Do The Hard Things First - A Petrus Development Show Episode on Expectations for New Fundraisers

Andrew and Rhen return to the Petrus Development Show for a discussion specifically for new fundraisers and the organizations who employ them.  Very few of us go to school for fundraising.  Fundraisers are often pulled into development positions because of the relationship they have with an organization's leaders or because of their passion for the organization's mission.  Though many new fundraisers come to their position with very few specific development skills, given the correct expectations and training, they can absolutely be successful!

Show Notes:

In this episode, Rhen and Andrew share stories from their early days as fundraisers, and they reassure new development officers that the world of nonprofit fundraising is, indeed, navigable.  This discussion is both a dose of encouragement AND a list of expectations and best practices.  If you're new to fundraising and need a specific path forward, this episode is for you!

In this episode, Andrew and Rhen answer the following questions:

• Popular opinion is that fundraising is just begging for money. We know that's not true, but what is the alternative?  What is fundraising?
  
  
  
• As a new fundraiser, what can you expect for your new position?  What are your responsibilities? 
  
  
  
• Conversely, what are your director's responsibilities and what should you and your director expect from one another?
   
• What will your board or other leadership council expect from you?  What do donors expect from you?  
  
  
  
• What if you're fundraising part-time while you do another job for the organization?  How do you split your time? 
  
  
  
• What can you expect as results in your first year of fundraising?  And, in the subsequent few years?
  
  
  
• Fundraising can be frustrating, especially as you're doing all the work and not seeing the desired results.  How do you handle feelings of self-doubt?  

As Rhen mentions at the end of the episode, Petrus offers its BOAT (Basic Online Advancement Training) course as a way to learn fundraising skills while building a network of peers to support you in your work.  For more information on our fall BOAT cohort, click here.  (And, if you haven't already, be sure to listen to this podcast episode for that $200 discount code!)   

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

10:49.31 aggierobison Well, howdy everybody. Welcome back to the Petrus Department show. My name is Rhen Hoehn from Petrus and joining me today is Andrew Robison, owner and president of Petrus. How's it going, Andrew?

10:59.74 AROB I'm doing really well. Just enjoying some nice, unexpectedly cool weather here in Texas, which doesn't really happen this time of year. We're usually a couple more weeks or months away from cool weather. So I'm enjoying it. It's been raining and that's cooled it off. So yeah, how about you?

11:17.08 aggierobison Yeah, it feels like fall here. The leaves are turning. We've had some nice cool mornings in the forties. Love that. I love this time of year. Kids are back in school. My oldest just started running cross country and had his first race just a couple of days ago here.

11:29.77 AROB Ah, very nice.

11:31.49 aggierobison So we've entered that phase.

11:31.50 AROB Yeah.

11:32.81 aggierobison It's something new for us learning how it all works and living with him learning the training and yeah, surviving it all. So that's been a good experience for us so far.

11:43.42 AROB That's awesome. And most people probably don't know that you were a big runner and in fact ran a running shoe store at various times in your life, right?

11:55.32 aggierobison Yeah, after college, I did. I managed a running store for several years, ran some marathons. I'm a little ways removed from that, but hopefully we'll get back to that at some point here.

12:04.86 AROB Aren't we all?

12:05.53 aggierobison Now that the kids are a little bit older.

12:07.06 AROB There you go.

12:09.01 aggierobison Have you had any big experiences or tried anything new lately?

12:13.60 AROB Oh my gosh. So, you remember and people listening might remember that last year, 2023, I got a wild hair and I started doing MMA training, right? And it was going great. And then I had a very tragic morning and broke my leg and had to have surgery and they put metal plates in. I couldn't walk for three months and it was just a bad deal.

12:37.91 AROB And at that time my wife said no more wrestling and I said okay fine, no more MMA. I said okay fine and I said but what about boxing, can I box? And she said, "Ah, I don't know." So somehow I convinced her to let me.

12:55.87 AROB Go back and, with her blessing, to go back and do boxing in our early morning boxing class three days a week. Early is very early; we start at four o'clock in the morning and ninety percent of the class is hitting a bag and running and doing cardio, but today, every now and then the coach is like, "Alright,

13:17.23 AROB gear up, we're sparring." And so today we sparred and it was just three of us. And so I had to go, I did two, I had a three-minute round against one guy, three-minute round against another guy. And then I got a break while they went and then I was back in the ring. So I ended up doing six rounds of boxing sparring. And by like after round four, I mean, I could barely lift my arms and it was,

13:44.70 AROB It's a lot different, the amount of energy it takes to spar than it does to hit a bag. It feels like hitting a bag is a good workout and I like doing it, but I don't know if it's like, you're tensed and you're kind of taking shots and you're moving, constantly moving and punching when you're actually going against a live person versus a bag, but I was toast by the end of it.

14:07.48 aggierobison Excellent.

14:08.50 AROB Yeah. So that's my kind of new thing. We don't really spar a lot, but sparred today and I'm going to sleep well tonight. That's the takeaway from that story.

14:17.44 aggierobison All right. And no big injuries?

14:19.43 AROB Yes. No big injuries.

14:20.15 aggierobison Um

14:20.72 AROB I didn't hurt anything. I didn't hurt anybody. I think we're all good.

14:24.75 aggierobison All right.

14:25.50 AROB Yeah.

14:25.72 aggierobison So speaking of new things, it makes me think back to when I was new to fundraising.

14:30.61 AROB Ah, good.

14:30.69 aggierobison Those early days, I got hired at the campus ministry at Michigan Tech and didn't really fully know what I was being hired for.

14:31.86 AROB Yeah.

14:38.34 aggierobison Do you remember your earliest days of fundraising?

14:41.72 AROB I do. I had just graduated from college at A&M. I had been pretty involved at St. Mary's, the Catholic campus ministry. And I knew the development director because my dad ran a private foundation that gave money to St. Mary's. So I knew Greg, the development director, Greg Gorman. I had graduated from college in December.

15:09.06 AROB I had my whole plan to go do Teach for America, found out two days before graduation that that wasn't going to happen and didn't know what the heck I was going to do. Fortunately, Greg called me in and said, "Hey, I want to talk to you about a job." And I said, "I don't even know what you do, but I need a job. So I will come talk to you." And so I ended up

15:28.22 AROB getting into a good office, a good department, had a great ministry, and was fortunate that I was able to learn while doing. And yeah, that was, gosh, 20 years ago.

15:42.62 AROB Um, yeah, almost 20 years ago. So it's been a while.

15:45.59 aggierobison Wow. Wow. Yeah, that's great. I started about almost 10 years ago, but um, I guess nine years ago now. I came into a brand new fundraising office in a ministry that had existed and had done some fundraising, but there was nobody in the office to train me.

16:00.24 aggierobison So we, I was trained by a Petrus consultant and eventually you became my Petrus consultant and taught me everything that I know.

16:00.55 AROB Right.

16:07.29 aggierobison Um, but I remember those early days of just kind of grasping in the dark, like, hopefully this works.

16:11.91 aggierobison I hope I'm doing this right. I don't know why I'm doing all these things, even necessarily, how do they all fit together?

16:17.41 aggierobison So today we want to talk a little bit about that experience, those early days, that first year of being a fundraiser. I feel like it took me a good 12 or 18 months to feel like I actually knew what I was doing, to kind of get the full cycle of the year under my belt and to know what was going on.

16:33.68 aggierobison I don't know, what was your experience like getting it all figured out?

16:36.56 AROB Very, very similar. My boss, in fact, when he hired me, he said, "I can't require you, but I would like for you to commit to three years working here." And I said, okay. And he said, "The reason for that is because we're going to train you and I'm not expecting to get much out of you in the first year. You're going to be learning.

16:57.49 AROB There's a lot to do. And really, you know, then we want to give you time after you know what you're doing to implement what you're doing and be fruitful and effective." And so I said, OK, so I agreed for three years. For me, fortunately, I had an experience early on where my boss had said, "I want you to try to figure out how to get young graduates to give, young alumni." And so I said, OK,

17:25.45 AROB So I came up with this idea, I pitched it to a couple of friends, I pitched it to my boss, and it was to do a class gift program where we asked our college seniors to commit to a pledge before they graduated. And so he said, "Okay, what's it gonna cost?" And I said, about $200 for a lunch or for a dinner. And he said, "Okay, great. We could swing that, go for it." And so that experience, you know, he let me run with it. I managed everything. We had a lot of success with it. That first class gift was over $50,000 from 50 seniors. And it was a really great success. And then that was kind of my,

18:02.24 AROB "Okay, I could take a breath." There's still a lot to learn, but at least I know I can do some things and be effective. So that was my saving grace, I think, in a lot of ways, was that class gift experience, having that so early, it just sort of gave me the confidence to figure out, all right, I can do this and be a fundraiser.

18:17.40 aggierobison When

18:22.26 aggierobison Yeah, I think everybody kind of needs that moment and it's hard to know what that's gonna be. Let's talk about when you very first start a job in fundraising. Nobody goes to school for fundraising, almost nobody.

18:31.93 AROB Right.

18:32.40 aggierobison Some people go for nonprofit management, something to that effect, but nobody's really going to get an undergraduate degree in fundraising. So most of us come into the field having no idea what's going on, right?

18:43.23 aggierobison I think a common experience is you have a priest friend who says, "Hey, I've got this job I'm hiring for.

18:46.88 AROB Mm-hmm.

18:50.52 aggierobison I think you'd be a great fit for it." And you're like, "OK, what am I doing?" Right. And so I think a lot of people come into fundraising with the mindset that it's like you're going out and begging for money.

18:54.50 AROB Mm-hmm.

18:59.65 aggierobison Right. I know some of my acquaintances when I first started fundraising, their impression of it was that I was going to go shake people upside down and take whatever money fell out of their pockets. Right. And maybe that was kind of my impression at first, too. Over time, I came to find that's not true.

19:16.23 AROB Right.

19:16.83 aggierobison Do you want to expand on that at all?

19:20.17 AROB Sure. Totally. So I think that it is pretty common for you to think, all right, what is fundraising or what is people giving? It's whatever you have on you or whatever you've kind of, you know, got extra money.

19:35.48 AROB That's what you're giving to charity, right? And for many people, that's the extent of what charity is for them or many parts of their life. And so you then sort of translate that onto the fundraiser and you think, all right, well, what are you actually doing if people are just giving when they have extra money?

19:53.12 AROB And so you must just be kind of going around, finding people and saying, "Do you have extra money? Do you have extra money? Do you want to give it to us? We could put it to use." And the reality is that's not what fundraising is. Fundraising is 100% - true fundraising is 100% finding people that have a passion for what your organization is doing and want to invest their dollars, their charitable dollars to help you have a greater impact.

20:22.75 AROB And so from a fundraising standpoint, it's about finding, identifying, building relationships with those people so that they understand what the impact is that the organization is doing. Maybe they've experienced it in the past and they have a connection and maybe they don't, but they need to know how they can help. And that's the role of the fundraiser. It's not twisting arms. It's not shaking people upside down for what falls out. It really is about,

20:51.06 AROB understanding what somebody's interest is in your organization, and then finding a way for them to give money to support it and help it have a greater impact.

21:02.64 aggierobison Exactly. One thing that always comes to mind thinking about that, the priest I used to work with, Father Ben, would always say that when he first started fundraising, he kept hearing, "Oh, it's all about relationships." And he was like, "Okay, yeah, but it's really all about money. Right?" And then over time, he came to realize, "Okay, it really is all about relationships." And it is, when I first started fundraising, my impression of it was that it was like a Shark Tank

21:26.47 aggierobison type of scenario, like you're going to go sit down in front of this donor and they're going to grill you. And if you're not perfect, you're not getting the money.

21:31.98 AROB Yeah.

21:32.15 aggierobison And it's really nothing like that at all, right? It's really just going and having coffee or a lunch with people, getting to know them and seeing if there is a connection there between what you do and what they're interested in.

21:43.31 aggierobison And when you do find that, it's not even like asking them for money.

21:43.31 AROB Yeah. I mean.

21:46.70 aggierobison It's like, "Oh, here's this opportunity that you've been looking for to give to make this impact on the world." And they get excited to give you the money.

21:53.00 AROB Right. Yeah. I can't remember if it's a Henri Nouwen quote or if it is a quote, but it's kind of the most beautiful spot of fundraising is when the interests and the passions of the donor and the work and the impact of the charity align.

22:10.70 AROB And when that alignment is there, then that is when true fundraising, true philanthropy happens and the greatest impact comes from that.

22:10.85 aggierobison Yeah, exactly. So let's talk about just a couple of scenarios. You know, say you, the listener are a brand new fundraiser and let's talk about some different, uh, what that might look like and say, well, there's lots of different scenarios out there. Let's say you're a brand new fundraiser and in an office that's, you're the only fundraising staff, a one-man shop, which is pretty common. Uh, maybe it's you and the director, maybe some others on staff, but you're the fundraiser.

22:42.94 aggierobison If you're coming into a more established fundraising office with multiple fundraising staff, there probably are more delineated responsibilities, and it's a little more clear what your responsibilities are. But okay, you're a new development director in this one-man shop. What are your responsibilities? What are the director's responsibilities? Because they're not fully out of fundraising once they hire a fundraiser, right? And what does that look like, and what are the director's expectations for you going to be?

23:06.62 AROB Great questions. So this was your experience, right? Brand new fundraiser and a shop with a director who it was new, fundraising was new to him.

23:09.96 aggierobison Yep.

23:16.28 AROB And fortunately, Father Ben made the decision to, when he hired you to bring on Petrus as a consultant and guiding coach, and so we were able to help you.

23:16.49 aggierobison Yep.

23:25.88 AROB But your experience is very similar to, you know, the majority of fundraisers and new shops, right? So what are some of your responsibilities? Well, first year responsibilities are to get organized. So a lot of new development programs with the new development officer, there's the pieces of a fundraising program in existence.

23:51.05 AROB But they're not aligned, they're not put together in any way that will actually allow you to be successful in fundraising. So what are some of the ways you can get organized? You can, if you don't have a donor database, establish a donor database and then start putting some plans and processes together to

24:09.26 AROB track people. How are people going to be entered and how are you going to draw those out? Right. So that's one way to get organized. Another way to get organized is looking at some of your policies and procedures just when it comes to accepting donations from people. Right? So if you're at a parish, you know it seems pretty easy. Most of the giving up to that point is through the offertory. But what are the processes and the policies in place for counting the offertory, for assigning that, for putting it into the database and tracking it? But if you're not at a parish and you're at, say, a school or a nonprofit that really doesn't have those processes already in place, that history, then, you know, a gift acceptance policy is really important. How are people going to give? What kind of gifts do you accept? What do you not accept?

24:54.76 AROB A kind of policy for counting gifts and inputting them into your system and assigning them to the donor that gave them. All of those policies and procedures are going to help you long-term, but getting organized with those early on is going to be really helpful.

25:13.96 AROB And then I think, you know, kind of next step, next level is you get organized around what's your plan, right? What is your communications plan? What's your development plan? Who's doing the plan? Who's executing on it? What is your plan for developing a case for support? What's your plan for assigning roles, responsibilities to other people and stuff? There's a lot of pieces that go into that plan, but it really, in the beginning, it just looks like getting organized. So does that answer your question, Ben?

25:44.34 aggierobison Yep, definitely. I know when I started, like we said, I was the brand new development director in a brand new program. I spent most of that first year getting the database in place, right? We had records that were in binders over here, boxes of forms over here, like they're all over the place.

26:00.74 aggierobison And that felt like a, it felt like a waste of time. It was a very tedious process, but man, looking back years later, that was one of the most beneficial things that I did early on.

26:04.03 AROB I know.

26:09.10 aggierobison I spent a lot of time there and then just learning the organization and its history and what you're offering now and what's the vision for the future so that you can bring that and communicate that to the donors, to the constituents, is super valuable as well.

26:23.69 AROB Yeah, you asked a second question and part of that was what's the director's responsibility?

26:27.84 aggierobison Right.

26:28.02 AROB So, you know, the director's responsibility is not to help you get the database up to date, up to speed. Right? Like that's not what he or she is hiring them, hiring you for so then they can keep that. Their responsibilities are really about coming up with the message, the vision, that case for support, which case for support is a kind of fancy way of saying, what are we raising money for? And why should people be supporting us? And then what are we going to do with those dollars? That's your case for support. So that needs to come from your director, whoever is in charge.

27:04.42 AROB And then, you know, the other responsibility of the director is to start this journey of building relationships, going out and seeing people with the development director on their own. And so if the director can do those things and then the development director, a new development director can kind of take that role of getting organized and then start feeding into, you know, more of a role of seeing people and building relationships, that's going to be a really great kind of duo going forward to build an effective fundraising operation.

27:38.27 aggierobison Great. Let's talk about if your organization has a board or maybe it's a parish council, finance council, what are their expectations for a development director usually?

27:49.91 AROB So this is all over the place and it's really going to depend on the personalities and the experience of your board members.

27:57.12 AROB Most board members in my experience, most board members want revenue to increase, but don't necessarily have a firm grasp on what is effective in making revenue increase. Right? A lot of board members I have in my experience, when they think of fundraising, they automatically think of grants, they think of mega gifts and mega donors, and they think that your job is to go out and have coffee and lunch with people and ask for gifts.

28:27.24 AROB So they don't have a full grasp on all the organization that it needs to be effective long-term and sustainable. So it's really important and it benefits the development director and the organization significantly if you can identify what are your activities, what are your lead measures that you're going to communicate to the board. These are the things that we're doing.

28:53.37 AROB Ultimately, these will lead to results, your lag, right, your dollars that come in, your new donors, everything else. But the more you can emphasize, here's the activities that we need to do, building the database, adding names to the database, going to see donors, getting our appeals out, interviewing people for articles, all of those kind of actions and activities that you're taking as a development director, communicating that to the board is going to go a long way.

29:20.55 AROB Otherwise, they're just going to look at the one metric that they can identify, and it's trackable, it's dollars in the door. And if those dollars aren't coming immediately, then their expectations are going to be skewed, even if you're doing all the activity that will ultimately lead to more dollars in the door.

29:38.78 aggierobison Exactly. So let's look at a slightly different scenario back in those same lenses. It's very common to see an organization where they can't afford a full-time development staff member yet, right?

29:48.82 aggierobison And so they might take a campus ministry might take a campus minister and say, all right, you're doing that. And now half of your time is spent on fundraising, or the principal of the school might have to fit in fundraising, you know, 10 or 20 hours a week, when possible, or you know, all these organizations that

30:03.77 AROB Or the coach at the school or, yep.

30:05.43 aggierobison Exactly. The director of the ministry might be on their own building the fundraising program.

30:08.27 AROB Right.

30:10.55 aggierobison How do you make that work as you get started with fundraising? Where do you spend your time? What's the most valuable thing to be doing there?

30:17.54 AROB Yeah, so. I do tell people that part-time development officers get part-time results. And that's just the reality of if you can't dedicate your full time to fundraising, then you're not going to get full-time results. So that's just kind of off the bat, you know, recommendation from the expert.

30:36.88 AROB You're gonna get best results with a full-time development director. Okay, now set that aside and say that sometimes that's just not possible, right? We need a part-time person just to make it work, otherwise there's no way to make it work. And so those pieces about being organized are going to become even more important for somebody who has a split role and split responsibilities. The other thing to keep in mind if you have that sort of split responsibility,

31:07.61 AROB is there are going to be things that, if you have a limited amount of time, so let's take the coach for example, right? The basketball coach at the school also teaches one course and is the part-time development director, right?

31:21.71 AROB So probably they are coaching because they love coaching, right? Maybe they're teaching in class because they love that, but they're definitely coaching because they love coaching.

31:29.00 AROB Well, then the principal or the president comes and says, "Hey, I need you to spend half your time fundraising." They're going to say, "I don't really, I don't really like doing that." And so they're going to look for kind of the easiest, the simplest things to do to check off that I'm doing fundraising,

31:44.11 AROB and not take on the really kind of harder, more challenging pieces of development, such as going to see donors, such as making phone calls, such as updating your board, such as doing kind of tedious work like you talked about building that database. And so it really becomes important that you identify, if you're in that part-time role, what are the most important things that are going to drive our development program forward. And I'm gonna, I'm going to do those things first, even if those aren't the things that I love doing. And while it sounds, you know, it doesn't sound glamorous in any way, but it certainly makes everything more effective.

32:27.24 AROB And then when you have that effectiveness, then hopefully the next iteration of this is, well, now we have dollars coming in. We see what's possible. Now we're going to hire somebody full time. So there's definitely kind of a process to get there, but it's really easy to devolve to doing the easy, the simple things. But those aren't necessarily the things that are going to lead to effective fundraising.

32:51.78 aggierobison Yeah. And sometimes if you lean into that thing you don't like very much, you come to like it as you get better at it. Right?

32:57.30 aggierobison I was always terrified of my first donor meetings. The whole process scared me a little bit, but as I learned how to do it, learned how the process went, it became very enjoyable, became the funnest thing I did every day.

33:07.98 aggierobison Right. So it's something you have to kind of learn and figure out. And I'm as introverted as they come on the Myers-Briggs, all the way to introvert.

33:13.70 AROB Well, you know, that's, yeah, you definitely are.

33:18.42 AROB Things like that, oftentimes they feel scarier in sort of preparation and thinking about them than they are in reality, right?

33:30.69 AROB Like, you know, you said you kind of had this image of the shark tank, right?

33:33.90 AROB Like, "I don't want to go meet with donors because they're going to ask me all the questions that I don't know and they're going to be tough on me and they're going to demand, you know, that I know where their dollars are." And how many, how many meetings with donors did you actually have like that in all of your years at St. Al's?

33:50.39 aggierobison Almost none. I would say one, but it was actually more of a misunderstanding.

33:54.30 aggierobison They grilled me the whole time because they'd confused our ministry with another one. That was my most difficult meeting. And then we later went back, sorted it out and got it all figured out.

34:01.02 AROB Yeah.

34:04.54 aggierobison But yeah, almost never.

34:04.70 AROB Yeah. So one out of hundreds, right? And thousands.

34:08.54 aggierobison Oh yeah. Thousands. Yeah.

34:10.39 AROB And so, you know, the reality is, and it's a similar experience for me, I had one experience in, you know, 15 years of direct fundraising that I can remember being really uncomfortable.

34:22.41 AROB And it was because I screwed it up and it wasn't, you know, I created the situation and then I had to endure the couple of minutes of uncomfortableness, awkwardness. But, you know, thousands of meetings where people were thrilled to see me and really took joy in our meeting. And, you know, when you start thinking about it and you build it up as something scary. So it doesn't have to be donor meetings. It can be other things that are scary, but they're scarier in thought and preparation than they are in reality.

34:53.28 aggierobison And that kind of leads into the next question already here. What do the donors expect from you? And let's say look at it from two different angles. First, if you're a brand new development director, if they've never had any interaction with development staff from your organization, and then maybe spend a minute on if you're a new development director who's replacing somebody, right? There's probably some different expectations from donors in those two situations.

35:16.66 AROB Yeah. So if you're a new development director, I think most of your donors, right? So you've got kind of a slice of like super engaged, you know, maybe your board members, maybe, you know, if you're at a parish or finance council members, you know, people that are kind of like more intimately involved, they might have different expectations for you as a development director, because they just know more about the organization, right? So what does that look like? You know, maybe they want you to have kind of a little bit clearer grasp, firmer grasp on the numbers behind the organization or things like that. So you've got to take that slice of the population off. The other 95% of your donors, their expectation for you is...

35:58.62 AROB that you're going to tell them a little bit more about the organization, the work, the impact they're having that they didn't know before they sat down with you. So that's mostly what your audience is going to be expecting of you. Then on the flip side, their expectations of you when they make a gift,

36:17.77 AROB is that you're going to acknowledge the gift, right? You're going to thank them for the gift, you're going to send them the proper paperwork and receipts and documentation for the gift, and that as time goes on, you're going to remember that they gave, continue to show gratitude and thankfulness for those gifts, and just continue to keep them informed as they go.

36:45.48 aggierobison And then what if you're taking over for somebody, you know, somebody who's been in that position for years before you, what does that transition look like?

36:53.35 AROB Yeah, so that's a pretty common one because development directors... Good development directors are constantly being sought after to take on new roles, right? So what that means, and then bad development directors are flaming out and leaving vacancies, right? So usually when you move into a development director role or development role, you're following somebody that's either been really good and been kind of, you know, invited to step up.

37:21.29 AROB or they were really bad and you're replacing them for that reason. And so the first thing is to identify like, all right, what was the guy or the gal before me? What was their experience? What was donors' experience with him or her? And then how do I... How do I make my experience positive, their experience with me positive, right? So I think when you're replacing somebody, the first thing, the best couple of things you can do is go through the list of people that the development director or the development person before you had relationships with and just reach out, establish that connection, say "I'm replacing John" or

37:59.95 AROB "You may have heard that Stacy moved on and I'm the new development director and anything that I can do for you, I want to be of service to you." So it's really about, if you're replacing somebody, it's kind of just picking up where the other person left off for better or worse and making sure that your donors at large and then, you know, at the macro and the micro level know who you are and what you're there to do.

38:26.16 aggierobison Yeah. And just a tip that I found extremely useful when I started, uh, Peter to care tree, who was my consultant from Petrus. When I started he always told me, you know, you're brand new, use that to your advantage. Call these donors and say, "Hey, I'm brand new on staff here.