Jeff Schreifels
Welcome everyone. So glad you're with me today. Well, today's episode is gonna be a lot of fun. And I actually don't know where we are gonna end up today. I'm going to talk with Jason Lewis, who's been challenging the non-profit fundraising sector with his writing in LinkedIn and his Substack postings, really questioning the ethics around what he calls big philanthropy. And he's calling out the direct response fundraising industry as well and how we may have lost our way. Now, if you haven't seen his postings, he's gonna give us some context. And of course, I'm gonna be asking him a bunch of questions, but a little bit about who Jason is. Jason Lewis is the founder of responsive fundraising. And that's a consultancy that helps leaders create places where fundraising can thrive.

He is also an adjunct faculty member at York College of Pennsylvania, where he teaches non-profit management, social entrepreneurship, and consulting. Jason is the author of The War for Fundraising Talent and a contributing editor to the fundraising reader. So let's bring Jason in and let's get ready for some real talk.

Jason, welcome.

Jason Lewis
Hey, Jeff. Good to see you this morning.

I've got my coffee in hand. Yeah. Somebody told me when I was hosting the podcast that I should get mugs or t-shirts or ball caps and I never did it. ⁓ so I admire you for pulling this together.

Jeff Schreifels
Excellent. Yes. Put that together.

Yeah.

Well, I just thought it'd be a fun way to kind of like, hey, we're just sitting around having coffee and chatting. So.

Jason
And the little box, Jeff, the little box that showed up in the mail a couple of weeks ago, ⁓ I think one of my kids was in the living room. We were all anxious about what it was. And I didn't recall that one of your people said they were sending it. And then I said, yeah, I get to have this conversation with Jeff.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah.

Great. I'm glad you're here. Like we've known each other for a while now, you know. ⁓ We've had discussions last night.

Jason
Yeah, think the first time, I think the first time you and I talked a long time, the first time you and I physically were in the same room, we were at that conference right before, in 2019, we were at a conference up in Wisconsin. You and I were both in the lineup. That's the first time we had some time to actually sit across the lunch table sort of conversation. But yeah, we've known each other probably a lot longer than that.

Jeff Schreifels
That's right. That's right.

think that included some bourbon or scotch, something too.

Jason
Yeah, it might have been a better conversation if it did.

Jeff Schreifels
Well, we don't have that today, but ⁓ we'll have to make sure we do that sometime. All right, so I gotta say, you gotta fill me in Why is everyone so pissed off at you right now? Not everyone, okay, let's not say everyone, but there's a lot of people pissed off at you. Why don't you give our listeners some context of why.

Jason
Ha

I don't think everybody's pissed off at me, but yeah.

There's two camps that are probably the most, whose feathers I've probably been ruffling the most. ⁓ And it's the two big corners of our sector. And you can't mess with some of the underlying ethical questions that I'm asking without ruffling feathers. Big philanthropy is the large foundations. Donald Trump unplugged all sorts of resources for large.

corner of our sector here in the last six months, ⁓ you know, last what actually 90 days. It hasn't even been six months. It seems like it's feels like it's been. ⁓ But I don't think we understand the history of all that. And I don't think that we understand the when we think about big philanthropy and those those feathers that I've been ruffling over there.

Jeff Schreifels
Feels like years.

Jason
I don't think we understand the history and the obligation that these foundations essentially signed on to fulfill several decades ago that now Donald Trump is, and the Trump administration is basically unplugging. And the more we understand that and the more that big philanthropy owns up to that, I think the more they're going to begin to understand perhaps where they've dropped the ball. When it comes to our direct friends in direct response, you know, I've been bantering with folks in direct response for several decades now, but what I see is a shrinking group of people who are still very loyal to some of the underlying assumptions in direct response. ⁓ yeah, that camp is, that's an interesting camp. can certainly, we can go any direction you want to.

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Okay. So you got, you got people in both of these areas kind of pissed off at what you've been talking about a little bit here. And I mean, you, should mention you got this great Substack You talk about, but you've been writing prolifically.

Jason
Well, I, you know, Jeff, I hosted the fundraising talent podcast for about five years, launched that after the first book. And then, ⁓ about two years ago, I said, I've got us because a lot of these debates that we, you and I, and everyone else likes to have on, LinkedIn and other social media platforms. I said, I've got to start writing in longer form so that people can, so that I can find my, my people who want to think about this in longer form. And so Substack became that place to do that.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah.

Jason
I'm really grateful to the Chronicle Philanthropy and to the Giving Review who've both picked up some of my writing ⁓ and given ⁓ it more exposure. ⁓ But I think we spend a lot of time, we're talking about real stuff and there's real statistics out there that are constantly telling us that perhaps we're moving in the wrong direction. And I think...

Jeff Schreifels
momentum.

Yeah.

Jason
you know, we as a professional community have got to start thinking in longer form. So that's what you're seeing me do on Substack. You know, just trying to do it in a couple hundred words may not be enough. ⁓ And I think three thousand, words, like the essay that most recently ruffled the feathers of our friends in direct response, it's 3000 words, you know? ⁓ I don't know how many, you know, how many words are in the average direct mail appeal, but.

Jeff Schreifels
Yep. Yeah.

Jason
Some of us have got to actually do our homework and actually understand there's a lot of material in that recent piece that you're talking about. Yeah.

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Well, let's talk about big philanthropy. I have to ask, mean, are our foundations just evil?

Jason
I don't think they're evil. don't know. I don't think they're evil. ⁓ I don't think they're evil. I think that big foundations starting back after the civil rights movement, the US government made a deal with big foundations. is when foundation, foundations date all the way back to the beginning of the late 19th and early 20th century when the first sort of big, big.

Jeff Schreifels
Carnegie, all those Rockefellers. Yeah.

Jason
Yeah, all those all the all the old guys. Yeah. Yeah.

But then they really started to take off, ⁓ you know, after the civil rights movement, and they sort of became the guardians of social change. But they also made a deal that, you know, you could put you could put lots of resources inside these vaults with tax advantages. ⁓

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jason
But what was happening at the same time, the government was stepping back from its obligations to community services. There's some great people who do things, people who spend a lot more time doing a lot more research and reading than perhaps you and I do. ⁓ Scholars who've really chronicled some of this, how this all sort of evolved. ⁓ But basically what the deal was was that foundations would would not only sort of have the opportunity to sort of set the agenda on social change, but they would also be the funders. ⁓ And ⁓ I think it begs, you know, the whole way that we relate to foundations now begs the question, you know, how much money needs to go in, how much money needs to stay there, and how much money needs to flow out. And where I get most ruffled is how much applause we need to give someone when they're

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jason
you know, when the minimum expectation is 5 % and we're patting ourselves on the back for, you know, turning up the volume on, you know, six or 7%, it just doesn't... Yeah, that's what ruffles my feathers.

Jeff Schreifels
Right.

Yes. so, okay, they have to do this 5 % or they, you know, so that's one thing. But then the other thing is how they control it and what you have to, you know, from non-profits. And I think about like, Vu Le, who writes, you know, he writes about this all the time around foundations. You know, they're like, you have to jump backwards. You've got to...

you do somersaults, you've got to like promise every, you know, everything to this foundation for a $10,000 grant. You know, it's just like, and then you got to feel grateful that you get this money from the grant, from the foundation. And so foundations have been doing this, you know, as I was reading more about big philanthropy in your take on foundations, the more I was like, yeah, this is like,

What are we trying to do here? What are these foundations actually trying to promote? Because it always felt like to me, I mean, be as crass about it is like, hey, some rich guys put some money away that they could put away, and maybe they felt good about it, but really then they could take care of their family through this foundation. They'd have their...

sisters or someone to start running a foundation. I often think that athletes who have foundations, and I know most of them are just like, yeah, they get their friends and their family on the payroll and then they hold these events and you know. And so foundations to me have been like.

Jason
Well, here's the Jeff, here's the reality of it. It's not a democratic process. so not only starting again, mid 20th century, not only did foundations become sort of the guardians and sort of getting the privilege of setting the agenda on what social change should look like, and then also expected to some degree or another fund it adequately or not. ⁓ What they also got to do.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah.

Jason
⁓ is they got the privilege of doing it without a lot of public accountability. And I think a lot of this critique that you're gonna see coming, I think a lot of the critique you're reading from my material, I think what's absent from some of the crisis that's being talked about in Washington right now is that the Heritage Foundation, for example, is a private foundation as well. So for all the funding that... is not flowing from private foundations into charities, the Heritage Foundation also underwrote the playbook for everything that's happening. So we can either say that the folks at one of these other large foundations are the, you know, whether they're the guardian of good or are they actually dismantling society. ⁓

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Jason
because a lot of us, regardless of what our politics are, are gonna look at one of these foundations. If I took two of the largest foundations, any two of them, and put them side by side, one of them would be advocating for what's happening right now, and one of them would not. And none of that went before the public back in November, for example.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Jason
And it's that lack of democratic accountability that I think we, more and more of us on both sides of the aisle are becoming more and more aware of. And you have people, you have people on both the far left and the far right that essentially, and this is what big philanthropy is wrestling with right now. Right now, big philanthropy, sort of the moderates.

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Why

don't

Jason
Institutional philanthropy. Yeah, it's just it's just short for institutional philanthropy

⁓ So these are large institutions private foundations who are organized for the purposes of of In many cases funding some sort of social good ⁓ Usually at the interests of some, know big donor, you know at some point in the past And and in some cases they take on a role, you know that

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah.

Yeah. Right.

Jason
usually at the outset is consistent with their founders, the initial benefactor, then over time, you know, the Ford Foundation, what the Ford Foundation today funds is completely counter to what the Ford Foundation would have been funding in its first and second generation, right? I mean, literally the political swing, and that's the way it's always going to be as long as we rely on this.

Jeff Schreifels
Yes.

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Jason
But I don't even know if it's so much about the money, but it's the idea that these large institutions get the privilege of deciding what is good and what is bad, or what should be funded and what shouldn't. ⁓ Or even telling us how we should do that funding. So a lot of these conversations that we're having about unrestricted monies and donor-advised funds and trust-based, a lot of these sort of defining of what is the right way to give and the wrong way to give. A lot of that's coming from these large foundations who arguably, you know, perhaps we need to be turning the, what is it, turning the mirror around or whatever and saying, hey, hey, perhaps rather than telling us all how we should be doing this, perhaps you need to be thinking a little bit about how you all are doing this. And if you really zoom out,

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Excellent. Yeah.

Jason
It's really the same critique that we all have about inequality in our society, you know? It's really the same critique. You and I are just zeroing in on a particular corner. ⁓ It's a smaller subset of oligarchs who kind of control the story.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah. Right.

What do you think it should be like?

Jason
Well, I think it should be more local and I think it should be more distributed. I think like even some of the people over the last decade or so, last five years that I've perhaps disagreed with, I think the money should be moving faster. I have spent a lot of time the last five years really understanding what the gift is different than the tax, different than the tax and the commodity. So our societies are organized any

Any society as we understand it today ⁓ is organized around three primary modes of exchange, and that is the commodity, the tax, and the gift. And they all play distinct roles, and they operate in different ways, and they create different types of outcomes. And we don't expect the tax to do the same things that we expect the commodity to do, or we don't expect the commodity to do what the gift does. But one of the things about the gift in particular

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Jason
that our sector should be the most, one of the most, that our sector should be the, one of the primary beneficiaries of is that the gift is always moving. It doesn't become anyone's private property. Think about the way that our endowments are set up. So think about the endowment at the large charity. ⁓ Think about the same critique that I'm making about big philanthropy.

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jason
It's really the same critique that we're hearing about, you know, Harvard, for example. It's money that is being, that was perhaps initially intended as a gift and then sits in a vault and doesn't do anything. And ultimately when the gift sits somewhere, whoever's controlling it is kind of secondary to that. But whenever that money sits there, that resource sits there, it stirs up resentment. And right now we have people on the left and the right

Jeff Schreifels
Right.

Hmm.

Jason
who

don't like that money just sitting there. I've read a number of people say this. David Callahan has essentially said the same thing over at Inside Philanthropy. As soon as the Trump administration's done and shoot, whenever that sort of time, the left's gonna come after big philanthropy the same way. The far left's gonna come after them in the same sort of way because they don't think it's any more just than, it's just different.

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

Jason
It's just different ways of looking at.

Jeff Schreifels
And then they could argue people from Harvard. Well, it actually is doing something. It's, you know, it's, it's, ⁓ you know, creating what is it if it's like, you're getting a 10 % return on that 50 billion. So they're getting 5 billion a year to fund their, all their projects and all of all of those things. So can you make that argument that it is actually continuing on? But.

Jason
Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff, you and I, well, that's the question. So yeah, how big is too big? And you and I could have the same debate with, you know, you and I are two, you know, two individuals who live comfortable middle-class lifestyles. We both own companies. We both own homes.

Jeff Schreifels
You know, are these things even ethical? And how big of an endowment is it? You know? Yeah.

Jason
And there's people in this country and around the world that would say that we have enough or that perhaps we even have too much. And it's just a route, know, what that line is, is always, you know, based on, ⁓ you know, who's sort of making that judgment. ⁓ And I don't think that...

The more I understand the gift, this is why I keep going back to the gift.

You look at an endowment like what Harvard's got. And if they're making more money in the markets by leaving that money there, then they're paying out, then not enough money's flowing out. So, you know, if they've got $54 million, billion dollars, I'm sorry, 54, yeah, it's like, yeah, billions. We're talking about big B, not M's.

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Billion. Billion.

Jason
10 years ago, 20 years ago, you and I would have been just talking about, you know, big millions, not big billions. But if the markets, if they're making 7, 8 % in the markets, then their payout should be at least that much. Or something's stagnant. Something's not honoring in my mind the gift.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah, yeah.

Jason
It's that movement. So you started the conversation around the idea that, you know, I'm ruffling feathers or pissing people off. When you understand the ethics of the gift, one of those core ethics, those core fundamentals of understanding the gift is that the gift is always supposed to move

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Mhm.

Jason
And when it's not moving, when it's not moving, someone resents that lack of movement and somebody feels like it's not equitable.

Jeff Schreifels
So it's happening now where the current administration is pulling back government funding and there's a call essentially out in our space, say, hey, foundations start opening up. I see your 5%, but you've got to do more than this. This is now the time to do something.

Jason
Yup, that's it. Yup, yup.

Yeah, yeah. And again, having that historical, having that grasp of history that you all signed on for this a half century ago to play this role that the government signed off, you know, essentially vacated. And now even to the extent that the government has continued to play, you to the extent that the government has continued to play what role they do now when the government decides to pull out completely. ⁓

I think we need to be...

And there's ethical questions here, there's value questions here, there's the things that you and I and others were perhaps taught and are growing up in the church or something like that about hoarding. ⁓ But then there's just, going back to what David Callahan at Inside Philanthropy is talking about, some of it's just the practical value that the tax incentives that the government

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah.

Jason
whoever is in the White House is affording these institutions and is it really yielding the type of return that it should? Because there's money, there's incentives going in and there's money going out and is it a fair deal? That's what, everything that I keep referring to back in the ⁓ second half of the 20th century, it was called a grand bargain. It was a great bargain.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah. Right.

Jason
It was a bargain between these foundations and the government. And in some cases, those bargains have to be renegotiated.

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jason
And guys like you and I in our fundraising careers, we weren't really taught in fundraising 101 to think very critically about this stuff. You and I, when we were in our first fundraising 101 workshop at AFP or CASE or wherever we were, we weren't taught to think that perhaps those foundations are not moving money as quickly as they should. And we were taught to, know, wine and dine and

Jeff Schreifels
No. Yeah.

Yeah, how to get the gift, how to get it.

Jason
you know, think that these, yeah, and these people, yeah, and how to get it and to make these people feel like they were, you know, the kings and queens of generosity or something. And then you start to, after you've been in it as long as guys like you and I have, you start to think maybe this, or you come upon a crisis like we're in the midst of, and you start to think, okay, maybe this isn't, maybe this deal isn't so.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah, right.

Jason
know, fair and equitable as it's supposed to be.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah, I mean, it feels like ⁓ it's structurally flawed where... ⁓

You this, you wrote a lot about control and how these foundations control the flow of the gift. ⁓ And it's true, you know, like I think about my wife, she runs a small non-profit and she got a big Kellogg grant for a three year, you know, and it, and it did what it was supposed to do. And then they just decided,

Jason
Yes, yes.

Jeff Schreifels
Well, we're now switching our focus over to something else. You don't get any more. That's it. Good job, but you know, so like the work is like just starting, you know, a three year grant. was generous grant, right? But then like someone inside Kellogg says, ⁓ we're going to do something else.

Jason
Well,

so you've got these foundations operate like quasi government institutions is what they do ⁓ in these hierarchical sort of top-down, know, paternalistic type relationships. Like, you know, what is big brother? What is daddy? Your grandpa telling you that you can get away with this month. You know, I teach, I'm going to be teaching a class here in the fall on social entrepreneurship and I'll spend the first couple of weeks just talking to the students about how social change works.

And if you look at the way social change in our society or any other society, social change doesn't ask for permission. And we're a sector that's supposed to be all about changing things. And yet we've created these structures or we tolerate these structures that essentially we have to go around asking people for permission to do things that it's not really in their best. Kellogg, if you're a hunger organization or if you're a an organization that wants to feed people better quality of food or something, Kellogg has no interest in your making all that many strides in that direction. And that's where a lot of this wealth comes from. again, know, couple of years ago, certainly my training growing up in the church, you're supposed to, know, as a good conservative capitalist and all that kind of stuff, I'm supposed to have opinions that say, ⁓

you know, the person who earns this thing can do what he wants or what she wants with it, all that kind of stuff. But when you really start to interrogate some of the underlying ways that this works, we're not set up to actually be able to do what we say we're trying to do. Social change doesn't ask for permission. It doesn't have some third party.

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jason
some third parties, you know, funders saying, no, you can't do this anymore. Or when we get uncomfortable with the things that you're doing, we're going to withdraw your funding. That's not the way that social change works. Just not.

Jeff Schreifels
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. How what do you think about the Gates Foundation? Same we're done in like 20 years or so.

Jason
I think that's extraordinary telling. haven't written about that in any, you know, lengthy, but I think, ⁓ so I think that's telling of the conversation that you and I are having, because I think the baby boomers are questioning as they're sort of planning their exit, if you will. ⁓ They're thinking, okay, you know, have we set the world up?

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah.

Jason
to be as good as the world we inherited. And so I think somebody like Bill Gates and even our colleagues over at the Heritage Foundation, there's a couple of boomers over there running things too. ⁓ I think that generation is asking themselves, we, you know, we inherited the world at a very good time in the post-war period and a lot of us benefited from, you know,

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Jason
you know, the gee whiz, the original New Deal, you know, they benefited from all of these things. And I think people like Gates and others are asking themselves, okay, is all this wealth that I've accumulated, have I, you know, have I paid it all back? ⁓ There's a philosophy, a theory that emerged in the 90s called the die broke philosophy.

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jason
you might have remembered that it was a popular book when I was in college. I remember I was working at a Sears department store and I had some older colleagues that were reading this book and they were thinking about their retirement plans and stuff. And it was a new innovative idea that emerged in the 90s. That's the same generation that was reading that in the 90s. That's the baby boomers who were starting to, their careers were starting to take off.

Right? They were starting to accumulate wealth. They were paying, you know, they were perhaps thinking about paying off their mortgage. And this die broke idea sort of came on the scene and, and it resonated with some folks. 25 years later, you're seeing those same baby boomers like Gates decide, you know, maybe

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Jason
you know, maybe establishing this foundation that's designed to only give away so much money so that it exists in perpetuity isn't such a good idea. And so we're going to spin this thing down. The whole spin down for not. So the critique you and I could talk all day long about all the rights and wrongs about big philanthropy. Big philanthropy is talking about this spin down. It's the idea you're seeing more foundations talking about spending down.

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Jason
in the last five or 10 years than you probably ever had. Because they're all coming to the realization that maybe this money doesn't need to sit, maybe it needs to move faster.

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Jason
Yeah, you and I aren't talking about anything that's terribly, ⁓ you know, people are talking about this stuff. Yeah.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah,

yeah. And then I look at like philanthropists like Mackenzie Scott, in her giving as an individual, kind of you talk about giving the gift freely, without really any strings attached to it. And that's another thing that ⁓

Jason
Yes. Yes.

think it'll be fascinating to read Mackenzie's book that she writes in 10 years after she has, you know, so she does what she's been doing now, what we understand Mackenzie doing with Scott Mackenzie Scott doing now, last several years that she's been giving away these extraordinary gifts. But but she's also she's also been expected to sort of fit in this paradigm that was sort of there before she got here. And she's had to push against it. if any, you know, she and a couple of others have been, you know, I think in the back of her mind, she's thinking, maybe I should die broke. Maybe I there's what can I do with this after I'm gone, right? And she's trying to figure that out. But she's in a she's navigating a world that doesn't really tell her to do that. ⁓ You know, Chuck Finney, a great philanthropist,

Jeff Schreifels
Thank you.

Right.

Jason
⁓ He's got a great biography out there. Chuck Vinnie died a couple of years ago. He's the founder of ⁓ the, what are the stores in the, the duty free stores in the airports. ⁓ He wanted to, he was determined to give away everything before he died. He died just a couple of years ago and during that lifetime he gave away about $8 billion.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah, yeah.

Jason
He did a lot of it in secret. His name's not on the side of buildings. He didn't take Ted Turner's advice and say, let's put our names on the side of buildings and tell people how generous philanthropists are. He was quiet about it. He was actively involved. It wasn't like he just let people sort of run and go do things with his money that he didn't want them to. So he was very actively involved, but he played a very different role than what we see.

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Jason
He played a role much more consistent with what Mackenzie Scott is trying to play. Yeah.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah, yeah. I mean,

don't you just feel, mean, human tendency, we're about control. We want to control things, right? And so this is why these foundations are doing it the way they do, why philanthropists do it. They want an outcome. They want to make sure that, you know, people do what they should be doing. So like,

Jason
we do. Yeah.

Jeff Schreifels
I think about the whole movement towards just giving people the cash instead of creating an infrastructure. What is called the income thing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓

Jason
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, exactly. Why does the universal basic income, why does that bother so many people? Or

why do so many of our charities think that we have to actually, why do I have to box up the food when I could just hand them, hand the folks a couple hundred dollars and say, go to Walmart, right? ⁓ Why do I think that I can better, I mean, I think the hunger,

Jeff Schreifels
Right.

Jason
food feeding people sort of thing. There's people who have looked at that and done plenty of ruffling feathers about how we feed and address that particular need. It's a great sort of subset of our sector and where some of the contradictions are in the way that we think about social change. And even that Walmart is creating a lot of these

economic challenges for the same folks who are working at Walmart or the same folks who are going to the food bank because they're not paid a fair wage. So how about we just make sure people are paid a better wage? And I sound like I'm totally betraying my conservative first year economics class at Liberty. Yeah, yeah. mean, it's just, my dad would shame me and Dr. Falwell would

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly. Yes.

Well, you are. Good, good for you.

Jason
kick me out of the school. But I mean, some of these things you've just got to wrestle with and the best time to wrestle with them is in the midst of a crisis like this. Somebody told me a couple of months ago when I wrote right around the time, you know, the whole thing was unraveling with the Trump administration. They said, Jason, can you kind you on this? And I said, no, I'm not going to wait on this. I think now is the time to really think through some of what got us here.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jason
If I wait until everything sort of settled down and everybody feels comfortable again, you know, we won't realize that this system that we're all participating in perhaps isn't all it's cracked up to be. Yeah.

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

So if you had a magic wand, what would it look like then?

Jason
Well, you can't turn back. It's kind of like the discussion about the direct response conversation too. You can't turn back the clock and sort of, you I don't want to make America great again or anything like that. I think there's plenty of things that, there's plenty of instances just in the last hundred years where the world wasn't all that great, you know, for a lot of people that didn't look like you and I. And I think we need to stop pretending like,

Jeff Schreifels
Right.

Jason
making America or making the world great again. ⁓ But I think we can definitely think back. I think we need to utilize constraints. I think the answer perhaps to that question, whether we're talking about philanthropy or whether we're talking about direct response, which are the two places that I'm ⁓ ruffling the most feathers, is really about constraints.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah. No.

Thank

Yeah. Yeah.

Jason
Or in saying, look, there's a limit, perhaps there's a limit on how large that foundation should get. yeah, ⁓ right. Yeah, yeah. And same thing with the direct response conversation. The system is designed to be highly efficient. And just like my father would have taught me about a small

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah.

And what about payouts? This 5 % thing is just.

Jason
you know, engine on a lawnmower, if that highly efficient system, if it doesn't have a governor, if it doesn't have a limit, if it doesn't have a constraint, it will blow itself up. That's just the way that systems, highly efficient systems work. There is such a thing called the law of diminishing returns. And you and I have been looking at statistics when it comes to things like direct response. And we've been saying we've passed the point of diminishing returns a long time ago. ⁓

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Jason
you know, direct response as an alternative funding stream with big foundations. Direct response worked really well with our grandparents and the boomers and a little bit of our generation. ⁓ And the question is, it continue to, my generation is half the size of my parents' generation. ⁓ We're not gonna be able to keep that flow going the same way.

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Jason
⁓ Some of this is just real practical and generational and some of it's just really being honest with the numbers.

Jeff Schreifels
I'm thinking we need to probably have another podcast that's just focused on direct the direct response industry. Because I think we've got we've had we talked. I love the discussion on the big philanthropy and I was like, well, we could do both of these. I think these are too big. Like this could be an hour and a half long and try to, know.

Jason
Yeah, yeah, I don't know what's your schedule, how this, because we're... ⁓

Yeah.

It's not gonna fit, right, right.

You tried to keep it to 45, I understand.

Yeah.

Jeff Schreifels
You know, because today's people, don't want the hour and a half podcast. But. ⁓

Jason
Yeah.

Although

Joe Rogan does a three hour, some of those guys have been doing three hour podcasts. You might dare to, ⁓

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah, maybe, yeah, but I don't, you know, I'm not talking some creatine and protein powder at the same time, where there's only really like 40 minutes of actual quality, anything.

Jason
Okay.

Right.

you

Jeff Schreifels
but ⁓ tell us, tell us how people can get ahold of you and your Substack and sign up and.

Jason
Yeah, so I do a lot of my writing now at I do all my writing for the most part it on Substack. It's called the butterfly effect. ⁓ It's just a play on the our branding it responsive. We have a little butterfly that and the and it some of this is just an appreciation of sort of, know, the butterfly effect scientifically is the idea of sort of looking at complex systems and appreciating that when you sort of go back.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah.

Jason
And you understand where we started from. have ripple effects and perhaps unpredictable things happen, which is really just the underlying critique that we've been talking about with Big Philanthropy is that we set some things in motion a half century ago. so anyway, the butterfly effect on Substacks, the best place to find me, responsivefundraising.com is our website.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah.

Become

your friend on LinkedIn. Definitely.

Jason
Yeah, can be kind of, you know, most of your listeners probably either know me or they're, connected to me on LinkedIn. ⁓

I, I have decided to be, I tend to be a little more brief on LinkedIn because we've all, we've had other moments, you know, where, where too much was happening on LinkedIn and yeah.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah.

Well, tell me a little bit about responsive fundraising too.

Jason
Yeah, so ⁓ we started responsive right before the pandemic. I had started my own consulting practice about five or six years prior to that. ⁓ We have a group of consultants around the country. We use a particular set of frameworks, kind of a soup to nuts fundraising philosophy that we teach organizations probably best suited for smaller organizations. ⁓

Jeff Schreifels
Mm-hmm.

Jason
A lot of these materials originated back with my graduate school experience, just asking how do we create a high performing, you know, fundraising operation that honors the gift and honors the experience for those on both sides of the exchange, that meets the need, that doesn't put, you know, unnecessary barriers in the way.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah.

Jason
And it starts with philosophy. So we, you when we work with a client, we want them to wrestle with some of these big questions. Some of the reasons why I'm ruffling feathers the way I am is because none of us were taught to wrestle with these underlying questions. We were just sort of handed things and said, go and get the job done. We're telling our clients as organizations, especially in times like this, maybe you need to interrogate your underlying thinking. ⁓

Jeff Schreifels
you

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jason
And what are the ethics of fundraising? Do you understand why you go about this process the way that you do? What kind of relationship does it form with you and your donor? At Responsive, we want our donors, we want our organizations to have very high expectations of those relationships. That's what you guys do. That's exactly what you guys do. That's the business you're in.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's what we do. ⁓

Jason
You're in the business of training gift officers to have higher expectations of those relationships. But how many of our practices, whether we're talking about big philanthropy or direct response, how many of those practices really allow us to get those kind of relationships where high expectations can exist?

Jeff Schreifels
That's right.

Yeah, and even with major donors, know, only what we have found is really only a third of those donors really want that deeper relationship with you. That's what's been so interesting. And those ultimately are the donors that you want to build those relationships, the ones that say yes.

Jason
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Schreifels
I want to understand what you're doing. I want to partner with you. I want to know more than just, you know, how many kids we're helping today, you know.

Jason
And that's some of those underlying assumptions that I want a client to wrestle with early in there. Before you write your development plan, before you decide to chase after big foundations, or before you decide to launch a direct mail program, if a third of your donors are ultimately going to say, yes, we're interested in this relationship and two thirds are not, what does that say about your practices? Because when your CRM is chock full of names,

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah.

Right.

Jason
that ultimately don't wanna have a relationship with you. How much confusion and overwhelm are we creating for ourselves? And how difficult is it to discern who to call? Let's trace that back. Let's trace that back to the origins of where some of that overwhelm came from. And... That's your podcast.

Jeff Schreifels
Yes.

Yes, and that's going to be on our next podcast.

You and I are going to do that podcast after this one. Yeah.

Jason
Yeah, that's the, yeah, I mean, let's just trace it all back. That's the ripple, that's the unintended consequences. That's the butterfly effect. That's the unintended consequences of decisions that we made or our predecessors made perhaps decades before us that now translate into some of the misery that we're navigating now.

Jeff Schreifels
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Well, hey, thanks for joining me today. ⁓ Great conversation. I always love talking with you. I missed like, we need to have more of these, but we definitely are going to do the direct response one. We have to do that one because, you know, I spent a lot of time in that industry. So it'd be good. Yeah, yeah.

Jason
Yeah, this has been fun.

Yeah, there's a ⁓

I know you did. Yeah, I know you did. I've got lots of friends in that space and I do appreciate all those folks in that space. it's unfortunate that I ruffled their feathers this week, but I do understand where they...

Jeff Schreifels
No, it's a good thing. It's always a good thing. We always need to be able to critique ourselves, right? So hopefully we can do that. So anyway, thanks for joining us and hey, we'll see you next time.

Jason
Yeah, yeah, yeah.