Major Gifts Fundraising: Jeff Schreifels Turns Donor Trust into Revenue | Ep. 212

So for years, most organizations have been doing what we call direct response fundraising. You know, send a letter out and someone will write a check and that's fine. That's a more of a transaction. What we want is more transformational gifts.

But I am the world's biggest super fan. You're like a super fan. Welcome to the Business Superfans podcast. We will discuss how establishing business superfans from customers, employees and business partners can elevate your success exponentially.

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Freddy, ready? Hey, super fans. Freddy D. Here in this episode 212, we're joined by Jeff Schreifles, a pioneer in relationship centered fundraising who helps organizations solve one of the biggest challenges, building meaningful donor relationships that lead to long term support instead of one time gifts.

Too many nonprofits struggle with donor attrition and inconsistent revenue because they focus on transactions rather than genuine connection. Drawing on more than 30 years in a non profit sector and his leadership at Veritas since 2009, Jeff has helped hundreds of organizations increase mid and major gift revenue through the proven Veritas way approach. If you're looking to strengthen relationships, deepen trust and create loyal supporters who champion your mission, this conversation offers a practical path forward.

Welcome, Jeff, to the Business Superfans Advantage podcast. Great conversation that we had before we started recording. Let's continue that conversation. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. Let's do it. So tell me a little bit about how did you get started into the industry of helping people get donations? I mean, that's a completely different animal than traditional business.

But the rewards for helping people get the funding for the things that they're doing is gotta be enormous. Yeah, well, it started right out of college. I kind of fell into fundraising. Most people who are my age don't go to school to be a fundraiser.

But circumstances were such that I needed a job and I called a local nonprofit and they said, hey, we do need fundraisers. And I said, well, I don't know anything about it, but I'll learn. And they said, all right, come on down and let's, let's talk. And I got a job as a fundraiser for a small nonprofit in Philadelphia.

And Very quickly realized how much I loved fundraising. And the whole concept of helping donors find joy in their life through their giving and helping a need be alleviated was thrilling. And so that started my journey. So right out of high school, I became a fundraiser and worked for two nonprofits in Philly.

And then I got hired by a large agency called Domain Group out of Seattle that worked with large nonprofits all over the country doing direct response fundraising. So those things that you get in your mail, television, radio, ads, print ads, that's what they did. Anything to elicit an initial response, to build donor bases for nonprofits. And I did that for about 12 years.

And then the former owner of that group called Domain and I got together and because we both had backgrounds in the nonprofit space working as a development director, wanted to do something about major gifts. So we saw that that was an area of opportunity. This was about 2009. There were not a lot of agencies or good consultants that really helped nonprofits on the major gift side.

And so we took what we learned on the direct response side, the discipline, always starting with data and using that as the basis for the strategies that we want to do in vogue with major gifts, put together a structure around that. And then that helped the frontline fundraiser have the time necessary to build authentic relationships with donors, because that's what it was all about. Fundraising isn't about the money. It's really about building relationships.

And if you do that well, the money follows. And so we took that approach and applied it, and it was just the two of us in 2009, and today we have 40 of us around, around the world. We're a virtual company, always have been. We have folks in Europe and all over the US And Canada working with us to work with hundreds of nonprofits and thousands of fundraisers.

So that's how I got into it. What a story. But you really hit a point that I want to really drive home. And it doesn't matter what the industry is.

It's still relationships. People buy and deal with people that they like and trust. And the fundamentals are the fundamentals are the fundamentals. And it's global.

It's global. And when I played on the global stage years ago, I learned a little bit, you know, the hard way, because I was trying to crack into the Japanese market, and I've shared this story in the past, but I was there on all business. Here's the contracts, here's the technology. You get to have all of Japan, master distributor, blah, blah, blah.

And they would all like what we were Talking about I'd go to the trade shows, I learned some Japanese, all that stuff, but never closed the deal. Deal. And so I was in Australia with my distributor there and his name was Paul. We're at dinner at a restaurant on the beach and what am I doing wrong?

He goes, what are you talking about? So I'm talking about the business, the business opportunities goes, shut the heck up about that stuff and start asking a little bit about their culture and their approaches and everything else. So the next time I went there, where do I go tour, what should I go see? And everything else.

And we started building a relationship. And when they came here, we had a two hour meeting. And then I took him around the whole Phoenix Valley so he could see it, experience it and everything else and see the desert and took him way out in the desert and stuff like that. About a month and A half later, two months, I got a $200,000 initial order from them and it was done.

But I flipped the script. Perfect example of building the relationship first and the revenue will happen because of that result. So yeah, that's a great story and it's one that we hear every day from those that we're working with. It's building those relationships and with the donor.

The donor then gains the trust of the organization and the person that they're working with. And when that happens, the major gift officer then finds out what is that donor's passion and interests really, and why are they connected to my organization? And matching up the passions and interests with all the projects and programs that organization has is the role of that major gift officer. They're the bridge that brings their passion and interests and the need together.

And if they do that, well, the donor finds joy in their giving because people want to give. Yeah, people want to put. People want to help, they want to give. That's right.

And the need gets met. That's a beautiful thing coming together every day. Yeah, I mean, it reminds me of when I was selling manufacturing software and I would spend time talking to the business owner about what was the challenges that they were doing. I wasn't talking about the technical stuff.

We did the presentation and I would flat out say, hey, there's four or five of us in this space, we all do the job, so let's get that out of the way, you know, and so that neutralized that aspect because it doesn't matter if it's blue, green, purple, whatever, it's irrelevant. What's the bottleneck? What's the strategy? Where do you see yourself in the next Couple years and we started having a business conversation and I just did it naturally.

And we would get the W out of it because of the fact that I wasn't selling my widget. I was talking about, okay, he's scrapping metal. It's costing $20,000 per piece of metal, 40,000. Can't repurpose it until that specific metal is utilized.

So it's sitting in a shop floor, you know, how much do you have wasted? So I help solve a real problem. You guys are doing the same thing as you've got an agency organization that is needing funding for the cool things that they're doing. They don't know how to do it, they know they need it, so they team up with an organization like yourself.

You've got the connections, you build those relationships and the magic happens. What's even better is that the organizations actually do have the connections. They just don't know it. Really.

Yeah. That's the thing is we don't tell organizations they have to go out and find new people to support them. We take those donors who are already in their database and let them know. Here are the donors within your own database that have been telling you through their giving that they actually care about what you're doing.

But they could do so much more if you actually reached out to them personally and asked them to help you. So for years, most organizations have been doing what we call direct response fundraising. You know, send a letter out and someone will write a check and that's fine. That's a more of a transaction.

What we want is more transformational gifts. Donors need that one to one kind of interaction with someone. Of course, if they're going to write a 6, 7, 8 figure check out to someone. And so the key is, though, is identifying who those donors are.

Develop a plan around those donors, develop the relationship, and then you'll see the money follow. Yeah, and I'm going to transfer that to the. To the business world. Oh, yeah.

Because one of the things I talk about is you want to get everybody aligned behind the mission. So think of a racing rowing team. Everybody has a single oar. And you gotta get everybody in line, everybody in synchronization, because otherwise that boat's not even going in a circle, it's just waddling.

And you get that going and it needs to transform throughout the organization. It's probably the same with you in the business you're in. But now you get the, you know, the front line, which is, I call them direct. I've learned this from one of the guests Director, first impressions.

That's the front line, and that's who they. That's your most important asset in the company. Okay. That transcends to.

If they're working with contract or VAs, because there's a communication that continues with suppliers, distributors, or in your case, donors. And it continues. But if everybody's aligned behind the goal and they know what the mission is, that's transformative, as you mentioned, and because it's all about relationships. And one of my quotes in my book, Creating Business Superfans is people will crawl through broken glass for appreciation and recognition.

And the donors want to be recognized, and they want to be appreciated. Yeah. And, you know, even more so than just being recognized is they want to know that their gifts are actually making a difference. And this is.

This is where most nonprofits fail. You wouldn't believe. I have story after story of donors given millions. Okay, I'll tell you a story.

Several years ago, I was taking a small flight from Dallas to Midland, Texas. The oil wells are. And I get on this guy, this big guy comes, sits down. He's kind of dirty.

His fingernails are all dirty. And I'm thinking, okay, he must work in the oil fields. So I sit down with him, and he's really chatty, and he's like, so what do you do? And I said, well, I help organizations develop major gift programs.

And he's like, major gifts. That's interesting. He goes, I've made a few major gifts in my life. So I was like, okay, first, never judge a book by the COVID So I find out this guy owns some of the oil wells in Midland.

So now I'm. This is great, because in my profession, to be able to sit down with someone who's a major donor and have a conversation with them to find out what their experiences have been is gold. Yeah, well, you're on a flight, so you're. You're stuck for 30, 40 minutes, an hour, Hour, Right.

So I'm stuck with him. And so I said, well, tell me your experience of giving your major gifts. And he's like, you know what? No one's ever asked me that question before.

He said, I have got one really good experience and one really bad experience. And I'm, like, sitting there going, this is going to be good. So I said, well, tell me your bad experience first. He goes, Well, I gave $1.

5 million to my university. And it's. I'm not going to tell you what it is, but it's a famous university to fund the wide receiver, football coaches, offices in the new athletic department area building that they made. I said, wow, that's really specific.

Why. Why that? And he goes, well, when I was in high school, I played wide receiver, and I loved it. I wasn't that great, but I had such a great experience on the team that that just always was with me, and that's what I wanted to do.

And I said, that's great. I said, well, why was this such a bad experience? He goes, well, I gave the $1.5 million, and all I got back was a letter, you know, just thanking me for the 1.

5 million. Basically a receipt letter. I never heard from them. I never heard once he said, in fact, what I had to do was I was going to be in the area for business.

I called them to see if I could actually see the offices that I gave the money to, and they were like, oh, yeah, yeah, come on down. So he goes there, and they put some freshmen to show them around, and the freshman doesn't have any context of what. Why he's doing this. They go and look at the offices.

No coaches came out, no one said anything to him, and he basically just left. He said, that soured me so much, Jeff. He said, I had planned to leave a ton of money in my estate to them. I wrote them out after that day.

I said, wow. So there's an example. This is $1.5 million gift.

And they couldn't get back to him to talk about how his gift made a difference. Then I said, okay, tell me the good one. And he said, well, I gave it the same $1.5 million gift, but this was to my local veterans organization.

And I go down there and volunteer. And they were creating a new building, and so I gave 1.5 million. And he said, I'll tell you the first thing I got.

I got five handwritten letters from veterans thanking me for what I did. And he said, I don't cry often. But he said, I was just in tears reading these letters, how important this was for them. Then the executive director invited me and all of my extended family to the grand opening of the.

The event at the the building. And every month, the CEO calls me just to check in, see how I'm doing. I go down there. I still go down and volunteer, but he checks in, asks me some questions.

You know, I give him some advice on from here to there. But it's nice to hear from him. And he said, I have now taken everything that I was going to give to that university and put it all towards them in my Estate. He says they have no idea how much they're going to get.

Wow. What a story. Yeah. And it's.

It's profound because it doesn't matter who it is. You know, you remind me of when I was. When I was selling manufacturing stock and even other industries. But I'm going to use manufacturing as an example because when we were selling computer aided manufacturing software, the guys on shop floor running the milling machines, delay the wire, EDMs, all that stuff, nobody pays attention to those guys.

They would come into the meeting because they're going to have to use the technology that I'm selling. So I would invite them in. I made sure to get everybody's name, and then I would send them all a personalized letter thanking everybody for participating into the meeting, their feedback, their input and everything else. And they all got sent.

So that guy running the milling machine felt like a rock star when he got a letter brought to him from the front office. To him out there, he's going, what the heck is this? And I closed more sales because of that. Because when I asked, why did you pick us?

And he says, well, we felt that after the sale, your company would provide the best support. Yeah. Yeah. It's exactly what you just said.

One guy were appreciative. Gratitude. Again, it goes back to acknowledging the other people were. Took it for granted.

Yeah. That's amazing. That's a great story. Yeah, exactly.

People. The other thing around is what I've noticed is, and this kind of goes to your story, people. Donors want to be known. People want to be known.

Like you remember that I was in that meeting. You acknowledged that you took that name because you wanted to thank me personally. That means that you spent time thinking about me. People want that.

People. It feels good to have other people think about you. Yeah. And it really.

And that's global. It doesn't matter. No, it doesn't matter. I've had language barriers and I've still had great times because I made an effort.

I recognized them, they recognized me for where we were. And we still. We were able to communicate with. With language challenges.

Yeah. Just fine. Yeah. Yep.

So share a story where you guys worked with somebody that you really transformed their whole operation and the way they were doing things. Yeah. To where they became what I would. A super fan of you guys and your biggest advocates that are in turn have gotten you more business because of what you did for them.

Well, there's a lot of them, but one that I can think of now that's really relevant is public media. So, you know, npr, PBS stations around the country, telethon kind of things, small dollar donors, for $5 a month you can get this tote bag and all that kind of thing. And so for years, that's when working. Well, for 40 years they built up their donor base that way.

One of the things they've nick neglected over the years is anything beyond that a membership. So there are donors in their database that are multi millionaires who could be giving million dollar gifts, yet they're giving $5,000 a year because it's their membership dues in a sense. Well, they started to identify that problem. We knew from our perspective that they're, when looking at the data, they have donors in their database that they could do so well if they just started building relationships with them.

And so we convinced four stations, four fairly large in the US to do a pilot program where we would help them build their major gift program. And over, over a two year period, they would see some growth there. We did that because we knew that it would work. And secondly, if we could do the small pilot, once it worked for something, we knew how the network would get a hold of it and want to do it.

And so for two years we did a pilot program. And within one year they saw tremendous giving. And over that two year period, they doubled revenue. Four stations together, they doubled revenue because they started building relationships with donors and started soliciting donors face to face, many for the first time ever.

So of course people were interested. So at that time the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was still around and they heard about this and they called us to a meeting and they said, how can we replicate this around the country? And so what we did was we said, we can train every fundraiser in your network, over 300 fundraisers, fairly reasonably, and we could have an impact. And they love the idea because they want to do something big.

So they provided a grant, paid it to us to actually work with 300 fundraisers. We trained them with our online training platform over a 13 week period. And then they tracked those fundraisers who worked with us versus the ones that didn't. And over an 18 month, month period they brought, we brought in $74 million more in revenue just through that training, just through the training.

So that pilot turned into the training thing. But then at the same time, the pilot also then got the whole network going. And now we work with dozens of public media clients directly doing our work with them. And we continue to grow.

And those stations now who have been with us for a while, they've been growing tremendously. Remember when the rescission happened with them with. They took all the money away from the government money. Well, what that's done is all the individual donors have stepped up.

So individual giving is so high, and now they're all worried because they have all these donors that gave more. But how are they going to hold on to them? Well, those donor. Those organizations that we've been working with over the years, they know how to hold on to them, and they've been building them up.

And so the retention rate with the donors that we've been working with are so much higher than the organizations that hadn't had a major gift program and are trying to scramble with what to do. So it's. For us as a business, it's been tremendous. We started.

What we did is we gave away free webinars to the whole entire network. We just said, yeah, we'll do webinars and show you what we do. And we did that and gave it away and eventually said, I think we'd like to work with you. And that's how the pilot came about.

The pilot was successful, and then it just grew from there. So that's an example of working in a small scale and it blows up. But essentially, that's kind of been our business ethos at Veritas from the. From the very beginning.

We decided early on that the best way to gain customers was to give away everything we knew free. And so we started a blog. We wrote three times a week. We.

We started a podcast. We did white papers, and we gave them away. Essentially, you could do whatever we do. If you just read all those blogs and white papers, you never had to hire us.

And my business partner at first was like, I don't know if we should do this. I mean, no one's going to want to hire us. I said, just wait. Because not everyone can actually implement what we're doing.

Right. That's the thing. That's the thing. And that's what happened.

People started reading, and then all of a sudden, people are calling us left and right. We need your help. We need your help. And that's how we grew our business.

And we continue to do that. We give away as much as we can. And what happens is people. Few of those people call us every day and say, we need your help.

Yeah. So, but those four that you start off, those guys are going to be super fans of you guys because you transformed their whole. Their whole business. They became the best endorsers of the work.

So when other station managers would like, I'm not sure about this. Well, call this person. And they would just say the most glowing things because they doubled revenue. You know, like, we were here, now we're here, and it's because of this.

So. Yeah, no, I can. I can completely relate because again, back in. When I was selling stuff, we had daytimers back, if you remember those days.

Oh, yeah. And I had all my customers in the daytimer. I had a CRM that I used on the Mac and I would print out into a daytimer. And I'd had a mobile phone.

It was one of. I got one in the early days, so I had the big brick. But what I would do is we would do a presentation, and then I would turn around and they'd say, okay, well, tell us a little bit more. I says, well, here.

Here's my daytimer. Take a look. And I says, every one of them is referenceable. And I would put my phone on the table and says, pick anyone and call them.

And I'd just shut up. That's awesome. And they would flip through the thing and they'd say, oh, these guys are using your stuff. Yep.

Those guys are using your stuff. Yep. The john over here is using it. Yep.

I don't need to call them. What do we got to do to wrap this up? The deal was done, but it was. A power move because the same thing.

With what you guys are doing. You've got success. When you have success, it comes across. Yes.

Yeah. And it's a whole different mindset. Yeah. And it's done that for a lot of organizations that are international.

So, like, Doctors Without Borders in the US Hired us several years ago, and in one year, they increase revenue by $44 million in their major gift. Well, Doctors Without Borders has a network around the world. Right. So today we're working with Switzerland.

The Netherlands wants us, you know, so it's. It's one thing over here. And then they became champions worldwide for us. Yeah.

Super fans. Gom. Superfans. Yeah.

Cooler name. Yeah. But what's important there is you guys started out here domestically and through natural progression. I'm gonna word it that way.

Yep. And because of the super fans that you created, you were able to start going beyond United States and start dealing with really the entire world is where you're dealing with. Yeah. And you're dealing with different cultures.

But the fundamentals are still. The fundamentals. They still need funding. As you said, Doctors Without Borders, I mean, they're all over the world.

And there's a multitude of other agencies that are all over the world. And that has got to be rewarding personally from the things that you're doing and the amount of people that you're helping. It's got to be a great feeling to be able to go into the office and says, you know what? But look what we just accomplished over here and helped these people in this country or this situation where they had this disaster and we came in and we got people to help get that taken care of.

That's the power that you guys bring to the table. It's been incredibly rewarding to be able to own a company that every day I can wake up and know that thousands of people's lives are being touched for the better because of the work that we're doing. It's an amazing. Yeah, it's amazing feeling.

It definitely is. I can appreciate it. Because you're doing good. Yeah.

Bottom line, we're doing good stuff not only for those things in the world, but again, also for the donors lives. Right. I don't want us to forget that. How, how incredibly important it is for people who are giving away something they've earned.

So when you think about money, what it really is is just the value of what you've earned. What your work, your labor. Right. So someone works their whole life, works really hard, and then decides they want to take something, a part of that and give it away to make something good happen.

That's an incredible transit transaction that's happening. Yeah. Because they need to have for themselves, they need to feel they contributed. Exactly.

And when that donor does that, I mean, besides all the chemicals that fire up in your brain, the dopamine and everything else that. Right. It. It brings them such joy and comfort and makes them feel good about who they are as a person.

Yeah. Because it's a beautiful thing. I help make that happen. Exactly.

With their peers. Because you got to look at the aspect of their peers. This guy donated to this. This gal donated over to here.

And they all know each other more or less. Right. And so it gives them the ability to feel proud of what it is. It's like denying somebody to be able to say, hey, I really appreciate the gesture that you just did is something that is really shortcoming because you're denying that person.

Just like you said with the guy in Texas, he was denied the joy of knowing that he helped somebody. Exactly. And that completely flips it upside down, as you explained. Yeah.

Now, interesting about denial, one of the ways that I get executive directors of nonprofit to actually do the fundraising, where they're soliciting a donor face to face because Many nonprofit leaders are like, I don't want to do that. I feel uncomfortable. I said, look, if you're an executive director of a nonprofit, this is part of your job. You.

You need to fundraise, and you're doing your donor a disservice by not asking them to help you. And when you turn it around like that, you're denying the donor joy by not asking. It flips something in their heads. And they're like, all right, let's do this.

And they have an incredible experience. It's a natural human instinct. And I'll just share the story is I'm one of the few people you'll meet that has actually gone through Checkpoint Charlie, if you know what that is. Yeah.

Okay. So I went through that 1978, and my dad was from Poland, and so we were a buddy of mine, we were cruising through Berlin and going through Checkpoint Charlie to get to Warsaw, Poland. My dad flew in there and we're going to meet. We couldn't find the place.

And so it was nighttime, you know, we're in a foreign country, blah, blah, blah. And we saw a taxi driver and asked him, I speak a little bit of Polish, but not that much. But he went and drove to where we needed to go and didn't want anything. We still gave him some money for doing it, but he didn't want any money.

He was, you know, and we still insisted, but he wanted to help. And just like you said, if I would have never asked, I would have denied that person because he felt like a rock star that day. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

All about. Yeah, really? That's bottom line. So you guys do some really cool stuff.

So as we kind of come closer to the end here, Jeff, how can people find you guys and how can they help? Yeah, they can go to our website@veritas group v e r I t u s group dot com. And, you know, there's all kinds of ways to interact on the. On our website, but if you want information, there's a resource tab and that's where we have all of our free resources, all of our white papers, spreadsheets that you can have, templates, all of our blog posts, anything you to know about min or major gifts is it there.

So you can go there and download all of those. All that information. Okay. We'll make sure that that's in the show notes.

Great conversation that we had. Definitely would love to have you on the show down the road again. Yeah, would love to. Thanks so much for having me.

Jeff's message today is simple and powerful relationships come before revenue and when people feel known, appreciated and connected to real impact, they become super fans for your mission. For service based business owners, that matters because loyalty, referrals and long term growth are built through trust, not transactions. As I've mentioned many times, when you lead with genuine appreciation and show people they matter, you create Business Superfans. Know of a business owner who could benefit from this conversation, share the episode and help them get one superfan closer.

And if you enjoyed today's conversation, subscribe and follow the show so you never miss an episode. Have you ever noticed how nobody gets excited about another email but a personalized card, a thoughtful customized gift, or even a simple postcard showing up in the mailbox? People remember that. That's what I call the Mailbox Advantage.

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An ecosystem of advocates or as I call them, business superfans who remember your name, recommend your business and help drive growth. That's the Mailbox Advantage. Cut through the digital noise, create memorable experiences. To learn more and get started, visit TheMailboxAdvantage.

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