Neurogiving Explained

Get ready to dive into the fascinating world of Neurogiving! This high-energy episode cracks open the human brain to reveal the hidden biological drivers that actually spark generosity while moving way beyond old-school fundraising myths to show how identity and deep-seated emotions pull the strings of donor decisions long before they even see a "Donate" button. Listeners will walk away with a toolkit of actionable strategies—from slashing the "cognitive load" that kills conversions on digital forms to turning a cold CRM into a powerhouse of donor identity and trust. Plus, this conversation tackles the big questions: how to ethically use AI to make philanthropy more human and why "manufactured urgency" is officially backfiring in our world of attention burnout, giving you the chance to align your mission with the way donors are actually wired to give!

Transcript

Donor Behavior Shifts And Free Report

SPEAKER_02 0:00

In 2025, donor behavior broke the assumptions most teams still used to plan. FundraiseUp's Pulse of the Donor 2026 gives you benchmark data on what changed and what to do next. Download the free report today at fundraiseup.com.

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Speer, joined this week by my friend, and I'm so excited to have this on here because I feel like we've been trying to get this interview for so long. Ladies and gentlemen, we have finally made it happen. The one, the only, Tyrion Coshies on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Oh, stop, Megan. It's so great to see you and finally have this happen. I appreciate you being free this particular time because it just worked out. So thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Yeah, fantastic. Okay, so we could talk about all sorts of things, right? We could talk about your background as the vice president of Kindsight. We could talk about, oh, and we are going to talk about Neurogiving, which is your book that just came out recently.

A 30-Year Fundraising Origin Story

SPEAKER_02 1:01

But tell the audience a little bit about yourself and your background that kind of brought us to this conversation today before we dig into all of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Oh, yeah, origin story. So um apparently this is not well known. So I started fundraising 29 years ago. Next year is my 30th, 30th year anniversary.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Thank you. Thank you. It's really weird. So yeah, 30 years ago, a friend of mine said, Hey, I'm doing this like part-time job and I think you'd be good at it. And it was knocking on doors on the streets of Minneapolis, asking people for uh for money for the Sierra Club and human rights campaign. And on a day like today, where it's 50 mile an hour winds, and my sister lives in Minneapolis and they got a foot of snow. I'm like very glad to not be fundraising in that environment. But um you get to learn what it's like to get rejected a lot, like literally, like our call our knock door knocking sheet was uh 200 doors a night, and you get to get rejected 180 times a night, right? Like whether it's nobody answering the door or just somebody slamming the door in your face or whatever. And so you, you know, you learn the hard way, but you also learn what fundraising is not, I would say. No offense to those organizations or you know, whatever, but like the way in which we were fundraising was a very different way than what I would normally consider fundraising. And so I went through that for several years and moved out wet out, sorry, out east and did some training and was the executive director of an organization out there, and then moved through different fundraising, and it was a lot of trial and error for me of figuring out like how to do fundraising, how to figure out what fundraising was like. And I went to like all of us do, read books. I have like, for people that are watching it, like all of literally all of the fundraising books on my shelf behind me. And I went to conferences and I got mentors and coaches. And when it didn't work, I felt like it was user error. I got something wrong. I was not doing it right. And it was this instance of like, uh it would work sometimes and then it wouldn't work other times. And I was like, I just don't get what's happening. And we would raise money, like lots and lots of money, millions and millions of dollars, and cool things would happen. But then other times it would just fall flat. And so at one point, I was like walking down the hallway, eating chocolate out of my like

Behavioral Science Unlocks Donor Decisions

SPEAKER_00 3:28

coworker's bowl of candy, because I was like, I don't understand. I just don't get it. And it got me thinking of like, why do people make decisions, not charitable decisions, like giving decisions, but why do people make decisions about why not to eat chocolate out of their coworker's candy jar, why to exercise instead of you know doing that? And it got me into behavioral science. So I started asking those questions and I took some coursework, read some books in that area, and started doing webinars and presentations on that. And it sort of clicked. It was this unlock for me. And people kept asking, what were those source citations? What were you, what were those books? And then when I started thinking about maybe a book and we got in the conversation with Wiley, they said, What would you write about? And I was like, you know, the only thing that comes to mind is this kind of concept the neuroscience, the behavioral science of of donor decision making. They're like, that would be an interesting book. And I was like, well, it turns out I've done all this research and I'd love to just sort of not talk about what I did, but really point people in the direction of the research. Here's where all the research is. Now you all have a jump start on where to go, and you don't have to go dig up all the research. You don't have to like go find it, it's here for you. So it's 220 some source citations and like 40 pages of reference notes. So if somebody picks it up, they can kind of jump into the game of double judge wherever they want to be on something, and they don't have to like go do 14,000 Google searches on like where's the science on this? Sure. That's kind of my hope, and that's kind of sort of the backstory.

SPEAKER_02 5:15

I love it, and that's what we're gonna dig into today because I do think that there's and I've been maybe not for 30 years, but I have been in the fundraising game for a minute.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

I have a pretty extensive background in it myself. And I do think that something I see happen regularly is that we kind of expect, as fundraisers, for donors to not behave like humans and check their human, natural human instincts at the door just because we have a really good cause.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Right.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

And that that is a it has been a problem. It will, it is continuing to be a problem. And so I want to kind of dig in from that element, right? Because from what from what I understand from neurogiving, right? We're talking about the idea of what actually happens to a donor's brain and how they think about decision making, but then also what happens in that giving. So talk to me a little bit about the process. So somebody goes online or somebody gives a writes a check, whatever that is.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

What actually talk about the physical, like what happens to us as a donor when we get to engage in generosity

Generosity Is Hardwired In Humans

SPEAKER_02 6:24

like that?

SPEAKER_00 6:24

You bet. So actually, let's start before that piece happens and then get to the the decision to give, because I think that's the piece that that for me I got wrong. So I came into the fundraising space having done competitive debate. And so I won, I won our state championship. I coached the only back-to-back national champion in debate. And so I learned about persuasion. I thought persuasion was what made me good at fundraising. So I thought that if I wrote this really great piece of copy and then learned about sort of how to make an argument for how good our cause was, then I could convince someone that they should essentially vote for our cause instead of the other causes out there. And that was my mindset coming into individual fundraising, corporate fundraising, grants, all of that made sense to me through the lens of argument. I could make a better argument than other people because I had made better arguments than other people in my previous life. And I was really, really good at it. My sister will say, who was a competitor coach uh at the time, that I was not as good at it because she and her student beat my student once. But that's a different story for a different time. What I realized in doing this research is that when people get up in the morning, they don't get up in the morning saying, I really want to be convinced of making a decision for the arts versus education or for kids versus healthcare. People wake up in the morning saying, I have, and they don't literally go through this process, but they have this idea of who am I and who do I want to be when I grow up? And that all comes from there's a study, Wernican and Tomasello, that says that there's uh they they did this study where they woke up babies, pre-linguistic babies. So they're babbling, they don't have any sense of language, and they wake them up, so they're angry, right? They're crabby babies.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

As I would be too.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

And they're hungry, so and they drop food or toys in front of the baby, and the baby picks up the toy, picks up the food, and gives it to the adult study person without knowing what empathy is, what without knowing what altruism is, without knowing what generosity is. And the evidence there is basically what Dr. Paul Zach says is that there's a moral molecule in our brains, that there's an element of how we work together as humans that drives our behaviors. Now, they've tested this across multiple different communities, different cultures, and whatnot. And what they found is that brain chemistry drives us to help one another. Are there reasons why, as we get older, as we interact with people, why we stop doing that for reasons? Of course there is. But in general, we're wired for generosity. And so what I start out in the book talking about is that generosity is hardwired. It's not a hard sell. And there are reasons, essentially pre-existing conditions, why people care about things. They care about what happened to them, they care about what happened to people that they care about, and they want to do something as a result of those pre-existing conditions. And it's not to say that we we can't necessarily that those things aren't malleable. Well, they can change over time, but we tend to try and go at someone and try to convince them to go from zero to one. You don't care about dogs, or you better yet, my daughter wants a cat. And I'm like, you are not gonna convince me to get a cat. We have a dog, I love my dog. We are not gonna get a cat. If you want to grow up and get a cat, that's your business. But I am not gonna be, it's not that I hate, well, I don't want to see any cats endangered, but sure, but you are a doghouse. Right. And I'm not gonna necessarily be compelled to give to a cat charity. I like the, you know, I don't want to see cats endangered, don't get me wrong. Sure. But I'm not, that's not the most important thing in my life to give to a cat charity. And there are so many things like that. They're all good causes, but on the top of my list is a different set of value priorities based upon these pre-existing conditions. So when I see in the, you know, in the back of my head, I've got all of these sort of values, these things that are things that I care about based upon what's happened to me in the past and things that other uh things that happen to people in my life, whatever, all of those things have informed what my brain is focused on. And when there's some sort of emotional stimulus that occurs through a direct mailpiece, an email, a social mode media post, someone else coming to me and talking about it, that emotional reaction pulls that from the back of my brain, not literally, but you get the idea, from the back of my brain to the front of my brain says, oh, that's something that you care about. Here's a moment where that's put together and it says, Oh, you should focus in and care about the thing that you already care about. And now your brain says, Do you trust that person or that organization? Do you care about that person or do you trust

The Donation Page Is Not Persuasion

SPEAKER_00 12:16

that person or that organization enough to pull out your credit card and do something about it? Whether that's the financial transaction, a time, you know, to volunteer, or I'm willing to advocate for that organization. I'm moving from inaction to action because all of these things that I cared about were sitting, you know, on the back burner. And now you've given me an emotional re reason to put it to the front burner, to do something about it. So to your initial question of what happens in the moment of I'm gonna donate, I'm gonna click the button, is your brain has already essentially decided to move from inaction to action. It's overcome the inertia of saying, I'm gonna do something. What's really important in that inertia of inaction moment is that for nonprofits, they are under the impression that the landing page of or the donation page is a convincing moment, is a moment where they need to persuade the person to do something. In reality, whenever someone lands on your donation page, they have absolutely already made a determination to give. And the key is it's essentially the same as me standing in front of you, Megan, with a handful of cash. And in that moment, if I'm hand holding a handful of cash and you visualize that, I'm saying in telep telepathically, I'm saying, Megan, here's some cash. The thing that you don't want to say in that moment is, Turian, let me ask you about your favorite, your favorite pet and your size and what your favorite color is. But inadvertently, unintentionally, so many nonprofits are asking a ton of questions in the moment where the person is saying, here, take my money, just my money. And the more questions that the quote unquote Megan asks me, the more I'm like, Oh, I don't have time for this. I have like dinner on the stove, quite literally. I have an Amazon package that's coming to the door. I have life, I'll do this later. Yeah, and in the brain, the donor says, I don't have to do this right now. And what I always say is the enemy of good fundraising is not no, it's not that I don't care. I really care about this thing, but I'll do it later.

unknown 14:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Just do it later, and later may come or it may not. So that's a very long answer to your question. But I think it's really important, at least for me, and the unlock of saying, like, you don't actually convince or persuade someone to give as much as you sort of get out of their way in doing the thing that they most want to do.

SPEAKER_02 15:29

In 2025, donor behavior shifted across channels, devices, and giving frequency. FundraiseUp just released their 2026 Pulse of the Donor report that unpacks what happened. Your donation form is now your most valuable asset. Donors who trusted their experience gave more, gave again, and told others. Stop guessing what will work in 2026 and start using real data. Download FundraiseUp's free Pulse of the Donor report today at fundraiseup.com.

Targeted Messaging Beats The Shotgun Approach

SPEAKER_02 16:13

I think for most fundraisers, right, we presume that absolutely everybody is going to be passionate about our cause because it is a good cause. And that's not to say that your cause isn't good.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Of course, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

It isn't. But it really speaks to the need for targeted messaging in fundraising. Yes. We've tended to take this shotgun approach of absolutely I want to cast the widest net possible to reach as many people as possible because that's how we're gonna convert. Instead of really thinking about like so, for example, I have a friend who is runs the Alzheimer's walk here in Pittsburgh, because that is a cause that deeply touched him and and his dad. And now everybody we he rallies a ton of people because so many people have been touched by that. But that's always the first I always thought it was interesting that that's the first thing he says is has do have you or anyone you know have they been touched by Alzheimer's dementia?

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

And almost everybody at this point, it is unfortunately a pretty a wide-reaching example. But that really to bring it back to the person as to in your again to use your explanation of like, oh, that's a thing that's in the back of my head. Yes, this did affect my aunt, my dad, my sister. And we play on that instead of just saying, who wants to support a walk?

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Exactly right.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Right?

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

So and it's interesting how we don't we tend to not think that way. Because again, we expect donors to not behave like humans because we ourselves do not behave that way.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

That's so interesting.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

And our I I think our approach is like any money is good money because we're so ultimately and I don't I get it. Like, we want to do the work that we do so we have these goals that are that are tied to revenue. But what ends up happening is we're getting people involved in things that they sort of tertiarily care about because the thing in the back of their mind is I'm friends with Megan, so I want to support Megan, which is not a bad thing. Sure. But it's not it's not anchored enough for me to keep coming back to a thing that's not really a big deal, right? Like it's not you're a big deal, don't get me wrong. But like Thanks a lot, man. But I'm just saying, like, you know, there are things where if I have a conflict on that weekend or there's just something else that comes up, I gotta now prioritize between showing up at that walk or doing something else. Whereas, like, if this is something that's like top three of the things in the back of my mind, I'm gonna move that other thing in order to be there to do that thing because it's so important. And those are the people that you want to focus in on, those are the people that you want to prioritize because those are the people who will be your advocates, be the people who care so much about what you do that they're going to really sustain your mission. And so uh that's how I think that the shift works in uh I I don't want to say that it changes like everything about what we do. At least for me, it changed how I thought about the work that I did in fundraising.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

Yeah. Okay, so I think that this is a really interesting time to even be having this discussion, right?

AI Segmentation And Precision Philanthropy

SPEAKER_02 19:44

Because in this in the sector, in life in general, right? Ever I feel like at this point, every two days, a new AI platform is popping up and giving us a new tool to be able to help with fundraising, help with marketing, help with whatever the fill-in-the-blank task is that we need to do. Is now a really so I my answer is yes, but I'm curious as to like what your well, if your answer is no, then I really don't understand this interview and where we're getting but I because we're talking about the importance of zeroing in on the folks to whom these things matter, right? Instead of that shotgun approach, because we now have the AI tools available, how do we apply this to really start segmenting differently than we always have? Or it like is it more I guess maybe the question is now that it's more possible, what's our first step given the tools and the resources that we have available that we didn't have to take this kind of approach 10 years ago?

SPEAKER_00 20:48

That's a great question. So let me start with what we don't do and then talk about what we should do. So the first piece is I see these tools out there that talk about prospecting and new donors and people wanting new donors. And the challenge, and this is part of the reason why I wrote the book, is the challenge is everybody's looking for richer, younger donors, like the mythical unicorn that has never actually existed in the history of forever. Yep. And yes, and so my argument from this, from the ethical, sustainable part of the this book, the like the I would say the right version of this book is that when you are seeking out this the richer, younger version of the donors, you're looking for the wrong thing. Um, and that is because just because someone has wealth or is younger does not mean that they care about the thing that you do. There's no correlation between that. And so you will you might have some AI tool that says, look, there's this 25 year old that has All of this disposable income, but do they care about your cat charity? No, not necessarily. And so you could spend a whole bunch of time targeting them with social media ads and whatever else, but you'll spend a lot of money and they won't be engaged with what you're doing. And let me be clear: even if you have signals, quote unquote signals that they care about cats, that doesn't mean that they are charitable. That doesn't mean that they're willing to give you money for your cat charity or volunteer for your cat charity. You don't have any, you don't have any signal about their philanthropic behavior, whether it's time, talent, treasure, testimony, any of those things. So the things that we're looking for in the prospecting tools in those ways is not the thing that we should be focused on. So what should we do? What we should be doing is first looking at the people that we already have, and how can we engage the people that we already have that are the people that are engaged? So what we have been doing is being very, very generic with our donor relationships. We have been saying, thank you for your gift. And the reality is that when we say, Megan, thank you for your gift, what we are actually recognizing them for is the least important part of the donor journey. The $25 that you gave is the output of all of the stuff that happened in the back of their mind through the inertia of the decision-making process in the brain that we didn't see, but they mentally went through to get to the point where they clicked the button or wrote the check. And the key is we didn't ask them about those things that got them to the point of clicking the button. And if we asked them about that, what we would find is that the reason why they clicked the button is because their mom had dementia and they wanted to honor their mom with this gift.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

And if our CRM is actually used as a memory-making device, if it included more than just dollars and dates, if it actually said Sharing wanted to honor his mom with a $25 gift, and this is what this meant, then in the donor relationship, what I can do is then say, Sharing, thank you so much for honoring your mom instead of thank you for your gift of $25. Sure. That says way more.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

Oh my gosh. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

And it reinforces the generosity journey. It reinforces the identity in the back of that person's mind. Now, what I am hearing in my brain is I have honored my mom. I'm not gonna stop doing that. Yes, I'm never going to stop doing that thing. Am I inclined to maybe stop giving a charity $25? Maybe. Am I gonna stop honoring my mom? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Right? That's the and I'm obviously oversimplifying. But uh if we if we can reflect that back to the donor in a meaningful way, and AI enables us to do that at scale in a meaningful way. Now we're talking about doing what what our friend Nathan Chappelle calls precision philanthropy.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

That's unique, that's valuable. And what I'm worried about is where AI does the fundraising for us, for the humans, and doesn't do and isn't, I would say, relegated to the back office function. So kind of bookending, where we're using AI for the prospecting without relationship to the identity, and when we're using AI for the last mile part and eliminating it from the human conversation, where that's dangerous is because when I'm sitting across from you, let's say you're sitting across from me and you're the fundraiser, and you're asking me those questions, AI is very literal in asking the questions, and it doesn't understand what's not said. So in the facial reaction, in the in the

Why Thanking Donors For Dollars Fails

SPEAKER_00 26:56

space between the words. And AI is just gonna take what's literal and follow patterns. And it's going to say, like, okay, they made this gift and then ask a series certain series of questions. And if I don't say something to you, you're the you might, as a human, say, there's something happening here. I'm gonna ask a follow-up question. Trained fundraisers like you will do something more. Sure. And a robot is just gonna be like, oh, he didn't say anything, move on. Right. That's the the worry. That's one of the worries that I have with that. So there are good use cases, there are bad use cases of AI, but I think there's a a proper use case that's that has so much amazing potential. And let me be clear in that use case, if you're not using AI as but if you're doing that, if you're asking the right questions and you're stewarding donors in that way, that's fantastic too. So I'm not trying to be this like AI hype person, you have to be using AI. The point is, can you reflect the donor's true decision-making process in that donor relationship, in the stewardship?

SPEAKER_02 28:15

Oh, that's so good. Yes. Preach. That was really a fantastic answer. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

I love it.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

Okay, we have time for one more question, and it's I maybe a little on the spicier side, not spicy, but I do like to like push buttons on YouTube. What is or is there one piece of kind of the fundraising advice that this sector has believed for years and years and years that that neuroscience clearly proves wrong that you wish if if there was one thing that we could stop doing because the science says, no, this isn't it, what's the one thing that you would tell fundraisers to stop doing?

SPEAKER_00 28:59

Oh, frankly, there's a ton besides

The Fundraising Myth Of Urgency

SPEAKER_00 29:02

the persuasion piece. The one that I would the one that I would start with is the urgency piece. Okay, so here's the challenge, and I I talked about this in a a webinar a little bit ago. Five years ago, maybe, maybe, yeah, maybe five years ago, when the world was different, we talked about urgency, and urgency is a neuroscience principle. Our brains are designed to make to use shortcuts to make decisions. And so when time is running out, our brains feel like, oh, we should make a decision sooner. Sure. Nonprofits grabbed onto that principle and basically used time is running out for everything. Sure. Time is running out, it's the end of the calendar year. Time is running out, it's the end of the fiscal year. No one is.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

Which literally nobody cares about the end of the fiscal year.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

And at all. Now it's everything and everywhere for all kinds of things. And that in and of itself is a problem. When your organization does that, and every other organization does that, it creates a universal problem. I'm not going to get all Kantian on that side. But what I am going to say is that the challenge in this environment is that we live in an intent in an attention scarce environment. And so everyone is in a world of attention burnout. There's so much stuff coming at us at all times. Yes. And now, when what the neuroscience says is that when attention narrows and focus narrows, our brains don't respond the same way. So that logic that may have been true five years ago doesn't work in an AI world. When time is running out, our brains actually jettison the decision that we don't have to do because there's no requirement for us to make a charitable decision. So now we just say, oops, later. Later. I'm going to make that decision later. If you are not a number one priority, you are not a priority at all. Which is why when we increase, this is like I was chemistry student the year 100 years ago. Boyle's law basically says when we increase pressure. So I'm not going to get into that. It's not necessarily. Point being, we everybody is continuing to say urgency, urgency. And all of those appeals, I'm sure everyone's seeing this, those appeals are not working anymore for exactly this reason because everyone's like, I can't do this. Like I'm uh there's too much. So that's the number one thing that I would say is stop relying on your urgency and realize that the donor's urgency is what matters in the new world order.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

Oh, that's so good. It's gonna make some people really mad, but I like it.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

I mean, the science is super clear on this.

SPEAKER_02 32:11

Yeah, the science is clear, that's great.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

Like it's ridiculously clear in this particular area. There's just too much information coming at people. And so our brains need to exclude information. That's the key. And in this world, unless you are the top priority, and frankly, most nonprofits are not the number one priority for most people. Sure. You're just not gonna get on the radar.

SPEAKER_02 32:36

Yeah. Oh, that's so good. I we could talk about all of this for another two hours.

SPEAKER_00 32:43

Uh but unfortunately nobody wants to listen to that.

SPEAKER_02 32:46

We're running out of time. We will certainly have you back on and we can discuss not only more of neurogiving, but also how when you were the debate champion, I was the dramatic interpretation champion on the other side of the house. I love it. We can have a whole conversation about those forensics days.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Yes, in Pittsburgh.

SPEAKER_02 33:05

Uh in Pittsburgh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Which school? North Hills. Oh, fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 33:10

North Hills High School. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 33:12

Yeah, I was a dramatic inter girl for all four years.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

The things we learn on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Yes, indeed.

Where To Find The Book And Bonuses

SPEAKER_02 33:20

Okay, so because we do not have another two hours to chat about this, if somebody wanted to learn more or they wanted to find the book or connect with you, what's the best way for them like to connect with you to learn more about the work that you've done and the research and all of the things?

SPEAKER_00 33:32

Oh, geez. Um, I'm on the socials. I have a website, Sharon Koshi.com. The best way to get the book. So there's the book is on all the places where you would buy a book, but there are some bonuses uh if you go to neurogivingbook.com that you can get for free. So that's another way of doing it. But the science is all the way out there. Like there's lots of people who do the science in inside the sector, outside of the sector. My hope is that the book just puts a lot of it in one place for folks.

SPEAKER_02 33:58

Nice. That's great. All right. Uh, Sharina, as we wrap up, 2026 here on the podcast is has become the year of learning.

Book Recommendations And Closing

SPEAKER_02 34:06

What's a book on your, I mean, I'm I can see the bookshelf behind you, so I know there are plenty of books on your list. What's one that you would put on your absolutely recommend everybody should read it list?

SPEAKER_00 34:18

So we were talking before, and this is really hard. I will say that over the last week or so, I watched all the best picture nominees for the Oscar, and they kept showing this preview for a movie called uh The AI Doc, um, the AI documentary. And I would highly recommend that because it has all lots of good people. And there's a new book call coming out from Peter Diamantis called We Are as Gods that should be out when the podcast comes out, I think that I would highly recommend. But there's also a book that, and he's a futurist, he's he's in the movie, which is the connection there. So I that's one that I would just recommend because I'm I would urge a lot of caution with the use of AI. I'm not an AI Luddite by any means, but I just think we should be cautious about how we use AI. But as a practical tool for fundraisers, there's a book that I quote in one of the chapters called Exactly What to Say. And it's a blessedly short book. You can read it in probably a couple of hours, and it talks about how to actually have those conversations with donors to be able to reflect them back. So uh, if you want a short book to pick up, I'd pick up Exactly What to Say by Phil M. Jones.

SPEAKER_02 35:29

So good. Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for making the time. Really appreciate you taking taking all that wisdom and pouring it into both your book and into our audience today.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Thanks for having me on, Megan. Really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 35:43

Yeah, my pleasure. Again, my guest has been Cheryan Koshi, who's the VP at Kindsight and also the author of Neurogiving. Definitely go check that out. This has been another episode of the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Spear, and we'll see you next time.