Hello everyone, my name is Ryan and you are listening to The Vegan Report. It is said that money is the nerve of war, and in the war of making a better world for animals, the same rule applies. The only reason why professional vegan non-profits such as Mercy for Animals, PETA, the Paul Watson Foundation or Suchafarm exist and thrive is because of money, and that money does not grow on trees, it is the result of extensive fundraising efforts.
And for today's episode, my wish is for vegan organizations, both big and small, to become champions of fundraising. To help us achieve this goal, I am thrilled to welcome Marina Boulos-Winton, a rock star in the philanthropic world, who has graciously agreed to share with us the secrets behind her success. Marina is currently the Executive Director of Yes Employment Plus Entrepreneurship.
She previously served for 10 years as the Executive Director of Chez Doris, a day shelter for women in difficulty. Prior to this, she held the position of President and CEO at the Foundation of Greater Montreal.
Her professional journey also includes serving as the Acting Executive Director of the High Water Women Foundation, as President and CEO of the National I Have a Dream Foundation, as Assistant National Executive Director of the YWCA, as well as Senior Executive Positions with the National Fundraising Consulting Firm CCS Fundraising Inc. and with the United Way of New York City. So welcome Marina, thank you so much for having accepted my invitation.
I'm so glad to have you on for so many different reasons. I should tell listeners that you were my teacher in college and you were one of the main reasons why I decided to launch myself into a career in fundraising. You were very inspiring and I always had so much respect for your professionalism, for your expertise and I feel like this is a gift. This is a gift for me to help. Thank you.
I remember you as one of my first students and that you were very keen, very eager to learn, accepting of all the information that you were given. And for me, preparing the syllabus, so it was my first time teaching, it was a great way for me to prepare a syllabus and topics for my students that also perfected my work, my actual work. So it was also beneficial for me. So thank you for that.
And I find it extremely rewarding that from one course that I taught, which was about prospect research, like finding donors that I now see many years later, my old students in positions where they're really my equals, right? So it's very rewarding. That's amazing. And prospect research is my favorite step in getting fundraising. I just love it. It's so fun. And maybe we should start with that.
I think that when people hear about fundraising, they get anxious and they're not really interested in doing the fundraising. So they are passionate about the cause and they want to pursue their goals as nonprofit leaders. But then the fundraising is like the legume you don't want to eat. Yes. So why is fundraising fun? Can you make the case for loving fundraising?
Well, if you're working for a great cause, fundraising, I think, is an honor and a privilege because you are a solution to the problem. And our charities exist because private citizens decided to put together this organization because a problem existed that wasn't getting solved by the government. And so you have many, many great mission-based organizations that need people's philanthropic dollars. And if you believe in the mission, it's an honor to be raising money to solve societal problems.
So I think that's how it has to be seen. If there's a problem with the mission, then you have a problem. If it's not compelling, if you're not solving problems, then you're not going to raise any money. I think that I mentioned how you could feel anxiety from doing fundraising. And maybe this has to do with the ask, this asking for funding. So do you have any thoughts about that, how to facilitate the ask? So it's very stressful asking people for money.
There's many ways of asking people for money, whether people still do, believe it or not, direct mail or grant writing or events. There's lots of different ways to raise money. And so you have to see what is the best way to ask for money and within people's means. There's a difference between asking somebody for $50 versus $500 versus $5,000, $50,000, half a million dollars or $5 million. So those are all asks.
So your question was, so why is it so difficult or how do you encourage somebody to not be so... Like I think some people have a fear of being rejected, right? But the first piece of advice I would have to say in starting your fundraising career, let's say, is to learn how to tell a compelling story about your cause. So I think people give to people.
I'm now with a different cause and while my cause might not be of interest to everyone that donated to my former cause, people still return my phone calls. People give to people. It's important to develop a relationship with our donors to be honest, to communicate, to communicate the impact and to share real life success stories to create that emotional connection. So I still have a connection with a lot of my donors.
Like sometimes my donors would even invite me, let's say, their other cause was, let's say, the opera or something like that and they would invite me to concerts. So of course I would go and I've kept in touch with them. It's important to reach out to people who already care about the cause. So if you're starting cold, it's not the best thing to do, right?
It's much harder starting with a blank slate like where am I going to shake the bushes to get donors than looking at a list that you already have. It's also important to know what people's capacity is. It's one of the most important elements. So a very good example, a mistake that actually one of my colleagues made yesterday was that she was making a request for a hundred thousand dollar gift. She didn't do her research and they never give more than ten thousand dollars.
And they responded to us right away saying, well, like, our assets are so small, we don't have that capacity. Can you resubmit your proposal? Thankfully, they gave us that opportunity, right? It's also important to focus again on relationships. So in crafting proposals or making asks, you try to see if you have a commonality. So with the same donor, well, the president of the board is somebody that I went to high school with. So I mentioned it.
I mentioned that this person may not know me well, but she knows about the quality of my work. I also mentioned that I remember very well the founder of this foundation or the person who this foundation is named after and why there is such a great link to our cause. So it's a bit of marketing, really. It's to try to grab people, get their attention and to say, hey, look at me, right? Look at me like there's a lot of great causes, but you have to find the connection.
And really, it's with practice. I've been doing this for more than 30 years. It's with practice that you get really good at it. And the people I find who are the pros at finding a connection with people are people in planned giving, people who are successful in getting people to think of their cause and put it in their will. Yes, planned giving. That's something... Well, could you explain what planned giving is and why it's important to think about it?
So it's called planned giving because you're not giving now, you're giving later. And so you either put the name of a charity in, let's say, an insurance policy or your, I don't know, your RRSPs, any type of savings that when you... or a will, your last living testament. And you can give either a percentage of your estate, a fixed amount, fixed assets, such as a house. So just to give you an example, it was a very dear lady who...
And the people who are really the most susceptible to putting charities in their wills are people who have no children. So it's important to look at your donor list, look at who is a faithful donor, faithful, regular donor. Those are the people who are, even though they give small amounts, maybe they're on a fixed income, but it's important to look at who are your faithful donors and then start having conversations or getting to know them over time.
And if you publish literature on like a brochure or an advertisement or an email about, have you thought about putting us in your will or to plan a gift after you leave, they respond. So in one case, one woman, just a conversation, no children wants to leave her legacy behind, wants to be remembered. How can she be remembered? She doesn't really have any money other than her house. And I said, well, why not your house? And she said, that's an excellent idea.
And so, it's important to develop like a friendship. It's such a huge honor to be being given someone's house and then having to take care of selling it, emptying out the contents. It's something that needs to be done in a very respectful way. Definitely. I feel like giving, the way you portrayed it and fundraising is about creating relationships and then deepening those relationships. Is this a good way to summarize? That is it in a nutshell. Thank you.
And what about the person who thinks, I'm just starting here. I don't have the many years of experience that Marina has. And I'm just starting this new organization, this new cause. How do I get it off the ground? Starting from scratch. Is there any hope for me to fundraise for my cause if I don't have already that pool of supporters? How do I go from zero to 10? So, I'm working. So look, I've worked for a couple of causes. Right now I'm working for a third where they didn't have many donors.
Like they had, they didn't have zero, but they had like maybe 250 at best. And it takes time. It takes, I think after two years you will start seeing the results. But it's the ability to tell your story first and to be in social media, the media in general, like the more people who know about you and what you want to do is key. Because after repeating your name or your cause and what you do after so many times, that's how you develop brand recognition.
And that's what causes like the charitable sector has to do all the time as well, as well as inform, let's say the media, right? And have stories written about the work that they're doing. So but it's difficult to do your work with no money. Starting a charitable endeavor is very entrepreneurial and it requires a lot of sacrifice on behalf of the social entrepreneur. So how does one start? I really believe in investing money in prospect research. So the, so your podcast is international, right?
So but I guess people could Google what type of prospect research is available. I personally use something called charity can and grant connect in Canada. I know that in the US and maybe it's international is a software called I wave I w a V E, which has people from all over the world. So and also you need to realize, okay, what type of donors are the ones who will be the most attracted to my cause? Is it individuals? Is it companies? Is it charitable foundations?
Is it another segment of the corporate world? Is it the government? So in my case right now, for instance, most of our, the bulk of the money comes from government because we help the economy. Whereas a homeless organization or an organization that helps, let's say stray animals, it will largely be individuals and it depends largely on marketing, social media to get those individual donors.
And the only other donors that are corporate in nature would probably be corporations that produce pet food or pet store, like well, pet supply stores, right? So you really have to see which segments of the population are the most. And then also foundations who have a mission that's similar to yours. So it requires interest capability and would they be interested in you? So you have to try to develop a relationship. So it could even be sending e-newsletters, right?
So you bring people in that way. So the last charity I worked for, which was an organization for homeless women, actually the mission evolved over time. It made it more compelling. It was strictly a day shelter for vulnerable women. A lot of lonely women came, but with the lack of housing that I think the whole world is experiencing, the lack of housing, the cost of living increasing.
It was evident that we also had to serve homeless women and the donor base grew from certainly 250 to well over 15,000 in no time and its budget grew tenfold. So that's the advice I have to give for somebody who's starting out with a clean slate. Let's go back to the prospecting tools because I feel like it's not that it's a secret, but I feel like this is not something we often talk about in the fundraising world, that those powerful tools are available to us.
So what does Grant Connect, iWave, what's their function and what's the price range of getting those softwares, those data banks? So it could range anywhere from something that you might be able to find at the library if you ask the reference librarian to get it. So it could cost as little as maybe $800 to something that could cost as much as $3,000 or $4,000 per year. What they do is they do data mining.
And so if you were to do it by hand, which I have done like at the very beginning of the last charity that I worked for, is I would go online and look at similar charities and look at their donor list. I would look at their annual reports, who they were thanking. Sometimes it's broken down by their biggest donors by categories, and it would tell me. But this is a very painstaking process. It's very long.
You know, you write it out by hand or you start typing and you put it on an Excel spreadsheet and then you have to figure out, okay, so how much do they give per year? You have no idea. It's like taking a stab in the dark.
What these data mining softwares do is that you can tell it, you know, give me all the organizations, let's say in Montreal or New York or whatever, in Montreal who donate to the environment and I'm only interested in, I don't know, organizations that have assets of 50 million dollars or more, which means that, you know, it's a decent sized charity and it'll give you a list. And it could even produce an Excel spreadsheet for you. You can choose the ones that you want.
It gives you the contact information, phone number, everything. So for instance, just like my colleague who made the error of not looking in the prospect research software, she would have known that this foundation is a very small foundation. They only, I don't know, they don't have assets of more than half a million dollars, right? And so they only have like $25,000 to give every year. So of course they're going to say, we're going to only consider requests no more of $10,000.
And if they have, you know, they used to get five to 10 requests, as the person explained. Well, now they're getting 30 requests per year. So it's more work for just amount of the same amount of money because their assets are always the same. They're never changing. So eventually these foundations become smaller. Well they're the same size, but they don't keep up with inflation. So you have to focus on the big ones first and then the smaller ones later.
I think it's also important to talk about restricted and unrestricted gifts with that. So people might think that, you know, well you've got it made if you're able to get really large gifts, like let's say from the government or foundations. But the reality is, is that the little gifts, the $50 gifts, the dinner that you're going to, the gala that costs $500, $1,000, whatever, those are super important as well because the smaller gifts is your unrestricted funding.
And so when your costs are increasing, you know, like your rent, your wages, because the cost of living is getting higher and your grants are not indexed for inflation. It is very important to be able to count on those small donations, even though there are a lot of work for your friend raising capabilities and to pay for your unrestricted, for your operating expenses that your grants are not paying for. Because it pays for either the highest need.
It could pay for a repair that you hadn't an expense that was unforeseen. And there you go, you know, so that's, that's, I think that that's, it's important to keep that in mind. How do you explain that to donors? How do you make them understand that need? Because there are many donors who have that mindset of, I want all of my money to go to this project 100% and I don't want to cover operational costs or anything like that. How do you address that?
So a classic example is I was once, I sent a proposal to a donor or a prospective donor at the time and it was all salaries. And she said, but I want to donate to programs. And I said, but the salaries are the program. It's just a different word. They are the people who will feed the homeless women who will provide them the counseling and who will find them an apartment. That's your program. So you can't offer also your programs without a percentage of administrative costs.
And so we instituted, it's important to institute or to say that let's say 10 or 15%, 15% is perfectly acceptable. That we'll pay for operational costs such as accounting to make sure that your grant is well spent for the rent, for the heat, and for marketing or communication expenses so that we could tell people what we're doing. It's perfectly acceptable. And when you present it that way, they'll understand.
I have not met anyone who did not understand and they said, well, then charge us more for something else so that you'll get, you know, like because we don't like that. Our board doesn't like that word. Right? So the program officer who you're having conversations with, if they like you enough, they will guide you.
Another thing that came to mind was how many nonprofits, at least in the animal sector and it's a recurring comment, are dependent on a certain segment of donors, for instance, individual donors and how they wish to diversify and get new donors. What is your answer to that problem? I think that, well, look, I'm realizing I'm working for it. We'll talk about, I'm working in a completely different sector and it's difficult to get individual donors.
So your question is, how can organizations that help animals, how can they get away from individual donors? They can't. It's extremely labor intensive to deal with individual donors. I get it. It's also dealing people like really having a relationship with people who have an emotional connection to animals, period, who are very sensitive people affected by when people, when animals are hurt as well. Right?
And having to, I see it on social media, like I'm on, you know, like I'm on these community Facebook posts and some people are, for instance, obsessed with taking pictures of cats and they think that they're stray. And so a lot of people chime in or so it gets a lot, when animals are involved, there's a lot of reactions. Right? So it's having to go through all that. It's necessary, unfortunately. And you have to count yourself lucky because at least people are coming to you. Right?
And so it's easy to have, it's easier to have conversations with people when they're coming to you as opposed to you going to them. Right? It's important to also use traditional media, I think, as well. And I think the segment of the population who are interested in animals are especially those who are more elderly because their pets are like family. Right? They might be living alone. They have the comfort of their pets.
And that's where you, it's, that's the segment of the population that's probably the most interested. Their children have gone away or maybe they don't have children and their pets have brought them a lot of comfort. That's very true. And that's something I never thought about weirdly enough. But yes, in that case, you know, you talked about how it is labor-intensive and it is. And there's also that emotional toll.
So let's talk about maybe the cost, the mental health cost of doing fundraising, starting with, you know, rejection, getting rejections, but also managing those relationships. How do you deal with that? First of all, where do you put the boundaries? And then how do you manage your mental health while doing fundraising? So I think there are some causes I've realized that you can be more successful, you will have less rejections than others.
So if, for instance, I think since the pandemic, helping the homeless has been very popular because it's a need, like it's evident, like when we were in lockdown, it was evident who, the many, many people who didn't have a home. So it's harder actually for those who are working with the vulnerable who face trauma and or let's say people who work with pets that have been traumatized and you live their trauma. And so it's important to practice self-care and have your limits.
And so some people, so I met people who, you know, counselors whose doctors told them, find another living because you're going from charity, like charity to charity, charity with the same mission, but you burn out because you can't handle the trauma that you're listening to or hearing or you're seeing or hearing from your clients. And it's the same goes for pets is that if it's bad for your mental health, it's important to realize like, is this the right career for me as well?
And it's important to be able to distance yourself and not make it a 24-7 career. I'll give you another example of, I think another example of where people have difficulty in their careers. You know, I had the privilege in my last job of working with many Inuit women who live in Northern Quebec. They live in a very, very, well, much more rural environment. They come down to the South, often with not the education, the language, the background needed to work in an urban environment.
Especially Indigenous women fall prey to the sex trade. And our counselors also, the counselors that work with these ladies, it's hard for them. But who it's even harder for is if you have an Indigenous employee who works with Indigenous clients who could be relatives, who could be, you know, like in other words, who could be relatives or friends of relatives. It's a small community.
And so not only are they helping people nine to five during their work, but they're also helping people because they're successful in, you know, during their private time. So and they tend to burn out very quickly and do not last more than two years. It's very unfortunate.
So we can say that for a lot of communities who come, you know, they're successful, they come to another city, they send money back home, or they're the, you know, they're the first to graduate from university and they're helping maybe their own family that might have a lot of problems during their own time. You really have to take the time to rest and be strong for your job, which is, you know, maybe Monday to Friday, nine to five or other times.
So I also want to tell you about, speak to you about rejection. So I'm now the executive director of Youth Employment Services in Montreal, also known by its marketing name, yes, Employment Plus Entrepreneurship. And I came to this organization thinking, well, I'm a rock star, like in fundraising, and all of a sudden, I don't feel like a rock star. Right. Why?
Because our mission really is to help young people, 18 to 39 year olds, find work and to also help people of any age become entrepreneurs and launch companies, as well as we have a third pillar of service where it's, we help artists, we teach artists how to monetize their work. So we really contribute a lot to the economy, we prevent vulnerabilities, we launch certainly 500, 600 or more companies per year.
And we contribute to the, like we contribute to the wellbeing and to the fabric of Montreal. Our mission, however, is to help English speakers in Quebec and to help them learn French and prevent them from leaving the province because they can't find work or they can't find their place. It's not a sexy mission, I'm told. It's not sexy because let's say the language of the majority is French. And you know, some people prefer, most people prefer helping everyone regardless of their language.
And I've been told that, especially by foundations, that we don't have the curb appeal or the sex appeal that a homeless organization does. So now I have to do my homework in crafting compelling stories and finding the type of donors that would be more interested in us. Yes, the government is interested in us, but you're at, you know, the government can change as we can see in the US right now, right? Lots of changes happening in the charitable sector.
It could happen in Canada, it could happen anywhere as soon as there's a change in government. So I have to find the secret sauce of who will find us sexy? And how can I make us more sexy? So is it creating a new program where I'm helping more vulnerable communities such as young people aging out of foster care, veterans, or Indigenous people, or more visible minorities who have a tougher time finding jobs? Absolutely.
That's, that's, to think that, you know, you find yourself in this situation with this, it feels like sadistic, like, It's cruel. It's cruel. It doesn't. It's like, what do you mean it's not sexy? It's very sexy. I've been told that several times. You're not sexy. It's a weird problem also to have in North America, you know, not that many people can relate to how come, you know, you're having problem with, with, you know, serving English speaking communities.
And it's just the, the crazy circumstances of living in Quebec. And, and thank you so much for sharing that struggle because I'm 100% sure that many of our listeners are facing some kind of same struggles and, and are thinking maybe I'm the problem in this equation. You know? No, no, no, no, no, but it's, it's just, it's a question of finding the solution. And sometimes, you know, there's a lot of finger pointing. I think it's important. Well, first, let me, let me backtrack.
First of all, it's important to do a matrix, right? So when you're fundraising, you have a pipeline, you want to know what is your success rate and is your success rate getting better over time and why, right? So I think that one person at the very least should be producing, let's say at the very least 50 proposals a week, right? And if, if they're all successful, that means you have twice the amount of work the following year.
You have to be, you have to vision what's going to be your needs later on because that means you're going to have, you're going to be working twice as hard filling out reports and as well as renewing applications or finding new people, right? So you have to think along those lines and you have to think, okay, so if I'm constantly getting rejected, speak to the people who have rejected you and ask them for their advice. Their advice is free and people love to give advice.
And so that's what I've been doing is I'm, I'm, I'm asking people for advice actually now I'm, we're doing a strategic plan. We're interviewing people. We're asking people, what do you think of our mission? What would make it more interesting? And I think that, you know, the, the crazy, crazy politics that we're in is that we would be seen, the English speaking community would be seen as a partner in trying to promote the French language and the culture as well.
So how like, as they say in French, you cannot now, especially with the new laws that were in place two years ago, you cannot get away with not speaking French because the language of business for companies having 25 people or more has to be in French. And that even includes us. So we're at least 25 employees.
So that brings other interesting things because, you know, like even if you have an event planner who has to look for venues, you can't go out there and only speak English when you're looking for a venue and your counterpart is a francophone. It's, it's, it's, it's, you know, it's not done. Right. So I think everybody has to do their part in speaking French, but certainly being bilingual or having more than two languages is extremely desirable. Definitely.
And yeah, as you said, in this political climate, I think we should be investing in economic development. I think again, incontournable. I want to talk about that step of crafting a story and a compelling case and maybe start with this problem that I think exists in the animal cause, which is, you know, how much cruelty do I show on social media and how, you know, do I, do I show pictures of dogs, cows, chickens, whatever, being in pain or being happy?
And I have had conversations where people have told me, you know, leaders of organizations, there is a, we don't like always peddling the, those negative emotions that come with presenting difficult footage, but it does, you know, people do react more intensely to that and get more engaged, but at the same time, you know, on the long-term, is that a viable strategy? So what are your thoughts on that?
I think when someone, when you present a sad story, but then it has a solution, right, is much more compelling. So it's the same thing that goes for homeless people, like we, I started off by showing, I remember the first picture I used was a picture of somebody sleeping in our garbage sheds. Very jarring situation, but I also used a before and after picture of this person sitting on her bed in her brand new apartment. I think, look, I mean, it's marketing, right?
And you, is it a necessary evil to show the sad pictures? No, but I think you also have to listen to your donors who will then tell you, you know, I'm tired of always looking at haggard faces. Can you show me smiling faces? Right? So I remember having that effect when we had a fundraising event and we had, we announced a million dollar gift from a donor. And we had, it was like, you know, a simple three person band singing, Here Comes the Sun from the Beatles.
And we flashed pictures of smiling women throughout the song. It had such a profound, it touched everybody. There were like 300 people in the room and they were crying. You know, you don't cry so much when, like maybe the recipients, like I know I would cry if somebody gave me a million dollar gift for my cause, but to have everybody crying in the room and then to see all these smiling pictures, some of them toothless, you know, it has, it depends.
You have to listen and be intuitive to your audience. You know, I think you have to use all sorts of messaging as well. Like you have to not forget to thank people. I think that's also important that not only to ask for money, but to send pictures of smiling dogs or animals or cats, because I believe that they smile too. They really do. And say thank you.
Yes. I think that for many people, there's an inclination to peddling into the more negative emotions, the outrage, the anger, the fear instead of, and there's another, we're overlooking the positive ones and the power they could have and they could bring in. I love this idea of mixing the two and giving a positive twist to that story. Yes. I think it's genius.
Yes. As a matter of fact, I mean, I told you an example of what I did at the beginning, but more and more I was using positive stories like the women who went to school, the women who got their kids back, the ones who got off of, went to drug rehab, are living clean. And you know, so I think it's more important to convey the positivity than what I started off with. Yes and people, you know, we're living in this same, you know, more or less negative atmosphere with the news cycle and all of that.
So we're looking for places where we get our inspiring stories and definitely for the listener who is managing a nonprofit or a fundraiser. You could be that place for your book. I think also it's important to convey the good stories that were had because of a donation. And it makes people dream like I can be that person as well.
So when the last organization that I worked for had its first million dollar gift, it made people dream and other people came out of the woodwork to also give their a million dollar gift or more. Yes, I absolutely love this advice. We should feature other donors and share their stories and even give them the mic and let them talk about why they are donors and what made them support this cause. They're in the best position to do this.
Right. But I don't think I really answered your question about how do you craft a case, like let's say a case for support. Is that what your question was at some point? So it's important to not only start with a powerful mission and story, but it's also important to define your problem clearly. Like what do you need to solve a problem? You use data.
In my case, I would say 40% of young job seekers who are English speaking are struggling to find work due to language barriers or lack of experience. They need this and this type of support. It costs X amount of money. Explain your solution. And what is our success rate in the past? Right. We help over 2,000 job seekers land meaningful work every year and demonstrate an urgency. Like you have to look at your statistics to tell them our calls have increased by 27%. We can't keep up with demand.
We need your support. And why would your gift make a difference? Sometimes especially in raising money for animal causes, it's small gifts. So what can you, you know, you break down the gift, the impact of a gift. So what does $50 give you? What does $500 give you? What does $5,000 give you? And you just be inclusive to everybody and all types of donors will show up. Another question about the case is the medium we use to present that case. And you did mention traditional media.
You also mentioned direct mail, which surprises a lot of people. Yeah. Especially young people. Yes. There's still an older generation of people who still write out checks and donate to direct mail. We don't get as much direct mail as we used to. The rate of response is higher than in social media. But I guess it depends on the cause really. I would imagine that for the homeless.
So the homeless, helping the homeless or food banks or poverty relief organizations tends to attract people who believe in their faith. Right? They're either they come from all sorts of religions. They're faith based. And they have a deep belief in helping those who are disadvantaged and help. It's their beliefs to really help people out of difficult situations. I think when it comes to animal causes, it's probably the same thing. It's older people who probably are the donors.
It's important to analyze your donor database. There are also companies that do that that will tell you who, like based on their postal codes, are they from wealthy neighborhoods? Do they have a lot of like their house could be worth a lot? Are they educated? Are they elderly? Are they in an area that is frequented by a lot of elderly people? So I used to once work for our community foundation. I was the CEO. And we would do direct mail or advertising in magazines for seniors.
Because the mission of the community foundation is to set up funds, funds that, you know, that where the assets stay in place, but the interest is given in perpetuity. So it's a form of plan giving. And so it's older people who are attracted to that. So where do you find the older people? And sure enough, you know, people would respond to direct mail. Yes, send me more information.
And then they have a conversation with the plan giving director or officer and a contract assigned for, you know, maybe donating their house or other assets. I know that many animal nonprofits are on social media a lot. That's where I see many of them. And my feed, you know, as someone who supports this cause is just overcrowded with different animal nonprofits. And I do see their messaging and sometimes their fundraisers and how much, you know, their mission echoes each other.
So for instance, you have a sanctuary based in Oregon, another one based in Quebec. But it's the same. It's a sanctuary for animals and with the same mission. And I guess maybe another question I had regarding that is how should you collaborate with other nonprofits in your fundraising? Maybe to avoid that other, you know, competition of, you know, attention or, you know, how do you interpret that situation? I think that what I can see from the animal charities is that they're very territorial.
So for instance, one charity that helps animals is very much in a local newspaper and they have space that's given to them for free for adopting pets, right? And then people will go to their website. And if they're really interested in that charity and helping, you know, foster animals or donate, that's their go-to because it's part of the fabric of the community. So it's highly unlikely that for instance, a charity, an animal charity in Quebec will collaborate with another charity in Oregon.
But it is interesting that if you are involved, very involved with the charity in Montreal, that you want to look at what are their ways of attracting new donors, right, to their charity that can be brought here. But I don't hear of so many stories of, I don't know, in the US, it's unusual in that people will come travel with pets all the way from Kentucky, like in the South, all the way to the North in New York City. There are plenty of pets also in New York City that need a home, right?
So people, I think people realize that and they're more territorial and wanting to help a charity in their own community. So again, in Montreal, you'll have, you know, you'll have places in that are outside the island or at the west end of the... People are affected by their own community charities, but these charities will always become, will most likely always be small boutique charities. And that's okay. That's okay. Yeah. That's the weird thing about social media.
You know, you don't feel like you belong to a certain place. Like you see, you develop a relationship with different charities that are not in your neighborhood or in your country. Right. Right. But yeah, well, there must be a lot of charities and it must take up a lot of one's time to do that, right? To pay attention to all these charities. I'm not implying that I do. Okay. Is there a ceiling for fundraising? A ceiling? What do you mean? In terms of capacity.
So you mentioned how, you know, some sanctuaries, it's more of a boutique model because of the limitations of where you are and all of that. But how do you assess, you know, I'm the type of charity that will never grow past that and that's my ceiling and I should assess my success according to that. Is there a way to find that out? Well, I think it's, there's a way of finding that out by doing a feasibility study, right?
Like a feasibility study is basically, usually it's done by a third party who will analyze your mission, see if people outside your regular group would be like, you kind of think, okay, who would I love to get as a donor? And so you ask these people, would you ever donate to my cause and what would I have to do for you to be interested in me? So there are consultants who do that. I'm also, I also do it with my own donors, like I'm well known enough that people will take my call to do that.
But I think sometimes it's also then doing a strategic plan to see how can your mission change because you have to turn yourself into a pretzel to be something that you're not to change in order for people to donate even more, right?
So one good example of a charity that I was the executive director of was a national charity whose model was to adopt kids, quote unquote adopt, it was a real adoption, kids from underperforming schools in challenged neighborhoods where there was a very low high school graduation rate, give them the same kids, like let's say from grade three up until grade 12, an afterschool program consisting of tutoring, mentorship and fun team activities to the same kids. It's a very expensive and long model.
And that's an example of a boutique charity because not everybody is interested in that model, right? I mean, it'll work, it's great. It'll help a few thousand kids per year, but it's not an evergreen model. The group that you adopt is the only group that you adopt. If they graduate, will you adopt another group?
And so the model was originally that it had to be a high net worth individual to do it, but who, not many people want to spend $1.2 million at the time, or it's probably more than that, over 10, 12 years to the same group of kids. And that was it, right? Well, you've helped people graduate from high school and you also help pay for their college education after that, but it doesn't appeal to everybody. But that's a boutique charity. Definitely. Marina, I don't want to take more of your time.
Do you have any parting words, last advice before we end the recording? Just love what you do. That's it. That's all that's important. Love what you do. Thank you so much, Marina. Thank you very much, valuable advice, and I hope this podcast gets shared among, you know, in the animal cause and activists and leaders, because there's a need to do better fundraising that space. And yeah, so thank you. Thank you so much. You're very welcome. Thank you, everyone, for listening.
I kindly invite you to share this podcast with the vegans you know. Let's encourage more people to take action. Again, thank you so much for caring, and I will see you next Tuesday for a new episode.