People in Fundraising ep. 105: Anne Murphy, founder of Empowered Fundraiser, and AI Strategist

[Music] welcome to another conversation in people in fundraising this podcast features interviews with nonprofit professionals who discuss their career Journeys Lessons Learned and enthusiasm for working in fundraising and here's your host the founder of people and fundraising Tim Wilson hello everyone and welcome to another episode in season 4 of people in fundraising this is a podcast webcast I launched two years ago to invite guests in the social impact space have them reflect on their careers share what motivates them what challenges them and today I am really excited to meet Anne Murphy in Zoom because an is a very prolific generous content sharer on LinkedIn and that's how he first got connected good afternoon an hi Tim thank you so much for having me and thanks for the shout out um on our you know paying attention to one another's content on LinkedIn I don't know if people fully appreciate how much it means to those of us who put content out there when somebody says that they actually see it and read it it's like you know just a wonderful feeling to know that it that it's helping in some small way yeah absolutely and you make a good point and I I remember hearing a stat at some point and it could be outdated but about 95% of LinkedIn users don't post their own content they don't react they you know Jay Frost of the philanthropy masterminds calls it quietly observing and I think he's totally right um but you know for people like you and others that are really pouring their hearts and minds and energy into addressing questions about development yeah coming up with Solutions challenges it's just it's important to let you know that you know we are seeing it and you know particularly for me I'm seeing it I I appreciate it so and and to have you here today to talk more about it is great thank you about yourself sure well first again thank you so much for having me I love your podcast it's been really fun to listen back to some of my friends who you've interviewed and then some people who I didn't know before and learn about that their backstories so thanks again for having me on I got into fundraising when I was an intern I just needed an internship and I was at my college you know office and said have to have an internship in order to graduate does anyone does anyone know of an internship that exists and they said well I think Judy down the hall is hiring an intern in the development office and so I went and I learned then what development was and started my internship doing stuff like event planning and working on annual giving projects but the part that was really wonderful about that internship that kind of launched me to a really like lovely and satisfying career and fundraising is that my mentor allowed me to work with her on strategies for principal gift donors even though I mean I didn't know what principal giving was I didn't even know what fundraising really was sure but the what she let me do was this was back in the day when so much was still on paper and she was an iconic class and put less things in the CRM than most people even did back then and she had me go through the files of on a few of our principal gift donors and she asked me to determine why they give she was like go through so and so and so and so and talk come back and talk to me about why it is that you think that they make gifts to University of Illinois and then talk to me about what actions you think we need to take so that they would want to continue giving and what was really cool about that is I hadn't even done the things that were kind of you know the grunt workk that we do behind the scenes yet very much before I got that bigger vision of why we do fundraising in the first place right I got to learn about all the reasons why people give you know loyalty crisis peer because you know peer pressure gratitude all those things and see like the bigger picture of it and that really laid the groundwork for um a beautiful career that started 25 years ago now oh awesome yeah awesome and we entered the field around the same time I I I it was April of 2000 for me so okay okay yeah yeah we're we're just Young Bucks here that's right obviously we were both like 10 years old when we started exactly yes that's right that too so from Principal gifts and please you know share with our audience where you know where did you go from there in terms of yeah roles trajectories institutions that'd be fascinating to do sure so that was so at University of Illinois I got to start as an intern and then I had the opportunity to work as a graduate assistant in a fundraising course which was also really helpful just learning from an academic point of view about philanthropy my first job was teaching a uh was sorry running a um call center which was delightful I led those students so much and I still remember every single one of them um I you know I started my first major gift role really within the first couple of years of being in fundraising and it was kind of just sink or swim loved it had good mentors had great people around me I had a really good portfolio for a discovery officer back then and just kind of continued through the steps that a lot of development officers have where I went to work for bigger organizations or you know being in a leadership role in a smaller space ultimately um before I launched my consultancy I was running the um College of Engineering and the College of Business at Oregon State University found foundation and um had you know a large staff working for me still had my own portfolio and had thought really that that was where where I was going to continue in my you know growth trajectory in our field I always thought I would want to be you know the president of a foundation or um you know some other role at that level in kind of institutional fundraising yeah and then I changed my mind I decided I wanted to be a consultant I wanted to be able to create more change the higher I got into leadership roles the harder it actually became to create change and in my naive a I thought that when I got to whatever magical level in our industry that I would then be able to you know use a lot of my entrepreneurial ideas and my Innovation and there would always be a place for it and I would be able to kind of call more of the shots and what I learned is just that it's such an intricate system in higher ed and that making change is really can be really hard so my husband and I decided to launch our consultancy about a year and a half ago and uh have never looked back we're having a blast that is awesome that's so great if we could just pause there about the consultancy because I I want to just follow up a little bit about that concept of how change is really hard to affect and also if you can if there's a way to because you mentioned you know shops of various sizes as well I I imagine that diversity of experience has been extremely beneficial you know again with your consultancy firm that we'll get to in a moment so you just maybe talk a minute or two about both of those Concepts the the challenges of change and that breath of experience please yeah let's see well I do I feel really fortunate because I have been able to do a few different types of fundraising you know I've worked in academic medical research which is just a whole other world right lots and lots of coordination behind the scenes um you know lots of grateful patient work lots of Discovery work um and working in like a really highlevel organization this was at UCSF where we were you know the people who our donors were very high high profile our doctors were very high profile and that was a really good learning experience for me um that I really that really carried over into principal gift work because there's so much of that strategy behind the work that we do in principal gift fundraising very similar to academic medical where sometimes the fundraisers don't even they're not the one-on-one people with the donors it's the doctors yes so that was a really good experience um I like the I liked the opportunity to get to work with different kind of personas so like a business Alum is very different donor than a computer science Alum or a biology Alum or you know um a grateful patient or somebody who gives to libraries so I really enjoyed that aspect of it and I recommend the fundraisers to try to work with different constituencies so like my hot take on this is that we actually don't need to work in a in a vertical that is like our passion so I don't believe that fundraisers need to feel a deep heart connection to the thing that they fundraise for because I believe at this point that we are we are professionals and we can fund raise very well to our highest degree without having a deep and um abiding passion for the cause um and and to just just put a fine point on that uh the reason why I say this is because so many of our colleagues are suffering because they are so passionate about their cause when we wear passion glasses we're apt to put up with stuff that we wouldn't otherwise put up with right yeah that's a good point so I'm pushing back on that mentality that narrative that you have to work in the same genre for your whole career you know if you're an Arts person you have to be an Arts person if you're a science person you have to be a science person no let's let's have a portfolio career let's dabble and let's work as professionals without this kind of like boundary Crossing vibe that we have to love our work yes yeah I like that term and the and the image of passion glasses you know yeah why do you put them on why should you take them off them out yes it's the ability to take them off and sometimes we forget that we're allowed to take our passion glasses off and it does not mean that we are not um we we are not excellent fundraising professionals yeah yeah yeah it also doesn't mean that you know we're tabling our care and our commitment to our colleagues our initiatives the donors themselves yeah right it can both things can be true both things can be true so I I absolutely think that it's a great idea to work in different organizations work with different personas for your actual you know donors different academic areas I think it just enriches our ability to do good work wherever we are and over time you develop like uh you know this is the era of the generalist now with AI and yeah those of us who've had the chance to work in different types of settings like it's all it's all becoming really useful now yes absolutely yeah so true let's pick up now where you mentioned um starting your consultancy firm as you mentioned about two and a half years ago and just for our audience where can they find the name of your Consultants from the webite please sure thank you so our company's called empowered fundraiser Consulting and coaching we are in the middle of considering a full Rebrand but we're doing a semi- Rebrand in the meanwhile um for our AI work so our AI work is under AI empowered fundraising group um which is not even we don't even have our website up for that yet but I can be found at www. empowered fundraiser.com so it's empowered fundraiser.com and of course I'm on LinkedIn I I also have a Tik Tok account at Anne Murphy fundraiser if you're interested in a little bit lighter approach there I think there is some dancing still on there but not as much as in the beginning I'm all for that you don't have to I'm like dress today you don't have to put on a shirt and tie you gotta have fun in the work that we do too right right so yeah go ahead so speaking of you know that emotion of you know having fun and joy um I'm just curious and what was it like you know create creatively mentally emotionally for you to chart this entrepreneurial path with empowered fundraiser please yeah well I'm I love this question because I've so enjoyed the like existential experience of being an entrepreneur yeah it's like one of the most healing Journeys I've ever bet on because it's you you're putting out there you are the product and you have to have a different type of mentality about how you feel about how others might perceive you which I have decided that that's actually not my business yeah what how other people are perceiving me is none of my business and in doing so it's helped me let go of a lot of sort of you know self-doubt and limiting beliefs I mean fundraisers work in a really you know highly visible High achieving very performative industry and those habits die really really hard I'm very used to trying to fit into a box knowing what that box is knowing what it's called you know how to show up how to bring my energy how to bring my power and being an entrepreneur is a different type of power and authority and what I've learned is that my leadership style that was really helpful to me in higher ed particularly in stem fields for so long that leadership style required um a level of like what for me I'm just talking about me maybe other people will resonate with it but like a level of um like TEF on around me that is not necessary now now where I feel most successful in leadership is a more poorest leadership style one where my heart can finally be on my sleeve and I can make decisions based on my intuition I can make decisions based on where the universe seems to be leading me to like a center of gravity I'm much more open to what the what the different signal are that are out there I I very rarely feel like I have the right answer anymore and that's very delicious every day I love that I imagine that must feel you know liberating to be kind of outside and this is just my you know my terminology my way of thinking about it just liberating in the sense that you're outside the confines of others expectations others viewpoints you mention you know the word mold you know you're able to bring your authentic self and we'll get into that a little later with another question but um I I can just tell like you know as you're talking like the enthusiasm like you know the look on your face you know it just it's portraying like this is this is real this is the Gen work yes yeah yeah that's the thing you get to like the biggest shift for me um because by the way I mean it is a big deal to take like my 25 year career that was like fully on track and everything was going amazingly and all and be like you know what I mean what a what a privilege I have what a privileged life I have that I could sit back and go you know what I'm gonna try something different I've been working toward this for 25 years and now I decided I want to do something else it's a it's like whoa a big leap of faith I heard this phrase I it comes from Ray Brad Ray Bradbury yeah Bradburn the author Bradbury it's um jumping off the cliff and growing your wings on the way down oh wow and right and so we don't get that many opportunities to do that in our life once we get set off on a career we kind of Go In This One Direction so for me to be able to Zig when everybody else was zagging was really awesome kind of scary but the good news is is that I I think in part because of being a fundraiser one of the life skills I've developed is that I don't really hear the word no I kind of hear maybe that's not quite right or maybe there's something we need to regroup on or not right now not this project not this time I never heard those things about oh 80% of small businesses fail like those words just went in one year and out the other so yeah yeah well that that is that's terrific and as you were talking an i i I'll try and make this really quick um it reminds me a little bit about the artist singer George Harrison he was actually the first one to to leave the Beatles and then he came back and then the the whole band broke up um but he just felt like talking again about parameters and confinement like he couldn't be his true self as an artist and maybe you know relating it to your experience a bit like you're now as a consultant you are empowered to manage your time your creativity how many clients you want and so forth and the result and going back to the analogy with George Harrison is he his very first solo album was a triple LP he had he had come up with so many songs of different St that he knew would not fit the Beatles mold yeah but it but he had all this energy and ideas and creativity and so you know a year after the band broke up he's like here you go World here is three albums worth of material yes okay so perfect analogy for your listeners don't ever underestimate the amount of creativity and Innovation and energy that you have that's inside you it may be that there just isn't a a perfect place for it in your role that you have right now it does not mean that you don't have all of those skills and all of those abilities and the the opportunity to make a huge impact it's there it just might be kind of Under Wraps right now yeah I love that thank you for following up with that an yeah very very good um I wanted this is topical to something you were in involved in just a few months ago and you mentioned artificial intelligence and that's uh particular Focus um of your consultancy firm so I would love if you could just talk a bit about the she leads AI virtual round table that t took place in mid February I you were posting about it on LinkedIn it looked really interesting so what would you like our audience to know about it please sure I mean I think the whole she s AI initiative is a really good example of how I'm I now have the opportunity to make an impact in the world in ways that I could have only imagined a couple years ago and what I learned as I got into the AI um you know sphere in early 2023 is that AI can really be characterized as a women's game generative AI like where we are right now with the AI Revolution it it hinges so much on skills like empathy and vulnerability and connection that women's goto leadership styles obviously generalization but really have a very positive impact in AI adoption rates AI governance ethics bias Etc as this like takes over our world and what I found is that it's um women are czy cing you know spaces where we can drop our shoulders and you know share about some of the things that are so existential about AI like we're losing our ability to separate fact from fiction right we're wondering you know what have I been doing with my life why have I been wasting so much time when there are all these things that machines can do for me sure um you know wondering about you know what is the election cycle going to be like what worrying about our grandparents and deep fakes right like there's a lot who are we and what is our self-identity so women's leadership styles tend to have a really good kind of foothold in the AI space and we're all eager for ways to amplify one another right we talk about sending the elevator back down so you know as we we work together we get to a certain level we got to remember to send the elevator back down and women are really generally pretty good at doing that and so the she leads AI initiative started as just me writing about these Rockstar women on LinkedIn once a week I'd write about three people then we started hosting events and they were like just these huge Love Fest amazing women learning so much from each other then we started doing round taes and then it started to really become a thing so she lead's AI is now like a growing movement um awesome this week I actually launched our membership Community it's called called the incubator and it's a place for women who are building their communities and their clientele around AI for us to come together and upskill um you know learn about for so you know folks who haven't yet launched a consultancy what is it like to be a consultant what's it like to be an entrepreneur teach each other learn from each other celebrate one another um and I'm not entirely sure where it will all go and that's one of the beauties of being on my own is letting the universe tell me what is the right Next Step to take and so I'm just doing that little by little and it's really for my heart but over the long term it'll be you know part of our business model awesome awesome um you mentioned an the incubator does that have its own LinkedIn profile or is it all connected to you on LinkedIn I'm just trying to make sure that people know where to find it yes so when this comes out it'll they'll there'll be evidence of it on my LinkedIn profile right now we're in quiet launch so it's nowhere it's stealth mode yeah it's total stealth mode you're like one of the first people I've told about it because today is what Wednesday yeah we launched it on we launched it on Monday so oh my goodness yeah yeah super quiet we're only taking 10 members right now we're we're going to it's a small tight-knit mess Mastermind type of membership awesome um but can I tell you about some of the AI stuff that we do that's so cool please absolutely so this has been so much fun I mean I wouldn't have expected that my work life would involve AI as much as it does but what I've learned is that for those of us and lots of your listeners fall into this category and you in you like when you have Decades of subject matter expertise in a field and then you add in some intelligent automation some artificial intelligence you become a superhero you can all of a sudden take this beautiful work that you've been doing and take it to 11 and do it in a way that's more repeatable and consistent and scalable and that saves brain calories and that gives you more time to do the things that only you can do yeah and so that in itself like it's like talking about a tool but you're really talking about people process and culture and that's what's so exciting to me is being able to see the shift that our clients are having when they start implementing AI in their regular everyday work processes and like how how positive they feel about the work that they're doing and the things that they don't have to do anymore that they didn't want to do right yes it's really wonderful so we're having a blast with that and we've now integrated a much um more intentional component around AI governance knowing that we can teach people how to launch an AI Council how to build a framework for responsible AI or whatever terminology you would use in your organization that they can create their own personal code of ethics because it all boils down to individuals at the end of the day yeah absolutely yeah lots of good insight in there and I'm wondering you know what ex you know like today May 8th 2024 you know if you put a time stamp on it what excites you about you know maybe the short-term future of AI and what are some things that you hope can be uh sused out discussed you mentioned you know ethical AI as well you know anything like that please um so my Mission the thing that like I wake up in the morning ready to run through a wall on is that AI is going to give all of us the opportunity to rethink the way we've always been doing things I often phrase it as break what's already broken oh and when I think about breaking what's already broken I mean small stuff tactical stuff but I also mean big stuff I mean our power structures I mean who makes decisions right who has has the who has the the investment and the resources in an organization who is you know forging ahead with their career and who's able to kind of become the center of gravity in an organization that has been left to people in like fairly traditional positions of power and authority and those with proximity to them but now that's changing right like it's going to be the people who know how to use these tools responsibly and that's one thing I'm excited about is the even playing field this is never going to happen again it has never happened in any of our lifetimes we get a Level Playing Field and we all get to bring to the table more of a more based on our skills and our aptitude than on just traditional power structures so that's the big big picture is let's just change everything let's make everything that wasn't working before let's finally make it work and then I do um I would say that if there's something on a smaller scale that I'm thinking about it's that I don't want the nonprofit sector and higher ed in particular to wait too long because I think my speculation is that by football season this year when lots of our colleagues are out in the you know tailgating with um donors and in the sky Boxes Etc that our donors and our board members are going to start asking all these questions that they well should what are you doing with my data how do you know it's secure is it going to be trained is is it going to be used to be trained other models um you know are you checking for bias all those things my concern is that we won't be ready to respond to those questions I can see that right yeah and I want us to be ready for those questions because it's it all boils down to Stak holder trust yeah we want our donors to trust us and some of us will feel like that means we shouldn't use AI but what it really means is that we need to be implementing this ubiquitous technology in order to have well-functioning businesses our donors and our board members are sophisticated enough to know that if we're like nah you know what we haven't quite figured out what we're doing yet that we're not running a well-run business yes so you know we're in a little bit of an AI bubble and lots of us are like oh my God why isn't everyone doing it um and I recognize my bias on that but yeah that's what I hope is that people will will be prepared sooner rather than later for those kind of stakeholder conversations yeah that's so well put and I I think about that in my own day-to-day job um just where we are in terms of adopting Ai institutionally and my own specific role in Prospect development um yeah and you know the Beauty and the challenge is that it changes so quickly too like you uh so fast quick adopter yeah yes yeah yeah I figure I figure like those of us who have been like just hyper nerding out on this for the last year and a half we've probably spent a lot of time in rabbit holes that folks don't need to spend a lot of time in and that's probably the beauty of it is we're we can give people like the cliff notes of what they need to P pay attention to right now and they can just ignore some of the other stuff right I like that but yeah yeah oh good well this time has gone quickly I I do have one last question that I would love to have you dive into um you know as I look behind you and you've got one of the most colorful and interesting sets of any guest I've had I've interviewed over a hundred people now I love the clock the the lamp behind you lamp left shoulder such um and so I think I think that backdrop fits into um in a way and you talked about creativity here earlier so that's where this is going um a couple of years ago Bono of you was interviewed for a book that he published his autobiography called surrender and in that book he talks about life being the creative act and that's his direct quote as I've watched you on LinkedIn with the content you've put out over the last year plus that we've been connected I I keep and as I prepared today's questionnaire I keep thinking of you you know in that in that creative space a creative person and you can see that again with your setup bringing vitality and and candidness to our profession I would just like a little bit of insight please whatever you're comfortable sharing how do you how do you make time and make space carve out time for whatever creative Outlets you nurture your mind your spirit it's such a good question I agree that life is a creative act and that part of the challenge is to look for the things that are getting in the way and remove those um because what I found is that it's always there it's just that sometimes there's something blocking it from coming out yeah it's it's whether that's time or space or a physical location or some kind of something lack of tools and one of the things that's been the most profound for me is quick quick story and I bet people will resonate with this when I was in fourth grade Mrs plymel told me that I would never be an artist we were supposed to draw self-portraits and my girl did not have a nose she had really bright big blue eyes and a pretty smile and and blonde bangs and stuff but an artist in Residence was coming to our classroom so overnight Mrs plymel put a weird nose on my girl it was like a weird carrot shaped nose and my story forever since then until you know one year ago my story was I am not an artist I can't draw I can't write I can't you know I can't do any of these art see things yeah but then I got access to Dolly and mid journey and what I learned image image creating uh tools and what I learned is that the ideas and the concepts and the creativity was inside me it just didn't have a way to get out yes and as soon as I gave myself the way to for let it get out now I'm an artist now I make beautiful images yeah and I just needed an outlet and I bet it's that way way for lots of people I think fundraisers often get put into a category of sort of um kind of like well we're just kind of like we kind of get put into a box a little bit right like what we're like what we do how we dress what our you know our politics everything although there are a lot of musicians and you interviewed some of them um and it's like you know you can be a fabulous fundraiser you can be such a good leader in advancement and also be unique and wonderful and be yourself and that's more true now than it ever has been we're not as interested and nobody even your donors are not as interested in these like presentational you know approaches to professionalism we want to know real people right it's why video content is is like you know it's why Tik Tok is Tik Tok because we want to be able to relate to people versus Instagram which is more polished Tik Tok being rougher on the edges we want to see into people's lives right absolutely and that's what I would that's what I would say is like let people let people see into your life a little bit whatever level is comfortable for you because seeing and being seen are the most important things that's what we all want absolutely then yes and then that was for me the realization I needed to launch people in fundra raising because I had this idea to talk to people like over the phone or get an email survey oh okay and then I GNA put it into a book and it would sit on a shelf like a policy and procedures and everything else that people turn out and then we got all accustomed to zoom more I thought well that's more immediate that's more personable I and I love how you just articulated that we want to be seen we want to to be seen yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so here we are two years later and I it's been so great to have you on the program today an so much fun Tim thank you for what you're doing I love how you're humanizing fundraising so well within with your podcast like keep up the good work it's just awesome well thank you that means a lot and yeah you especially you know most of my guests I know them you know I've worked with them or you know we run in the app for Prospect development but yeah people like you and uh lisis Diaz and others who have been guests like I've never met you in person I've never heard your voice until 30 minutes ago um but but but it's really heartening for me to know that I'm seen by people like Thy admire like you so thank you so much absolutely absolutely yeah keep up the good work thank you and I'm I'm really delighted and honored to have you as part of that work today thank you so much an thank thank you and uh thank you to our audience you'll be able to find Ann Murphy's interview on YouTube LinkedIn and the audio only format on Spotify and podbean in July of 2024 and thank you for supporting the content as it airs on LinkedIn every Monday and appreciate people's support and enthusiasm if you'd like to be a guest drop me a line on LinkedIn or on my website uh people in fundraising gmail.com and I hope our paths cross someday in person this has been really delightful too me too have a good rest of your day you too thank you