June 7, 2023 • 36 mins
The Owner of By the Waves Charity Consulting joins Jen from the beach of Dorset England to share how she launched her firm prior to the pandemic. Leesa Harwood shares her fascinating approach to selecting clients and how that has led to a brand new hobby!· ·
(Originally aired 5June23)
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S1 (00:04):
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those
of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect
the views and opinions of Ola's media or its sponsors.
S2 (00:15):
Welcome to From the Nest with Charity. Jen I'm your host,
Jen Neumeyer. On this podcast, we have casual conversations with
folks in the nonprofit field exploring the success and lessons
learned of topics like campaign tactics and mentors. Today, you
get a chance to eavesdrop on my conversation with Lisa Harwood.
She's the owner of Buy the Waves Charity Consulting in Dorset, England.
(00:38):
And yes, that is a beach town. And yes, I
am jealous. So we'll talk about Lisa's journey to consulting
and launching her firm right before Covid. She'll also share
her fascinating approach to selecting her clients. And we'll get
some insight into her newest hobby. So stay with us.
This is from The Nest with Charity Jen.
S3 (01:04):
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S2 (02:20):
So, Lisa, thank you so much for joining me. I'm very,
very excited to have you on the podcast. And I
know the listeners are going to just love hearing from
you and hearing your background. So as we start off,
let's tell us a little bit about about you and
your background.
S5 (02:39):
Well, Jen, I was never meant to work in the
not for profit sector. I was never meant to work
in charities. And I arrived in Florida in a little
town called Vero Beach from my home country of the UK.
I landed in the US and I worked for a
TV station there, which is what I should have been doing.
That's what I had done. That was my degree, right.
And then the March of Dimes happened. The March of
(03:02):
Dimes Birth Defects Foundation landed in my heart, said, No,
you don't want to work for it. You say you
want it, you want to come and work for charity.
And that's what I did. And that was back in
19 the early 1990s. And I never looked back. I
had been in the charity sector ever since. So then
I went to the American Cancer Society in South Florida,
and then when I came back over to the UK,
(03:24):
I carried on and worked for Save the Children. I
work for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which is a
huge maritime life saving charity over in this country. So yeah,
I got the charity bug and it never left me.
And now I run my own consultancy. I'm working with
not for profit leaders in the sector, so it's been
not for profit all the way and I have enjoyed
(03:44):
every single minute of it.
S2 (03:46):
And isn't that so funny? I think that there are
so many stories, if not maybe most stories of people
who have just sort of fallen into fundraising and they
you know, you know, I like to say I don't
know of too many kids that grow up and say,
I want to be a fundraiser when I grow up.
And and I do love your story because I think
(04:08):
that that's how it happens, is we end up somehow
associated with a nonprofit working with a nonprofit, and then
that becomes our passion.
S6 (04:20):
Yeah, it does.
S5 (04:21):
Although I think we were lucky. I mean, I sometimes
I find myself now talking to much younger charity professionals
and I and I'll say to them, Do you know
when I first started working at the Pocahontas building in
downtown Vero Beach with the March of Dimes, there were
no computers in the office. And they look at me
and go, How? How do you fundraise without a computer? Like,
(04:43):
how do you do it without mail? Merge and direct
marketing and stats and insight and and we had to
do it off gut feel and relationships and telephone calls
and writing out paper slips and all of that at
the time. And I feel like I was incredibly fortunate
to be in it. I suppose the ground floor and
the beginning of what I would say was the professionalization
(05:04):
of fundraising, because you're right, back then nobody said, I
want to be a fundraiser and walk through the door,
you know, waving a little fundraising ticket. But now I
hear far more people saying, I want to work in
the nonprofit sector. I want to work in a in
a meaningful environment. I want to make a dent in
the universe. I want to make a dent in a
(05:25):
significant problem. So whilst I'm still not sure whether people
aspire to be a fundraiser, I do think that it
is much more difficult now to accidentally land in a
not for profit career because I think there are quite
a lot of people now who aspire to that career
and rightly so, because it's a great it's a great
place to be.
S2 (05:45):
Yes, Yes, I absolutely agree. And I think to equate
the even though it's not really an equation, but I
think when I started in the nonprofit field and in
particularly in online fundraising and digital. Meant when when the
platforms were new. You know, Twitter was just launching, Facebook
(06:08):
was just launching. And there was such excitement and energy
around that and building those communities. And so, you know,
there there is always an evolution, you know, of how
we do things. And it just is it's interesting to
sort of hear those journeys and how that has evolved
over the years.
S5 (06:29):
I think it's speeded up now, though. I think I
think back in 2016, Charles Schwab World Economic Forum said
that technological change will never be as slow as it
is today. And I think that's the difference now, isn't it?
Is that where it took 20 years maybe for us
to really harness the power of technology in those in
those early days in a blink of an eye? Now,
(06:49):
you have to understand, and I work with a lot
of my clients around things like crypto philanthropy, digital and
digital platforms, different giving platforms. And I think you really
have to move quickly now because it's it's a build.
And if you miss any of those early steps, you
you really struggle to keep up. And one of the
(07:10):
concerns I've got for charities these days is you have
to move quickly. You have to move fast. And a
lot of charity leaders are my age. They're what I
would call analog leaders, their leaders that are not digital natives.
We have to we have to try really hard to
understand this stuff. And yet we're leading charities in a
digital world. And so I think there's a real issue
(07:33):
here for those of us who have come up the
ranks and are my age particularly, but those of us
who are not digital natives, to remember that we we
think in a linear way, we think in a very
specific way that is not suited now to future proofing
your organizations as far as tech is concerned. So I
(07:53):
think we have to listen much more to younger people,
the digital natives in our organization, the my boss certainly
ever listen to me back in the day, because we
really have to learn some stuff from them, particularly around tech.
S2 (08:08):
Yes, absolutely. This is something that in my sector, in
public media, is a real struggle as well for legacy
organizations that have, you know, their tried and true fundraising
methods that may be starting to erode slightly, like making
that pivot to, you know, focus on digital relationships, on
(08:33):
digital innovation, on testing, and as you said, like listening
to those younger voices. It is a very new world.
And it and it can be kind of scary for them.
S5 (08:45):
It can. And we've seen that happen during the pandemic,
I think. I mean, one of the problems of the pandemic,
the pandemic created for charities as well as the high
demand in some areas was was cash flow was on
a knife edge for many organizations. And what what worried
me in that period was I saw I saw lots
(09:05):
of charities disband their innovation teams to cut budgets. I
saw lots of charities disband their innovation and their experimental
budgets at a time for me where I think they
needed them the most and I wanted to shout, No, don't,
don't cut that. You know, cut something that you've been
doing for a long time that is starting to go down.
Don't cut something that is essentially the thing that will
(09:28):
save you in the future, you know, And and so
I hope that they come back. I hope that those
innovation teams are brought back into the fold. And I
hope that those innovation budgets recover. But it was a
shame to see some of those cut during the pandemic
when I think charities needed the most.
S2 (09:45):
Yeah. Now I know in your sort of consulting role,
you work with a lot of different kinds of clients.
And so how do you approach those conversations and are
there any, any, you know, tactics or tips that you
would have for talking to leadership about making those investments
(10:10):
in digital? What sort of just overall your experience with that?
S5 (10:15):
Well, it's a very small consultancy. It's me and I
do have a couple of really trusted associates that I
use as well. But I think for me, it's about
being really authentic and and I am really authentic with clients.
And I will always say to a client or a
prospective client, if you want someone to come and help
you keep things ticking over and shore up those areas
that have been in decline for the past 3 or
(10:36):
4 years and actually are now in a terminal decline,
Probably go and find another consultant because that's not me.
If you want to take some risks, if you want
to do something innovative, if you want to try something new,
and if you want me to challenge your thinking on
on how innovative you're being, then that's great. Let's, let's
have a conversation. So I think right from the outset,
(10:57):
I'm not a consultant who will shore up and. Who will,
as part of a longer term strategy to buy some
time whilst a charity innovates may be. But I'm I'm
always really clear at the outset that that's not what
I do. I don't. And so I'm much more interested
in in helping charities to to plan plan something for
(11:20):
the future rather than rather than keep a legacy from
the past on life support because that that isn't going
to help. And I'm always really clear about that.
S2 (11:31):
And going back to when you are sort of evaluating
those clients and who to take on, you know, being
a small consulting firm yourself with a few others helping,
you know, how do you go about making those decisions?
I mean, I know that before when we have talked you,
(11:52):
you had some really unique roles. You were an interim CEO,
I think, at one point. And and so so how
do you balance those requests and and really sort of
analyse the the client need to sort of match your
skills and talents.
S5 (12:13):
So I have three. I always say I earn my
salary in three different currencies and the first one is
obvious is money because I have to pay the mortgage, right?
You have to, you have to live, you have to
eat and you have to pay your fuel bills. So
so I have to I have to be paid. But
but the second one is, is innovation and fun. I've
(12:33):
got to get paid in that. The client has to
has to pay me in innovation and fun. And then
the third one is learning. So when a client offers
me an opportunity to learn something that I did not
know before, I engage with that client, then then that's
great because it keeps the gray matter alive and it
keeps you thinking. And so I kind of balance it
(12:55):
out between those three, what I call those three accounts. And,
and if, if a client can give me lots of
learning and lots of innovation and fun, then I might
not charge them as much if they give me absolutely
no learning and absolutely no fun. Guess what? You know that.
So I it's a bit like a graphic equalizer. And
I look at each client on that score sheet and say,
(13:17):
This one I really want to take and I'll prioritize
clients on that basis as well. So a client that
that can fill all three of those counts is my
dream clients. And I've been really lucky over the past
five years in that almost all of my clients have
been able to fill those buckets, which has been fantastic.
S2 (13:36):
Oh my gosh, that warms my heart. I just love that.
So now you said five years. So was it five
years ago that you decided to to do to go
on your own and do consulting?
S7 (13:49):
It was, yeah.
S2 (13:50):
And so how was that transition and that journey? You know, like,
tell us a little bit about how you went about
making that decision. It seems like a big leap to me.
S5 (14:03):
Yeah, and it wasn't the first time I've made that leap,
so I made that leap. Oh, I suppose ten years earlier,
when I had left my job at Save the Children,
I decided to set up a consultancy. It didn't work.
It didn't work. And I. I just didn't have the
experience and I didn't have I wasn't ready. And so
I went into a into another job. And and at
(14:26):
the time, that was so difficult because I really wanted
to do consultancy and it just wasn't meant to be
at that point in time. But on reflection, when I
12 years later, when I came back and said, okay,
I think I'm ready now and set up my business again,
it felt completely different. It was completely different and I
was able to recognise the difference and know with confidence that, okay,
(14:49):
I know what wrong feels like and I know that
this is not that. So I had confidence then, but
I was talking to a friend the other day and saying,
had I known when I set my business up in
August 2018 that less than two years later we would
be slap bang in the middle of a pandemic. I
wouldn't have done it. I would not have done it.
Even with that that assurance that, yep, this feels right.
(15:11):
It's okay. I would have been absolutely terrified and said No,
there's no way my little tiny, fragile business at less
than two years old would be able to survive that.
And so I am so glad I did not have
a crystal ball because it was really during that period
that I think I really I really understood the power
(15:34):
of of a consultancy that can work alongside charity leaders
at one of the most unprecedented, challenging times of probably
their career and and support them along the way, walking
shoulder to shoulder with them. And I remember I suppose
round about the back end of 2020 thinking there is
(15:55):
nowhere I would rather be and there is nothing I
would rather be doing than supporting. I had ten clients.
At that point, and there was nowhere I would rather be.
And every single minute of every single day felt meaningful
and every single minute of every single day felt like
a really good use of my time. And so I'm
really glad I couldn't see what was coming because I
(16:16):
would not have taken the leap. And so I guess
if I could go back and give myself some advice,
it would be go for it, jump. Don't worry about
what's coming because you surprised what you you surprise yourself sometimes, right?
And and it was a really good growth experience for
me during that time.
S2 (16:33):
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, gosh, yes. That's amazing. So now you
had said that you had tried starting a consultancy a
few years ago and that you weren't ready. Are there
any sort of any nuggets of advice that you can
that you would give to others who are saying, I'm
thinking about going out on my own and and being
(16:55):
a consultant? You know, are there are there a few
things that you would advise them to consider before, before,
you know, making that decision?
S5 (17:09):
Yes, I think I mean, it's different for everyone, isn't it?
But for me and I really can only speak for myself,
one of the things that I I live and die
by really in this consultancy is that when I work
with charity leaders, I do so from a place of experience.
So I've got the scars and and I understand where
(17:30):
they are and I understand how they're feeling. And it
was really interesting when I took the interim chief exec
role at Jeans for Jeans, which was a part time,
two days a week. And I did that partly because
it's a it's a cause really close to my heart.
One of the first campaigns I ever ran was jeans
for jeans, blue jeans for babies, for the March of
Dimes Birth Defects Foundation over in Florida. So to get
(17:53):
the chance to be the chief exec and interim chief
exec here, I jumped at it. But the other reason
was that I was at that point starting to work
with a lot of chief executives. And I had never
been a chief executive. And it was the one area
where I thought, I'm not I'm not advising from experience now.
I've worked with chief executives. So as far as that,
that that is concerned. Am And so taking that role
(18:15):
as an interim chief exec post pandemic, just after the
pandemic and actually overlapping with some of the lockdowns was
was really, really interesting. And I feel that now that's
a ten month period of being a chief executive in
a difficult in a difficult situation, in a difficult environment,
if nothing else, gives me much more confidence to be
(18:37):
able to work with chief executives now because I can
kind of look them in the eye and go, Oh,
I've been there. You know, I did that. And and
it it helps with my empathy and it helps with
my understanding of their situation. So always for me, it's
important to be coming at this from a place of
experience and not necessarily from a place of an intellectual understanding.
(19:00):
That's important too, but on its own. For me, that
wouldn't work. I would not have the confidence to be
able to look my clients in the eye and go, Oh, okay. So,
you know, and so that's important for me. And it's
the confidence more than anything else.
S2 (19:14):
And I love what you said about having the scars
along the way, because I do think as difficult as
nonprofit work is, there is always something to learn in
those challenging situations. I was at a nonprofit where I
had free, almost free rein to do very creative, innovative,
(19:40):
innovative online campaigns and really had a lot of experience
under my belt. And then when I started at a
new organization, there was so much resistance and it was
all about navigating those waters. So I love that aspect
of consideration. You know, what are what are your buckets
(20:00):
of experience when you're thinking about going into consultant work?
Like just understanding even for yourself, like, here are, here
are my little here are my little areas that I'm
really that I'm really good at, that I have that
experience that as you say, I can look someone in
the eye and relate to what they're doing and give
them advice.
S5 (20:21):
But equally and I guess I go back to what
we were talking about earlier on, it is important never
to stop learning. So, you know. Correct. I mean, I
can I cannot lay claim to having a huge amount
of experience in crypto philanthropy. They are an ally. We
were the first charity in 2014 which looking back now,
was very early to start taking donations in cryptocurrency Bitcoin anyway.
(20:42):
And so I remember that. But I am still just
like everyone else. Quite use crypto. So there are some
things you can't have experience in because they weren't there
when you were when you were doing that role or
in that in that position. And so that's why that
third learning part is really important, you know, when I
look at clients. Because it is important never to stop learning.
(21:05):
If it's important for me to come from a place
of experience, then I just have to get on and
get some experience right. In crypto philanthropy, I have to
start reading books. I have to start talking to people.
I have to start doing pro bono. And one of
the ways that I get experience is by talking to
clients who might want some pro bono work. And I
can say, I can't charge you for this because this
(21:26):
is as new to me as it is to you.
But if I do some pro bono work with you,
how does that sound? Because I can get some experience.
I can give you the benefit of the experience I
do have. And together we can learn about this new thing.
And that has worked really well. So I think that
it is important to move outside your experience as well
and find a creative way to do that.
S2 (21:47):
Yes, And of course, that goes back to what you
were saying before about your three buckets, about making sure
that your that those three buckets are covered in your
in your consultant work. So I love that. One thing
I want to do is I want to go back
to something that we actually had talked about even before
the podcast, and that is the state of nonprofits today
(22:13):
and the biggest risks to nonprofits that we see. I
think that you and I are probably aligned on what
what we agree are some of the biggest risks. But
let's and we talked a little bit just a little
bit about this earlier, but let's kind of dive into
that because I think you had some really great perspectives
(22:34):
on what the biggest big, biggest risks are to nonprofits
these days.
S5 (22:40):
It's really important. I think that charity and we touched
on this with innovation, but when cash flow is on
a knife edge and it is for many charities now
when they're being asked to deliver more for less, there
is a real tendency for charities to to look down
and in so just look internally, look at what they've
already what they do, what they know and and try
(23:03):
and and optimise all of their existing activities as much
as they can and look at the short term and
look at business as usual. And that is perfectly understandable.
And to a degree there is there is a place
for that. But I think one of the biggest risks
at the moment and until we can get charities and
nonprofits back on an even keel financially, is that's all
(23:25):
they do. And what they what they don't do is
they look up and out. And I see so many
charities planning in year, but but not planning to three,
four years from now. Now we don't know what is
what is going to happen, what the world is going
to be like in two, 3 or 4 years. So
I think even when I say planning, I mean something
(23:46):
very different to what you and I would have known
as planning ten years ago. It's about being agile and
it's about being lean and it's about being innovative and creative,
but still aiming at some very clear metrics and a
very clear vision and a very clear set of aims
at the end of it. But that requires multiyear planning,
(24:06):
that requires us looking up and out. That requires us
not just embracing technology as a tool, but being able
to thrive as an organization in the technical ecosystem, which
is much bigger than that. So I think one of
the biggest risks is that we we retrench back into year,
year on year planning. We retrench back into trying to
(24:28):
keep what we've got on life support and we don't
look up and out and we're not brave and we
don't learn from other sectors and we stay in our bubble.
And I think that's one of the biggest risks that
we've got at the moment in the sector.
S7 (24:43):
Yeah.
S2 (24:43):
One of the well, among a few of the things
that we've been talking about with some of some of
our organisations is really focusing on diversification of fundraising. I
think that that comes right along with what you're talking about.
You know, that multi year planning, you know, looking at setting,
(25:05):
carving out just a little bit of the the budget
and the time and the resources to explore something new,
even though it might fail. I think there's also a
real fear of failure. But yet you learn, you learn
so much from from that. And so yes, getting organisations
(25:27):
to expand for sure.
S5 (25:30):
And I like I always, I always work with my
clients on an answer matrix because I think, you know,
you can you can proactively decide how much of your fundraising,
investment and risk you want to put in product development,
how much you want to put in market development, how
much you want to put in that top right hand quadrant,
which is diversification, and therefore you might lose that. And
I think as long as you have some framework and
(25:52):
some discipline around those decisions and you stay with them,
you can you can make sure that you always allocate
some growth investment, you always allocate some diversification, and diversification
does not happen overnight. So if you're only just starting
diversification now, well, you're looking 2 to 3 years from
(26:13):
now before you really start seeing some of that pay off.
So I think there are some charities that will run
out of runway because they have not started early enough.
So I always encourage my clients to use the Anthos
matrix two by two matrix and proactively allocate your fundraising
spend and risk to those four quadrants and then decide,
(26:33):
you know, how much of that you're going to put
in that high risk box. And there's nothing wrong with
putting some of that in your high risk box as
long as it's a conscious decision. It's not reckless. It's planned.
S2 (26:44):
Yes. Yes. I love that. It's not reckless. It is planned.
I think that's so important. So share with us maybe
an example of a client or even just in your
in your past, something that was that you saw as
a really great success that you were just so personally
(27:07):
gratified by that it just is like if there were
any shining example of an organization doing making the right
budgeting decisions or creating a really great campaign or internal resources,
because you have such a wealth of experience working with organizations,
(27:30):
can you think of a success story to.
S7 (27:32):
Share with us?
S5 (27:33):
You know, whenever whenever people ask about success like that,
one of the things that that they often. Ones is
the big bang, right? The really big bang. But one
of the things I genuinely believe is that success is
lots of little bang. Success is a build of lots
of little things. And I think I can point to lots.
(27:55):
I mean, I mentioned earlier the Rnli was the first
major charity to start fundraising in Bitcoin, and I remember
that point. I remember other charities just looking at me,
What are you doing? Why are you doing that in 2014?
I'm like, Well, why not? I mean, you know, well,
you can't trace where the where the bitcoin are coming.
So I'm like, so, you know where every coin that
(28:15):
lands in one of your cash collection boxes comes from, right? No,
of course you don't. So, you know, you do what
you can do. And of course, now you look at
the giving block and you can get the details of
the people who donate. You know, one of the 7000
cryptocurrencies that they take on that platform. So I think
that things like that are really important because they they
(28:36):
teach your teams that it's okay to to take a risk.
They teach your teams that if everyone else is saying
don't do it, but you really think you've got something,
it's okay to say, well, let's just try it and
see what happens. So I think there are little things
(28:56):
like that. They are an ally. You know, we we
restructured as part of a cost improvement program, but it
was really a transformational restructure of fundraising where fundraising didn't
sit in one department. You know, we try to to
embed it in the areas of the organisation where those
cases for support and those particular functional bits of fundraising
(29:19):
would be the most useful. And it works. Bits of it,
bits of it didn't. But again, you know, for me
that's a success because we tried something new and we
kept the bits that worked and we didn't keep the
bits that didn't and that was really a success. It
teaches your teams to innovate. It teaches your teams to
have a go. And once you remove the fear of
(29:42):
trying something and you explain and you demonstrate to teams
that you can put risk frameworks in place when you're
trying something new and that you can mitigate risk and
you can watch for those little triggers. I think for me,
that's the biggest success you can have as a fundraiser.
The danger of referring to success as the campaign that
(30:04):
went really, really well and earned lots of money is
that if fundraisers don't think that whatever it is they're
working on will deliver, that they won't do it. So
I'm I'm a bit a bit of a zealot about
let's define success as how brave we were and how
responsible we were in managing risk in a high risk
(30:26):
situation and how well we evaluated afterwards and how well
we do things differently as a result of what we've learned.
So for me, I've tried to do that all through
my career, sometimes more successfully than others. So for me,
I've tried to do that all through my career, sometimes
more successfully than others. But but that for me is
(30:48):
a success. If you can if you can operate in
that way and you can make your organisation a safe
environment for others to operate in that way, that success,
rather than always being able to say, Well, I won
this award for that, or this campaign went brilliantly, or
this campaign beat or records in a way that's easy
(31:10):
to do. That's the easy bit, right? But getting an
organisation to be brave, innovative without being reckless and creating
that culture, that's a success.
S2 (31:21):
Yes. I was just going to say like creating like
that creates such, such a wonderful culture for people to
feel like they can contribute, to feel like they can
they can bring their ideas to the table that there
is there is some freedom in that.
S5 (31:42):
Yeah, for sure. And and. And that there is no
recrimination if it goes wrong. I think in that kind
of organization, it's, it's, it's safe to bring bad news
as well as good you know and I think that's
that's really important as well. And so yeah the culture
is really important and creating the right culture, particularly now.
(32:05):
I mean, we've talked about, you know, one of the
reasons I think that innovation teams have been disbanded is
because nobody, nobody, nobody's really happy or those organizations aren't
happy to embrace calculated risk within their organization with a
view to calculated gain. And and and that for me,
(32:26):
you know, if those organizations are going to hold up
a direct marketing campaign that went really well that they've
been doing for years and they got a 3% increase
this year on that campaign. But they've closed down their
innovation team. I'm not sure I can buy into that.
S2 (32:42):
Yeah, yeah. I think that is a great ending to
our to our podcast. But I do have one other
question for you. So tell us, Lisa, just what kinds
of things do you enjoy doing on the weekend?
S5 (33:02):
Well, I have just started and I say this I
when I was young, like young, young. So child, I,
I was a writer. So from the age of about 11,
all the way through to about 21, I wrote a
weekly column for my local newspaper. I won some writing competitions.
I had a play produced. And if you'd have asked
(33:22):
me then what I would have ended up doing, I
would have said, I'll be a writer. But life got
in the way. I found I found fundraising, which I adored,
and found the charity sector, which I love. But I
have just gone back to university here and I've just
started a creative writing course and I have found my
love of writing again. And so you will find me
(33:43):
at the weekend now writing because I'm being held to
the fire to do 2000 words a week as part
of my course. And so it's really lovely. And I
found this love again that I had forgotten all about.
So that's the thing that I'm really excited about at
the minute. And of course, I live in Dorset, which
(34:03):
is on the south coast of England. I go from
beach to beach. I lived in Florida, Vero Beach, now
I'm at Dorset, got some of the most beautiful beaches
and the warmest ones because we're all the way on
the south coast. So who wouldn't go to the beach?
S2 (34:16):
Yes. Yes. Oh, gosh, that's wonderful. And I think that
that goes back to what you were saying about always learning.
So I love that that you are doing that in
your professional life as well as your personal life as well. So, Lisa,
share with our audience how they can get in touch
with you, how they can learn more about your work.
S5 (34:37):
You can get in touch with me by having a
look at my website, which is a w w w
dot by the waves. Co.uk by the waves. All one word.
We've talked about the beach. There you go. It's I'm
living the brand as I. But by the way is
co.uk and you can just get in touch with me
through the website.
S2 (34:57):
Okay, that sounds great. Well, thank you so very much
for sharing your wonderful knowledge and insight. It has been
an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast and
we will definitely be checking you out at your website.
Thank you so much, Lisa.
S7 (35:15):
You're very welcome.
S5 (35:16):
And hopefully I'll see you stateside at some point and
I can buy you lunch. That'd be lovely, wouldn't it?
S7 (35:22):
Oh, yes. Let's do that. You do.
S2 (35:25):
All right. Thank you so much, Lisa. Such a fun
conversation with Lisa. I particularly love that calculation she has
for selecting her clients, taking into consideration the skills she'll
learn that could be of benefit to her in the future.
And she really just lives by that lifelong learning motto.
(35:47):
And I just love that she's writing again. So I
hope you have enjoyed this episode. If you'd like more
nonprofit fundraising resources, visit my website at GenCon, where you
can sign up for my monthly newsletter, Access Free Guides
and learn more about my book, The Insider's Guide to
Online Fundraising. This has been from The Nest, where fundraising
(36:10):
takes flight.
UU (36:10):
Thanks for listening.
S1 (36:18):
This episode is produced by Ola's Media Network in San Diego, California.
Jessica Garcia serves as general manager. Lina Alvarez is associate producer.
Elia Ramos is creative director. Jesse Polk is executive producer
and founding partner. And Chad Peace is our president and
founding partner. Thank you for listening.
S8 (36:41):
Alas, media.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those
of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect
the views and opinions of Ola's media or its sponsors.
S2 (00:15):
Welcome to From the Nest with Charity. Jen I'm your host,
Jen Neumeyer. On this podcast, we have casual conversations with
folks in the nonprofit field exploring the success and lessons
learned of topics like campaign tactics and mentors. Today, you
get a chance to eavesdrop on my conversation with Lisa Harwood.
She's the owner of Buy the Waves Charity Consulting in Dorset, England.
(00:38):
And yes, that is a beach town. And yes, I
am jealous. So we'll talk about Lisa's journey to consulting
and launching her firm right before Covid. She'll also share
her fascinating approach to selecting her clients. And we'll get
some insight into her newest hobby. So stay with us.
This is from The Nest with Charity Jen.
S3 (01:04):
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S2 (02:20):
So, Lisa, thank you so much for joining me. I'm very,
very excited to have you on the podcast. And I
know the listeners are going to just love hearing from
you and hearing your background. So as we start off,
let's tell us a little bit about about you and
your background.
S5 (02:39):
Well, Jen, I was never meant to work in the
not for profit sector. I was never meant to work
in charities. And I arrived in Florida in a little
town called Vero Beach from my home country of the UK.
I landed in the US and I worked for a
TV station there, which is what I should have been doing.
That's what I had done. That was my degree, right.
And then the March of Dimes happened. The March of
(03:02):
Dimes Birth Defects Foundation landed in my heart, said, No,
you don't want to work for it. You say you
want it, you want to come and work for charity.
And that's what I did. And that was back in
19 the early 1990s. And I never looked back. I
had been in the charity sector ever since. So then
I went to the American Cancer Society in South Florida,
and then when I came back over to the UK,
(03:24):
I carried on and worked for Save the Children. I
work for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which is a
huge maritime life saving charity over in this country. So yeah,
I got the charity bug and it never left me.
And now I run my own consultancy. I'm working with
not for profit leaders in the sector, so it's been
not for profit all the way and I have enjoyed
(03:44):
every single minute of it.
S2 (03:46):
And isn't that so funny? I think that there are
so many stories, if not maybe most stories of people
who have just sort of fallen into fundraising and they
you know, you know, I like to say I don't
know of too many kids that grow up and say,
I want to be a fundraiser when I grow up.
And and I do love your story because I think
(04:08):
that that's how it happens, is we end up somehow
associated with a nonprofit working with a nonprofit, and then
that becomes our passion.
S6 (04:20):
Yeah, it does.
S5 (04:21):
Although I think we were lucky. I mean, I sometimes
I find myself now talking to much younger charity professionals
and I and I'll say to them, Do you know
when I first started working at the Pocahontas building in
downtown Vero Beach with the March of Dimes, there were
no computers in the office. And they look at me
and go, How? How do you fundraise without a computer? Like,
(04:43):
how do you do it without mail? Merge and direct
marketing and stats and insight and and we had to
do it off gut feel and relationships and telephone calls
and writing out paper slips and all of that at
the time. And I feel like I was incredibly fortunate
to be in it. I suppose the ground floor and
the beginning of what I would say was the professionalization
(05:04):
of fundraising, because you're right, back then nobody said, I
want to be a fundraiser and walk through the door,
you know, waving a little fundraising ticket. But now I
hear far more people saying, I want to work in
the nonprofit sector. I want to work in a in
a meaningful environment. I want to make a dent in
the universe. I want to make a dent in a
(05:25):
significant problem. So whilst I'm still not sure whether people
aspire to be a fundraiser, I do think that it
is much more difficult now to accidentally land in a
not for profit career because I think there are quite
a lot of people now who aspire to that career
and rightly so, because it's a great it's a great
place to be.
S2 (05:45):
Yes, Yes, I absolutely agree. And I think to equate
the even though it's not really an equation, but I
think when I started in the nonprofit field and in
particularly in online fundraising and digital. Meant when when the
platforms were new. You know, Twitter was just launching, Facebook
(06:08):
was just launching. And there was such excitement and energy
around that and building those communities. And so, you know,
there there is always an evolution, you know, of how
we do things. And it just is it's interesting to
sort of hear those journeys and how that has evolved
over the years.
S5 (06:29):
I think it's speeded up now, though. I think I
think back in 2016, Charles Schwab World Economic Forum said
that technological change will never be as slow as it
is today. And I think that's the difference now, isn't it?
Is that where it took 20 years maybe for us
to really harness the power of technology in those in
those early days in a blink of an eye? Now,
(06:49):
you have to understand, and I work with a lot
of my clients around things like crypto philanthropy, digital and
digital platforms, different giving platforms. And I think you really
have to move quickly now because it's it's a build.
And if you miss any of those early steps, you
you really struggle to keep up. And one of the
(07:10):
concerns I've got for charities these days is you have
to move quickly. You have to move fast. And a
lot of charity leaders are my age. They're what I
would call analog leaders, their leaders that are not digital natives.
We have to we have to try really hard to
understand this stuff. And yet we're leading charities in a
digital world. And so I think there's a real issue
(07:33):
here for those of us who have come up the
ranks and are my age particularly, but those of us
who are not digital natives, to remember that we we
think in a linear way, we think in a very
specific way that is not suited now to future proofing
your organizations as far as tech is concerned. So I
(07:53):
think we have to listen much more to younger people,
the digital natives in our organization, the my boss certainly
ever listen to me back in the day, because we
really have to learn some stuff from them, particularly around tech.
S2 (08:08):
Yes, absolutely. This is something that in my sector, in
public media, is a real struggle as well for legacy
organizations that have, you know, their tried and true fundraising
methods that may be starting to erode slightly, like making
that pivot to, you know, focus on digital relationships, on
(08:33):
digital innovation, on testing, and as you said, like listening
to those younger voices. It is a very new world.
And it and it can be kind of scary for them.
S5 (08:45):
It can. And we've seen that happen during the pandemic,
I think. I mean, one of the problems of the pandemic,
the pandemic created for charities as well as the high
demand in some areas was was cash flow was on
a knife edge for many organizations. And what what worried
me in that period was I saw I saw lots
(09:05):
of charities disband their innovation teams to cut budgets. I
saw lots of charities disband their innovation and their experimental
budgets at a time for me where I think they
needed them the most and I wanted to shout, No, don't,
don't cut that. You know, cut something that you've been
doing for a long time that is starting to go down.
Don't cut something that is essentially the thing that will
(09:28):
save you in the future, you know, And and so
I hope that they come back. I hope that those
innovation teams are brought back into the fold. And I
hope that those innovation budgets recover. But it was a
shame to see some of those cut during the pandemic
when I think charities needed the most.
S2 (09:45):
Yeah. Now I know in your sort of consulting role,
you work with a lot of different kinds of clients.
And so how do you approach those conversations and are
there any, any, you know, tactics or tips that you
would have for talking to leadership about making those investments
(10:10):
in digital? What sort of just overall your experience with that?
S5 (10:15):
Well, it's a very small consultancy. It's me and I
do have a couple of really trusted associates that I
use as well. But I think for me, it's about
being really authentic and and I am really authentic with clients.
And I will always say to a client or a
prospective client, if you want someone to come and help
you keep things ticking over and shore up those areas
that have been in decline for the past 3 or
(10:36):
4 years and actually are now in a terminal decline,
Probably go and find another consultant because that's not me.
If you want to take some risks, if you want
to do something innovative, if you want to try something new,
and if you want me to challenge your thinking on
on how innovative you're being, then that's great. Let's, let's
have a conversation. So I think right from the outset,
(10:57):
I'm not a consultant who will shore up and. Who will,
as part of a longer term strategy to buy some
time whilst a charity innovates may be. But I'm I'm
always really clear at the outset that that's not what
I do. I don't. And so I'm much more interested
in in helping charities to to plan plan something for
(11:20):
the future rather than rather than keep a legacy from
the past on life support because that that isn't going
to help. And I'm always really clear about that.
S2 (11:31):
And going back to when you are sort of evaluating
those clients and who to take on, you know, being
a small consulting firm yourself with a few others helping,
you know, how do you go about making those decisions?
I mean, I know that before when we have talked you,
(11:52):
you had some really unique roles. You were an interim CEO,
I think, at one point. And and so so how
do you balance those requests and and really sort of
analyse the the client need to sort of match your
skills and talents.
S5 (12:13):
So I have three. I always say I earn my
salary in three different currencies and the first one is
obvious is money because I have to pay the mortgage, right?
You have to, you have to live, you have to
eat and you have to pay your fuel bills. So
so I have to I have to be paid. But
but the second one is, is innovation and fun. I've
(12:33):
got to get paid in that. The client has to
has to pay me in innovation and fun. And then
the third one is learning. So when a client offers
me an opportunity to learn something that I did not
know before, I engage with that client, then then that's
great because it keeps the gray matter alive and it
keeps you thinking. And so I kind of balance it
(12:55):
out between those three, what I call those three accounts. And,
and if, if a client can give me lots of
learning and lots of innovation and fun, then I might
not charge them as much if they give me absolutely
no learning and absolutely no fun. Guess what? You know that.
So I it's a bit like a graphic equalizer. And
I look at each client on that score sheet and say,
(13:17):
This one I really want to take and I'll prioritize
clients on that basis as well. So a client that
that can fill all three of those counts is my
dream clients. And I've been really lucky over the past
five years in that almost all of my clients have
been able to fill those buckets, which has been fantastic.
S2 (13:36):
Oh my gosh, that warms my heart. I just love that.
So now you said five years. So was it five
years ago that you decided to to do to go
on your own and do consulting?
S7 (13:49):
It was, yeah.
S2 (13:50):
And so how was that transition and that journey? You know, like,
tell us a little bit about how you went about
making that decision. It seems like a big leap to me.
S5 (14:03):
Yeah, and it wasn't the first time I've made that leap,
so I made that leap. Oh, I suppose ten years earlier,
when I had left my job at Save the Children,
I decided to set up a consultancy. It didn't work.
It didn't work. And I. I just didn't have the
experience and I didn't have I wasn't ready. And so
I went into a into another job. And and at
(14:26):
the time, that was so difficult because I really wanted
to do consultancy and it just wasn't meant to be
at that point in time. But on reflection, when I
12 years later, when I came back and said, okay,
I think I'm ready now and set up my business again,
it felt completely different. It was completely different and I
was able to recognise the difference and know with confidence that, okay,
(14:49):
I know what wrong feels like and I know that
this is not that. So I had confidence then, but
I was talking to a friend the other day and saying,
had I known when I set my business up in
August 2018 that less than two years later we would
be slap bang in the middle of a pandemic. I
wouldn't have done it. I would not have done it.
Even with that that assurance that, yep, this feels right.
(15:11):
It's okay. I would have been absolutely terrified and said No,
there's no way my little tiny, fragile business at less
than two years old would be able to survive that.
And so I am so glad I did not have
a crystal ball because it was really during that period
that I think I really I really understood the power
(15:34):
of of a consultancy that can work alongside charity leaders
at one of the most unprecedented, challenging times of probably
their career and and support them along the way, walking
shoulder to shoulder with them. And I remember I suppose
round about the back end of 2020 thinking there is
(15:55):
nowhere I would rather be and there is nothing I
would rather be doing than supporting. I had ten clients.
At that point, and there was nowhere I would rather be.
And every single minute of every single day felt meaningful
and every single minute of every single day felt like
a really good use of my time. And so I'm
really glad I couldn't see what was coming because I
(16:16):
would not have taken the leap. And so I guess
if I could go back and give myself some advice,
it would be go for it, jump. Don't worry about
what's coming because you surprised what you you surprise yourself sometimes, right?
And and it was a really good growth experience for
me during that time.
S2 (16:33):
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, gosh, yes. That's amazing. So now you
had said that you had tried starting a consultancy a
few years ago and that you weren't ready. Are there
any sort of any nuggets of advice that you can
that you would give to others who are saying, I'm
thinking about going out on my own and and being
(16:55):
a consultant? You know, are there are there a few
things that you would advise them to consider before, before,
you know, making that decision?
S5 (17:09):
Yes, I think I mean, it's different for everyone, isn't it?
But for me and I really can only speak for myself,
one of the things that I I live and die
by really in this consultancy is that when I work
with charity leaders, I do so from a place of experience.
So I've got the scars and and I understand where
(17:30):
they are and I understand how they're feeling. And it
was really interesting when I took the interim chief exec
role at Jeans for Jeans, which was a part time,
two days a week. And I did that partly because
it's a it's a cause really close to my heart.
One of the first campaigns I ever ran was jeans
for jeans, blue jeans for babies, for the March of
Dimes Birth Defects Foundation over in Florida. So to get
(17:53):
the chance to be the chief exec and interim chief
exec here, I jumped at it. But the other reason
was that I was at that point starting to work
with a lot of chief executives. And I had never
been a chief executive. And it was the one area
where I thought, I'm not I'm not advising from experience now.
I've worked with chief executives. So as far as that,
that that is concerned. Am And so taking that role
(18:15):
as an interim chief exec post pandemic, just after the
pandemic and actually overlapping with some of the lockdowns was
was really, really interesting. And I feel that now that's
a ten month period of being a chief executive in
a difficult in a difficult situation, in a difficult environment,
if nothing else, gives me much more confidence to be
(18:37):
able to work with chief executives now because I can
kind of look them in the eye and go, Oh,
I've been there. You know, I did that. And and
it it helps with my empathy and it helps with
my understanding of their situation. So always for me, it's
important to be coming at this from a place of
experience and not necessarily from a place of an intellectual understanding.
(19:00):
That's important too, but on its own. For me, that
wouldn't work. I would not have the confidence to be
able to look my clients in the eye and go, Oh, okay. So,
you know, and so that's important for me. And it's
the confidence more than anything else.
S2 (19:14):
And I love what you said about having the scars
along the way, because I do think as difficult as
nonprofit work is, there is always something to learn in
those challenging situations. I was at a nonprofit where I
had free, almost free rein to do very creative, innovative,
(19:40):
innovative online campaigns and really had a lot of experience
under my belt. And then when I started at a
new organization, there was so much resistance and it was
all about navigating those waters. So I love that aspect
of consideration. You know, what are what are your buckets
(20:00):
of experience when you're thinking about going into consultant work?
Like just understanding even for yourself, like, here are, here
are my little here are my little areas that I'm
really that I'm really good at, that I have that
experience that as you say, I can look someone in
the eye and relate to what they're doing and give
them advice.
S5 (20:21):
But equally and I guess I go back to what
we were talking about earlier on, it is important never
to stop learning. So, you know. Correct. I mean, I
can I cannot lay claim to having a huge amount
of experience in crypto philanthropy. They are an ally. We
were the first charity in 2014 which looking back now,
was very early to start taking donations in cryptocurrency Bitcoin anyway.
(20:42):
And so I remember that. But I am still just
like everyone else. Quite use crypto. So there are some
things you can't have experience in because they weren't there
when you were when you were doing that role or
in that in that position. And so that's why that
third learning part is really important, you know, when I
look at clients. Because it is important never to stop learning.
(21:05):
If it's important for me to come from a place
of experience, then I just have to get on and
get some experience right. In crypto philanthropy, I have to
start reading books. I have to start talking to people.
I have to start doing pro bono. And one of
the ways that I get experience is by talking to
clients who might want some pro bono work. And I
can say, I can't charge you for this because this
(21:26):
is as new to me as it is to you.
But if I do some pro bono work with you,
how does that sound? Because I can get some experience.
I can give you the benefit of the experience I
do have. And together we can learn about this new thing.
And that has worked really well. So I think that
it is important to move outside your experience as well
and find a creative way to do that.
S2 (21:47):
Yes, And of course, that goes back to what you
were saying before about your three buckets, about making sure
that your that those three buckets are covered in your
in your consultant work. So I love that. One thing
I want to do is I want to go back
to something that we actually had talked about even before
the podcast, and that is the state of nonprofits today
(22:13):
and the biggest risks to nonprofits that we see. I
think that you and I are probably aligned on what
what we agree are some of the biggest risks. But
let's and we talked a little bit just a little
bit about this earlier, but let's kind of dive into
that because I think you had some really great perspectives
(22:34):
on what the biggest big, biggest risks are to nonprofits
these days.
S5 (22:40):
It's really important. I think that charity and we touched
on this with innovation, but when cash flow is on
a knife edge and it is for many charities now
when they're being asked to deliver more for less, there
is a real tendency for charities to to look down
and in so just look internally, look at what they've
already what they do, what they know and and try
(23:03):
and and optimise all of their existing activities as much
as they can and look at the short term and
look at business as usual. And that is perfectly understandable.
And to a degree there is there is a place
for that. But I think one of the biggest risks
at the moment and until we can get charities and
nonprofits back on an even keel financially, is that's all
(23:25):
they do. And what they what they don't do is
they look up and out. And I see so many
charities planning in year, but but not planning to three,
four years from now. Now we don't know what is
what is going to happen, what the world is going
to be like in two, 3 or 4 years. So
I think even when I say planning, I mean something
(23:46):
very different to what you and I would have known
as planning ten years ago. It's about being agile and
it's about being lean and it's about being innovative and creative,
but still aiming at some very clear metrics and a
very clear vision and a very clear set of aims
at the end of it. But that requires multiyear planning,
(24:06):
that requires us looking up and out. That requires us
not just embracing technology as a tool, but being able
to thrive as an organization in the technical ecosystem, which
is much bigger than that. So I think one of
the biggest risks is that we we retrench back into year,
year on year planning. We retrench back into trying to
(24:28):
keep what we've got on life support and we don't
look up and out and we're not brave and we
don't learn from other sectors and we stay in our bubble.
And I think that's one of the biggest risks that
we've got at the moment in the sector.
S7 (24:43):
Yeah.
S2 (24:43):
One of the well, among a few of the things
that we've been talking about with some of some of
our organisations is really focusing on diversification of fundraising. I
think that that comes right along with what you're talking about.
You know, that multi year planning, you know, looking at setting,
(25:05):
carving out just a little bit of the the budget
and the time and the resources to explore something new,
even though it might fail. I think there's also a
real fear of failure. But yet you learn, you learn
so much from from that. And so yes, getting organisations
(25:27):
to expand for sure.
S5 (25:30):
And I like I always, I always work with my
clients on an answer matrix because I think, you know,
you can you can proactively decide how much of your fundraising,
investment and risk you want to put in product development,
how much you want to put in market development, how
much you want to put in that top right hand quadrant,
which is diversification, and therefore you might lose that. And
I think as long as you have some framework and
(25:52):
some discipline around those decisions and you stay with them,
you can you can make sure that you always allocate
some growth investment, you always allocate some diversification, and diversification
does not happen overnight. So if you're only just starting
diversification now, well, you're looking 2 to 3 years from
(26:13):
now before you really start seeing some of that pay off.
So I think there are some charities that will run
out of runway because they have not started early enough.
So I always encourage my clients to use the Anthos
matrix two by two matrix and proactively allocate your fundraising
spend and risk to those four quadrants and then decide,
(26:33):
you know, how much of that you're going to put
in that high risk box. And there's nothing wrong with
putting some of that in your high risk box as
long as it's a conscious decision. It's not reckless. It's planned.
S2 (26:44):
Yes. Yes. I love that. It's not reckless. It is planned.
I think that's so important. So share with us maybe
an example of a client or even just in your
in your past, something that was that you saw as
a really great success that you were just so personally
(27:07):
gratified by that it just is like if there were
any shining example of an organization doing making the right
budgeting decisions or creating a really great campaign or internal resources,
because you have such a wealth of experience working with organizations,
(27:30):
can you think of a success story to.
S7 (27:32):
Share with us?
S5 (27:33):
You know, whenever whenever people ask about success like that,
one of the things that that they often. Ones is
the big bang, right? The really big bang. But one
of the things I genuinely believe is that success is
lots of little bang. Success is a build of lots
of little things. And I think I can point to lots.
(27:55):
I mean, I mentioned earlier the Rnli was the first
major charity to start fundraising in Bitcoin, and I remember
that point. I remember other charities just looking at me,
What are you doing? Why are you doing that in 2014?
I'm like, Well, why not? I mean, you know, well,
you can't trace where the where the bitcoin are coming.
So I'm like, so, you know where every coin that
(28:15):
lands in one of your cash collection boxes comes from, right? No,
of course you don't. So, you know, you do what
you can do. And of course, now you look at
the giving block and you can get the details of
the people who donate. You know, one of the 7000
cryptocurrencies that they take on that platform. So I think
that things like that are really important because they they
(28:36):
teach your teams that it's okay to to take a risk.
They teach your teams that if everyone else is saying
don't do it, but you really think you've got something,
it's okay to say, well, let's just try it and
see what happens. So I think there are little things
(28:56):
like that. They are an ally. You know, we we
restructured as part of a cost improvement program, but it
was really a transformational restructure of fundraising where fundraising didn't
sit in one department. You know, we try to to
embed it in the areas of the organisation where those
cases for support and those particular functional bits of fundraising
(29:19):
would be the most useful. And it works. Bits of it,
bits of it didn't. But again, you know, for me
that's a success because we tried something new and we
kept the bits that worked and we didn't keep the
bits that didn't and that was really a success. It
teaches your teams to innovate. It teaches your teams to
have a go. And once you remove the fear of
(29:42):
trying something and you explain and you demonstrate to teams
that you can put risk frameworks in place when you're
trying something new and that you can mitigate risk and
you can watch for those little triggers. I think for me,
that's the biggest success you can have as a fundraiser.
The danger of referring to success as the campaign that
(30:04):
went really, really well and earned lots of money is
that if fundraisers don't think that whatever it is they're
working on will deliver, that they won't do it. So
I'm I'm a bit a bit of a zealot about
let's define success as how brave we were and how
responsible we were in managing risk in a high risk
(30:26):
situation and how well we evaluated afterwards and how well
we do things differently as a result of what we've learned.
So for me, I've tried to do that all through
my career, sometimes more successfully than others. So for me,
I've tried to do that all through my career, sometimes
more successfully than others. But but that for me is
(30:48):
a success. If you can if you can operate in
that way and you can make your organisation a safe
environment for others to operate in that way, that success,
rather than always being able to say, Well, I won
this award for that, or this campaign went brilliantly, or
this campaign beat or records in a way that's easy
(31:10):
to do. That's the easy bit, right? But getting an
organisation to be brave, innovative without being reckless and creating
that culture, that's a success.
S2 (31:21):
Yes. I was just going to say like creating like
that creates such, such a wonderful culture for people to
feel like they can contribute, to feel like they can
they can bring their ideas to the table that there
is there is some freedom in that.
S5 (31:42):
Yeah, for sure. And and. And that there is no
recrimination if it goes wrong. I think in that kind
of organization, it's, it's, it's safe to bring bad news
as well as good you know and I think that's
that's really important as well. And so yeah the culture
is really important and creating the right culture, particularly now.
(32:05):
I mean, we've talked about, you know, one of the
reasons I think that innovation teams have been disbanded is
because nobody, nobody, nobody's really happy or those organizations aren't
happy to embrace calculated risk within their organization with a
view to calculated gain. And and and that for me,
(32:26):
you know, if those organizations are going to hold up
a direct marketing campaign that went really well that they've
been doing for years and they got a 3% increase
this year on that campaign. But they've closed down their
innovation team. I'm not sure I can buy into that.
S2 (32:42):
Yeah, yeah. I think that is a great ending to
our to our podcast. But I do have one other
question for you. So tell us, Lisa, just what kinds
of things do you enjoy doing on the weekend?
S5 (33:02):
Well, I have just started and I say this I
when I was young, like young, young. So child, I,
I was a writer. So from the age of about 11,
all the way through to about 21, I wrote a
weekly column for my local newspaper. I won some writing competitions.
I had a play produced. And if you'd have asked
(33:22):
me then what I would have ended up doing, I
would have said, I'll be a writer. But life got
in the way. I found I found fundraising, which I adored,
and found the charity sector, which I love. But I
have just gone back to university here and I've just
started a creative writing course and I have found my
love of writing again. And so you will find me
(33:43):
at the weekend now writing because I'm being held to
the fire to do 2000 words a week as part
of my course. And so it's really lovely. And I
found this love again that I had forgotten all about.
So that's the thing that I'm really excited about at
the minute. And of course, I live in Dorset, which
(34:03):
is on the south coast of England. I go from
beach to beach. I lived in Florida, Vero Beach, now
I'm at Dorset, got some of the most beautiful beaches
and the warmest ones because we're all the way on
the south coast. So who wouldn't go to the beach?
S2 (34:16):
Yes. Yes. Oh, gosh, that's wonderful. And I think that
that goes back to what you were saying about always learning.
So I love that that you are doing that in
your professional life as well as your personal life as well. So, Lisa,
share with our audience how they can get in touch
with you, how they can learn more about your work.
S5 (34:37):
You can get in touch with me by having a
look at my website, which is a w w w
dot by the waves. Co.uk by the waves. All one word.
We've talked about the beach. There you go. It's I'm
living the brand as I. But by the way is
co.uk and you can just get in touch with me
through the website.
S2 (34:57):
Okay, that sounds great. Well, thank you so very much
for sharing your wonderful knowledge and insight. It has been
an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast and
we will definitely be checking you out at your website.
Thank you so much, Lisa.
S7 (35:15):
You're very welcome.
S5 (35:16):
And hopefully I'll see you stateside at some point and
I can buy you lunch. That'd be lovely, wouldn't it?
S7 (35:22):
Oh, yes. Let's do that. You do.
S2 (35:25):
All right. Thank you so much, Lisa. Such a fun
conversation with Lisa. I particularly love that calculation she has
for selecting her clients, taking into consideration the skills she'll
learn that could be of benefit to her in the future.
And she really just lives by that lifelong learning motto.
(35:47):
And I just love that she's writing again. So I
hope you have enjoyed this episode. If you'd like more
nonprofit fundraising resources, visit my website at GenCon, where you
can sign up for my monthly newsletter, Access Free Guides
and learn more about my book, The Insider's Guide to
Online Fundraising. This has been from The Nest, where fundraising
(36:10):
takes flight.
UU (36:10):
Thanks for listening.
S1 (36:18):
This episode is produced by Ola's Media Network in San Diego, California.
Jessica Garcia serves as general manager. Lina Alvarez is associate producer.
Elia Ramos is creative director. Jesse Polk is executive producer
and founding partner. And Chad Peace is our president and
founding partner. Thank you for listening.
S8 (36:41):
Alas, media.
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