April 19, 2025
Three Secrets to Building Influence with any Money or Policy Decisionmaker in Your World
There has never been a time when the influence of nonprofit leaders was more needed. In particular, we need to have influence with the money and policy decision makers that hold the power to help or harm the people we serve.
At the same time, a lot of things are happening that could leave a nonprofit leader feeling pretty vulnerable and powerless. Our challenge is to find a way to move like water and create that influence no matter what else is going on.
One of the things I hear most frequently from nonprofit leaders I work with is some version of, we can't get XYZ critical decision maker to listen to us. We've tried everything and we can't get through to them. We either can't get them to listen, or we can't get access to them, or both. And then what happens is folks just kind of give up on those decision makers or resign themselves to not being able to have influence with them.
I get how that happens, but what's that costing you? If these are money and policy decision makers that matter, can you afford not to have influence with them? Is that really an option?
In this episode, we share:
- The two biggest problems most nonprofit leaders have in getting access to the right decisionmakers, and how to solve them
- How past experience with decisionmakers can lead you to the wrong conclusions about influence building – and how that gets in your way
- How to train your subconscious brain to seek out and funnel influence-building opportunities to you
- How to craft messaging that will really land with a decisionmaker, and motivate them to work with you
- What it really means to speak the decisionmaker’s language, and why it makes such a huge difference
- How to know when it’s time to switch tactics and build influence another way
I'm preparing to launch a group coaching program that will focus specifically on helping you craft messaging that will shift decisionmakers’ perspectives and get them on board with sustaining and even expanding your funding. This will be a coaching opportunity for a limited number of people to come in and be part of a group. There'll be some training, but most of it will be coaching and helping you to get your messaging dialed in so that you can address this pressing need.
What I'm seeing right now is there's nothing more important than this. If that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, message me through the podcast website or on LinkedIn.
Links:
Episode 67 -- Three Keys to FInding the Right Decisionmaker in any System
WEBVTT
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You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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In today's episode, we share three secrets to building influence with any money or policy decision maker in your world.
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So stay tuned.
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If you want to have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place.
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I.
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I'm Kath Patrick, and I've helped dozens of progressive nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter.
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It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner and to have them.
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Bringing opportunities and resources to you.
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This podcast will help you do just that.
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Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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Hey there folks.
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Welcome to another episode of the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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I'm your host, Kath Patrick.
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I'm so glad you're here for today's episode because there has never been a time when the influence of nonprofit leaders was more needed.
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In particular, we need to have influence with the money and policy decision makers that hold the power to help or harm the people we serve.
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At the same time, a lot of things are happening that could leave a nonprofit leader feeling pretty vulnerable and powerless.
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Our challenge is to find a way to move like water and create that influence no matter what else is going on.
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One of the things I hear most frequently from nonprofit leaders I work with is some version of we can't get X Y Z critical decision maker to listen to us.
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We can't get through.
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We've tried everything and we can't get through to them.
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We either can't get them to listen, or we can't get access to them or both.
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And then what happens is folks just kind of give up on those decision makers or resign themselves to not being able to have influence with them.
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I get how that happens, but what's that costing you?
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If these are money and policy decision makers that matter, can you afford not to have influence with them?
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Is that really an option?
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If there's a money or policy decision maker that's important to you, that you haven't been able to get through to and build influence with.
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There are three possible reasons for that, one or more of which can be true at the same time.
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Number one, you haven't landed on the right messaging that speaks to the thing you want in a way that resonates with that decision maker.
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Number two, you haven't been able to get that right messaging in that decision maker's ear.
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And number three, you don't believe it's possible.
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On some level, you don't believe it's possible to do that.
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That's it.
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Those are the three reasons.
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When you boil down all the stuff that happens and all the struggles and the hundreds of nonprofit leaders I've worked with, and we go in and we analyze, okay, what's in the way?
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Why are we not able to get through?
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How do we fix that?
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When I workshop this with my clients and we create an influence building strategy and we execute on it.
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What I have learned is that if that hasn't already happened, what it all boils down to is one or more of those three core reasons.
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So that's what I want to tackle today, and I'm gonna tackle the last one first, because it actually is the most foundational.
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That's the part about on some level, not believing that it's actually possible to build significant influence with that decision maker or with a group of decision makers.
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Let me take that apart a little bit because how we come to that belief and then what happens with that belief inside our brain is really important to understand in order for us to undo it.
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Because as long as that belief is there, I promise you, it doesn't matter how many tactics and strategies and messaging refinement we do.
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It's not gonna work if you don't believe fundamentally that it's possible to build influence with that decision maker.
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So we gotta get at the beliefs first.
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So how do we wind up with the belief that either a specific decision maker or a category of decision makers, or sometimes feeling like any powerful money or policy decision maker of any kind is just we're not gonna be able to have influence with them.
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That belief usually comes from lived experience.
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The lived experience of having tried to get to one or more of those powerful decision makers, and having been ignored or rebuffed.
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Or you get a meeting with them and they smile and nod, but then they don't do anything and then they go ahead and do the opposite of what you wanted.
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All of those experiences have happened to pretty much all of us at one point or another, sometimes a lot.
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I've certainly had my share of experiences where I've tried a lot of different angles and just was really struggling to get through to a particular decision maker.
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And it is totally understandable that from that lived experience, you could come to the conclusion that, well, I guess it's just not possible.
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I guess we just can't build influence with this specific decision maker over here.
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Or if you've been rebuffed by a number of them in a particular category, well, I guess it's not possible to build influence with that type of decision maker, and so on.
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So that's the first part of the belief that starts to happen.
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And then we start to make up reasons why that is so.
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And so we add to the belief.
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We embellish the picture and we say, well, it's because powerful decision makers don't listen to people like me, or to organizations like mine, or to nonprofits in general, or to small nonprofits or to nonprofits that work on these kinds of issues.
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We make up all sorts of rationale and reasoning architecture for why it is that our core belief that has now been adopted that we can't influence these folks is so.
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Virtually all of us humans have been guilty of this at least once in our lives.
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And even if it wasn't with a decision maker, when we go to engage someone and we are rebuffed or ignored or pushed aside.
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On some level as human beings, that's painful.
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And so we partly adopt beliefs about why that is and what that means out of self-protection.
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So there's emotion bound up in this too.
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This is complicated stuff.
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But let me ask you this before we go any further with beliefs.
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If you don't believe fundamentally that it is possible for you to build influence with a particular decision maker or type of decision maker.
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What do you think the chances are that you will ever actually build that powerful influence?
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Right.
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Pretty much zero.
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So we have to address the belief problem before we get into anything else.
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Cause it's at the core and it will stop us in our tracks.
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And there's no need for that.
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I think it's very helpful to understand what's going on when we do that.
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We have a lived experience or a series of them that gives us information.
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We tried to engage X Y Z decision maker.
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They did not engage.
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We did not get what we wanted.
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Maybe they ignored us.
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Maybe they rebuffed us.
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They did something that we felt like, okay, we really didn't connect, or we can't even find a way to communicate with them.
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Sometimes it's that fundamental.
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So we take that information and we come to a conclusion.
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And this is the first problematic step in the belief construction process.
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We come to this conclusion and then we add all that rationale around why it's so.
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And what happens when we do that with our conscious thinking brain, is that that belief and all the architecture and the rationale that goes with it is transmitted to our subconscious brain, our reticular activating system.
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And the job of the reticular activating system is to filter out unuseful stuff and to filter in only that which we have told it is important.
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If we've told it something is not important or not possible, it will filter it out.
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That's its job.
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It's one of its jobs.
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And you think about why that is.
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It's even before current circumstances, the volume of input that we're all receiving every day is just insane.
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No human being can process all of the sensory and other inputs that we're getting every single day.
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So that reticular activating system's job is super important.
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It protects us from overload.
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Because if we were actually consciously thinking about every single piece of input we got all day, we wouldn't be able to focus on anything and nothing would get done, and we'd probably go crazy.
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So that filtration system is vital for our wellbeing.
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The problem is if we don't understand how it works and we're not careful with what we're teaching it, we can wind up with it doing us a huge disservice.
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And that's what happens in this situation.
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We have the lived experience.
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We come to a conclusion.
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We build the belief, and we build the rationale around it.
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And then the reticular activating system takes that and says, okay, boss, I got it.
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There is no opportunity there.
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We can't influence this particular decision maker or this group of decision makers or any decision makers, depending on what you've concluded.
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We got that now.
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Alright, we will filter out any input that contradicts that.
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It doesn't exist because we already know that what is true is that you cannot influence them.
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It's not possible.
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So why on earth would we let any input in that tries to contradict that?
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That's just noise and it diverts us from our core work over here.
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You can see how that might be problematic.
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On the flip side, when we teach it that there are opportunities for influence building and engagement everywhere.
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That you never know where the next chance to make a connection, to build influence, to pull someone a little closer in and get them on board with your stuff.
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If we believe that there are opportunities happening every second all the time and every one of them is a chance to build a little bit more influence and that that's vital to what we're trying to do here long term.
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Then what we're teaching our reticular activating system is to filter in anything that might remotely be an opportunity to engage, an opportunity to connect.
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And that's what we start seeing and experiencing, and then we can act on it.
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So the job of the reticular activating system is to both filter out what it has been told is irrelevant, and to filter in, like a laser-focused funnel, to mix a metaphor, to bring all of that in.
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And say, oh, look at that.
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Oh, there's another one there.
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There's another opportunity.
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Oh, grab that.
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Look at that.
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Look at that.
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They're all over.
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And then your conscious brain can do the work of saying, awesome.
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I see that opportunity.
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I see that opportunity.
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I see this other opportunity.
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They're not all equal, and you've got limited bandwidth.
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So you won't necessarily act on every opportunity that your RAS filters into you, but at least you see them.
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And you can make strategic decisions about which ones to pursue and which ones to maybe set aside for now.
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So the first thing we have to do is stop teaching our reticular activating system that this isn't possible, or that it's really hard and that the opportunities are rare.
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Instead, we have to teach it that the opportunities are everywhere.
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Every waking moment, opportunities for engagement and influence are coming at us if we know to look for them and if we're open to them.
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But what we often don't realize is how powerful that reticular activating system function is in determining what you see and what you notice.
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So that is job one.
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We teach the subconscious to let the good opportunities in, and to not work against us by filtering them out.
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And there's a more extended process that goes with doing this to make sure that that sticks.
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Because if you are currently in a belief that it's not possible.
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You can't just flip a switch and say, okay, I've decided it's possible.
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Now get to work reticular activating system.
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Bring me all the stuff.
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It takes a little more effort than that, but there is a well-defined process for doing that.
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And I teach that in my coaching programs cause it's so foundational.
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It requires consistent action over a period of time to train a new belief into your reticular activating system.
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But not only is it possible, it's foundational.
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I do it constantly and I'm always on the alert for, oops, Hey, have I got an unhelpful belief operating here that is not giving me what I want?
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And when I identify those, and there's a process for doing that too.
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When I identify those, I get to work on them.
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Because I know the process for rewiring the belief, and I just get to work on that.
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And say, okay, now I know the unhelpful belief.
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Let me identify what I need to have operating as a belief instead, that's gonna teach the RAS to send me the input that I need.
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There's processes for all of that, and I teach that inside my coaching programs.
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So first of all, you fix the belief problem and you get your RAS working with you to show you all the opportunities for engagement and influence building.
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Then the other two pieces are making sure your messaging is dialed in.
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And by dialed in, I mean that it is the right messaging for that decision maker at this time.
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Cause different things will work at different points in the process, or different times of political environment as we have observed right now.
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But the bottom line is your messaging has got to resonate with the decision maker and connect to something they care about.
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It needs to engage them emotionally.
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It needs to do a lot of different things.
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But we have to get our messaging right.
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So for starters, if we have a group of decision makers, let's say city council members or the state health department or a potential contracting partner.
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So first of all, those are categories.
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City council members are at the city level and they're elected officials.
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The state health department people are obviously at the state level and they are paid government agency people.
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And then the contracting partners could be government or they could be private enterprise, and you're liable to approach them somewhat differently based on that.
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So they're already fitting in categories.
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And just the categories they live in, influence how you design your messaging a little bit.
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Because what keeps an elected official up at night is a little bit different than what keeps an agency person up at night.
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And that's different than what keeps a private enterprise actor up at night.
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This is all foundational message building that I trust that you already know, but I'm revisiting for clarity.
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We have to understand what are the primary problems and concerns they're walking around with on a regular basis.
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And that's context.
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We're not necessarily gonna speak directly to some of those things.
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We might.
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Depends on how relevant they are, how connected they are to the thing that we're looking to have them do for us.
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And let me just pause for a second and say that influence goes beyond making a specific ask and getting a yes.
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Although that is a huge piece of it, and that's often what we're focused on.
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But influence also goes to, long term, helping to shape how they're thinking, helping to shape how they see the world.
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And helping to shape how they see us and our organizations and our role in the world.
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Ultimately, we're looking to be seen by them as thought leaders, as highly valuable problem solving partners, as influential in our own right, and a really good ally to have, a really good partner to have.
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Because we solve important problems.
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We show up, we deliver, we contribute to the intellectual advancement of the discussion around how we solve problems.
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That we're all of that in their minds.
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And you don't build that in a day.
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You build that over time.
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But sometimes you're at a place where you just need to get them to say yes to something.
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And that's all the influence you want or need right this minute.
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You'll work on the other stuff long term, but right here, right now, you need a thing.
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Totally understand.
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And that is more true right now probably than it has been in a while, 'cause we're facing a lot of threats and some opportunities, but the threats are looming pretty large.
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It's absolutely critical that the decision maker understand the problem that you solve and the level at which you solve it.
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And the impact it makes when you solve that problem.
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And that's the impact on individual people's lives in the community.
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But it's also the impact that you have on the financial picture for whatever world the decisionmaker is in, whether it's a city budget or a state agency budget, or a private enterprise balance sheet.
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You're able to communicate effectively, impact around those aspects that land for that decision maker.
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That means you have to learn to speak their language.
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This is a balancing act because you have to speak their language and it's not necessarily the same as yours.
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If you work in healthcare or housing or workforce development or nutrition or whatever arena you are in, there are all sorts of terms of art and acronyms and this that, and the other that are shorthand language.
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And you cannot assume that the decision maker you're communicating with shares that language.
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They may.
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And if they do, you're in great shape because then you can kind of nerd out together in your shared language.
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And That has an influence building component all its own.
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But you also have to speak all of their language about ROI and balance sheets and so on.
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When you are able to effectively speak to them in their native language, whatever it is, your influence and credibility go way up.
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And so that's not even about the general focus of the messaging.
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That's about the delivery and the engagement process.
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It says to them, without ever saying this out loud, I get you.
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I know what you're dealing with.
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I can speak your language, and the reason I can speak your language is I understand the problems you're dealing with, and I've got solutions for the problems you are dealing with.
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Now those solutions also solve other problems that that decision maker may or may not be concerned with.
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But you have to be able to align the work that you do with how it solves a problem the decision maker cares about.
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And you have to be able to frame it in the language that the decision maker would use to describe that problem.
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This is core.
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You could be saying conceptually the same thing, but if you're not saying it in the language that the decision maker would use themselves, they may or may not get it.
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They may or may not understand that you just offered to solve one of the most pressing problems they have.
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Because you said it in a language that wasn't familiar to them.
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So we have to make sure that all of our messaging is doing that in all the different spheres of decision making.
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And this is a process of continuous testing.
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The basic process for it is you take everything that you've heard that decision maker say, or you can look online to find places where they have spoken or have written things.
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Whatever you can gather to learn how they talk about the problem you solve.
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The more of that you can gather the better, because it helps you shape your initial messaging as close to how they would talk about it as you can.
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And then you will engage and you will get more feedback.
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You will learn more things as you actually talk with them.
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And hopefully you'll develop the skill of adjusting your language in real time.
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And one of the simplest tricks for that is to just repeat back to them what they just said.
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Because then they hear their words coming outta your mouth and that tells them that you heard them, you got it, and you are integrating it into your thinking.
00:21:21.739 --> 00:21:25.338
And that is a key part of how you build influence.
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Sure.
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Some influence is grounded in just straight up money and power.
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I have lots of money.
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I have lots of power.
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Do what I say.
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And there's a certain subset of decision makers who will be influenced by that and who will say, yep, okay, well then I guess that's what I better do.
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Fortunately, there are a lot of other ways to cultivate influence that aren't about having a lot of money and power.
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And those are the ways that we need to cultivate because with just a few exceptions, most nonprofits aren't going around with lots of money and power.
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There are a few, but you know, most of us are not operating from that place.
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So we have to use all the other strategies for influence building that aren't grounded in that.
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