Linda Lysakowski, ACFRE, on why the volunteer shortage is a myth, and how to recruit, train, and keep the fundraising volunteers you need.
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Somewhere in your organization, someone has said it out loud in the last month: we cannot find volunteers.
On the latest episode of the 501(c) Drop, Linda Lysakowski joined BetterUnite CEO & Co-founder Leya Simmons and did not accept the premise. Linda is one of roughly 100 people in the world holding the Advanced Certified Fundraising Executive credential, she has helped organizations raise over $100 million across four decades, and she has written 40 books, including Recruiting and Training Fundraising Volunteers, published in 1994 and still in print. Her diagnosis is not that the people are gone. It is that we are going about finding them backwards.
Leya opened with the numbers. Volunteering in America fell to 23.2% of people in 2021 and rebounded to 28.3% by 2023, roughly 75 million Americans. A meaningful jump in two years, and a signal that the willingness never actually went anywhere.
Linda agreed, and pushed further.
"I don't think people are saying, no, I don't want to volunteer anymore. Most people don't do that."
Some people do step back. They age, their health changes, the thing they used to do is no longer the thing they can do. Linda's answer there is not to write them off but to point them somewhere else. During COVID she became, in her words, the unofficial and unpaid Zoom queen of her parish, moving Bible study and other in-person gatherings online. One member had moved from Nevada to Florida and had dropped out of the group entirely. Once it went to Zoom, she was back in.
The more common barrier is simpler: people do not know the opportunities exist, or how to get involved.
When an organization tells Linda it cannot find volunteers, she asks one question first: what do you want these volunteers to do?
"Where you're gonna look for them is going to be different."
That single question does most of the work, because the answer routes you to a place:
That last one produced the most quietly practical moment of the episode. Linda's church wants to start a planned giving program and has no estate planning attorney in the congregation. But there is one advertising in the church bulletin.
"So guess who we're gonna call to do that as a volunteer? Because he's obviously committed to what we're doing."
She also noted the stakes: somewhere north of 60% of people in this country do not have a will. Teaching your donors how to write one is a favor to them before it is ever a strategy for you.
Ask Linda what makes a good volunteer ask and she does not start with the pitch. She starts with the paperwork.
"You must have a position description for every volunteer."
What goes in it: exactly what you are asking them to do, what you will provide (the computer, the training, the equipment), whether they are expected to attend meetings, and the hours you expect. The reason is retention, not bureaucracy. People volunteer, discover the job was nothing like what they pictured, and quit.
Her analogy is the one to repeat in your next board meeting. Imagine hiring a staff person by walking in and saying you met a woman named Betty, she was really nice, you liked her, so the organization should hire her. Betty shows up Monday and asks what she is supposed to do.
"You would never, I hope, hire a staff person that way. But that's unfortunately how people recruit volunteers, including board members."
The volunteer who is set up that way does not just struggle. They fail, through no fault of their own, and then they leave.
This is the reframe most of the sector skips, and Leya said so directly: we rarely put the words board member and volunteer in the same sentence.
"They're probably the most important volunteers you have in your organization."
Which makes the board job description worth getting right, especially on money. Linda's warning about giving minimums is sharp. Say the description requires $1,000 a year. You may lose a person who would have been an excellent board member and cannot give that. Worse, you may land someone entirely capable of giving $10,000, who reads the document and gives exactly $1,000.
"You're not gonna give ten thousand because you asked for a thousand."
Her fix is to write a meaningful gift and leave the number out. For board members she likes a second formulation: we want this organization to be one of your top two or three charitable priorities. People give to their church, synagogue or mosque, and often to their university. You are not asking to be the only recipient. You are asking to be near the top.
Linda has been on the receiving end of the alternative. She was giving an organization $250 a year when a phonathon caller asked her for $25.
"I was really insulted. I thought, didn't you look at my records? Don't you know how much I've been giving? So I gave them twenty-five dollars. Well, that's what you asked for, so that's what you got."
Which produces the sentence worth taping to a wall, further down this page.
The other rule attached to the ask: anyone who is going to ask for money should give first. Not a particular amount. Linda was explicit that a volunteer giving $100 can absolutely ask someone else for $1,000, because that is what the other person can give. But nobody raises money successfully without having given themselves.
For the volunteer or board member who says they cannot ask for money, Linda's response is that asking is one of four steps, not the whole job.
Identify. Cultivate. Ask. Steward.
The person who will not ask can still do three of them. They can come in 30 minutes before the board meeting and call major donors to thank them, which lands differently coming from a trustee than from staff. They can make an introduction. When Linda was a director of development, she regularly brought potential major donors in to meet the president, and people felt honored by the invitation.
She proved the point at a capital campaign board training for an arts group. She opened by asking who woke up that morning excited to go raise money for the theater. One hand went up, exactly as she knew it would. She put that board member to work explaining how he asks and who he asks, and the rest of the room left full of names, introductions, and a few volunteers for the ask team after all.
And on the fourth step, the one that gets the least attention:
"The thank you is the last step in the gift, but the first step in the next gift."
Some departures are personal and unavoidable, though even then a role change may keep the person. The rest fall into patterns worth auditing:
Which brings the conversation to the part nobody puts on the calendar: managing them. Are they showing up when they said they would? Are they signing in and out? Did they do the job you assigned? Are they background checked? Do they need more training rather than a quiet exit?
Linda and Leya both remembered the old way, which was a stack of Excel spreadsheets and, before that, Word documents. Leya's version of that memory is the reason she started a software company.
When Linda was researching her book, she ran focus groups with volunteers from a range of organizations. One man's complaint stuck with her. He did not mind being asked for money. He minded how.
"I could tell it was just a standard letter that they sent out to probably thousands of people, and they didn't recognize that I was a volunteer."
He gave, and then he stopped volunteering.
So if you run a volunteer appeal, the order matters. Thank them for their hours first. Tell them you appreciate their time and talent, then invite them to consider a gift of treasure as well. Then ask, based on what you believe they can give. Some will give a lot, some will give ten dollars, and both outcomes tell you something real: your volunteers had an experience meaningful enough that they gave money on top of their hours.
One more detail, and Linda called it the key to the whole thing: have a volunteer sign the letter. Not the executive director, not the director of development. When she worked at a university, alumni signed the appeal to alumni, parents signed the letter to parents, and seniors got an appeal from a fellow student. Nobody expected much from the senior class. A $25 gift was a win, because the point was to ingrain philanthropy early so those gifts could grow later.
Leya's admission at the end of the episode is probably shared by a lot of people reading this: in her years as a development director, she never ran a volunteer appeal.
Linda's axiom is the line the whole hour hangs on:
"You never can insult somebody by asking for too much, but you can insult them by asking too little."
It applies to the board member you underestimated, the volunteer you sent a form letter to, and the $250 donor you asked for $25. Underasking is not humility. It is a failure to have looked.
The volunteers are out there. Decide what you want them to do, write it down, train them, thank them, and manage them like the asset they are. Then ask them for something worthy of what they have already given you.
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Transcript Recording:
Leya Simmons (00:04)
Hi everyone, welcome to today's 501c Drop. I am Leya Simmons. I am the CEO and co-founder of Better Unite and your host of the 501c Drop. Welcome. However, you are joining us, I'm thrilled that you're here. I'm even more thrilled, I have to say, about my guest today. Our guest has spent more than 40 years in the nonprofit world. She is one of only about a hundred people on the planet.
In the world holding the Advanced Certified Fundraising Executive Credential, the ACFRE. She has helped organizations raise over a hundred million dollars. She has trained tens of thousands of fundraisers, and she literally wrote the book on our topic today: recruiting and training fundraising volunteers. And actually, let me add that those aren't even the most interesting things about her.
Linda Lysakowski welcome to the five one C drop. Thanks. I'm so happy you're here.
Linda S Lysakowski (01:08)
thanks so much, Leya, for inviting me.
Leya Simmons (01:10)
Of course, I have you are so I will actually say you're the only the second ACFRE that I've ever met personally as well. So
Linda S Lysakowski (01:18)
Yeah.
Leya Simmons (01:19)
it's a thrill to to meet you and to have your expertise and to talk about volunteering. I I find this to be a really fascinating topic. Obviously, my background as a fundraiser leads me to this, but also what what I know what I think our our sector knows intuitively, which is that volunteers are a feeder or a pipeline for tomorrow's donors.
at a in a in a very like if we're putting people to dollars kind of way. they provide so much value. And I was really surprised to read this statistic. I'm sorry, I'm actually gonna read it because I don't want to get the numbers wrong. But volunteering in America cratered to 23.2% of people during the pandemic in 2021. So by 2023, it has rebounded to 28.3%. It's about four 75 million Americans.
So I, you know, that hu that's a pretty significant jump actually in just a two-year period. And I think that what we can infer from that is that people they do want to help, but they maybe the people don't know how, don't know where to start. And then I think that we see a lot of times on the on the nonprofit side, you know, I hear, I hear this all the time. I know you hear it too. We can't find volunteers or we're we're not sure where to turn for volunteers first. So I I thought we might start there.
do you think that there's a shortage of volunteers out there?
Linda S Lysakowski (02:44)
I actually don't think there is. I mean, yes, some people have had to back off from volunteering because maybe they've aged and they can't do it anymore as much as they used to. But I think even that is not always true. I mean I'm obviously with you see by my grey hair, I'm no young spring chicken here and my health is not as good as it was that I can't go out and do some aspects of volunteering, but I still manage to find things
I do. In fact, when you mentioned COVID, during COVID, I sort of became the unofficial Zoom queen of my parish and I was doing a lot of things that we normally did in person and we couldn't do. So I was hosting them on my Zoom account, like Bible study groups and things like that. So I think maybe if they are aging out, you can turn them into a different direction. But and some people just, you know,
maybe
aren't v jumping up to volunteer because they don't know that there are volunteer opportunities out there and how they could get involved. So I don't think it's really declining that much. I mean I know the numbers show it is, but I don't think the people are saying, No, I don't want to volunteer anymore. You know, that's just I
Leya Simmons (04:03)
Yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (04:03)
just don't think people normally do that. Most people right.
Leya Simmons (04:07)
There's just other barriers in there, maybe.
What do you think has changed about volunteering over the last 10 years? Do you do you think that there are expectations now that people have that they didn't have before? Or is there any like contextual piece to this?
Linda S Lysakowski (04:25)
I think the there are some changes in the fact that people there's still volunteer opportunities out there. But one of the things that's changed is I believe that we're trying to now recruit volunteers for the specific jobs that we're looking for. You know, in the past I think people just took any volunteer that walked in the door and said, Okay, yeah, you you well we're glad to have you.
Leya Simmons (04:51)
Now you go do this, yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (04:53)
But now I think
I hope that people are more responsible and maybe be in part because of my book. I'd like to take some credit for it if I can. But I think it's it's important that volunteers know what's expected of them. And I think that has changed a lot, that volunteers have more expectations. They want to work for, they want to volunteer for organizations that are doing good and that are efficient and effective.
And when they see the results of a good organization, they don't hesitate to volunteer.
Leya Simmons (05:30)
Yeah. They want to know what's expected of them and then they want to feel successful at it also. I think that's probably
Linda S Lysakowski (05:34)
Right.
Leya Simmons (05:35)
a piece of that. Do you I mean so okay, we have data here that's gonna say a volunteer hour is valued, and I have no idea who made this number up, but I can we can actually pull it for us. here it is. Independent sector do good institute in April of 2026. They valued a volunteer hour at $36.14.
What what do you think about that? I I actually did this at the beginning of our conversation too, kind of treating volunteers as like a dollar figure. What how how do you how do you feel about that? Does that help our our case, our situation in the sector or does it hurt
Linda S Lysakowski (06:06)
I I tr honestly
don't think it makes much difference. I I think with the IRS you can say, Well, we received a gift of volunteer hours, but that doesn't make your bottom line go up in itself. It's how you're using those volunteers that could help
Leya Simmons (06:23)
Mm-hmm.
Linda S Lysakowski (06:23)
you raise money. But I I don't really think the dollar amount matters to the volunteers and or the organization that much. It's good to have that figure so you can
say, well, the volunteer hours we work some p sometimes when people are writing grants, they can say, We have volunteers who have contributed, you know, thousands of dollars in in of their time. So that's probably the only time you really ever get to use that.
Leya Simmons (06:53)
Yeah, as a reporting function. What do you think so when when you hear what I've heard, you know, we're a nonprofit, we c we can't find volunteers. Where what do you what do you look at if an organization tells you that that's what they're experiencing?
Linda S Lysakowski (07:07)
Well,
the first thing I would ask them is what do you want these volunteers to do? Because where you're gonna look for them is going to be different. For instance, if you want a volunteer, maybe you have a grant writer, but she's so swamped because she has other duties besides that or he. And
Leya Simmons (07:26)
Mm-hmm.
Linda S Lysakowski (07:27)
maybe you want somebody to do the research because that's one of the reasons I don't personally like doing grant writing, because I don't like the research. That's not my thing.
If you would say
Leya Simmons (07:36)
Mine either.
Linda S Lysakowski (07:36)
to me, Can you come in and research foundations for us? I'd say, heck no, yeah. But I could come in and do something else for you. So
Leya Simmons (07:41)
no, thank you. Yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (07:45)
if you want somebody to do that, then you go to a college or a university or somewhere where young people are that are really savvy on the computer and they know they enjoy it. Frankly, most of the people I talk to they're my age, either
Some of them don't use a computer at all and those that do hate it. So and sometimes I hate my computer,
Leya Simmons (08:06)
Just two kinds of people.
Linda S Lysakowski (08:08)
I must admit. But the younger people, they grew up on this. They don't know a life without computers, so they're probably more willing. But if you want to raise money from your business community, then you go to the chamber of commerce or because I was successful as a staff person in
raising money from the business community. And I actually have written several books on that topic because I knew all the business people. I was a former banker myself. So I was accustomed to going to the chamber meetings and I knew I knew certainly a ton of bankers in the community, but I knew a lot of other people too, people that were my customers in the bank. And when I went to work for a nonprofit, I said, Hey, you want to come over and volunteer for this business appeal? And
I had no trouble getting them because I was at the right place and the right time. So you have to first of all know what you want these volunteers to do. If you want them to volunteer at an event, I would say go to somewhere usually mostly a lot of women like working at events comparatively to males, but
Leya Simmons (09:17)
Yes, yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (09:17)
you know, go to a place where there are young women like a American Business Women's Association or some
Leya Simmons (09:24)
Or like a junior
league even, yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (09:26)
Junior
League, you know, anything like that where you have a lot of women because they typically like doing organizing events and they're good at it. So know what
Leya Simmons (09:35)
Yeah. Yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (09:36)
you want to volunteer and then I can point you in the direction of where you'll find the right volunteers.
Leya Simmons (09:44)
Okay, so we've established that they're they are out there. We know this for sure. And in order to find them, you've got to first have some clarity around what you want them to do and then go to the right place. So now we've done all of that. The gap is not the supply. It's gotta be more in the ask. So what is what makes up a good volunteer ask?
Linda S Lysakowski (10:04)
Well,
I think the first thing that you have to do is you must have a position description for every volunteer. The pi person who's gonna come in and do research. Okay, this is what we want you to do and and this is what you have available. You can use
Leya Simmons (10:19)
Hm.
Linda S Lysakowski (10:19)
our computers to do this. We're not asking you to bring your own. And you have everything laid out and a position description so they know exactly what you're asking them to do. Because a lot of people volunteer for something and then they find out
This wasn't at all what I was expecting and so they quit. You know, they're they're just not happy in that role.
Leya Simmons (10:40)
Yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (10:40)
And some people are much more comfortable with asking for the gift. A lot of people are not comfortable with that. So then maybe you have another job description for them. Maybe you're gonna use them in a role like stewarding donors, writing thank you notes or calling, signing thank you notes or
Leya Simmons (11:02)
Mm-hmm.
Linda S Lysakowski (11:02)
calling donors and thanking them for their gift. So knowing what you want from them and translating it to them, I always use the analogy that I said, you know, if you were gonna hire a staff person, would you just come back to work one day and say, I met this lady named Betty and she's really nice. I really liked her. I think we should hire her. So your organization hires her and she comes in Monday and says, Okay, what am I supposed to do? You would never, I hope never fire
hire a staff person that way. But that's unfortunately how people recruit volunteers, including board members. And it's really sad because somebody will well, my friend or my cousin or my next door neighbor would be a good person. So let's bring them on. And they don't know what's expected of them. So they're not going to succeed. They're going to be a failure because they don't they come in there not knowing what's expected. So you have
Leya Simmons (11:57)
Yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (11:57)
to really
S sit down with them and tell them exactly what you expect them to do and what you're gonna provide and you're you're gonna provide training for them, you're gonna provide the right equipment that they need. And if you do that, you're gonna retain those volunteers. They're not gonna leave right right away.
Leya Simmons (12:16)
Yeah, I think there's a lot of
times when this just th all of the the management of the volunteers on the staff side feels like that's overwhelming to them. And that's where like a I mean, again, not to but that's where a better unite or you know, it's a a volunteer management tool can come in and support
Linda S Lysakowski (12:35)
right.
Leya Simmons (12:37)
really. It's just a support, but it it it can take a huge load off of the organization and the staff time that's required for all of that.
Linda S Lysakowski (12:44)
And
and I'm glad you mentioned volunteer management because that is so
Leya Simmons (12:47)
Mm-hmm.
Linda S Lysakowski (12:48)
critical. And I just love the fact that you have a program that will do this because back in the old days people did it on spreadsheets, Excel or something.
Leya Simmons (12:58)
I've done that.
Linda S Lysakowski (12:59)
You probably that's probably why you started this business. So you know what that was like. But management is critical.
Leya Simmons (13:03)
a hundred percent. One of the multiple spreadsheets I needed to get rid of in a software company.
Linda S Lysakowski (13:09)
You have to know are the volunteers showing up when they said they were going
Leya Simmons (13:13)
Mm-hmm.
Linda S Lysakowski (13:13)
to?
You know, do they sign a paper when they come in and when they leave? And you know, did they do the job that you assigned them to do? So
Leya Simmons (13:21)
Are they background checked? Yep.
Linda S Lysakowski (13:24)
you and you know, maybe they need more training. Maybe they didn't do so good in some area, but maybe you need to train them more.
Leya Simmons (13:32)
Yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (13:32)
So that volunteer management is really, really important. It's recruitment is important. Right.
Leya Simmons (13:36)
Filtering them through the application process too, right? Like figuring
out how to get them, yeah. And then place them once you've got that information.
Linda S Lysakowski (13:44)
Right.
Leya Simmons (13:45)
okay, so walk us through your playbook. You've got, let's pretend we've got an organization that has like zero volunteers today. What where where do they start? What's step number two? On and on.
Linda S Lysakowski (13:58)
Well, I think they start with, as I said, deciding how they want to use volunteers. Okay, we need volunteers because we're running this special event, so we're gonna need twenty volunteers to serve on the committee. Or we wanna do a business appeal and we may need fifty volunteers to go out and talk to the businesses in our community.
Leya Simmons (14:18)
Mm-hmm.
Linda S Lysakowski (14:19)
Or we maybe we wanna do a planned gift program. You can even include volunteers that are
plan gift specialists like estate planning attorneys, financial planners. We love to start a program for bequests. So we want some volunteers that can write articles for our newsletter or they can come in and do a a tr an informational session on estate planning.
Leya Simmons (14:45)
That's a great idea.
Linda S Lysakowski (14:47)
So whatever it is that you want to use the volunteers for, that's how you start recruiting. Because you're not going to go recruit a
plan
giving attorney and and then tell them that they're gonna work on a special event. I mean that's probably not gonna thrill them too much.
Leya Simmons (15:03)
Or plant a tree or yeah. I just heard
so many ears perk up when you said that because as we have like we approach this the great wealth transfer and plan giving and bequests and all of that becomes so much more essential for us to to plan for.
Linda S Lysakowski (15:22)
Right.
Leya Simmons (15:23)
I you know honestly, I had not really thought about that. Like recruiting volunteers from your community that are in those key roles to inform the community. And also, you know, we know that peers asking peers for that kind of thing is always better. So anyway, this is a great.
Linda S Lysakowski (15:36)
Mm.
Leya Simmons (15:38)
what do you think? So you we've talked about the job description a lot. Is there any one thing that a volunteer or great role volunteer role description has?
Linda S Lysakowski (15:47)
Well, there's several things I I think first of all, the expectations that you have for them, are they expected to attend meetings and one of those meetings? You would expect them to be get some kind of training, but it's what you're gonna provide should be in there too. We're providing, you know, a two hour training session on special events or on whatever it is that you're asking them to do. And then the hours that they're
expected to give. And also I think it's important that you look at volunteers as potential donors. So if your volunteers are going to be asking for money, you definitely should say in there, we expect you to make a meaningful gift. And I I did a lot of corporate and business appeals where we would bring in the business leaders of the community and
Ask
them to go out and call on five other businesses. And a lot of times, you know, five was no problem because if let's say they were a banker, they'd say, Okay, I'll call on five of my customers, you know. And
Leya Simmons (16:57)
Sure. It's right there.
Linda S Lysakowski (17:00)
so I think those kind of things are important, but we always stress that you andor your company are expected to make a donation because nobody can be successful at raising money unless they've given themselves first. So
And I would suggest not putting a dollar amount in there. And a lot of times, especially with board members, and board members are volunteers, though so we haven't talked too much about board members, but they're probably the most important volunteers you have in your organization. But sometimes they'll want to put in their job description, board members are required to give a thousand dollars a year. Well
Maybe you have somebody who would be a great board member in a lot of ways, but they simply for one reason or another cannot give you a thousand dollars. But on the other hand, the even worse thing is you might have somebody who comes in there and is very capable and willing to give you ten thousand dollars a year. But if the job description says a thousand dollars a year, what do you think it's gonna give? It's gonna give a thousand.
Leya Simmons (18:05)
it's limiting. Yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (18:07)
You're not gonna give ten thousand because you asked for a thousand.
I had a ha happened to be I wasn't volunteering for this group, but I once had an incident where I was actually insulted by a a an organization and I was supporting. Now I'm not a major donor, but I was giving them $250 a year. And they called me on the phone during a phonethon, and that's another way you can use volunteers that do phonothons. But they called me and asked me for twenty-five dollars, and I was really insulted. I thought
Didn't you look at my records? Don't you know how much I've been giving? So I gave them twenty-five dollars. I was like, Well, that's what you asked for, so that's what you got. So I think that's really important that you have to know. just I would say in in a volunteer job description, just say a meaningful gift.
Leya Simmons (19:03)
Mm.
Linda S Lysakowski (19:03)
or you can also word it like for a board member, I often suggest we want
you to make this organization one of your top two or three priorities for your charitable giving. Because people give to their church or synagogue or mosque, that but that's oftentimes where they give the most money. they might give to their university. So they're not gonna make you the only recipient of their giving, but one of the top two or three is a nice way to word it. And they might say to you, well, I can't do that, but I'll I'll do this. You know the
You never can insult somebody by asking for too much, but you can insult them by asking too little. So
Leya Simmons (19:45)
that is a very good word of w that's an incredible axiom to keep in all of our heads. I
Linda S Lysakowski (19:51)
Right.
Leya Simmons (19:51)
yeah, I want to return to we you and I talked about this before as well. The you know, the concept of the board members as volunteers. We we very rarely in the sector talk about that. Like you r really equate a board member and the words board members and volunteers together. I I don't hear that very often. So, and and they are often responsible for
some component of of of an ask. And so you were talking before about, you know, well what if you've got that board member or volunteer who's just very uncomfortable with making an ask.
Linda S Lysakowski (20:27)
Yeah,
I think that's very common. A lot of people are not
Leya Simmons (20:29)
Yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (20:29)
comfortable with this. But what they really don't understand is that fun there's four steps in fundraising. No matter who you're raising money for, who you're raising money from, there's always four steps. First you have to identify donors who are potential donors. Then you have to cultivate those donors to build a relationship with them. And then you make the ask, and then you steward them.
So there's four steps and somebody might come onto your board and say, I can't ask for money, but maybe they would come in thirty minutes before the board meeting starts and call donors, especially major donors, and just thank them for their gift. And as a donor, they're gonna be thrilled when a board member called me. that's really important. You
Leya Simmons (21:15)
Yeah, for sure.
Linda S Lysakowski (21:17)
know, they're a big wig, they're on the board of trustees for this organization. So they feel really good about that.
And identifying donors, you know, maybe they don't feel comfortable asking, but they said, Well, I can introduce you to someone so. And I know a lot of times when I was a director of development in within an organization, I would always be inviting potential major donors to come in and meet with the president. And everybody felt honored by that, had lunch with the president, you know. So
There's a lot of ways people can help with fundraising besides just making an ask. That's only one I guess it's an important component. You have to make the ask or we're never gonna get, but but I think a lot of people d don't realize that. I once worked on a capital campaign for an arts group and it was really interesting. There was one board member who actually loved fundraising. I mean, that's so rare to find a board member. So
Leya Simmons (22:17)
They're rare. Yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (22:19)
I really
use this to my advantage when I had training for the entire board. We were talking about, you know, finding donors, the the identifying part and cultivating them. And I started the board meeting by saying, Okay, who woke up this morning and said, I can't wait to go out and raise money for the theater? And I knew exactly what would happen. This man's hand went right up. Nobody else was
Leya Simmons (22:44)
One person.
Linda S Lysakowski (22:46)
they were like, not me, you know. So I said
Well, Jim, I'd like you to to help me with this training then and tell them about, you know, how you make an ask and and who you ask. And then we realized that identifying the donors and cultivating the donors was really important. So the rest of board members left that meeting and they were filled with ideas on who we should ask for money. And they said, Well, I could make an introduction to this person. And and some of them even were willing to make an ask, but I knew exactly
what was going to happen in that instance because I knew this guy would say, Yeah, I love it. I can't wait to go out and raise money. But very seldom do you get anybody who raises their hand when you ask that question. But I want to ask them
Leya Simmons (23:31)
never experienced that.
Linda S Lysakowski (23:32)
just in case. And I wanna see who who does respond and says, Okay, so you're gonna be on the team that makes the ask.
Leya Simmons (23:40)
But even if you don't, I mean, even with that one piece covered, there's still three other very important components to it
Linda S Lysakowski (23:46)
Exactly.
Leya Simmons (23:46)
that I think a lot of times, and especially that fourth, the stewarding piece, get short shrift a lot of the time. So
Linda S Lysakowski (23:52)
Right. They always say
that the the thank you is the last step in the gift, but the first step in the next gift. yeah, well I've only written forty so far.
Leya Simmons (24:01)
Man, you have got some really good ones, Linda. It's like you should write a book. I'm just kidding. only 40.
my gosh. You're
Linda S Lysakowski (24:12)
Yeah.
Leya Simmons (24:12)
so amazing. okay. So we've matched up our people. We've hopefully brought them into an environment where there's not too much chaos happening. We've given them a job description. we've got our board members that are well directed and they're, you know.
kind of moving into that, but I want to talk about the keeping of our volunteers. Why do you think that why do you think that volunteers leave an organization?
Linda S Lysakowski (24:45)
I
think there's several reasons why people leave. I mean, there's always people who have to leave for personal reasons. Maybe their job changed
Leya Simmons (24:51)
Sure. Well.
Linda S Lysakowski (24:52)
or their aging and but even if that happened, you might be able to move them into another p volunteer position instead of the one that they have been doing. Not always, but I was talking before when we were talking a little bit before about this, we were talking about COVID, which was a a nightmare for a lot of organizations.
But what I found out is that we could do a lot of things on Zoom and since I was already familiar with Zoom before COVID came, I became the unofficial and unpaid Zoom queen for my church because a lot of things we were doing, like Bible study and things like that, we now shifted to Zoom. So it's possible
Leya Simmons (25:35)
Linda, do you want to know?
I actually did the say I served the same function for an organization that I was serving as development director for. Was a
Linda S Lysakowski (25:39)
Really? that's cool.
Leya Simmons (25:44)
youth recovery organization high school, and I had been using Zoom, and so I taught them all Zoom. I was like, I don't know why
Linda S Lysakowski (25:51)
Yeah.
Leya Simmons (25:51)
I'm in this position, but here we go. So
Linda S Lysakowski (25:54)
Yeah. It's
but that was a a volunteer position that I was doing a lot of this stuff as a volunteer in person
Leya Simmons (26:00)
Yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (26:01)
and when Zoom came along I said, Well, we can do this by Zoom. You know, we don't have to do
Leya Simmons (26:04)
Yeah, remote.
Linda S Lysakowski (26:05)
it in person. And it worked out really great. In fact, we had one member of our parish who had moved from Nevada to Florida and she had to drop out of this Bible study group we had.
So when we did Zoom, she was able to participate and she was so excited about that. I said, well, now
Leya Simmons (26:25)
It's incredible.
Linda S Lysakowski (26:25)
I can be a part of this. So you might be able to retain some of them, but if you can't, I think one of the there's several reasons why people leave an organization besides personal reasons. Sometimes the organization isn't doing what they thought it did, may and maybe they didn't get a a proper orientation, or maybe their own
values have changed, but most of the time maybe they see that this organization really isn't very efficient and very effective. So you've gotta have a strong organization if you want to work with volunteers because nobody wants to work for a loser, you know, that even the rats desert the sinking ships.
Leya Simmons (27:06)
Yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (27:06)
And some organizations I've seen had some nightmares that came up, like the executive directors that embezzle money and things like that.
But once the organization gets those issues resolved, then you know, people are still willing to volunteer. But and those are the certainly the exception. There's only been a
Leya Simmons (27:27)
Sure.
Linda S Lysakowski (27:27)
few of those I've seen in my forty years, but but and sometimes they just feel like they're not valued enough. having a a special volunteer appreciation dinner or something is really helpful. I know the university I worked for every year had a a big
event, a big dinner for the volunteers and they had a choir at this university, so they had the choir come in and sing and the president got and talked and and the people really felt they were valued. And sometimes volunteers feel like, gee, nobody really appreciates what I've done, you know. And it might be
Leya Simmons (28:06)
Yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (28:06)
hours and hours of time that they put in and a lot of times it's not only their time but their talent. Some of the skills that
you can recruit somebody that has skills that you don't have within your organization. We were talking earlier about plan giving. That's the way you can use volunteers and you think, well, gee, we have to have somebody with a lot of expertise. No, you can get a team of what we call allied professionals, estate planning attorneys, financial
Leya Simmons (28:35)
Mm-hmm.
Linda S Lysakowski (28:36)
planners, and they can do things like write articles for your organization, have a seminar on leaving a will. I just
investigated
this in fact because I'm doing it for my church and I think there's still like sixty some percent of people in this country don't have a will. So you're actually doing
Leya Simmons (28:54)
it's a huge percentage, yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (28:56)
your donors a favor by telling them how they can write a will and it's the money's gonna go where they want it to go. So that's a way in fact, you know, we were looking for for this when we talked about where to look for donors.
If you don't have those donors within your organization, I mentioned my church is looking at doing this and we don't have an estate planning attorney in our church. We have attorneys, but none of them are specialized in estate planning.
Leya Simmons (29:26)
Mm-hmm.
Linda S Lysakowski (29:28)
But there's an estate planner that advertises in our church bulletin. So guess who we're gonna call to do that as
Leya Simmons (29:33)
There you go. Yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (29:35)
a volunteer? Because he's obviously committed to to what we're doing. So I think there's
ways that you can find volunteers if you really get creative and
Leya Simmons (29:45)
Mm-hmm.
Linda S Lysakowski (29:46)
other than going to the phone book and just calling up names, you don't want to do that. That's a little bit too creative. But but there are lots of places to find volunteers, but appreciating them is something you need to do once you get them in the door. And training, providing training for
Leya Simmons (30:03)
Well, spe sorry. Spe so we're training
them and appreciating them. We you and I talked a little bit earlier about the, you know, kind of the path of a volunteer to donor, or that, you know, that that you should requ or not require, but you should request of your volunteers that especially if they're fundraising, that they make some sort of gift, a meaningful gift, not putting a dollar amount on it and all of that. What so when is that that
a donor a volunteer, maybe it's not a board member, maybe they're not involved in the fundraising component, but how how do you kind of nudge a volunteer along to becoming a donor? Or what is what does that look like? should you I mean maybe there are certain volunteers that you really shouldn't should not ask for money from. What what are your feelings on that?
Linda S Lysakowski (30:51)
Well, I think the when you should ask them, it depends on what they're doing. If they're a volunteer who is going to be asking for money, then you should they should make their gift before they ask anybody else because it's a well documented statistic that somebody who's making ask is always more successful if they made their own gift first. And it doesn't matter what the amount is.
Maybe
they can give $100, but they're asking other people to give a thousand because that's what those other people can give. But if they're not asking, then I would have a special volunteer appeal. And I was thinking about when I wrote that book, the recruiting and training fundraising volunteers, one
Leya Simmons (31:35)
Mm-hmm.
Linda S Lysakowski (31:36)
of the things that I did to prepare for myself that is I had some focus groups with volunteers from different organizations.
And usually they would come from multiple organizations in one focus group. But I'll never forget one man said to me, you know, I don't mind being asked to give money to this organization, but I really didn't like the way they approached me. He said they sent out a piece of direct mail, and people still do use direct mail, but but he said right.
Leya Simmons (32:06)
yeah. It's having its a mo it's having a moment again, I think.
Linda S Lysakowski (32:10)
But he said they've just
I could tell it was just a standard letter, you know, that they sent out to probably thousands of people and they didn't recognize that I was a volunteer. So if you're gonna do an ask to volunteer, a special volunteer appeal, you start out by thanking them for their volunteer hours and how much you appreciate them, and then say, Well, we really appreciate your time and your talent.
We'd also like you to consider a gift of your treasure too, because time, talent, and treasure are something that almost everybody is familiar with. And then you ask them for a gift, again, based on what you think they can give. You know, s some people can give a lot, some people could maybe only give you ten dollars, but you can say you got a gift from your volunteers, and that really means that your volunteers had a meaningful experience if they're willing to give you money in addition to their time and talent.
Leya Simmons (33:10)
I it I it I I assured Linda at the beginning of this that this was not in any way a plug for Better Unite, here it keeps coming to me that this that having a system in place that allows you to segment, which is the word I'm here, like I'm like segmenting your volunteers and being able to maybe even create workflows following a volunteer path that
That allows them to feel special and singled out as opposed to, like you said, those mass emails, because that would be very infuriating. And you might end up, you know, turning someone that was a $250 donor into a $25 donor like you had happen. And stop volunteering all at the same time, right? So
Linda S Lysakowski (33:41)
and and he stopped being a volunteer too. He just got frustrated.
Leya Simmons (33:46)
that's where we need these like systems of record that can we can mitigate all of that with just the smallest
Linda S Lysakowski (33:51)
Right.
Leya Simmons (33:52)
amount of tech that has absolutely nothing to do with.
with you know the way that we interact with the donors. It just keeps us clean clean on the back end. Linda, this was incredible. I I it so much of what you have said has resonated with me and my experiences both as a board member, as a volunteer, and as a former development director. And I've got to admit right here, right now, that I never did a volunteer appeal and I feel kind of ashamed about this moment.
Linda S Lysakowski (34:22)
Well the key
to also to the volunteer appeal is having a volunteer sign the letter. Don't send letter from your executive
Leya Simmons (34:29)
volunteer to volunteer.
Linda S Lysakowski (34:30)
director or from the director of development because a volunteer can say, I mean I did a lot of direct mail in my days, like when I worked for university, we always had an alumni sign an appeal to the alum,
Leya Simmons (34:43)
Yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (34:44)
a parent sign the letter to parents. We even did students, we did a
A student appeal to our seniors, not that we expected a ton of money from them, but if they gave us a $25 gift, we were happy because it it ingrained philanthropy in them, and that's what we were trying to do. So when they did graduate and get successful, those gifts would increase. But we always had a representative, if it was a volunteer letter, then the volunteer would sign it. So always have a volunteer sign that.
Leya Simmons (35:18)
Such an easy thing to accomplish, but such a common miss, I think that is. Well, Linda, you're leaving us with parting shots of wisdom. I can't even stop her. Just
Linda S Lysakowski (35:27)
Okay.
Leya Simmons (35:28)
keep coming. If you want more, or if you want to go deeper, please go to lindaleesakowski.com. You're going to find recruiting and training, fundraising volunteers. one of her books written in did you say nineteen ninety-four, still holding true today, by the way?
Linda S Lysakowski (35:42)
I think it was nineteen
ninety four, it was a long time ago, but still in publication.
Leya Simmons (35:46)
Well, all of the advice
is apropos today. her most recent fundraising book is The Revolutionary Board, but Linda also has a suite of books on spirituality, and I will be checking those out as well. Again, all of that is on lindaleesakowski.com. And also, Linda has her own two podcasts about one on fundraising or nonprofit work and one on spirituality. Did I get all that right, Linda? Yay!
Linda S Lysakowski (36:11)
Yes. And the
nonprofit one I have some plan giving experts and I've had people just talking about in fact I'm gonna have Leya on there. I just made a deal with her that she's gotta be on my podcast now. Because I think you know, volunteer management is so critical and and I was so thrilled to find your system because I think every organization
You know, we used to try to manage volunteers on Excel spreadsheets, maybe even before that, Word documents. I don't know, it's been a long
Leya Simmons (36:43)
yeah.
Linda S Lysakowski (36:44)
time. But having a a a software system that will help you manage your volunteers is really and I think an important step because it's it's identifying it's a lot like making the ask. It's identifying them, it's recruiting them, it's
You know, making me ask for a dollar amount, but it's managing the volunteers too that if you don't manage them you're gonna lose them.
Leya Simmons (37:13)
Really moves the needle. Well, thank you again, Linda, so much for spending some time with us today. I so
Linda S Lysakowski (37:17)
Thank you for having me.
Leya Simmons (37:19)
appreciate you. I encourage everybody to go take a look at all of Linda's incredible work. She's also available to consult. And I really thank all of you all as well for spending a little bit of time with us today. I very much appreciate it. You can join us again live. We are taking September 1st next Tuesday off, but you will find us again on September. I think that's
8th September 8th at 130 Central. If you want to catch us live on the web show, but we're always on YouTube and on Spotify, however you want to. You'll find all of this information in our show notes as well. I really appreciate everybody here today. Thank you all for joining me and let's go do some good. Bye-bye.
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