EP 109: Events Should Fuel Donor Growth, Not Replace It — with Jeff Schreifels

Jeff: Welcome to Elevate Your Event, your favorite podcast for transforming fundraising events. Join us weekly for expert tips and creative ideas to make your next event a standout success. Events can raise money, but they can also stall your donor growth if they're doing all the heavy lifting. On this episode of Elevate Your Event, we're joined by Jeff Schreifels, principal and owner of Veritas Group, a fundraising consultancy that helps nonprofits build donor pipelines that actually last. We’re talking about where events fit, where they go wrong, and how to turn one-night generosity into long-term donor relationships. Let’s dive in.

Jeff: All right. Well, welcome back to the Elevate Your Event podcast, where we talk about all the various ways you can make your next fundraising event better and maybe figure out how to connect it to your entire donor management, donor development plan. So we’ve got a special guest today. I am excited to introduce Jeff Schreifels. Jeff, go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell the audience a little bit about your background. We know you hail from the currently cold Philadelphia.

Jeff Schreifels: Yeah. So, like you said, I’m the principal and owner of Veritas Group, and Veritas has been around for 16 years. I’ve been in fundraising for 38 years. I started right out of college working for a small nonprofit based in Philadelphia. For the next eight years, I worked for two different nonprofits as a development director. Then I went to Seattle and worked for a large direct response agency for 12 years before my business partner and I started Veritas. I’ve worked in all aspects of fundraising, from writing acquisition letters to holding events to sitting across the table and asking for large gifts from major donors. I’ve been fortunate to get experience across the whole realm of fundraising.

Jeff: Right. Well, I think that helps too, because you now know how the pieces connect together.

Jeff Schreifels: That’s right. I like to call it the donor pipeline, from acquisition all the way to the final legacy gift. I’ve been able to be involved in all of those areas.

Jeff: I think that’s a smart way to look at it. Obviously, if you’re in commercial sales, you understand what a pipeline is. I don’t think a lot of nonprofits necessarily embrace it to that level, but it makes a lot of sense. You have to have a lot of patience, right? I mean, I don’t think your sales turnaround is 30 to 60 days for some things, but for these guys it can be years.

Jeff Schreifels: Yeah. For major gifts, it could be anywhere from 12 to 36 months. It really depends on where the relationship is with that donor at the time.

Jeff: That’s good to know. Thirty-six months sounds a lot shorter than I would have thought in some cases, but it’s great to know it’s achievable.

Jeff Schreifels: Yeah. Thirty-six months doesn’t mean that the donor’s not giving, but they’re not giving that transformational gift until they’ve really built trust with your organization and you’ve brought them an offer that matches their passions and interests. That takes time.

Jeff: Let’s spend a little time on that pipeline idea. Give us a high-level overview. For a nonprofit, what are the stages we’re talking about?

Jeff Schreifels: I look at a pipeline as starting at the very beginning: what are you doing to bring new donors into the organization? You’re casting the net out in a number of different ways, whether through direct response, events, or people inviting their friends. Whatever you’re doing to get that first gift. From there, you’re cultivating those donors. Some of them are going to say no and decide they’re not really passionate about the mission after they learn more. But you’re trying to capture as many as possible. Eventually some donors start giving larger gifts, and that’s where mid-level comes in. That’s a stage where you’re beginning a different kind of relationship with the donor. Maybe it’s all been direct response before, and now you’re introducing them to a mid-level rep. That rep might have 600 donors in their portfolio and is starting to understand who that donor is. For the donor, it’s probably the first time someone from the organization has reached out to them. Then major gifts is when they gravitate up to those bigger gifts, typically 10,000 and above cumulatively. Over time, you cultivate them through those major gifts and hopefully eventually an estate gift or planned gift. That’s the pipeline, and you have to really look at every part of it and ask how you’re investing in each area.

Jeff: Right, and what are the expected outcomes and metrics for success, right? ROI on each of those areas.

Jeff Schreifels: Exactly. Acquisition, cultivation, mid-level, major gifts — they should all have an ROI attached. You should be very aware of what you’re expecting from each of them.

Jeff: And just to tie this into events, events don’t necessarily fit into one stage.

Jeff Schreifels: No. They’re a part of all of it.

Jeff: Exactly. A lot of our clients come in and we can kind of assess their maturity level with the pipeline you’re describing. We don’t really consult at your level, but we’ve been around enough nonprofits to know how events factor into that, and it guides what we tell our clients. A lot of the things you do — or don’t do — at events can significantly impact a variety of these stages.

Jeff Schreifels: Absolutely.

Jeff: For example, we’ll talk with people who say auctions are kind of difficult and a pain, so they’re just going to do an ask. And I’ll say, okay, but who’s coming to this event? Are you expecting a whole bunch of people being introduced for the first time? Are they guests of somebody who bought a table? Are they all prepared to donate even at the $100 level? Or do you have other ways to engage people that are going to capture their name, their email address, their credit card, and all that information you’re going to want later? We end up steering them toward stage one, which is max engagement. I want everybody’s email coming in the door.

Jeff Schreifels: Exactly. For acquisition, that’s where those auctions are great because it’s a fun way to capture the information. Now hopefully during the event you’re also introducing the mission so they at least know what you’re about.

Jeff: I’ve always wondered about that. I’ve gone to some charity events and I’ll read up on the charity beforehand, but I imagine a lot of times somebody just calls up their buddies and says, “I bought a table at this charity event. Want to come? It’ll be fun.” Those people may not know much about the mission.

Jeff Schreifels: I think the majority of the people going because they were invited to fill a table are not going to become long-term donors necessarily. A few will, but you should do the best job you can to capture all of them. If you have a table of 10, maybe two of them will be really captured by the mission, but you’re trying to get all 10. The others can still contribute through auction purchases or other engagement and help subsidize the event.

Jeff: One hundred percent. And it goes back to data again. We coach clients through maybe their first event or first event using technology, and they’ll say they want check-in to be streamlined and easy, so they’re just going to make up email addresses or preregister everybody because they don’t feel comfortable asking guests for personal information at the door. And I’m like, well, do they know what they’re coming to? If you want all that information, you’ve got to get it.

Jeff Schreifels: Yes, you have to get it.

Jeff: So that’s kind of stage one. Then let me ask you this next question. I’ve got maybe not new visitors to the organization. I’ve got people who’ve connected with the event, donated in the past, maybe come for the last three or four years. How do I get those people from a $250 paddle raise to $1,000 or $2,500?

Jeff Schreifels: You’re the expert at how to get them to give more at the event, but I think it comes from what you do pre-event with those people and helping set expectations. Let’s say you have a table captain with 10 people and hopefully they know what those guests gave last year. They can go to them and say, “Hey, last year was great. I know you spent $500 on an auction item. I’d love it if our table could do 20% more this year. If you could do $750 or $1,000, that would be awesome.” There are things like that you can do if you have a relationship.

Jeff: I love that advice. And maybe you also have to vet who you’re bringing, right? I bought a table at a fundraiser we’ve done for a few years now, and the event’s kind of stuck. It’s a great intimate event, but it’s stuck in the sense of how do I get the paddle raise from 40 or 50k to 100k? The board was saying, “We just need richer people in the room.” And I said, “We need more generous people in the room, that’s for sure, but I don’t know if they have to be rich.” What came up was that everybody should look at who they brought and ask whether these are the type of people who are going to go from a $250 paddle raise to $500 or $750. Or do I need to invite other people? And then what you said was also interesting: if I do feel that way, I need to preset expectations.

Jeff Schreifels: Absolutely. It wouldn’t be pushy for me. What I would do pre-event is make sure all the table captains are on board. You’ve had a pre-meeting with them. You’ve already given them the information about the people they invited if they’ve invited them back, so they know what they’ve given before. Then you’re setting the expectation for what they’re going to communicate before those guests come. There might be things in the silent auction you know they’ll like, and you can tell them about that beforehand. That’s the kind of thing about knowing your people, and for that event, that’s how you can move from 50 to 100.

Jeff: I love that. There’s another event we do that’s fairly high profile, and it’s so desirable to be a part of that they actually use what we call a table revenue report. They kind of relegate the bottom four or five tables out. If you’re in the bottom 10%, they strongly feel they’ve got to give somebody else another chance who’s been dying to buy a table and see if they can beat you. You can get back in, but you run the risk of not. It’s kind of like game theory.

Jeff Schreifels: Yeah.

Jeff: So what do you say on stage? Let’s go to mid-level gifts. You said major gifts are typically 10,000 and above per year. Mid-level is between 1,000 and 9,999.

Jeff Schreifels: Correct. Though if you’re a university, obviously major gift levels might be 50,000 or 100,000. It depends on the size of the organization.

Jeff: There’s a lot of room in that range. This is something a lot of our clients struggle with. If Jeff gives every year and gives $1,000 in the paddle raise, how do I get him to $1,500 or $2,000? Or is the answer just that we need more different people because that guy is maxed out?

Jeff Schreifels: Good question. Let’s say someone gave $1,500 or even $5,000 or even $15,000 the first time they ever gave at an event. I would not call them a mid-level or major donor yet. I would call them someone who’s interested, but I wouldn’t put them in a portfolio until I qualified that donor. We always have a process to determine whether a donor actually wants a relationship with you before you spend the money, time, and energy to cultivate them. For the donor who gave $1,500 or $7,500, the follow-up is calling that person and finding out the motivation behind that gift. Were they inspired by the mission? Do they want more information? Can we talk further? That’s something we would do on the mid and major gift side because a lot of donors who give at events are giving from the emotion of that night, and most of them are not what I would call a mission donor. The job after the event is to try to convert them into a mission donor.

Jeff: Describe “mission donor” for our audience.

Jeff Schreifels: A mission donor is someone who really buys into the cause of your nonprofit, someone who has a passion for it. Somebody might become a mission donor at the event because you did something that broke their heart, or because they said, “Wow, I didn’t know this about this organization. My father had this disease and now I see they’re working on a cure.” That would be a mission donor — someone who cares about it, wants regular updates, and wants to know exactly how their gifts are making a difference.

Jeff: That’s powerful. And what you’re describing says I’ve got a captive audience. I always joke that events are a marketing person’s dream come true because I get to market to the audience and they’re actually paying me to do it, assuming you charge admission. So I have to take advantage of that stage time. I assume you work closely with clients on how to best use that 15 or 20 minutes.

Jeff Schreifels: That’s right. You want your best shot at explaining what you do, what the problem is, and how their help is solving that problem. That’s the best use of an event from our point of view. And what we know from major gifts is that the problem comes when the organization uses the major gift team to actually run the event.

Jeff: Oh Lord.

Jeff Schreifels: That’s the problem. In many ways, I look at events as a marketing function, not really a fundraising function. Because the fundraising side can come later. The marketing side is: we’re trying to acquire these people, cultivate them, lift their giving, inspire them. But to look at this as a fundraising strategy can really hurt. Here’s what I see: the events become such a big part of the overall fundraising strategy that those donors now become event donors. And event teams look at those donors as their own, not the organization’s. I’ve seen event teams say, “Oh no, you can’t talk to our donor because if you go cultivate them and ask for a gift, then when it comes time for the event, they’re not going to give their $50,000 at the event.” And we’re like, hold on — this is not your donor. You’re a strategy. This is the organization’s donor. We’re trying to help the donor give to their heart’s content.

Jeff: Oh man, I’ve seen this. I was on a board where there had been so much success from a series of international walk events and a peer-to-peer platform. The organization had gone from raising a couple hundred grand a year to over a million. That was all great, but the connection from the staff all the way up to the executive director was built around the people hosting those walks and how much money they were raising individually. As a board member, I asked a simple question because we had a CRM: who are our top 10 annual biggest donors? They couldn’t name anyone in the top 10. And those top donors were corporations connected to a completely different event, a golf tournament that raised a couple hundred grand. My point wasn’t that we should stop doing walks or go embrace golf tournaments. The point was exactly what you’re saying: these are donors to the organization, not event donors.

Jeff Schreifels: Exactly. And pipeline-wise, if someone gave $1,000 through a walk or run, your goal is to get them to $2,500 to $5,000, and that might be through cultivation, not just by inviting them to the next walk. Then the next goal is to endear them to the organization over time and the mission, and turn that $1,000 walk gift into a $100,000 major gift, and eventually a planned gift.

Jeff: I’d say charities can run into this trap. For us, it was a little bit of a trap and we fixed it. There were a number of people connected to these walks who thought the organization’s name was the name of the walk. It would be like somebody thinking you work for Heart Ball instead of the American Heart Association, or for Race for the Cure instead of the organization behind it. As much as we love events, they can’t take over the identity of your organization.

Jeff Schreifels: Right. But too often that does happen. Because events get stuck as a major source of cash, and then organizations think, “Let’s do another one and another one.” Now they’re running four or five major events a year. They hire more staff to do that. Then they say, “These donors can’t give to major gifts because we need them to prop up the revenue from the event.” Now the KPIs become about attendance and event revenue. If a $100,000 donor to that event is now giving through a major gift officer instead, the event KPI looks down. That’s how you lose sight of what you’re really trying to do, which is help a donor give to their heart’s content. One of the barriers is turning events into a department instead of a strategy.

Jeff: That’s so funny because I think there’s a little bit of event planners’ ego tied into that. It’s not always metrics. I remember when we first introduced mobile bidding at a school auction, the first question was how to make sure only people physically present could win an auction item. Our response was, this is great — your people don’t all have to be there. They can bid from anywhere. You’re going to raise more money. But they weren’t excited because they measured success by how good the party was. When people didn’t come to the party, they felt like that was a fail.

Jeff Schreifels: Yeah.

Jeff: We run a big Kentucky Derby event every year, and it is a fundraiser for us. But one of the things our board had to learn over time is that you actually make more money if some people don’t come — they’ll still donate the $500 ticket and you don’t have to buy them dinner or drinks. But it goes back to what you’re describing: are the goals of the event aligned with the goals of the organization?

Jeff Schreifels: Right.

Jeff: We’ve got to wrap up soon, but I want to ask you about boards. In terms of their influence on events and donors, where do they help and where do they tend not to help, especially with mid and major gifts?

Jeff Schreifels: Where they don’t help is in not having patience or understanding that it takes time to build a mid and major gift program. They’ll say, “We need a major gift program, let’s hire a major gift officer, and we should start seeing money flow in.” They don’t understand how long it takes to build authentic relationships where the donor gains trust and eventually gives six-, seven-, or eight-figure gifts. That takes time. Boards usually don’t have that patience, and then the pressure moves down to the executive director, development director, and major gift officers. All the pressure becomes “get the money.” We believe fundraising really isn’t about the money. It’s about building relationships. If you do that well, money becomes a result of those good relationships.

Jeff: I love that. That’s such a powerful way to say it.

Jeff Schreifels: Where boards really help is around acquisition of new donors. Being able to open up their contacts and say, “I have these five people I know who would really resonate with this mission. I want to invite them to something,” whether it’s a small event in their home or something else. That’s one way boards can be very helpful. They can also help cultivate current major donors they know. In some cases, I’ve seen the actual solicitation come from the board member under the guidance of the development team because they have the relationship.

Jeff: That’s awesome. I sit on a couple boards still, and I’ve been in the event staff’s shoes and nonprofit staff’s shoes more than most board members. You try to encourage board members to behave, but to your point, they don’t always understand how complicated the process is. I’ve also instructed nonprofit staffs that they’ve got to do a better job educating board members on what it takes.

Jeff Schreifels: Absolutely. Whenever you bring in a new board member, you need to have a development kit for them so they understand their role in fundraising, not just governance. What are the expectations from them? What are they expected to do? A lot of times board members don’t have any idea, and the organization has done no work to help them understand how development and donors play a part in the health of the organization and their role in that.

Jeff: And I’d say all the way up to events, like educating your board members on which major donors are there.

Jeff Schreifels: Oh yeah, absolutely. That’s a given. That’s part of your pre-event strategy. All your board members should know who is attending, who they’re connected to, and have a plan for every donor they’re connected to. Then post-event, you should have a recap with those board members about what happened.

Jeff: I think it’s awesome. Oh my God, this has been great. We could chat for hours because there’s so much rich information here. Jeff, are your clients mostly East Coast, or all over?

Jeff Schreifels: All over the world.

Jeff: Oh my God. I would strongly recommend anybody trying to figure out how to unstick their event or drive a more mature donor development program to give you a call, because I can tell you guys would do an amazing job. How do people get a hold of you?

Jeff Schreifels: All they have to do is go to veritasgroup.com. Specifically, since we’re talking about events, we have a white paper — we’ve got over 25 different white papers — but one in particular is called Events and Major Gifts. They can download that. It’s a 20-page white paper that goes through all the steps: what do you do pre-, during, and post-event, and what the role of major gifts should be around that event. You can also find me on LinkedIn and connect there as well.

Jeff: I’d encourage all of our listeners to give them a look. We can link to that white paper as well from our podcast episode. Jeff, this has been amazing. Again, I really appreciate all of your wisdom and insight, and thank you for what you do for the nonprofit community.

Jeff Schreifels: Appreciate it. Thank you.

Jeff: All right, so we’ll wrap this up. This has been a great episode. Until next time, guys, happy fundraising. If you enjoyed our show, please take a moment to leave us a review. You can find us on Apple, Google, and Spotify. Don’t forget to subscribe for more great content. And if you’re a fan of video, check us out on YouTube. Until next time, happy fundraising.