Intro
Welcome to the Fit Fundraising podcast, where we bring you game changing fundraising topics direct from our meetings with major donors and nonprofits nationwide. We don’t interview consultants who haven’t met a donor in decades for fundraising stays on the front lines with nonprofit donors and leaders. This podcast is a glimpse into our work with nonprofits as we get on the field of them and successfully modeled fundraising.
Roy Jones
I’m Roy Jones and welcome to the Fit Fundraising Podcast. We’re so glad you joined us today. We’re gonna have a great time and I have a great guest that you have to meet. I wanna introduce you to Carrie Lynn Wright. Carrie has her own agency and again, after you hear her speak today, you’re gonna wanna call her. She’s voted a silver winner for the best mentor and business coach in 2025. Hospitality and Culture Workshop voted the best development workshop in 2021, 2022, 2024.
She’s a certified Enneagram coach, certified resume writer and interview coach, career coach, young professional Athena award winner in 2020. She’s written more than 100 published articles in numerous publications. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communication and broadcast journalism and a master’s in counseling, both from Liberty University. She is wife to Michael and mom to Eli and Violet. Carrie uses her experience and education to transform workplace culture, working with individuals and teams through emotional intelligence training, leadership development and strategic planning. She’s helped us dramatically here at FIT Fundraising. She serves our team as a contractor, as a senior account director, helping us manage accounts.
Carrie, thank you so much for joining us today. We’re so honored to have you. You know, it’s interesting for years and there have been books written on this topic by Boomers, but this Sustainer or monthly givers. Yes. I’d never really thought about younger people and the kind of the set it and forget it kind of model. Absolutely. And so we really should be focusing more on Sustainer programs with these younger donors where they can push a button, put it on their credit card. Right. It’s usually a lower dollar gift.
Carrie Wright (
It’s lower dollar. Yeah, I mean, it’s not going to be in a four or five figure gift monthly, but if they can, my motto, “”fix it and forget it””, then and once you get them to that level, right, it’s sort of like and think about it this way. If those millennials were kind of treating their job like life as a cafeteria, they’re also treating their donor and their donor giving like a cafeteria. They’re going to wait to see and find the place, the organization, the mission that connects with them. They are really wanting to know that their money is making a difference. So they’re going to very much be impacted and connected with the organization’s mission. So it’s really important that you reach them with that and then you give them opportunities to go online, set their credit card, set their debit card, whatever it is, and be able to just have that monthly draw.
Roy Jones (
Wow, wow, I love that. Take just a minute and talk about more about your personal experience. I mean, what you’ve learned working with nonprofits and you’ve really kind of crossed, you you’ve gone from working in the office environment in nonprofit organizations to coming over and actually helping us do donor cultivation. And, you know, what are you seeing? What have you learned personally, just looking at the different generations and fundraising?
Carrie Wright
So prior to my own company joining Fit Fundraising, I was with a very well-known brand, national brand, and it is a service industry. And part of my study into the different generations was because I saw so many different generations, even in this organization, working together. And I was over top of about 350 employees with hiring, training, and I had to figure out how do I train someone who’s 16, never had a job, to actually effectively communicate.
I learned a hard lesson when a 19 year old comes up to me and says, Ms. Carrie, I need to talk to you about a text that I received. And it was really rude. And I thought, what text did I send her that was rude? And I asked her, said, well, I’d love for you to share what happened and what did I say? And she said, well, you texted me the word OK, but it was only OK, period. The letter O.
the letter K and a period. I stood there stunned and in my literal Gen X mind thought, what in the world did I do that was so wrong and rude? And so from this Gen Z’s perspective, she said to me that it came across really strong, it came across really forceful and because you just put okay period, it was really rude. And I’m like, well, please enlighten me. What should I have typed instead? I got this whole education on and you can Google this stuff. It’s out there on the internet or you can chat GPT it, which we haven’t even talked about it. And so she said it would have been preferable for me to write the whole word OKAY or I could have just wrote K, no period. I could have thumbs up the message and all of these different variations. And I thought, my gosh, we are speaking the same language and not saying the same thing at all. Wow. Personal experience, but it sent me sort of on this journey to understand how is this now impacting if that’s one little word.
Roy Jones
Wow.
Carrie Wright
Right? How is that impacting our generations working together, our teams not communicating well, or maybe how we even therefore impact and better communicate with the different generations of donors that we’re trying to reach?
Roy Jones
Wow Yeah. And you know, it says something about you that that should be willing to share and actually, you know, you were willing to listen. You know, usually when I talk, I get the response. Okay, Boomer, and that’s ⁓
Carrie Wright
We can Google that one too. And they love my son who I remind all the time says that to me. Okay, Boomer. said, first of all, I am not a Boomer. Stop accusing me. But here’s the thing. It’s back to that idea I mentioned at the top of the podcast, reverse mentoring. So I think it’s important that whatever age, generation or stage you find yourself in leading a nonprofit, in reaching donors, you need to be open to new ideas.
Roy Jones
Yeah, it’s all about attitude going in. Well, you know, it’s really interesting, all these changes. And of course you have some people, know, some of our clients, some CEOs or development directors have been in their position 20 years. Long time, yeah. And you’ve got others that are brand new. Right. A lot to diverse age groups. Change in the marketplace is a tough thing. Yes. How would you coach or mentor a chief of marketing or a chief development officer?
Roy Jones
to kind of rally the team and especially how to rally an older boomer C-suite team into making some of these changes in their communications.
Carrie Wright
Listen, such a great question because I get asked this by workplaces all the time, nonprofits, corporations, private sectors. I think we have to embrace the past.
We’ve got to engage the present and then we also have to look to the future. And what do I mean by that? So embracing the past, we need to recognize that there is knowledge, experience and wisdom that comes with older generations who’ve done it. You just said people in their job for more than 20 years is almost unheard of for millennials and Gen Z has no concept of that. And I would tell you that COVID also changed a lot of things for all generations and all graphics. So what we saw in 2020 with COVID was a lot of people
Boomers included, especially the older end of Genes X’s that were saying, you know what? I’m not happy with what I’ve been doing. I’ve been doing it for 20, 25 years. I want to do something else. I want to fulfill my passion. So there again, it goes back to that, right? So we’ve got to embrace that past as an education for us. I think we also have to really engage the present by saying, hey, you’re here right now in this organization for this season, however long it may be. We have to remember too that most of our employees are not going to stay forever.
They’re just not. And so what we want is for that not to be the same mentality for our donors, right? So we want to engage the present donors and we want to keep cultivating those relationships so that even if they’re, let’s say their account manager is gone or their donor specialist is gone, they still are invested in the mission of the organization and that that mission does not change. And then I think we look to the future by saying, okay, what is coming?
How do we continue to reach a new generation, Gen Z, and those millennials who maybe start to have a little bit of money on a monthly basis that we can start training them? That’s the thing. You gotta start training them now to start giving monthly. So that’s a big part of it.
Roy Jones
I love it. Any examples of how it was done wrong? What would be some mistakes that could be made in this area?
Carrie Wright
I have a great example that actually went viral but Tony the paint guy was working for a prominent paint company and he was making these TikToked He was putting himself through college while he had a side job mixing paint and so the leftover paint that was coming back from customers or it wasn’t the right shade after they mixed it
He started after hours, not on company time, mixing this paint. And he goes to the executives in this company and says, hey, listen, I’ve got millions of followers. There’s all these subscribers. I think we could make this a marketing campaign. And the executives look at Tony and say, you’re fired.
And instead of embracing the fact that there’s this new technology called TikTok, they decided that they were scared of it. And I think that’s a prime example of how we have to bridge the gap, right? Think about how your generation grew up, how my generation grew up. We had one TV and we all gathered around it. And that’s how we got our information. We did not get to just have whatever we wanted on demand. My kids, I have a nine year old and a 17 year old, they do not understand commercial breaks or having to record a show.
or wait till Friday night until your favorite show came back on. They don’t get that. But when we think about how our information has now gone to the palm of our hands, it’s very customized. We will talk all kinds of things about algorithms and what is your phone is not the same as mine, right? So your information that you’re getting communicated to is not even the same as mine. So we have to understand that now everything is so customized to what our preferences are.
That’s what donors are looking for and that’s also what employees are looking for. It’s a whole new phenomenon
Roy Jones (10:16)
got to ask how did Tony the paint guy? did that story end?
Carrie Wright (10:20)
Well, Tony did just fine for himself because he look his viral followers got so angry about the company and shame on them, right? I won’t name the company. You can go Google that story, but they missed their mark and he ended up being able to go to a startup paint company where he has made able to implement his new ideas on marketing through or through marketing on Tik Tok. And he’s got a huge following and he’s made lots of money as a result of it.
Roy Jones
I love it. Well, that’s great advice, great example. And again, I think the most important thing is communication, open door, letting people know it’s okay to have different opinions about things. ⁓
Carrie Wright
Communication does not necessarily mean agreement and that’s where we get ourselves in trouble is that you may have a different life experience a different generation than I do or than a Gen Z or does but that doesn’t mean we can’t sit down and effectively have a conversation.
Roy Jones
Kerry, this has just been a wonderful conversation. I so appreciate it, but thank you again for joining us. And if our listeners wanted to learn more about how to connect with you directly, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Carrie Wright
Yeah, absolutely. They can go to my website at C-Wright, my last name, W-R-I-G-H-T, consulting.com, C-Wrightconsulting.com.
Roy Jones
Thank you again. I so appreciate it. And of course, the other thing you can do is you can go to fitfundraising.com. You can click on the your team page and you’ll see Carrie’s photo and a link to her website right there. But please, please, please, I want to encourage you to go to fitfundraising.com. One thing we do is offer free fundraising council to nonprofits. Did hear that? Free, free.
free. Now I have to admit we’ve had more than 15 of our clients that we offered free fundraising counsel come back and actually have retained us month to month because the ROI we provide. But please, please click on that button and just let us reach out to us because we want to help you. That’s why we’re here and we really believe that we can make a difference in your mission and your ministry and help you make the world a better place. fitfundraising.com. for joining us today on a podcast. We’ll see you soon.
Intro
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