Everyone Needs a Coach

Jeff Schreifels

Do you have a coach or mentor in your life? Someone who can encourage you and guide you in your work as a fundraiser? In my own life, I’ve been very lucky to have had several incredible mentors, including Richard, whose guidance has helped shape me as a person and a leader. So I know just how impactful it is to have a coach in your corner. But unfortunately, coaching is often not valued in the fundraising world. And this is having a detrimental impact on your ability to be successful, as a fundraiser or fundraising leader. So for today’s episode, we’ll be sharing more about why we believe everyone needs a coach, and how the right coach can help you grow and have an even greater impact on your mission.

Recorded

Welcome to the Nothing But Major Gifts podcast from Veritus Group featuring Richard Perry and Jeff Schreifels. Twice a month, we bring you the latest and best thinking about major gift fundraising so you can develop authentic relationships with your major donors. Here are your hosts, Richard and Jeff.

Jeff Schreifels 

Welcome to the podcast today. I’m Jeff Schreifels. And today I’ve invited Lisa Robertson and Kara Ansotegui to join me in a great discussion, because something we feel passionately about is the value of having a coach. We’ve all been in situations where we’ve attended a conference or training and we’ve gotten some great ideas. But then we never really move those things forward. Doing this on your own is hard work, even if you’re motivated to make a change. So that’s why Kara, Lisa, and I are going to be discussing how we think about and approach coaching. And why having a coach can be transformative in your work. But before we get too far into it, Lisa and Kara, why don’t you introduce yourselves?

Lisa Robertson

Sure. I’m Lisa Robertson, Director of Client Services. I’ve been in the nonprofit world for nearly 30 years, as scary as that sounds, and with Veritus for 10. And what I love about our role here at Veritus is the opportunity that we have to coach, to come alongside people, to encourage them. And I think about, even in my own life, the coaches that I’ve had who have helped me become you know, better at the things that I wanted to become better at. Glad to be here today, Jeff. Thanks. Yeah, Kara.

Kara Ansotegui

Yeah, and I’m Kara Ansotegui. I’m the other Director of Client Services here at Veritus. And I’ve been in the fundraising industry for between 20 and 25 years, and I’m just really excited to be here and talk about coaching today. It’s one of the parts I really love the most about our work. Like Lisa said, getting to come alongside our clients each day in coaching, it’s such a true pleasure.

Jeff Schreifels 

Okay, well, thanks for joining me today. I know this is going to be a good discussion. So Lisa, let’s start with you. Help us define what we mean by coaching.

Lisa Robertson

Sure. We’re talking about someone who comes alongside and is meeting regularly. And in this case, with fundraisers, we’re talking about strategy, we’re giving them accountability, and we’re able to offer some outside perspective, right? Sometimes we just need that. Someone who’s outside of our world to kind of give us a broader view. So in our work, what that means is we’re meeting with frontline fundraisers, and we’re managing the execution of their fundraising plan; we’re asking really thoughtful questions to get them to think more broadly; and we’re helping to support them in overcoming obstacles. And sometimes we’re, you know, part counselor, right? Or I call it the Weight Watcher’s scale. So like, one time, I was working with this COO, and he told me he wouldn’t make his calls if he didn’t know that we were going to meet that week, because it helped him move the donor work up his priority list. Because he had so many things to do, he could have kept putting it off, putting it off. But when it’s like, “Oh, Lisa is going to call and she’s going to ask me if I’ve made these calls, and what I learned, and what our plan is,” then, you know, that’s really helpful to him.

Lisa Robertson

And then, you know, I think of another fundraiser. She was at the end of her career. She’s been really successful in large markets talking to some donors, if we said their name out loud, you’d be like, “Oh, yeah, we know that family.” Right? So it’s like, why would she need a coach? Well, she was in a new organization. And she was learning a new system. And, you know, at first she was more resistant. But at the end of it, she was like, “Man, I need this set of tools.” Actually, what happened too was, their database was a complete fail. And she was like, “If I hadn’t had you there to talk me through that, to help remind me to have a good system, I would have been lost.” And so, you know, it was important to her. So, in some ways, we’re walking alongside someone, we’re reminding them, and in other ways, we’re sort of stepping into a role a manager might hold, because that manager is potentially so busy, right? So it’s really a lot of things, but it’s really walking alongside, having that accountability, offering the advice, and asking really thoughtful questions.

Jeff Schreifels 

That’s really good. I mean, I look at it in my own life, of having different people in my life that have been in that coaching position for me. And you’re exactly right. If you know that you’re meeting with a coach, in fact, I have one right now, her personally, just in leadership training, and just having a coach, knowing that I have that and knowing that I’m going to be talking to her on an ongoing basis makes me more aware of what I’m doing and what I’m going to be reporting back to her on. So it is this accountability piece. But it also is helping you think of all the issues that you’re working on all the time, because, you know, “Hey, I got to talk to my coach about this, or this situation came up.” I’ve got to know what’s going on. And some people have said, “Why do you need a coach? You’ve been in this for 30 some years, you should know what to do.” And we all know that I would say everyone needs someone in their life to hold them accountable, to talk about things that they’re going through, whether that’s a formal coach or informal, having someone like that in your life can really help you personally. And what we do is help them professionally. And many times as you said, it does become like a counselor situation, you know, where we’re helping them personally as well. You know, because this is tough, tough work. You know, being a frontline fundraiser is not easy. Having someone to be able to come alongside of you is probably one of the best gifts your organization could give you, I think. So, Kara, why don’t you share with us why we think there’s such a need for coaching in fundraising, specifically.

Kara Ansotegui 

Yeah, well, I just want to start and say, I love that story that you shared. And Lisa, I honestly yesterday had a client, and the first thing he said was, “I knew we had a call today. So I went ahead and made sure I called donor XYZ.” You know, I am his accountability partner. You know, I think coaches have really unique roles. And we have to sometimes remember they really differ from teachers, right? Our job as a coach is to really hone and enhance our clients’ abilities when it comes to building those relationships. We teach them along the way, but we’re working with really smart people, right? We’re there to help them and hone those abilities that they have. And you guys made such interesting points about coaching. I feel like we’re willing to accept coaching support in other areas of our life, right? We’ve got fitness, mental health, personal life coaches. But there’s this resistance still to coaching in relational fundraising that I just don’t really, truly understand.

Jeff Schreifels 

Well, let’s take a second. Let’s just think about why is that, do you think? I mean, why are people resistant to coaching in fundraising or in the non-profit space? What do you think some of the reasons are for that? People feel like they should know what to do? So they don’t need that extra help? Could it be ego? You know, like, “Hey, I’m good at this. I’ve been doing this for years. I don’t need someone to hold me accountable.” What are some other things?

Kara Ansotegui 

You know, they think they know what to do. And they’re resistant to hear that maybe there’s another strategy or another way that could help them be successful.

Jeff Schreifels 

On the non-profit side, on the organizational side, from leaders, they’re thinking, “Why am I going to pay for a coach, when I’ve hired them to do the work?” You know, like, “I have hired their expertise, they should know what to do. They don’t need more support. And plus, you know, money is tight, you know, and I’m not going to spend that money on that. I don’t want more overhead.”

Lisa Robertson 

Yeah. I have two thoughts on that, Jeff. One is, you know, when you’re the fundraiser, and someone hires a coach for you, it’s kind of like if you said, “Lisa I’ve seen you on screen. You need a personal trainer, I sent one over to your house.” I’d be insulted, right? But if I’m like, “Hey, I need to get in shape,” then that’s a different story. So when someone else brings someone in it feels kind of like, “Why do you think I need somebody?” And the other thing is, I think about, you know, my husband is a an athletic coach. And he coaches two sports, but he’s especially good at helping people with their batting. And in that, you don’t start from scratch. You don’t go in and go “Hey, you’ve been batting forever, kid. You know you’re 18 years old. You’ve been doing this since you could walk. You need to start all over.” You go, “There’s little adjustments you can make.” And it’s usually just where they put their hands, or lifting their elbows, or little things. And I think that’s what we’re doing. We come along and go, “You are a fantastic human. You do a really good job. Do you know if you tweak this one thing…” Or, “What would happen if we set it up a little differently?” Or, “What would happen if you had a different sort of plan?” So we’re not saying scrap everything you’ve known for 25 years. We’re like, “Hey, what if you did this?” And I think it’s sometimes hard to hear that. But it’s really beneficial.

Jeff Schreifels 

Yeah, exactly. By the way, it’s hitting coach, not batting.

Lisa Robertson 

Sorry, see? If I don’t even know…

Jeff Schreifels 

You’re probably not a big baseball person. But your husband is a hitting coach.

Lisa Robertson 

He’s a baseball coach, but he really specializes in hitting. There we go.

Jeff Schreifels 

So, Kara, what are some other reasons for coaching?

Kara Ansotegui 

Well, you know, I think we could use sports analogies all day. But similarly, fundraisers have challenges, and sometimes it’s hard for them to talk to leadership about those challenges. And when we’re in that role, that’s kind of our role, right, is to help keep leadership engaged and informed in what’s happening with the fundraiser. And what’s happening with that person, their strengths, their weaknesses, what we need to improve on, what our strategies are for the organization’s program at large. And I think that’s a really important role that we play. You know, leadership sometimes really lacks support; they have a ton of staff, and they just can’t do all of these one on one meetings that we can do, right? So I have one client, the leader, she’s the Chief Development Officer, she has 10 people underneath her, and she told me one day, “I could not do the fundraising program without you guys, right? You keep me apprised of challenges with my team. You send me notes after every meeting. And so I kind of know where everyone is. And I know what my talking points are with them when I meet with them every week.” And so we just play such an important role of keeping both the leaders, and their staff, on track in their programs.

Jeff Schreifels 

Yeah. Okay, now, I’d love for both of you to share what it looks like when you don’t have the kind of coaching support you need, and when you do.

Lisa Robertson 

I think when you don’t have it, you don’t have that accountability, right? And so you do get kind of… you can get sucked into… we’ve all been in non-profits, where it’s all hands on deck, there could be a million meetings, there could be a million things you’re going to have to do. And so a coach really provides that opportunity to be accountable to someone, and really have someone that has a frequent meeting/communication with you to keep you out of that minutia and focused. And then I think the other thing is that you might struggle to overcome obstacles, because you don’t have someone that can help you creatively think through those situations. I just think about so many times in life, right, when you’re talking about something, even to a friend and they go, “Well, what about…” And you’re like, “Oh, why didn’t I think of that?” And that’s why we have prefrontal cortexes and relationships, because, you know, we want to think and learn. And it helps us to have an outside perspective, right? So it’s nice to have someone outside of your situation, who has experience, and has dealt with similar situations, and has best practices to pull from, and even someone who can just ask the right questions.

Kara Ansotegui 

When you don’t have a coach, you might not have someone who has proven experience in this area of our work, right? We all know leadership that may be really great in one part of the role, but the relational side of fundraising is more challenging for them, right? They have other strengths. And so you’re really getting to work with someone who has insight in best practices and can tell you what’s happening in the industry, and what’s working for others. I think, one thing we do really well as a team is we share across one another things that are working within other organizations, so that our clients can implement that.

Jeff Schreifels 

Yeah. Okay. Both of you, besides your roles as Director of Client Services and handling all the clients and our CELs, you’re also coaching some Major Gift Fundraisers and Mid-Level Fundraisers yourselves. Just give our audience just a snippet of what it looks like on a call with a frontline fundraiser. What does coaching look like? I want people to get that in their head; what it could feel like. Why don’t you start? And then Lisa, maybe you’ll add to it?

Kara Ansotegui 

I want to be clear, not one of our calls is exactly the same, right? We come alongside our clients in where they need to be. But, for me, coaching is really… this is probably an overused analogy, but it’s teaching them how to fish, right? We aren’t fishing for them. But we’re really teaching them how to fish. So we’re teaching them how to goal their donors so we can know what kind of gifts to expect. We’re talking to them every single week about donors that typically give the following month and the month after that, right? So what strategies do we have in place? Are we making sure those asks are happening? Are we stewarding them for the month? And are we learning passions and interests and getting that out to them? And so it’s really helping them learn those skills, and setting them up for success on a week to week basis. And Lisa made some points. Sometimes we’re also therapists, and we’re just making sure that all the challenges that happen in the organization, that they can stay motivated and work through those.

Jeff Schreifels 

So Lisa, tell us a specific thing that you’ve had to talk to a fundraiser about, you know, when you’re meeting with them during the week.

Lisa Robertson 

Yeah, I’ve got a couple of illustrations. One is, you know, we always like to start our calls with a win, right? Why? Because you said it, this is really hard work. So when you say, “Hey, tell us about, you know, a good quality win or connection,” it never fails. I worked with one, she happens to be an ED, but she also has a caseload. And she’ll say, “I don’t know if I’ve done a whole lot this week. And I’ve got so much going on, I’ve got…” You know, she calls it mom guilt, because she’s got so much going on, she feels like she’s not attending to anything. And then I’ll go, “Let’s go through your list. Let’s see who we need… who’s behind or who we’re getting ready to ask for.” And sure enough, she’s like “Oh, I talked to them. Oh, no, I just had coffee.” And so she forgets what she’s done, right? So that’s what it looks like: it’s me going “No, okay, you have talked to Jeff. You are ready to ask him for his fifty grand, you know, you’re all set up for this. You’ve done the work, it just didn’t feel like it. But you’ve been following your plan. So you’re great.”

Lisa Robertson 

Another time, it might look like, you know, after the wins and connections, “Tell me what’s going on, you know, your plans with your donors, or who did you talk to?” And it’s like, “I talked to Kara. She was so mad because we actually sent something to her. And we addressed it wrong, you know, it was to her and her spouse. And he has nothing to do with the giving. And she was so insulted because she’s told us that a million times and our processing center has messed that up.” Now, if I’m managing that person, and a couple other people, and they’re having the same things, that’s what Kara was talking about, I can take that to leadership and go, “Hey, your processing center is hurting your pipeline and hurting your Major Gift Fundraisers.” And that’s where it’s like, that person felt personally responsible, and kind of devastated, because they got the phone call from an upset donor. But I’m able to walk them through that. They probably handled it really well. And if not, I might give some other suggestions of things we can do to help with that and say, “Let me help advocate for you with your leadership because this is becoming a problem,” right? So it’s really, like Kara said, it’s very varied, where we’re focused on kind of what has happened, where are we moving, and what is our plan? And are we following our plan?

Jeff Schreifels 

Yeah. Good stuff. I just wanted folks to kind of know, like, what does it feel like to have a coach talk to you about your portfolio? What does it look like on a weekly basis? And what should it feel like?

Kara Ansotegui 

Can I just add in one more thing there, Jeff? I’ve actually had someone say to me in leadership, “So you’re telling me, I don’t need to be… you’re taking over my job?” And I just want to let people know that not no, that is not what we’re doing. Right? When we talk about these things, we aren’t managing. We aren’t managing your staff. You’re managing your staff. We’re simply helping set your staff up for success. And keeping you informed and engaged as a leader so that you can have the strongest fundraising program possible. And I think there can be some confusion there, and so I just want to clear that up.

Jeff Schreifels

That’s good. Lisa, why don’t you talk to more about why organizations resist coaching support for their fundraisers?

Lisa Robertson

Sure. Well, you touched on it earlier and I have written on it, which is, they feel like, “Hey, I’ve hired them to raise money, to get a good donor, so they should be able to do it.” And so there’s just little… and Kara touched on this, the nuances of the job, right? Like we always say, this is the best job in the world. And it is. And we also say, it’s a very hard job. It really does take a lot. And so it really requires a lot of emotional intelligence, drive, organization, personality, all these things. And you can’t expect, as a leader, to know all those things, right. And then the other thing is, you know, going back to the point of playing the manager and all those things is, the leader might feel like, “Well, I should be able to do this.” Well, maybe not. Maybe they’ve been hired because of their expertise someplace else in the donor pipeline or someplace else in leadership and that’s great. But we also kind of come in there, and we’re helping right? Similar to Cara I say, “Hey, listen, here’s you. And here’s your fundraiser. And I come in right in between, just to get in the muck and mire.” So, you don’t have to worry about the day to day minutia of I talked to this donor, they were upset. But you can deal with the organizational pieces of the donor processing center getting the name wrong, right? Kara, do you have a story there? I think about something like that similar.

Kara Ansotegui

I was just going to say I’ve sat in that role, right? I hired Veritus before years ago. And one of the greatest gifts you guys gave me was meeting with my team and copying me on notes so that I always knew strengths and weaknesses, and how they were performing in the program. And instead of letting that be a fear, which it can be sometimes, right, like, “Oh, they’re taking over. What are people going to think I’m doing? There’s a really wonderful way to allow it to be a relief in that stress. And that burden on you when you have so many other things to do. You can focus on other parts of your work, like you were just talking about Lisa. So yeah, you know, I want leadership to always remember, we’re here to support them in this journey.

Lisa Robertson

That’s a really good point.

Jeff Schreifels

So if one of our listeners right now is wanting to get a coach or find some additional support, what advice would you give them? Lisa, why don’t you start? And then Kara, why don’t you follow up with her.

Lisa Robertson

I think we would always suggest they start with a free assessment from us, Jeff, right. Because what that does is it shows them a little bit more about their value attrition, kind of where we might be kind of losing donors, and they’re giving along the way. And it also gives them a better understanding of their staff needs, and where we can help serve them as coaches. So I always definitely recommend that.

Kara Ansotegui

I would just tag onto that Lisa, and say that I know not everyone can afford our weekly coaching, right? Especially smaller nonprofits. So that can be a challenge for them. But we really are working to make more group coaching available in the near term. And I would just recommend they come and talk to us and learn a little bit more about that group coaching, because I think it really still can offer them the best of both worlds.

Jeff Schreifels

Yeah. Okay, Kara, for any leaders listening, how can they begin to provide some of that coaching support to their team right now?

Kara Ansotegui

Sure. You know, I think they can start by doing some of the simple things we do here. They can have weekly meetings, right, in order to check in on the progress of each individual staff member. So if that is too much maybe they go to bi-weekly. We even do that sometimes. During those meetings, they can coach them on how to best prioritize their work in order to accomplish their goals. They can ask them questions that help them think through next steps. You know, an example of that really is each week, I meet with my coaching clients, and I ask them what their next touch point is; I ask them how they’re planning for it so it’s completed on time, right? I also ask them what donors make gifts the following month, and encourage them to think through their strategies to ensure that they have plans built for each of those donors. So it’s really a balance, in my mind, of helping them think through and strategize versus really telling them what to do. And that’s what I think managers can do, is teach their, I know I said it already, but teach them how to fish, right? They can teach them how to start prioritizing and strategizing on their own.

Jeff Schreifels

Awesome. Well, thank you both for joining us today on this episode. And we hope this has given you some creative ideas and inspiration to pursue a coach in your fundraising work. If you’d like to learn more about how we partner with organizations and fundraising leaders to provide coaching to your team, I want you to grab some time with my colleague, Amy Chapman, to learn more about how we can work together. You can find a link to her calendar in the show notes. Really take advantage of that and have a discussion with her. So, thank you, and we’ll see you next time.

Recorded

Thank you for joining us for the Nothing But Major Gifts podcast from Veritus Group. Richard and Jeff also write an ongoing blog that you can subscribe to for free at veritusgroup.net. Please join us again next time.