“A few very simple habits will put you in the top 3% of people using LinkedIn”
One greatly under-estimated tool for building relationships with potential funders, corporate partners and major donors, is LinkedIn. But what’s the most effective approach?
Rob was delighted to talk to fundraising and LinkedIn expert Michelle Benson. After many years as a fundraiser and grant giver, Michelle has found that most fundraisers are failing to make the most of this potent tool for success in major donor / trusts / corporate partnerships fundraising.
Michelle and Rob discuss an approach which is different to what most people tend to do. Rather than you chase them, a better way is to attract your ideal funders and partners to seek you out and want to develop relationships with you! She explains exactly why it’s so effective to do things differently, as well as a few simple habits that will help you get conversations with the right partners and funders for your charity.
We’d love to know what you think! And thank you for supporting our show, for instance by sharing it with colleagues or on social media. We are both on LinkedIn (!) and on X / Twitter Rob is @woods_rob.
Episode overview
[02:25] Michelle shares her extensive fundraising experience and her unique perspective from working on both the fundraising and grant-giving sides, before explaining the surprising interconnectedness of different funders in any given area of philanthropy.
[07:19] An introduction on using LinkedIn proactively, and how many funders prefer to seek out charities. Michelle discusses the advantages of LinkedIn for building relationships with potential funders and the impact of engagement on the platform.
[12:50] Rob and Michelle discuss the evergreen nature of LinkedIn and the remarkable impact of regular engagement on the algorithm in your favour.
[15:41] Michelle advises fundraisers to connect with funders and engage with their target market to shift from the charity echo chamber to instead being seen and found by funders.
[18:44] How does this work in practice? Michelle shares success stories of fundraisers being proactively contacted by potential donors and the importance of warm interactions on LinkedIn.
[20:18] Getting the most of your LinkedIn profile – Michelle emphasises the importance of a recognisable photograph and the value of joining closed groups for fundraising discussions. And shares tips for optimising your LinkedIn profile for visibility and search engine optimisation.
[24:11] Rob and Michelle discuss the importance of consistent posting and re-sharing content on LinkedIn.
[34:05] Michelle shares how spending a short amount of time engaging on LinkedIn for fundraising purposes can be incredibly effective.
Further Resources
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Transcript of Episode 150
Michelle Benson (00:00:00) – ‘I had a woman on my course who started with me in three days. Later, this guy DM’d her and said, are you up for a zoom? And she was so excited. She said, oh, I’m so excited….This guy’s DMed me. I think, I think he’s a philanthropist. I said, oh my God, that’s the man. Which is hilarious. (It took us about 18 months… It took Sophie three days!)’
‘So if I was a grant manager and you rob a fundraiser and you’ve left me a comment and I start chatting to you, you and I are chatting. So we’re having this 1 to 1 conversation. But 7000 other grant managers could be reading that post. Half the time you’re commenting, the people you’re chatting with, it’s not them that then end up chasing you for the conversation. It’s the other sort of 7000 people that read the comments.
‘The second you hit that like button, you are in the top 5% of LinkedIn users.’ Now. There’s over 100 million people worldwide. You hit like you’re now ahead of 95% of the gang. The second you write a comment, you are in the top 3%. So 97% of people on LinkedIn will not leave a comment. So the competition is asleep. Why not get in there, right?’
Rob Woods (00:01:23) – Welcome back to the Fundraising Bright Spots podcast. This is episode number 150. My name is Rob Woods, and this is the show for fundraisers who want ideas, examples, and perhaps a dose of inspiration to help you raise more money and really enjoy your job. This time we’re looking at the social media platform LinkedIn, and how a relatively small shift in your approach could turn the platform into an incredibly powerful tool for high value and partnerships fundraisers. I recently recorded this interview with a hugely experienced fundraiser, Michelle Benson, whose company is called The Culture of Philanthropy. Michelle has a really interesting perspective on fundraising, not least because of her experience on the other side of the fence, working in grant giving as well as fundraising. In recent years, she’s used this insight to create an approach that helps fundraisers make far better use of LinkedIn than most people currently do.
Rob Woods (00:02:18) – I learned so much from Michelle, and I really hope that you find it helpful too. Hi Michelle, welcome to the podcast.
Michelle Benson (00:02:25) – Hi, Rob, great to be here.
Rob Woods (00:02:27) – Thank you so much for making time. I so enjoyed our chat the other day, all about the kinds of things that fundraisers often are unaware of. So I’ve been looking forward to a chance to create a podcast on this subject, which we’ve never done before. Specifically our whole interview. Just about LinkedIn. But I’m getting ahead of myself before we get into the content. So you’re an extremely experienced fundraiser. I think you’ve been working in the sector for 29 years or so. You were a fundraiser for a long time, but you also have experience on the other side of the fence, so to speak, and your course is now a lot of them are about LinkedIn. What’s the name of the company where you work now?
Michelle Benson (00:03:04) – Culture of Philanthropy
Rob Woods (00:03:06) – So we’ll put a link to that in the episode notes for people to find out more.
Rob Woods (00:03:12) – Just in my introduction there, I said a little bit of your backstory, but could you give us a bit of that journey and in particular why it’s helped you in the courses that you now deliver to help fundraisers and especially high value fundraisers, get better results when they use LinkedIn?
Michelle Benson (00:03:30) – Definitely. So I, as you said, worked in fundraising for absolute years. And when I was working with fundraising, I worked from both very large charities as well as absolutely tiny ones. And then after 18 years of doing initially corporate fundraising and then becoming a fundraising director, I skipped over the fence and started to work for a trust fund. And despite having 18 years experience of working in fundraising for all different types of income streams and level of income, I was still really surprised by what I found on the other side of the fence, and ultimately I was working for a trust fund and I started to do joint funding with other funders. So that included other trust funds, corporates, philanthropists and their advisors. And one of the things that really struck me was everybody was talking to everybody.
Michelle Benson (00:04:27) – So if you became a funder and it does, let’s say, Rob, you started to be a fundraiser who was working in the homeless space. In your space, you will meet other funders. And I think on the fundraising side of the fence, we kind of think that, you know, trust funds, talk to trust funds, corporate talk to go. But actually it’s a big mesh. I’ve been doing these joint funding because I still do some consultancy with funders, corporates, funding with major donors or major donors. Funding with trust funds is not uncommon. And so everybody knows everybody. Everybody’s talking to everybody. And now of course these days you’ve got a lot of forums and a lot of online spaces. So it makes it even easier for funders to communicate with each other. So what does that actually mean for fundraising? The impact that has on fundraising is back in the day, all funders had an Oakland application form because ultimately you opened up your applications and therefore everybody who applied for you, that was your pipeline of, you know, funding opportunities.
Michelle Benson (00:05:32) – Whereas if you’ve got all this access to other funders and you’ve been able to speak to other funders about who you are funding what’s working well for you, it enables you to close your application forms. There’s no reason to open up an application form at all. This is a thing called the internet, right? You can find anyone you like. So the thing that really struck me was everybody’s talking to everybody because it’s highly organised behind the scenes. Income streams don’t really matter. They all merge into one big, you know, big funding pot at the end of the day. And as far as the fundraisers are concerned, it’s harder and harder to get in front of this audience because this audience can proactively find you and prefer to proactively find you than necessarily having lots and lots and lots of applications come through the door because those application forms need staffing, as does proactive looking. But instead of being reactive to what comes through the door, fingers crossed you might get some great charities. Come through the door.
Michelle Benson (00:06:36) – Why not be proactive? Don’t leave it to chance and go out there and. Find what you’re looking for.
Rob Woods (00:06:42) – So thanks for that introduction to some of the things you’ve discovered. One of the things that leapt out at me was when you just said funders preferred to find you. They’re looking to make the world a better place according to their values or their mission of their foundation. But many of them are happiest when they go and find the charity that, as far as they could tell, would be worth a relationship with. Maybe part of the solution is a charity that seems to be doing good work in that space. You’re saying they don’t want to be sought out so much as find the right partners? Is that right?
Michelle Benson (00:07:19) – Yeah. Obviously, there are a lot of funders who have an open application process, but I should imagine if you are a fundraiser, you’re finding, you know, opening those doors harder and harder. One of the things I also discovered is. If you are a funder and you want to proactively look, if somebody tries to pick the lock so you’ve locked the door, you think I’m going to be proactive and find charities.
Michelle Benson (00:07:45) – If somebody tries to pick the lock, it’s quite annoying and you’re entering their world as a problem they’re trying to solve. If, however, you are proactively looking and then you find stuff, then it’s really exciting and you enter the world as the solution they’re looking for. So actually the other thing for me was when I was on the funding side of the fence, I kept on constantly thinking to myself, if ever I’m a fundraiser again, I’m being found. I’m going to put myself in the pathway of where people are looking, and I’m going to be found because I become like the surprise treasure that they want to find, as opposed to that person who’s trying to break in through the back door, as it were. Yeah.
Rob Woods (00:08:28) – And one of the advantages of LinkedIn is the things you can do to help build relationships with the kinds of people who might care that are more in your power.
Michelle Benson (00:08:40) – Definitely. So ultimately, when you go on LinkedIn, there’s no barriers. The first thing to say is people who have a profile on LinkedIn are generally them.
Michelle Benson (00:08:50) – So if you’re talking to a company page, you’re usually talking to the comms team. Whereas if you’re talking to somebody’s profile, you’re actually talking to that person. So if I was a grant manager at a trust fund who’s got a closed application process, if I’m on LinkedIn and you start commenting on my post or commenting on my comments and I start chatting to you, you’re really talking to me. If I then check out your profile, it’s me. I’m checking out your profile. And then the other thing is obviously a lot. There’s a sinkhole thing that most people are aware of. The lurkers on LinkedIn, which is, you know, sort of 60% of people don’t post, don’t like they just read, but they don’t interact. Lurkers don’t do anything in public. So they’re not going to like they’re not going to post, they’re not going to comment. But they do send invitations. They do accept invitations, and they certainly send direct messages. So they do everything but in private, as it were, as opposed to, um, publicly, however.
Michelle Benson (00:09:50) – So if I was a grant manager and you Rob a fundraiser and you’ve left me a comment and I start chatting to you, you and I are chatting. So we’re having this 1 to 1 conversation. But the 7000 other grant managers could be reading that post. You’re on display so often with my students. I encourage them to comment and like and really join the conversation with funders. And then invariably they get a direct message from somebody completely different saying, oh, I just read your comment that you left with Susie Smith larded up. So actually half the time you’re commenting, the people you’re chatting with, it’s not them that then end up chasing you for the conversation. It’s the other sort of 7000 people that read the comments right.
Rob Woods (00:10:34) – So this comes back to one of your first points, which is that in the space, you know, to do with the environment or to do with homelessness, many of those funders are likely to know each other and certainly to be connected. And so if we’re conscious of that insight and we’re more proactive in interacting with one of them, who knows which other ones who could care, do care, could have access to resources, help, grants.
Okay, so now that makes sense.
Michelle Benson (00:11:06) – And also the other thing is it’s so much better for small teams. Well, any charity. Because ultimately if I’m emailing 1 to 1 with a grant manager, it’s just me and that grant manager, if I’m at a networking event and I’m having a conversation, it’s just me and them. We’ve linked in. Every time I’m leaving a comment, it’s me and the other 7000 people there. So the leverage in that is incredible. And if you keep popping up and you, you know, people, people can get to know you. So LinkedIn is what I call a discovery channel. So it’s first a Discovery channel to be discovered. And it’s also a relationship tool so that you can I mean, if I said to you, Rob right, you’re a corporate fundraiser. Could you talk to 50 corporates tomorrow please. That’s going to be really hard. You could definitely talk to 50. You could reach way more than 50 companies tomorrow on LinkedIn. So it’s that beautiful thing of being able to keep turning up like that and and just being present and being seen.
Rob Woods (00:12:06) – Yeah. And this might be obvious to many of our listeners, but I guess another advantage as well as scale, one to many is the evergreen nature, or certainly the long term nature, in that as long as you can achieve some level of consistency and maybe not everyone is able to do something every day. I don’t know what you teach about what a minimum level is, but if you just keep plugging away doing something every week, then over time. One of those other funders in your space might see something that actually where you commented or someone replied to you three months ago and or you did that three months ago, but only this week does someone else see it and like it. And then I guess it gets higher again in the algorithm, doesn’t it?
Michelle Benson (00:12:50) – Yeah, exactly. And then the other thing is, um, the algorithm is watching your every move. Of course. So the more you’re commenting on if I was a trust fund, for example, and I start, um, commenting on trust funds posts, it’s going to go, ah, she likes that.
Michelle Benson (00:13:06) – Bring her more of that. So everybody’s newsfeed is unique to them. So no one has. So for example Rob if you go on to LinkedIn and start scrolling through your news feed that is totally unique to you. No one else has your news feed. And it’s unique to you because it’s your past history. So what have you stopped on before? What have you, you know, what have you commented on? What have you liked? So the more you interact, the more the algorithm brings more to you. So I kind of think of it a bit like a sniffer dog. You know, you give the sniffer dog a good sniff of the rag and then you go, go on, boy, go off and find me more, you know, go and do so. It’s almost like if I’m a corporate fundraiser and I’m keeping, you know, I’m stopping the scroll and I’m liking and I’m commenting a lot on CSR posts. That algorithm is going, go, go get me more CSR people give me so so it’s prospecting for me.
Michelle Benson (00:14:00) – It’s filling up my newsfeed. And so the more the newsfeed fills up, the more I interact, the more the more I get. So the more you do it, the easier it gets because your newsfeed starts to change.
Rob Woods (00:14:13) – Hi, it’s Rob and I wanted to quickly let you know about our two flagship training courses. That’s the Major Gifts Mastery and Corporate Partnerships Mastery Programmes that are starting again from April 2024. These courses help you make serious progress through a combination of masterclasses with me and individual coaching support. Rather than describe them myself, I find it’s usually most interesting if you can hear directly from people who’ve experienced the program. So here’s a short clip from a spark fundraiser named Sarah Smith of Hospice Care Charity in Devon, who spoke about some of the positive effects that the Major Gifts Mastery programme has had on her fundraising.
Sarah Smith (00:14:51) – It was brilliant on many levels. I think you can get bogged down in the process and the job, and I think coming on the program relit my fire and made me fall in love with the job again. I definitely left it feeling like I had a real fire in my belly to make a difference. Honestly, you will. You will get your investment back many times over.
Rob Woods (00:15:15) – To find out more about either Major Gifts Mastery or the Corporate Mastery Programme, go to brightspotfundraising.co.uk/services
For now, let’s get back to my conversation with Michelle. So what’s a key philosophy or a key approach that you teach fundraisers on your courses about who they should be proactively connecting with?
Michelle Benson (00:15:41) – Well, LinkedIn gives you a free profile and it says to you, right, Rob, here’s your free profile. Please give me your name, your title and where you work. So you immediately say, you know, I’m Rob. I’m a fundraiser. I work for XYZ charity. Instantly. The algorithm then says, oh, because your colleagues connect to your trustees. So it just scrapes LinkedIn. Does anyone from your charity want to put you in with that bubble, as it were. Then it reads that you’re a fundraiser and you work for a charity and immediately wants to put you in the charity echo chamber because it wants people to constantly, you know, wants you to engage.
Michelle Benson (00:16:20) – So it puts you in an echo chamber with people like yourself, you’re more likely to engage. It does all of that because, quite frankly, wants to sell advertising to you, and it’s a damn sight easier to sell advertising if it bunches everybody together. So the algorithms are really keen to put you in the charity bucket, to keep you in the charity bucket, and to keep you talking to other fundraisers so that it can sell advertising to all of you as a group. Happy days for LinkedIn. So my advice is we’re going to do everything that LinkedIn recommends you to do. I’m almost telling you to do the opposite, because I want to get you out of the charity bucket, and I want you to, I want to put you into the funding bucket. So first of all, start connecting with your funders. So connect with your current funders and also like and comment on your target market, because the algorithm just wants your attention. And whatever’s going to get your attention is what it’s going to feed you.
Michelle Benson (00:17:18) – Because the more you come back on LinkedIn, the more you give LinkedIn your attention, the more your attention it can sell to advertisers, hence its revenue. You keep being seen. What I do with my students is we do quite a deep dive into their profiles, etcetera, etcetera too. To get themselves into the funding bucket. And then when they’re in the funding bucket, they’re very active within it, because that encourages the algorithm to prospect and bring you more. And from there, people find them and direct message them. Lots of the people that I work with get direct messages from CSR, people from trust funds from I have a fantastic story. When I was a charity, we had a major donor that we were prospecting and my CEO said, right, I should be the person that talks to this major donor only mate. And we took 18 months to get the CEO in front of the donor, chat them up. Before we got the donation. I had a woman on my course who started with me in three days.
Michelle Benson (00:18:16) – Later, this guy DM’d her and said, are you up for a zoom? And she was so excited. She said, oh, I’m so excited. I’ve got this guy’s DM me. I think, again, I think he’s a philanthropist. I said, oh my God, that’s the man. Which is hilarious. It took us about 18 months. It took Sophie three days.
Rob Woods (00:18:35) – So and crucially again, it’s fundamental to a theme in this conversation. He proactively dmed her, the fundraiser.
Michelle Benson (00:18:44) – And so that’s a wonderful thing as well. When people come to you, it’s a lot easier. It’s a they’re a lot warmer. People come to you when they’re ready and that’s the important thing. So you’ve got a lot of people that are seeing you who are not quite ready to give yet or, you know, so if I was a trust fund, for example, we might say, I’ve got a trustees meeting this week. We’re not looking at any more applications. We’re getting the trustees meeting done in two months time, are initiating grants.
Michelle Benson (00:19:11) – But I’m still a grant manager. I’m still seeing you. You’re still popping up. You still want to stay top of mind. So when I am ready, I’m ready to DM you. The thing about LinkedIn is you’re dealing with vast numbers. When we’re offline, we’re used to doing everything one on one and maybe having a pipeline of sort of 20 donors that we’re trying to get to an event or whatever. We’re talking hundreds and hundreds. So you just keep yourself present, and then when people are ready, they come to you and or it gives you an opportunity to create that relationship so that you feel that it’s warm enough so that you can direct message them. They’ll know you. And so it’s not a cold. It’s not a cold, spammy message. It’s someone you’ve actually taken time to get to know online, as it were.
Rob Woods (00:19:56) – Yeah. One question I’ve got is, I presume you’re not saying that I shouldn’t avoid connecting with other corporate fundraisers. I could connect with other people who do a similar role to me, because there might be value to that in my career.
It’s just I should add in proactively trying to join conversations in the kind of party where I want to be invited to.
Michelle Benson (00:20:18) – If you’re going hardcore, I’d go all out on the corporate stuff and I would look for a closed group of fundraisers so that I could just separate the two, because obviously there’s some fantastic closed groups on Facebook, for example. I also think closed groups are great for fundraising because they’re more honest. You have richer conversations in those closed groups than you do. Don’t forget, LinkedIn is an open platform. The other thing that I would also say is update your photograph and be recognizable because your virtual you. That photograph is what, who people are going to get to know. I had a student who was a corporate fundraiser who got a direct message from a CSR chap and said, we’re both in London, why don’t you come to my office and let’s have a meeting? She went to his reception and it was absolutely banged out. And then he came down, looked at this really crowded room and recognized her immediately.
Michelle Benson (00:21:12) – And there’s something really nice about that. Equally, I’ve had zoom calls with people where someone’s jumped on the zoom and they don’t look absolutely anything like they did on the on LinkedIn. And it’s like, you’ve got to know that person once you meet them in the cafe, once you see them in reception, once you see them on the zoom call, you kind of feel like you know them, although you’ve never met them before, which is a great, wonderful moment. You don’t want to ruin it by having a photograph that’s 20 years old and they’re like, oh, you’re not who I thought you were. That’d be quite disappointing. Equally, you see photographs of people sort of on stage with a microphone, but you can’t see their face. And so although you think, oh, it’s look at me, I’ve got a microphone looking terribly professional. I can’t get to know you because I can’t see you or they’re looking away, you know. Oh, I’ve got sunglasses on. You’ve only got that small little circle.
Michelle Benson (00:22:02) – Fill that small little circle with your face and look directly at them. And if you can have a solid black background as well, which if you jump on Canva, you can make it quite solid. Um, mine is fluorescent green now, aesthetically it doesn’t, you know, it’s not the I’m not winning any design awards with that fluorescent dream, Rob. But I do stand out if I like and comment. I’m standing out and you can absolutely see my face. The other thing is, if you open creator mode and it talks about and it gives you five hashtags. Might say talks about philanthropy, partnerships, um, CSR, homelessness or whatever you think. First of all, don’t go hashtagging social impact because that means nothing. Because every single charity under the sun can say so. Say, say, homelessness, poverty, you know, what is it that you want to be what you’re associated with? Out of those five hashtags, the first three are connected to SEO. So I’m all about being found.
Michelle Benson (00:23:05) – So yeah, I want you to be discovered on LinkedIn. But actually, you know, when you Google someone’s name, their social profiles come up. That’s because the first three hashtags, if you’ve got creator mode on, are totally connected to Google or any search engine, as are your first three skills. So if you’ve got a list of loads of skills on your LinkedIn profile that says, you know volunteering this year, rearrange them. So if I was a corporate fundraiser, I’d make my first three skills CSR, partnership and maybe ESG or something like that, or HR or marketing, if that’s the type of corporate fundraising I do. And I would also make sure that my first three hashtags are those as well, because then if I’ve got anyone searching on Google, I’ve just really pushed up my chances of being found because it’s a virtual world that you’re connected with.
Rob Woods (00:24:02) – That makes sense. And what would your next key tip be about activity that we should strive to do fairly regularly?
Michelle Benson (00:24:11) – I think if you’re going to post consistently, a lot of people find posting quite difficult.
So I, first of all, definitely like and comment on those things. You can do that. They’re they’re pretty easy. A reshare is exactly the same as a post and you can reshare old stuff as well. So some CSR person is putting a cracking piece of content out and it’s six months old. Reshare it anyway so that will you know that works for you. The other thing is play to your strengths. So people often say, is it better to do video? Should I do, you know, should I write something to them? If you are absolutely awful on video, don’t do video and you write like Hemingway, right? You know, like, what are you good at? Do that. And don’t be fooled to think that old video is more popular than text or blah blah blah, because ultimately, if I’m on LinkedIn and I love video and I keep stopping on video, LinkedIn is going to bring me more videos. If I’m on LinkedIn and I like articles and I keep stopping at articles, it’s going to bring me more articles.
Michelle Benson (00:25:14) – But I would also say if you do a post one, post one point. So think of it a bit like a joke with the punchline. If I told you a joke with six punchlines. And that’s also like if I told you a really funny joke, Rob, and it’s hilarious. It’s a funny joke. So it doesn’t matter whether I write it down, do it on a video, do it as a graphic, do it as an audio. It’s a hilarious joke, right? Because of course I’m hilarious. But if I told you, more are much more likely to tell your dire joke. That’s just not funny. Do it on video. Do it as a cartoon, right? It’s still just a rubbish joke. And that’s like content. One piece of content, one punchline. If you’ve got four punchlines, you have four posts. Don’t waste four great little gems into one post. Spread it out and make it full. So definitely consistency is the key in posting. If you’re going to post once a week, stick to once a week.
Michelle Benson (00:26:08) – If you’re going to do three days, do three days. But what you should do is spread them out 24 hours apart. If you post something and then you post again within 24 hours, you depress your current posts. So you want a 24 hour window between posts on LinkedIn, unlike other channels.
Rob Woods (00:26:27) – Yes. And I guess the thing I’m wondering, Michelle, is that this understanding of how LinkedIn works at its best is so different to what many fundraisers have experienced, where they’re trying colder approaches, or they’re trying to seek out a conversation with the kind of funder or donor or company, and they’ve been ignored. And what you’ve said is if you do the right things, the tables flip. And actually the right kinds of companies or funders or major donors seek you out. That’s so different from what people may have experienced. Could you say a little bit more about it, maybe give an example or two and any other tips to help us believe that doing it this way round works?
Michelle Benson (00:27:12) – Number one, funders can only make impact that they want to make by partnering with charities.
So they’re looking for partners. Because if you’re giving away money and you want to make a social impact, you need to partner with the charity in order for that to happen. So you are actively looking. Number two. Is when you’re trying desperately to say, do you want to come to an event or you’re trying to get in front of someone, you know, what you’re trying to do is interrupt them. You’re trying to get them to stop their day and come to your event or come to you. What I’m talking about is you going to them. So if I’m on the train and I’m checking out LinkedIn or I’ve, you know, do my whenever I look at LinkedIn, you’re coming into my day. You’re coming to me. Now, if you come to me with broadcasting’s by this by their sell, you know, sell, sell, sell, then of course you’re going to be ignored. Because, you know, when you and I watched TV in the adverts, come on, we pause the telly, we go and make the tea, we come back, we fast forward and we carry on.
Michelle Benson (00:28:12) – Right. So no, everybody runs away from ads. But if you are leaving comments that are either humorous or informative or affirming or you just having a conversation, you’re just you’re just part of their morning, you’re just part of their day. And also you’ve got to remember the sheer numbers. So when I’m a fundraiser and I’m trying to contact funders one by one, if I’m getting in front of 100 donors in your prospects in a week, I’m rock and roll. I mean, that is some serious work, isn’t it? Whereas, if I’ve just put a comment out on LinkedIn and 3000 people see it? And also, if you keep turning up and people keep seeing you, they’re not coming to you straight away necessarily. It’s not like I just saw one comment from Rob and there I am doing, you know, sending you a DM. I might have read 3 or 4 of your comments, or I’ve seen a comment saying, oh, I should, I should contact him. And then I get busy and then three days later I see another comment and you think, oh damn it, I was supposed to contact him.
Michelle Benson (00:29:13) – And this is why stewardship is brilliant on LinkedIn as well. Your current donors. The other thing about stewardship is offline. It’s highly inappropriate for me to go above your head. So if I’m a corporate fundraiser in your day-to -day connection, if I then start talking to your boss or your colleagues, whatever, that’s pretty inappropriate. However, if I only talk to you and you leave the company, I, you know, I lose my foothold in that company or a new, new boss comes along with a new broom and, you know, all that good stuff. So if I’m on LinkedIn and I connect with you, Rob, and you work for Barclays Bank, and you’re connected to your boss and your various immediate colleagues, the algorithm starts recommending those people to me and also start sharing their stuff with me because I was interested in you. The algorithm will figure out. I’ll be interested in what your boss has got to say. Now, I can easily leave a comment to your boss and go, you know, I’ve been working with Rob, actually.
Michelle Benson (00:30:10) – It’s been really great and I could be really complimentary about you. Now I’m getting to know a lot more people within the company in a really socially acceptable manner, which I couldn’t do if I was offline. So this is the sort of experience that the students I’m working with are having. So the way I see it is, and I do this myself, everything I teach, I do myself, I get up in the morning, I go on LinkedIn, I spend half an hour on LinkedIn, I close LinkedIn down, I get on with the day job and whilst I’m getting on with the day job, virtual me is out there doing its thing. And so to me is one salary, which again is wonderful for charities. It definitely works. It’s not um, it’s not some sort of minor miracle pill. You need to be strategic about it. You need to really understand. Right. Who do I want? Why do I want these funders? And also you’ve really got to consider what you have to offer.
Michelle Benson (00:31:07) – So if you treat LinkedIn like some free advertising channel as to, you know, advertise advertise and sell, sell, sell, it’s not going to work. It really won’t work. You need to treat it like a networking party. You don’t walk around a networking party, just sort of throwing brochures in people’s hands. You get to know people, you get to chat with people. It’s the first step of the relationship to get that meeting right. So you don’t have to go in there and blind everybody with your genius. You just want to, you know, you’re just chatting, basically. And the more authentic and genuine you are, the better it serves you. The second you hit that like button, you are in the top 5% of LinkedIn users. Now there are over 100 million people worldwide. You hit like you’re now ahead of 95% of the gang. The second you write a comment, you are in the top 3% of LinkedIn users. So 97% of people on LinkedIn will not leave a comment.
Michelle Benson (00:32:16) – So the competition is asleep. Why not get in there, right? And then if, God forbid, you should post something or reshare something, you are now in the top 1% of users world, globally on LinkedIn. Now, I know as a fundraiser when I use. Is to fundraise. It could be a bit of a dogfight and everything was super busy. I and I’ve also been on the receiving end of application forms where it’s an absolute tsunami. You are in a huge, hugely competitive space. If you see a CSR director or a grant manager or a wealth adviser or a solicitor post on LinkedIn, the only people liking and commenting it are other solicitors, other CSR people. There are no fundraisers there. Get in. Not only are you commenting and you’re putting yourself in the top 3% of users worldwide, you’re going to be seen by thousands and thousands of eyes that you cannot get in front of normally.
Rob Woods (00:33:15) – I love this, Michelle. Not only have you really helped me change my understanding of what game we should try to be playing and what our approach should be, but also, you’ve really helped me see it doesn’t take much.
Rob Woods (00:33:30) – I don’t have to give it 40 minutes a day. I might not even give it 20 minutes a day, but if in 5 or 10 minutes I just go to the right kinds of places and then I’ll just get involved a little bit without much courage needed. I mean, now and again, I might build up to it and post myself, but if all I start doing is liking and resharing and so on, and interacting, paying compliments in the right kind of space, which is very easy to do already the game is turning in my favour, and I am becoming more visible and likeable to the kinds of people that might care about my course.
Michelle Benson (00:34:05) – Yeah, and when you then turn your phone off and you go to work, that comment is still working for you. That comment is hard at work all day long for the next 24 hours when you’re asleep at night, that comment is still working for you. You know it’s this or cold calling. What would you rather do? It’s much more effective.
Michelle Benson (00:34:26) – And it’s not only being seen by the author, but everybody else. Yeah. And so that’s the wonderful thing I think about teaching this stuff to fundraisers, is that fundraisers already come with a lot of empathy. Being able to chit chat. So you don’t need that. You just need a keyboard, you know, or your phone and also what people have on it anyway. So a lot of these fundraisers are on LinkedIn for 20 minutes a day anyway. So it’s not like it’s an additional thing to the day.
Rob Woods (00:34:56) – Yeah, it’s just for many of our listeners, I think it’s a slight change in approach and understanding, and then maybe a 10 to 20% more proactivity once you get there and it, uh, could make a massive difference. I’d love to talk on and on, Michelle, but inevitably we need to finish very soon if people want to find out more. I know you teach great courses on this in a longer format. Where can we find out more?
Michelle Benson (00:35:22) – Uh, well, you can find me on LinkedIn. You can follow me on LinkedIn as Michelle Benson or my website. Culture of philanthropy. Fabulous.
Rob Woods (00:35:32) – Thanks so much for all your help, Michelle. I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the tips, the philosophy, and the examples. I think our listeners will get lots of value from it too. I’m going to log on to LinkedIn this afternoon and see what I can do to improve my approach to LinkedIn. But for now, thanks ever so much and I look forward to catching up with you very soon. Bye bye bye. So I hope you enjoyed our conversation and have found some things you could try yourself. As usual, we’ll put in the podcast section of our Bright Spot website, a summary and a full transcript of our chat. And in case you want to learn more from Michelle, we’ll include a link to her company, The Culture of Philanthropy. If you’ve not yet subscribed to the Fundraising Bright Spots podcast, please click that button now so you get instant access to dozens more techniques and inspiring examples to help you with your fundraising.
Rob Woods (00:36:20) – Now, if you’re a high value fundraiser and you’d like to find out more about our two popular programs, that’s Corporate Partnerships Mastery or the Major Gifts Mastery Programme, which have now helped literally hundreds of fundraisers grow their results over the last ten years. We’re now taking bookings for the next programs, which start in April 2024. And as I published this, the early discount, worth £400, is still available. If you want to find out more, go to brightspotfundraising.co.uk/services do let us know what you think about today’s episode, either via LinkedIn or on X or Twitter, where I am @woods_rob, finally, thank you so much for listening and supporting our show. And thank you to all you wonderful people who’ve either got in touch with me directly or who’ve shared these episodes with your colleagues or on social media. Good luck with your fundraising, and I look forward to sharing another bright spot story with you very soon.
