GOOD NEWS: Trusted Advisors
Good News: An enewsletter for donors and nonprofits
on strategic planning, governance, fundraising, and executive leadership.
Trusted Advisors
Recently I've been paying more attention to wealth advisors because I am impressed by the depth of their client relationships and how they go about developing them.
A few things that your foundation or nonprofit can learn from some wealth management firms and the people who lead them:
Be a Trusted Advisor
While the surface-level product offered by most wealth management firms centers around financial planning and investment advising, the best wealth managers position themselves as trusted advisors on financial and other matters. This only happens after years of genuine relationship building are matched by a track record of exceptional performance. While many relationships are simply transactional in nature, some wealth managers gain the status of trusted advisor after years, perhaps decades, of building trust through scores of conversations, some weighty, some not. The lesson for others, especially fundraisers, is that relationships should be top of mind. Not social media and other electronic gimmickry but deep, enduring relationships with people seeking to serve.
Build Robust Pipelines
Attend any wealth management staff meeting and you will hear regular discussion about pipelines or funnels. These professionals know that to generate a certain number of clients, they need to generate many more prospective clients. Talk of leads, prospects, and touches demonstrates the understanding that all sales positions, and fundraisers, are engaged in an exercise with a high (95%?) “failure” rate. They hear no, or nothing at all, way more then yes or even maybe. So consider what number of wins you need for success and plan for many more attempts. Think of those not yet saying yes not as failures but as successful research that will lead you to the yes’s.
Embrace Accountability
Wealth management staff meetings sound quantitative. “How many prospects are in the pipeline?” “How many people do you plan to meet this week, month, and quarter?” "How many contacts have you had with that client?" Updates providing the answers to such questions and conversations about each interaction lead to productive plans for next steps, including pausing some people and projects. Too many development meetings I attend focus only on the amount of money raised which may not be the most telling signal of progress, even if it an important bottom line.
Do Good
As a young person I was told that if I wanted to make a small fortune in life, give a big fortune to a wealth manager. The joke implied that professionals in that field were maybe not so good at their jobs and perhaps motivated by self-interest. While it is not hard to find examples of some who fit that model, my actual lived experience is that the people I've met and worked with are motivated by a sincere desire to help people plan so that client financial security, hopes, and dreams are possible. A few such firms of which I am aware even give away to the community 10% of their profits each year and love it. Imagine a world where more for-profit entities did that? Or even where more exceedingly well resourced nonprofits shared their relative wealth more with others?
Like some of the wealth managers I've met, the most cherished donors and nonprofits also are positioned as trusted advisors on important matters.
Routinely I hear from nonprofit clients that funding from donors is important, of course, but it is not as important as having people they can turn to as an objective sounding board. My donor clients also report appreciating the opportunity to learn from and with their grantees.
So take a look at wealth management firms if you want closer relationships with your key stakeholders, accountable and measurable outreach, and philanthropic role models.
Stuff Steve is Watching, Listening to, and Reading
Eyeroll Activism (9 minute watch)
"It was a horrible thing and it shouldn't have happened and, if they didn't act like such thugs, it wouldn't have had to happen, but I don't need to wear a pin about it." Bill Maher on why he didn't wear a lapel pin for the first Minneapolis ICE shooting
Watch Here
The Privy Counselor (60 minute listen)
"The greatest development for a person to be of the highest utility to a family is to become their privy counselor. To become the privy counselor is to fulfill the great professional mission of someone serving great families and that is to be a great #2 and make someone else greater than he or she would have been. Not by manipulation but by true assistance and true caring. Courtiers have bad reputations, correctly, because they were by and large seeking something from someone. The privy counselor is seeking to give something to someone. So being a great #2, as I define it for modern times, I think is the highest calling of a person in our profession." Jay Hughes in conversation with Joe Reilly, Inheritance Podcast
Listen Here
A New Zealand Story (3 hour read)
“There were numerous legends in the ancient world of lands of perpetual summer where miraculous fertility gave abundance without toil and people passed their days in pleaure, free from tyranny, disease, and war. Such stories belong to an enduring, maybe even universal, mythology of escape - from work, from duty, from cold and hunger, from time itself, from death. For most of history these are understood to be imaginary places. But every once in a while they get mapped onto something actual and people suppose for a moment that these mythic Elysiums are real."
Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All, Christina Thompson
