How can leaders lean into finding their vision?
Well, I think if you don't have funding, it's pretty hard to get your vision going.
So if you believe enough in it and you are unwavering in your belief, then you will
find and the vision is good and people you're able to inspire them to jump on board, then you
will find funding. I mean, separate to that, asking people for money is hard. It's hard.
And I mean, I was raised with, I remember my father saying to me, oh, you know, the classiest
people are the ones that don't talk about money. And I agree with that to an extent, but if you run
a charity or any organisation, you do actually have to ask for money. It's called the money story.
So you just have to get comfortable with that. Now, you can't just ask people that you have
no relationship with, you know, asking for any significant amount of money. It's a relationship
and nothing big is going to happen online over a text message. It's going to be lunch or a coffee.
And it's like putting compost in the garden over time. They need to believe you're a person of
integrity. They need to believe in the vision. They also like supporting, in our case, sort of
small yet big charity. So how do they lean into it? They've got to believe it and maybe get a
little bit of advice on how to do it. So for example, we have to ask, or I have to ask for
matched funds. So it's tax time now. So our biggest donation time of the year. And if we have a matched
fund, so people donate $5 and then their five becomes 10 because of a matched fund, hugely
attractive for people. So you need to make it attractive for people to fund the vision and
they need to believe in the vision. And if they say no, that's fine. That's right. It is. It's
honorable that they even listened, right? That they even took the time to consider it. And we've got to
do a good job of inspiring people. I think you use that word in there as well. So I really appreciate
the wisdom. Do you remember where the sources that you learned about the money story?
So, I mean, I read, yeah, it's a really good phrase. I subscribe to lots of emails. It was one of
those emails. It was an email that I get about fundraising. I can't remember which particular
one it was. And it was actually a 90 second video and I showed it to all my board in a board meeting.
But in essence, what the money story video said was, so let's say you've got a number in mind,
then you say that number and that's what the person works with. And I had an example of that
where we had no warehousing out, warehousing partners pulled the pin on us. It was just before
COVID started. It was completely devastating because there's a book charity. If you don't
have a warehouse, you've got nothing. And I said to someone who was very much a big wheel in corporate
Australia in the nineties, I didn't know this person well, but they knew my father. And this
person said to me, how much do you need for a warehouse? And I said, 25,000. He said to me,
Fiona, right, I will write 25,000. Now it was a gobsmacking moment. And I think because he knew
my father, that was like an indirect reference to my character and integrity. But it illustrated
perfectly the point of the money story. You say the number.