WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:11.700 All right. Hello, everyone. It's very exciting to have these big packed rooms. I'm Amy Parker. 00:11.700 --> 00:17.540 I'm the Chief Funding Officer at the Open SSL Software Foundation, which is a job I just 00:17.540 --> 00:24.100 started in October. This is my first Phos Dam. It's all a little intimidating. I really 00:24.100 --> 00:29.900 appreciate folks giving me a chance to speak with you all today. 00:29.900 --> 00:36.100 I also want to say I know that a lot of people cringe at the idea of fundraising. I heard 00:36.100 --> 00:41.060 it today in the very first presentation where the research showed that one of the things 00:41.060 --> 00:46.300 maintainers don't want to be doing is fundraising. And I hear it with lots of people when I tell 00:46.300 --> 00:52.340 them what I do is a career they just really are afraid of it. But that really has been what 00:52.340 --> 00:57.020 I've done my whole career. More than 20 years now I've been working as a nonprofit fundraiser 00:57.020 --> 01:02.820 and a wide variety of contexts from the New York Public Library to the Smithsonian Institution 01:02.820 --> 01:09.720 and most recently the Wikimedia Foundation before joining Open SSL. And the reason I can 01:09.720 --> 01:17.520 say that I myself really love my job is because I view it the way this quote views it. 01:17.520 --> 01:24.680 I really see my job as inviting donors to invest in our organization so that we can accomplish 01:24.680 --> 01:31.800 our mission and serve our users. A lot of people think fundraising is about begging people 01:31.800 --> 01:37.160 for money because you need money. If you take that approach you will never find the joint 01:37.160 --> 01:41.840 it. My hope is that I can inspire more of you in this room and the open source community 01:41.840 --> 01:49.360 to feel a little bit more of the joyful part of this activity that we all have to do. 01:49.360 --> 01:55.360 There are a lot of different ways to raise money and I just want to say only the largest 01:55.360 --> 02:00.360 of organizations can do all the things you're seeing on the screen. Very few of us in this 02:00.360 --> 02:04.040 room are going to be able to have fundraising programs that are this diverse and that 02:04.040 --> 02:11.720 have this many methods of fundraising involved. First, smaller organizations, the best 02:11.720 --> 02:17.160 return on investment, the best bang for your buck is really going to be focusing on these 02:17.160 --> 02:24.560 major gifts. Major gifts might sound intimidating but it's really to scale. Maybe a 02:24.560 --> 02:31.560 major gift for you is $1,000 or $1,000 or $1,000. Maybe it's 10 or 20. Whatever that threshold 02:31.560 --> 02:36.760 is that this money starts making a little more of a difference. The reason that's the 02:36.760 --> 02:43.520 important place to operate is because decades of data show that high touch fundraising has 02:43.520 --> 02:49.360 this greater return on investment. You can see here that let's say we have this great email 02:49.360 --> 02:55.120 list and I send out an email and I ask people for money. You will be lucky if one of them 02:55.120 --> 03:02.640 out of $1,500 sends you $5. But if you actually take the time to get to know a potential 03:02.640 --> 03:07.880 funder and build a relationship with them and have them really understand you and what your 03:07.880 --> 03:14.320 needs are and what impact that gift is going to make. Your chances go wild. They turn 03:14.320 --> 03:20.000 to like one in four. One of the presentations we saw earlier today, the person had made 03:20.000 --> 03:25.480 15 asks and they had nine of them say yes. Those were not because they just sent an email 03:25.480 --> 03:32.480 and hoped the money was going to come. Those were well-cultivated solicitations. I'm also 03:32.480 --> 03:37.720 going to talk a lot about individuals today. I know we talk a whole lot about companies 03:37.720 --> 03:42.960 and that there are very, very important part of fundraising in this community. But this 03:42.960 --> 03:48.800 is data from the GivingUSA study which is one of the biggest long-term studies of philanthropies 03:48.800 --> 03:54.800 going on for more than 20 years now that can buy all statistics about philanthropy in America. 03:55.360 --> 04:02.760 Statistically, the vast majority of philanthropy is coming from individuals. They're obviously 04:02.760 --> 04:10.480 the 67% but they're also this 8% of GivingBibyQuest and there are also actually a lot 04:10.480 --> 04:17.120 of the foundations. Particularly in the U.S., a lot of wealthy people do set up family 04:17.120 --> 04:22.400 foundations or channel their money through a donor advised fund which makes it appear in 04:22.400 --> 04:27.680 this foundation line and kind of skews what that line means these days. This wasn't true 04:27.680 --> 04:33.360 20, some years ago when the study started. Corporate GivingWild important is on the whole 04:33.360 --> 04:39.680 of very smallest percentage. It's also the smallest when you think about it in terms of proportion. 04:40.400 --> 04:48.640 So, as an individual, individuals give more as a share of their income around 2% of their 04:48.640 --> 04:59.520 income they're donating than companies which is like 1% or less. Before we can think about fundraising 04:59.520 --> 05:05.200 for our own organizations, I just want to take a minute to put us all in the same mental space 05:05.920 --> 05:11.440 and try to think about this from an emotional level. I also heard that in one of the presentations 05:11.440 --> 05:18.320 today about the emotional significance. Think about a meaningful gift that you have made. 05:19.520 --> 05:27.520 To any charity, maybe it's your church or your hospital or your kid's school or the food bank 05:27.520 --> 05:32.720 down the street, whatever it is, something that you've made and try to think about why did you do that? 05:36.160 --> 05:40.960 No, we don't have to give gifts. Why did you do it and how did it make you feel? 05:42.880 --> 05:47.360 If we have lots of time, it would actually be nice to hear some of your examples but since we don't, 05:47.360 --> 05:54.320 I will give you my example. This picture was taken in 1997 when I went to hospital Albert Schwitzer 05:54.320 --> 06:00.880 in Daeshapel, Haiti and I had this amazing service learning experience. As an American, you can 06:00.880 --> 06:07.040 probably tell, let my accent. It was the first time I'd left the country and where did I go to like 06:07.040 --> 06:14.880 one of the poorest places on the planet? It made such a big impact on me and I still continue to 06:14.880 --> 06:22.160 make small donations to this place every year. I also know they have very few resources. 06:22.160 --> 06:27.040 Every dollar I give is going to make a difference. That's why I am doing it. 06:28.800 --> 06:35.120 But I'm also doing it because they ask me. Frankly, I like them but if they didn't remind me 06:35.120 --> 06:41.680 from time to time, I would probably forget. We all have busy lives, a lot of things on our minds, 06:41.760 --> 06:46.400 and the fact that I get these solicitation letters every once in a while helps remind me 06:46.400 --> 06:54.320 to do this thing that I want to do. I hope like your examples, the way you feel when you make a 06:54.320 --> 07:03.360 gift is actually good. It's not a load of something that makes you feel bad but generally speaking, 07:03.440 --> 07:12.800 you care about a thing and you give money to it. This quote is from a keeping excellence in fundraising, 07:12.800 --> 07:19.120 which is actually the textbook that professional fundraisers all read. I have this certification. 07:19.120 --> 07:24.320 It's a certified fundraising executive credential and there's lots of things you have to do to get 07:24.320 --> 07:28.720 this but you do have to pass a test and this is the book that if you read it, you will be able to pass 07:28.800 --> 07:34.800 the test. It really teaches you about fundraising but it also tries to put you in this mindset of 07:34.800 --> 07:42.720 seeing your job as a job that is helping people make an impact they could not do otherwise. I can't 07:42.720 --> 07:48.400 make anybody healthy and Haiti on my own. I'm giving so that I can allow somebody else to do 07:48.400 --> 07:56.400 that thing that I hope happens. This is also a line with what the studies show. I know a lot 07:56.400 --> 08:01.040 of the status from the U.S. there's a lot of data on philanthropy in the U.S., which is why much 08:01.040 --> 08:08.160 of it's coming from there. But the studies show that when you ask people why they're giving gifts, 08:09.200 --> 08:16.480 the number one reason is the mission. It just falls in a way they believe in what you're doing 08:16.480 --> 08:23.520 and why you're doing it. But not far behind is the happiness. Not far behind that is the fact that 08:24.480 --> 08:29.840 makes people feel good. They want to do this thing because of the joy they will experience and 08:29.840 --> 08:35.360 to my point earlier because they get asked. You can't just hope that people are going to realize 08:35.360 --> 08:40.640 your software is important and oh I'm just going to send some money. There are some wonderful 08:40.640 --> 08:50.480 humans that do that but they are few and far between. Companies have very different motivations 08:50.480 --> 08:56.400 for making gifts. There were presentations earlier today that talked about some of those and 08:56.400 --> 09:01.520 I'm not trying to pretend that these are untrue. I just want to spend time on it but I want to 09:01.520 --> 09:08.720 acknowledge that companies exist to make profit. It's like a fact. It's not an evil. It is simply 09:08.720 --> 09:18.240 a fact. But when I think about corporate giving, I try to remember that it's also human beings. 09:20.080 --> 09:26.720 There is a business decision but the beginning of the relationship is me, Amy Parker speaking to you 09:27.520 --> 09:33.680 and we are building a relationship and you are getting excited and that might lead to other 09:33.680 --> 09:37.520 conversations with the company that will ultimately be based upon these facts. 09:41.040 --> 09:45.920 And this gets me to the real point of today's session, the session title. 09:47.200 --> 09:51.360 There's this saying and fundraising that's successive is about making the right 09:51.360 --> 09:57.600 ask to the right person at the right time and so for the rest of this presentation I'm just going 09:57.600 --> 10:07.920 to kind of go through those three. The right ask. How many of you in this room own a drill? 10:11.920 --> 10:19.680 I really think everybody at a certain age you just own a drill. Do you remember buying this drill 10:19.680 --> 10:25.280 and why you bought it? Was it because it was your lifelong dream to own the drill? Does it have 10:25.280 --> 10:32.400 pride of place in your house? No, probably not. It was probably a super practical decision 10:32.400 --> 10:38.400 that you needed to hang a painting on the wall or maybe build something if you're really crafty. 10:40.160 --> 10:46.560 The reason I mention this is that we can get really cut up and talking about what we do 10:47.280 --> 10:53.360 the drill instead of focusing on why the drill is around. Why did we get the drill? What does 10:53.440 --> 10:59.520 the drill do? You know that drill is essential to habitat for humanity building houses for people 10:59.520 --> 11:05.040 that the charitable purpose of those houses is where the passion and connection is going to be 11:05.920 --> 11:13.200 not like this black and decker drill. That's really uninteresting. We can especially in this 11:13.200 --> 11:20.880 community when so many people that have to do the fundraising are also the experts in the technology 11:21.520 --> 11:29.920 you can kind of get trapped and talking about the drill stuff. The tools without talking about 11:29.920 --> 11:37.600 the bigger vision. Those of you who have come here to this conference maybe not, but in general 11:37.600 --> 11:45.680 it can be a trap within open source software. As I mentioned I joined the Open SSL software 11:45.680 --> 11:52.240 foundation in October. While I had been at Wicked Media which is an open source project, 11:53.440 --> 11:57.760 much of their funding comes from people who don't even realize it's an open source project. 11:57.760 --> 12:02.960 So this was a big shift for me to move over to a project like this that is 12:03.840 --> 12:10.480 important and deeply critical to the world, but it's really not known. It doesn't have that 12:10.480 --> 12:18.720 neighbor brand recognition. Frankly, I was an English major so if you read what we do on the left 12:18.720 --> 12:27.040 I still barely understand it. It's complicated. My boss is sitting here. He gave me like a week 12:27.040 --> 12:33.520 long PowerPoint slides trying to explain open SSL. It's highly technical. It's something that is 12:33.520 --> 12:39.040 not something the general public is going to read on the left and say oh yeah that's important. 12:40.720 --> 12:48.960 The mission is universally understandable and is inspiring in a very different way. The mission 12:48.960 --> 12:57.200 is really the magic of it all. The photography might be what we do, but the mission, the why we do 12:57.200 --> 13:04.080 it is really the thing that we want to leverage when we're trying to get people to buy into our 13:04.080 --> 13:13.360 beliefs and to join us as supporters. So one of the best parts about starting a new job as a fundraiser 13:13.360 --> 13:18.720 is meeting the people that already give you money because they already love you. It's an easy place 13:18.720 --> 13:27.440 to start. And so one of the first things I did was look back on GitHub sponsors. Who were these people 13:28.400 --> 13:33.760 that were not even asked, no, I didn't exist. There was no Amy Parker they are asking people 13:33.760 --> 13:41.600 for money and they just sent us money. $5 a hundred dollars doesn't matter how much they took their 13:41.600 --> 13:47.840 own initiative and just sent money. And I've been writing to them and talking to them and asking them 13:47.840 --> 13:55.680 why? Why did you do this? And these are just some samplings of the reasons. These are not about 13:55.760 --> 14:03.280 the technical side at all, right? These are people who have mission alignment interested in our 14:03.280 --> 14:11.920 values, same worldview, want to see the same things happen. That is really where the storytelling 14:11.920 --> 14:21.280 comes into play. This is just another example you may or may not have heard of this place called 14:21.280 --> 14:29.040 Story Corps, it's a US nonprofit. And what they do is put two sort of regular people in a room 14:29.040 --> 14:34.560 and you have a conversation with each other and those conversations get recorded and they are 14:34.560 --> 14:39.600 archived at the Library of Congress and they are also played on like national public radio 14:40.400 --> 14:48.400 and they're just everyday normal conversations. In a way, that doesn't sound like a super important 14:48.640 --> 14:57.360 thing. It's nice, but it doesn't sound like a thing that is going to really inspire me and 14:57.360 --> 15:04.400 get me to make it. But when you read this solicitation letter and the way they're connecting 15:04.400 --> 15:13.040 this storytelling to this bigger picture of humanity understanding one another, especially today 15:13.040 --> 15:19.200 is very divisive times. It takes it to a higher level. The mission of story corps actually reads 15:19.200 --> 15:25.520 to help us believe in each other by illuminating the humanity and possibility in all of us one 15:25.520 --> 15:32.720 story at a time. And it's that more so than we record conversations between average people 15:32.720 --> 15:41.600 that is really where the magic is. This just sort of sums up what I was saying about storytelling. 15:41.680 --> 15:46.480 You want to put your mission at the center. If you don't have one, you want to work on 15:46.480 --> 15:52.160 articulating what your mission is. And donors give because they want to accomplish something, 15:52.160 --> 15:56.400 they can't, they can't just do on their own. They know that you are the one making 15:56.400 --> 16:01.200 a possible. You're that drill and they want to give to let you do your work. 16:01.360 --> 16:10.880 I'm going to move on to the right person. The right person is really all about networking. 16:11.920 --> 16:17.280 So this is the then diagram of the things that need to fall in place for you to find the right person. 16:18.080 --> 16:24.960 And you know, as a fundraiser, lots of people come to me with brilliant ideas like 16:25.680 --> 16:31.680 you thought about Bill Gates or Elon Musk or all the richest people in the world. That's 16:31.680 --> 16:36.800 going to be the solution to all of your fundraising problems. The piece of this pie that often 16:36.800 --> 16:42.080 gets overlooked really is the connection. So capacity just means this person can give you money. 16:43.200 --> 16:46.800 Authinity is there, there are connection to an alignment with your mission. 16:47.360 --> 16:52.640 The connection means you have to be able to get to them. This was also in an earlier presentation today. 16:52.640 --> 16:58.160 You know, this is the challenge most of us have. There could be funders out there that seem very 16:58.160 --> 17:03.920 well aligned, but if you don't have a way in the talk to them, that's going to be your challenge. 17:06.640 --> 17:13.040 This is from that same textbook, these concentric, concentric circles. Yes. 17:15.040 --> 17:19.280 We could argue about who's in the middle of your concentric circles. That is an arguable 17:19.360 --> 17:26.320 point and not why I put it up here, but the point is that the people at the center, those are 17:26.320 --> 17:32.240 the ones spending the most time with you. They are the ones that know you the best. They have the 17:32.240 --> 17:39.200 most skin in the game, so to speak. They have the most stake in it. And as you move out, it just 17:39.200 --> 17:45.920 lessons and lessons and lessons. You will have way more success raising money for people in the 17:45.920 --> 17:52.240 center. Those people that are already educated and understand and committed are much more likely 17:52.240 --> 17:57.120 to give support than someone way out in the general public who you're just talking to for the first 17:57.120 --> 18:03.520 time, who doesn't even know what open source is. The part of fundraising where we're talking about 18:03.520 --> 18:09.920 networking is building up your central center circle, but also trying to move more people into it. 18:09.920 --> 18:14.960 People in these outer rings that can be brought just slightly closer in so that they are more 18:14.960 --> 18:24.960 likely to respond positively to your ask for support. In an open source project, who's closest 18:24.960 --> 18:32.160 to you? Probably people volunteering in one way or another, and I know this is super sensitive. 18:33.040 --> 18:38.320 I want to assure you this is super sensitive in all nonprofit organizations, not just the open source 18:38.320 --> 18:45.440 community, but the data from a variety of studies. This is just one of many shows that people who are 18:45.440 --> 18:52.000 giving of their time to something are very likely to also give of their financial support. 18:53.040 --> 18:57.920 The way you approach those people has to be done really delicately in with sensitivity, 18:57.920 --> 19:06.320 but those people are bought in. And globally, this is a global study on philanthropy here. 19:07.280 --> 19:13.680 More people give money than time. Time is actually a far more precious resource to people, 19:13.680 --> 19:20.080 especially if you worked all day on a computer doing a really technical job, and then it's like 19:20.080 --> 19:26.000 night time, and you really want to just keep coding on your free project, nobody's paying you for. 19:26.000 --> 19:32.480 You know, the time that you're getting is a miracle. The money actually more people are going to do that. 19:32.480 --> 19:42.560 And so just a little summary of the networking, I think these subbolets here, you need to know 19:42.560 --> 19:48.400 your existing community first, and you know, being new at my organization, this is really what I'm 19:48.400 --> 19:55.360 trying to do as I talk to people, you know, what motivates people? Who are these people? Why are 19:55.360 --> 20:02.080 they giving us support? Trying to understand that before you go out to other people is really 20:02.080 --> 20:07.120 important, and you may be surprised. I was surprised that some of these people that I wrote to, 20:07.120 --> 20:11.760 they were like, yeah, I don't even, you know, I don't personally use open SSL, but like, 20:11.760 --> 20:18.000 I know that we do somewhere, but I understand it's important. So I did not expect that answer 20:18.000 --> 20:23.680 it was really shocking. So asking people and getting those answers as key before you can go and 20:23.680 --> 20:31.680 build relationships out. Also, a lot of funderators' offices look like those 20:31.680 --> 20:38.000 scary serial killer movies with post-it notes and strings because we do a lot of network mapping. 20:39.280 --> 20:44.000 You know, you know, this person, but who do they know? They might have a connection to another 20:44.000 --> 20:50.080 organization or another funder. And so once you know your core people, it's not just really about 20:50.080 --> 20:56.880 them, but who they can connect you to and building that out as far as you can. And, you know, 20:56.960 --> 21:02.560 it's not only software that needs documentation. We are not geniuses that are going to remember 21:02.560 --> 21:08.080 all of this. It is really good to take advantage of whatever resources that you're to 21:08.080 --> 21:14.720 spell is able to track all of this information, whether you're using CRM, a constituent relationship 21:14.720 --> 21:20.800 management system, or whether you're just using an Excel spreadsheet, or whatever free and open 21:20.800 --> 21:26.880 source version of Excel there is. That documentation is essential. And it's also essential 21:26.880 --> 21:34.400 because of the reality of turnover. You know, people aren't here forever. And then finally, 21:34.400 --> 21:45.120 the right time. Am I at time? Am I okay? Okay. I'm at time. Okay. I will just say the right time. 21:45.120 --> 21:50.000 This version of the slide is talking about how really we can think about our right time, but it's 21:50.000 --> 21:54.880 the right time for the donor that's the most important. You want to have some kind of net to 21:54.880 --> 22:01.040 catch people that's the right time for them, like it gets upsponsors site. And I can only be here today 22:01.040 --> 22:04.880 because we do have some sponsors giving us support. So thank you to them. And if any of you are 22:04.880 --> 22:09.280 in the room, let me know. There will be no time for questions because I apparently talked a lot, 22:09.280 --> 22:13.200 but I have a bunch of business cards and you can find me on LinkedIn if you want to chat. 22:20.640 --> 22:32.480 There actually still is time. Oh, it's time for questions. Oh, great. Oh, yes. Okay. Sorry. Confusion. 22:34.480 --> 22:37.760 It's okay. I just spent for the end, but I will take questions instead. 22:39.600 --> 22:41.280 Yes. I will repeat your question as well. 22:41.360 --> 22:54.080 Yeah. The question was, do I have any advice specifically for the European context with 22:54.080 --> 23:00.000 a culture of charities different? And I would kind of be lying if I said yes. I have had the 23:00.000 --> 23:05.760 opportunity to live abroad in Asia, which also has a different philanthropic context, but I've never 23:05.840 --> 23:13.760 lived in Europe myself. All the Smithsonian and the Wikimedia Foundation do have global 23:13.760 --> 23:17.680 donors. So I have some experience with those donors, but if you are European based, 23:18.960 --> 23:23.360 somebody will have a better answer for you than me. Yes. 23:23.360 --> 23:28.160 Where is the largest? It takes the start putting up a donor base, for example, or the 23:28.160 --> 23:37.920 two. In carry people know what business, but I imagine they're a lot more business aspect 23:37.920 --> 23:41.200 that you need to think about. Can you share a bit more about that? 23:41.200 --> 23:45.200 The question is, where is the best place to start for putting up a donor page? 23:46.000 --> 23:51.760 Okay. Well, this is a question that gets into some complexity. So I will talk a little bit 23:51.760 --> 23:58.160 about OpenSSL because that's an easy place for me to start. So the one place that we have set 23:58.160 --> 24:05.120 up right now is GitHub sponsors. It's an easy setup to be able to allow people to give on that 24:05.120 --> 24:12.480 platform and most of the people who know us and know what we are are there. So it's a good audience 24:12.480 --> 24:18.080 and an easy starting place. And then we get like a monthly disbursement of the gifts that come in. 24:18.640 --> 24:25.040 They serve as sort of this middleman so that we aren't doing the administrative work around receiving, 24:25.760 --> 24:33.440 thanking, acknowledging every single donation. And that, those approaches, they're not the only 24:33.440 --> 24:38.400 one, but the ones that serve as the middle are really good place to start if you're not doing this yet. 24:40.720 --> 24:46.400 When somebody gives you money, you know, acknowledging that it's just arrived and saying thank you 24:46.480 --> 24:52.000 is really, really important or you will not get more. And so if you don't have the time to 24:52.000 --> 24:56.800 in space to do that, you want to use an organization or something that will facilitate that. 24:57.760 --> 25:03.040 Beyond that, it really depends on the legal status of your organization. And this is also 25:03.040 --> 25:09.440 dependent on if you're a European or US based. But in the US, if you're a 501C3 charity, there are 25:09.440 --> 25:17.680 many platforms that are free, that you can, well, free as in no fee to use to allow people to give 25:17.680 --> 25:23.520 you donations. PayPal charities is one of the most common ones and they take a service fee, 25:23.520 --> 25:29.120 but they facilitate the transactions for you. There are many options once you go beyond that, 25:29.120 --> 25:34.720 but for baby steps, that's where I would begin. Yes. What are your opinions about the differences 25:34.720 --> 25:40.640 between a pure donation, a sponsorship versus something like a Kickstarter, where you can also 25:40.640 --> 25:48.000 get a donation, again, but also get something back in the future or something. Yeah. The question was 25:48.000 --> 25:54.320 about my opinion about places where you make sort of a pure donation versus things like Kickstarter 25:54.320 --> 25:58.480 where you're getting something in return, like, you know, a T-shirt or other sorts of tiered 25:58.480 --> 26:04.080 benefits. I've done both of my life, both have their own advantages, and there are certain 26:04.080 --> 26:09.600 times in places where something like a Kickstarter can make a lot of sense, but those went 26:09.600 --> 26:18.480 done well are a ton of work. And when I was at the Smithsonian, the Asian Art Museum one year 26:18.480 --> 26:24.960 did like a Kickstarter, and it was enormously successful, but they ended up having to hire an 26:24.960 --> 26:30.880 additional staff person because of the work involved, the expectations that people have for what 26:30.960 --> 26:36.960 they're getting in return are just very high. And I also think it's a little bit of thinking about 26:36.960 --> 26:44.240 the mental, the way you want people to mentally think about these gifts. So, you know, if I give 26:44.240 --> 26:49.360 you something and I get something back, there's a little bit of a transaction, like, oh, that was 26:49.360 --> 26:57.200 a cool sticker, or, you know, it's not the same calculation. And donors that are doing that 26:57.200 --> 27:03.440 on a transactional basis are less likely to stick around and be devoted and want to give to you 27:03.440 --> 27:09.360 year after year. So, they can be great for, like, a one-time, while, when we're doing this explosion 27:09.360 --> 27:15.040 of fun, and we wanted you branding and marketing and T-shirts, but if you want people to get into a 27:15.040 --> 27:22.640 pattern and have that long-term giving, it's much better to think about pure philanthropy. People 27:22.720 --> 27:28.560 would disagree from the, I will say, that's an opinion. I think a couple more? Three more minutes, 27:28.560 --> 27:34.400 in the green. Do you speak about the process of bullying people from the outer circles, what's 27:34.400 --> 27:40.000 the inner ones? What is it, look like? Hmm. Well, it's going to be different everywhere and 27:40.000 --> 27:46.160 sort of depend upon, sorry, the question was, for bringing people from outer circles into your 27:46.160 --> 27:53.040 inner circles, what does that process look like? And so, I think one of the other things that we've 27:53.040 --> 27:59.520 just done at OpenSSL is hire our first community manager. He's back there, I'm staring at him. And 27:59.520 --> 28:05.360 that's one step in trying to bring people closer, because there are people out there now that are, 28:05.360 --> 28:12.000 like, one ring out, but nobody's ever really engaged them. And like, why are you doing this? 28:12.000 --> 28:16.880 What did you just do? And so, that's one version of trying to bring those people in, you know, 28:16.880 --> 28:23.200 just paying attention and inviting conversations is one way. And the other way is through that 28:23.200 --> 28:28.720 networking. So, you know, if I'm in the center and I host a little luncheon and invite three 28:28.720 --> 28:33.680 of my friends who are in the next circle out, you know, and you come to lunch and now you've met 28:33.680 --> 28:40.480 three new people to bring in. That kind of cultivation event is what it would be called in a 28:40.480 --> 28:46.320 technical sense. Can be done in a small scale, like, four of us just go to lunch after this, 28:46.320 --> 28:50.880 or in a much bigger scale, you know, some charities have very, very big events that do that. 28:52.560 --> 28:54.880 Last question. Last question. Yes. 29:10.480 --> 29:39.120 Yeah. Well, I think people are smarter than the question was, how do you strike the balance between, 29:39.120 --> 29:45.200 having people, if you really enjoy chatting with people about your work, how do you strike the 29:45.200 --> 29:53.840 balance between, we're just having a chat, and I just need the money. And honestly, like, 29:54.880 --> 29:59.520 they know you need the money. Like, it's not, you're not tricking anyone. They're not going to 29:59.520 --> 30:06.240 feel deceived when you bring this topic up. And as a fundraiser, I've always had a job title that 30:06.240 --> 30:11.520 indicated that that is my job. You know, I'm not taking you to lunch because I want you to be my 30:11.520 --> 30:20.320 new best friend and be my cats that are whatever. Really, there is an ultimate aim. It can also 30:20.320 --> 30:24.560 be challenging if you like people that some people will just want to talk and talk and talk and 30:24.560 --> 30:30.320 it's hard. If it's going nowhere, that's a challenge you'll figure out in time as you do it more. 30:30.320 --> 30:35.440 But I think the transparency in your communication, even requesting the meeting, you know, one of the, 30:35.440 --> 30:38.320 one of the things I would like to talk with you today about his funding. 30:40.320 --> 30:42.800 Yeah. All right. Thank you.