The Big Nonprofit Strategy You Can Adapt For Free with Jerome Cheung
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Does face-to-face fundraising feel out of reach for your small nonprofit? Many you think you need a big amount saved just to start. What if I told you there's a way to step into large-scale face-to-face fundraising, just like the big, well-funded organizations, but without the financial barrier of hiring an agency? Today, we’ll discuss the pros and cons of pricey face-to-face campaigns and reveal accessible (and scalable!) paths for smaller nonprofits.
Joining me is Jerome Cheung, a seasoned fundraiser whose 18-year career has spanned across high-profile charities and agencies. His expertise in monthly giving, telefundraising, face-to-face engagement, and other fundraising avenues has made him a distinguished professional in our field. I met Jerome at Public Outreach, a face-to-face fundraising agency, where he honed strategies to manage donor attrition and has successfully spearheaded initiatives for organizations like the American Red Cross, Greenpeace Canada, and Ecojustice.
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Key Episode Highlights:
Rethinking Big-Budget Campaigns: Why break the bank when you can make meaningful connections affordably? Small nonprofits might not have deep pockets, but what we do have is determination and a personal touch that's truly priceless.
Volunteers to the Rescue: Your mission's got supporters, right? Let's get them out there talking to folks. Jerome tells us our volunteers have something really special—a real love for the cause that makes potential supporters stop and listen.
Start with a Hello, Not an Ask: I joke that asking for monthly donations right away is like asking someone to marry you on the first date - there is little opportunity to build a relationship! Jerome and I talk about kicking things off with a friendly chat and a simple "Can we keep in touch?"
Take it to the People: Where's everyone hanging out? At the park, grabbing coffee, walking the dog? That's where we can make some real connections. Jerome shares some cool strategies for making the most of these everyday spots.
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Watch this episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/lDuNNHprP9I
Links and Resources:
Connect with Jerome on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/jerome-cheung-a0819912
Email: jerome.cheung@stratcom.ca
Connect with Maria on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mariario/
Support the show: https://www.buzzsprout.com/208666/supporters/new
Transcript:
00:00:00 Jerome: Again, in my day, early 90s, Greenpeace had internal canvases in most countries, right? Germany, Canada, US, and they were all, you know, young idealistic folks like myself wanting to make a contribution. We basically didn't have any skills. They put us into the canvass and we, you know, we would go door to door. Some of us would call, right?
00:00:26 Maria: Hi friends, ever wondered how you could turn your big ideas into results? I'm Maria Rio, your go-to guide for helping small nonprofits have real world impacts. Together, let's reimagine a better sector, tackle systemic issues, and yes, raise some serious cash. Welcome back to The Small Nonprofit, the podcast where your passion meets action.
00:00:58 Maria: Hi friends, welcome back to our episode. Before we begin, and just to let you know, I post episodes for The Small Nonprofit here weekly. So if that does sound like your kind of thing, please consider subscribing to the podcast. But for now, grab yourself a coffee, pull up a seat and get ready for our chat. Today's guest is Jerome. Hi, Jerome.
00:01:19 Jerome: Hi, Maria.
00:01:20 Maria: Can you introduce yourself to our audience and let them know what you do, how long you've been doing it?
00:01:26 Jerome: Sure, I'm Jerome Cheung. I currently work at Stratcom Canada. Strategic Communication, that's the full name. We're a full-service fundraising and engagement agency. We do telemarketing, texting, lead generation. We also have a lot of engagement and political services. So we do surveys, focus groups, telephone town halls, broadcast voice messages, AKA robo calls. And I think that's it. That's most of our services. And I've been a fundraiser for a long time. Like I started working at Greenpeace Canada in the early 90s, which is dating myself. And did a few little gigs and fundraising.
00:02:08 Jerome: But then in the mid 90s kind of, I kind of disappeared from Canada, went overseas, worked for about 15 years in international development and democracy promotion. But then in, and I had a little stint in 2000 at, just for one year at Ecojustice, kind of an interim period, but then I went overseas again. But then I came back in 2008, I think, and started working at public outreach and lots of really interesting things there. And then most recently moved over to Stratcom in 2019. So at Stratcom I primarily, been, kind of on the fundraising side, I work both on the kind of the political and fundraising side, but on the fundraising side, primarily kind of doing telemarketing and texting.
00:02:57 Maria: I didn't know you did international development work. That's really interesting. Were you also fundraising there or where did that go?
00:03:03 Jerome: Well, not initially. So I did what's called the CIDA ladder. So back then it was called… Global Affairs Canada, it was called Canadian International Development Agency, CIDA. So I started as a volunteer at Canada World Youth. I'm sure, you know, thousands of young Canadians have done Canada World Youth. It's kind of a youth development exchange, right? So I went over and lived in a small village in Ghana and literally dug ditches for a literacy center that they were building.
00:03:40 Jerome: And then like after me, several other teams went and like the second team, after we dug the ditches, the second team laid the foundation, the third team helped, you know, put up the structure. So I did volunteering for a while, moved on to [QSO], did volunteering there. And then I got hired by USC Canada. So that was, this was now like a real, not a volunteer job, but actually a real development job. And in that I did do a lot of grant writing. So I did a lot of grant writing for European and UN organizations.
00:04:14 Jerome: Then when I worked at... So then I had that little interim period back in Vancouver, it was back in Canada in Vancouver at Ecojustice. And then I went back overseas, this time working for, National Democratic Institute. So that's a US based organization that promotes democracy. Indonesia was going through its transition to democracy. The dictator Suharto had just stepped down. And there are all these free elections and stuff going on. So I participated in that. I observed several elections and also kind of helped with the decentralization process because they went through this massive process of kind of ceding power to provinces and local districts, which is great. Right?
00:05:02 Jerome: Like, because up until then, most power had been just held in Jakarta, under Suharto. And there was a process of, kind of for real democracy to happen that, you know, as you know, like, the government that affects you the most is the one closest to you, the municipal government. Right? So that was the attempt to do that. And my job was to fund organizations to monitor budgets, actually. So sort of an anti-corruption effort and that was actually a World Bank grant. And that's interesting because I remember writing it and then waiting three years to get the money. I was the only one on the team who, like there was a team of us that had written the proposal. And then I would, three years later, I was the only one left. So I ended up managing the program.
00:05:57 Maria: So frustrating. That's horrible.
00:05:59 Jerome: No, but that's what, like a lot of those large multilateral funding agencies, they have, because it's multilateral, they often are combining budgets from various countries and that slows everything down. Yeah, so during that period, I wrote grant proposals for World Bank, UN, DFID, which is the British grantor, Australia. So it was a ton of a lot of grants, let's say that.
00:06:34 Maria: Nice, nice. You've had your hands on a lot of different things in the sector from volunteering and frontline support to telemarketing–
00:06:41 Jerome: Yeah, [much two] distinctive types of careers, fundraising and kind of the programming side of, you know, like volunteering. And in that, a lot of the volunteering work was very community based work. Like we… I literally lived in religious without electricity or running water. But that's… it's amazing. Like you learn so much about the people. And then that period that I did democracy work, which is really interesting. And actually, this is often, I say this to my friends at Public Outreach, like the work, I did a lot of election observation.
00:07:17 Jerome: So election observation involves, you know, training people, training usually volunteers and to go out to every polling station and record, right, the results of each polling station and then transmit it somehow to the central headquarters, right, where we database it. And we would use that as a kind of an alternative audit, if you will, of the official results, right? And that is extremely similar to canvassing, right? Because that's exactly what we do with canvassing. We train people, go out to talk to people, right?
00:07:53 Jerome: And in the case of Public Outreach, and for your viewers, again, like that's a face-to-face agency based in Canada, and both Maria and I work there. And you do the same thing, like you, they record, in this case, credit card numbers, personal information, and they transmit it to a central database. So in some ways, there's a lot of similarities between those three kinds of activities and linking those up. Right? Training, deploying and recording and transmitting or capturing information.
00:08:29 Maria: Super interesting. And how did you get involved with Public Outreach?
00:08:33 Jerome: Well, literally, well, because of my friends, my friends from Greenpeace. So the thing is like Greenpeace has spun off so many agencies, right? Stratcom is one, right? So there's a whole bunch of folks from Greenpeace and Stratcom. And so is Public Outreach. And I was actually brought in because, to some degree, because one of their founders, James Julien, probably many of your viewers might remember James Julien. He was quite a figure in AFP Toronto. He died suddenly, very young age, very tragic. And they just needed a skillset to sort of replace him. So the owners, John and Brian reached out to me. I was actually in Ghana at the time, doing a little consulting gig. And so that's how they brought me in. Right. So that's, so that was kind of my transition back to Canada.
00:09:23 Maria: Love that. Yeah. And today's episode, I want to focus around, you know, face-to-face fundraising and how that has impacted the sector. But we're going to be talking a little bit about Public Outreach because we were both there. But I think what we talk about is very applicable to so many different agencies and so many different types of engaging people on a more personal level. So yes, we have phone calls when it comes to getting people involved to make a monthly donation or a one-time gift. But we have face-to-face when it comes to streets, stores and malls.
00:09:57 Maria: So I'm sure you've all seen the people with the vest. I actually referenced it on my first episode with Cindy, like they're iconic. Like you know exactly what they are, what they're looking for. Right. So yeah, I love to hear your thoughts on a face-to-face fundraising because Public Outreach to me seemed like one of the first companies to really professionalize it and expand it to the level that they did?
00:10:20 Jerome: Well, actually, it was Greenpeace that first professionalized it. Again, in my day, in the early 90s, Greenpeace had internal canvases in most countries, right? Germany, Canada, US. And they were all, you know, young, idealistic folks like myself wanting to make a contribution. We basically didn't have any skills. They put us into the canvas. And we, you know, we would go door to door, some of us would call, right? And that's how it started. And, you know, incredibly for those who do use face to face if, you won't believe that back in those days, we just asked for one time gifts, right?
00:11:02 Jerome: Today, most face to face, professional face to face canvassers working for agencies will be asking for a monthly gift because the return on investment is so much higher, right? But it was really, this is a myth, I don't know if it's true, that two German or Austrian Greenpeace fundraisers were out having a beer, and after a certain amount of beers, were starting laughing and they were saying, what if we just stood on the corner of the street and asked people for money? And then the next morning, after they got over their hangovers, they actually just said, that's not a bad idea, let's try it. That's really the myth behind the origin of face-to-face, as it exists today.
00:11:52 Jerome: And so you've got street canvassing and door canvassing. One of the things about street canvassing is that door canvassing requires a certain amount of logistics, to be able to send people out, to make, you know, you have to plan the walk of the canvas so that you don't overlap and end up calling on somebody's house multiple times by different teams. And sometimes when you run out of turf, as they call it, right, territory or streets, you have to deploy them further out. So that's, you know, I know in Toronto we tried, we always tried to do that along the subway line, but eventually Public Outreach did have to, and so did Greenpeace in my day, have to rent cars, right, to get them out into different parts of the city.
00:12:41 Jerome: So that's the thing about, street. Street in a way is like an ever-changing landscape, right? Like the people moving through it are new all the time. And so that's one of the reasons why it solved a logistical problem and actually tapped into a large volume of people that you can't do as in the way you can do door to door, right? Door to door takes time to, there's a finite number of doors, if you will. But with street it's, you know, we just found like you plant yourself at young and done to us. You don't have to move. Really? You can, there's always some new wave of people that you can talk to.
00:13:22 Jerome: So that is great because if you look at direct marketing, direct marketing really is, depends on and is limited to lists, right? Whether you're doing direct mail or email fundraising or would I do text fundraising or telemarketing? Like, if you run out of lists, you've finished your list, then you can't fundraise anymore. Where this is the great thing about face-to-face and why it's a phenomenal acquisition method is that you have this untapped universe, really, like a limitless list that you can continue talking to, try to convince, continue to try to persuade people to come on.
00:14:05 Jerome: I think that's face-to-face. And if you look internationally, face-to-face is huge around the world. Like, I've known clients who are spending, US clients, for instance, I knew one US client. They spent $4 million on face-to-face every year and they employed six agencies. Yeah.
00:14:28 Maria: Wow, that's wild.
00:14:29 Jerome: I know. Well, everything is bigger in the US, of course. But it's a reflection of really how big you can go. If you do have that kind of budget, again, there's no list that runs out. You just continue standing on that corner or going to do neighborhoods. So that's why it's fantastic. And many of the large global brands have really used face-to-face to expand. There's even some global brands that even have an international face-to-face advisor. Amnesty and I believe UNICEF, they have these international face-to-face guys or women who go around the world to try to optimize their face-to-face campaigns around the world. So that's how big it is.
00:15:18 Jerome: But it has really become professionalized. I guess this is kind of the thing we wanted to talk about. Not that that's bad, it's great. It is being professionalized in the sense that, number one, like the staff, that staff that are highly skilled and highly specialized, right? I'd say like, the person being successfully hired today compared to, you know, 20 years ago is like, day and night. Like, it's just like, they have to be, you know, super extroverted, really good with the public, be able to understand and talk about complex social issues like the environment, like social justice, but also be responsible with payments.
00:16:10 Jerome: So, you know, back in, I don't think we had the same criteria back in the day. So I tip my hat to people who do make it through probation on Facebook. I think it's the hardest job really, one of the hardest jobs in fundraising. And I, so respect people who do that on a daily basis. And I think like people who do get through that crucible of training and experience and they become very, very good fundraisers. And if you look around the landscape in Toronto, there are face-to-face canvassers from Public Outreach working in dozens of NGOs, right? That's a great thing because in a way it's a great training kind of machine in a way, right?
00:17:03 Maria: Oh yeah, absolutely. I see them at Planned or Doctors Without Borders, MSF, leading hospital campaign. It's definitely learned, it is a very difficult job for sure, but you learn so much about interacting with different kinds of individuals, being really persuasive with your body language, the words that you use, how you tell stories, teaches you to become an amazing storyteller. But yeah, just like thinking back to like the professionalism around that, I was just thinking of the turf situation because a lot of organizations who use agencies like this might not realize that, yeah, there's so much coordination between all of them.
00:17:47 Maria: Because you don't want someone who A, shows up in a different vest representing a different organization the day after someone else or, you know, that door getting knocked by a different agency representing even the same organization or a different organization that can really leave a bad taste in people's mouth. So there's definitely a lot of pros and cons to the model. And something that I really liked when we did our pre-screen call was you mentioned like because of the rise of agencies like this and maybe organizations as well, there's been less of a push for more grassroots efforts. So you see less people coming together and saying, hey, I really believe in this. Let's get people to sign on to our petition that are not attached to an organization or an agency. So I'd love to hear more about that from you.
00:18:42 Jerome: Yeah, again, I think that the professionalization of face-to-face is kind of created kind of expectations maybe, right? In the fundraising community that it should be this way. Like, you know, you want to be recruiting the right kind of person. You want to be training, you know, A to Z, all these different skills. Another big one is you want to have a PCI compliant way of capturing the information, right? Nobody goes around with a paper and clipboard anymore, right? You notice that, right? If you ever see a face-to-face canvasser, they've always got a tablet now, right? And that tablet, it's not just the tablet, because I did work on this at Public Outreach. Like there's a lot behind that in terms of electronic security to make sure it's PCI compliant, right?
00:19:36 Jerome: And that's super important to, well, the entire industry, because the moment we have some kind of credit card breach, that's going to be bad for the industry. But I guess that means that when a small organization is thinking, oh, I want to do face-to-face as well. And I think you had this experience when reaching out to some of these companies and Public Outreach is not the only one. Right. The threshold is often quite high, like $50,000 to $100,000 just to get into it. And that's really unfortunate. But it is understandable because of all those other things I told you, like the recruitment, the training, the deployment part, all the costs in deployment, sometimes involving vehicles, and the expense of the PCI-compliant data capture device. Different agencies use different devices. All of that costs a lot of money.
00:20:42 Jerome: Now, I think that's money spent, well for the global brands because the thing is that when they are able to get a monthly donor, that return on investment is fantastic. The thing I guess that I've been thinking a lot about, and this came out in our pre-screening interview as well, was that, well, you don't have to always be asking for monthly donors. Again, back in my day, we were asking for one-time donors. This is why you need to have all that training because, you know, asking a person for monthly gifts successfully does take a lot of skill, right? You have to be, again, a big one is, you know, you have to build rapport, because if you don't build rapport and trust, nobody's going to want to hand over the credit card, let alone allow you to do a recurring gift.
00:21:35 Jerome: So that's why those folks, they're very, like polished, right? Your modern day canvasser, your professional canvasser is very polished. They… They've been trained in all the, kind of rebuttals to, because everybody, whenever you ask for a monthly gift, people have objections, right? So all of that means that that model, which is great because it's geared towards a monthly gift, is going to be expensive, but small organizations then can't access that, but, doesn't mean they can't access canvassing, right? Because again, canvassing is very organic. People have been doing it, I don't know how long. I mean, I know at least in North America, it's been a feature of political fundraising and still is, right? Politicians and supporters of politicians still come to your door.
00:22:30 Jerome: So it doesn't have to necessarily be super expensive, especially if you kind of lower the bar in terms of what you're asking for. And this is where the idea of, like organizing small canvases to just build a list, right? Just use that as a list building effort. And I think in many ways, there's some advantages, that over for instance, the other method that a lot of small organizations use to build lists, which is organizing events, right? And the events are great. They're a lot of fun. When they work well, you can get a lot of money out of them. And you also can start building your list based on participants.
00:23:15 Jerome: But they also contain a fair degree of risk. If your expenses are more than your revenue, then you're in the hole, actually. So there are some risks involved with the events. But the thing about an event is that there's a lot of preparation over several weeks and then it happens all in one day. Right? But with a, let's talk about a volunteer canvas. The cost I think of a volunteer canvas is very low actually. Right? And it's day to day. Right? So you could be tracking that against your results day to day, week to week. It's not, and if at some point you, you know, it's costing too much, you just tell everybody, okay, we're not going out anymore. Right?
00:24:01 Jerome: So I think there's a lot of potential value in smaller organizations trying to organize local canvases. Because the other thing is, I find is that global brands, like WWF and UNICEF and Plan Canada, they have tons of fundraisers working for them, all these talented people doing everything, but they don't actually have a lot of volunteers. So that's another reason they often have to turn to professional canvassers, but also because their target is monthly donors. But, a small organization, if the target is just list building, you don't necessarily need all those bells and whistles that I talked about.
00:24:50 Jerome: You don't have to select among the best and the brightest. You can, you know, a basic canvas instructions to just go out and, you know, with a call to action, for instance, like a petition, just go door to door, talk about this particular petition or pledge, right? If you're not, it's not involving money, it's going to be, you don't have to, again, less involved training there. You don't, definitely don't have to kind of worry about security and all the costs involved in transmitting that sensitive data. So I think there's a lot of advantage. And then on top of that is that it's lower risk than an event, right?
00:25:34 Maria: Something else when you're speaking about risk that keeps like a red flag in my mind is how are you gonna get this investment if you're a small to mid-size nonprofit in front of your board where they say, yes, I'd love to try this new thing where I'm just sending strangers out into the street to collect monthly gifts. I think nonprofits tend to always say, we've done it this way and this is the way that works. And we're too scared to try something like that. Even if we had the 50,000, like I don't want to try that.
00:26:04 Maria: So your idea of having volunteers or a smaller group of people that are not as professional trained, just collecting emails, just getting names on your paper and getting their information seems like such an amazing way to test if that investment would be something more that you'd like to think about, but also the list building aspect, many organizations have no strategy and no plan to build a list outside of events, which really harms them in the long term, unfortunately. So having just the opportunity to, you know, as a local organization, I could see also that being like so important.
00:26:45 Jerome: Yeah.
00:26:45 Maria: Like if you are providing, like, food bank services in this neighborhood, you can go to everyone in that postal code in that neighborhood and collect their emails specifically and have those conversations with people who are predisposed to care about your organization. So, love this idea.
00:27:01 Jerome: Yeah, and I think there's a strong argument to be said, like there's local causes actually are, I think it's very effective to fundraise on local causes. Like I remember this one, this is the story I was telling you about, Red Door Shelter. Public Outreach taking on Red Door Shelter. And this is a cute story where one of our staff had gone over to work for Red Door. And this is there in Parkdale, I believe. She really wanted to convince the organization to do it and convince people that it's a good thing to do. But again, they couldn't afford the initial costs. So they saved money for three years.
00:27:47 Jerome: And then finally did a tiny campaign, it lasted like one month with three people, but the results were phenomenal. Like just off the scale, the community responded so well. Like a lot of people actually said, I had no idea the shelter was here, right? And they also were able to get a major donor, not right on the doorstep, but through talking to people in the neighborhood, that person realizing that the shelter was there actually went to the location and said, I had a campus that come to my door and I want to make a large donation. So, you know, I like the idea because also it's about mobilizing, you know, volunteers. And again, I was a volunteer for many years in a local community. Right.
00:28:38 Jerome: And, you know, I think sometimes we forget that a lot of these organizations, food banks, shelters, that kind of thing, they exist in the community and it's too bad that they aren't supported by the community more directly. And this is a great way of doing it. But again, you don't have to resort to necessarily saving money over three years before you can afford a professional face-to-face company. I think it's possible to organize that on a more volunteer basis when you keep the bar low.
00:29:16 Jerome: So like you said, list building, capturing emails. I would really also suggest capturing cell phone numbers, not landlines, but cell phone numbers, because landlines are quickly dying out. And it's important then also to remember that you wanna be creating some kind of journey on, you know, you could start with email, because again, it's cheaper, but you could also then use text, not as cheap as email, but much, much cheaper than direct mail.
00:29:48 Jerome: And use that to create a kind of welcome journey, a journey of engagement with a few, ask in there. So again, use that list building effort to start pushing donors up the donor pyramid, right? Up the layers of the donor pyramid. And that, I think, would not cost so much money, right? It would certainly cost less than you'd have to invest in a professional agency, right?
00:30:14 Maria: I also think, like, it's a much more rewarding volunteer task because we also know that volunteering is down across the sector X, Y and Z. But why is that? Maybe if we gave them a task that is more reminiscent of what people used to willingly, happily gather to do. Maybe we'd get more engagement instead of saying like, hey, I need you to, you know, help me set up envelopes, which is more of an admin task.
00:30:38 Jerome: Yeah.
00:30:40 Maria: There's that kind of more community building that you're able to do with your volunteers by giving them a more intentional and meaningful tasks that it asks them to find other advocates for your organization, which is so sweet, so great.
00:30:54 Jerome: Exactly and I think the other thing is that in the professional space, quite often the least in my experience in Public outreach, canvassers were being sent out in, all around year, three, you know, every month of the year, even when conditions are adverse, like it's raining or it's minus 20.
00:31:21 Maria: Blizzards.
00:31:21 Jerome: Yeah. And that's because the demand is so much that the companies just have to use that all the time of the year to do that. And another reason why you're looking, this is why the recruitment and selection process is difficult because you're also looking for people who are hardy and resilient that way. You know, I've had Public Outreach campuses come to my door in the middle of like a snowstorm, minus 20. I always invite them in for a hot chocolate. But you don't have to do that with volunteer campuses. Just do it on a nice summer day. Right? Because again, it is volunteer. So you're, you don't have to kind of deploy people in all kinds of conditions. Just do it in, you know, fair conditions, right? And it reduces the stress.
00:32:18 Maria: I also wanted to ask you, if we're seeing the professionalism of fundraising through face-to-face have its pros and cons, do you think the professionalism of the sector overall is having that kind of similar effect on the general public where they feel, oh no, I don't need to do that because it's already being done by UNICEF, right? It's already being done by World Vision, so why would I go out of my way to gather X, Y, and Z supplies or money or whatever to then put that into affect myself when I could just donate and be done with it.
00:32:52 Jerome: I don't know. I think maybe, maybe that's true. But I think that again, going that local level, right, I think people notice that, oh, a lot of the charity stuff I'm getting is so polished. So, you know, so marketing, right? Like it replicates a lot of the stuff they're getting on the consumer side. I think once you do encounter something a little bit more rough, something a little bit more frayed at the edges, clearly not professional, but you can see the genuine intent. This is, another thing about canvassers is, again, another thing we look for in canvassers, again, one of the reasons why, is the best canvassers are the ones who are really genuine, right, and have, or who are authentic, right?
00:33:52 Jerome: And so, finding people like that who can address a wide range of different causes, that can be challenging. But again, a volunteer who wants, you know, loves their local food bank, loves their local shelter, they don't have to pretend to be genuine. They are genuine. So when that comes across, right, I think people recognize that and it appeals to people.
00:34:16 Maria: I love that you said that, because looking back on my fundraising days as a face-to-face canvasser, like my style of fundraising has always been, like very bubbly, very charming, you know, it's who I am regularly. So seeing how other people were able to fundraise in a completely different manner that was authentic to them, like super maybe like deadpan and just very like to the facts and it still get results was very interesting for me because it let me think about and imagine different personalities being able to be really successful at fundraising. It's a little of a side note, but it was really interesting.
00:34:57 Jerome: No, and I think, you know, the thing that makes face-to-face fundraising so effective is body language and emotional connection, you know, you're, because we don't have those encounters a lot in society anymore where somebody just coming up to you and trying to sell you on something. You don't even have that in, like stores anymore. Remember like you, you, this old, kind of, I don't know, it's a trope, I guess, but you go out looking for a car and there'd be a car salesman and he would like personally, like that kind of try to sell you, persuade you based on, you know, his knowledge of the car, right?
00:35:44 Jerome: And that doesn't, those kinds of encounters don't happen anymore. Really? Like you go into best buy and just know people, maybe somebody says hello, but they mostly ignore you. Right. But I think, like, it is interesting to occasionally have that encounter. And sometimes I get it with kids who are fun. There's a couple of kids who go door to door here offering to shovel for $10 or something. And I like that because it's like, oh, you don't get that kind of sales thing, this offer anymore.
00:36:24 Maria: Yeah. It's a little endearing because it's like, oh, you're such an idealist, you know, you're so hopeful and I love that for you and I want to support so, like, build some, like good feeling in the donor as well.
00:36:36 Jerome: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think, again if you strip away all those other things, right, the need to talk about a gift whether it's monthly or OTG, so then you're stripping away the need to handle credit cards professionally, right? And the need to operate in adverse conditions, right? Because I mean, I remember Public Outreach, they would have like sock allowance and like, remember that?
00:37:10 Maria: Jacket allowance, boot allowance, yeah.
00:37:12 Jerome: So it's like, now the canvasser is being equipped with all these things, right? So I think again, you know, just doing it. And you know, for instance, another great thing would be, for instance, I know The Stop has that farmer's market, right? So there's a great example of, you know, that's a fun thing. You just organize five people to just hang around at the farmer's market and sign people up, you know, with this petition or pledge. That's a nice kind of morning. You're talking to nice people, you know, you might get a free apple.
00:37:54 Maria: It's so much less of a barrier than give me your credit card.
00:37:58 Jerome: Yeah.
00:37:58 Maria: Just collect their emails.
00:38:00 Jerome: And actually, if you think about it, like… so I used to do direct mail at Greenpeace in the early 90s. And back then, same thing, like we would be mailing to people first with an OTG ask, we would never ask, nobody would ever get a monthly ask straight off the bat. Right. So it was like prospecting first. So you'd be sending an email, sorry, a direct email, a direct mail, two people and asking them to make first a one-time gift. And it was only after a person gave once or more than once, usually, even, I remember, I think it was like the third gift. Would we, only then would we segment those people off for a monthly ask? And that's sort of been lost now with a lot of these direct acquisition methods. We're going, we're jumping right to the monthly ask. Right.
00:38:48 Jerome: So I think one thing is like monthly donors in a way have become so important because of their return on investment that we're actually, like kind of ignoring one-time donors in a way and certainly ignoring just people who are non-financial supporters. So I think like going back to that ladder, like don't expect a person, just become a monthly donor automatically. You have to convince them first, right? And maybe they need to be a one-time donor for a while. Just try donating occasionally and see how that feels for them, right? And it's after that, then you ask them for a month or two. So it's again, like not jumping to the third run in the ladder, but like moving people up.
00:39:34 Jerome: And I think this is the idea is like, bring people on with a social issue, some kind of pledge, some kind of petition that piques their interest about the things that your local NGO does. Then put them into some kind of email or text welcome series that to, again, cultivate them, give them more information. Don't ask them right away, like build their knowledge for us, build their interest and then at some point ask them for a one time gift, right?
00:40:05 Maria: It feels a little bit like proposing on your first date.
00:40:08 Jerome: Yeah, exactly. That's right.
00:40:10 Maria: Commit now. Give me your credit card.
00:40:13 Jerome: It's like the development of the industry has kind of moved to this point where, I guess it's because a lot of agencies figured out how to just go straight for a monthly gift. Because you can, you do it, and that's great. But there's this other portion of the donor community, let's say, that's getting less attention. And so if you're willing to sort of bring them on more slowly, then that can help small organizations.
00:40:50 Maria: What do you think small organizations can do as their first two to three stops to get something like this started?
00:41:01 Jerome: I guess, making it one of the volunteer things that people can sign up to, like whenever they're recruiting volunteers, making it as an option. I guess, looking at their turf, right, their neighborhood and seeing what turf exists for them. Like for instance, the stop had… has, not only the area around the Wychwood Barns, but you have the farmer's market itself. Right. So just because… So it's not just neighborhoods, I think it's like, are there high traffic areas where you can put canvassers and basically there's an opportunity to have a conversation. Really? That's what it is. Like they're conversation generators, right? So that would be one. So basically kind of determining your turf and that's like determining the kind of opportunities, if you will.
00:41:55 Jerome: Coming up with some good call to action that's related to their mission. That's an important one. And then there's the logistic things like, again, you know, planning walks, like, you know, so these are very simple. You just sort of take Google Maps, right? Blow it up this big, you know, like, zoom into it. You've got one street, print that. And then you just highlight like, you know, where the canvasser will go. Right? This is the streets that you're responsible for. So you're just coordinating that, right? Well, political canvassers do it all the time. Like, if you wanted, a staff person or a volunteer who is good at that, try to recruit a political canvasser, right from the NDP or the Green Party, like, they have the skills to do that.
00:42:43 Jerome: So you've got your call to action, you've got your Turf maps, and I guess then the other thing would just be some logistical things about creating a form to capture the information, do it in a way that... I mean, it's not just the form and sending out the form. You also have to have staff then or volunteers to enter that in the database right away so that you can start talking to these people right away. The best thing would be a day after or a couple of days after a person has had this conversation with a canvasser, they receive an email. Right? But it's fairly, you know, thank you for signing our pledge or thank you for signing our petition. And then some information about, again, the call to action and the mission. Right? So those are the basic things, I think, really.
00:43:32 Maria: Yeah. Great. Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today.
00:43:37 Jerome: You're welcome.
00:43:37 Maria: I also want everyone who's listening to be really nice to your local canvassers. You heard how hard it is. Buy them a coffee, buy them a pop. It's just really nice. Really appreciate it. Or just say hi and not try to, you know, put your AirPods in and run faster.
00:43:52 Jerome: Yeah, exactly. Like, yeah, if you just, if you don't want to give, that's fine. Like in fact, sometimes when I'm not in the mood to give, I just say I'm not going to give today. And I'm not going to waste your time. So thank you for what you do. And yeah, good luck today. And that's it. And that's actually helpful for them because it means they don't have to waste time on you, but they got a nice feeling to that, you know, two second interaction, right?
00:44:17 Maria: For sure. Just having someone be kind.
00:44:19 Jerome: Exactly.
00:44:20 Maria: It goes a long way when you're having a hard job.
00:44:21 Jerome: And that's what our industry is about, right? Kindness and generosity. So,
00:44:25 Maria: Yeah. So, Jerome, where can people find you if they want to continue the conversation?
00:44:31 Jerome: Well, they can look me up on LinkedIn, or feel free to send me an email at jerome.cheung@stratcom.ca.
00:44:40 Maria: Okay, perfect. Thank you so much. And thank you all for listening to another episode of The Small Nonprofit podcast. I'm your host, Maria. And if you'd like to continue the conversation with Jerome, his information will be in the show notes. Bye for now.
00:44:54 Jerome: Thank you.
00:44:58 Maria: Thank you for listening to another episode of The Small Nonprofit. If you want to continue the conversation, feel free to connect with our guests directly or find me on LinkedIn. Let's keep moving money to mission and prioritizing our well-being. Bye for now.
