Why do you believe leaders hide from funding their vision?
You have an expertise behind this.
So I'd love to hear about that.
Well, when I first got into the business of,
well, I call fund development,
but at that time it was fundraising.
There's a real reason in the two different words.
Okay.
In fundraising, you're looking for how do you can,
if I can use the term,
positively manipulate people to give you money.
Okay.
Yesterday I got a text message
from one of my political campaigns
and it was intimidation, trying to intimidate me.
We've written to you for the last 10 days,
this person's written, this person's written,
you've not responded.
Are you still there?
Are you really interested in our cause?
Well, that was just pure fundraising.
It was trying to intimidate me
that I am no longer valued by them
unless I give them some money.
Yes. Okay.
That is very, and that's all over the place
in our fundraising season of political campaigns.
Right.
But fundraising in its purest form is
I'll give you something if you give me something.
So I get a blanket or I get a t-shirt
or I maybe get a special interview
with a special person on the phone.
It's all about, I'll do this, you do that,
we're happy together.
I learned in my process of developing the book content
that fundraising is really manipulative all the way around.
Wow. Okay.
What I'm trying to do is help people see
that they can find and develop partners
that are equally involved in their mission.
And then you treat them as partners
because they're equally involved.
It's not like I want the money and run,
I want to work with you
because I'm taking your investment, your work
and putting it to work in my vision.
And I have an obligation and a responsibility
to keep you as a partner engaged and informed
and appreciated.
Yes.
And long-term funding,
and that's why I changed the whole term back in the 80s
from fundraising to fund development.
The word development means steps and stages and growth.
And I want to grow with the people that support us.
And I want them to give more.
I chair a board of an organization now
in the Philippines.
And our goal there is to find individuals
who will support little kids going into preschool.
But you can support a kid
or you can support a whole class of kids.
Well, the goal is to get people
to support a whole class of kids.
That's 16 kids every single month, $560 a month.
I may start by getting you to support one kid.
But the partnership says it's worthy
and you can use my money correctly.
And I got to keep them informed.
I got to treat them right.
I got to treat them as if they are the sponsors
of the class, I'm not.
I'm just a facilitator.
Yes.
So the philosophy is very different.
And when I was working with the nonprofit sector
for 35 years, I was really working with them
in their major donor area
and how you treat partners correctly
so you could build sustainable partnerships forever.
Yes.
I've never heard of it that way, Larry.
And I want to reiterate that the difference,
there's a major difference between fundraising
and fund development,
which is why you pretty much decided
to take away from fundraising.
Fundraising is a positive way
of manipulating someone to give you money
that may not have the same vision or mission as you,
which also leads to sometimes by intimidation.
And then the fund development,
which is what you truly promote,
which is finding someone,
which is a partner that has equally involved goals
and visions as you and keeping them engaged
and growing with them.
So- That's right.
And if you do that, they'll stick with you forever.
I'm watching one, our international organization right now
that's probably in the last decade lost $80 million
by failing to treat people right.
Yes. And they have not,
and I'm really saddened about that
because I love the organization,
but they switched gears and they really want the donor,
they call them donors.
With donors are people that get stuck in the arm
with a needle, you extract blood, you give them a cookie.
That's your manipulation is you get a cookie at the end
and the manipulation is, but what you're doing today,
even though it hurts a little bit,
it's helping somebody else.
I mean, they do use, you know, that's, there's value.
I mean, that's what you are doing.
You are helping somebody else.
But when I say a partner, come in every month
and give blood because you are transforming people hurting
and we will help you do what you wanna do.
That is a very different mode
than trying to get you to come into a blood bank
and let me stick you with a needle,
pat you on the back and hope you come back.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And effective fund development bills people
that are lifetime givers, not just seasonal
and giving you once or twice and they go away.
Fundraising, you've always gotta be always finding new people
because you already burned pit past people.
Yes.
And they don't forget that.
No.
When you break trust in a relationship,
you don't get it back very fast.
So Larry, you don't wanna text that guy back
and give him any money?
Yesterday I said, I don't like you trying to intimidate me
and I want you to stop writing me.
Wow.
And I typed stop.
Yes.
Because I was just really worried of the fact
that I was no longer valued except for my money.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And that was a $5 gift.
I mean, they're not wanting a lot of money
on text messaging, but it just irritated me
that they were starting to attack me
as the one that was the bad person
for not giving them money.
That was really what they were doing.
And their goal wasn't to build a relationship
nor a partnership.
Their goal was just the intent.
Just get the money.
Get the money, yes.
Get the money and run.
And I see, I watched, because it's my business,
I frankly like to watch what they do in direct mail
and all the other techniques.
And mainly because you get good ideas and you get bad ideas.
And this space, I just was irritated to the point
when they told me that they had contacted me
this number of times and almost like,
when are you gonna get your act together
and send us five bucks?
Just five bucks.
And I thought, you know, that is not,
I don't want a relationship with you
if you're gonna act that way.
Absolutely.
I'm heavily involved in my political views,
but I'm very careful where I put the money
because I don't want it to go to a big black hole.
Yeah, definitely.
I know how much it costs to put coffee on the table
in a conference room,
and that's not what I wanna pay for
because they don't need coffee in a conference room.
It's 65 to $100 a five gallon pot.
So, you know, it's absorbing it.
And so that's where my money's gonna go.
Absolutely.
If I can help somebody that really will work on the change
that I wanna see, I will consider giving to them,
but I'm not gonna support a coffee pot
in the back of a conference room.
Absolutely.
And you know, you were speaking about donor.
When I first started out, and I'm now a real estate agent,
but when I first started out in my career,
I was a phlebotomist for Plasma Center.
And we had donors who were committed to returning.
And although, yes, they received something from it,
they were committed to four to five hours
of sitting there donating plasma,
which meant that they had a different type of commitment.
Right?
Yeah, and if you had been on your side,
and this is what often doesn't happen,
you are the facilitator.
You're taking the plasma.
If you told them every day how valuable they were
to somebody else's life,
and I'm helping you do what you wanna do,
and I'm looking forward to coming back
so you can help another life,
it's language that you need in your arsenal
to help them come back.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And to inform them.
And it's so crazy because you're speaking my language,
and this is definitely not about me,
but I wanna help you to understand how much I relate.
I also was an organ tissue and eye coordinator.
And so nobody wants to be called, right?
When their loved one is on a ventilator
or they have passed and we asked to donate.
However, the conversation and the relationship
that I had built with them over a short period of time
allowed me to contact them later on
to tell them how many donors received their donation.
And it was a different type of feeling, right?
And that was that staying connected and growing
with that individual as they were going through
such hard times.
Well, what happens in fund development
is the person that gives is equal partners
to those who are doing the work.
Absolutely.
And so your expertise in extracting the donor
or extracting the need is one thing,
but you are helping that person do
what they wanna see happen in changing.
And so if, and people don't realize
that the receptionist in an office
can have an impact on a partner.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Well, now naturally the president
or the chairman of the board at a higher end will have that.
But it's not, you know, cause the person,
my wife died 10 years ago and it was a funny experience.
I'm not talking about the death,
but I had to call UCLA Medical Center
and it was on Christmas Eve and it was about midday
and they had already closed down most of the activity
at UCLA because of the Christmas weekend.
So you gotta get the context of Christmas Eve,
everybody closes at noon, I'm calling at 12, 15.
I ended up talking to a guy that had no business
and picking up the phone.
Oh no.
It sounded like he was from the Munsters.
Hello.
What do you need?
Oh.
He did not know how to relate to me in the situation.
I was trying to figure out how to get my wife's body to them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He was not prepared in his mental condition
or his education at UCLA, however he got the job,
to treat the person that calls with grace and listening
and helping them accomplish their objective.
Now it was so funny that I was actually
chuckling with the gal that was helping me
because she died about 15 minutes before.
But it was a humorous thing to go through
but he didn't have any business.
Even though I was calling the morgue,
they should have had somebody else there
that was there to help me accomplish my objectives.
Absolutely.
And so that's now nothing to do with money.
But it speaks the same language.
My wife had to make a trip to UCLA to extract her brain
because of her brain tumor.
Yeah.
We were on a weird weekend, I understand that.
And to this day, it's a humorous story
and I chuckle about it.
I think how sad it was that he could not have helped me
be a little bit more kind and gentle.
I'm so sorry.
What can I do to help you?
It was almost like I had to push him to help me.
Yes, yes.
That was UCLA's problem, not his problem.
Yeah, yeah.
He could have been schooled in it to do better
or they could have said,
we don't ever have this one pick up the phone.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And like you said, yes,
we're speaking of something completely different,
but I believe that this could relate to someone
that is in the medical field
or that is trying to push a business or an entrepreneur.
The biggest thing I think we're speaking about
is developing a relationship first.
It's relational capital is what you do that.
And when I wrote the book,
it really transformed,
prior to the book, I was doing a good job in fundraising.
I mean, I was not trying to be even covertly manipulating
and we were doing well.
But when I started realizing the biblical foundation
of how God wants us to be givers
and to help populate the world with effective giving
and receiving and help that way,
it started to transform everything.
Up to that time,
we were the fundraising wing of the organization.
After that, we became the world involvement ministry
and we were involving people in world needs.
And you want to help, we would like to have you help,
we will help you help.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We changed everything.
I would never allow anybody in my structure thereafter
to ever say we're working with donors.
Yes, yeah.
We're working with financial partners
who have skin in the game.
Whether it was $5 or a million dollars.
And I worked with many people
that would write million dollar checks.
It didn't make any difference.
They were, you know,
and Jesus was observing people in the temple giving
to his disciples.
And he said, look at that lady over there.
She gave all she had the last two cents into the coffers,
the widow's might.
That was no different than Nicodemus
giving the tomb for Jesus
or other people doing major extraordinary things.
The amount of money is not the critical issue here.
It's how we see each other
and how we realize that we are engaging to,
it's God to people and people to people.
All of our gifts come from God himself.
We don't own anything.
How do we distribute what he's given to us
to help the lives of other people?
And that's the message over the years has been,
let's treat them royally.
Let's treat them with honor.
They are chosen to invest in you.
Let's make sure that they feel
that their investment is making a difference.
And let's go put a $65 pot of coffee
in the back of the room
because we just wasted somebody's valuable asset
for that coffee to go cold in the back of the room.
Absolutely.
And I believe I wrote this down
and it's having biblical principles
and practical steps that lead to thriving in life
with purpose, abundance and contentment every day.
And I believe that's the vision and the goal that-
That's the essence of the book.
And when we do an interview,
we're talking about stuff like we're talking about now.
The book just backs up the content.
Absolutely.
I spoke on Sunday and in 30 minutes,
I gave a summary of nine chapters.
Wow.
They didn't read the book, but they got the essence.
They got the Cliff Note edition.
And then I said, if you're really wanting to get into this
or if you know somebody else is struggling
because they're confused, they live in fear,
they don't know where they're going,
get them this book because this book will help them.
Wow.
So people were getting the book
because they wanted to help somebody else.
Now I hope they read it themselves.
I think everybody can benefit by a restart
on how they think about life and stewardship.
Stewardship is not about money.
Stewardship is a lifestyle
that happens to include occasional giving of money.
But there's time and there's my attention.
There's my giving attention by looking people in the eye,
a listening ear, a little bag of cookies
next door for a person that's lonely.
I mean, there's a hundred ways to give.
And the reason we don't is because we are deceived
in some believing it's all for us,
which is a major problem in our culture,
but it's a worldwide problem, not just American culture.
And then we believe that if it's all for me,
how do I make it to the next day?
I'm not thinking about the needs of others.
And I've got the ability today
to help you accomplish your objective
if I'm just sensitive to you.
So indifference plays a really,
and indifference is a caution
because you can be indifferent to people really easy.
That does not say you have to give to every single thing.
In fact, smart stewards say no to a lot of things.
So it's not bad to say no.
I will never give to a person on a freeway
looking for a handout.
I may gave him a card telling him where he can get real help,
but I'm not gonna waste my money on him
so he can go buy another pint of liquor.
It is because my stewardship does not stop
when I give the money.
Absolutely, absolutely.
That makes no sense at all.
So why don't I give him on the street?
Somebody says, why keep $5 and change in my car all the time
so I can help people?
No, what you really are doing is relieving your guilt.
Yeah. Wow.
Yeah, that's all you're doing.
And you're passing on
because he's not gonna spend the money you wanted.
And they say, well, once I give it to him, it's his, no?
Your responsibility is to ensure
that your stewardship is effectively working
because God's holding you accountable for that stewardship,
not somebody else.
Wow.
And that's definitely very powerful
because I think the newer entrepreneurs are,
and I've had this discussion with other podcast guests
that they have a product
and that are just selling the product
in order to receive money.
And they don't have passion or vision behind the product.
And so it looks like, it seems like some are just out there
just to get the money and in any way, shape, form or fashion,
which I believe has a result
of not having a long-term business,
but yet a short-term business.
Well, and our culture,
our secular culture is teaching us what's in it for me.
Yes, yes.
See?
So it's the same thing that happened
in the book of Genesis.
There was a little thing called
the snake show up to Abed-Niv.
It was all about what's in it for them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The game plan from Genesis 2 to 2024 has not changed.
Yeah, exactly.
And that's all it's about.
So there's many people,
now I know that I need to be profitable in doing a book.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But if my motivation is to write a book to be profitable,
then I've got the wrong motivation.
Absolutely.
And I don't deserve to see it successful
if all I'm trying to do is get you to send me 25 bucks
so I can make a little bit more money off of you.
No, I know we got to exchange the cost.
I understand that.
If I don't have an economic stream
that allows me to keep on going, I can't keep on going.
But my motivation is not because I'm making 25 bucks.
My motivation is how can I help you be productive in giving?
Absolutely.
And giving your life away.
And yes, I wrote one chapter out of 17 chapters,
there's one chapter on money.
Because everybody expects a book about stewardship
to talk about money.
So let's talk about it.
And that's clear in the back of the book
because that's part of application.
It's not a part of understanding the principles.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.