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Nonprofit Hub Radio
Whether starting a nonprofit or taking an existing cause to the next level, The Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast is about breaking down how nonprofits can grow. Each episode features an interview with a sector star with insight, stories, or ideas that can take your nonprofit from good to excellence. Join host Meghan Speer every week to make your good go further!
Nonprofit Hub Radio
Transforming Nonprofit Generosity: Building Donor-Centric Cultures and Sustainable Fundraising Strategies
Join us for an enlightening conversation with Malcolm Sproull, a fundraising enterprise architect whose journey from the commercial sector to the nonprofit world is nothing short of inspiring. Malcolm's insights, drawn from his Scottish-Irish heritage and his grandmother's teachings on generosity, offer a profound understanding of philanthropy's cultural nuances. As he discusses his book "Cracking Generosity," Malcolm unveils the unique challenges nonprofits face, including the critical need for infrastructure to manage cash flow—key insights for anyone in the nonprofit sector or interested in philanthropy. This episode promises to equip listeners with valuable knowledge on building trust with donors and crafting sustainable fundraising strategies, making it a must-listen for those dedicated to making a difference in the nonprofit world. Discover how nonprofit boards can transform their organizations by fostering a culture of generosity, even when they lack a philanthropic background.
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Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub podcast. I'm your host, megan Spear, and joining me today is Malcolm Sproul who, title-wise, I'm so interested to dig into this as a fundraising enterprise architect. This is not a title I've ever heard of before, so I'm very excited to dig into that and also to have a chance to talk about his new book, cracking Generosity. So we are very excited to have you join us all the way from New Zealand. I think you are actually my first international guest on the podcast, at least this year. Malcolm, welcome in.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. It's a very big privilege to be part of this. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my pleasure. So tell us a little bit about your journey in the nonprofit world and what led you to authoring this book.
Speaker 3:Well, if I work backwards from the job title, fundraising, enterprise Architect is a rather grand title, I think you'll agree. But it's the end result of me spending 20 plus years in the non-profit sector here in New Zealand after having come out of the commercial sector in sales and marketing, and my background is business and revenue generation, profit making that sort of thing, and so when I got into the non-profit sector, I found that there was an absence of the infrastructure needed to manage cash flow and enthuse people to give money to your good cause, and there was a marvellous supply of extraordinarily passionate people, but there was a real weakness in the systems and processes the boring stuff actually, that keeps the wheel turning, and I don't want to say that I'm boring, but some people do. My children do sometimes, that's universal, regardless of what country.
Speaker 2:It's a fair and child's play. Yeah, that's the universal standard.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, man, you're boring Dad. But anyway, my interest is in the detail of the mechanisms that actually keep the cash flow going, and that's everything inside a non-profit fundraising side of the equation. It's not just the specific method by which you pull the money out maybe a gala or a major donor program, it's all of those. So I jumped into the non-profit sector, straight out of the commercial sector, into my first non-profit in 2002. And quite honestly, it was a combination of shocking new and wonderful, because I fell in love with philanthropic people. You know it was so different to dealing with folk in the commercial sector who were sort of just, you know, consumer, profit-oriented, let's make more money kind of people you know.
Speaker 3:And then I found these human beings in the country who would be intentionally setting aside money in their lifestyle to give it away to good causes. I mean, they were setting up their finances to intentionally give money away. And that aligned beautifully with my grandmother's teachings when I was 15. She had a finger like that in front of my face at 15 saying Malcolm, there's only one good reason to make more money than you need and that's so you've got more to give away. And that was her principle. So I blame my grandmother for being in this interview today, so it's her fault.
Speaker 2:It's a good call out to be, though, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Because she ultimately sewed that into us that making money is one thing, but when you're making money, put some aside. To be given away was an integrated part of our culture, and so this is my expression of a career shift and a job that I hope honors my grandmother.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that so much. What a great philosophy. And everyone wants to talk about the legacy that they leave behind. But here you are. I'm assuming a lot older, not a lot older, but definitely above 15.
Speaker 3:Have a look at this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been there that you're still impacted by that, so much so that you've turned around and made a career out of it. So I'm sure that she would be very proud to know that legacy is living on.
Speaker 3:I hope so, and she meant a lot to me. I mean she was a very big part of my youth. But there was a cultural thing that was Scottish Irish in its origins you know we were a colony of the British Empire here. You know we were a colony of the British Empire here and they brought with them from Ireland and Scotland the idea that you know, we are on a bound and there's a duty of care for your neighbour, and so everybody came over with a culture of looking after one another and a little bit of setting aside money to help one another out when times were down.
Speaker 2:You know was part of that culture and it's part of that that I'm trying to, I guess, continue. Yeah, that's great. So, before we dig too far into the book itself, I'm curious to hear from your perspective, perspective when we talk about generosity, yeah, that being a value, I think it's interesting that you point back to the scotch, irish roots and that's something that that honor and that duty was very much a part of that culture and then it infiltrated through, you know, down the generations across the world, down to new zealand. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on, as you have studied, the cracking of generosity, which I'm going to assume you've cracked the code. I don't want to pat myself on the back but I think I have yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is that something that you see applicable, like would it be as applicable to cracking the code here in the us, or is it culturally to europe, to new zealand? Is generosity culture based or is it something that where the formula is going to work because generosity at its core is such a human value?
Speaker 3:Really good question. Love that, Thank you. What I've found is so. My research here in New Zealand is based on 10 charities that I worked in and observed from the inside over a 20-year period.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:But during that time I also researched the global nature of philanthropy and generosity and there's an awful lot of common denominators. So you know, let's have a look at America, for example USA, canada both essentially colonies that had people migrate from Europe to fill them up right, and those people came to those colonies with the culture from that European foundation, and that European foundation, depending on your roots, had a lot of philanthropy, was an integrated part, or sort of generosity was an integrated part of how society functioned once upon a time. So they brought that with them and what I found when I've been talking with folk from the States, from Canada and from Australia and from the UK, south Africa, all over the place, there's a real commonality about what I call citizen generosity. The biggest barrier isn't the absence of that culture. The biggest barrier is that constant issue of trust. I'm keen to support financially a thing that really matters in my heart, but can I trust that organization to apply that money the way I would like it to be applied?
Speaker 3:And you know that kind of issue is the battle, but in a country like New Zealand. The other thing about New Zealand as a society from which the lessons can be applied globally is that we are a guinea pig society. It's a bit of a strange thing. I mean, while we've also made Lord of the Rings and Peter Jackson's world famous out of New Zealand and movies, I hate to tell you this, but Yogi Bear was filmed down here, you know. Just so you know.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that.
Speaker 3:And the last Yogi Bear movie. You know so, the all time American Yogi Bear here in New Zealand. So a heap of movies shot here that are made to look like they're in the States because we've got landscape that's really quite beautiful. But apart from that, we've got citizens in New Zealand who are very much globetrotters. We're 5 million people in New Zealand and 1 million of us live overseas, and pretty much 3 million of the 5 million who live here have done what they call an OE overseas experience. They travel the globe.
Speaker 3:We travel quite a lot so we're well-versed with the nature of other countries and other cultures. But we're also a replica. We're also a nice little model of consumer minds that are not too different from anybody else. In Pittsburgh we buy the same stuff, we eat the same food, we consume in a similar fashion, and so there's real parallels and so it's kind of, you know, white, anglo-saxon, protestant worldview Plonked, plonked here and replicated there. You know so the data I've found and accumulated for the book. When I've presented it to people in Oxford, in the UK, or people in Canada or in Australia, they go oh yeah, that's us, because we've got some real commonality, and a lot of that commonality does come from the colonial nature of those places. The roots are all quite similar, are all quite similar, and so I've found that when I've tested these 12 steps of my book with people across the globe, it resonates in pretty much every country.
Speaker 2:So when we talk about this concept of generosity, then, especially around I need to trust that organization to be a good steward of the money that I am being generous with. Are there common traits that you have as you've studied these organizations over the course of the last 20 years? Are there common traits that you have found to be successful in building trust?
Speaker 3:Yes, there is.
Speaker 2:What does that look like?
Speaker 3:Well, I hate to make it as simple as this. I mean, hopefully people are taking note or listening. I think it's oversimplistic, but it was a conversation with an old man in that first year in my nonprofit experience. I was on the phone doing telemarketing, which you do. You're ringing up potential. Oh yeah, oh yeah, you're right. Oh yeah, oh yeah, no. And so I'm ringing this old guy up and I'm doing my sales pitch as if I was in the commercial world and he interrupts me. He says, malcolm, look, I'm 84 years old, I could die tomorrow. In other words, can you get to the point Spit up? So I spit up and he says, look, all we old philanthropic people need to know is the answer to two questions Will my money do what you say it will do, and can you prove it?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I said, okay, yes, you know I can answer those two questions. And so I did. And he said can you answer them quickly too, by the way? And so I did. And he said, okay, how much do you need and when do you need it? And through that conversation, my eyes opened. At the end of the day, all we've got to be is an infrastructure and enterprise and organisation which answers those two questions.
Speaker 3:And you've got yourself. You're connecting with people who are predisposed to want generosity to happen in the world. I think there's a genetic kind of predisposition, there's a behavioural predisposition. I think we rank a lot of people as not being generous. But when you give people a chance and they connect with something in their life that has, in their life journey, already predisposed them to want to see a thing go in a good way, then you trigger and match that and bingo, this person who looked like a bit of a hard-nosed character turns into a generous human being. And it's about finding that match for a start. And when you've got that match, you've got two questions to answer and it's the as those two questions will my money do what you say it will do, and can you prove it? And if your organization is structured to to answer those two questions, then trust builds. The only other factor that's needed in there is the time factor, because you know my 84-year-old friend who's long past his history of giving went back 50-odd years in his life.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:When I got to know him a bit more and his way of testing the waters was testing the waters, he would go okay, you look like you're doing something in the world that I like to see get done, I'll throw you some money to test the waters. And sometimes he was a classic in that sometimes he'd be giving 50 bucks here and 100 bucks there and test the waters and he'd wait a year or two to see what came back and then suddenly he wrote a $50,000 check. Wow, you know, because you had answered his two questions Is my money doing what you said it would do and are you proving it? The end here's more money.
Speaker 3:And that generosity is the nature of, I think, the nature of generosity that I've seen and heard of and had reported from all parts of the world, really Folk who live everywhere you know. So, yeah, that's that simple. I think, and I hate to say it, it's that simple. And I would say that 90% of the work I undertake in building infrastructures, in fundraising enterprises, is to address those two questions. Almost 90% of it it's getting folk inside the organisations to think in terms of the worldview of the donor and constantly that donor's questions are on their mind, you know, and not look every day through your eyes at the world, but through the eyes of that donor looking at you. Yeah, and then what is your accounting practice doing to support those two questions? What is your marketing doing to support those two questions? What is your staff communication and culture doing to support those two questions?
Speaker 2:I think my I would say experientially or anecdotally what I have seen to be true is that we are all pretty good at answering the first one Is it going to do what you say it's going to do, yes? We're not as good at the second one, which is those ways to prove it and showcase data that says yep, this is the thing we set out to do and here's how it went. I think the gap is in closing the loop around that proof of concept.
Speaker 3:Absolutely 100% on, monique, you're 100% right. One of the biggest weaknesses that causes that fragility in that side of the equation is a lack of discipline in the methods by which you get back and report. One of the barriers is the turnover of staff in the nonprofit fundraising arena. You know, in the States I think you're looking at, you know 18 months to 24 months is the average survival rate of a person in the fundraising side of the equation.
Speaker 2:That's just so sad. It's really hard to build that momentum if you're constantly having staff turnover that way.
Speaker 3:A huge problem, huge problem. But then again, you know, you've got to look at why that turnover is, and I've found some examples again when that infrastructure of you know the enterprise is designed with that as a concern and something to address. You know, we've got organisations here where you've got people who have been in fundraising for 14 years in one organisation and they've stayed stable. And the reason they've stayed stable is because, more to do with infrastructure design than you know, that's enabled their passion to be nourished. I mean, there's these human beings who come in and work in a non-profit to raise funds for a charitable cause. You know, first of all I just want to hug every one of them, you know. So one big global hug to everybody who's doing that right at this moment. You are a precious human being and that's all I can say. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And your work matters.
Speaker 3:And your work Absolutely.
Speaker 2:In magic ways.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, yeah yeah, and your work matters, and your work absolutely matters. And there's four words. Four words I want to pour on top of you, and that's to cherish, nurture, preserve and protect you.
Speaker 2:And if you have an infrastructure that cherishes, nurtures, preserves and protects your fundraising people, that's a key part of the design work I'm looking at is, you know, and trying to bring in is how cherish, nurture, preserve, protect right, so that oh my gosh, can you just I can just try to envision what it would look like if all of our non-profits had a culture built around that for their fundraisers and the input that change that that would make their ability to raise funds oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:Well, because ultimately, what folk are trying to do, I've seen so many people step in and give it a go and then get burned out.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:The sadness. I'm actually 21. This is the result of me going into the non-profit sector. But the delightful nature of these human beings going in there has just thrilled me on so many occasions. When I meet them and what I see is that they encounter an infrastructure and an enterprise which does not welcome them, it does not cherish them, it does not nurture them, it does not preserve them, it does not protect them.
Speaker 3:And that absence is correctable because what you've got there in that beautiful human being who's walked in the door to say can I help, how can I help you? And I want to work in fundraising and all of that sort of stuff Is failing to see inside that person a unique giftedness that they walked in the door with. And we're all going to have some degree of naivety about how we enter into these places. I have to say that that was me certainly in the first year, but I was fortunate. I was really fortunate and the first nonprofit I worked in. I was there for five years and I was wait for it cherished, nurtured, preserved and protected.
Speaker 3:The difference that made to the foundational desire for me to continue in this work was phenomenal. Now I went into other charities where that was not the case and the organization spat me out in a certain period of time, but I was able to measure. Well, I was able to learn from those experiences and that's the learning that's inside the book. So what we are losing is an awful lot of marvelous talent, the hearts of these people, man, I go back to my big global hug. I just love them to bits. I'm telling you right now, and what's failing them has really kind of annoyed me and driven me to the writing of this book, to the writing of this book.
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Speaker 2:So talk to me a little bit about the book itself, then. So is the audience, those folks who are on the front lines and deserve that giant hug, or is it maybe the bosses above them who are creating the culture that is causing them to need these giant hugs?
Speaker 3:and okay, you're gonna. You're gonna touch some nerves, megan, this is gonna go okay I like to stir the pot where I can good on you, good on you, good on you who's the key audience?
Speaker 3:Okay, Well, they're all of those people you just mentioned. Thanks, inside, there I have. The book is divided into two sections. The first section is my kind of learning curve and discovering of citizen generosity and what it looked like and what's the actual potential of Joe Citizen and Josephine Citizen, and they were giving potential. That's sitting there waiting to be released, what's the actual potential of Joe Citizen and Josephine Citizen, and they were giving potential. That sitting there waiting to be released, and the size of it I found was massive. And then the second section is the 12 steps necessary. I'm sorry to use 12 steps, but you know 12 steps to release that marvellous generosity, 12 steps to release that marvelous generosity.
Speaker 3:And to your question. The audience might not be comfortable with what they read, because my first observation at step two is know your enemy right and knowing your enemy. There are five big enemies of generosity in the world and it's not the individual person, they are not the enemy. The individual giver is not the enemy. The enemy number one are non-profit boards.
Speaker 2:Well now, who's the feather ruffler?
Speaker 3:I get you. Yeah, that's going to go down real well, that's going to make me real popular. That is Nonprofit boards.
Speaker 3:Not because they are fundamentally flawed, it's just that culture that we talked about at the beginning is missing inside the boards and we've got a vast array of people coming onto boards and nonprofits globally whose background does not include a philanthropic history and they come from commercial backgrounds. They've been invited on the board because somebody has said you know how to make money good on you, come and join us and help us do that. And that person they've invited was a very successful business person who made profit by selling widgets right and coffee and stuff. And they come in going well, I know how to make profit by selling stuff to people, and now you're asking me to be on a board to advise on how to make profit. And so what they do is they invent another opportunity shop, they invent another sports event, they invent another grand gala event, but they don't invent philanthropy because they don't understand it and they don't support it and they don't cherish, nurture, preserve and protect those people in their fundraising departments who do understand it.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's such a good point.
Speaker 3:And so that dynamic pulls them down and, honestly, it's not because they are nasty human beings who are on these boards. These people do it. They put up their hand for good purpose, right, and say I'll be on the board Okay, good on you, but they don't know what they don't know, and so what we've got to do, the book is designed for one of them. You know, god bless one of them who comes on board and reads that book, and I actually had one of those experiences. I had a guy read it in Spain, would you believe?
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:He was on holiday for a month and he got the digital version of it off Amazon, read it and he came back to New Zealand. He had been in charge of a charity for 10 years that had started with one donation from one couple of $100 million, oh, okay.
Speaker 3:These people had parted with $10 million a year, each year for 10 years, and they'd asked this guy to organise this organisation so that the charities they would support with this money would be independent at the end of it and not reliant on them anymore for that money. So build other philanthropic stuff into the system.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And when he came to the end of the 10 years and he's reading my book he says this is what we failed to do. The reason we failed to do it was because people who were leading those non-profits did not understand the philanthropic stuff that that book describes. And so he read the book in Spain, came back and arranged a meeting with me, and I'm now consulting with them to try and help their charities to build the infrastructure, starting with the board members and having conversations with them. That's a vital ingredient that the culture of philanthropy and a donor-centric culture is integral to the entire infrastructure of everything that's done and all of the thinking from the board down. So the answer to your question really is that it's definitely for board members, it's for anybody who's an enthusiastic supporter of an organisation and it's certainly for fundraisers and people who want to build a robust, sustainable fundraising entity within their own organisation that will last decades into the future. That's the goal.
Speaker 2:Okay, no small goal. Okay, just a tiny bit, no small goal, no small goal.
Speaker 3:I'm going to take over the world a couple of weeks from now, but other than that, you know that's the yeah.
Speaker 2:Other than that, nothing major. I love that and I love the idea of that kind of starting from the top down right, of that kind of starting from the top down right. Far too often I feel like you know somebody who's maybe in fundraising or in nonprofit marketing gets ahold of a book like this. They read it, they get very excited about it but they don't really have the power to impact change within the organization. They can only impact their work. But I love the idea of the approach of starting with the board and having that kind of trickle-down impact into culture to actually change the way an organization functions 100%.
Speaker 3:It's absolutely paramount that that is done, because one of the parts of the book even though I've just told you that the section one describes something and then section two is 12 steps. At the end of it I sneak in step 13, right?
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:Let me show you what step 13 is. Are you ready for this?
Speaker 2:Ready.
Speaker 3:I'm going to see if I can find it. There we go, step 13. Ah, plan for sabotage, it says.
Speaker 2:Step 13. Ah, plan for sabotage, it says.
Speaker 3:Plan for sabotage, because all of those marvelous stuff we've just been talking about, best laid plans, trying to do everything under the sun, you need to be thinking that something's going to sabotage this and, as you go, plan for sabotage.
Speaker 3:The foundational data for the book comes out of 10 charities that I've lived and worked in and studied from the inside and, as I say, over a 20-year period, and three of them apply more or less these principles to function and to build philanthropic relationships and philanthropic income.
Speaker 3:Seven did not, and of those seven that did not, two don't exist anymore and the other five are struggling to keep their head above water because they haven't embraced philanthropy and its profitability. You know, the massive generosity of philanthropic people is also highly profitable and the best way for any charity to really fund its mission, in my humble opinion. And so the measure of the absence of that culture is reported in the book and the impact of that culture is reported in the book and the impact of it is measured and illustrated in seven of those 10 charities that failed to put that in there, and a good chunk of the reason for that does, I'm sorry to say, hark back to a start with the leadership and the failure for that culture to triple down when that culture has been nurtured and cherished, preserved and protected right. The end result has been the three charities where they're thriving.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great man, malcolm. I feel like I could keep this conversation going all day because it's been so interesting, but if somebody wanted to find the book, I presume it's still available on amazon or how would they connect with?
Speaker 3:you. If you go to my website, it's it's in, uh, cracking generositycom. Um, there's a link straight there to the amazon site or amazon spot where you can buy it. It's available as a hard copy, also as a a digital version, an e-book. So you've got an e-book version. The one that the guy read in Spain was an e-book. And then I have a local distributor for the Southern Hemisphere. I've divided the globe into two the Northern Hemisphere, that's you guys, and the Southern Hemisphere, that's us, and it's available there.
Speaker 3:And then, as time goes and my energies are applied, the aim is to build a podcast that's dedicated to the detail of it and also answering the questions of people who read the book. I should say, too, that there's a parallel book, a companion book, that's coming out associated with it, the companion book. So this book is very much written for people in the fundraising sector and in the non-profit sector globally, that's people who are doing what you and I do, right. But the other book is directed at the citizens who are generous and it's based on 100 individuals born in all the same year, in 1919. And it tracks the impact of their giving over 100 years to the year just before COVID and tells their story of how much influence they had from their generosity and the impact those 100 people had. And the idea with that book is to try and enthuse more citizens to increase their giving to charitable causes and to look at philanthropy as the first way to do it, rather than buying something from an op shop.
Speaker 2:That sounds fascinating and I cannot wait for that one to come out.
Speaker 3:It's a work in progress.
Speaker 2:That's great, well, excellent, malcolm. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been a really interesting conversation. Definitely go check out Cracking Generosity you can find and order Malcolm's book. But thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate all the wisdom and insight you had to share on this topic.
Speaker 3:It's been an absolute privilege and a delight, and thank you for the opportunity.
Speaker 2:My pleasure, this has been another episode of the Nonprofit Hub podcast. I'm your host, megan Spear, and we'll see you next time.