Tag Archives: budget

Nonprofit Radio for November 7, 2022: Align Your Money With Your Goals

 

Sarah OlivieriAlign Your Money With Your Goals

There’s a dimension to your budgeting you might be missing: Organizing your budget so you know what impact your money is achieving for you, and you know the costs connected to your goals. Sarah Olivieri returns to help you course correct. She’s the founder of PivotGround.

 

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[00:03:22.35] spk_0:
and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. We have a listener of the week Cheryl McCormick, she’s ceo of Athens Area Humane society in Athens Georgia. Cheryl is a longtime fan many, many year fan of non profit radio she blogged about the podcast once, putting it in her top five, that was years ago, she’s been listening a long time, she was in my plan giving accelerator class, the very first one um in fact she was the first person to sign up for the very first class and we finally met in uh in Atlanta Georgia just a couple of weeks ago and she was so gracious, she took her her afternoon off to meet with me and we spent hours getting to know each other even better, catching up learning more. It was just a it was a real pleasure to meet this uh non profit radio super fan for many, many years. So Cheryl McCormick, thank you, thanks for taking all that time to to see me, you’re our listener of the week also happy Halloween. Now that’s a week late uh I need an intern to blame because I didn’t realize that, I mean I knew Halloween was coming up, but when I was doing the show I just didn’t realize it was gonna be published on Halloween Day the 30 obviously 31st so um you know, I you’re stuck with a lackluster host what can I say I hope you enjoyed your Halloween I’ll leave it with that I’m doing the best I can without an intern to blame. Hope you enjoyed your Halloween and I’m glad you’re with me because I’d be thrown into our neuralgia if you inflamed me with the painful idea that you missed this week’s show, align your money with your goals, there’s a dimension to your budgeting. You might be missing organizing your budget. So you know what impact your money is achieving for you and you know, the costs connected to your goals. Sarah Olivieri returns to help you course correct. She’s the founder of pivot ground Antonis take two does this show sound better? We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. It’s a genuine pleasure to welcome back Sara Olivieri. She has over 18 years of nonprofit leadership experience. She was co founder of the Open Center for autism, Executive director of the helping Children of War Foundation and co author of lesson plan Ala carte integrated planning for students with special needs as the founder and heart behind pivot ground Sarah helps nonprofits become financially sustainable world changers. Her company is at pivot ground and at pivot ground dot com Sarah Welcome back to non profit radio Hey

[00:03:31.03] spk_1:
tony It’s so great to be here.

[00:03:42.02] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure to have you. Thank you very much and uh and thank you for sitting through that longer than usual intro to the show. I I had to shout out our listener of the week Cheryl and then I had to explain why I didn’t say happy Halloween next week last week. So thank you for sitting through that interesting through that. No

[00:03:53.15] spk_1:
problem.

[00:03:53.94] spk_0:
Now, you know I pronounced your name Olivieri,

[00:03:56.84] spk_1:
you got it. But

[00:03:57.78] spk_0:
do you just say Allah very,

[00:03:59.41] spk_1:
no, no Olivieri

[00:04:01.34] spk_0:
Oh

[00:04:09.56] spk_1:
yes, thank you. Just lean into the italian sound. People think I’m italian because I kind of have a little bit of that look but it’s actually from the jewish side of my family but you know, I’m an honorary italian with an italian last name.

[00:04:14.43] spk_0:
Absolutely. And you want to, you want to get every vowel sound in there. So thank you. Thank you for not doing olive very you’re

[00:04:20.88] spk_1:
welcome. Like

[00:04:21.86] spk_0:
O L I V E I know you got to get the Olivieri.

[00:04:26.96] spk_1:
Olivieri. Olivieri.

[00:05:11.81] spk_0:
Olivieri. Yeah, well the sarah kind of always wanted sarah that doesn’t sound italian sound not really, but I understand. All right. So you’ve got two great ones, uh, jewish and italian, I’m often confused for jewish people, people that I have a look that folks think is a jewish look. So I don’t mind it, we’re all suffering under our mothers. It’s all we all we all have the guilt from, from mothers so jewish or italian we share, we have that, we have that bond but let’s not, let’s not talk about oppressive mothering, let’s talk about organizing your budget, organizing you know what your money is doing for you so that you’re aligned with your goals. Let’s say high level, what could we be doing better?

[00:05:42.17] spk_1:
Yeah. Well, first of all, so many nonprofit leaders are not like money. People, they don’t have M. B. A. S. They’re not like and their budgets scare them. So if you’re listening now and you’re like budgets like, please, no, I want you to know that we can make budgeting fun because high level your budget is like your financial strategy, right? It’s a map that tells you how your money can work and how well it is working, Right? So if you like things like having more money next year than you have this year, and if you like things like having incredible financial data to tell these amazing stories about the impact you are making and the impact you could be

[00:06:08.14] spk_0:
making. If

[00:06:34.11] spk_1:
you like to have money to pay your staff and equitable, you know, fair market value so that they’re not overworked and run down and living in poverty themselves. A budget, not just any budget is your very, very best friend. Because it’s the thing that if you know how to arrange it, will unlock the answers to how you get most of those things. And unfortunately most people’s budgets are not telling them those answers right now. And so hopefully we’ll be able to demystify that a bit today.

[00:06:41.64] spk_0:
We absolutely will. Yes. We’re gonna we’re gonna achieve that. Hope. Alright. So, I should have called this budget is your friendly budget. Budget is your budget is fun and friendly.

[00:06:52.62] spk_1:
Yes. Right. Love your budget.

[00:07:13.31] spk_0:
Alright. Alright. Love your budget. Love your budget. I love how you were going to demystify and uh be upbeat about something that could be very uh dull if we’re not doing it right. So, but I can tell that you’re doing it right. You’re have manufacturers enthusiasm around budgeting. Okay. Um Where should we start? We need to start with vocabulary or is that

[00:07:17.29] spk_1:
like any bit of vocabulary just to make sure that nobody is kind of getting lost in the weeds because whenever we talk about budgets were starting to bring in a little bit of financial vocabulary and um I don’t want to need to be lost if we’re using that language or if you hear it. Right? So um

[00:07:36.26] spk_0:
Okay. Yes. Plus All

[00:07:37.47] spk_1:
right. We don’t want to be in

[00:07:39.17] spk_0:
it for you to be in jail when you say, you know net profit or something. Okay,

[00:07:59.21] spk_1:
that’s right. And you know what I want to tell everybody who’s ever nervous about budgeting vocabulary. Is that different people use it in different ways. So, my number one tip, when it comes to vocabulary actually what you write in your budget is def find what you mean in the budget because one’s person’s gross is not someone else’s gross. And these terms, you know, you’re like that’s gross. right? What’s net, right? It’s not the same for everybody. And you might find yourself in a disagreement about these terms. Um and you could both be right and both be wrong. So um I just encourage you to like really eliminate the jargon and just describe what you’re talking

[00:08:22.36] spk_0:
about, define like define it in a footnote or something like that,

[00:08:45.48] spk_1:
define it right in the line item, right? Just put it right in the line item. So um so first of all, most, a lot of the numbers in the budget are either money in numbers or money out numbers, Right? So they’re now we’ve eliminated all the dragon, right? Either it’s money coming into the bank or it’s money going out of the bank. And then we have another set of numbers which are called assets and that means assets is the amount of money that you have kind of stored away, right? That it was already put in and stayed in or things that are worth money, right? So if you have property that could be turned into money stocks, that could be turned into money, right? All those things are worth money. And so if it’s worth money or is money just sitting around that’s your assets

[00:09:12.77] spk_0:
back

[00:09:49.59] spk_1:
to the money in money out, right? Money in. We have some terms like revenue, gross revenue, net revenue. Um These are all ways of talking about our money coming in and usually money going out is a little easier because we talk about like x expenses typically, and there aren’t as many words that we throw around to describe expenses. Um And then the last kind of category that I’m just gonna call measures for today. These are the most important numbers that are usually missing from most budgets. These are the things like percentages in your budget that tell you how the money is working and that’s where the secret is. And luckily for you is, most of these numbers are less than 100. So smaller numbers are easy for our brains to like look at and think about. And so looking at percentages telling the story about how our money is working is really, really important and we can talk later about what some of those

[00:10:18.21] spk_0:
are. In fact, if the percentage Is equal more than 100, then we have a problem.

[00:10:20.48] spk_1:
Yes.

[00:10:22.66] spk_0:
Of our of our assets or our expenses are okay. All right. So do we need to distinguish between revenue and gross revenue? You mentioned those two.

[00:11:09.90] spk_1:
Yeah. So at the end of the day, so you’re always gonna look at all the money coming in in a budget. That’s usually what we call top line revenue, because usually at the top line of the budget. Right? So you want to be thinking about the total amount of money coming in and then you also want to be thinking about kind of breaking down where the money starts to go out and then how much is left over. So gross and net are terms that to describe how much is left over after certain kinds of expenses come out. So what I want to know is what’s my top line revenue and then after I’ve paid for my programs, um and especially like money that I wouldn’t have to spend if I didn’t have that program. So I want to know how much is left over after I paid my program expenses. And then I usually want to also know what’s left over if I not only paid my program expenses, but also paid my staffing programmatic expenses, like how much is left over after that, right in

[00:11:32.58] spk_0:
my right? Just staff program expenses.

[00:11:35.16] spk_1:
So all the program expenses and the staffing expenses of the program

[00:11:39.61] spk_0:
staffing, expensive program but not staffing of other other functions,

[00:11:43.46] spk_1:
not staffing of other functions.

[00:11:45.06] spk_0:
We’re not there yet. Okay.

[00:11:46.14] spk_1:
And then I get this number, some accountants call it contribution margin. A lot of people have never heard that, but basically it almost sounds like

[00:11:55.25] spk_0:
a contribution margin. Anybody says that I’m putting them in jargon jail,

[00:12:18.31] spk_1:
right? You’re like jargon jail. Right? So, but but what we’re talking about is how much money is left over after everything came in and you paid for all of your programs, how much money is then contributed to the general operating expenses, which you will never ever hear me call overhead. I call them operations. And the language we use in budgeting really matters. Right. And we all heard, but just in case somebody missed it. Right. Overhead is a good thing. And the reason is because overhead is operations and operations are critical to operating, right? No operations, no operating.

[00:12:38.67] spk_0:
It’s also investment in potentially future,

[00:12:40.28] spk_1:
essentially future

[00:12:41.49] spk_0:
work maybe you’re reserving for for a future ambition for a future purchase, maybe you’re reserving so these are all, you know? Yes, it’s it’s it’s it’s absolutely operational, but I also see as investment for the future

[00:12:57.23] spk_1:
and

[00:13:08.42] spk_0:
the and that’s essential your sustainability for God’s sake. So if people on your board are complaining that you have a reserve for something, you know, ask them. Well, don’t you reserve for future for future future recessions, don’t you reserve for future investments and expenditures in in new markets? So please sir, you know, be quiet

[00:13:38.17] spk_1:
Yes, you should have a reserve. And when you get to the very, very bottom, people sometimes call the bottom line at some point, you’re going to have a number that if you are a for profit business, you might label it profit profit margin margin. When we hear that word margin, I don’t want you to be scared. It just means how much is left after something else taken out right? That’s all margin is right. It means we had money in and we took some money out and then we wanted to know how much, how much pie was left. Right. Do we have one slice left, two slices left, you know that

[00:13:51.08] spk_0:
give an example of something margin, flush it out please.

[00:14:41.76] spk_1:
Sure. So, um, you’re, so we just talked about contribution margin, right? That’s how much money is left after we took out program expenses and program labor, right? So if we take out all of our expenses, program expenses, labor expenses, operating expenses, everything what’s left at the bottom is also our margin. Some people call that net, but some people put net somewhere else. That’s just the total amount of money that’s left over after all of our expenses. Now we need that money and I want to reframe the way we think about that bottom line because people get like really focused on that bottom line, obviously you don’t want to be leaking money every year, year after year. However, it is okay to have less than nothing left over one or two years. If you spent that money to invest in something that’s going to bring in more money in the future, right? Not everything pays off in one year, right?

[00:14:56.46] spk_0:
Staff, new staff, right,

[00:14:58.92] spk_1:
new staff or building a fundraising department. Right? So if you don’t have a fundraising department

[00:15:04.54] spk_0:
and write

[00:15:09.49] spk_1:
the people. So some people are making money, some people aren’t. So then at the very bottom, I want you to realize that, you know, kind of a rule of thumb I use is if the money left over, it needs to be at least equal to inflation, which on average is 3%. So if you don’t have 3% and what it was, what we have to define our terms, I’m always telling people define their terms. So this is where we get into those measures, right? So percentage is the amount of money that’s left over our margin, right at the very

[00:15:37.20] spk_0:
bottom.

[00:15:39.10] spk_1:
Um, and what percentage of that

[00:15:42.60] spk_0:
of

[00:15:42.90] spk_1:
the total revenue that came in? Right? So if total revenue came in was 100,000, right? We wanted and we have $10 left, what percentage, you know, is $10

[00:15:54.51] spk_0:
of, you

[00:16:09.72] spk_1:
know, 100 or 100,000 whatever. So, and you know what, you don’t have to know how to do the math because any spreadsheet will do it for you. And I have a template that we can give away where the formulas are already in there. So, um, So, but that way we, we want that bottom bottom number to always be at least 3%, is the new zero.

[00:18:35.77] spk_0:
It’s time for a break turn to communications. They sent their bi weekly e newsletter on message this week. And it had something that I think is interesting. It’s called three under the radar targets for your pr pitches and the three that they suggest our association publications trade and professional associations eager to hear about news regarding one of their members or latest advancements in the field, alumni publications and hometown newspapers. If your pitch is mostly about an individual, consider sending it to, uh, to uh, alma mater publications and, and hometown newspapers. And the third is e newsletters. They say you’ll likely have a few of these in your email inbox right now, like morning brew. Good, good, good. And the skim these folks published daily and offer the opportunity to get your news delivered to lots of loyal readers and they make the point that, you know, this is not the new york times or the Washington post or even the Chronicle of philanthropy. But you’ll get some, you get some coverage, you’ll get some exposure and you can use the, uh, use the content, repurpose it on, on your social channels. So linked to it, uh, that way also, and maybe on your blog as well. So it’s some coverage, right? I mean, it’s not the end all be all, but it’s three things that sort of are as they say under the radar and that is turned to communications. Clearly your story is their mission. Turn life into dot C O. Now back to align your money with your goals Folks in our high inflation period right now that we’re living in 2022, folks may ask, well, should it be higher now, should be eight or 9% or should it just be sticking with like 3-4 because that’s the average over over a long term and don’t have to worry about an annual fluctuation up or down. So

[00:19:01.58] spk_1:
I think you know you can go either way certainly if we’re gonna have high inflation for a while, I’d be wanting more money left over right? But overall I want you to be trying to not have zero. Right? You if you have so 3% is the new zero. That means you’re just treading water. You want to be or you know if we’re at 5% inflation, you just and you’re at 5% you’re just treading water so you really want to be Probably and it will vary pro organization, I would want to be at least 10 to 15%. So that means I now have money to invest in next year. Right? So if I want more money next year than this year, I have to increase my operations around how I raise

[00:19:21.90] spk_0:
money. Which

[00:19:48.08] spk_1:
means I have to put money into the money making machine so that it can make more money, right? Your fundraising function is a money making machine. And the fuel is money. You put money into the machine, you put a dollar in and you get a dollar 25 out or a dollar 50 out. Or maybe it’s even better. You get uh $2 out, right? But if you don’t feed the money making machine money so that there are people to run it. Um And materials and all the stuff you do to fundraise, you won’t have more money than next year.

[00:19:56.99] spk_0:
Alright, alright, now some folks are gonna say so I just have to get this little thing out so you want you want rather than treading water, you want us to be doing a strong breast stroke?

[00:20:06.74] spk_1:
Yes, right? Doesn’t that sound better? It

[00:20:10.33] spk_0:
just felt like extending the metaphor

[00:20:12.89] spk_1:
butterfly. If you feel like

[00:20:14.56] spk_0:
you could do the butterfly, that would be that would be outstanding. Now some folks will say well, but the the the only way to there are two ways to increase your margin at the end of the year. Either increase revenue through feeding the fundraising machine or cut expenses.

[00:20:33.11] spk_1:
But

[00:20:43.46] spk_0:
now if you start getting into cutting expenses, what do you, you know, are we just cutting paper clips or are we cutting staff? Which could be very detrimental, cutting back on properties where we have outreach, you know, that could be very detrimental. So

[00:20:48.99] spk_1:
just

[00:20:49.45] spk_0:
put words in your mouth. So

[00:21:14.27] spk_1:
No, no. So I I like to take all of my expenses and kind of mark them in my budget according to three categories. I like to be silly. I use three icons, I use a heart icon which means this expense is creating an impact. I use a money bag icon to say this expense is generating money, right? And then I use a picture of a toilet bowl to say this money, just goes out the door and it doesn’t make impact or money, right? And some things make impact and money and we want a lot of those, if you have an organization that all of your expenses are making impact and money are probably very, very healthy financially. So all the ones

[00:21:33.97] spk_0:
with, that’s

[00:21:38.31] spk_1:
right. Or you can put two icons in the one, you know, in the line. Now, if you start labeling the moneybag line items as your revenue generating expenses, if you want more money next year or the year after or tomorrow, you need to increase your revenue generating expenses. If you decrease your revenue generating expenses, what’s going to happen?

[00:22:02.90] spk_0:
I mean

[00:22:18.77] spk_1:
revenue, Right. So I think, and once those words are so powerful because watch somebody try to cut a revenue generating expense once it’s labeled like that, right? They’re not gonna do it now all of a sudden it makes perfect sense. And I, I saw this mistake happened at the beginning of the pandemic. I’ll never forget the first time I sent out an email to my list at the beginning of the pandemic, I got back all of these like auto responder emails of people who had were gone because they had been fired so many nonprofits cut their fundraising

[00:22:39.78] spk_0:
staff. Yeah,

[00:22:43.77] spk_1:
that was like, that’s like cutting off your own feet, right? You need to increase. And as true with many, many disasters, you know, it turned out the pandemic was actually quite a good time for fundraising. All of my clients did better financially, not worse. And they were investing in revenue generating expenses in a time when they were going to need more

[00:23:31.15] spk_0:
revenue. Yeah, it was a short time. It was a short term panic. Uh, and unfortunately there are organizations that and for profit as well, corporate as well that reacted panic wise, you know, knee jerk and um, and that I think in the, in the medium to long term that hurt all those, all those who did that. Um, yeah, that’s

[00:23:32.36] spk_1:
rough times. Well, let’s get back to fun things like budgets. So here’s a big tip when it comes to lay out, right?

[00:23:39.24] spk_0:
Just for fun friend. Remember that

[00:23:40.86] spk_1:
my fun friend.

[00:23:42.07] spk_0:
Budget a mere friend. This is your one of your fun friends. Okay. Yeah. Yes, We’re back to budget. All right.

[00:24:00.90] spk_1:
So maybe I’ll just a little P. S. A a little budget advocacy to take us into happy times is I want your budget to be for you, right? The I. R. S. Has a version of your numbers that they want to see. And if you we get grants, foundations may have a version of a budget that they want to see. But first and foremost, I want you to feel that your budget the way it’s laid out is a tool for you, the nonprofit leader, right? That’s what it’s there for. This isn’t just something we need to throw to other people and yeah, you can have somebody rewrite it. So it satisfies somebody else. But I want you to really love it as the tool for you and lay it out the way it starts to tell you a story.

[00:24:31.23] spk_0:
All right,

[00:24:33.10] spk_1:
That’s right. You love your budget?

[00:24:35.13] spk_0:
Yes. Budgets. Budgets are budgets are people too.

[00:25:54.62] spk_1:
That’s right. So one of the ways I like to get my budget telling a better story that I don’t see anybody doing it. So simple is I like to take all of my fundraising revenue and expenses because your fundraising function is kind of like a business inside a business. Right? And I like to move it to the very, very back autumn of my spreadsheet. So I have revenue that comes from programs at the top. And then I take out the expenses from the programs and then I take out the operating expenses and then I get the true cost without fundraising of my nonprofit. And it might very well may be negative. It kind of depends if it’s appropriate for your non profit to be generating funds from its services. I do by the way, count, um, restricted grants that our first specific program as program revenue. Right? Because if you didn’t have the program, you wouldn’t have that revenue. That’s how I kind of divide the line. And then, so I get this, this is the true cost. So my nonprofit is negative. 200,000 to run all of our programs. Right? So we now know now we have, our true fundraising goal are true fundraising goal is, You know, 200,000 plus three

[00:25:58.61] spk_0:
minimum.

[00:25:59.88] spk_1:
Right? And now, because have you ever been in front of a budget? I bet you’ve seen this tony where like, you know, you’ve seen various versions and they’re just kind of like monkeying with the fundraising numbers at the top. It’s like a game to make the bottom number go zero, right? Like it’s not necessarily based in reality, I’ve seen that happen on lots of

[00:26:17.54] spk_0:
boards,

[00:27:07.63] spk_1:
you know, budgets being presented to boards. So now we have the true, you know, fundraising goal and the true cost of running our nonprofit without fundraising. And then I have this little section where I have fundraising money in revenue, you could call it if you want, but we have the amount of fundraising money coming in is unrestricted money. And um, and the amount of money going out. Right? So what is our fund Raising staffing costs? What are, are you know, marketing expenses, communication expenses all around fundraising. And then I see how much is left over. Right? My fundraising margin, if you will. Right, this is so this is do I have $200,000 coming out to match my bottom line or let’s say if we have 200,000 at the bottom we want 300,000 out of fundraising. So now I know if it’s going to be enough, right? And what do I do if I want more, more fundraising money, I gotta, put

[00:27:15.66] spk_0:
the machine, you

[00:28:58.41] spk_1:
gotta feed the machine, you gotta put dollars in the machine. And then I also, there’s, this is where those measures come in and it’s harder to talk about these Over the radio. But, um, that to 300,000 out, I want to make sure that that’s a healthy percentage of how much I put into the machine, right? So I want to know is my machine working well, right? Do I put a dollar in and get a dollar out or do I put a dollar in and get 50 cents out? Now? The truth is, unfortunately, people measure this in different ways. So there isn’t like, you know, an industry norm that’s really well calculated for you to assess on, but certainly if you’re putting a dollar in and getting a dollar out, You’re not fundraising, right? That’s, that’s zero, that’s a total sum of zero. And, but what I really want you to watch then is year over year or even month over month. Um, is that, is that percentage increasing? Like, so maybe I put a dollar in last year and I got a dollar 50 out and then this year I put a dollar in and I got a dollar 75 out and then next year I put a dollar in and I got $2 out, right? So double your money is always pretty good. I like to benchmark against some other things like what’s the average return on investment, right? There’s another jargon term, right? Just means return is how much money comes out of the machine, Right? So your return is I put a dollar in and my return is $2 out. So I compare that to the stock market. You know, would we be better off just putting money in the stock market on average compared to our fundraising department? Can they beat the average? I’d say they should be able to beat the average otherwise just don’t have a fundraising department and invest in the stock market. Right? Um, um, so you can kind of benchmark around some other things, but really you want to be investing in and making a healthier and healthier money making machine and that percentage is how healthy you are.

[00:29:41.12] spk_0:
And, and if the, if the margin is not where you want it to be. I mean, there are other reasons to have fundraising outreach, building long term relationships with corporate funders, individual donors, ultimately, hopefully leading to planned gifts. So there are, there are reasons why, as you had said earlier in the, in the short term, your margin may be negative on fundraising. You’re, you’re working to turn that around as relationships grow, whether institutional or individual, uh, as maybe events grow. Hopefully you’re not too event depending if

[00:29:49.21] spk_1:
you measure those events, probably their margin is, you know, their percentage is probably much lower than your other activities

[00:29:56.82] spk_0:
gets hard. Events get hard to measure then you should be measuring the staff time that goes into the events

[00:30:02.00] spk_1:
and absolutely

[00:30:09.97] spk_0:
that’s where you know your bake sale type events are not not sustainable. Not certainly not going to sustain your nonprofit. Um

[00:30:15.28] spk_1:
Okay,

[00:30:15.64] spk_0:
so I just you know I just want to flush out a little bit when you said you know you may as well be in the stock market if you’re if you’re fundraising margin is zero but you’re building towards something.

[00:30:26.84] spk_1:
Yes, absolutely

[00:30:28.42] spk_0:
much much more robust than you’re you’re working with now in the in the immediate term.

[00:31:25.59] spk_1:
And probably you can make your fundraising department work way better than the stock market, especially in the long term. And that goes back to your budget being for you. It does not have to just be an annual budget. In fact I always encourage organizations to be looking at least three years into the future, right? Like real life doesn’t function on the calendar year, right? Like real life things develop over time and they don’t have to fit into that 12 month box. That’s for the I. R. S. Right. But your real budget should really consider like when is a reasonable expectation for us to be seeing that money coming back when we know it takes the you put the money in the machine. It’s not instantaneous. And some things like you know used to plan giving right? Plan giving has a really long time line, you put the money in the machine And it might take years. It might take 10 years, 20 years, but you could put a dollar in and get like $200,000 out, right? Like

[00:31:39.27] spk_0:
huge. Um Let I I want to get to connecting your you’re connecting your goals to you, to your budget. But I but I want to make sure is there anything else that we should talk about around, you know, organizing the budget and seeing the impact of your money before we get, you know, specifically two goals.

[00:33:02.42] spk_1:
Yeah, I think just that, you know, just like we talked about, right? That that percentage margin, right? That’s the the percentage of money that’s left over compared to how much came in is the number you can use over and over in your budget. That’s the number that tells you how well is this working? Right? So, if you want to know, so, you know, maybe you have three programs and you want to know, you know, how good is each program at making money, right? And they don’t all have to make money because we’re primarily trying to make an impact. But you can then take say how much money, you know, does this program being bring in and subtract all the program expenses including the people and then say what percentage of the money left over compared to the money that it brought in, Right? And then you can say, okay, out of these three programs Program A is great at making money. Program B is so so at making money And program de just, you know, eats money. It doesn’t bring in any money. It’s always in the negative. But that’s okay. And then like what we’re about to talk about measurement, but we might then say, well, pro program A is good at making money and it’s good at making an impact. So let’s do a lot more of Program A program B is so so at making money and you know what? It’s also so so at making an impact. Maybe we should consider getting rid of it, right? If it’s not really doing either. And program D. Maybe it’s gushing money, but it makes such a big impact. You’re like, this is totally worth it for the impact. And we can make up the difference with our fundraising.

[00:33:32.21] spk_0:
Why do you go A B. D.

[00:33:33.96] spk_1:
Oh, I don’t know. Abc I’m getting over from Covid. I may still have a little brain fog, right? You know, your

[00:33:41.17] spk_0:
abc

[00:33:42.38] spk_1:
numbers,

[00:33:43.27] spk_0:
your numbers person, not a

[00:33:45.43] spk_1:
person,

[00:33:46.92] spk_0:
not alphabet. The alphabet will work on work on the A. B. CS. And another in the next

[00:33:50.98] spk_1:
show. Right,

[00:33:53.03] spk_0:
okay, let’s connect all this to our goals.

[00:33:56.26] spk_1:
Yeah,

[00:33:57.54] spk_0:
it seems to me that’s something that you you seem to emphasize that folks are not not aligning the two, you’re budgeting with your costs with your goals.

[00:34:12.14] spk_1:
Yeah. So one is like, you know, if you can measure your your money and how well you’re making money, right? Where are you able to make money either in programs or through fundraising? You can line that up now, right? Do you want to expand a program? Right, So that’s a common goal, right? We want to expand program d my favorite, maybe program C right? Program.

[00:34:31.88] spk_0:
You can

[00:36:31.38] spk_1:
See that. So program, see we love program, see it’s helped 400 people this year, and we really want it to be helping more like 4000 people buy in the next three years, Right? So we want to expand that. So in order to expand that, we need to, you know, how much money are we gonna need to expand it? Right? And it always costs more to grow than to maintain, right? So for expanding, I’m always thinking extra money, extra money, not just the cost to run it. Um, And then we can say, okay, how do we, you know, is this gonna generate money as it goes to fund itself, its own expansion? Or do we need to simultaneously be boosting up? You know, improving the fundraising machine so that it can fund this expansion. So now you have kind of, you’ve connected the finances to the goal and you can start to make decisions like, okay, I don’t just need to write if you just said, oh, I’m gonna write a grant and pay for the expansion of this program. Well that always sends off red flags for me because I’m like that program, if it I need to know first, if it’s not gonna pay for itself 100% and its own growth, then I’m gonna get the grant, I’m gonna launch the program and then the grant’s gonna end and the program’s gonna be in trouble. Right? So I know that while the grant might be icing on the cake, I really need to invest in boosting up my fundraising machine, making it more more effective, efficient feeding it more money. I need to be putting money in there so that I can now expand and have another program. So every time I like to call a mission pie, right, there’s your programs and your money pie, that’s your money machine. So every time you want to make more mission pie, you probably also have to grow your money pie capabilities. And so a lot of people don’t do that. And then we get like huge programmatic operating costs and we don’t grow our fundraising capabilities simultaneously. So that’s one example,

[00:38:49.13] spk_0:
it’s time for Tony’s take Two I think this week’s show sounds better. Am I in both of your ears this week instead of only your left ear or both speakers. If you’re on your desktop instead of only your left speaker, Pretty sure that I am and I am sorry about the past many weeks in august I upgraded audacity, which is the program that I use for post production, Like adding intro and outro and these Tony Take 2s and sponsor messages and cheap red wine. Of course you gotta gotta add cheap red wine, right That all that all gets added at the end later on in post production so that I’m not interrupting what I hope is a valuable conversation with guests. Right? No interruptions. I had the stuff later and something changed in the new version. After I upgraded audacity. I knew what was wrong. I knew it didn’t sound right, but I couldn’t figure out what the problem was. Uh, and then finally I researched and I experimented and I did find the problem. So now the music is in both ears, The talk is in both ears and the problem is fixed and now things are back to normal. Uh, it had been quite annoying. I know to listen in one year but those days are over, we’re, we’re, we’re now in november and the technology, Well the technology has an advanced, the user has caught up with the technology that’s what’s happened. So that was annoying as sh it as I was listening to it and I was frustrated but the frustration is in the past brighter days now, starting in november. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for align your money with your goals with sarah olivier t another

[00:39:07.53] spk_1:
another is around. yeah. Around how we tell our donors and ourselves how good of an impact we make and whether or not it’s the best way to do it. Right? So this is where you’re in your budget and in the template I have, it’s fully laid out like this. You want to have kind of a a separate tab. Hold on. Let me start. Let’s

[00:39:10.98] spk_0:
make sure we get this out. Where can listeners find the template?

[00:39:14.85] spk_1:
We will let me see if I can tell you the link right now.

[00:39:20.19] spk_0:
Is that pivot ground

[00:39:21.63] spk_1:
pivot ground dot com. And I may have

[00:39:26.19] spk_0:
you just click resources or something like that

[00:39:38.29] spk_1:
if you click um free resources from the homepage. If you’re following along. Um, and there are a few places we can that you’ll have several resources.

[00:39:41.39] spk_0:
Okay, what’s the template called that? We

[00:39:44.59] spk_1:
template is the ultimate nonprofit budget,

[00:39:48.35] spk_0:
nonprofit budget. It’s at pivot ground dot com. And click on, click on free resources. Okay. You needed that. You need that little parenthetical. Ok? Please please continue. I want to make sure folks can find this.

[00:40:54.82] spk_1:
Okay, so let’s say, you know, let’s deal with you know, programs. See again, we’ll give it some more love. And we’ve started to measure its impact. Right? So, and this is tricky, right? There is not a direct correlation. Oftentimes, especially in human services measuring impact. You know, we’re kind of triangulating? It’s not like, oh, X number of people served well, how well did you serve them? Right. Was this like a life changing service or was this like you’re not homeless last night kind of service. Right. Um, so, but what, however way you can, can measure it and you can measure it in multiple ways, how many people you served in a day in a week, Right? Um, you can now then take those program costs and say, you know, divide, divide them by how many people you served and find out how, how much it costs to serve one person. And the math is all in the templates. I don’t want people to get like nervous about math, but there’s lots of examples. So, um, now we know

[00:40:57.65] spk_0:
maybe, uh, maybe a little uncomfortable with math, but they definitely have their alphabet down.

[00:41:02.51] spk_1:
That’s right. Which I clear I’m good with the math. Just not, not

[00:41:06.06] spk_0:
properly radio listeners, very savvy, very savvy group. We have, we have the abc, we’ve mastered that recently, but we’ve mastered

[00:41:14.38] spk_1:
it. Good for you. And I say,

[00:41:16.79] spk_0:
we, I’m including myself in this.

[00:41:18.65] spk_1:
That’s right. We’ve

[00:41:19.48] spk_0:
mastered the alphabet. We can, we can rely on that baseline.

[00:42:26.93] spk_1:
So let’s say, you know, it costs, you know, $500 to serve one person for one day. Now there’s a few things we can do with this, number one. We can tell a fundraising story. Like, hey, it costs $500 to serve one person for one day, how many people do you want to save? Right. Like, um, do you want to say one person half a person. Right. And we started actually just had this conversation with a client the other day. They help victims of domestic violence and the real costs of supporting somebody to leave their house. Often it’s women who are leaving with an average of two Children and leaving everything behind and now have a giant legal battle ahead of them as well as rebuilding their entire life from scratch. The cost to save a life of a victim of domestic abuse is very, very high. It’s in the many hundreds of thousands, Right? Um, so you can start to get a grip on what does the impact you’re trying to make cost? So, but besides telling a donor story, you can, and I really think you should start asking yourself, is there a way we can get the same result with spending less

[00:42:39.57] spk_0:
money,

[00:43:59.50] spk_1:
Right? Because if we can do that, then we can get that result more and more and more. That’s how we begin to scale. That’s how we begin to say, Okay, last year $100,000 could get this amazing result for 100 people this year. The same $100,000 because we’ve changed the way we have designed to get the same result now serves 100 and 50 people right? Isn’t it better to serve 100 and 50 50 then 100 as long as the result is just as good. I’m certainly not suggesting we like fun results. Um, just to save money. Um, that’s not what we’re talking about, but, but we really want to ask that question like, you know, and just like we compared to the stock market right? Like is this help we’re providing that cost this amount of money? What else could we do for that money? You know, does this really make sense? Is that a really good amount of help? And you know, there’s, um, I think they’re called give directly, they’re a nonprofit that just gives cash. Um, they serve poor communities I think around the world and they’re very good at measuring this kind of thing. And they’re always comparing, you know, if we’re trying to solve this problem, like, um, you know, starving Children in this community, Is it more effective to open the soup kitchen and start feeding the Children or is it more effective to just give their parents cash or give the kids cash? Right. And again and again, you know what they find is just giving people cash free and outright no restrictions solves the problem at just as well, if not better for less money than building a whole

[00:44:14.70] spk_0:
program. But

[00:44:16.03] spk_1:
if you don’t know those numbers, you’re not gonna have that answer. There may be an easier way. There may be a better way, but you’re not going to know that if you can’t start measuring this kind of thing,

[00:45:21.16] spk_0:
that’s also where investment in technology might be able to make a difference for you in terms of, you know, the way your scheduling, uh, the way you’re in taking, you know, maybe maybe your intake folks to use your client example of domestic violence victims. Uh, maybe your intake folks would be better served with tablets than paper or, or laptops and tablets or, you know, or, or phones than laptops. So, investment in technology may help, um, investment in processes or the designing processes. So that takes time. That’s, that’s a lot of introspection. That’s a lot of time because again, you know, you don’t wanna you don’t want to diminish the impact and you don’t want to treat your, your certainly your, your beneficiaries as anything less than people deserving respect. So I’m not saying hand them a tablet, but there may be process ways, technology ways, um, maybe different staff organization, but you know, it takes introspection to try to reduce, reduce friction, reduce costs and, and keep impact the same.

[00:47:29.35] spk_1:
And that’s where you then get all of your, um, you know, I like to kind of like your, your tactical, your, your tactics related to your goals. So the goal is, um, you know, so I break goals down into like what’s the outcome that we don’t have control over and then the kind of related goal that we do have control over. So if the outcome goal is we want to now see if we can serve 150 people instead of 100 without spending any more money. And then the thing that you do have control over. Well let’s test, let’s set a goal to test new technology. Let’s set a goal to test new processes. Let’s set a goal to work with a consultant to improve the way we do intake. Um and then let’s see if these things start to have the the the total impact that we are hoping for. Um I had that with a large client human service organizations like 45 different programs and they had no central intake process or process to kind of move people between their different programs. They were mental health organization and a lot of people needed to go from one service to another, like maybe first they needed addiction recovery and then they needed peer support and housing support and then they needed job job support, right? So they really need to be taking a journey, but they didn’t have a way to take people on a journey. It was just kind of a free for all the person had to be their own guide. And so we kind of really went through with a fine tooth comb. How do people come in, what service are they coming in for? And then how do we begin to take them on this journey? So that because the more people who go on a complete journey the bed, the result is right. That’s how we go from making somebody just not homeless last night to making a lifelong impact for someone who now is in stable consistent housing, has a job and has become self sufficient and is able to manage their mental health and whatever other issues on an ongoing basis.

[00:47:56.78] spk_0:
Um Let’s um let’s talk. We’ve we’ve you’ve identified some, but let’s let’s let’s identify some some of these important metrics. Like let’s kinda um I don’t mean summarize because we’re not necessarily finishing, but I’d like to put them all in sort of one place where people can say, well, these are important metrics for me versus you know, versus not so much more vanity or less important. Can we identify some of those?

[00:48:22.96] spk_1:
Yeah, I think, you know, all the metrics around,

[00:48:28.13] spk_0:
how

[00:49:28.86] spk_1:
good are we at, right? The metrics that answer, how good are we at? So for you, whatever question you wanna ask of your budget, right? The budget is like, you know the secret Jeannie, you want to ask it? How good are we at making money? How good are we at serving? You know, people, how you know, how efficient are we at it? So um to kind of summarize to give you the answers. The budgetary answers, where to find those answers really is. How good are we at making money while you can find that answer per program by taking the income and all the expenses out and then seeing the percentage that’s left over. Right? And the dollar amount, right? Having $100,000 left over. Maybe it’s good. Maybe it’s bad. Right? But if we look at percentages, then we can really compare year over year. So we may not know if it’s good just by looking at one year, but if it’s improving year over year, then we can say, oh, improvement is good. We know that that’s good. Right? Um, we can then also

[00:49:30.76] spk_0:
as a percentage of what what we’re spending on the program.

[00:49:34.05] spk_1:
Right? So the percentage

[00:49:35.81] spk_0:
percentage

[00:49:36.34] spk_1:
exactly. So the percentage that you’re spending of the total amount that’s coming

[00:49:40.77] spk_0:
in?

[00:49:41.84] spk_1:
That’s where we look at percentage. How good are we at fundraising? Right. You just look at the total fundraising income, subtract out the fundraising expenses and say what is left over, Right? So we can say how are we improving? Then we’re gonna look at that percentage year over year. We can look at that percentage and compare it to other things in the world that make money.

[00:50:02.68] spk_0:
And

[00:50:02.89] spk_1:
then we can also look at the total dollar amount. And answer the question of are we is our fundraising machine making enough money to cover our expenses?

[00:50:12.66] spk_0:
Right? Making enough

[00:50:13.87] spk_1:
right? Making enough So not how good is it? But is it making enough? That’s where we start to look at the total dollar amounts. Is it enough. Is it enough

[00:50:22.25] spk_0:
subsumed in what you just described is the often cited cost of raising a dollar?

[00:51:43.97] spk_1:
Yes. Yes. Now, you know the nonprofit space likes to use that amount and I think it’s helpful because it’s kind of very tangible, like, oh, you know, what is your cost to raise a dollar? But I like it less for two reasons compared to the percentage method because um, it’s hard to do the reverse math. So if I said like, hey, tony like if my cost to raise a dollar is 75 cents, How much money do I need to put in the money machine? If I want $250,000, Like it’s just not easy math, right? So, um, it starts to get easier if you look at percentages. Also, the for profit world doesn’t really use cost to raise a dollar, they use the percentage return on investment. And so if you want to, because there’s lots of other ways to make money. So if you want to compare how good your way of generating money is to another way of generating money. Like if you really are asking like, do we invest in our fundraising machine or do we invest in the stock market? Right. Um, that may be a real question at some point. And or not for all of your money, but for part of your money and um, you then, you know, need to have apples to apples, right? And so the percentage is that kind of apple that the for profit world uses to talk about, how good are we at making money. Um And so it’s easier to compare. Does that make

[00:52:03.21] spk_0:
sense? Also you gave me long enough to calculate that.

[00:52:05.84] spk_1:
Uh

[00:52:16.29] spk_0:
If it costs 75 cents to raise a dollar and we want $200,000, we would need to put $150,000 recorders. Um Okay. Other other metrics. This is where we are metrics. But

[00:52:20.38] spk_1:
yes, I think

[00:52:21.24] spk_0:
we should know. Yeah.

[00:53:51.20] spk_1:
So um so we covered how good are we at doing this? Is it enough? Right. And then when you get into per program, how much does it cost to make a unit of impact? Right. So one person and I recommend you maybe even kind of when I think about, you know, it’s hard to measure impact at nonprofits. But most recently I kind of like to break it into like levels right? Low level impact help somebody for a few days, medium level impact like made you know, a year long type of change and then high level impact like life changing and you could have multiple levels. And so you might want to kind of break your levels of impact into that. But you know, how much does it cost to make one unit of impact? That’s one metric, You know, and then is that good? Right. Is that, can we do better than that? Um and there that’s where we need to like compare the cost year over year. And we also need to look at um, metrics where we want to think about, are we able to scale this up? Are we able to grow this dramatically? So you mentioned bake sales earlier, bake sales are highly profitable typically. Right? Like people donate all the food, all the labor, you know, as long as your staff, you know, if it’s like a, you know, P. T. O. Type bake sale and you get to keep all the profit right? Cost is almost zero. profit is almost all that money that comes out. That’s your profit That’s the margin.

[00:53:53.00] spk_0:
If everybody’s a volunteer, sure

[00:54:40.50] spk_1:
if everyone’s a volunteer, but if you were to scale up a bake sale to the size of a county fair, not everybody can be a volunteer. You know, I have to have security and ticketing and a special location that can handle all those people all of a sudden our profit the money coming out of the machine comes way way, way, way, way, way down because bake sales are not scalable. You can’t grow it to a large amount. You can’t just say, you know, $1 in, gets me $2 out. Now I’m gonna put in $100,000 and get $200,000. No, no, not if you’re fundraising machine is a bake sale, your fundraising machine will break if you try to put, you know, 200,000 in. So you wanna be mindful as you look at, how good are we at Making money with our money machine you want? And this is the same for delivering an impact you want to be mindful of, would this work if we put 10 times as much in? Right. If we grow it 10 times as big, would it

[00:54:54.41] spk_0:
break or we,

[00:55:29.18] spk_1:
would it work? Right. Would we sink the ship? We break the machine? Would we overwhelm it? Or would it work? And you can ask the same question about your programs, right? You’re able to serve 100 people now? Well, what if 200 people showed up your door? What if 10,000 people showed up at your door? Could you, would you just, you know, 10 times as much or, you know, however many times as much of what you use to serve people? Right? You just scale up your machine, will it still work? Not always. Right. So, you wanna be mindful and you may see as you track your budget that how well something is working is getting worse and you’re like, but we’re doing more and more, why are we getting worse at making money? Let’s say. Um, and that’s because the thing your machine needs some tending to, because your machine is not designed, you know, to go that fast. It’s not designed to work at that level. And so that’s another thing we have to be mindful of,

[00:55:54.02] spk_0:
Okay, anything else that we haven’t talked about that You want folks to know about our, our new fun friend, our our budget,

[00:56:29.75] spk_1:
you know, I think just you know, in summary, right. The the answers of is this good, are we improving? Is it enough? It’s the same kind of calculation over and over again. And that’s why I want you. What I want you to take away is it’s not like we have to do a jillion different kinds of fancy things with our budget. It’s the same type of math and it’s the same type of questions. But those are very, very powerful questions. Is it enough? Is it getting better? Is it the best thing we could do Right? Those are things that your budget can tell you. And we’re basically using the same kind of formula is the same calculations again and again and

[00:56:45.77] spk_0:
again.

[00:56:47.12] spk_1:
So it’s it’s simple. Once you’ve done it a couple of times you’ll start to see, oh I can apply this here and I can apply this there and it becomes relatively easy.

[00:56:59.74] spk_0:
Sarah Olivieri, pivot ground uh company is at pivot ground and at pivot ground dot com you’ll find her template and other resources at pivot ground dot com. When you go to free resources, Sara, thank you very much. Terrific. I have a new fun friend.

[00:57:20.10] spk_1:
The the budget

[00:57:21.44] spk_0:
budget. Well, you’re you’re a long time fun friend?

[00:57:26.27] spk_1:
Yes,

[00:58:04.02] spk_0:
thank you again next week. Corporate funding with Lori’s Osk Roscoe. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by Turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c. O. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott Steiner Brooklyn. Thank you for that. Affirmation Scotty. You’re with me next week for nonprofit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for July 14, 2017: Social Change Anytime Everywhere, Part Deux

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Amy Sample Ward: Social Change Anytime Everywhere, Part Deux

Amy Sample Ward

We pick up where we left off last week with Amy Sample Ward, discussing her book, “Social Change Anytime Everywhere.” We’re covering your fundraising plan: scheduling; testing; staffing; budgeting; and tips for your website campaign. Amy is our social media contributor and CEO of Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN). Her dad Tim joins in to share what it’s like to raise a social media scientist.

 

 


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Oppcoll no. Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. The three fiftieth show is coming up july twenty eighth, two more weeks, the three fiftieth and i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with dexter okla nation if i saw that you missed today’s show social change anytime, everywhere parte do we pick up where we left off last week with amy? Sample wards book social change anytime everywhere covering your fund-raising plan scheduling, testing, staffing, budgeting and tips for your website. Campaign amy’s dad tim joins in to explain what it was like to raise a social media scientist, and this originally aired on april nineteenth twenty thirteen on tony take two thank you, responsive by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com here’s amy sample ward with her book social change, anytime everywhere part do i’m always pleased to welcome amy sample ward to the studio she’s membership director at non-profit technology network and ten, as i said her most recent co authored book social change anytime everywhere about online multi-channel engagement the forward is by two time guest of this show, craig amar, the founder of craig’s listing craigconnects no, sorry work that in there that he’s been on the show twice her blogged is amy sample, ward dot or ge and she’s at amy r s ward on twitter. Welcome back, kayman sample work. Thank you for having me back. It’s. Always a pleasure. Um, i guess my one of my first my first question is on the cover of this book the word’s, any time and everywhere. I’m showing her the cover now to remind her of the are separated. But they are not hyphenated. Why? Why aren’t they hyphenated the way proper english would be any hyphen time? Because they’re in different lines and every hyphen. Where where is the copy editing on this? On this cover? Yep. I don’t think i’m gonna let you just go by with this job. It’s it’s apparently thie design aesthetic. Okay, which you had no control over, i guess. Okay. Okay. I think this should be hyphen. I mean, i think these things are important in in language. All right. But it helps you enunciate the title very well. Any time, every right. Trying to learn how to spell her. You would think that any time was two different words. And and it’s, not it’s, not everywhere is not two different words. It’s. True. Okay, um let’s. Ah, i like to reflect a little bit. Okay, we talk all the time about online engagement, teo. And with what’s been happening this week, if you are engaged online on your charity, does nothing at all related to anything around violence or maybe victim or family support or politics of guns. Your charity has nothing to do with any of that. How do you respond? What do you do online, too? Let people know that you’re you’re conscious of what happens in the world. That’s outside your own. Sure, i think i mean first i would say i understand the argument of, you know, we don’t work on the politics of gun issues. However, you probably work with people and ultimately in any crisis or disaster, people are involved, you know, and reminding your own staff that it’s not just about bombs or terrorism. This is still about people and treating whatever response, whatever communication you have next in that light that there are people involved in this, i think helps you just take the right tone regardless of where you go next, because you’re then being responsive to what if it was you, you know, you would want someone to treat you or your city or your issue like people were involved. Next it’s a great opportunity to go check any scheduled messages you have any tweets or facebook post that air maybe already scheduled about something else. Also, look at your content calendar. You know where we planning on sending out an email appeal this week? That was, you know, using the story of this great little kid, and now maybe we don’t want to do that story or maybe not that message it all this week, you know, not that you have to completely shut down every organization didn’t stop this week, but trying to be responsive, teo, the fact that, you know, even in your own goals, you’re probably not going to get the analytics or the metrics you wanted, you know, no one’s going to be clicking through that email anyway, if that’s not what’s on their mind so looking at not just scheduled tweets, but what’s on your what’s scheduled to go up on your block what’s scheduled to go out and email looking at all of that immediately so that you can either put things on hold, readjust change, maybe which story was going to be in a newsletter? You know, there’s things like print ads or direct mail that that that’s already out there, you know? But people also don’t look at the newspaper and think, i can’t believe that this ad ran like because in our minds, we know that that’s not like a real time media. We know that that’s program six weeks in it, right? Exactly, but when you see something go up on twitter, you know, when you everyone else is just watching twitter for news updates it it really does feel a little bit more careless because they know that you let it happen. You know, you could have changed that tweet. We talk a lot about engaging with people online not so dissimilar lee from the way we engage with people face to face, you know? And when when i saw you earlier today, we you know i told you that i was feeling raw and sensitive and you know, that was that was really basically after right after hello, yeah, so, you know, i’m doing that in it, and i’m sure i’ll do that with friends. I meet for dinner tonight. It’s not it’s, not unlike online when you can have a conversation about this, or at least share your feelings when it really oppcoll just doesn’t deal with your data your day to day world, right? It’s it’s never going toe i mean, i don’t want to say never as if any statement could ever be, you know, all all encompassing, but for the most part, it’s not going to hurt your organization to say something like our hearts are going out to the victims and here’s a link to resource is or hears, you know, the the google spreadsheet that was created to help, you know, people say i’ve found this person or this person is missing, you know, like that it doesn’t hurt your brand, it doesn’t hurt your cause even though you might work on a totally separate mission to say, hey, we know this is happening and we want to make sure that we’re one more post in your facebook stream. That’s pointing to resource is instead of to something else. Okay, excellent. Well, we’re going to pick up with where you and i left off last month. It was march fifteenth with the fund-raising plan. We have just met and a half or so before we go away for a couple of a couple minutes, why don’t you just tease a little bit? Share? What? What we might be talking about with respect to a fund-raising plan. Sure. I think last time we talked kind about the components of the plan and this time we can get and i think to the nitty gritty, a little bit more like what does a be testing really look like in a campaign? Especially in real time? How do you figure out what’s working and keep kind of iterating as you’re in the middle of the campaign? And then also, what does that look like for your organization? Who’s involved once the campaign is live, is it just that development director or other staff? You know, playing into that campaign on then? Even what does it look like on online? What is what? Is your website need to do to be responsive to the campaign? Okay, maybe testing? Yeah, i don’t i’m not sure that that really qualifies for jargon jail. I’m not really feeling like putting buy-in george in jail today, and it probably doesn’t even really qualified. But well, why don’t you just explain what a be testing is? Sure. So for the most part, you could test everything on your website just by saying, well, it’s, their people are clicking on it, they like it, but it’s a little bit more scientifically valid. If you say have two buttons and people when they came to your website, they’re being presented with one of two buttons, and then you can just leave it up for a few days and say, gosh, anyone that saw the blue button clicked three times more than anyone that saw the red button, for example, so it’s just changing one component at a time with two versions so that you can figure out which works better and then start changing the next thing. And you’re directing people to both of them? Yes, simultaneously. Yep, i guess. Randomly, exactly. Okay. And you? You have an excellent example. In the book about the the clinton bush haiti fund, and we’ll talk a little about that. Ok, we go away for a couple seconds. When we come back, amy and i will continue this conversation about about her book and and your fund-raising plan stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent, not too many live listeners today, i’m suspecting that a lot of people are if they’re online, they’re looking at cnn or some other some other news source that they trust. But i will say, live listener love out too. Forest grove, oregon and new bern, north carolina also since you taiwan ni hao and for korea, we have listeners in seoul and young in korea on yo haserot glad that you’re very glad, very glad that you’re with us. Thank you. Um okay, kayman sample word let’s talk about some of these details of of a be testing. What does this look like? Well, you can do it. I mean, even though we used the example before of your website, you can do it on anything. You know, you could do it in an email. Newsletters on little micro sites, it’s. Just a page essentially, whatever. Wherever you’re trying to put content out, you could do a be testing. So it could mean different photos, different buttons that text it could also mean having a photo or no photo, you know? Ah lot of organizations will do. A b testing specifically around fund-raising with on that on that donation page, does it have a photo or does it just have the form? Or, you know, does it show maybe a image of some sort that shows, like how they’re using the funding, for example, or what the project looks like that they’re asking for money for or again, is it just the form, you know? So and that’s it it’s going to change it’s not going to be the same for every single organization? You know, you have to do that testing because if especially if you’re an organization that’s used a lot of images in your campaign in your appeals that’s, you know that it’s driving people to remember what, what this is all about maybe having that photo there again, we’ll just keep that emotional tie to the campaign. But if it’s your raising money for something that you haven’t been using, that kind of graphical support for, well, maybe people would get there and say, why do you have this random photo of a child up here? You know, so so you wanted to be consistent, but you also want a test to see. What’s going to get the most completion on that form. Ok. And so i just said quickly before the break. You are you are you randomly? Your technology is randomly assigning people two different a and b version that’s what they be testing it first to a and b version is that is that what happens? So there are all different levels of sophistication, so you may be using a tool google has? Uh uh, baby testing tool optimize. Lee is another pretty sophisticated tool to use for that, especially around your website. But with email marketing, you could just say we want to send you don’t have the list this message and half the list this message or say you have a thousand people on your email list, send the first one hundred message a the next one hundred message be and then wait two hours, see which one had more opens and then say, great, we’re going to go with that message to the other eight hundred. Okay, so this could be that instantaneous. We’re just a couple of hours. Exactly. Okay. Okay. Now, an email, a popular thing to test is a subject line. Right? You could. Be having different versions of a subject line, right? Everything else would be the same. Exactly. The message inside is the same. But having, you know, a call to action versus you know anyone, regardless of which side you support anyone that’s on a political list. You’ve seen them testing those subject lines. You see messages coming almost every day during campaign season. Sometimes it just has one word. You know, sometimes it has your name in it sometimes it’s a really long call to action and that’s just those campaigns testing out what’s getting the most people to open this on the on the fund-raising landing page side, you have the example of the clinton bush haiti fund. They changed something so subtle, just the words within the button that you click right. The red, they have a red button and i have i’ve read that red is a very powerful color. Red is supposed to be very good button color for donate now for donation buttons or buy buttons. So they changed it from submit that the word in the button was submit to support haiti, and they got a fifteen percent increase in dollars per page view. Just something so subtle is that exactly and part of that, you know, some organizations think, well, we don’t want to write submit because normally, you know what we want them to do is donate or whatever their word choice, maybe, but if you have all throughout your website, if you keep using the word support, support us through your donations, support us by taking this action, and then someone gets to a page where there’s a button that says donate well, it feels really weird because you’ve already been consistently using this other word, so that consistency is important, you know? And again, if if you go look on your website now and you see that on your you’re donate paige it’s the only place you say there were donate but the rest of the time you really are talking about, support us financially. That’s an opportunity to do some testing because maybe donate works for your organization, and you should change those other places where it says sport or the other way around. Okay, excellent example, right of potential testing. Another thing they did there. There’s. This little geo trust verified icon i guess that it’s a trustworthy site right? Forgiving is that what that is, right? And there are all different kinds of those, you know, whether it’s charity navigator, geo trust like all those different things that say, basically, we’re not goingto take your money and do something else with it, i guess again, there’s different levels of what these other certification sites mean to, but some places have found, you know, some organizations found that by putting those kinds of seals of approval, i guess you would say on the donation for more on the button, they saw a big increase, but others have found like they did. You know, when you when you take it away, you actually haven’t they well, they decode, they had to do when they when they took that away, they lost five percent revenue right per page view. Exactly. There’s a trusted icon similar to papal, verified on the commercial side. Exactly. So people have gotten really used to, even if people don’t necessarily know what geo trust is or they don’t know what you know, charity navigator is they don’t know what they are, but the fact that it says it’s verified, you know, someone’s looked into these people give some amount of trust some of the things that you suggest it could be changed on dh tested form fields, how many form fields you have, the donation amounts that air suggested those little radio buttons that you click ten, twenty five, fifty hundred and that’s a really big thing to change, especially, you know, certain campaigns have found easy ways to mix that up because if they had a number involved in the campaign, you know, if if the campaign was around ah, holiday and it was on the thirteenth or it was a military campaign and they wanted to use the six as there number, and so then you just have increments of six, and you, maybe you say sixty is the default, right? Whenever organizations test that out, often they find people that the hyre number really does get donated because they’ve just mixed it up a little, you know, they didn’t defaulted to ten, you know, they put it up there a bit because people will still put it down if they want to have a smaller number, you know, but showing kind of the idea with where that preset radio button selection is. Is basically trying to say this is the average gift. This is the normal donation. So it’s not, you know, we’re expecting you to do this, but, hey, most people are doing this one thats why its preset on sixty. You know, eso it just encourages people. Tio not think oh, this is just a ten dollar or that’s, just the twenty five dollar normal donation, you know, so putting different numbers in there that are, like, thirty three and, you know, throws people a little. We have. We have tim sample on the line, tim samples called, and this is amy’s dad, he called in last month. Tim. Tim sample, how are you doing in oregon? I’m doing good doing good and plays it’s it’s already done, or or a gun? Oregon where there’s no evil or he’ll help you. Oregon. All right, there you go. You go. Oregon. Are it’s not gone? There’s no e at the end. Oh, thank you. Alright, oregon, but i’m a i’m right in the middle of work right now, but i’ve had an opportunity to come down on my desk and lock the doors. Nobody bought it. I’m at your disposal. Thank you, tim. You know, i wanted to ask you. I have here with me. You know, this little kind of sort of shrinking kind of wallflower, you know? Never not very engaged. Not very out there. What? What? What is she always like this when she was growing up? Oh, you’re talking about my daughter? Yeah, i know. I know. It’s. Hard to tell. Yeah. Yeah, alright, now, but without the sarcasm has always been a type a personality. Yeah, and always always engaged. Like, was she in? A lot of i could’ve asked her, but it’s more fun to ask you. Was she out there? Like, in activities in elementary school in high school? I mean, she’s, the online engagement, everything poster poster will be, could everything she could possibly get involved with. She was involved with her mother, and i tried to give her every opportunity to try every sport, every activity you wanted, you know, you know, as parents, we tried to do that for her. Can. My god, you know a good example of amy. I tell this story. He probably doesn’t remember it. But in the second grade, i said anything. You got your homework. Done well, yes. He had two next day’s homework done the whole weeks. Only john had read three chapters ahead. It was the last time we ever ask her if she had her homework done. Never had to worry about amy school or anything. Okay. And always self directed, always always getting right with it. And and i feel like he is right now. I know and engaged also. Always engaged with the public. Yes. Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. How did we know that she’d end up a consultant and someone that people look to for advice about online engagement? Did you see this coming? I thought he’d be president united states by now myself? No, no pressure. Thanks, dad, but i didn’t want to go into politics. I amy always had a sense of what was right and wrong, you know, always interacting with other children. You know, she always knew what was right or wrong. She never made bad decisions that i can see. And if she did so well, i hit way didn’t know about it. All right, well, we’re back, but she has a sphere of alligators. Is that is that you’re doing? Is that is that? You’re doing, she has a fear of alligators, is that you’re doing a fear of alligators. You’re not aware of this? Well, we don’t have many alligators over here where we live in oregon and oregon in oregon, oregon. Now i know i never knew he had any fears at all. Tony all right. It was an example after a trip to florida, and tony will let me live it down if it comes up to you. Okay. Yeah, i have a fear of snakes. Oh, i don’t think i pass that on to her. I don’t know if alligators are reptiles like snakes are alligators may or may not be reptiles. Maybe maybe look together. Alright. Alright. We’re gonna let you go back to work, tim. All right, perfect. Thank you very much for calling the opportunity. We’re going. You don’t have to your daughter by tim sample. Okay. Goodbye. All right. I wanted to have some fun. Do that that’s fair. Okay. This’s. Tony martignetti non-profit radio. You are in charge of the shop. Future president. I know i the bar’s pretty high now. Yeah, i in fact, when alison find was here last week, i asked her if she thought that a presidential candidate could emerge outside the two major parties from online on, and she felt that it could eventually, but that we would see local local races first. Mayor’s maybe governors or senators, you know, but more local than presidential right away. But i was i had you in mind. I had your president cha operations. I don’t. I want to. You know, there’s. Another election coming up it’s true only only only few years. It’s. Really? Not all that far away. So exactly. Okay, she felt it was possible. Do you think it’s possible for a for their previous president there emerges online. Yeah, especially. I think around someone from a grassroots campaigning background not political, necessarily, but someone that’s that’s already actively working online to bring people together for other social issues or other kinds of campaigns. So so someone who’s in it in that way, i think, could easily cross over to say great. Well, now i want to run for for an elected position versus i’m just going to be the organizer that keeps this. Keeps this movement going. Okay. You have anybody in mind? Apparently i need to put myself in the strike don’t talk about other candidate. Exactly. Were we stupid? All right, i will go on the record shows up today never mentioning another candidate. All right, um, let’s oh, there was one more thing. I want to point out that matching gif ts is another possible, maybe another another possible testing. So oh, exactly the existence of or how big a match might be, right? Especially, you know, something to think about with phrasing of matching gifts is there’s the version of, you know, if we get to this number, we get that same total matched or every ten dollars gets matched. So then people think, well, my ten dollars isn’t going to mean much to this really big pot. We have to get two of twenty thousand, but if instead you say the matches, you know, dollar for dollar, whatever you khun give, how does that affect your community? Because some communities may really get behind the idea of, like, having to get to that really big number together and other communities want to feel like they’re five dollars, was still matched and still meant ten dollars, for the organization. So think about the way you use the match in your campaign, and several weeks ago we had a university professor on from university of chicago john list talked about scientific research around matching gift does does a three to one match necessarily pulled more than a one to one match? Right and where and on dh? Also in the phraseology of the match, the way you’re describing and that will show was on february eighth of this year. If you want to hear discussion about the scientific research specifically around matching gift excellent, we’re going to take more of a break, another break, and when we come back, we’ll talk more about who gets involved in the campaign, some budgeting, maybe some calendar ring and things like that and also tony’s take too, of course, comes before all that. Stay with me more with amy coming up first pursuant, check them out for lots of free resource is week after week, um, urging you to browse the collection, as my library used to say in elementary school, browse the collection that was when we had those card catalogs looking that they weren’t literally index cards or little cards were that brass rod ran through the ran through the middle on the bottom of the cards. It was always shiny and slippery, and you could get their little those little cards. And they used the dewey decimal system. We don’t know. Uh, we still use the dewey decimal, so i don’t even know. Do it. Yeah, but browse the collection and pursuing its much easier than the brass rotted dahna card catalogs of yesteryear. And where do you go? So you click. You go to pursuing dot com and you click resources. And then as you start your browsing the maybe the blogged or webinars or content papers or infographics. It’s all right, there. No card catalog required pursuing dot com. We’ll be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers. You need money for your good work? Yes. Throw a spelling bee. You know i hate the word. Let us. I got stuck on lettuce was or greenlee was all it was all iceberg at the time. I hate the word. Let us i love but thea tangible manifestation of the word i enjoy but not the word itself. I digress. Host a spelling bee make millennial money. These are ideal fundraisers for millennials with spelling bee. And live music, et cetera. Stand up. Comedy dancing check out the video at we b e spelling dot com and talkto alex career the ceo now time for tony’s take two. Thank you so glad that you are with us. Whether it is let’s, do it backwards. I hate to break with tradition. It’s it’s so risky, but we start with the affiliate affections. And i am so glad that our am and fm listeners are with us week after week wherever your station fits us into there. Line up. So glad to have you with us podcast pleasantries always going out two the two are precious podcast listeners precious podcast pleasantries. I’m not going to do that every week now. Two’s enough podcast pleasantries over twelve thousand listening in the time shift so glad that you are with us thank you. And alive listener love always goes out you know who you are you know where you are. I can’t shut you out by city and state this very day. Although i will be able to next week and the week after live listener love to you thank you for being with us and also, if you are a non-profit radio insider and i get into your inbox every thursday. Thank you for letting me in there. I’m grateful that is tony, take two. And here is amy sample ward continuing with her book, social change. Anytime everywhere you gotta get this book for god’s sake, just get it. Amy who’s, who should be involved in this work? And how are we going? Estimate the time that’s going to be involved in our online campaign? Sure, i think fund-raising campaigns just like any other campaigns organization, maybe running advocacy list building, you know, community engagement, etcetera can’t be thought of as something that’s completely contained within the fund-raising department, because ultimately there are e mails and there’s this a b testing on the website, and all of those other components require all different staff from different departments. So it’s an opportunity to create, i think, processes we suggest in the book, where you will have regular opportunities for staff across departments, not necessarily like on all staff meeting, but staff across departments that are ultimately all creating the success of that campaign to come together, whether that’s like every week or however your organization wants to do it. To have a meeting where you’re all in the room at the same time, or all on video chat or whatever you want to do so that everyone’s talking about it. So as soon as you break that campaign down into the people that are in charge of the email never talked to the people that were in charge of actually counting how many people are coming through the form, then you’ve already said, well, we’re not even going to have the best conversation we can have with this campaign staff aren’t talking to each other, so creative process first, so that everyone involved is coming together regularly to talk about kosh, we saw that this button language was the best. Well, the e mail better have that same button language. You know, any abie testing that you’re doing anything you’re learning about what’s working with the campaign should then be immediately reflected in all the other components. So how you either evaluate ahead of time, staff time or recognize all those different pieces are maybe serving the rest of the organization. So thinking of of people in communications is not just communications staff that all they do is communicate. But they also served fund-raising and they also serve advocacy, and they also served programs. So what does that mean as far as your staff plan? And what does that mean for your value evaluation of staff? You know, those communications staff in this example couldn’t just say, well, my job is to send e mail and i sent them, but how, you know, how was your function in this organization, reflective of our success in our fundraising campaign were reflective of the success in our advocacy campaign so that it’s showing that that person isn’t just responsible for hitting send on thousands of emails but showing them even in their own evaluation, that they’re part of the whole organization success, which i think is critical for having all of your staff buy-in toe working towards your mission, you know, as soon as you say, well, your job is just the website what their job is the web site, because it’s serving the mission of helping people understand you know what your your cause is all about and so did did they lead the baby testing that help figure out that that button actually could have, you know, in increased by fifteen percent the donations that’s huge that’s, not just the fund-raising team that’s also that person who’s managing the website. What about the smaller shop? Just a two or three person arts group? I mean, how are we going to build even? Ah, modest campaign into what we’re trying to. We’re struggling to keep get getting done day in, day out, right? I think for smaller organizations, but really, the same lesson applies to everyone. Ah lot of of the components of the campaign are actually developed way in advanced. If you’re collecting stories actively as you are working with your community year and you’re keeping those stories not just on a piece of paper in your desk, but, you know, kind of like a story bank you have, you have ah, bank. You could draw from of all these different stories then in that moment when you need to create a campaign, maybe it’s a response of campaign because some horrible event has happened. And you want to make sure people are aware of your services. You know, for example, you have that content. You don’t have to then spend a week developing. Okay, who’s who from our community do we want to talk to you know, where could we get a story about our services in action? You’ve already created that content in advance, so especially when you only have two people, the more you can do to just kind of be librarians, you know, tio, cart, chronicle and archive all that you have all the time so that you can really easily just say that’s, you know, the book i want that’s, the story i want off that shelf and let’s put it into this email and then again, a be testing is so, i think, critical for really small shops, because if you really can just say, we’re going to send this e mail to one hundred people each and then know that the one that got more opens is what we’re going to send even though it took you maybe an extra five minutes to go back and say, okay, now send this list that was a really great five minutes, because it means you’re getting that many more people opening that message. Let’s look, a tte budgeting our campaign may involve some adwords facebook, facebook yeah, how are we going toe? How do? We figure out what what we should be too spending money on is beyond the time that also is an indirect, indirect cost, right? First, obviously, you know, you have to have the caveat of it all depends what’s your campaign about where is your community? Ah lot of people have have realized that you’re not necessarily just going to make all of your money from your fund-raising campaign on facebook, but a lot of those people that are participating as donors, maybe on your facebook page. So thinking about how you budget for promotion of the campaign versus budget, for the call to action, you know, you may want to just invest in having ads showing the efficacy of your work so that when people are then emailed a call to donate, they’re like, oh, yeah, you guys do really great stuff. I do want to donate via email because that’s my, you know, i’ll just click don’t and go to your website, but maybe it’s different for your forget it community, maybe your community doesn’t really know, and they just need to be told, like there was a disaster and donate, you know, it depends a lot in the circumstances, i think it’s also, especially with things like facebook, where they’re changing the algorithm like every five hours you have to do so may be testing, you have to invest in that a be testing. So you know which of these ads are working better? Do we do promoted posts, or do we do ads? So some of it is just having a reserve of that advertising budget to test with, and you don’t have to spend a lot of money now, like facebook ads are not expensive, right? For-profit lee fifty dollars or so you could oh, exactly, you attest? Oh, for sure, yeah, and the problem or the great opportunity that could become a new obstacle for organizations, is that when you get in there to do a facebook at our, you know, promoted post, you’re you’re presented with the opportunity to pick like which gender location, background so many details, but it can either be overwhelming and you just say, well, i just wanted to go to everyone, and then you’re going to run out of that fifty dollars budget instantly, you know, or you get so narrow and who you want this ad to? Go, too, but it never really goes to anyone. So i think there’s a little bit of opportunity, teo play even just with that, that scale of who do you really want to promote this to? Who is your donor? And what do you know about them? Which goes back to what we talked about months ago, about how, you know, investing and knowing who your community is first, so that you can say the right things on the right channels, and i appreciate that your advice always is. What are the goals of the campaign right now, and not only to raise the money that that? Well, actually, the campaign may not be about even about money, but may not only be the explicit purpose of the campaign, but also to grow engagement in the long term, bring some new people to the cause may not even fremery respond to your call to action, but now they’ve joined your community exactly, exactly. And for them this you know, your campaign that maybe their friend donated teo was the first time they had heard aboutyou, but they’re now hearing about you in a really trusted way because they heard that. A friend not only supported your work but gave money to your work, and now they just want to follow along, and eventually you can, you know, encourage them up that ladder of engagement to become a donor as well. And in that respect, not everything in your campaign has to be about the call to action, right? I mean, i know i guess you want the called action to be frequent, but there can be things that are informative beyond the call to action. Exact. I think a lot of organizations will shook about a fundraising campaign, i think. Okay, first and foremost, they’re donating to this campaign. They’re going to donate to this campaign. They really get that out there, and then people donate and then there’s nothing else, you know. So people feel like, well, i did the thing, but there has to be more aiken dio so recognizing that there is always more they khun dio having that thank you, paige, push them to the very next step. What’s the next step for you is that great. Thanks for donating here’s the button to share on facebook that you just donated, you know, or is the email confirmation encouraging them to share their story about why they donated so that now you have one more story and your story bag, you know, so think about what people can do to still feel like they’re contributing to this forward motion because they already donated, which is huge, so don’t take someone who’s willing to take a really big action and then just dropped them off, keep them, you know, sustained that engagement and keep them engaged so that you can ask them to donate again, you know, if they haven’t heard from you, and now you’re asking again for them to donate well, they feel like don’t you remember that i already donated? But if you’ve said, you know, hey, share this on facebook? Hey, give us your story, etcetera, and then you say thank you for donating. Please help some more. They feel like yes, of course we are trying to get there together. What is ah, home page hijack? Uh, it’s called many things, but basically i’m sure most people have experiences when you go to a website and you just, you know, landed on the website haven’t clicked on anything, and then something pops. Up, even the new york times does this you think you’re going to go read an article from the new york times that your friend just tweeted that and there’s a thing that pops up that says, don’t you want to pay for new york times content? Why don’t you subscribe? That’s that’s ah, home page hijacked, for example, it’s basically a light box that pops up and says, whatever you thought you were here to read. This is what we want you to read and it’s great for people that if they really are just hitting your home page because maybe they were, you know, searching online for something and came to your website, they don’t know or you’re directed people back to your website, and it can pop up and say, this is what’s happening here is the called action here’s, that big red button that says support haiti or whatever, and obviously they could close out of the box or lorts like off it, etcetera, but the fact that it makes it super front and center lit literally front and center on the website helps direct that traffic into the call to action where you could maybe. Instead of them seeing your home page that’s, you know, normally fairly generic has lots of navigation, et cetera and drives them to a page that’s just about the campaign, you know, really focus. They can see the donate form they khun see whatever helps funnel people just to the campaign instead of accidentally clicking unlike, oh, what is this organization about? And what do you do and what’s? This other thing? I see a photo of, you know, it just helps funnel people in where you want them to go. You have advice about how frequently someone may see that home page hijack, so maybe it shouldn’t be more than once a week person and the technology will support that our exam twice a week per person or whatever you think exactly, yeah, i mean, it’ll where people out if every time they go to any page of your website, they’re getting this pop up essentially, you know, but if you can say yeah, once a week or the first time someone comes to the website because maybe outside of a fundraising campaign, you could use that for many things you could have it say, join our email list. You know, subscribe to our news, whatever you want that pop up to be. So if you see that every time, well, gosh, i signed up a week ago, and i’m seeing it every day, you know, so just may be the first time that i p address hits the web site, you know? We’re going to take a break in about a minute. We want to have some print possibly to be in support of our campaign. I want to just open that topical bit. We’ll talk more about it shortly. Sure, i think print is actually a great medium, especially for fund-raising still one of the main drivers of fund-raising effort so looking again at that piece as a way to frame all of the content that’s going to come later because you’re going to be ableto change up at the very last minute, what you tweet and what you put in an e mail, etcetera. But if that print piece supports that overall call to action, the overall message and maybe has just won fairly general story that you can then really dig into that story of what that person’s you know, experience was or what those services mean to the community it’s a great way to frame things as a oh, yeah, i remember this. You know, every time they then get an email from you. All right, we’ll talk more about this and the and the fund-raising plan in general, when we return with amy, sample ward, stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from a standup comedy, tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked. 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Uh, anything more that you want to say about print in support of this, i would i would add that prince should certainly be needs to be in this fund-raising calendar with a campaign calendar that we talked about last month and it’s something that we’ve talked about in the past, i forget what episode number, but we talked about competition and how teo, you know, if if you were doing a phone bank, for example, of donations and you and you mentioned the research shows, at least if you were to mention, you know, the previous collar don’t thisyou know people are more inclined to say, well, i’m going to do that if someone else did print is a really easy way to do that as well, because you clearly know where they live, you are mailing something to them. So say, on average, people in your neighborhood donated this last year to our campaign. Oh, my gosh, now they like now i’m going to look in on my neighbor’s like which ones of you donated one hundred dollars? Now i feel guilty, i’m going to donate a hundred dollars, you know? So so keep those same principles that you use online with making it be a riel story, having it connected to something directly when your mission have a very clear call to action. But then take advantage of that local competition that peer pressure of this is this is really, really in your neighborhood. But also this is how people are actually helping us. So you should too. We can also have competition in telemarketing right in our telephone call once just remind i think this may have been last month, but in the way that callers are greeted, andi encouraged or thanked for their past giving there could be some competitiveness. Exactly. Exactly. So i’m not just saying like, oh, thanks you want to donate, but also, you know oh, you have reviews caller. Exactly. The previous collar donated this. And if you can, if you can hear sometimes, you know it’s it’s hard to just make a judgment. But if you could hear that it was a male calling and you could say, oh, well, the man before you donated this, if you if you have that opportunity to be gender specific, the results or even hyre from studies that say, you know, once i’m told the previous collar was a woman and she don’t even more than me well, man, i want to donate as much as her, so all right, let’s, let’s wrap up our campaign with the thank you’s yes, thank you’s are critical and thank you don’t have to be at the end of the campaign. Thank you should be every time someone’s done something, so when they sign up for that email lists, you know, thank them if they donated, thank them, but also do that thinking in public when you can, you know, you’ll see people in the campaign putting on facebook that they, you know, because they got to the thank you page, the confirmation page, and they tweeted, or they posted to facebook that they just donated, well, that’s a great place if the organization is then liking that post, if you you know, privacy settings are such that you can see their post or on twitter, the organization is retweeting them to them that’s huge validation the organization noticed that i just tweeted out, you know, that i donated and i’m i got retweeted or i got thanked publicly and that certainly doesn’t take, you know, a lot of effort, you’re not creating any new content you’re just saying thank you very much, but it can mean a lot publicly for the community to see those individual voices being thanked. How do you feel about the mailing of small, maybe small tokens? Oh, yeah, of gratitude o i think i think a hand written note, even if all it says is, you know, tony, thanks so much for your donation. Amy. It was a hand written note. It had to go through the mail, you know? It means a lot exactly could be something online, maybe maybe a little gift certificate or a discount to a site or something. Exactly how else can we say the small ways of saying thank you, right? And i there are lots of ways where, you know, and and ten we can say thank you by saying, you know, to thank you for what you’ve done here is a free webinar, for example, you know, web in our past, but for other organizations, it can also be an opportunity to say, because you donated, you’re now invited to this event that’s only for our donors, you know, so you’re also providing access to something that is otherwise exclusive, and you can use that as a way to say, hey, all of our donors are going to be joining us at this, you know, a local place that everyone knows is really fun or, you know, historic or whatever come join us in this, and it doesn’t have to be, you know, because he’ll be a national campaign, but you could say, if you’re a donor, you’ll get the link to the live stream and you get to be there for this interview with our founder or whatever, and even if people don’t want to go it’s still saying, we know tony, you donated, and we want you as part of this conversation, just the act of inviting exact is very, very it is very gracious exactly in heimans larger organizations that i that i work with will often invite people on the other side of the country to a luncheon that we’re hosting in new york city to to say thank you right way don’t expect them to come. We know the observers are tiny that they will, but the act of the invitation what if they were going to be in town for other business where they were going to be in town, meeting with someone? And now they can say, oh, while i’m there, i’m also going to go to this luncheon because i donated and that’s really cool, you know, i’ve never asked you this. You’ve been on many times. What is it that you love about the work that you do, this whole body of work that you that you’re involved with? What is it you love? I i love the people like i love that we are in a position to get to support not just one person that we’ve met, you know, and, like, help them do whatever, but we can help hold communities that’s really exciting, you know, or that you can help all of those people in the community know that they’re in a community i mean, i think that’s the really exciting power of the internet is that people thought i’m the only person that has x y and z here and the only person it’s experienced this, and now they go online like, oh my gosh, i’m not special at all there’s a million. People who’ve had this and so part of it is that that feeling of like, i’m not special, but i’m not special because there are so many of these other special people you know, and getting to find them and create community with each other, even when you can’t all be physically in the same room. Her latest book is social change anytime everywhere you’ll find amy’s blawg at amy, sample ward, dot or ge once again a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Be sure and thank him for calling it. I will. That’s, dad, dad to you? Yes, next week i know it won’t be fermentation if you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers. Wee bey e spelling dot com a creative, producers clad meyerhoff sam liebowitz is the line producer. Betty mcardle is our am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez and this music is by scott stein he with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.