EP9 - Erika Mork (University of Lynchburg)

shake the leaders behind enterprise impact, CSR and ESG, the people turning measurable

purpose into change. I'm a Joe's Rashid, founder and CEO at Giving Force, and today I'm joined by Erica Morgan, director of Institutional Giving at the University of Lynchburg, Erica has spent her career at the intersection of mission and money, from leaving development at disability services, organisations and symphony orchestras, to founding her own consulting practice, helping non-profits become properly resourced. She's a full-bright fellow,

a certified fundraising executive, and someone who's been funded by the US Department of State to teach grant writing to NGO leaders internationally. Her view is simple, organisations doing real good in the world deserve to be funded like it is. Erica, welcome to the show. Thank you, thanks for having me on today, appreciate it. It's a ramping that I missed, you know, anything you'd want to add to your intro. That was a great intro, Q. I mean, maybe just like a

little bit of behind the scenes of, I don't know, I grew up here in Minnesota, I was talking about

“having a snowstorm outside earlier today, which is not unusual for this time of year, and I think”

there's just a lot of influences from place and the type of ways in which Minnesota specifically with the United States has kind of looked at philanthropy and looked at the nonprofit sector, and I've just benefited from a lot of that. So yeah, I guess maybe one other thing is just the role of studying abroad in my life and being able to get outside of the United States and look at problems different ways and be able to talk with different people about how they're

facing those things. I was really fortunate to be a rotary youth ambassador when I was in high school to Denmark and I had three wonderful host families over there, got to study in Japan, got to studying Bangladesh. My full-bright was in South Korea, and that was a wonderful experience. I think a lot of those international experiences kind of really shaped being able to kind of see some of these things from a very global view and that can kind of help with being able to figure out systems and how

resources need to move to be able to solve problems. Absolutely. I mean, you know, that that just being in some of the other issues for a small time can really really help. I absolutely see that day-to-day without a team, which is international. Take us back to, you know, you said from the beginnings, you know, shaped in Minnesota and these other places, what kind of drew you into the sort of

civic space, you know, and maybe fundraising. But just always been pretty interested in making the

“world a better place. I think a lot of sounds kind of, I don't know, a little flowery, but I think”

that a lot of us have some drive in us for, you know, seeing something and wanting it and knowing how it could be better, seeing the potential and something. And I think I saw that pretty early on. I grew up actually living inside of Minnesota State Parks, both of my parents were Department of Natural Resources employees. So I literally lived in the parks and I had a very beautiful surroundings, very natural surroundings. I think that seeing then places where that is not the case, going to places

where there was very dense populations, no green space, some things like that. It really kind of helped me to think about, you know, some of these differences. And I think that got me interested in particularly some environmental causes that have been part of over time. I think also thinking about how funding kind of works and moving from, like, how a private foundation can work and have that money go to a nonprofit with something that was kind of new to me. So when I

started off working in a nonprofit, there was a person, Kathy Kalka was her name. She was a vice president of development and I was a program person, kind of a lowly program person.

This is my first job kind of out of university and I was working in human services and she just

was telling me, like, well, you have all these ideas and people said to me, if you can get them

“funded, if you can find the money, you can do them. And I think that challenge was something that”

kind of got in my head because I was like, you mean all that standing in the way right now for us is the resources to do this and otherwise you would say yes. And so I'm like, well, okay, I think I could maybe see about how to do that. And this person who is higher up in your organization, she allowed me some access to things that I might not have had access to otherwise. Things like our foundation or gender directory online subscription, things like that that I could actually

query and come up with prospects for us. And so I felt that in that role, I was kind of empowered to seek out those resources with them. I mean, within some controls, I was successful. And so having the money come in and being able to actually see something happen is it's kind of a, I don't want to say it's like addictive. But I mean, it's a thing where you feel like, this is something where I can have like a real impact because all that was a question of

was getting those resources in the door and now look what we can do. And so it was a thing that allowed people to say yes. And so I was just kind of a very much transitioning at that point

to be their director of development. And I think I was 23 years old. And I was just really thrilled

“for that opportunity. And I was kind of inside myself. And so I think just having people who saw”

but I was willing to take that initiative and then we're really going to give me a shot. And that meant a lot. So that's kind of what got me into fundraising. And then that's when I was kind of pivoting to also to look at, okay, what's the other side of a table look like? What is the side of the table from the allocation of these resources, looking from corporate giving, looking from foundation giving? And I'm trying to, you know, dip my feet in that a little bit too. There was a very,

I think it's the oldest benevolent organization in Minnesota. And it had a really unique structure for how it would award grants in the state. And I was really lucky to be able to kind of join a group that would review the grants, do site visits, so go out to nonprofits and ask them questions to make sure that kind of their statements matched what they submitted in their proposals. And then make recommendations to their board. And I've got to see that side of things for me about eight

years. And it was just kind of a lovely thing to be part of to be on the other side of the table. And

“I think that really helped me then moving forward, be able to think about, you know, how to engage”

and fundraising with these different perspectives in mind, from the perspective of the funder, that that corporation that wants to do good in the community, whatever it might be and and how do we partner with nonprofits and kind of make that a win-win for everybody. So I mean,

well, A sounds like an amazing experience and a great opportunity which you for us with both hands.

So you love picked up some amazing perspectives as you've gone through that journey. So, you know, I think give days if I'm correct, was one of your when you're initiatives. And that did very well. I mean, I have to say by any standards, it was an exciting success. How did you get, you know, so many people to give so much in a short space of time? What what turned those people from, you know, just you've got me in my address through to

we're going to give you money. In the case of something like a give day, I would say it's not uncommon amongst universities in the United States and some other types of nonprofits where they might have a day of giving of some kind in Minnesota. There's, you know, kind of a concert at effort to like have it be a day sort of maybe around the time of Thanksgiving where people are

“solicited and just choose to give and make a difference on that day. And I think that crafting”

something that is about a day is about developing a sense of urgency, kind of a sense of belonging, joining in, feeling like, okay, I'm like, sometimes even checking this off my list because I know this is something that's important to me and I just need like a reason to do it right now. And I think that we just are able to coordinate that and have the message go out on foreign advance and be far reaching and kind of cycling enough and people see it and then

think, okay, yeah, I want to be part of reaching that donor goal and then also we're certainly focusing largely on the goal of donors. So the number of participants, as opposed to necessarily the dollar amount and that kind of, you know, is about sort of that just doing your part and people have really different motivations for giving sometimes and that's something that I think

was kind of a breakthrough for me early on. And my career was just there was this thing that

people would talk about often called the seven faces of philanthropy and I would remember reading these different motivations that people had and thinking, okay, I guess some of the, you know, some of our messages probably should, you know, touch on these different things or ways in which we engage people should probably touch on these different kinds of motivations. And so even though I think I was at a point right then where I had done like a big gala type of event and I felt kind

of burnt out on fundraising events because there are some things that are fraught about them, like you spend a lot of money on them and it's kind of a big to do and, you know, look nice and all these things on top of it all and I think that I've, I read some of stuff and I was like, oh, okay, there's some subsection of our donors that want to do something that is social. They want to be able to be out and be seen and be part of something this way where we're

sitting at a table and all having an experience together, whatever it is, other people don't have that in them and they have very different reasons for why they'd want to get involved. And so I think that things like a give day or, you know, they feel, they feel an important niche kind of when it comes to a donor motivations and I'm looking at the levels of giving to, you know, a day like that is really wonderful for kind of a point of entry into the organization,

making your first gift, making an annual gift that might, you'll be repeating every year,

but also maybe incrementally growing. There's, of course, very separate conversations and things that go into assisting major gifts and some of that can also kind of be tied into something like that where that becomes an impetus for someone making a larger gift being able to show case like that they are offering a match or a challenge or something for a particular initiative and that really helps with awareness. And so then they had a kind of this added

influence type of power in like shining a light on something that they care about and hopefully motivating other people to care about that as well. Yeah, I mean, these are journeys, not a point in time activity, you know, it's not once and done. Thank you for sharing that. As you said,

you know, philanthropy from different angles. You know, is there a common thread that goes across

all of the things that you've done, whether it's it's fundraising, helping organizations get funded or, or, or, you know, the the various many places that you visited. Is there anything that you you think ties out all together? You know, I've got a full lot of question for that one, Chief. Well, you know, I feel protective of the nonprofit sectors, sectors like reputation and wanting people to feel like, okay, not only are we doing good, we're trying to do good kind of in the

“best way that we can and, you know, doing good better. And so I think that when I've looked around”

planet or visited different places and also think that maybe been speakers at an event or something I've had a lot of conversations with people that I think are kind of about, like, how this, how this plays out kind of this almost hierarchy of like causes and how these things

are viewed by people as far as what should be like, say, funded by our tax dollars in different places.

And there's a big difference is right where you visit certain countries and certain things are, no, this is our baseline. Everyone needs access to this and other countries. It's like, well, our baselines are different spot. And so anything above and beyond that needs to kind of be supplemented through philanthropy. I remember I was a speaker at a, there's a national conference. It was a national recreation park association conference. And I was speaking about how to create a foundation

that would benefit a public park system. So essentially, this is a tax funded entity, this park system, but they want to do some things that are made above and beyond. And I think oftentimes when we're in, like, things like dealing with public property and things like that, we think a lot about, okay, well, what, what is the balance between making something free and accessible and

available to everyone versus having the user for that thing pay in some way or have a little bit more

skin in the game? And so sometimes there's this combination of, you're going to pay for a class or pay for a cross-country ski permit or these kinds of things. And also, though, we are all collectively contributing through our tax dollars to make this something available to everybody. And so

“I would have seen kind of over time, I think one thread and this concerns me a bit is just that”

there's, I think a widening gap sometimes between where philanthropy is like, you know, the gap that philanthropy is filling seems to be widening. And it's also, I think, and I'm speaking more from my own country in the United States. But also, I think I see that the hierarchy of these causes isn't necessarily changing, but the kind of line on this kind of hierarchy for which philanthropy is necessary to fill in the gap is a little bit getting a little more important. So for example,

at this conference, we were talking to somebody else who was speaking and they were showing like where parks and rack ranks in sort of like what people want to support to it. We were kind of talking about, okay, well, police and fire, those were really up there. Everyone kind of agrees. We want that to be able to build for every, not based on your ability to pay for that service, right? So this is for everyone, it benefits us all. Then kind of health care and education or

kind of in a tier. And then like pretty soon, you're getting to like parks and libraries. And that usually, historically, at least in the United States, has been something that's had very wide community support. And so it hasn't needed much philanthropy on top of that to be able to kind of provide basic services and operate. And then kind of a tier below that tends to be like arts, humanities, culture, environment, animal welfare, these kinds of things. And so it's interesting

to think about it kind of globally or even locally, like in this collective conversation that we have about, like, what is it that we all care about enough that are elected officials and the people in charge, where we can like feel empowered to like make decisions where they are putting our tax dollars towards that because we all wanted enough that we want that to just be fully funded by what we're already sort of giving in a way. And then there's this difference of like, okay, as

you get further down, it gets harder to advocate for some of those things or maybe it's not as broadly appealing or maybe there's more disagreement about how it gets funded and whether or not our tax dollars should go there or to what extent. And then you get a lot more of this kind of like, okay, then individuals who care, they step in and they fill in these gaps. And there's a lot of, you know, uh, influence that comes with wealth then. And I've also found that sometimes proximity to

wealth doesn't mean that you have all the answers about you know any better than anyone else. And so there gets to be these issues that kind of like, how do you kind of have those resources go to the things that are most in need of those resources and also kind of trust the folks that are closest

“to the problems like the communities there to like solve those things. So I think that's one of”

the things that kind of scene is just that nowadays like even parks and wreck, even libraries, even sometimes police and fire, like they're doing more fundraisers. They're actually asking for more resources on top of what maybe budgets would allow for. And sometimes that's very supplemental and other times I think there's a danger in sort of like raising the bar for what that private support looks like year over year. When sometimes I think what we really need to

And think carefully about where is philanthropy best applied? Yeah, absolutely agree. I mean,

we're kind of seeing that in the UK as well, where that creep upwards in terms of, you know, or down depending on how you look at it, where, you know, philanthropy has to step in, you know, whether it's schools or other other places, you know, things that we're considered just normal activities and now certainly optional. Yeah. So, you know, my follow-up question to that was going to be, you know, how do I have now got to? So this is exciting. So one of those is,

you know, how do you navigate that, you know, that breadth of demands that come in from whether it's the donors, the people needing support and those providing the services or just, you know,

“when you're making choices, what's your north star? Yeah. Um, I think what I think that's helpful”

is kind of like a, there's been a trend overall of like a type of movement around community-centered

fundraising. So when I kind of first got into more leadership roles in my field, donor-centric

fundraising was the main thing that we would focus on. And I think that's still very valid because it's, it is oftentimes the donors resources. It can be their current dollars that they are giving. Sometimes it's something that gave many years ago and it's been in a private foundation and, you know, those dollars were technically aren't necessarily theirs anymore because they got the tax judgment when they gave them away. But now right now, they're, you know, they're making decisions

with that money or they have ties to that money from the past. And I think that thinking through like how to be donor-centric in terms of assisting them with reaching, you know, making their goals met through what they're doing. But also encouraging more of this community-centered fundraising approach where we're kind of acknowledging that the community has a vested interest in what it is that's happening and has probably the best knowledge of what's needed and what's necessary and they're

“closest to those problems. Probably we shouldn't just, you know, not trust that. And so I think”

there's these issues of, you know, kind of trusting control that kind of come up. And I think a lot of donors now are a little bit more savvy about some of that too. I think there's a good amount of wiggle room between like wanting to help someone accomplish something and wanting to make sure that there's like some input or, you know, that does not something just pushed at them. And so I think that there's been a good movement around this kind of community-centered fundraising idea,

which is offering some balance to that donor-centric fundraising. The value of course of donor-centric fundraising is largely because we want to have that donor have had a good experience, feel happy and good about what they've done and want to do it again. I want to repeat those gifts. And so there's

ways in which we always want to cater to that. But I think nonprofits can kind of also

lay down some lines sometimes about like, why does they know what they know and and hold to that. And I think that oftentimes that's respected, donors often will benefit defer and be like, oh, yeah, whatever is best. I mean, like, let's talk it through and I'm not going to, you know, push something in a direction where it doesn't need to go. And so I think that there's not a lot more receptivity to that and that's really helpful in the dialogue.

So, and I don't think that I have that kind of goes with that is a charity in the UK, had it, had it at a wall, just a wall outside and you could paint it. So that's cool.

“Volunteers would come along and they'd show them the wall and say, if you want to paint it,”

there it is and there was many layers of paint on it and they'd obviously look at it and go, well, that's a waste of time. It's like, yeah, so would you if you'd like to do something really helpful? You know, his, his option be. It sounds like, you know, you know, you're dressing the same sort of challenge, hopefully without presenting a wall. Yes. Oh, that's such a good example. I think those have, there have been several times in my career where I greatly valued partnering with

different corporate giving programs. And, you know, sometimes it's really wonderful in-kind gifts that help with those events. It helps maybe with just the operations of the nonprofit, sometimes there's cash donations, sometimes there's volunteerism. There can be some fraught like things when it comes to sort of like I remember going to a very large insurance company in Minneapolis and they invited all these nonprofits in to table with the idea. We didn't

know all of it, you know, ahead, but it became clear that the idea would be that all their employees would circulate. We would build awareness about the nonprofits in the community because the employees would engage with all of us at our different tables and then they would pick where to give their money. And, but what became like more clear was that it was kind of a popularity contest because they would, you know, we were, you know, politely joking a little bit because the table

and I went there to table and the table next to me was a service dog table, you know, to help people who were blind and, you know, sight and pair in some way, be able to move around in the world and they dogs were adorable and everybody stopped and saw the dogs and we were kind of

contest or I would say like your example, like the idea of trying to engage to turn up feel good, to turn the giving into kind of like a team building exercise or something can sometimes send nonprofits through a bit of a lot of hurdles and sort of maybe least some of their resources. So even just looking around that room, I was like, wow, we all took like half of the day and came there, we gave away some swag even, we engaged with people and it was our time and just

effort and and that was kind of that, right? And so, you know, we have to also kind of think about like how are we spending nonprofit staff sort of precious times sometimes and maybe these awareness

trades aren't necessarily always so worthwhile. But I have sometimes advised that nonprofits to

come up with one thing, in this case it would be that wall, I guess, but to say like, you know, at work's an environmental nonprofit and we're like, you know, they would use seed bombs, native seed packets that their kids would be grow out and like put into places and this was part of their programming and they're like, okay, we will, you know, it's good to organize sometimes a one thing, maybe it's a cleanup for the community or something like that where you can

then have a place for groups of volunteers to be able to plug in and have that type of experience, feel like they're getting back. And oftentimes people who volunteer are more likely to give financial resources as well. So it's not, not always the best advice to like not to not offer

those things. But how do you think, absolutely? In his journey, I mean, you know, no one wakes up,

you know, with the realization what difference they can make and how they can do it to throw it away, you know, there's that maturity curve where people, you know, start with A and then moves away through to Z. So yeah, certainly not diminishing the, but it was it was it, I like the anecdote, I do share it. Yeah, yeah, that's fun. I like how they used it to turn the situation. You've advised lots of organizations on how to, you know, getting, how to go back, getting funded,

“what's, what do you say is the biggest mistake that people make when they when they go for funding?”

You know, is there anything, or, you know, do you see a pattern or is it, is it just could be anything? Well, my mind goes probably more to kind of grant seeking and mistakes I see in that,

probably because a lot of my experience has been in revealing those grants, writing those grants.

I do that and they have the University I work for as well. And I work with kind of internal folks who are putting together ideas. And I think that what I feel like a stickler on when I'm looking at things myself is evaluation. There's a lot of times where nonprofits maybe don't spell out their evaluation plans very clearly. They may not offer up like if this program is repeating, they might not offer up like measurements from the previous period, which would help a lot.

They also focus a lot on outputs. So the number of people, the number of hours, the number of volunteers, the number of days of service, all these very accountable things. And those are valuable to count and a lot of foundations and corporate giving programs they want to hear it. But also people really want to know, usually, how are you like moving that needle? Maybe it's an outcome oriented thing. And so sometimes when I look at those and like this is just a listing of like

people who came through the room and sometimes it's things like those fairs where people are tabling and they're kind of counting every person who walked in the door and stopped at their

“table. And you have to think about the quality of these interactions. And so as somebody who's”

maybe on the funder side, sometimes and looking at it, you're like, I just want to have more of a sense of like the quality, the depth of some of these interactions and those outcomes types of measurements can really help with that. And so I usually try to advise to like include more outcomes, show how you're moving a needle, think about how you can measure that. Maybe it's even just a satisfaction type of survey. But something that shows that you're making a difference,

a change in knowledge, a change in behavior. And maybe looking at that over time, like, what can you really expect in this immediate time frame of like the grant period that you're going to be in. And where are you headed beyond that? And so at least with my students, when I teach in a master's and no probability to ship studies program and I usually have students work on things like logic models. So they can show kind of linearly how it is they get from these longer term

outcomes back to kind of those inputs of staff and time. And you know, all of that like through

“their old program. And I think when people can have like a very clear vision of like how those things”

function, it's easier to communicate it and help a funder know how things really work. Yeah, perfect. It can be a little bit daunting for people looking at, you know, how does this impact this over here in the future? You can't do it, but it just takes a little time to work through that process or backwards really. I know I actually advise them to do it backwards. I'm like, start with like what is what is really the reason for existence here and then and then move

oh, you actually have a lot of staff and resources in this one thing, but not so many in this other

thing. And we really need them both to achieve what that is. And so we need to think about maybe how we structure something a little different. Absolutely. Because you know,

“quote often that that's the best way of, as you say, identifying the gaps and and can you really”

going to make the difference that you think you're going to make? Always a challenge, especially when

it throws up something unexpected. But hopefully that catches, you know, what you, you know, when the stake you're about to make before it happens. So as I sort of closing sort of question,

“is there anything that you're working on in the coming year or anything that you'd like to share”

for people who might want to get into this space? I'm working on my teaching more. I really like

working with master students. And I just started having, um, we have an EDD program at the University of Lynchburg as well. So I'll just start kind of incorporating some doctoral students into our programs. So that we need some changes to, to on curriculum and things too. Yeah, I really enjoy that teaching aspect. But of course, my full-time role is with the University

“working on grants and and seeking resources. I think I just, um, continue to plow away at some of”

those things and enjoying that a lot. Fantastic. Fantastic. So, look, thanks so much for talking to us. You know, you can't just do things without the resources. You know, it should be obvious, but it's important. And, you know, thank you for sharing, you know, your insights from from what sounds like already a fabulous career. Erica, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me.