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
From Burnout to Focus: Transforming Nonprofit Fundraising
Feeling exhausted from chasing the latest fundraising trends with little to show for it? In this insightful conversation with Isaac Ezell, CEO of Seed Fundraisers, we explore what truly drives sustainable nonprofit growth. Drawing from his 13+ years scaling Hope International from $5 million to $38.5 million, Isaac reveals that successful organizations focus on just one or two core strategies—rather than trying to do everything. He outlines five primary fundraising approaches and encourages nonprofits to align with their strengths and donor base. Most importantly, he highlights the relational heart of fundraising, where storytelling and listening build deeper, mission-driven partnerships.
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Drowning in spreadsheets and manual processes. Bonterra Apricot is the smarter, faster way for nonprofits to manage programs, track outcomes and actually show your impact. Find out how at bonterratechcom slash nonprofithub. Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub Podcast. I'm your host, megan Spear, along for another episode today. I'm very excited to have Isaac Ezell with me. He's the CEO of Seed Fundraisers, which I, full disclosure, do also work a little bit with Seed Fundraisers as a coach, and we'll dig into all of that. But I just have really appreciated so much of the wisdom that Isaac has had to share with our team at Seed, so I am thrilled to have him here and have you guys get to learn from him as well too. Isaac, welcome in.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much, megan, and goodness, I've been watching from the sidelines for months and just excited to spend a little time in front of the mic with you, talking with this group of people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm excited. So by way of introduction, give us a little bit about kind of your background in nonprofit, what led us to hear this conversation today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I think most folks in the nonprofit space I guess this is broader than that too but certainly in fundraising, which is where my career has been, we have an origin story. That's not necessarily like straight in an arrow, like point A to point B, necessarily straight in an arrow like point A to point B, and I graduated from college thinking that I was going to work in studios setting up microphones and helping musicians get the best out of a song that they'd written. What I ended up doing was a little bit of that and then ran into a mentor and this guy deserves every shout out. His name is Dick Giggie. If you live in the Nashville area where I live, you've heard his name if you're in the nonprofit or social enterprise space. But he turned me on to the idea of using that same creative skill and aptitude towards fundraising and towards business models, towards social entrepreneurship, and so that was about 14 years ago now. Actually it was a little longer than that, but about 14 years ago an organization he introduced me to great organization I still support called Hope International. They do Christ-centered microfinance so they help folks start tiny businesses all over the world. I started, I applied, he endorsed me for the role. I got a job as essentially a major gift fundraiser, but doing the work of fundraising, that is, going around networking, inviting people to give, here in Nashville and at the time it was a lot of other states too. But as Hope International grew, when I started, hope was about $5 million in annual revenue million in annual revenue and over the 13 years that I was there we grew to 38 and a half million dollars in revenue. So we grew a lot.
Speaker 2:At the beginning I was that frontline fundraiser and absolutely loved the role at Hope. We had a unique culture where we were focused on. It felt especially unique at the time. Maybe it's less unique today. I hope it's less unique today Whereas fundraisers we were setting out and saying, hey, we want to care about individuals who are giving to our organization or might give. We want to invite people who are passionate about this work deeper into it. But we're not focused on just pushing buttons to create a transaction or treating people in a way that we wouldn't feel great about right, and so it was a great place to grow up as a fundraiser, as a lot of us who have been at Hope would say, and it was a great place to yeah, to really learn that trade.
Speaker 2:So I spent 13 years there, various different roles, starting in that frontline space, but then by the end of my time there was leading strategy, fundraising strategy and had been for several years and working with all the kind of unique niches of fundraising, like an investment fund that we started or international fundraising in Hong Kong or other countries. So, anyways, it was a really fun time. That's where I got the majority of my experience in this space, really most of it. But about five years into that I started doing coaching on the side, started helping organizations that didn't have the same, were a little bit not quite as far along as Hope was at the time, and saying, hey, how can I help, how can we, how can I support? I did that with Seed, this group that you and I are both a part of, really because the founder of Seed and a close friend of mine, dan Reed, and yours, dan Reed, was somebody who had coached me and so and I just came.
Speaker 2:I don't like to do things alone. I don't know there are people that like to do things alone, but that's not me. I love to do things with other people.
Speaker 1:I am not one of them, but I respect that there are those people in the world. I don't know many of them, but I am not one.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and so I did it with Dan and we got better together as time went on. And so eight of my 13 years at Hope I was also doing coaching on the side of other nonprofits that were a little behind us in terms of revenue raise Maybe not behind us in terms of number of years serving or other kinds of things and just took that experience that I had and invested it forward into other organizations. A year ago I stepped out of Hope. It was time Hope had grown to the place where it was. It did not need me and it probably didn't need me for a few years, honestly, because it is a large team, 70 or so folks raising that $38.5 million. But I just felt drawn and called into this work of helping others accelerate their ability to use the skills that I'd learned to help them jump forward, leap forward in their fundraising space and hopefully avoid some of the mistakes that we made Lots of mistakes that we made over those 13 years in growing hopes fundraising Nice.
Speaker 1:Well, that's great. So there is, honestly, with your depth of knowledge, a breadth of things we could dig into. But something that you and I have been talking about within the seed coaching community and just in general in the space, is this idea of where we are, I think, given where the state of nonprofit-profit is right. It's been a crazy, crazy couple of months for everybody.
Speaker 1:Um, I think more often than not we have this, this group of people right now, who are looking for the quick fix, looking maybe for the magic bullet of especially for folks who might have been really heavily grant funded, who are now having to diversify and they're having to figure out strategies that they've never done before. They're getting taken in, I feel like, by a lot of these kind of maybe quick fix by our software and it will fix all of your problems, right? You and I stand in agreement that we don't love that approach.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:I'm not here for the snake oil salesman kind of nonsense, right but I'd love to kind of dig in and hear your thoughts, isaac, on if somebody finds themselves in that situation right, where maybe the funding plan needs to change or we have some big plans and we thought we were going to be able to do these kind of activities and now we can't. Where do we start? That's not that, because it's so easy to get taken in, I feel like, by the bright and shiny right and everybody wants to point squirrel over here, right, how do we pause and take a step and evaluate a, what do we actually need? And B, how do we move forward? Because there are great consultants out there, but how do we evaluate that for ourselves? So let's kind of dig in from that perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, oh, man, I have so much to say about this particular category of work. I think in general, we look for silver bullets because it is this promise of magic. Right, like we want magic in our worlds and in our lives, we want to, like, get the outcome without the effort That's-.
Speaker 1:We all want that, was it Home Office Depot or Office Max or something that had the easy button staples.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, yeah, we all want that.
Speaker 2:And I think to like the version I'm talking about here are the rephrasing of that is from some work that Andy Crouch has done.
Speaker 2:In thinking about, what is it that kind of attempts us to short circuit the hard work that's necessary?
Speaker 2:Now, that doesn't mean that we don't like do hard work, for wrong reasons sometimes or to the wrong end. But the first principles, I think, are thinking more specifically about the big impact without a lot of work, if there's a promise that you're hearing, whether that is a CRM system, whether that is like the newest, latest book or person you follow on LinkedIn and again, there are great people in both of those places. I'm not saying every person who posts on LinkedIn is terrible. I do it and you do it right, and in fact, it's important for us to do that so that there's more voices in the ecosystem that are not just offering a silver bullet, but we also get this from our boards or ourselves when we go hey, if I just get this director development, all my problems will be over, if I could just find the right person. So it's not just people trying to sell us things, it's also the ways that we dupe ourselves into thinking like here's the magic solution that I can, and we have a lot of common ones.
Speaker 2:We see people in the ecosystem, other nonprofits, doing something. We think, oh, that will solve my problems, and I think the first sniff test is like are they promising magic? Is somebody here promising me magic? That is, the outcomes without the effort. The second that I like to do in thinking about and this is how I evaluate coaches that join the seed platform too is I like to look and see what real life experience they have with fundraising. Did they work at a nonprofit or with an organization that worked alongside nonprofits helping them with fundraising?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If that's not there, then I'm going to be very skeptical in listening to their advice. There's a recent book that came out and I won't name the author or and maybe it's actually great advice. I haven't read the book, but looking at this person's just LinkedIn profile, I immediately was like, okay, I'm going to be skeptical. There's zero, zero references to being in a nonprofit or until they started a consultancy focused on fundraising, and so that's the second thing I look for is just look at the history. Is there some time spent? Is there work that they did behind the plow of doing the work of fundraising that they did behind the plow of doing the work of fundraising? Or are they trying to take something from outside the fundraising world and apply it without doing the necessary work of having lived in the fundraising space as well? So those are a couple of things that just jump off the top.
Speaker 1:No, I think that's a really good call out because it's so easy. I feel like to get suckered in by the new and shiny right, but taking in anything else, we would take time to do our own due diligence.
Speaker 1:That's right, we would take time to do the research and figure it out. And so, coming at any platform decision, consultant, decision, any of those things has to have that same due diligence to it, and that research is critical, I guess I wonder. And that research is critical, I guess I wonder and something you and I have talked about too is it's really easy to go chase the new and shiny if you don't understand where you're headed by yourselves internally. There's not some sort of internal strategy that's guiding what you're doing. The consultant, the tools, the coach, the new director of development, all of those things are tools to the strategy. But if that piece is missing, then you are going to be more subject to the whims of whatever's floating around.
Speaker 2:It's almost like a cart before the horse kind of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and I mean I think that adds on to your valuation criteria, right? I think there's an elemental aspect of nonprofits that kind of plays into this too. As nonprofits, we essentially have two things two organizations, two paths for resources that we're managing. One is that programs and operations side of the work of providing some help, providing some service, providing some thing that is not provided in the normal marketplace, and then the other is a fundraising operation and, depending on where you came from or how you came to the work or what you enjoy the most, you probably spend more time or have more energy on one side or the other.
Speaker 2:That I bet lots of folks listening to me right now are like oh yeah, I'm the programs person or I'm the executive director who is the like the fundraiser. I like, I love doing that and the programs. I get annoyed, like when I have to get into the details on that one, and that's fundamentally difficult and they're not necessarily fundamentally aligned to things Like donors might have different ideas about what impact they want to have on your constituency. On the other side, those who are being helped, those clients, those end users, and so there's some, and we could talk about this perhaps on a future conversation about those tensions. But because of that, you may be looking for quick fixes on both sides of the organization and going how can I just make this less painful the fundraising side so that I can focus more effort on this program side, and vice versa.
Speaker 2:And but the reality is first again like we need to step back when it comes to fundraising, and this is something you and I have talked about, like you mentioned. But in determining how you're going to grow fundraising, in particular, how you're going to have a sustainable fundraising operation, it's incredibly important to focus and this is like one of the things that we focused on at Seed. It's an insight that's been corroborated through some research that the Bridgespan group did and presented through this Stanford Social Innovation Review, that organizations that actually scale in their fundraising. They do that not by doing everything, not by doing Giving Tuesday and the end of the year giving letter and the big fundraising gala. And, which is the other side of the spectrum, right, we have silver bullets and we have burned out executive directors, like some of them have, like they're burned out and that's why they want to go over here to the silver bullet, cause they're trying to do all of the things.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But really at Seed, what we coach our folks on and what I'd recommend you do regardless if you work with Seed or with any other organization, a coaching or consulting organization, or do this on your own is to step back and say what is the one or two strategies we're going to focus on? Again, that same research from Stanford showed that the organizations that focused on one or two strategies they were actually reliably able to scale impact and, by impact, fundraising revenue. On that side, the research doesn't show those who took that risky step of saying we're only going to do fundraising events and major gift fundraising. It's a risky step and so that means some folks probably failed too. But what is nonprofit work if it's not stepping into a risky thing to serve others, to sacrifice some of our own influence or our own resources or our own renown to help somebody who needs support and help, who needs a barrier lifted, who needs something to help them move forward from a situation that they're stuck in?
Speaker 1:Ever feel like you're stuck managing programs in spreadsheets and scattered systems? Apricot by Bonterra is a smarter, faster way for nonprofits to track outcomes, simplify reporting and unlock more funding. With tools built for real nonprofit workflows and trusted by over 3,400 organizations, it helps your team grow your impact and better serve your community. You can meet us at bonterratechcom slash nonprofithub today. So I was in a conversation the other day with an executive director who was, I think, in the exact spot that you're talking about super burned out there. They do all of these different things and they just keep doing them because it's it and it's that line that I hate of like, this is what we've always done. This is what we've always done. Like, okay, but and I, I it was maybe a risky statement on my part, but my statement was yes, but the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Right, if you want to continue to grow and you want to scale that impact, we can't continue to do the things we've always done.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:There has to be something different, and so I think maybe that's a tension that intrigues me is we have to do something different, but I don't want to jump, I don't want to just chase squirrels with new and shiny. So, like, how do we evaluate what's the rubric that's in place to evaluate what things we're doing are working versus where those gaps are, that we should like look at a new strategy or invest in a new technology or something along those lines?
Speaker 2:that's, I think, the tension that intrigues me yeah, well, and I'll jump in and like give folks like a place to start. So. So a place to start is to identify. So, within the within fundraising strategies again, we use like words, like strategy, which have a million different definitions at times, right, but when we think at seed, and what I'd invite others to think about when it comes to fundraising strategies, is that at the core of a fundraising strategy is how we are activating generosity.
Speaker 2:There are two things in common with any fundraising relationship we need to have storytelling. We need to be telling stories, whether that's in a personal relationship or that's from a mass communications platform or it's an event. We need to be telling stories. We need to listen too. Those are the two things that are in every fundraising relationship. There's a third that's a little different, based on which strategy you choose or you focus on, and that is how you activate generosity, what is the form that it takes. And so, okay, that's a lot of words. What I'll say is if you can choose one or two forms of activating generosity. So, with annual giving, it's mass communications. You're activating generosity through that letter that you send, through the TV advertisement or, more likely, for the folks listening today, through the email that you're sending. There's major gifts where you're activating generosity through personal relationship, people that you get to know personally their story and they get to know yours and you invite them into that relationship. Events is where you're activating generosity through a transformational experience at its best, or at least an entertaining experience that you've curated for the donor Through grant writing it's a technical writing and reporting process and through corporate sponsorship, it is activating generosity through an aligned brand invitation saying, hey, your brand benefits in this way, our brand benefits in this way, by being affiliated with each other. This is the NFL, the National Football League, doing the pink jerseys once a year and saying, hey, we support breast cancer. The breast cancer nonprofits then receive a large gift as a result of that. And so if you could choose one or two of those a lot of the same activities that you're doing, whether it's an event that you do once a year, a lot of the same activities that you're doing, whether it's an event that you do once a year or it's the direct mail that you're doing those things can fit within a strategy of activating generosity in a specific way.
Speaker 2:And I'll just give you one quick example.
Speaker 2:So say, you're doing a big annual gala every year, but you decide you don't really want to be focused on growing the number of events, to grow the number of fundraising, because that's how that works Right, but instead really major gifts is the thing that you want to be focused on Lots of vendors or other people that are involved in that process, design work, invitations, all the things and turn it instead into a small gathering or a set of small gatherings in people's homes where they're inviting people to hear about the work for the first time.
Speaker 2:But it's in a much more conducive space for personal relationship to grow, and so that personal relationship is what the invitation is out of. The small gathering it's not. Hey, will you give towards our goal of $30,000 tonight it's. Will you engage and have a meeting with myself, the executive director of the organization? I'd love to share more, if you're interested. The strategy first, or choose how we're going to activate generosity. Then we can step back and think about how all those tactics we're doing can bow down, can submit themselves to the focus of the strategy.
Speaker 1:That's so good. That's so good. I love it. There is one piece that you said in there that I want to just go back and highlight.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:And that is the fact that relationships require listening as well.
Speaker 1:I think far too often we get stuck in this idea of just saying and speaking right or just email blasting and direct mailing, and let me just tell you, and tell you, and tell you that we do lose sight of the actual relationship aspect of fundraising, that these are real people, not some sort of human ATM machine, but they are real people with real feelings and real things to say and opinions. And so I love the call out. There was, there was so much wisdom in what you just shared, but I really like that call out and reminder as well.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, and I think it. Perhaps this is a. We're seeding more conversations here, megan. I'd love to just keep having them, but I think I think one of the important pieces in thinking about relationships is what kind of relationships you want to have with your donors. And the reality is that a relationship that is transactional, relationship that is transactional, that actually works I wish it didn't. I wish it didn't work. I know To like raise money in a really transactional fashion, cause I don't feel like it's good for people that are giving. I don't feel like it's good for the nonprofit that's receiving to the same degree that it is when a relationship is missional, meaning that it's two-sided, it's a partnership.
Speaker 2:And even in a annual giving setting where you might be doing a direct mail piece, what are the spaces and the ways that you're creating a pathway for listening back to the organization? There are obvious ones the do not mail list. You know that is a form of yeah, yeah, do not email me, or mail me ever again. But we want to be more proactive than that, and there are plenty of tactics for that, and ones that are specifically focused are helpful for the smaller nonprofit as well. It doesn't mean you need to have big focus groups or pay a marketing research group to do those pieces. But you can pause and listen and respond to that relative of yours that's like, seriously, you sent another email, or when you said it this way, I thought you meant this instead of that and listen proactively within those situations.
Speaker 2:And it matters how we listen, regardless of the strategy. We need to listen if we can find it in ourselves through a posture of humility as well. It's easy to approach that advice either from a position of like, thinking of ourselves as better than the donor. Ooh, that's painful to hear and think about. But often those of us working in the nonprofit space we're kind of like, hear and think about. But often those of us working in the nonprofit space we're kind of like we kind of have it all together. And those outside the nonprofit space, they're working for money Wait why? And that kind of can be a poison to our relationship with the donor. To make it to where we are treating them in a way that maybe we wouldn't be if we thought of them as that full enlivened person that you were describing before, megan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's great Good. Oh man, such good stuff. I want to keep this conversation going, but I know that nobody listens to like a two hour long podcast.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:We will definitely have to have you back, but in the meantime, if somebody wanted to connect with you, learn more about you or your work, or learn more about Seed and what Seed Fundraisers is all about, how would we do those things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Luckily, there aren't that many Isaac Ezels in the world, so you can find me pretty easily with a Google search or a LinkedIn search. You know, slash Isaac Ezel. But if you want to hear a little bit more about Seed, or look at what we offer, we work especially, or particularly, with early stage nonprofits that are trying to accelerate and scale their fundraising operation. We've described them a little bit you and I have Megan over the course of our conversation where we've talked about they're feeling burnt out. They're feeling like they've done as much as they can on their own.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they just need a sage. They just need a wise someone to come alongside them. It's not just me. It's me and 17, 18 other coaches who have direct fundraising experience at Seed. So you can take a look at that website, seedfundraiserscom and reach out to us there if we can be helpful. I'm the one who picks up the phone if you shoot a message to us. So I'm happy to have a 30 minute conversation with just about anybody, and if we can be helpful, I'll point you to one of our coaches. If we can't, I'll point. I'll encourage you on your way and say you're doing great. You don't need any help yet, Wouldn't?
Speaker 1:that be a nice call. No, you're good, there's nothing you could do better.
Speaker 2:Well, that was they absolutely happen, yeah, I think. Or here's another group who can help better at your size and scale and stage and what you're trying to accomplish.
Speaker 1:Great as we wrap up, this is the question I've been asking everyone so far in this season. If you were speaking directly to, let's say, maybe the executive director of a nonprofit or director of development, chief development officer, those kind of high level leaders, what would be your one piece of advice or encouragement right now in this season, like what's the takeaway for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh man. There's so much I think that could be said, and I'm thinking of lots of different individual situations that I'm aware of, and I'm sure there's so many more. For some of you listening to this podcast, what you really need to hear is you're doing good work. You know you're doing good work connected to a mission that is impacting your community, your world, your nation, and, like, take a breath, like receive that encouragement.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I don't know you individually, but I know you're out there and you're doing that good work. The second I'd say is, for some of you, you're feeling frenzied. You're feeling like that burned out person at the end of their rope. Before it's too late, take a break, yeah, take a breath. Think about how your motivations might have been getting twisted, how your focus might not be on quite the right thing, not to say that everybody who's in that situation it's their fault or anything like that.
Speaker 2:But I found in my own journey of burnout that what I really needed to do is step back and have enough space and time to evaluate my own emotions, evaluate my own presence and evaluate the focus that I had. And in that process I hope you identify that, hey, we need to be more focused. If it's fundraising that's's causing that, that burnout, or on the program side too, hey, we can't solve everything for this constituent, but what we can do is help them with this one thing or this handful of things. And whenever we bite off more than is meant for us or that was given for us to do, it can be so hard to try to live and walk that out, and there are things for you to do to the person who's listening here. There are things for others to do, and it's okay to let others do too.
Speaker 1:That's a good word. I love it, isaac. Thank you so much. This has been a fantastic conversation. We will definitely have to pick it back up, but in the meantime, certainly feel free to reach out to Seed or Isaac if you have some questions about anything that he had to share. So thank you for joining us. We appreciate all that wisdom. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks, megan, and thanks to everybody listening.
Speaker 1:This has been another episode of the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Spear, and we'll see you next time.