What to do When Funders Say They Love You, but Still Under-invest in Your Work

You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. In today's episode, we share what to do when funders say they love you, but still under-invest in your work. So, stay tuned. If you wanna 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. 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. 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 bringing opportunities and resources to you. This podcast will help you do just that. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. I'm your host, Kath Patrick. I'm so glad you're here for today's episode, because I wanna talk about a problem that is way more common than you might think. And if anything about the title of this episode resonated with you, you know what I'm talking about. You've got these various decision-makers, and often this is particularly a problem with elected officials, but it cuts across all types of decision-makers. Whether it's electeds or government agency decision-makers, foundations, corporate funders, all of'em. And here's how this rolls out. They know something about your organization, they have some understanding of the work that you do, and they think it's a wonderful service that's important in the community. And they're really glad you're here. They love you to pieces. But still, they continue to under-invest in your work. So what the heck is going on? What is up with that? Well, this problem has four main causes. Sometimes all four of them are at work. Sometimes it's just one or two of them, but it doesn't really matter. Even one of these can result in a decision-maker under-investing. We need to be alert to all four. Number one, they don't understand the complexity of the problem you solve. I hear this all the time from nonprofit leaders. And it happens even if the service you provide is relatively straightforward, but the problem you're solving is more complicated than it appears on the surface. It especially happens when you have a complex intervention to a complex problem. The more layers of complexity on both of those pieces, the more likely it is the decision-maker is not gonna get most of that. And when they don't, you've got a problem because they're thinking that things are simple. And if it's simple, it must be easy. And if it's easy, it must be cheap to solve. Which connects to problem number two, which is that they don't understand the cost of the problem that you solve. And there's a whole bunch of ways that this failure to understand cost comes into play. There's the straight up, for example, if you are providing a service that helps people currently dependent on some form of public assistance to get what they need, and your service helps them in a way that they are more able to be self-sufficient and be less dependent on that piece of public assistance, then there's that cost. It costs X dollars to provide SNAP benefits or Medicaid or what have you. That's a clear direct cost in public dollar outlay to provide a service that the person needs because they are sufficiently low income that they require it. So if part of your service mix is you help people need less of that, then that's a pretty obvious way to measure the cost of the problem, in public assistance dollar outlays. But a lot of times the cost is more complicated than that. For example, if you're a corporate funder, you may or may not be concerned about that. You're concerned about other costs that are happening. If you're a contracting partner, you're concerned about costs in your world. The perception of cost can occur in a lot of different ways to different decision makers. But most of the time, partly because they underestimate the complexity of the problem, they're also underestimating the cost of it. They're also not really looking at the total cost of the problem. Because there's more to it than just direct outlay. There's all the knock-on effects that happen when a person, because of whatever they're dealing with, is less able to care for their kids or to be fully involved in the community, to be a taxpayer. All kinds of different ways in which there are costs to the problem that the people you serve are in. And we've covered this concept on a number of episodes, so I imagine you're fairly familiar with it. But whatever your service niche is, you're aware of all of the complexity of the situation that your clients are in, and all of the costs that are connected to that. And a lot of times decision makers are not aware of a huge chunk of those costs. Sometimes they're not even aware that the costs exist. Sometimes they're kind of aware, but they really have no idea what dollar figure might be attached to it. So there's a lot of layers to this issue of them not understanding the true cost of the problem. The third thing is, and this is a cascading effect from the first two, is they don't understand the depth and or magnitude and significance of the impact of your work. When they say things like, we love you, you're so great, we're so glad you're in the community, you do such good work, it's awesome that you're here, we hear such good things about you. That's all kind of feel-good stuff. They know that you're doing good things for people and making their lives better some kinda way. And they have a general idea of what category that's in. But they may not have a whole lot of more depth to their understanding. And if they don't understand the depth and magnitude and significance of the impact on the people who are served, on the community at large that those people are members of, and on the cost of the problem. Then, uh, it'd be really tough for them to figure out what's the appropriate level of investment. So if they're not getting the degree to which your work changes people's lives and why that matters. What the significance of that is in terms of how it reduces costs certainly, but also how it increases that person's ability to thrive and to become a vibrant part of their community, fully participating in all the ways. If they don't get that, then they're missing a huge chunk of the rationale for why they should invest at a high level in your program, in your work. And the fourth thing is, and this is kinda tied to all of the above, is that in their head, they're shorthanding what you do. And they're using the wrong shorthand. This is normal human behavior. They simplified your stuff down into a basic concept that they can hold in their mind. Because remember, they don't live in your world. They don't do this day to day. They're not deep inside the problem with the clients the way you are. And they haven't spent years developing an incredibly nuanced understanding of the problem, and the needs of the clients, and the impact it can make, and the cost that it has, and all those things. You know all that because of how much time and effort, and energy, and caring you have put into being in that world to create something really brilliant that is gonna transform people's lives. You know all that, but the decision-maker doesn't. What the decision-maker's doing,'cause they got 529 other things in their brain. Their day to day is about something else entirely. So when it comes to your work and the people you serve and the impact you make, and the cost of the problem, they have shorthanded that down to something very simple and concrete that is kind of a little marker that they've got in their head. Oh, yes, XYZ organization, they're great, they do blah. And blah is like three words. They feed people. They help people with housing stuff. They help people find work. If you're in any of those three fields, you probably just cringed. Number one, because that's a ridiculous oversimplification of the work that you do. But also you probably cringed'cause you've heard it more than once from a decision-maker, and you know why it's so frustrating and unhelpful. Now, there's something I wanna say about this simplification, this shorthanding that they're doing, that's really important for us to get. It's possible, maybe even probable, that you may have contributed to the problem. And here's how that happens. I've seen nonprofit leaders do this on a regular basis, and I understand why folks do this. It's kind of shorthanding things down for limited attention span audience, and you wanna make sure they get the gist of it. So we strip it back to the most basic concept, and we say,"Well, basically, this is what we do." And then we go on to explain the rest of it or a bunch of the rest of it, but what happens is they stopped at the first little shorthand that we gave them. We're not gonna get into how we fix this today. I'm gonna do that in next week's episode because it's too much for one conversation. But we gotta fix that. We do wanna create shorthand for them, but we wanna make sure that it's not an oversimplification that will come back and bite us. So those four things are the primary causes of this problem, of decision-makers saying they love you, but chronically underinvesting. Now, I'm gonna distill this further and say that this all boils down to basically a two-part problem that we have to solve. The first question is: What aren't they getting? What about our stuff are they not getting? And the second part is: What do they think instead? What is it that they think we do? How would they talk about that? Let's get into that first part a little deeper. We need to identify what it is they're consistently oversimplifying or failing to comprehend, within the three categories that I talked about. The complexity of the problem you solve, the cost of the problem you solve, and the depth, magnitude, and significance of the impact of your work. We need to get really clear about what aspects of each of those three things they're consistently oversimplifying or failing to comprehend. And I encourage you to get really granular with this. You want as much detail as possible. And I recommend you involve all of your team who have any contact with these decision-makers, because different ones of you will have had different encounters where different pieces of this puzzle will have emerged. Decision-makers will rarely just give you this perfectly formed, clearly articulated discussion of what it is they think you do and all the places they're misunderstanding what you do. But it will have emerged In the multiple conversations that various members of your team have had with that decision-maker, as well as any public statements they may have made on the topic. Mostly you're gonna tap what your team has heard in encounters with them. Start there. I did this not too long ago with a client, and it was incredibly helpful because all sorts of interesting patterns started to emerge that they had not seen until they started writing this all out and we started mapping it to see what was happening. So be super detailed at first. You'll go back later and decide if some of those details aren't that critical. If your list is really long and you're like,"You know what? It's not that important whether they understand this little piece of nuance or not." You care, but maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it's not critical to the understanding they need to have in order to invest at the correct level. So you can sort that out later. But list them all out to start. Don't edit while you list. Just go ahead and get it all out. Because here's what's gonna happen in the next phase of this. You're gonna start noticing what's coming up again and again, and that starts to matter. Even if it seems like a trivial detail, if there's a consistent misunderstanding across multiple categories of decision-maker, that's something to pay attention to. Ultimately, you're looking for particularly those items where a misunderstanding or a failure to understand that particular piece would likely cause underinvestment. So you're gonna do that first. And then the second thing is to identify the shorthand they're using that's wrong. And again, they will have told you this in some form or another, very likely. They may not have told all of it, but you will have heard them say,"Oh, XYZ organization, they do blah blah." And their rendition of blah blah is not at all how you would describe what you do, and is missing some critical nuance, critical aspects that would automatically cause them to be inclined to underinvest. So you've got to identify how are they shorthanding your stuff down? Again, you're looking at all three of these categories. How are they short-handing the problem itself that you solve? How are they short-handing the cost of the problem? And how are they short-handing the work that you do and its impact? Those three things. If you can identify how they're short-handing that, you've got really important information. Now, if you haven't had a lot of conversations with these decision-makers, then one way that you can get at it is, the next time you're anywhere near them, is to ask them to summarize the work that you do and the impact that it has. Now, obviously you're not gonna just go right up to them and say,"Okay, This is a test. I'd like you to summarize what you know about our stuff. Prove to me how clueless and ignorant you are." No, we're not gonna do that, of course. But what you can do is When they say,"Oh, we love you, you're so wonderful," you can say,"Oh, thank you, we appreciate that so much. You know, I'd love to know, when you're talking to your colleagues or to others about our work, what really stands out to you? What do you tend to tell them they should know about us?" Say it that way. And they'll tell you. They will just blurt out their shorthand. And then you can go,"Oh, Lord, we have a problem," but at least then you know. So you've got those two main pieces. What are they not getting, and how are they incorrectly short-handing your stuff? Now that you've got that, you're gonna map this out. I recommend a grid, but whatever works for you. And what you wanna do is map this out in a way that you see what's consistent across multiple decision-makers, and what's unique to certain decision-makers or decision-maker types. You're gonna be able to tell a lot from this. I promise you, patterns will emerge that you were not aware of. And you're gonna start to have some aha moments. Like, Oh, my goodness, do you realize that all the state legislators have the same misunderstanding of this critical piece of our work. Or all the city council members seem to not understand there's this huge city-related cost associated with this problem, and they're kinda missing that. Whatever it is, there will be patterns that will emerge. You're not gonna know necessarily what they're gonna be before you map this out. Typically, that's the case. When I recently did this with a client for some state-level decision makers, they told me going in that one of the frustrating things was that there didn't seem to be any consistency. And they couldn't figure out how to rework their messaging because it was all over the place. Well, we did a version of this investigation and mapping. And lo and behold, it turned out that there were four critical messaging elements that were consistently misunderstood by every single decision-maker category. Boom. That told us where to point our efforts first. We fixed those four pieces first. Then we went to the next layer of what's most problematic and so on. It helps you not only see patterns, but it's gonna set you up to then triage what have you gotta attack first. What's the most problematic? What's most likely to produce a really bad undervaluing of your work or its impact, a really bad undervaluing of the cost of the problem, all the things. So when you start to see what's happening there, and you look at it all together, instead of anecdotally like,"Oh, God, it was so frustrating. I just came out of this meeting with so-and-so. And I can't believe after all the data and all the information we've given them and the number of times we've talked to them, they still don't get it, da, da-da, da-da." I know. I know. I'm right there with you. I get it. I get the frustration. But when you map this out, you start to see, okay, where are the patterns? And that is huge information for where you're gonna need to focus your energy for shifting your messaging and doing some other cool stuff that we're gonna talk about next week that will help you turn this situation around. But we can't do anything about it until we've identified and diagnosed the problems and seen where there are repeat patterns that are demanding our attention most loudly. So this week we're setting the stage to give you what you need to then start tackling the problem and fixing it. And that's what we're gonna do in next week's episode. But get to work on this first. And we'll circle back next week and get started on solving the problem. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.