Stacking the Deck - A Petrus Development Show Episode on Boosting Fundraising Success

The phrase "stacking the deck" often has a negative connotation, leading people to think you're doing something unfair or manipulative.  Good news!  As we share in today's podcast episode, we think that "stacking the deck" in fundraising terms can be a wise and helpful strategy in many situations.  Let's discuss!

Show Notes:

As Andrew and Rhen explain, when they talk about "stacking the deck", they're really talking about strategic preparation before giving days, matching gift and capital campaigns.  This intentional preparation allows you to often have a handful of known donors committed BEFORE the event even begins.  In laying this groundwork and announcing success early, you encourage new and returning donors to give because they see your momentum and want to join in.  Simply put, the odds are already in your favor before your campaign officially starts!  Join Andrew as he shares specific tips and tricks about how you can "stack the deck" and improve your chances of success in upcoming campaigns.  

Note:  If you're planning a giving day in the near future, click HERE and check out our self-paced online course titled "Raising Money with a Giving Day".  Petrus would love to help boost your giving day results!

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

00:31.18
Host
Well, howdy everybody. Welcome back to the Petrus Development Show. I am Rhen Hoehn from Petrus Development. Joining me today, Andrew Robinson. How's it going, Andrew?

00:44.01
AROB
It's going great, Rhen. How about yourself?

00:46.22
Host
Living the dream, always living the dream.

00:48.68
AROB
Nice.

00:49.15
Host
So, uh, you told me something that surprised me a little bit - a little over a year ago, you broke your leg, right? You had all kinds of stuff broken in your leg. I guess your ankle, uh, however you want to phrase that.

00:57.89
AROB
Yes, yes.

01:00.26
Host
And you were on a tough road to recovery for a while there, but you told me, uh, you've been playing basketball a lot recently.

01:06.00
AROB
Oh, yeah. Yeah, every Monday night we call ourselves the Old Man Basketball Group because we're all a bunch of old men. Yeah, love it.

01:15.04
AROB
It's been a lot of fun and we play. We have access to the local gym at the - or the gym at the local Catholic High School and that kind of changed our ability to play consistently and people turn up.

01:26.22
AROB
So it's been great. Yeah, love it.

01:28.46
Host
Excellent. Are you the big man on the team or what's your, uh, what's your position?

01:31.79
AROB
Ah, so funny enough, I have always been - I'm not the tallest, but I've always played down low. That's just been my thing. I'm a decent shooter, but since my injury, I just don't really want to be down low banging around as much as I used to, because it would be pretty physical. And so I've kind of changed my entire game. So now I'm more of a shooting guard.

01:57.53
AROB
I'm not a great dribbler, but I can definitely shoot from the outside. And it's surprised me how occasionally I can get hot and - as I fall down and hurt myself - uh, make some shots, which has never been my strength.

02:11.77
AROB
So something about now my balance is different. You know, I've got titanium in one leg. So now I'm shooting at a different angle and the shots - I don't know. But yeah, it's been a bit of a shift since my injury.

02:24.89
Host
You've reinvented yourself.

02:26.31
AROB
Crazy, huh? Yeah.

02:27.44
Host
Excellent. You said your basketball team was doing a little bit of a fundraiser.

02:31.02
AROB
Yeah, so because we play in the gym, they're nice enough to open the doors. They gave us a key. We get to - yeah, it's been good for the league consistently. But we wanted to show gratitude and give back because they don't charge us anything. And so we did a little fundraiser. We used one of the crowdfunding platforms just to make it easy. And it's been great. A bunch of the guys chipped in, and we raised a lot more than we were expecting to and the pastor and the school principal were very grateful for it. So it was fun.

03:06.53
Host
Excellent. So I participated in a kind of crowdfunding campaign - this was a few years ago now - but the organization had a little bit of a campaign going on and they were getting really close to the end, hitting the goal on the last day, right? And I was like, you know what? I want to be the guy that pushes them over the edge.

03:25.47
Host
And I was, and it was super fun.

03:26.41
AROB
Hey, look at you.

03:27.79
Host
I made this gift and I was super excited about it and got a nice note from them.

03:31.02
AROB
Yeah.

03:31.47
Host
Like, it was just fun to be that person that pushed them over the edge, finished the campaign, completed it. What I was thinking about is - that's a really fun position to be in, finishing off a campaign.

03:41.74
AROB
Yeah.

03:43.11
Host
If you flip that to the opposite end, being the first person to make a gift to a campaign - you know, a $10,000 goal, $0 raised - is a lot scarier position to be in. I mean, you're doing the same thing, right?

03:55.80
Host
You're just giving to support the organization, but it's like, man, am I giving to a failing effort?

03:59.85
Host
Am I, you know, what - is this going to be worth it or is this just going to go to waste?

04:03.99
Host
What's going on here? It's really hard to be that first person to make a gift.

04:07.41
Host
And so today we want to talk a little bit about how to avoid being in that position from the organization's end. How do you prevent people - get them over that hump to make that first gift, or you know, get things rolling so that people want to give and push you over the edge.

04:21.20
Host
And this is a term that we like to call "stacking the deck."

04:25.53
Host
Right? Getting things moving in your favor before they even start. Can you kind of explain what this concept of stacking the deck is?

04:32.93
AROB
Sure. So this is something that I've been doing ever since we had new giving days or capital campaigns. It's just about going into a program like this or a project or a strategy like this with some intentional work being done behind the scenes in advance to pave the way for a successful endeavor. So,

04:55.69
AROB
Stacking the deck can be that philosophy - if we have a goal of, let's say in your situation, we have a goal of $10,000, right? Before we - or, you know, you can expand it to a capital campaign of $10 million, right? But let's talk about your goal. $10,000 fundraising campaign, online giving day, maybe it's Giving Tuesday, but we want to raise $10,000 before the public is ever told that that's our goal.

05:24.31
AROB
If we can go out and ask people strategically for gifts ahead of time and then announce that we have a $10,000 goal, and by the way, we're already $5,000 into our goal, please make a gift to help us get to that edge - then it takes away the fear from the donor standpoint of being that first donor because we've already stacked the deck, right? We've already prepared the way, paved the way for success. So then people coming on are like,

05:54.01
AROB
"Yeah, I'd love to support this." And you know, maybe some of them even take your approach - "I want to be the one that puts them over the edge." But stacking the deck is just being intentional about asking people ahead of time so that when you announce publicly, you're already showing success along the way towards your goal.

06:12.40
Host
Yeah, so is 50% the goal for stacking the deck? You know, getting halfway to the total, or what's the approximate goal here?

06:20.26
AROB
Yeah. So I would say for like a giving day, right? There was an organization that I worked with for years and we started a giving day there. Pretty modest - we started with a $20,000 match. We didn't really do much asking ahead of time. We just hoped we would raise $20,000 that day. And we did, but barely, barely, barely, right? We just squeaked by, but they were excited. The next year we went into it and said, you know, I think we could raise our sights a little bit. And so we set a goal of a $50,000 match, but we thought,

06:50.54
AROB
probably not going to raise $50,000 that day. And so then we started asking and we probably secured somewhere around 15 to 20,000. So it was close to 50% that day. The next year we went up to a hundred and we thought this is a big stretch. We need to be prepared. And we secured over $75,000 in gifts towards that hundred thousand dollar match, even before we announced or launched the giving day. So in that situation, that was 75% we hit that goal.

07:21.65
AROB
So I would say from a Giving Day standpoint, there's a lot of flexibility, right? 0% is kind of a risky move, but it depends on your goal history.

07:31.12
AROB
50% is good, even more. If you switch that over to capital campaigns - campaigns are a much longer process, much bigger goal, right? You're doing a lot more work. But the silent phase is the time when you are asking for gifts. And in a way, you're stacking the deck for when you go public. I would be - and we don't advise any of our clients to announce publicly before they're at 50%.

07:56.87
AROB
Sometimes there are exceptions, right? There's something to every rule, but 50% is the time that you really want to announce. I've even had some people on my team that have been working with doing campaigns now that are saying, "Andrew, you know, unless there's like a compelling need that we have to announce at 50%, I'm letting it go even higher. We're asking, you know, we're getting to 60, even 70% of that goal."

08:20.10
AROB
Before we go public, and then that just ensures more likelihood they're going to hit that goal and even exceed that goal towards the next stretch goal.

08:28.70
Host
So giving days, campaigns, I think another use case for stacking the deck is matching gift campaigns.

08:36.74
AROB
Yeah.

08:36.79
Host
It gets a little bit weird though with that, unless you have a very specific matching gift you want to ask for. You're going out and you're asking donors for the challenge gift, right?

08:46.35
AROB
Yeah.

08:46.46
Host
And then once you have that, you're going out and asking people to start making gifts toward that matching gift or part of that challenge gift. There can be kind of a weird dynamic of when do we stop asking for more matching gift dollars and start asking for gifts toward that match.

09:01.47
Host
Does that make sense?

09:02.45
AROB
Yeah, sure. So one time, in fact, in one of these situations where we had a 50,000 - this same client - we had that $50,000 goal. We did that for a couple of years.

09:13.88
AROB
We actually got to the point where we kind of overstacked the deck, where we went into our $50,000 giving day challenge already having $50,000 in gifts received on the match side. And so we actually increased the challenge to be instead of a $50,000 challenge - I think we ultimately went up to a $70,000 challenge just to give reason for people to feel like they're still contributing to that goal. So this is, you know, when you're talking about this, this is a really good way of doing a comprehensive holistic look at development where you're using major gifts and intentional solicitations and you're using annual fund, meaning you're casting a broad net and getting more people in. Every one of these giving day scenarios, we're looking at 20 to 40% of those gifts that come in

10:14.02
AROB
on the day of giving as being first-time gifts, which is good for the long-term future. And then those major gifts, in almost every case, we're asking for an increase in what they've given before. So it's a good blending. It's a good way to do that. And that stacking the deck is kind of that heavier weighted on the major gift side.

10:31.84
Host
Yeah, and I mean I think about giving days in particular, any really successful giving day, you know they're doing this, right? If you look at some of the biggest ones, I think we've talked to them in the past about Purdue.

10:43.01
Host
Their annual day of giving last year raised $76 million. Like, the logistics of raising that much money in 24 hours or 48 hours is

10:47.13
AROB
Crazy.

10:51.82
Host
Pretty much impossible when you're talking about thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of alumni.

10:56.74
Host
You know that they're spending the entire year basically working on asking people for these gifts to make on that one day, right?

11:03.56
AROB
Right.

11:03.88
Host
So same thing if you're, you know, part of iGiveCatholic, you see some organizations raise $100,000 in that one day and you put out a couple of social posts and didn't raise a hundred thousand dollars - that's the difference, a big part of the difference at least.

11:16.60
Host
Right? And so this is a strategy that's pretty pivotal for those types of appeals.

11:23.00
AROB
Oh yeah, totally. And it's not - it's just being intentional. It's about blending using the opportunity to blend major gift and annual fund gifts. It's about going into a project like this with excitement, with clear goals. And if you can do that and employ this very simple strategy of stacking the deck, right? Setting yourself up for success - whether that's on a giving day, a matching campaign, a capital campaign, whatever it is - then ultimately you have a higher likelihood of hitting your goal. You have a higher likelihood of more people giving because they see that, they feel that excitement and they want to be like you or the person that puts them over the edge. And you just have a

12:17.85
AROB
better handle on how to do fundraising from an intentional and strategic way than just sort of this scattershot "We're going to put out a goal and really hope that people hit it."

12:30.09
Host
Yeah, you know, and it's a common experience among people I've talked to where they have a goal, they're getting close, but they still have a ways to go, you know, on the last day before the deadline. And they're calling their major donors, "Okay, can you help us get over this hump, help us hit the goal by the deadline tonight?"

12:45.33
Host
Instead of doing that, you know, at the 11th hour, do it ahead of time and save everybody a lot of stress, right?

12:48.06
AROB
Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, I agree.

12:53.78
Host
Great. Well, as long as we mentioned Giving Day quite a bit here, I want to point out we have a full deep dive course on how to raise money with a Giving Day and stacking the deck is one component of that.

13:05.22
Host
It goes a lot deeper beyond just that as well though too. If you go to PetrusDevelopment.com/Academy, you're going to find that course. And so it's a one-time fee and you have access to it for life.

13:15.73
Host
So if your organization's thinking about a Giving Day - or you can apply these strategies to a lot of these other types of appeals we're talking about - go check that out, PetrusDevelopment.com/Academy.

13:26.24
AROB
Yeah, totally. That's a great course. I think it's well done. There's a lot of good content in there and there's no doubt it's going to help you make your next giving day more successful.

13:36.30
Host
Great. Well, I think this is very helpful. I think it's going to help a lot of organizations raise a lot more money with their matching gifts and their giving days and campaigns. Thank you, Andrew.

13:43.05
AROB
There you go. Yeah. Go out there, be successful and let us know how some of the advice that you got here changed your giving day or your capital campaign. And we'd love to hear it.

13:54.58
Host
Love it. Well, thank you. Have a great day.