Episode 48: Goal Setting with SMART Goals

Jeff: Welcome back to the Elevate Your Event Podcast, where we talk about all the various ways you can make your next fundraising event better. We are going to talk about goals today. Because Lori, who's on the episode with us, has a goal of getting you in and out of this podcast faster than any of the previous ones, apparently.

Lori: I think our podcasts are too long. I don't think people want to listen to the entire thing.

Jeff: I don't know. We have show notes. You can skip around. We don't care. Anyway. All right, let's introduce our crowd that we have today. We've got some fresh blood. Fresh meat. What do you call it, fresh meat?

Stephanie: I think it's fresh meat.

Jeff: Yes, Matt Riley. Matt's one of our channel account managers, and Matt has decided to join us. I think he was walking down the hall back from the bathroom, and we said, Matt, get on this podcast. Let's talk goals today.

Matt: All right, sure. The podcast?

Jeff: And we got our head of marketing, Lori Mackay.

Lori: That's me.

Jeff: We have our former show producer.

Stephanie: Fired already. Didn't even make it a year.

Jeff: And then Jeff Porter, CEO of Handbid. We are excited to talk about goals. Why are we talking about goals? Well, because we hate to kind of date or time when some of these episodes come out, but we are running into the end of the year. This is the time of year when we're all goal setting. We're goal setting with our charities. We're goal setting with our company. We're goal setting with our personal lives. So we thought it'd be appropriate to talk about what goals really mean. How do we effectively use them? Because so many of us set goals in so many organizations, we talk about the goals we set, and then they somehow go by the wayside. Maybe we don't set them properly or maybe we don't do what it takes to get there.

Lori: Or communicate them.

Jeff: Yeah. They just kind of stay quiet. Right. And it is absolutely one of the first questions we ask prospects who come in and talk to us at Handbid. So what's your goal? What are you trying to do? What are you trying to raise? What did you raise last year? What did you raise the year before that? What are you expecting to raise this year? Because if you don't set goals, you don't know where you're going to go, right? So anyway, we have a lot of different conversations in the office about goals. And we actually gave everybody at Handbid a gift. We gave them John Acuff's book, All It Takes Is a Goal. If you guys have not read it, it is a fun book to read. He's got a very fun tone. The audiobook is also equally as fun. So if you're not readers but you're listeners, maybe check the audiobook. We'll kind of mix in some of that. But one of the things that everybody in our group wanted to start with, especially around fundraising goals, is SMART. Make your goals SMART.

Lori: Yes. So this comes up a lot when we're talking about goals in our group and we say, oh, are they SMART? And then I think in the beginning we're thinking, well, I don't think it's a dumb goal. I think it's a really good goal. But that's not what we mean.

Jeff: Matt, what do we mean by SMART goals?

Matt: Do we want to take it one at a time, each letter at a time? So, SMART. S, specificity. How specific is your goal?

Jeff: So, I could say I want to raise more money. Is that a specific goal?

Matt: No.

Jeff: Not nearly enough. We made that one easy, didn't we? That's not a SMART goal. So we need to be specific. We need to say we want to raise $150,000 in this event, right? Or maybe it's not dollar-based. Maybe it's donor-based. Maybe it's, I want to increase my donor base by a thousand people in 2024.

Stephanie: I want more bids on my items.

Jeff: This goes into the next one. So we could say we want to increase donor or guest satisfaction at the event. But what's the next one, Matt?

Matt: Measurable. How do you measure these?

Jeff: So how do we measure that? What do you mean by I want to increase guest satisfaction or I want to increase guest engagement? Well, what's one way that you could measure that at an auction event?

Stephanie: How many people are bidding on your items?

Jeff: Yes. Ding, ding, ding. So anyway, yes. We look at bidder engagement. We'll look at bids per active bidder to say, wow, these people were definitely engaged. They were paying attention. Or bidders versus guests. How many people at your event actually registered to bid, to be active in your event? And having data for that matters. You've got to know who they are. You do have to ask their name.

Lori: Contact information.

Jeff: You know how you don't get that information? Paper bid sheets.

Lori: That's right. Or deciding that your guests are way too important to ask them for their email address and register them into the bidding software when they arrive.

Jeff: I've never heard that one before. Anyway, we get really saucy at the end of the year, don't we?

Lori: Yeah, we do.

Jeff: We've seen too much. We do reset next year, though, like January 1st. We come back as way nicer people on January 2nd. Okay so the next one, and this also comes up. What's the next one?

Matt: I'll go again. Don't ask me R because I forgot to write that one down. But A is attainable or achievable.

Jeff: Okay, well should we just skip ahead to R or do you want to... Okay, we have SMART as an acronym for the people that are not fully with us yet. So we had specific, measurable, and now we have achievable, right? Attainable, achievable. They have to be realistic, which is the next one after that. But let's talk about achievable. So last year I raised $25,000 in my silent auction. And this year with basically the same set of items, I'm going to raise $250,000. Probably not.

Matt: Good luck.

Jeff: Unless you just got some whole other group of bidders from somewhere. Right. Okay, so achievable, realistic, whatever you want to call it, they need to be realistic. And we hear this from people all the time. They're like, well, I had a silent auction goal of $750,000. We're like, you had $100,000 in fair market value in your items, so that's probably not going to happen. Okay. Lori, you're up. R?

Lori: I got this. Relevant.

Jeff: Oh, relevant. There you go.

Lori: No, so relevant, right? Because some goals are just not relevant. It's like, I want to have better food at my event. Things that just don't really have any sort of impact. They're not something that you necessarily need to set a goal on.

Jeff: I'm trying to think of an irrelevant goal for an event.

Stephanie: I'm so good at goal setting. I can't even think of a bad goal.

Jeff: What would be irrelevant?

Lori: It could be the food. It could be, I want every passed hors d'oeuvre to be eaten.

Stephanie: Who cares?

Jeff: Or I want every person to have a paddle number at the event.

Lori: A name tag.

Jeff: Oh yes. That is a good one. Name tag. See, you had it all along. You had to go to the name tag. Anyway, and then the next one.

Matt: Time-based.

Jeff: Time-based, right? So if I'm going to lose 20 pounds, I need to lose 20 pounds by April 1st or something. You can't just say I want to lose 20 pounds because you've got to put a time frame on it. And we're going to talk about time in goals here in a second because time is the number one element in a goal. We understand that there is time involved in goals, time involved in actually achieving goals, but then also some sort of time box, right?

Lori: I want to be married by the time I'm 30.

Jeff: Versus I want to get married. That's a lot of pressure. I guess your life is time-bound, but at some point it helps to put some goals in place. So, good. Okay, so our goals should be SMART. All right. So everybody out there when you're setting goals, this can be personal, but it also can be for your nonprofit, specifically for your fundraising or even your fundraising event, make sure those goals are SMART. And you can chop them up. You can have more than one goal. So if your goal is big, because we've talked about different sizes of goals, you can have massive goals that are SMART. And if you're a Jim Collins fan and you're into business, some people hate this term, but what do you call the gigantic goals from Jim Collins' Built to Last? Is that the BHAG?

Stephanie: Yes.

Jeff: The Big Hairy Audacious Goal, right? So this is saying as your charity, say you're dealing with child homelessness. No child will be homeless in the city of Denver by 2029 or something, right? That's saying, wow, that's a big goal. That's saying I'm going to do something outrageous. Now, the question is, when you set something that big, like my charity is going to start raising a million dollars annually in the next five years, whatever it is, now you've got to figure out how you get there. In a lot of businesses, they'll do one year, three year, five year plans. Some charities are good at that. And if you do create a goal that's way out there, it would be helpful to give yourself some interim steps to get there.

Jeff: Let's jump into John Acuff's book a little bit because I like how he does it. He talks about these zones. You've got your comfort zone and then you've got your chaos zone. We all know what our comfort zone is, and for a lot of us, we don't like ever leaving our comfort zone, which is probably why we're afraid to adopt technology at an event, or afraid to move venues, or afraid to make some other kind of major change to our event. So we stay in our comfort zone because it's just easier. Because otherwise, we tend to try to change everything at once and we end up in the chaos zone. We're trying to get to this productive zone, where we're actually making progress towards our goal.

Jeff: He has a couple different levels of goals. Do you remember what he called them in the book?

Lori: I just remember medium.

Jeff: Is that a thing? The names of the zones. We should have had a quiz on this book.

Stephanie: I feel like I am being quizzed.

Jeff: The easy goals. Easy Goals, and then from there you have middle goals, right?

Jeff: If you're raising $100,000 a year and your goal is to raise a million, you probably need some easy goals, and then you need some middle goals. Easy goals, he suggests, should take you about seven days to complete.

Stephanie: That sounds easy.

Jeff: And middle goals. So if we're talking about an annual goal, and it's a big one, then your middle goal should probably take a month or two. So say we're talking about our fundraiser. We can even talk about mine because I want to take my fundraiser from, I want to increase its revenue by over 50%. So then the question is, if I want to take it from $50,000 to $225,000, how do I do that? You kind of break that down. So say our silent auction does $25,000, I want it to do $40,000. How am I going to do that?

Jeff: Well, I could say, what am I getting? I get some of the same items, but maybe what I need to do is set some middle goals saying I need to bring back the items that I got last year. And then maybe my easy goals are every week I'm going to try to get one or two new items for my auction.

Lori: Or maybe get some new solicitors. Some additional fresh blood. Some people that can find some items. Solicitations.

Jeff: What he says in the book, which I thought was good, is time towards goals is what makes the difference. If you can spend, I forget, he gives you kind of tiers and qualifications, like if you spend 100 hours towards a goal, you're going to get pretty darn close. So think about it. Maybe all your easy goals need to be is just phone calls. Like I just need to make, we do this in sales, right, Matt? If I need to go out there and get so many new customers, I can boil it down to how many phone calls a day am I making. That's what we're talking about here, chopping down your goal into very small, easy to digest activities.

Lori: Well, it's like weight loss, right? We're all coming into the new year. We're all thinking about losing the weight.

Jeff: Maybe not everybody.

Lori: She's staring at me. Not everybody.

Jeff: Paranoia will destroy you, Jeff.

Lori: But it's like weight loss. If you say I want to lose 50 pounds, that sounds like a big, hairy goal for some people. And you really need to consider what can I do on a weekly, daily basis to get to that goal.

Jeff: Absolutely right. And it's way easier to say, I'm going to eat this many calories for a week, or I'm going to work out three times this week. That's my goal to get me to the 50 pound weight loss. It's making those small micro changes. You make those small incremental changes to what you eat or how you work out and you will see long-term results if you stick with it. That's his recommendation about just counting the number of hours you apply to the goal. So when you're thinking about your fundraiser next year and you're thinking, I need more sponsorship dollars, one of the things to think about is how many phone calls do I need to be making weekly to sponsors, to potential sponsors.

Lori: And one of the things we always hear, we're talking about monetary goals and fundraising for events, but what about experience goals where maybe you don't want to be run ragged this year at your event? You want to have your event next year, you're fine with the financial goal, but maybe you want to recruit additional people so that you haven't lost a small piece of yourself in your event fundraising efforts.

Jeff: That's a great goal for a lot of auction managers. They can only run one event a year because it all falls on them. Well, maybe this year your little goal is I'm going to start recruiting some help. I'm going to start getting some additional people. I'm going to let go of the vine a bit. I'm going to allow other people to help. So it doesn't always have to be a monetary goal.

Lori: It doesn't. And I think you're right. And it can still be SMART and not monetary. It just has to be measurable. And that can be how much time am I spending with my donors at the event?

Jeff: That's huge. So I think as you think about all of the different things that you want to try to achieve, yes, some of them will be monetary. Some of them will not be. Some of them obviously are going to have to get some sort of agreement upon. I mean, I would like to make it a goal at my event that I just put my feet up at my table. But I don't think that's going to happen. If anybody's met my wife, you know that one.

Jeff: So yes, make them realistic, and that goes back to the realistic part too. Sitting down and saying, is this feasible? And look, they may be big and bold, and you can chop them up and create your easy goals and your middle goals that are going to get you there, but is it even feasible? I talked to a gentleman once, and when it comes to silent auction revenue, there's a max that certain people are going to pay for certain items. And it doesn't matter how many cocktails they had at the event, there's still a max that most people will pay in an auction for something. You can get some sort of rule of thumb or some idea of what that is. In our experience, what we tend to look at is the revenue versus fair market value. On bid sheets, we typically see anywhere from 40% to 50% of fair market value is what an auction will pull in. And then with mobile bidding, it's usually in the 70s or 80s. Every once in a while, with certain items, you'll go a little bit over that, because fair market value is also subjective in some cases, so it's not always accurate. People will either bloat what an item's worth or undervalue it. Either way, this guy was like, our goal was $30,000 in our silent. I'm like, you had $10,000 in fair market value items. That's not likely attainable, unless these are so amazing and they're just unique experiences and don't cost you a lot. So it's worth really looking at certain things and deciding.

Jeff: And then obviously on the other ones in terms of making sure that they're achievable or attainable. I would like a goal that it's 85 degrees and sunny at a Derby event. Throw those goals out.

Lori: Incrementally, every day I watch the weather report.

Jeff: There are some things you just can't control, unfortunately. And in this case, as you sit down and think about your goals, think about how those goals tie in to the rest of what you're doing. Because what do we need to do at the event? What do we need to tell our guests?

Lori: What our goals are?

Jeff: We want to tell our guests what our goals are. Why? Because they tie into our program services. And they should know that goal before the event. That should be part of your ticketing. But you have plenty of auctioneers that will stand up and say, we are here tonight to raise $50,000 in this paddle raise. Hopefully that auctioneer has half that money already in the bank before they get up there. But we're not here to talk about paddle raise tricks. That's another podcast.

Jeff: You need to explain two things. What is our goal and why? Combine those together. What are we going to do with that kind of money? And then what's at stake if we don't hit it? I think you've got to be fair but blunt with your guests, and you have to show them the goals. Now, you don't have to show them a thermometer. I personally hate thermometers, but for those of you that feel like you need to show your guests that they've achieved something, great. Show them they've achieved something.

Lori: I'm glad you're bringing this up because I speak to several auction managers, and for whatever reason, there's a little bit of a fear around talking about the goal. Not even showing a thermometer, just even talking about the goal. I've heard everything from, well, if we say what the goal is, then we might not surpass it or we might not get to it. And then it's like a failure.

Jeff: Fear of failure. But what's the other one we see, which we also think is ridiculous?

Lori: Yeah, they think that once you hit the goal, nobody will keep giving. They're going to stop giving. It's like, oh my God, if we understate this goal, they're just going to hit it and they're going to stop.

Jeff: They're not going to stop. Guess what? You can change your goal. But look, hello, I'm not that drunk. That goal was $25,000. You just took this thermometer off the screen and now it says $50,000. What is that? That's kind of moving the goalposts, right? It's like the Charlie Brown-Lucy thing. If you've got your guests all ready to hit that goal, let the fireworks go off. Absolutely. And talk about what exceeding the goal means. If they exceed the goal, then you get to talk about all of the extra things that you get to do that year for whatever cause that were unplanned, or you could get to double the amount of dogs or kids or whoever it is that you're helping.

Jeff: Look, our church had a goal of serving a thousand families for Christmas with presents. That's a great goal. They said, we have definitely surpassed that. Our new goal is 2,000, but we hit our goal. We're happy. We committed to 1,000, and I think we're now going to hit 2,000, maybe 3,000. People didn't stop. A pastor didn't walk up on the stage and say, it's timeout, stop donating. It's too much. Because unless there's a limit, right? But let's think about it. In most of our organizations, there's no limit to what we can do with the funds that come in. It's just that our goal is to give 50 kids a scholarship. If we get to 75 kids, that's amazing. But I have 75 that want one, or I have 100 that want one.

Lori: Yeah, I agree with you. I never get that. They're like, take the thermometer down. We're going to change the goal.

Jeff: Then the poor people just feel like they're always short. They're never winning. I love the concept that people have got to celebrate the goal. And you can't celebrate the goal and get it to the extent of excitement that you need it to get to unless you build it up. You have to build up the goal. You have to tell people about it. I'm a big one of, they need to know this goal when they buy tickets. When they buy tickets to come to your event or a sponsorship, they need to understand exactly what it's going towards. And then when you hit that goal, we went to an event. Actually, Stephanie and I worked an event together where they hit this goal. The entire team's up there, they had confetti. People are in tears because they met and exceeded their goal.

Stephanie: And I'm working the event and I'm completely teared up.

Jeff: I know. I've worked with this group for a long time, so I'm invested with them anyway. Celebrate your goals. Absolutely. And we were actually there the year prior. They had the same goal and they fell just short of it. Nobody, of course they were like, oh man, we had this big goal. We were just short. But it wasn't like people didn't come back the next year. And guess what? The next year, bam, they hit it out of the park.

Jeff: Sorry, I digress.

Lori: No, you didn't digress. You're absolutely right on. And then I think what other people do is they'll edit their goal down because they'll say, well, this person's not coming. And because they're not coming, we're just not going to get that $20,000 donation. I'm like, why not? Did you ask them for it? They're not coming. Did you still ask? Did you make them mad? Call them up and say, sorry you can't come. Can we still count on you this year to support us?

Jeff: And we also saw this during COVID. There's a lot of the editing down of, I can't ask my donors for money right now. In our experience, it's always worth asking your donors. Let your donors decide whether or not they have the capacity to give. There's no need to make that decision for them. There's no need to change the goal because they're not there. There's no need to keep raising the goal because you're afraid they're going to stop bidding. These are all things that we do because we have this distortion thing, where we're basically convincing ourselves of what reality is. It's not reality.

Lori: Those daily lessons.

Jeff: But it's true that we convince ourselves this is how everybody else thinks. And we hear this on sales calls and support calls. Oh, my guests won't do that. My donors won't do that. Like, yes they will. Yes, they'll give you their email. Yes, they'll give you their credit card. Yes, they'll download an app to their phone. Yes, they'll donate money. Unless it's not achievable. One million dollars. You can throw it out there.

Jeff: So anyway, yes, you've got to make it achievable, but you also need to allow it to be achieved.

Lori: People like to know what they're contributing to. I like to know that I'm contributing to reaching a goal. That's definitely my thing. So if I don't know what the goal is, then I'm wondering, what am I contributing to? Am I just contributing to overhead? Am I contributing to a specific program? I like to know.

Jeff: Absolutely right. So we definitely need to share with them what it is, how it works, what we plan to do with that money. Look, you're not trying to scare them either. It's not like, if we don't hit our goal, these women are going to be on the street. You can allude to that, I suppose. But you definitely need to make them understand the impact of what we're doing. I think that's important as well.

Jeff: Just to recap, yes, you've got your SMART goals. We've gone through what all those acronyms mean. It helps to put together a set of really small incremental steps to get there. So if your event's in April and you're listening to this in December or January, you still can do it. Don't be like, oh my God, there's no way. Yes, you can accomplish it. Remember, they just have to be weekly goals. Your weekly goals might be slightly bigger steps than somebody who has 11 months, but you can still do it. So that might be, I need to break this down into how many phone calls a week I'm making, how many auction items, how many Home Depots am I visiting, whatever it is to get your auction together, how many sponsors am I calling. Put all that together and just apply time to it. That's the big takeaway that I think a lot of people miss as it relates to goals. All goals are achievable with enough time.

Jeff: So that's where when you put the time element in there and you're like, I'm going to make a million dollars. Well, one day your organization might make a million dollars. You just have to figure out what those steps look like. So definitely don't edit yourself down, come up with some sort of plan, and all you've got to do every week is those small little incremental steps.

Lori: And time is a great motivator. Let's just be honest. You attach a time, a deadline, a time box, whatever you want to call it, to something, it's a great motivator. We all, even if you are not a complete procrastinator, we all can fall into those tendencies and having that time helps.

Jeff: Set your easy goal so you're not a procrastinator. If you look down and everything's got to be a middle goal for you to get there, don't do that. But you're right. If you want to run a marathon, sign up for one. Nothing's going to motivate you more. Why do you think weddings are such a big motivator for people for weight loss?

Lori: Weddings or beach trips.

Jeff: But the other thing is also, you have to make sure you understand the habits and the behaviors that are going to derail you from your goal. What was the quote that he said?

Stephanie: TikTok doesn't want you to achieve your goal.

Jeff: Yeah. TikTok, Twitter. LinkedIn doesn't want you to, or not LinkedIn. Twitter doesn't want you to start a business. One of the other ones doesn't want you to write a book. They want to keep you distracted on their platform.

Jeff: And so think about that. When you're thinking about daily habits and your little easy goals, it's like you're going to sit down in front of the TV. Should I work on my fundraiser or should I watch an episode of Cheers or something? Probably work on your fundraiser.

Stephanie: Matt's like, Cheers? Is that a show?

Matt: Never heard of it. Is it on Paramount Plus? A little before my time. My parents might enjoy it, though.

Jeff: You're going to watch Survivor.

Stephanie: Survivor was my downfall with my kids.

Jeff: So anyway. Easy goals and then middle goals. Easy goals, middle goals, your big audacious goal. All of them should be written SMART. Even those easy goals. Write them in the SMART format.

Jeff: So here's what he says. When you've got only two gears, you end up in two places, either the comfort zone, which we talked about, or the chaos zone. But in the middle of those two extremes is where the real fun happens. That's the potential zone. And to get there, we need middle goals.

Lori: So no one ever thinks, I just want to be in the middle, right?

Jeff: Right. But here is: Twitter doesn't want you to start a business. TikTok doesn't want you to run a half marathon. And HBO Max doesn't want you to write a book. The modern world is designed to keep you from living up to your full potential. That is very true. So you've got to be intentional about this stuff. When you're talking about how much time you're spending, be intentional. When you're thinking about who you're contacting or what kind of other aspects of the event you need to go work on, be intentional about spending time on it.

Lori: Absolutely.

Jeff: It's been a good conversation.

Lori: Yeah. I like goals. Especially this time of year. I like setting goals.

Jeff: It's that time of year to set goals. SMART goals. And then hang on to them, right? Because I was mentioning this to you guys right before the podcast, but Peloton, I don't remember the exact figure, but their biggest month or week of churn is two weeks after the beginning of the year because everybody signs up for a subscription on January 1st and two weeks later they quit. Why? Because they set some goal that they can't possibly achieve. They look at it and say, I'm going to lose 50 pounds. How about you just say I'm going to ride 25, 30 miles a week? And then when you hit that, say 40 miles a week. When you hit that, say 45 miles a week. That's how you're going to get there.

Lori: Sometimes you have to walk before you can run.

Jeff: Walk before you run. Crawl before you walk. Stand up before you walk.

Stephanie: Straight on the Peloton.

Jeff: Well, you know, it's funny. When I did Noom, the very first movement goal they give you is 5,000 steps. 5,000 steps is nothing.

Lori: Especially for you. It is flat out nothing.

Jeff: But they're like, don't change it. You need to hit that. And then 5,200, and then 5,300. And I'm like, all right, whatever. But I get it. I understand the point of saying you're not going to start a move goal and be like, I'm going 20,000 steps a day.

Lori: Have you done that? I've done that. That's the kind of stuff I do. I'm like, I'm going to try that. And I'm walking everywhere. It's awful. I'm walking around my neighborhood randomly.

Jeff: Then you quit.

Lori: I totally quit.

Jeff: That's the whole point. You need the easy goals. Don't overwhelm yourself with your goals. It's part of the SMART process.

Jeff: Homework for all of our listeners. Set your goal. Set your BHAG, set your five-year, ten-year plan, your vision, where you want to be. Give yourself an annual goal. Tie it into your fundraisers and then start setting weekly easy goals.

Lori: And maybe some quarterly or monthly middle goals.

Jeff: Quarterly middle goals. What do you think?

Lori: I like it.

Matt: Yep.

Jeff: I like it a lot. All right. Let us know how it goes, you guys. All right. Well, good luck with your fundraiser. Good luck with your goal setting. Make sure they're SMART. If you don't remember what the SMART acronym is, it is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. There you go. All right. Until then, happy fundraising.