Hi, I'm Julie. I am going to walk you through how I helped my client to raise 3 million from individuals in six months and how we did that without ads or digital campaigns. So let's jump in. This is not for you. If you are at the 1 million annual revenue mark or less, If you have zero donors, if you have absolutely no individual donors, then this is really not going to be very helpful for you. And if you are still thinking about growing your revenue from individuals, this ain't really going to help you. If you're still in the thinking about it phase, it's all good. Go ahead and just click off This is for you. If you are at the two to 3 million plus annual revenue mark, if that's how much you're raising annually, this will really help you. If you have at least two people who are working on your development team, whether that is an executive director and a development director, or if you are a VP of development or a director of major gifts and you have a development team or a major gifts team, this is for you. And if six and seven figure gifts are a priority for you, this will absolutely help you. So who am I? Hello. I'm Julie. And thanks so much for listening to this. I am a fundraising expert. I have been raising money for 14 years on teams and helping my clients. We've together raised 50 million from individuals and family foundations. And I have been running my own business for six years now, which I am so grateful for. I absolutely love what I do and I have invested over a decade and hundreds of thousands of dollars in my own personal and professional development. I have hired coaches. I have hired consultants. I have worked with agencies. I have. I've read so many books. I've been part of masterminds and communities and all kinds of personal and professional development. You name it, I've likely done it. I've been trained as a life coach. I have invested so much in my own personal growth. And becoming a better human being and becoming a better leader. And I have been a student of courage and I have started my company courage lab because I want to create spaces where leaders can practice becoming their most courageous self. So that's me. And here is a snapshot. I'm going to walk you through a little bit about my story. And why I do what I do, the way I do it. So this is me in 2010, little baby Julie. And I was a part time development associate. It was my very first fundraising role. I really needed a job. And a friend of mine said, Hey, I think you'd be great at fundraising. There's this community center in South Los Angeles that's hiring. You should go for it. And I did. They hired me. I had no experience. And they said, we're willing to bring you on and train you. And we know you don't have any experience, but it's all good because we'll train you. We think that you're going to really add to the culture that we're trying to build. So I was a one person shop. I did it all. I did every kind of fundraising. I wrote grants. I wrote letters of inquiry. I did government funding. I did corporate giving. I planned events. I managed volunteers. I managed the gala. I ran the gala. I did I wrote press releases. I updated the website. You name it and I did it and my hair was falling out. I was so stressed. I got fired from that job because according to my boss, my, my grant writing wasn't up to par. And from there, I got a part time job in 2011 as a personal assistant to a ultra high net worth family. And that was really my exposure into wealth. And how wealthy people think and live and what they do, how they manage their money. It was really fascinating and there was such a lovely down to earth family. And then I also got a part time job fundraising and doing grant making a private foundation. And I was also trained as a life coach at this time. My boss trained paid for me to get trained and I learned so much, but I. Got fired from that program. Are you noticing a pattern? And my boss said, you know what? I don't care that you got fired. Did you learn anything? What did you learn? And I was so grateful for that perspective because I felt terrible but basically I just Didn't really agree with something. They were wanting me to agree with and so they released me from the program so that's that my big dream in 2014, I started working at United Way. This was a huge dream of mine. I thought, Oh, if I could work at United Way, I will have made it. This is amazing. So I started working at United Way of greater Los Angeles. I started out doing public speaking in front of federal employees for the combined federal campaign, CFC, hundreds of people in the audience. And I was trying to convince them to give 25 a paycheck in workplace giving campaigns. And I really learned about how to speak publicly and tell stories and persuade and connect with people, connect with lots of strangers. I raised like 800, 000 at that point. And then I became a major gifts officer and this was when I had an incredible mentor who taught me so much about raising six and seven figure gifts. I learned about giving gifts of appreciated stock. I learned about non liquid assets and I started raising even more. And I started raising two and a half million from about 120 donors were in my portfolio. And I was a top 1 percent performer at the time. And this is me with Michelle Carrick at United Way. We were presenting awards for an award ceremony and we had fun. And then from there in 2017, 2018, I was a development director. At lift Los Angeles, and I helped lift, which is a national anti poverty organization to launch their national major gifts program and our board chair did amazing. I got to work with really incredible volunteers. And I quit that job with nothing lined up. I was exhausted and I didn't know what I was going to do next. And I, that day that I quit my friend reached out to me and said, Hey, I need to raise millions of dollars for my nonprofit. I need help. I don't know what I'm doing. Will you come work with me and help me? And I said, yes. And that was my first experience into consulting in 2018. And I started my own consultancy and together with that very first client. We raised 5 million. We worked together for nine months and that mostly came from 12 individual donors had a lot of fun. And I learned even more about focusing on highest ROI opportunities. In COVID happened 20, 20, I launched my course and group program. Which is called Courage Lab. I was really itching to be with people in person again. And so in 2022, I decided to start working at New Story, which is an incredible organization. And I was their senior philanthropy officer, which just is a fancy title for major gifts. And I worked alongside the CEO and head of growth, her two incredible leaders, and I was traveling all the time and I raised about two and a half million from about 50 donors. And I was a mentor to their team. And that was super fun. And I left in 2023. And just went all in on my business. And last year, my clients raised a 10 and a half million. And I work with about five clients at a time. So on average, that's about 2 million a client. And I this, this snapshot I'm sharing with you because You really see how at the beginning of my career, I went from doing everything, doing all the things and being a generalist and raising one and a half million, which is good, but it was extremely stressful and it was not sustainable. To being a specialist and focusing on the highest ROI opportunities with really an incredible clients and incredible teams. And that led to raising even more by focusing on fewer things. And so you're going to see that as I talk about my method and how I help my clients and what's worked for us. So there are two ways to raise money. You know this, right? The first is you get your current donors to give more or you get new donors. So you could do both. You could do one or the other. These are the two ways you can raise money. And there are five ways. To get new donors. The first is ads. The second is organic content like social media, LinkedIn, YouTube, webinars, blogs. The third is referrals from current donors, current relationships, board members, volunteers. The fourth is cold outreach. So you reaching out to people you don't know. And the fifth is events. So these are the five ways you can get new donors. That exists for nonprofits, right? This is my method that's worked for me and that's worked for my clients to raise millions in record time. The first is 80 percent of what we do is focusing on current donors and asking them to give their best gifts. The second is referrals. We're asking everyone to refer us and connect us to someone they know who might be interested in getting more involved, who are values aligned, who are mission aligned. And then the other 20 percent of the method is focusing on new donors. So it's organic content and it's doing cold outreach where it makes sense. This, of course, depends greatly on the organization, on their strategy, on the team's strengths, on their goals. So there's so many things, there's different levers within this, and I'll get into that, but this is the method that has allowed me and my clients what's worked for us to raise millions. So why this method? Because in my experience, your top donors are not giving their best gifts yet. And why is that? It's because we don't understand how wealth works. When you understand that 90 percent of all wealth are non liquid assets, meaning it's not cash in the bank. And you are able to educate yourself and your donors on how to give from their wealth, and you're accessing 90 percent of wealth and not just the 10 percent that's in cash. And most people don't understand this because it's not taught. It's not your fault. It's not my fault. It's something that no one really teaches. And no one really understands. And a lot of nonprofits remain plateaued because they are asking for cash gifts. And focusing on your current owners and referrals, it is the most efficient and simplest way to raise unrestricted revenue for your mission. I haven't experienced a more efficient, simple way. Maybe you have, maybe there is one, please share it. This is what has worked for me, and this is what has worked for my clients. So what do we do in order to get this done? There are three things we focus on. The first is leadership. The second is increasing your and upleveling your technical skills. And the third is your strategy. So when I say leadership, what I'm talking about is your mindset, your character, your personal level of courage, your ability to manage your board and your team and to build the culture that you want and to uphold your values even when it gets tough. That's leadership. And let me give you an example of this. So my client, Flatbush Cats, raised multiple six figure gifts in the first three months that we worked together. Woo hoo, right? Amazing. And they did that because they were focused on values aligned donors. And at the same time, they let go. A major donor who was values misaligned and returned their money totally ball or move, right? Built so much credibility and trust with their board, with their team, and really stood out as we are going to draw a line in the sand. These are our values. We're not going to compromise them, and we are hell bent on growing even when it's difficult. This is leadership and this is what I help my clients to do. So this actually helps you to focus on the donors who are the highest ROI opportunities because donors who are not values aligned create distraction. It's a lot of noise. So the next thing we focus on in this model is your technical skills. This includes how to talk to donors and have investment level conversations about six and seven figure gifts. This is about how to negotiate huge skill, understanding how wealth works and being able to leverage non liquid. Assets. This is what we focus on. So let me give you an example. My client got a, one of their top donor actually to commit, to increase their annual donation from 300 K to 500, 000 that very month. And then also committed to 1. 5 million. So that was a pledge for the following year in just a 23 minute zoom call. And the reason why is because they learned how to negotiate, how to have a conversation with this donor, with their top donor and talk to them as a peer, leverage non liquid assets and understand how their wealth works. So they could have a conversation about giving their best gift. This is typical for my clients. They're able to get their top donors to give their best gifts by learning new skills. The next thing that we work on together is your strategy. So you've got to stop doing things that are low level, low ROI opportunities. and focus on high ROI opportunities. And you know what I'm going to say, I'm going to give you an example. So my client, the teaching well, they're an organization that retains public school teachers in California. The huge problem with vacancies in public schools, teachers are leaving the profession. Like crazy and the teaching. We worked together and we're able to optimize their annual report. It was already good and we took it to great, and this was a strategic move for them because their donors and their funders really resonate with the annual report. It's a vehicle that is easy for them to share. It's something that they want to read. They don't want to watch a video necessarily right in order to understand the impact. And this is true for a lot of organizations. They leverage an annual report. It's like we're inventing something new here. But for some of you, annual report may not be the highest ROI donor communication asset. So for the teaching well, They optimize their annual report and two days after they shared it with their board they had nine warm introductions, nine referrals to potential major donors, which was a record for them to get in such a short amount of time. This was their board. Organically reaching out to people and saying, Hey, take a look at this and introducing them to the teaching wall team. So that was such a powerful example of how they're leveraging their strengths and how they communicate and what they knew would resonate with their donors. So if this is something that you are interested in, if this method resonates with you, you can apply to work with me. You can go to julieordonez. com slash million. If you are someone who is looking to build your leadership skills, you want to connect with values, align donors, and you want to build your technical skills and learn how to negotiate and understand how wealth works. Then I encourage you to apply. I would love to learn about your organization. It's just a simple questionnaire. And you, once you do, you will get in depth case studies for free on exactly the results and what my clients did and walk you through what this program entails and how my clients applied that and create, we created a custom strategy for them. So That will be a really great tool for you to better understand how this might work and how this might look for you. I encourage you to apply. That's your next step. If all of this is resonating with you if you have questions, then you can DM me on LinkedIn. I would love to hear from you. And lastly, I just want to say thank you so much for listening Go ahead and head to my website, Julia Ordonez dot com slash million. And apply if that's your next step. Thanks so much.