“The major donor mistake that changed how we ran events…”

0:07

Hello everyone. Welcome to The Nonprofit Diaries, where we share the stories that don't make the newsletter.

0:13

I'm your host, Kimberly Bottom, and this week's guest is a self-proclaimed storyteller for social change. If you follow this guy on LinkedIn, you'll know that is 100% accurate.

0:24

His leadership currently supports one of the country's foremost Black and brown-led efforts to end gun violence as the director of fundraising and strategic partnerships at the Community Justice Action Fund.

0:35

When Tremaine and I first spoke, we actually realized we had a lot in common. We're Virginia kids, we're theater enthusiasts, and his energy just filled my cup so much. I'm so excited to fill your cup today with the same joy. Everyone, please welcome Tremaine Edwards. Tremaine, thank you for being here.

0:55

Yes!

0:57

Oh my gosh, you are just like family. I love you so much! Okay, Tremaine, thank you for joining us.

1:06

Let's set the stage for your diary entry, shall we? You've been in fundraising for a little while now, right?

1:12

You said that a few years ago you were the director of community engagement at the Academy Center for the Arts and you were putting on a show. So set the stage for us: what was the show all about?

1:21

Picture the year: it was 2019 or 2020—one of those years, because we've lost a lot of time after 2020! We had just opened up our grand historic Academy Music Theatre, which was a huge feat for the organization. That had been a $30 million capital campaign for the region of Central Virginia. I was really so honored and happy to be a part of the organization during that transition.

1:50

In my role as Director of Community Engagement, that meant a couple of different things. In the nonprofit world, we have our hands in a lot of different buckets, but I helped oversee our front of house team and our CRM, which held a lot of our donor data and their benefits—just about everything that happened through the organization, that was the hub.

2:10

It also meant I got to start working a little bit more with our donors and our sponsors and be part of that experience. As our former Chief Development Officer, Beth Doyle—if you happen to watch this one day—always reminded everybody in the organization: "You all work in development. You're all a part of the experience."

2:29

I literally got put as part of that experience in this role. On this day—as we're trauma bonding today—I had the wonderful opportunity of having to put my beliefs to pen and paper. I've always believed there are never problems, only possibilities, but this day that was put very much to the test.

2:53

We had a sold-out event with one of our partners for the ballet. We were really excited because they'd had a couple of shows and it was a sold-out show. That historic theater sat about 835 people, so it was a big, nice crowd for the area. We love that for the arts; we love that for ballet.

3:12

We're getting all the folks in and they're getting seated. Yes, we've done it! Naturally, in this moment, something just had to go wrong.

3:21

Gosh, yeah.

3:21

I can literally see her walking up to me still to this day. She walked up to me with a smile on her face, so I'm thinking we're great! We've done it, we've gotten all the folks in, and all of our donors have come out of our members' lounge and are getting seated—executed well.

3:36

Until—however, comma—she comes up to me and lets me know that some of our guests... and by some of our guests, I mean major donors, VIPs, no big deal! Just the people who give to ensure that this program was even possible to be on stage today, right?

3:54

Major sponsors didn't have seats! Didn't have seats for a sold-out event, meaning there were no seats anywhere available!

4:06

So that was a fun journey. When she first approached me about it, I was really confused, because I am a visual learner through and through—that is my calling card. You can show me something and I'll remember it 20 years from now. Often when I'm talking to people, if I look away, it's because I'm visualizing and having a full-on recall of the moment, like I'm doing right now.

4:25

Like you're doing right now!

4:27

Because I'm pulling it all back! I'm setting the scene, getting back in character, and feeling the magic—it's all coming back.

4:34

I'm so sorry!

4:35

Virginia Woolf, name them all! It's all happening right now. Thank you to my theater professors out there! But as she approached me about this concern, I was like, "No, that's not real. Am I hallucinating?"

4:49

Yeah, "That's not true." And she proceeds to tell me, "No, it is. I sent this message to you." As a visual learner, I said, "How about we open up your emails right now and test this to be true? Because if I'm wrong, I'm happy to be wrong. I've never been afraid to be wrong and take that hit, and we'll figure it out."

5:09

It turns out in this moment, I wasn't wrong: the email was never sent to me. So at least on that end, I was like, "Okay," because that would have been a double journey of an issue with our partner and our sponsors.

5:23

Once we addressed that, then it was still the moment of: "Okay, what can we do?" Because these were the major sponsors that helped put on this event today.

5:32

The panic slightly, ever so just, starts to sink in, where you might want to cry and vomit all at the same time, because at this moment I don't know what to do. Anybody who knows me knows my greatest pet peeve—whether it's me or working with a team—is the phrase "I don't know." It ignites my soul! I'd rather say, "I'll look into it."

5:58

In this moment, I really didn't know what to do as the show was literally starting—a show these donors helped put on.

6:06

So at this point, we're trying to figure out what we're going to do. Our Chief Executive Officer comes out—no more pressure added to the situation, right? You've got all the leaders of development, you've got the partner leaders, and you've got the literal sponsors hanging in the lobby with us, trying to figure out what they're going to do about a show that they helped put on while watching it from the screen in the lobby!

6:27

So wait, they were aware they didn't have seats?

6:29

Uh-huh!

6:30

Oh, wow. So even more pressure. It's not like they were waiting in a holding area thinking, "Oh, I think we have seats." No, they knew!

6:40

They were in a hold because they didn't have a single ticket with their names on it at all.

6:44

So at this point, we're trying to figure out what we're going to do, because they have to get in—there are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. They need to get in!

6:54

I'm trying to think through it quickly in my head, weighing all the options across the board with our team. We start looking at what staff are there, because at this point I'm starting to think: "Kim, if you're part of the team, I might need to take your seat! You might just have to go today, I'm sorry! We'll pay for it later."

7:13

I said that to my CEO, and thankfully in this moment he was like, "Well, we're sitting here, but they'd have to cross over people. You can take these seats."

7:21

We started looking at the box office area and looking at who didn't show up and where those seats were, because again, we were trying to find the best seats for them—not in the second mezzanine, but somewhere on the floor. We needed them present in the moment to see what was happening.

7:36

While people were looking at different maps and checking systems, the donors were thankfully being very laxadaisical about it, though I'm sure they wanted to get into the event. Our partners, our CEO—all the things were happening, and I was just in real time watching these moments happen and trying to figure out—an out-of-body experience—what were we going to do?

7:59

Eventually, I took a moment away for myself and said, "I'm going to look into the theater and just see what's happening." This gave me time to walk away and regroup, because I needed to figure out what we were going to do away from the noise.

8:10

I walked away thinking about the seats that were potentially available and looking at extra areas. A couple of things happened at that moment. We had a little space—I guess the technical term would be egress, if I can pull from the facilities manager back in the day—where there were essentially some spaces where we could sit them in a row.

8:30

We also had some seats that were pulled out for our AV team, so we actually had extra seats that had been unscrewed and moved that could be put back.

8:41

In that moment, we took some of the seats that our CEO lovingly gave up for us. We had our team sneak those chairs back in and temporarily half-drill them in, because we didn't want to make too much noise.

8:52

Yeah.

8:52

We were able to get them seated, putting some of our folks who gave up their chairs into really nice, cushy chairs on the floor. Got them all in there! They came in maybe 20 minutes late, but they got in and got seated. We gave them all the things—popcorn, wine, whatever you want! Just walk up to the bar and grab it.

9:11

We got them all seated, solved it, and it was all good. We never had to hear about it ever again, thankfully.

9:20

In that moment of wonderful trauma, it also allowed a couple of things to happen. In the moment, some of our other major donors got to see this. As I was walking away, one of our major donors saw all of this happening and saw us trying to handle this with grit, grace, and a smile. He patted me on the back and said, "Really good job."

9:40

That felt really good, because our donors saw how we handled the experience. I have a firm belief that there's customer service and there's customer experience. Service is transactional—a quick one-off. Service would have said, "We don't have anything, we're going to let you go." Experience says, "We want you to still be a part of this experience. We know that you're a sustainable giver, and we want to make sure that this experience you helped create is something you can experience."

10:08

It also taught us things after the event about how we handle our data better and how we communicate with our team. We started adding hold seats into every show for every single event.

10:20

Smart!

10:20

If there was a sponsor or a special donor emergency, we always held about five to six seats for every single show, and those only got released with permission from development or our operations director. It was a high-level clearance: until development said they had no need for them, those seats were never released, so that we always held space for that experience.

10:43

While in the moment it was a 0-out-of-10 experience that I never want to happen again, the good thing is it never happened again during my tenure there.

10:57

See, that's the thing: these moments are always going to happen. Something is not going to go right, and I'm with you where you're like, "Okay, it wasn't my fault and I have the receipts to prove it, but I'll help fix it." Then you move forward and new policies are put in place that improve the experience, which wouldn't have happened if you didn't have that moment.

11:18

I'm going to ask this just because we're on a podcast where we can all be real, and I'm a little petty: did the person who dropped the ball admit that they dropped the ball?

11:28

They did.

11:29

Okay, that warms my heart! Now, was it a nice drop-off of food and flowers—as an only child, I would have loved a spa day—or nothing?

11:41

No, I didn't get the facial or the spa day I deserved! However, I did get that praise, and it was mentioned to our executive leadership so that it was clear this wasn't my fault. Even then, without playing the blame game, there was an understanding that a moment got missed, it was owned, and we still rose to the occasion to help our sponsors.

12:10

Especially because these sponsors often overlap: they may be your sponsor, but they're also our sponsor, so this experience impacts our work as well.

12:20

That's stewarding your organization and your mission well. Even if you're not there anymore, they now have a framework for this place that you love and wanted to do well by—and you did, because you left a legacy of strategy. Hopefully no one will ever feel that stomach-drop sensation again.

12:40

I have to ask—because I still have news producer nightmares where I'm sitting in the booth and my rundown disappears, and I wake up in a panic—is this one of those for you?

12:48

Oh yeah, it'll never go away! Even for our call today, I triple-checked this thing, but I was like, "I'm just going to check one more time!"

12:57

If you two are out there watching this, maybe we'll just drop a hotline number for support services for them!

13:05

And it's just news flashes—it's our cell phone numbers! We don't have a hotline, it's just us!

13:09

No, it's us! Just call us and we'll walk you through it. It'll be fine.

13:15

Oh, that's so sweet—a support system! Tremaine, this is why I love you: you're always thinking of others, even in your own drama.

13:26

That's the best way!

13:29

Thank you so much for sharing. I really feel like this one's going to hit home with a lot of people, because whether it's a major donor experience or working in data when something goes wrong, we've all had that feeling in our stomach where it's like, "Am I going to survive this, or should I just roll into a ball and cry now?" By the way, crying is fine—if you need to do it, that's okay!

13:50

Get the thing done, and then go in that corner and have a cry. I've done that, too!

13:55

Exactly! Cry after! We are here to accept all reactions to drama; we are not here to judge. I love that.

14:04

Well, thank you so much for joining us. For all of you nonprofit professionals listening out there, this is your weekly reminder to hydrate, practice self-care, and go easy on yourself. Tremaine, I see you!

14:19

If you have your own diary entry to submit, please click the link in the description below. We would love to have you on the podcast and bring you in front of our lovely audience who wants to connect and relate. Thank you, Tremaine, so much for being here, and we'll see you next time!