social media is limited as you don’t own the relationship with your community. When the platforms go down (recently Facebook and Instagram), you still want to be able to engage with your audience. Think about giving them something valuable in exchange for their email address.
Execution. Use your email to nurture your list and lead them into a call to action - to give, volunteer, etc. Again, consistency is key - keep those relationships warm and engaged to build a “know, like, and trust” factor.

Favourite Quotes from Today’s Episode
Post your favourite quote on social media to share with us!

“So no matter if you're in a for-profit or nonprofit, you're always going to have people that get on the list and they just don't stay on the list. There's nothing you can do about that. And it's actually a good thing. And I'm going to tell you why it's a good thing, because if they get on the list and they're not engaged, they don't really care about what you guys are talking about, then why have them on the list? It's just a vanity. I would rather have a really small list. Actually. I would really have five people that are really engaged on my list. Then they have a hundred people and one person maybe opens the email.”

“And so that persona represents that one person, that one ideal, which we call maybe a donor or a volunteer that you want to attract. You want to grab their attention. And so, instead of looking at a bunch of people and trying to get all these different people's interests, you want to just narrow it down to “who is this person?” Why would they be interested in my organization? And what sh

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Next Episode

disrupting philanthropy with Yonis Hassan

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Fundraising and philanthropy make a lot of people very uncomfortable. A big part of that is our discomfort with money generally, but a lot of it is how our sector and philanthropy have been structured and the power systems it upholds.

Our sector faces challenges related to power, change, and resource redistribution for impact. In today's episode, Yonis Hassan, Co-Founder, and CEO of The Justice Fund discusses one of his biggest challenges with the philanthropic sector - the hoarding of money in foundations. According to the Justice Fund’s most recent campaign, Move The Money, charitable foundations in Canada are holding onto over $85 billion dollars in charitable assets. If distributed, this money would create transformative change in providing security and proper access to opportunities and long-term resources to underserved communities. Join the conversation as Yonis shares why the time to use this money is now. It’s time to call for change.

Myths that Yonis wants us to walk away from:

Preserving a foundation’s capital over a long time is in the best interest of the public. It’s not. There's going to be more money coming into this sector. There’s going to be more innovation, more creativity, and more risk-taking. Yonis urges the charitable sector to use the abundance of taxpayer’s assets in a timely manner when we have a plethora of crises facing our communities.
Small nonprofits cannot make big changes in the philanthropy sector. Whether you are a grassroots organization, an unincorporated organization, a volunteer, a board member, someone who just donates to organizations, there will be an opportunity for you to speak up around these issues.

Yonis’ thoughts around reforming philanthropy:

Changing the status quo. The foundations and funds in our sector have amassed a total of $85 billion. Reforming philanthropy entails leveraging the abundance of these assets to have a greater impact and serve the most vulnerable communities, especially during times of crisis.
Stepping up as a collective sector. We must act collectively and have an open discussion about charitable laws and how they contribute to discrimination and continued oppression of indigenous communities in order to mobilize resources that will improve the situation of the vulnerable populations.
It’s time to speak up. Yonis encouraged the philanthropic community to speak up. Whether it's speaking with your municipal council or your MP or MPP, your donors, or your board members, stand up and urge them to take action and make these legislative reforms.

Favorite Quotes from Today’s Episode
Post your favorite quote on social media to share with us!

“With over $85 billion of charitable assets in this country, we can be using that to invest in affordable housing, to invest in climate financing, to invest in transit, to invest in cooperatives, but we choose not to. So, expecting the federal government to implement some changes to hold us accountable, to hold the philanthropic sector accountable.”

Resources from this Episode

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