143. Do Your Good: Discovering Your Own Personal Giving Strategy - Sybil Ackerman-Munson
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Overview
Meet Sybil. She's a nonprofit purist on a mission: to help you do the most good when it comes to your personal philanthropy. It starts with building a personal giving strategy, aligning values and narrowing your giving goals. We're chatting about how to channel passion, creating focus and giving away money with humility. We believe everyone - especially nonprofit professionals - is an important philanthropist. Start here, and let's allow our collective giving to improve our world.
Today’s Guest
Sybil Ackerman-Munson, Founder, Do Your Good
“There’s an art to being a good donor. It’s not just about writing a check, there is an art form to it.”
Episode Transcript
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Episode Highlights
Sybil’s story and journey to where she is today (2:00)
Discovering your own personal giving strategy (10:00)
1. What do you do day to day?
2. What are your hobbies?
3. What is the place that gives you rejuvenation?
4. What issue keeps you up at night?
Sybil’s advice for how to decide on how much and how often to give (17:00)
The 3 different types of donors / funders (19:20)
1. Sustainer
2. Campaigner
3. Launcher
How you can validate your giving (24:00)
A powerful moment of philanthropy in Sybil’s life (26:00)
Sybil’s One Good Thing: Think positive first about people. Go into a situation, assuming the best in what somebody wants to have happen in the world and nurture that support it. (28:00)
Want to dive in further? Check out Sybil’s courses!
Powerful quotes
“There's different ways that the world intersects us that puts a burden on us for certain cause that isn't part of our daily life. It's something that haunts us or that keeps us up.” -Jon
“It's not about us. It's not about our mission. It's not about what we can bring to the donor. But in this conversation, I love that we're loving on our community and saying, we want you to be philanthropists, that that are empowered to change the world, we want you to feel like your gift can make a difference not only to the nonprofit, but it makes a difference in your life.” -Becky
“It's my kids and my family, and watching my kids grow. That's really inspiring to me, and climate change that's keeping me up at night. What I did was I ended up suggesting to myself, that I give funding to youth groups, kids that are speaking out in favor of action on climate change. And so that's where I ended up focusing my donation in the course.” -Sybil
“You can make a difference, no matter how much money you have to give away, you really can.” -Sybil
“There's an art to being a good donor. It's not just about writing a check, there is an art form to it.” -Sybil
“I actually think all three ways to fund are wonderful. As long as nonprofits can approach each funder in a way with that with understanding the differences, then I think they'll have a great chance of even raising more money.” -Sybil
“I think some of the thread of this conversation is about intentionality, and focus, and aligning all of that with passion. And I think that if you are someone who has emotional intelligence, and you can really look at your donors, and see what their heart is and what they need, you cannot treat them equally you have to meet them in the space that they are.” -Becky
“So how many of you all have like labored over those final reports and stressed about them. And yet they're important people read them. But the reality is, they're only like a small smidgen important. It's the other stuff I was talking about. That's more important. If you're a donor for validating your work. It's not about being able to read mountains of papers and final reports.” -Sybil
“I can work for people who have means that can then help nonprofits, that a lot of times are very small nonprofits, grassroots kind of nonprofits, with people who are doing this from a labor of love, that are trying to help the world. And can I we can, we can do that. And that's what philanthropy when it's at its best does.” -Sybil
“Think positive first about people. Go into a situation, assuming the best in what somebody wants to have happen in the world and nurture that support it. And I think that you'd be surprised at how much good happens. You think that way.” -Sybil
The 3 Types of Donors / Funders
1. Sustainer Donors
Sustainers are donors that care about an issue, but they don't want to really get involved in tons of detail. These donors love to go on the outings, the annual dinner, and events.
Validate your giving by making sure that the groups that you've been giving to over the years are still aligning with the values of the organization.
2. Campaigner Donors
Campaigners are are more interested in changing a societal norm. This person wants to fund a campaign to change the societal norm. They appreciate collaboration and communication about how your organization is working to change a societal norm.
There are very clear benchmarks for validation. There are going to be very clear conversations and policies that people are going to be talking about in year one, year two, there's going to be communications plans, there's going to be additional funding people have to raise. So it's going to be very, very intense on the validation.
3. Launcher Donors
Launcher donors are really interested in funding gaps in a field. As an executive director, if you see that there is a really big gap, like something that you can't cover, but you need it to really help your work to move forward, launcher donors would be important to engage with.
There are very clear benchmarks for validation. There are going to be very clear conversations and policies that people are going to be talking about in year one, year two, there's going to be communications plans, there's going to be additional funding people have to raise. So it's going to be very, very intense on the validation.
Connect with sybil and do your good
LinkedIn / Website / Podcast / Courses
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Watch the full Family Reach story mentioned in the midroll below! 🎉
