Revolutionizing Community Philanthropy by Empowering the Next Generation of Givers

Open minds & Open hearts can shift how we observe new solutions that serve our communities. Shared empathy, compassion and curiosity Empowers young hearts & minds to participate. Transparency, Accessibility & Affordability will Engage a new generation of Philanthropists.

Revolutionizing Community Philanthropy – Via Engagement, Education & Empowerment – Transparency & Impact tracking, Shifting the mindset from Scarcity >”Giving money (donation) away” to Abundance > making an “Impact Investment” in their community. Serving Community Nonprofits with tools, data & insights to drive engagement, collaboration and reliable funding.

John Del Bello is a visionary entrepreneur with over 35 years of community involvement dedicated to revolutionizing philanthropy. He combines curated technology with accessibility and affordability, drawing from 2,500+ hours of research. Holding a 2020-21 Certification in Nonprofit Leadership & Management from Austin Community College’s top-ranked Center for Nonprofit Studies, he’s equipped with vital skills for nonprofit leadership.

More information at https://bgiving.one 

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou:
Welcome to the Nonprofit Exchange. This is Hugh Ballou. This is our 405th episode, and we’ve got, oh, it’s always special, but today’s special. We’re going to talk about philanthropy. It’s a word that most people don’t understand. So sit back, and take notes. In the next 25 minutes, you’ll get some good ideas, and maybe a new perspective on what to do next. My guest today is John Del Bello.

John Del Bello:
Sure. Yes, it’s John Del Bello. That’s correct. Sure. I’m the founder and CEO of BeGiving. And we are a social good tech firm building a philanthropic social platform. So the best way to describe it is to imagine a philanthropic version of Instagram meets Charles Schwab. So we consider people to be impact investors no matter whether they’re doing time, talent, or treasure. And we make it easy for them to connect with community nonprofits to make a difference in the community.

Hugh Ballou:
Make it a difference. That’s what we’re about. It’s impact. So your title today is revolutionizing community philanthropy by empowering the next generation of givers. So I’m going to ask you to explain that, but maybe we ought to start by explaining your definition of philanthropy. What is philanthropy?

John Del Bello:
Yes, that’s a great question. If you look back in terms of the Greeks and how the word came about, it was giving back to humanity. And it was sort of inviting people to participate in being the better part of humanity. So kindness, generosity, and love, come from a place in the heart. And then if you step forward and look at how, you know, we think of philanthropy in terms of sometimes nonprofits, while the first nonprofit was called funny enough, the penny appeal, it was after the Revolutionary War when there was a lot of orphans and war widows. And a lot of the revolutionary wives the leader’s wives decided that they needed to create some value in the system of helping all these people from the revolutionary outcomes, there were outcomes, support, and they’d go around and collect pennies. And they’d sponsor and give that money to widows and orphans and other causes, but mostly that. And it wasn’t until, believe it or not, Carnegie changed the rules around philanthropy, because he went to the IRS when it was formed and said, you need to give structure around allowing organizations to have foundations that can operate in a tax-free environment to give back, basically, because they wanted to protect their wealth for generations while also being able to deploy. That’s why the limit is so low. It’s 5% on an annual basis. So when I consider philanthropy today, that’s another year. So we’re going to a 200-year gap, right? So from 17, it was like, I think it was 1798 or 99, I think of the penny appeal, maybe 1800. And then we jumped forward in Carnegie, that was in the early 1900s. And so now we’re in 2024. The way we look at this ourselves is a completely different perspective, which is, why can’t anybody make a difference in their community in the most simple affordable accessible, and transparent way? And so for us, anybody should be able to participate in philanthropy, whether that means time, talent, or treasure.

Hugh Ballou:
Yeah, time, talent, treasure, it’s a triple, triple, it’s a tripod, isn’t it? All three of those, yes. So, we misunderstand philanthropy and it’s different with the different generations. And I think I’ve talked to people, I run a non-profit to support non-profits, and there’s this general, well, there are lots of myths that we tell ourselves, but the misconception about philanthropy, and you defined it well in a very succinct manner. We think somebody has to have deep pockets to be able to give, when in fact, there are lots of different levels of giving, and in the aggregate, it makes a huge difference. And you know, it also makes a difference with the giver. Yeah. Which we forget about. We think, oh, no one asks for money, but we realize that when somebody is putting some money toward a cause, it’s good for everybody.

John Del Bello:
That’s right. I agree 100%. And it’s so funny, you say exactly what you just said is exactly in our mindset and our vision, which is anybody should be able to participate at whatever level they feel comfortable with. And they should be able to, again, commit time if they can volunteer, commit, you know, treasure, I say, is a very broad perspective that could be a quarterly recurring. It could be that you help fundraise for the organization. It could be that you Commit to raising funds for a specific cause meaning going to your you know, people do the Facebook birthday thing so there are very many ways, and then talent I think is Maybe you are a good fundraiser. Maybe you’re a good community leader. You could start a giving circle you could Go participate and become a board member So we look at this and say, there are various ways people can enact and be empowered to make a difference. But at the same time, we also recognize a lot of these nonprofits don’t have the capabilities. And that’s really what we’re trying to do is bring, you know, unite them because one party, the organization is doing great work. They’re just you know, small operators trying to do their best with very little funds, and they try to improve their community, but they’re not great at marketing. We all know this. They’re not great at engaging younger audiences. They’re not good at telling their story or being transparent sometimes. These are constant Issues that and it’s been reported. I mean, I’ve looked at like I’m 2,500 hours in research in the last four years And I’ve looked at pretty much everything out there and these consistent issues have been playing philanthropy for decades but nobody seemed to want to put two sides together because and you know this because right now the existing I Call it the paradigm is charitable giving funds on one side and SAS enterprise on the other giving product technology software if you want to nonprofits nobody’s brought them together and Why is that? We have Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. We have all these platforms. Why hasn’t anybody thought of this as a social impact platform opportunity to bring philanthropy to the masses?

Hugh Ballou:
And that’s what you’ve done. That’s what we’re doing. So there’s lots of challenges. I mean, you listed the key challenges I see, which all lead to a lack of revenue, leader burnout, and then low board and volunteer engagement. And so we’re putting our energy towards serving people. But we could serve more people if we worked on our infrastructure, which would then help us be able to generate more revenue to get more people engaged. So many, many, many things work together. So in 2020, and 2022, Giving Tuesday did a global study on philanthropy. What are the main issues that came out of that study?

John Del Bello:
Yeah, it was a great study, by the way. It was one of the best ones I’ve seen, and I’ve looked at it a lot. They had 300 orgs around the world participate. And what I think is the most important here was, they basically, it’s so funny, because this was our vision before this report came out, like we’ve been operating since 2019, 2020 ish, first as research stage for about 18 months. Then we started to do operations as a nonprofit arm first couldn’t get funded during a pandemic and post-pandemic, so ended up just going into our for-profit tech firm to get this technology to the market. When we looked at this study, We’d already said, that the main problem in the world in general is just the scarcity mindset versus the abundant mindset. And so the Giving Tuesday report said, like, this is the shift that needs to occur, because there’s generosity, In most people’s hearts, and most people say they want to make a difference in the world. Well, the interesting thing was, they were talking about how sadly, the state of philanthropy at the community level, especially, you know, over-reliant on too few people, right? So on average, large donors represent only 2.8% of your donor base, yet you’re relying on 40% of your revenue, which is not a good system. So they need to expand broader, and include broader audiences and younger audiences, right? So number two, there needs to be this shift that we were just talking about earlier is that you can participate even if it’s just your time, right? That’s a value, but that’s not monetary. So again, shifting that mindset from scarcity to abundance. If I have time, that’s something I can give. If I have a little bit of money, maybe $26 a year, I can do that. If I have $100 a year, right? So there’s all different ways. And then, more importantly, it’s allowing, you know, The engagement to be organic and natural. Let people find your cause because they’re seeing value in what you’re doing, right? Which means that nonprofits have to be more transparent, right? Their impact. They have to be able to better storytelling. They have to be engaging, but they don’t have to be competitive in mindset. That’s a broken rule. There’s no reason to be competitive. As a matter of fact, on average, your average participant in philanthropy in the world gives to between four and six causes a year. Meaning time, talent, or treasure. So, so this is not, you’re not competing to have that one donor to yourself. That’s not the facts. Uh, the next thing is they said, you know, provide simple ways for people to participate, right? Make it easy for them, which is again, about having the website, you know, be on an app that accepts donations or mobile, you know, mobile technologies is most likely, um, and allow them to get engaged because they feel connected to what your cause is. And then last is to engage them on their terms, not yours. Like a lot of a lot of times, I’ve talked to nonprofit leaders again to just gauge and understand things. But it’s like I’ve been in the space for 30 years and a lot of times it’s this mindset that they think they have to own the donor and it’s their donor. Right. That’s just the wrong, wrong way to think about it. Engage the donor on the benefit of what you’re doing and the impact you’re making. They will be there. They’ll stay there. They’ll be recurring. If it’s all about you owning them, they get that sense. And typically donors don’t like that. And that’s why you have a drop off from recurring or monthly or whatever is because they feel pressured or they feel like they’re doing something that they’re not naturally comfortable with. And so we need to stop doing that to participants in general so we can invite, to your point, a broader, more engaged, younger audience.

Hugh Ballou:
I think it’s also a missing piece that we don’t communicate with them about the results. They’ve given us money. We are stewards of other people’s money. That’s right. And we know what we’re doing, but we don’t tell anybody what we’re doing.

John Del Bello:
That’s right. That’s right. Horrible storytelling and not sharing impact. It’s a lack of transparency. Yeah, that’s for sure. That’s for sure.

Hugh Ballou:
Yeah, and that’s a very specific part of transparency. And it’s people, they tell me, well, I don’t want to toot my own horn. Well, you can tell the story of people’s lives that your organization has impacted. What’s wrong with that’s not tooting your own?

John Del Bello:
I agree. I agree. It’s funny you say this, the first measurement we have chosen to be the standard on the platform is we have all their 990 data, right? So when they, when they register, nonprofits register on our platform, and we’ve made it so both sides, a 14-year-old can operate the technology. That’s how simple it is and straightforward, Hugh. But we show them the verification of information we already have. So all they’re saying is, is this the correct information? Because we pulled it from the 990. And the only thing we ask for is, how many lives do you impact on an annual basis? And they have to show us proof. That goes into the app, and that makes it viable for people, to your point, on the other side to say, oh, wow, this homeless shelter helps 500 people a year. This mental health facility helps two people a year, four people a year, whatever it may be. This autism nonprofit helps 18 kids in the community who have autism. So these are very easy ways to measure. But we do plan on instituting, the best way I can describe it is, if you’re familiar, and I think most of your audience will be too, you look at a Fidelity or a Charles Schwab, what do they do? They pass information on from one side to the other. Here’s mutual funds, here’s bond indexes, here’s ETFs, here’s how their performance, here’s their metrics. And you get a sense of what they do and their performance and how they could help you grow your portfolio.

Well, we want to do the same thing with the nonprofits. We want to say, hey, here are the 28 subcategories we know exist at the community level. Let’s work with those orgs. And you might have an org in the same subcategory that might be a $400,000 org and has a $1.5 million org doing the same work just in different locations. I mean, we see a lot of cross-pollination. They just don’t, or so to say, the same efforts being made, but they’re not cross-pollinating. And we want to promote collaboration. But you look at that and you go, okay, let’s determine what is the best way to measure impact. So five years from now, we’d love to see this platform operate where anybody can get on, determine exactly the measured impact, know exactly the type of causes, how they could participate, and engage and drive and make their communities better, and stronger.

Hugh Ballou:
Now, you mentioned generations. Let’s hone in on that. So how do we, A, engage and invite the different generations? I’m a boomer. I’m one of the boomers. And I have children and grandchildren that are in different generations. I work with multiple generations. So that’s part of the question. So the other part is, that all types of organizations are struggling. Churches like Rotaries, community service organizations, and community non-profits, are all struggling with attracting multiple generations, especially what we’re calling the younger generations, which is a lot far from me now, but diverse and younger, diverse in all the senses that word. So, you know, engaging them, attracting them, having the relationship and it doesn’t matter for all leaders or not, how do we participate in and engage in them, inviting them and all of that that we just talked about?

John Del Bello:
Yeah, yeah, no. Great question, you and I think that’s the crux of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. So the first thing we recognize is when we started looking at all the data and research the nonprofits in this category are not good at storytelling. They do not know how to engage younger donors. They’re not good at marketing. They’re not good at transparency. They have way too much on their plate for the number of staff they have and they’re underfunded. So that’s only seven, by the way, there are about nine things we solve because there’s other stuff on 12 things we solve because there’s elements on the other side for the mobile app for the users. So we looked at it and said, okay, so let’s give them tools to make it a one-touch, share their media, tell their story. And we’re creating an AI bot that’ll be able to hit a button literally and it will already have all their information because we have it in our database and it will create either a still video with a script or it will have a voiceover. It could be a video, but they won’t have to produce anything. They’ll just have to click the buttons and it will tell their story for them to the other side. That’s a very important key because if they’re not good storytellers and they can’t share their impact transparently, they’re not going to get the younger generation. That’s number one. Number two, we want them to be able to have easy tools, one touch. So if they have a fundraiser, they can share that one button, but the URL, if they have a volunteer opportunity, again, share that one touch. More importantly, we know they need to collaborate. the nonprofits within one another because the number of nonprofits doing the same thing in different locations is astounding. We were looking at 66,000. We probably think there’s more than 50% of those are doing the same thing, if not more. So helping them collaborate and to get them to then engage that younger audience, they have to be using technology in a way that’s capable, simple, engaging. So we created this Instagram-like mobile app that again, makes it simple for them. They can find out about any org in their community. They can find out about any org in other communities too. know, if they wanted to just put a different zip code like we people were, were doing a lot of college internships, we’re doing programs for us, right? And they said, Well, I go to college here, but I live here. We said, Yeah, you just change your zip code and your profile, and you can do both communities. So we made that super simple. Then we said, it should be about quarterly recurring to save them on transaction fees, right? Because monthly recurring has been diving southward since the pandemic ended. So that makes it more affordable and saves them transaction fees. We also made it visual. So we give them data visualization. When people see data visualization, it makes it very simple for them to quickly conclude something because they see it visually. So you could see lives impacted in a graph. You could see a pie chart of how many orgs you’re helping. Um, we also track broader and your impact. So you, you got on it and you said you wanted to help these three orgs that you’ve been helping for maybe 20 years, right? You’d get on it and do your thing. Well, you could tell your grandchildren they could get on it and you invite them, and using your link that gets tracked back to you. Now you could see what your grandchildren are doing on the app and what impact they’re having. And we think that’s a very viral nature, which makes it natural to share and want other people to be involved. And then at the same time, it’s about, again, transparency. So younger people we find, convert to donations on 48% of impact videos, short impact videos, and they convert several, somewhere between 118 and 530% on short form text that’s about impact transparency. When I say it’s that people say, how do you have a 118 to 500%? Well, that’s because they end up sharing it. So it’s not even them that’s just getting converted. They’re converting people for you. Because again, it’s in short form and text. So a lot of people don’t know these statistics and the data that’s proven in surveys. And we’re trying to bring that element to the market where it will be beneficial to both the nonprofits and the individuals participating.

Hugh Ballou:
Wow. So those statistics are alarming for the duplicate efforts. That’s alarming. We have 1.6 million nonprofits in America. So what percentage do you think that is duplicating out there?

John Del Bello:
Yeah, so we took the entire set in 2020. And I had a CFO who was outstanding at spreadsheets. So we took the entire 2 million line of code from the IRS. Then we filtered it. And we said, only the community orgs, which were seven categories determined by the IRS. So we did the seven categories first. That automatically fed the 28 subcategories. So we didn’t need to worry about that. Then we said, where do they file 990s? Okay, it’s 200,000 minimum. So that knocked out a bunch. And then we said, where are most dollars going in the natural cause of the market, which is 90% go to the orgs over 2.7 million or something. So we said, okay, let’s knock out anything over 2.7, 2.8 million. And we came up with about it was 60 something thousand, 61, 62 thousand or so at the community level in the 28 categories in most cities. And then when we looked at the subcategories, that’s when we could see it was massive that you have food banks everywhere, shelters everywhere, homeless things, mental health, mental health and humanitarian were by far representing 65 percent of the marketplace in all cities. And those are because that’s the main areas of need in the country, right? You have a lot of kids underfed, you have schools that are having education problems and technologies and vocation, and we have mental health issues all over the all over the planet, but it’s high here. And then the main humanitarian, you know, food banks and homelessness is just rampant. And it’s just like, these are the mainstay orgs. So a lot are doing the same thing. They’re just in different locations.

Hugh Ballou:
That’s amazing. That’s amazing. Um, we, um, we don’t understand the word collaborate either. And so people, you know, people think they’re going to have to give up staff positions or salaries or whatever when you’re going to get more done with the same money and the same staff. and satisfaction and better so their tool is great let’s go to your website and you tell people it’s b the letter b giving dot one that’s interesting no order one one is for one humanity one one planet

John Del Bello:
one consciousness. Yeah, we picked that.

Hugh Ballou:
That’s one and not the number. So it’s, let me just give, people is listening and not watching. So if you’re watching, you see the website, if not, it’s B, letter B, giving, G-I-V-I-N-G dot O-N-E. So when people go there, John, what will they find?

John Del Bello:
Sure. So we’re pretty open. We share about us, we share the whys, we share a lot of information. We were actually about to upload in the next week, we’re about to upload our entire knowledge base, which is about a little bit over 2000 hours worth of study. One of the things we added recently, which was interesting because you brought this up earlier, Hugh, which was fascinating to us to see in measurable terms, but there have been so many neuroscience studies on giving and generosity. And what was fascinating to us was it proved that mentally and physically your body changes in a beneficial way when you are participating in acts of generosity and giving. And it was fascinating to think that that is possible for our participants. So we share that information as well. And then for nonprofits is their Path to join us and register and we have like I said about I think we have 22,000 live and we can go up to about 62,000 orgs And this is believe it or not I hate to say this but these are old Images because we have a brand new app coming out in the Apple and Google stores in September So all these images are going to be even better. The apps are better but yeah, they could go see what we’re doing and how it works and the same thing for participants, we’re allowing them to find out how they can join the revolution, as we like to call it. And one of the reasons we chose revolution, I didn’t get to answer that earlier, Hugh, but you have a great, great question why. If you’re familiar with Buckminster Fuller, he had a great quote, you don’t change the existing reality by trying to shift it, you create a new paradigm that replaces it. And that’s literally what we’re trying to do here the existing doesn’t work because there is no unity between charitable giving platforms and SaaS products we need to marry both sides, the nonprofits and the people together on one platform, just like a Facebook, just like Instagram, and create that value system. And that’s a different shift. And I think that will that will let people understand that it is not hard to participate and it’s not unaffordable and there are ways you can act in generosity and giving to make a difference in the community.

Hugh Ballou:
Well, there’s your email down here, which is a hot link so people can contact you and all the multiple social media places you’ve talked about. transformation today as an umbrella thing. It’s not only are we transforming the giving marketplace, but you’re also helping, me, helping transform my thinking about how I need to be engaged with leaders. So, John, this is a whole lot of helpful, useful information. Thank you for being our guest today. So before we end, we’re at the end of our time. What do you want to leave people with today? You have a thought or a challenge. What do you want to leave people with?

John Del Bello:
I think the best way I can describe it is… BeGiving for me is a vision that I want to share with others in terms of allowing them to choose how they want to participate in philanthropy. And that’s the way all of our team looks at it. We have several top advisors that have been in the sector for decades. We have board members in the sector. So we have a great, great team. And I think we all look at it the same way. How can we bring technology for the greater good to allow anybody to use it to their benefit and empowerment to make the world a better place?

Hugh Ballou:
John DelBello, thank you for Bello. Thank you. It’s close to Baloo, but it’s Bello. Yeah, there’s too many syllables for me, John. So John, you’ve been a wonderful guest, informative, helpful, and a lot of fun. So thank you for being our guest today on the Nonprofit Exchange.

John Del Bello:
I couldn’t be more happy to join you, Hugh. Thank you so much for your time and being a part of this great show.