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Nonprofit Radio for March 4, 2016: Date Your Donors

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Jonah Halper: Date Your Donors

Jonah Halper is author of the new book “Date Your Donors.” He wants you to enjoy the full breadth of fundraising relationships. He’s founder and partner of Altruicity consulting and he’s with me for the hour.

 

 


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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. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with five grossing alvey a lie tous if i drew a breath to hear the words you missed today’s show date your donors jonah helper is author of the new book date your donors. He wants you to enjoy the full breath of fund-raising relationships he’s, founder and partner of altruicity consulting and he’s with me for the hour on tony’s take two, the non-profit technology conference and ntcdinosaur live are you in? We’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuing dot com so glad to welcome jonah helper halper halper back to the studio has been a guest before his new book is date your donor’s he’s, a non-profit marketer and fundraiser with over ten years of experience specializing in new donorsearch acquisition and engaging gen x and wires he’s, founder and partner of altruicity consulting they’re at altruicity dot com the book is that get your donor’s dot com and he’s at jonah helper already chuckling. Yeah, welcome. Back to the studio. Welcome back to the show. I haven’t thrilled to be here. Thank you so much. Talk. Good to see you. Good to have you here. Um, congratulations on the book. Thank you. How did you get to the concept of dating and donors? So i started doing ah, training fund-raising training a couple of years ago. And i just found i started using a lot of dating analogies that was very natural on daz. They started tio go down that rabbit hole of discussing, you know, how fund-raising is is akin to relationships in courtship, in attraction and things along those lines. I started to think about about my career as a fundraiser, and i noticed that there were even even the people who, you know, classically trained in fund-raising and, you know, had the experience. Some fundraisers were unbelievable at the craft, you know, there’s some fundraisers who, you know, we’re okay. They’re mediocre, or they were just, you know, kind of putting in the time. And they’re doing the kind of the best breast practices of the business. But there was a clear line between those who were the born fundraisers or seemingly born. Fund-raising and those who weren’t and i started wonder why that wass and it wasn’t something you would able to see in a resume, it wasn’t something that was just, you know, you can look and see their track record and see why that was the case, it was experiential, like i would interact with these people, and there was there was kind of like an use of cool, like, it was just like you would be around them and you would be, you know, wanting to be around that would be attractive, and as that started to take shape, i started teo kind of more put, ah, structure around it to say, what is it that those type of people have that makes people want to be around them as a fundraiser or as just a human being? And, you know, one of the interesting kind of correlations i found was it was very someone of my high school experience, which is you weren’t you were you were not so cool in high school, i wish i was on the other side, but no, you know what it was is i went to a boarding school, all boys, tremendous. Amount of testosterone. And basically, you know, the need and the desire to be on the in crowd was the most important thing to make. Yeah, i spent so many waking hours just trying to figure out the chess moves that would take me to be in the inner circle. And what it did is it drove me further and further away. I became like the hanger on on. I thought i was i thought was a cool guy. I thought i had, you know, certain skills. I thought i you know, i was in a terrible ballplayer. Like the things that were important to high school boys. I was a terrible ballplayer. I i got my my varsity letter in announcing oh, as one step below cheerleaders. Annan varsity letter ship. So, i mean, i dealt with these things with a sense of humor and a nem barris ingley. A large number of times. It would more be people laughing at me then with me, right, which only, which only further perpetuates that downward spiral. Yeah, three guys, a joker reason he’s the jester. But he’s not, you know, it’s. Not even always laughing with them. Like i said. So all right, so i dealt with it. That was my athletic outlet was announcing right there and managing rights to carry soccer balls on and off the field. Make sure nobody was on the bus on time. So you’re announcing a managing in-kind of, understandably, why you kind of self selected into certain kind of career right now. I’m announcing right for myself. Exactly. I’m not shepherding a bunch of high school kids on a bus on then announcing touchdown, thie irony. The irony is i knew any i still know nothing about sports, right? I mean, i have trouble distinguishing football from baseball. Well, so have a great fundraiser is that you can talk intelligently on any subject for about two and a half minutes. Lord, help you. If they want to have a deeper dive in town. Well, two and half minutes they’ll be laughing that will be actually laughing at me. But i football is the one with the field goals, i think. Yes, yes. Your baseball has the three pointers. No, basketball is through your basketball to report. Okay, so so the irony was, you know that there’s somebody whispering what? What to announce? Almost exact my ear. Oh, that’s got a touchdown. Touchdown number fourteen that’s? Uh oh, yeah, here he is, steve berman, who was a friend of mine. I couldn’t remembers number, but that’s how i dealt with my awkwardness and snusz so? So where i’m going with this is is that i found there were certain kind of character traits of that of that high school kid who seem to be the center of attention. And then i found that things don’t really change from high school things like, yeah, i know i don’t i hope i’m in outlier and that in your theory, i’m an aberration. We’ll know what it does is it way kind of grow into a lot of the things that we are lacking in high school high school. You’re just naturally you’re trying to figure yourself out. There’s not necessarily that the confidence there, you know, there’s a discovery that’s going on there. So it’s not a natural thing for you kind of say, this is who i am, these with skills i bring that confidence that’s kind of grown over the years, but that what i’m alluding to when i’m i’m kind of referencing now is the fact that confidence and clarity whether whether it’s real or not on the high school level, right, that perceived confidence is something that people are attracted to the fact that you say i know who i am, i know what i stand for this is what, whether for good or for bad, this is who i am, people want to be around people who have that who have the kind of that confidence say this is what we stand for. This is what i’m excited about. This is where i’m headed, and i want you to join me and confidence and clarity or a couple of things that were going to talk about yes, because as you’re suggesting, those are traits of good fundraisers, those those outlier fundraisers that are at the at the high end? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, cool. Uh, what’s. So why don’t we go out a little early for a break right now? It seems like natural place and we come back, we will will dive into the details of date your donors 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. Jonah helper, my guest, we’re talking about his new book date your donors. You want to start with authenticity and so this’s where i was not so authentic in high school, but i believe i’m much more authentic now, but sure, authenticity a great trait for fundraisers. Yeah, you know, it’s it’s interesting, because when you are in the business of raising money, you’re interacting with a lot of people who are high net worth who travel in certain circles, have a certain lifestyle, it’s easy to kind of pander to them and try to say, you know, i want to be on the inside so i can get money from them. That’s the kind of at the perspective especially young fundraiser has is how can i get into this? This network? And what i was when i mention before and when i think, applies when it comes to authenticity, is and also packaged in the non-profit, you know, jargon of mission envision, the idea is that you should know what your folks what you’re standing for there is a few of my jonah helper and working with a special needs charity, and this is my my job and my mandate and what i’m raising money for. I’m not jonah helper, mr country club. I’m not jonah helper, mr poker player, you know, hanging, hanging out with with these individuals, they may become friends and that’s fine, and they may become my network, but i’m coming to them not underneath the guise of being a buddy of being one of their friends, just being part of the network, but rather i’m coming through the through the lens of my mission, what i’m in the business of doing, where i’m headed with this, what i hope to accomplish with my mission and how these individuals can be a part of that experience. So in a way, authenticity is not me trying to fit into their world, maur them trying to fit into my world, and and that requires me not to be focused on myself, right? And i know what i am, what i stand for, but rather interact with them and then hopefully they see what who i am or what i stand for, that authenticity, what i’m really in the business of doing, and they’ll gravitate today. And they’re hopefully attracted to it, right? Not metoo them but them to me. So let’s, break this down because you’re talking about authenticity of the person and also authenticity of the organization cracked. All right, so let’s, start with the person. This is where we get to confidence, you know, you you want yeah, yeah, you just don’t want people to be molding themselves to what they think, the donor that they’re meeting that day or that our wants them to be right. But be true to yourself. Well, they’ll see right through that in there is if you’re the type of person who’s going to be mike mission creep like, you know, you know, i may be the business of doing this well, but you’re excited about that. Well, let me chase you down there about you know, about that that i know what i’m in the business of doing this is who i am, what i stand for that person’s a hedge fund, you know, man or woman, i am a fund-raising professional for this organization. That’s what i do know this is who i am and what i do if the if the stars align and they’re interested in what i’m doing, they’ll support it. If this is not of interest to them, it is not a priority for them. If it’s, you know, not meant to be it’s not meant to be, but the moment i start chasing people down there, then i’m effectively being that kind of aggressive door knocker to say, you know, give, give, give me, me, me, i i and that’s why i don’t want to be playing now, but what about when you get into situations like you’re meeting with a donor and we get into a political conversation or something religious? You know where your yours the stars are not aligned with theirs, you know, maybe you’re different political spectrum different into the political direction, then they are. How do we how do we stay authentic? So it’s? Interesting, because i’ll give a kind of ah kind of case in point, you know, there’s some people who use social media where there’s like a clear demarcation line between the personalizing, the professionalized we’ll have this is my missing my business account like this is my business facebook this is my organizational facebook presence on this is my personal place. Facebook president and never shall the twain you know me. Ah, that that is not my approach. My attitude is my my priorities, my belief system, you know, what’s important to me what i don’t think it’s important to me is as much ah factor in my relationship with these individuals than than anything else. The fact that may not agree with me politically, or the fact that may not agree with me what it is, then that’s that’s their prerogative. But at the same time, it’s nothing to do with the mission vision might cause i think mature people can make that clear separation between what is relevant, teo, the supporting whatever the good work that i’m doing other educational, humanitarian or are you know, whatever it is as and what jonah helper you know, does on his on his free time now, there’s importance of someone being trustworthy and having credibility and respect and you could ruin that by what’s going on in your personal life. So there is absolutely a certain amount of of measure that goes into what you’re doing. Discretion, yes, absolutely absolute discretion, but because people look and people see and if you want them, if you want them to give you their money and to trust you with their money to accomplish a certain good, if they think that you are not a trustworthy person because of the way you live or your reckless in some way or form, then that obviously is going to hurt you on the business side. But i think that things that are whether it’s politics or religion, you can agree, be respectful and you can agree to disagree, and i don’t think that will bilich deepti be a deal breaker. In fact, what i find is that when people know jonah helper father for jonah helper, you know his religious level or his political involvement that just shapes me as a person, and i find that the people who have become fast friends within become my donors are people who become friends and in a bigger way than just, you know, thank you for your check, and i’ll keep your loophole. You’re good how the good work is, you know, play out it’s, become more friends, i think a good example that is, when i had, you know, a couple of my last children i would get presents from some of my donors because it was clear that i wasn’t just fundraiser was shown a helper, of course, you know, help her father. Father, you know so that yes, there’s, of course, abounds there, okay? And i see that playing more now in our presidential election year i politics come up more in conversation that with donors, potential donors, when i’m with clients, then you know, then even just six, six or eight months ago, if you’re too highly spackled, like if you’re like, you know what i mean? Spy eyes like like mr clean jeans. There’s no there’s, no depth to you. Outside of your job, people are not going to find a way not going can connect with you, there’s not gonna be that human connection because your justice, you know, thomason ah, doing the work of your organization and you’re not a human being. So i think i think those other things that add flavor, not color and deep in the relationship, obviously again, with certain amount of discretion depends on how you live your life. But but i think that’s so important people realize who you are as a person and even not just as your you know, you mentioned social media, but just in conversation, you know, you don’t have to be the raging donald trump or bernie sanders fan. You could be respectful of the other person and say, you know, you know, o r, you know, maybe you don’t even need to in a conversation say what your aspirations are and who you hope will win just oh, you know, okay, yeah, he’s cool or hillary’s lullabies finite, you know, matt, i see points in her, and most people are not going to say who you stand, who do you want? You know, they’re not going to challenge that way and that’s another thing also is that when there is a conversation where you want this is that you have a position or you feel strongly about something, i think that if you’re open minded person or healthy person, those those conversations can be interesting without devolving into, you know, for violence. So i think i think that you could you could have those conversations and just by virtue of the business, you have those conversations because you could be at a country club, you can be on the golf. Course, and you’re not talking business for ninety percent of the time you’re talking family talking politics, you talking religion and time all the things that everyone talks about eso yet you have to be kind of present and in that experience and be really yeah, and you want to get beyond the small talk? Yeah, you make the point and get your donors, you know, we’re looking for common ground, so we start conversations often with the weather, right? Because everybody shares that, but, you know, if that goes on for more than, like, a minute and a half, i start to get antsy, right way got to get further than the weather and they know why you’re there like there’s, no qualms that the reason why you’re in their offices because they talk about the mission in vision of your organisation, what you hope to do and why you need their money. So it’s it’s not like you pulled the wool over the eyes, we’re talking, you know, baseball and the next thing you know, we’re talking money. They know why you’re there so it’s just a matter of of guests making the connection, finding the connection, whether it’s through friends, your common connections, whether it’s, tio shared interests, whatever case maybe, but they’re expecting the having a deeper conversation about what you’re doing, and they respect you for what you’re doing, you know, this is that was this is the business that you chose to be in your raising money for a worthy cause and making wonderful impact so there’s nothing to shy away from its not fund-raising is not a dirty word here a lot of these traits, but all of these traits or that you’re seeking in fundraisers, can’t be hyre ascertained from a from a resume, and you mention this in the book, too, that that, you know, it’s a personal business, you want to meet people before? I mean, obviously it’s going to be a personal interview, but but you don’t find resumes, a very valuable tool for recruitment, basically, what i’m saying, right? I think i think in general you’ll find word of mouth is always the strongest, you know is whether you’re looking for new business or whether you’re looking tto find their best people. Companies around the world have wonderful policies where there’s incentives if you refer people to the company and they get a job there for existing employees. There’s a reason for that? Because if you’re willing to put your reputation on the line to bring someone in who you think would be a good fit for the company, then that then that person has a better chance of being a good person as opposed to just another resume and an inbox so there’s absolutely value ah, stronger value and sitting in front of somebody and interacting with them on in a real way to be able to determine if they’ve kind of got the personality and and the kind of the gumption to do the work and do the fund-raising i needs to get done that you will never be able to get by just looking at a piece paper. How poised are they right? Right? I mean, you might think, well, you know, the interview is an artificial, um, environment and there’s high stress, you know, for the interviewee, but so is fund-raising mean, if you’re meeting a donor for the first time, that’s a bit of high stress, a potential donor for the first time, actually, if i could show a quick story that i think way don’t really care way stay in the abstract. I don’t know i love no, we love stories all right, so it’s interesting, you say that you know, it’s high stress experience interview process. When i got my first job, i met with i want to like a job fair, for it was for the jewish federation system, which is like the united way for the jewish community, and it was a national it was the national umbrella organization that hosted this job fair, and there must have been twenty different cities represented the had their own local jewish federation, and i went to this Job fair is super green 20 year old kid, i did not even know what i was applying for. I was like, i want to help the jewish community that’s all i knew, i didn’t know fund-raising know anything on i start interviewing for all these jobs called campaign associate? I thought political campaign no, no campaign means fund-raising so i didn’t know that when i was interviewing, but i’m all the interviews that i had, there were what you’ve described grilling me, you know? What would you do in this scenario? And then you’re at an event and this happens, you know, a lot of that kind of stuff, and as someone who is new, ah, that was jarring. I didn’t. I didn’t know even what to proud of process that what the right answer was this is the wrong answer. There was one organization there representing one federation there from baltimore, maryland, with who ended up becoming my first boss kind of ruin the punch line there, but he didn’t ask me any questions about fund-raising or non-profit what would you do in a difficult situation? Not none of it. It was what books do you like to read? You like wwf wrestling or is a lot now. It was all of this random stuff, and i sat with him for forty five minutes and we just, like, talked and at the end of the forty five minutes there’s, like, all right, we’re done, and i was totally confused because especially in context of all the other interviews that i just had, this one was like like he was like, wasting my time. Yeah, i got to call backs. He was one of them and i ultimately went to baltimore ended up starting my career in baltimore for three years there, and i finally mustered the courage to ask him, obviously, once i have the job because i want to, you know, scare amount of hiring me, i said, you know what? Why did you hire me? He said, you have a nice smile, you carry a good conversation, the rest you’re going to learn on the job, and that was very powerful because that was him sitting across from a and saying, is he a nice guy? Does even nice smile? Is he? Is he great interact with? Because that part is harder to teach the art and that’s the part that you master that from high school is a part that i like god it’s trial by fire? Exactly. I got that out of high school, but that was something that was a lesson that i’ve taken with me since then to know that you were a you hire the right person not to fill a position where a lot of the other ones were, they were looking to federals phil position, and they’re trying to determine my skills if i was good for that position, but rather, he said. Here’s a guy who i think has potential, i’m going to hire him, and i’ll obviously augment the position to be right for him and b he was looking at me for my potential here’s somebody on dh what i was able to present on the emotional and the human side, the science of how to go out there and raise money. I had no doubts. The twenty year old kid you could learn. What? Do you like it? Yeah. Outstanding. So so you had clarity. You were you were clear about who you were. You exuded confidence, no doubt and and and led to the hyre. Yeah. Okay. All right. What are the traits? What else do you like to see in individual fundraisers before we get to the this clarity of organization around mission and things like that? What else do you like to see in a fundraiser? So, obviously, you know, one of the one of the most important ones is, you know, and they often they they even say it on resumes on a job. But descriptions is, you know, self starter. But i want to dive a little deeper in that idea of being that. Kind of entrepreneurial person to get out there and create new relationships, because when you are an entrepreneur, whether you work for a big company organization where you are on your own, a fundraiser is somebody who has to build their own network. If you’ll come into a new city or a new organization, you’re not necessarily hopefully you’re not just picking up the dozen are one hundred donors that already giving you’re going out there and raising new money, and that requires you to be a self starter to say okay, where are these people who would be interested in supporting this cause? How do i get introduced to these individuals? How doe i interacted them? How do i stay in touch with them? And all those kind of skills require you not sitting on your couch. Ng ng bon bon. Sorry. If that’s your approach, then it’s not gonna work if you want to be sitting behind a desk it’s not going to work. You have to be somebody who enjoys the thrill of going out there and and making those contacts. So that’s that’s one of them, you know, main things that i that i look for. Somebody who has that kind of drive to kind of get out there and make it happen as if you’re building your business because you aren’t your house, you’re building your network, your own proverbial roll independent for your business, it’s for the good of the mission. Exactly. Okay, all right. So let’s go to the organization side being being clear and confident on the organization side because we want to be successful in our dating relationship with our donors. You want teo clear, clear statement of mission. Somebody like you. Like, eight word mission even right? So that’s a lot. A lot of you know, the consultants who will help the organisation shape their mission. It has to be concise. It has to be super concise. You know what you could share with somebody on one floor trip up in the elevator? I it’s really what? Who are you? What? What? What’s the organization. And if your job is to tow and malaria deaths done, we’re in the business of ending larry desk. You’re not waxing poetic about how you’re going to do it and buy what deadline you just want to be able to say? Mission is what? You’re in the business of doing so, you should be able to clearly say, and like you said, you know, eight words or, you know, one sentence, this is what we’re in the business of doing. The only thing you might claire, qualify it with maybe his location like right ending malaria deaths, west africa, right? Right. That’s tied to your containers? Yes, exactly. If you if you are central africa and that’s your job and that obviously is in their mission statement. Absolutely. But again, it’s not going on about, you know your values and the vision for this it’s just clearly what you’re in the business of doing. What cycle? A sip of water. Because it looks like your first thing. Andi, i will suggest that we talked about so the mission you have some examples of missions in in the book. Remember buy-in charity water is very brief form. So i’m obviously a big fan of charity water. They bring clean water to basically to the people in africa and, well, it’s interesting. They limited to africa. It it’s a whole nother conversation about the scope of their vision. Ah, but they do of many, many different. Villages in central africa. I’m in some other areas as well, but basically they are fund-raising organization and the fund water projects on the ground, so they don’t actually drill themselves. They have organizations on the ground doing the drilling, but they are a fund-raising organization that funds those those well projects, and they’re one of the organization has a very concise mission statement. Yeah, a lot of them dio i’m trying to think it was you referred to certain certain one in particular, you know, just that was one example, right? You cite some in the book, so people have to buy the book way. Can give the whole book about paige, expect there’s only non-profit radio. This is not proper radio. Should expect you should have high expected. Yes, but we can’t bring you all two hundred rich pages. Yes. Date. I would have come with a list of the mission statements prepared. Dahna. Okay, um, after mission, we’re moving to our vision. Yes. Now we’re getting a little more detail. Yes. So so. And when you talk about vision, obviously i’m doing it through the context of dating and relationships. You know, vision is where you’re headed. So when i talk about dating when you’re dating for a purpose, right, you’re looking to find somebody who can spend, you know, whether it’s rest of your life with our meaningful part of your life. The idea is to find somebody who wants similar things is you, you know, using the dating analogy, do they want to have children? Do they want to live in the city or the suburbs? Do they want to be, you know, primary breadwinner, both, you know, both working whatever the case may be, but these are important conversations you have when you’re dating someone seriously. Where we headed together is unit because if you’re not on the same page of one wants children and it’s important to him, and the other one doesn’t want children that’s probably a deal breaker, so so, you know, the correlation to fund-raising is that i discovered that in my first marriage oh, there you are, bring i could bring some case study in on the way outside our competition today, vice to se eso eso eso when i was so when you’re when you’re doing the fund-raising business being the fund-raising business and you’re and you’re looking to get someone to support your cause, you’re not supporting your cause for what they are. It is now right? You’re not. We’re break. We bring clean drinking water to central africa. That’s not the case. That’s gonna get someone open their wallet, what’s going to get them to open the wall is this is where we are now, but this is where we’re headed, and if they buy into the idea of where you’re headed, then they’re going to support you. So if they like, if they see that vision of your organization is the white picket fence with the dog and the tire swing, then they will support you. They’re not here to fill holes or to cover your gaps in your budget. They want to know that you are a viable organization and you have some great things in mind, and you’re headed in their group great direction. So that’s, what i talked about vision and through the dating perspective is the idea that you’re selling somebody on where you’re headed, okay, where this relationship with right shows that it is going to go okay, i hang out because i have to talk a little about pursuing through sponsors our show and you and i’ll catch up in a minute or two pursuant you’ve heard me talk about one of their cloudgood aced tools, velocity made specifically for gift officers to keep the gift officers on task. Now i recognize the gift officer might be you. You might be the ceo, and you’re the director of development. All the more reason i think, that you need to check out pursuant and their tool velocity and all the more reason that you need technology to be helping you in your day to day because you’re wearing so many hats. So whether your gift officer in a large organization that’s got a half a dozen or more or your ah solo shop or somewhere in between, you know, you have to be using technology smartly, and velocity is one of those tools that can help you. It was originally developed for pursuant consultants to help their fund-raising clients, that’s another thing that pursuing does is fund-raising counsel, and it was originally developed as an internal tool for those pursuing consultants. They realized its value, and so they’ve made it available. You can get the tool without the consultant, you don’t have to have the fund-raising consultant you can use the tool that they’re using and get that value so you know, it’s got the analytics is the metrics, and it keeps you on task in you’re fund-raising so you know, if you need to raise more money, velocity can help you do it and there’s all the info about velocity at pursuing dot com now it’s time for tony’s take two the non-profit technology conference is this month coming up march twenty third through twenty fifth in san jose, california. I hope this is not news to you. You’ve heard me talk about it before i hope you’re going to be there or if you can’t be there subscribe subscribed to ntc live, which is the live audio stream that yours truly will be hosting for them. This is an excellent conference, it’s my third on tc getting interviews for non-profit radio third time i’ve been there, it’s, just a bunch of smart people that can help you use technology mohr effectively in your day to day pursuant is going to be there, they’re going to be right near me. I’m going to be on stage hosting this ntcdinosaur stream pursuit will be there, and you could check them out there, too. Um, it’s, all at ntcdinosaur, sorry, and ten and ten dot or ge, and also have info at tony martignetti dot com. And both places will have the the schedule of people that’ll be interviewing. And, again, those interviews going to be on anti seelye, ve the stream. And then also, of course, they’ll be on non-profit radio in the coming months. Okay. Jonah helper. Thank you for your indulgence, sir. Hey, you do you freely with ntcdinosaur provoc technology? I actually attended. Not last year, the year before that. And it was amazing. There was. Yes, it was. I had a first. All they had, like, big band on stage. You’re talking about twenty fourteen. It might have been twenty. Forty, right? Yeah. I had a fantastic time. It was. And it was in california. It was in san francisco that year. I loved it. I mean, they were great. The organizer’s there were fantastic. Yeah. Okay, i think i was twenty thirteen. I was a twenty. Fourteen. Was my first one there in washington, d c okay, so they alternate east, mid and west sametz been so close to twenty three years ago. Yeah. It’s a it’s. A lot of smart people. They had a big band on stage. It was. I mean, it was heaven enchantment, and i was like, well, i wasn’t expecting that. Andi conference in general gave me that kind of flavor. It was with the sessions or great, the people in the hallways, you know, i always love the hallways, the hallways of the best. Because when you you always meet the best people in the hallways, sessions are good because you can hear the training and they’re in their and the great sessions, but there’s, nothing better than being able to just bump into somebody and find out they’re doing amazing work, and it could be a small church in virginia, and they’re doing phenomenal things that you could apply to your organisation in some, you know, specific instance, i love that, yeah, that kind of randomness on dh and the ntc, the non-profit technology conference did that for me. We were talking about your organization and and its mission and vision statements, and you also want, you know, you want organization to be clear about who their primary customers are and not two morph into something that you really don’t belong doing or being with or, you know, again being true to yourself being say more about that. Yeah, so so, you know, let me get a good story that i heard from my friend nancy lublin, who is the founder of dress for success and was then chief old person of do something dot orgryte, which is teen engagement, so the fact that she was, you know, not a team made her the old productions on crisis text long yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Just treyz his text leinheiser heard one she started well, shouldn’t start, do something. Yeah, but she might as well have started because where i’m going with that story on dh, everything she touches turns to gold and that’s, not luck. I mean, it’s, she is a a tour de force. I mean, she is unbelievable. But the story that she she shared with me was that when she came to do something that or go it was a centers, it was a brick and mortar centers around the u s where teens would could get involved. And there it was founded by melrose place actor shoe. And it was andrew shoe. His name was okay. And it was it was a floundering organization. They were having a major major problems, and they were presented when she came aboard with an opportunity for i don’t know where the dollar amount was my been two hundred fifty, three hundred thousand dollars from a company that that said build a teen center near our call center. Like near, you know our operations and, you know, we’d love to have a teen center over there. And nancy, as the new ceo of the organization of duitz of do something that orc sa declined the money and an organization that is starving for cash. Yeah, so it seems to be like, you know, like, what are you doing? You know, your new new new kid on the block here on dh you’re turning down this money, and when she brought her into the offices or, you know, in in our offices, she they sat down with the leadership in legends like, how how badly do you want this job? All right, you know, you’re seemed to be kind of walking your way out of it, and she said, you know, you need to trust may because this is not the future of do something that i do something right, forget the dot org’s it’s not future of do something to have all these brick and mortar, you know, places for students to kids to come together, it needs to be online and she after that point shut down all the physical locations, took the whole thing online, rebranded to do something as do something dot org’s and and is now getting forget the corporate dollars that she turned away the two hundred thousand tens and tens of millions of dollars they get and primarily comes from from companies, so arrow pasta will partner with them for teens, for genes. They found that homeless teenagers the number one thing that they wanted were a pair of jeans. Why? Because i don’t have to be washed every day and its owner’s homeless, he doesn’t have access to clean clothes, a pair of jeans are cool enough, you know, generic and cool enough that you could wear and where without having to clean them every day. And that was something that homeless teenagers wanted, and they partnered with aeropostale for kids who had no better privilege to donate their genes threw in the store, it created a tremendous amount of foot traffic into air apostle, and that was vowed valuable to them, the co-branding was strong, and it turned out to be a wonderful partnership, and they’ve just replicated that that kind of model of companies adopting programs, supporting their their their operations, they have done tremendous amount, because so your point they were focused. On the mission of, of serving young adults who want to volunteer, and it was not going to be a brick and mortar place. It was going to be online. And because she was paying attention to that and not the dollar, she was able to take this organization which was floundering, and make it the powerhouse that it is today. And that she’s now entrusted in the hands of the other time the chief operating officer, aria finger she’s, now the ceo of do something that oregon are on ours, but on non-profit radio toy. So there you go as ceo and as ceo. And then and then they spun that off because, yes, okay, i said yes, because our online they’re able to serve millions and millions of teens like five million’s i mean, they have, and they have this big treasure trove of data. Yes, about teen engagement and know how to engage them in issues. I think they’re think their sweet spot is like sixteen to twenty five or so. And then beyond twenty five, they used your primary money is coming from companies. Big data or data is so important. So because that’s the case then, like, you know, think that something that you mentioned earlier about how nancy level went onto crisis text line that was born out of the fact that they were getting texts, emergency tests, texts of young adults who are suicidal, we’re getting abused or things along those lines and and as an organization as there to help people, what do you do with that? They weren’t equipped, they were equipped, and then they found the typical the standard nine nine eleven was not going to be able to handle us, especially for the digital age where people are going on their cell phone and they’re more comfortable hiding in the bathroom on their cell phone and texting somebody on emergency. They needed to do something so and that kind of stuff has outgrown has grown out of do something dot or ge and that’s? Why, you know, have crisis tax line? So it is there’s so many wonderful examples that you can see where, especially in their story, where they straight stay true to their mission, and if it wasn’t and if and if and if emergency texting was not right for do something dot or ge, they didn’t. Just like expand the mission to fit under, do something out or they made it crisis that’s now a new organization, nancy’s now the head of that. And that was a new thing. It wasn’t like mission creep, and now we’re doing, you know, we’re solving another problem. They started a new organization with all focus on your primary custom. Absolutely cool. All right, after we’ve started this relationship, we need to keep it going. And you call this i don’t have a name a chapter with somewhere you say from lust toe love. Well, so the analogy, the relationships go ahead. You’re so so we all know this and in our in our our own relationships, you know, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever it is at the early, early part of the relationship, this tremendous amount of lust, right there is the attraction it’s, new it’s, fresh it’s, exciting and that’s so important because that is going to be, you know, the chemistry needs to be there that’s vital to the success of meeting new people and starting to develop a relationship with them. But it needs to mature, right and there’s if the relationship is only on that’s the part i missed in high school. Yeah, the maturity and the whole thing is stirring up a lot, so i had a lot of lost, but okay, you know what to do with it all i’m in the same boat, my friend. S o so yes, so? So that has to mature. So, yeah, if you get somebody to become a donor of your organization, right, they may be enamored and they might be a beautiful organization. You could be a charity water you could be, you know, do something that or go any of these clauses that are gorgeous. I mean, they they look gorgeous, their offices a gorgeous they just have got that locked down, but it needs to mature and it was the relationship with them needs to be more than just face value is not just i’m excited to be part of this, you know, sexy organization. It needs to mature to say, look, i’m a partner. I’m somebody who’s not just early part of the job. I’m a partner. I’m in this for the long haul. I want to help them grow whether it’s capital improvements, whether it’s ah, you know the infrastructure what, whether it’s special projects, whatever the case may be, i want to see this organization grow from where it is now and where it’s headed. And that means that the relationship needs to mature where they have a greater stake in the game. And that means lino much like in our own personal relationships, where we might do certain milestone things, like move in together. There needs to be that kind of advancement, that kind of moves management and to use, you know, fund-raising jargon to take that relationship from one that’s courtship and maybe a first gift to now increase that support over time. Part of this is a plan. So when you have, we need to be more structured. Maybe then are in on our dating side and our our relationship side. But we need stewardship plan, basically what belongs in our stewardship. So i like to talk a lot about new donorsearch accusation because, you know, you mentioned if you have something as a donor and you want to keep one of the chapters is called, keep the fire alive. Right? So that you want to put some good practices in place. You know, i talk about there in the in charge of keeping the fire alive and howto kind of moves that move that relationship along, that you should treat someone like an investor or treat them like family right now. Or and and and and while it may sound like that’s ah, daikon that’s outside the investor way investors or relationships, right? Are you treating me like, like, a business transaction? Or so the nice thing is that it’s not mutually exclusive because what happens is in your relationships there are absolutely expectations if you if we decide tony, you and i decided we’re going to move in together, right? What? We have a wonderful relationship. We love each other. We have a wonderful relationship we want we’re going to move in now, and we’re gonna have to take it to that one quote next-gen metoo do this by the way, if you’re my wife. Well, my by floods in indianapolis, so nobody listens to this show so you don’t worry about it. Word getting out exactly right. Good. We could talk after, okay. So so if if we want to take that to the next level, is there anything truly different about our relation with each? Other do we love each other anymore? The moment that we are now in the same apartment? No, right? There’s, no inherent change that happens between the way you feel about me and i feel about, you know, the decision that we’ve decided move it. What we have done is we’ve increased expectations on each other that there’s a certain kind of shared life, now that we have that’s more than we had before, because we’ve said that this is a priority deepened our commitment, deepen our commitment. So now, now that we’ve deep in our commitment, i am now have a certain level of responsibility to you, right? You have there’s a certain level of investment that i’ve now made right than i know how to manage that’s, like just know if i move in with you and i lived like a single person, right? I don’t care about your feelings. I know it was anything of the week before when we weren’t living together. It was any behaving the same way, right? But now that we live together, i have a new set of standards that i have tto abide by and it’s me and it’s mutual, right? You have expectations to army. I have expectations on you and that’s. Not a bad thing. It’s a it’s. A healthy thing. But what happens is i need to meet those expectations. So if i wanted if if you’ve given me something, if you give me money a cz a fun as ah someone who’s going to give money a donor and i take that money. The relationship starts that right, it’s not thank you for your gift. I’ll speak to you next year. It’s. Now that i’ve taken your ten thousand dollars, i have a responsibility to you to make sure that you know how your money is being spent. Oh, so this gets to our city. Our stewardship plan eso starts appointed stewardship plan is that when i get to give, when i when i get money from a donor it’s, not just another box to check off and say okay, i got this gift. I got to go get another fifteen or twenty other gifts. Tto meet meet mike. Now, how are we going to try this house? So how do you really take this? And deep deep in that relationship so there’s everything from leadership roles. There’s these opportunities when it comes to getting them to open up their own home in their own network a lot times people think that if you ask somebody to do think favors for you favors going, quote, like open their home for a parley meeting or to give your cause that’s burning equity that deepens relation, because giving to you so finding ways to cement leadership positions for them to spend more time in your offices. And when i mentioned treating like investors and treat them like family, why should they only have a relationship with you? Right? You are representing an organization, there’s. Some other wonderful people in the office is it’s. Some of the best donors and leaders i know come into the organization and they say hello to everybody from the person at the front desk to the person in the mail room. They know everybody because this is their family now. So those types of opportunities airways to kind of systemized that are important you could see in the book the whole bunch of suggestions for that. All right, we’re gonna go further. We gotta take a break. But don’t go a little more into this idea, that asking people, asking donors and volunteers to doom or is not burning them out. It’s. Deepening the relationship and not doing that could burn them out. They’ll stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up 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 and they only levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy, tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. If you have big dreams and a small budget tune into tony martignetti non-profit radio, i d’oh. I’m adam braun, founder of pencils of promise. Asking people to do more. Yes, whether they are donors or board members, this is not typically does not lead to burn out. What leads to burnout is give me your your annual gift. And now give me your annual gift a year later and a year later and there’s no substance beyond you’re giving, right, right. So the so let’s talk about i want to take a cold pill that back a little bit because i think a lot of the fear of asking people to do more comes some of the fear of asking in general, especially asking for money, you know, fund-raising is not a dirty word, and i know so many professionals and leaders in the business of consultants talk about how it’s not a dirty word, but i kind of tied into the relationship side of things in the sense that when you’re asking for money from somebody, if it’s devoid, if it’s void of a relationship, right, if we’re just asking and you’re dialing for dollars it’s, it’s, it’s taking the relationship out of it and it’s just making us and no one enjoys all transactions for that. And no one loves that. No. One likes to do that that’s. Terrible when there’s a real relationship in that leads to money. It’s, beautiful, and obviously, you can hear the correlation between like sex and relationships. If it’s just mechanical and there’s no relationship behind it, it may be fun. You may get the gift let’s, not underestimate. Great. But but my point is, this is probably not going to be a sustainable long term strategy. You’re not going to get somebody that may give you one time, but it’s not going to be a capacity gift, they could probably give you a lot more than what they’re giving you and your and it’s not like there’s any relationship behind it. So if you’re if you’re going to go after those easy shots like that, then you might get lucky. All right, you know that, but but in the end of the day, if you if you develop a real relationship than the asking for money, is the exact opposite of a negative experience is the most powerful, empowering, beautiful next step in that relationship that makes people go? Yes, i’m i’m in this i’m in this relationship, i’m in it for the long haul. So it’s it’s kind of it’s it’s kind of that double edge sword where fund-raising could either be a terrible, terrible experience transaction transaction, a wallet with legs, right? You know it’s the sex appeal of just the fact that they have money versus somebody who’s, a partner partner in the cause and he’s excited about the vision and wants to see the succeed and right on dh just wants to do more than just give exactly. You’re not going to know that until you start asking, even if it’s just give it’s done in the context of i am partnering with you and the way i’m doing, doing my share is by giving you money because if you’re going to be on the ground drilling wells or curing our ending malaria deaths or, you know, providing needs for special needs children, i’m not as a donor, i may not be the expert on how to do that, but i know if i give you money and i trust the experts, it will get done and that’s fine, they built, they’ll become a partner in dollar and that’s fine, but it’s not a transaction, it’s more than that because they are bought into the vision of the organization, all right, on a part of getting people to buy in and having them feel insiders is sharing the occasional downside failure. Yes, i’ve seen i’ve seen the good, bad and the ugly on this i’ve seen organizations that are afraid to share information with their donors on day worrying about it, it’ll burn relationship, and those tend to be the relationships that were never strong to begin with. But the there are wonderful examples of how failure or, you know, where something did not work, and it may not be, you know, gross of, you know, abuse or are you no mistrust think some things just don’t work and, you know, you put your your organization on the line, you try big things, and it doesn’t pan out it’s a wonderful opportunity to deepen the relationships. Okay, i’ll give you ah, a quick story example. I was in scott harrison who’s, a ceo and founder of charity water in his office, and he was telling me about early on and charity water before it was like, the very sexy, very sexy that’s what it is today hey told me early early on, he had a couple people on staff on payroll. They were doing their first projects, and they were going to go by that it belly up. They did not have the funds for payroll. They they were really desperate, and scott told me that he sent out a number of, like, blow you. Know emails to people who are in his periphery, you know, just to these donors and basically say, like, i need help, i need help, we’re in trouble, we’re doing great work, it wasn’t just like, you know, bail us out was like, we’re doing amazing work, but we’re in trouble. And one individual guy named michael birch, who was the who’s, a tech entrepreneur, he was the founder of bebo, which is a british base like social network from the nineties, like i bought by, i think, a well for eight hundred million dollars and he’s done not numerous projects that also brought in a lot of money, but here was a guy, michael birch, and he responded to scott and said, i’m happy to meet next time i’m in the new york area, i think he was in san francisco, and he meets with with scott and scott in-kind of bears, a soul tells, tells him everything going on and, you know, they’re doing great work, but it’s just not catching on. They’re breaking their teeth and it’s just not happening, and michael birch gives him some recommendations, gives him some advice, and then he says, i’ll see what i can do, you know, as faras giving you a little help, so he goes home. I don’t know how many days it was, you know, whatever was in the story that scott told me, but scott told me that he was sleeping in bed and his phone went off. I know texts or phone call, but was from michael birch and say, he said, i sent you some money. I’m wiring it to your account. I hope it helps, and skye trembling opens up his bank account and there’s a one million dollar gift that was sent from michael birch to charity water. And that was that trust that michael had, and he was really kind of like the one of the first major donors that they had that kind of went all in on them. He was somebody after hearing the troubles and tribulations, but was bought into scott harrison, who is, you know, the personality on the mission that he stands behind and said, this is something i want to support, and they turn that negative into tremendous partnership into this day michael and his wife are huge supporters of charity water. Everybody is not perfect in ceo land. You talk a little about flawed characters. Yeah, because because with natural, you know, things don’t always go perfectly. We might even make mistakes. I mean that that was not a mistake, that scott sure that’s got made, but but things don’t always go perfectly, and we know that from our personal relationship characters in history succeed. Yeah, i mean, so we all know this from our own personalized ships, you know, sometimes you date somebody, it doesn’t work out, and it goes down in flames, sometimes amicable, sometimes it’s definitely not their, you know, whatever it is, whether it’s dating marriage were human rights. It’s the human condition s o in the nonprofit world it’s true as well, we don’t have, you know, perfect relationships. And there are times where you butt heads with a person that you’re involved with a lay leader of volunteering your organization, and you might no longer be the right person to have that relation with them might be somebody else. It might be something that you can work with them and see through tio, but the communication and like any relationship and i talk about in the book about commune importance of communication you can either work through it or if it’s, you’re not the right person to either find somebody else. If they are bought into the cause, if it’s the cause they care about, they might be ableto be kind of handed off to somebody else and if its destructive, which sometimes, you know, a fraction of the small fraction of the relations are and it’s not in the best interest of the organization, for them to be aligned with his lay leader don’t even if they give a lot of money and it could hurt the organization, you gotta cut your losses and pull out so there’s absolutely ah, whole spectrum on relationships and how you handle them depending on what’s the best interest of the organization. We’re gonna leave it there. The book is date your donors did your donor dot com and you’ll find jonah he’s at jonah helper. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Congratulations again on the book. Oh, thank you for having me next week. I don’t know because about five weeks from today, when we’re in the studio but you know it’s going to be excellent. Have i let you down? Ever has non-profit lady radio let you down? If you missed any part of today’s show, i admonish you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. I’m still not sure about the singing this year, so i’m still i’m still thinking about that. We’re sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuing dot com. Our creative producer is claire miree off. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by dina russell on our music is by scots died. Be with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be green. 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 pregnant mark 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 to sort of dane toe add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up 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 and 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 talked 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 expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. 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.

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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 final show of the year. Oh, i hope you’re with me last week for the penultimate show of the year, for i’d be thrown into functional dyspepsia if i came to learn that you had missed mastering millennials. Derek feldman, co author of the millennial impact report, shared the research on how twenty to thirty two year olds connect, get involved and and give two causes they’re passionate about and engaged by age. Amy sample ward, our social media contributor and ceo of intend the non-profit technology network nose which social platforms are best for which ages? And she revealed she also had tips to engage by age and, of course, her sixty second style stop, which was about sweaters this week. Dan’s donor retention ideas your end of your campaign got you lots of new donors, of course. How will you keep them? Damn blakemore is assistant director of development for individual giving at international house. We talked that fund-raising day back in june about howto hold onto your donors from phone to facebook this was an archive show from july fifteenth. Also goodbye google alerts will this happen in twenty fourteen? Maria simple, our prospect research contributor and the prospect finder, has free alternatives in case google alerts disappears, and this is an archive show from july twelfth between the guests on tony’s, take two to customer service reps got me thinking about solicitations and facebook ad grants campaign were brought to you by rally bound peer-to-peer fund-raising for runs, walks and rides, and by t b r c cost recovery. Getting your money back from phone bill errors and omissions here’s my interview with dan blakemore on donor retention welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of fund-raising day two thousand thirteen or at the marriott marquis hotel in midtown new york city, right in times square with me now is dan blakemore. We’re going to talk about donor-centric he is assistant director of development individual giving for international house. Dan blakemore, welcome to the show. Oh, thank you so much for having me, tony, i’m really happy to be here. My pleasure. What? What is international houses work? International house were a residential community for international graduate students here in new york city, the residents can be studying pretty much anything at the graduate level assed mama’s. They’re doing it in new york city, and they’re eligible live at the house. We also house interns, trainees and visiting scholars from around the city. It sounds like a pretty dynamic place to visit you. You are you there? You’re sharing meals with them very often. Oh, yeah. There’s. A dime. I mean, there’s a dining room. I usually have lunch every day with other staff members and resident members. Gym facilities, study room’s, computer labs. I mean, we try to have as much in the house as possible for them. S so yes, they have to leave every now and again to go to class or something crazy like that. What? We really want them to stay in the community as much as possible learned as much from each other as possible. Our mission is really driven by leadership development in cross cultural understanding for the residents. Sounds like an incredible place to visit all over the world, studying all different kinds of things. Oh, yeah. Here in new york. All right. Your seminar topic is acquisition and retention of donors, but it’s a panel. And your expertise is the retention definite, so i’m not going to hold you the acquisition of art let’s, talk about donorsearch tensions. Well, what social media is a be part of that i don’t know. He’s, telemarketing, a part of that where you want to start with attention before international house, at least in my experience, the attention has been much more focused around. Kind of, really, i i call it really the basics of good fund-raising good stewardship. Everybody gets a phone call or an email before that, long before they get their acknowledgment from the president or the director of development. We’re really trying to focus a lot around showing impact to people so that they are really clear on where their money is going because when i started at our house, we were in the middle of a multi year, multimillion dollar challenge grant and i started i said, okay, well, what are we doing to show impact to the people that have given already? Because it’s not gonna be much easier to get them to give us an extra hundred dollars, an extra thousand dollars if they know we’re doing the right thing with their money and there’s really something good happening here? Then you have to be going out to other people saying, okay, you don’t know me, but international house is a great place. Give me some money. Yeah, widely recognized that it’s caused a lot more time and money to acquire a new donor than to keep one s i said, what are we really doing? And we weren’t doing as much. So i really one of the things i’ve been happy to do in my three and a half years there is really focuses on ah, sustainable stewardship program so that we really engaging people. Whether they are named room donors from twenty years ago to someone who set up a scholarship fund last year that they’re hearing from us that they know that the money they’ve given in the past is really having an impact, and, of course, encouraging them to continue giving. Because we, we got to keep the doors open, we’re gonna keep the residents exposed to. They’re all the programs were providing to encourage their leadership. You mentioned a telephone call who would make that telephone call toe donors to thank them. Ah, in the lion’s share of cases, it’s me, since i mean, i’m assistant director of development for individual giving, but there are some already, i said, your title once. Yes, you don’t need to drop names dropping yourself ridiculous, already rolling, not even five minutes into this time, i already heard tyler. Thank you. Gonna keep things, tapes up your mic off. Blood there are some that i usually will say for the director development or a president especially kind alone, long gone, generous loyalty donors, alumni that are much older and has been given to us for decades that i think should at some point here from the president knew usually much more of a nice treat for them to kind of hear, share their experience of what they remember from when they lived in the house, but also then know that the president is saying, really, we appreciate your support, we value it, please keep giving and thank you. Okay, that’s important? I think the backdrop is closing in on us a little bit. So, you know, i don’t know if you have to move, but the backdrop is being encroached from from the other side. Oh, well, good. No, we’ll see what they’re trying to force. May they wanted eleven by ten ways. They were allocated a ten by ten. They wanted they wanted eleven by ten. Ah, all right. That doesn’t matter. Way continue. I mean, we’ve had earthquakes, we’ve had rappel going on. The lights have gone off today multiple times. I’m not surprised that are not our floodlights. Okay. Do boardmember sze, what have you ever engaged boardmember for these, thank you calls occasionally, i mean, i’m working one of my many goals, probably in the next year or two calls it because our learned, a long serving president is retiring in the next few months, so i really want to try to get especially starting with the members of our development committee, more involved with fund-raising just because some have been very concerned or worried about, oh, well, i don’t have nearly as many friends who are rich, they can come to the gallo or can make gift at five thousand dollars level every year, so i just can’t be helpful with fund-raising not true much more, so i’m working with them in-kind open their eyes do well, really, if you just make thank you calls and share your experience, why you share with the donors why you’re on the board asked them why they’re giving that’s easy way don’t you don’t need to write a check you don’t need to harass anybody else. That does not mean i don’t want you to get your wealthy friends to come to our special events or to come to speaker. Programs and meet residents. But it’s really about kind of opening up that fund-raising experience letting them see that there’s a lot more to the process, then just begging your friends to give you some money. Ok? All right, very much a personal touch. What? You’re trying to bring hope. Focus. Okay. Let’s, let’s go online, tio. Some social media. What? What do you what do you like to do on on facebook? Tio? Well, facebook keep donorsearch all social media for us is challenging, i would say, because by virtue of the kind of non-profit that we are, we are key audiences are always residents to currently live in the house. Alumni, donors trust these other people that know of our work. So it’s, we’re always kind of throwing different messages for different populations, all on the same channels because they’re all there falik it would be it would probably be nicer if we could say all the alumni are only on facebook or all the trustees are only on twitter that’s not realistic that unfortunately that is not going to go to them where they are exactly s o i think it’s been it’s been a lot of integration, to say the least, whether it’s the facebook groups like right now i know we have an alumni reunion coming up next weekend and kind of a lot of the mo mentum for it really started on facebook. Thehe lums, who are the co chairs of the reunion committee, released kind. They started their own subgroup within our group. Yeah, that was okay, everybody who’s coming to make sure you’re make sure you get your registrations in. Make sure you consider making a gift along with your registration, these air, all the events we have going on, we hope to see you there. Bring your kids if you if you get there, someone that you lost touch with, we’ll see if we can reconnect you with them. Is there someone you know who doesn’t hear from the house anymore? Make sure you two have them send us their new information. You’re happy to have them piggyback on. Oh yeah, international houses, facebook poll that makes not like, you know it’s a violation of policy or something. No, i mean there it’s much better for us to have them out there doing it, getting the message to their friends who? While i’m sure most the bulk of them live like our page generally know what we’re talking about. But there it’s all they’re always going to be much more responsive to someone that they know personally. Me or director development of the element i relations director putting something up saying hope we see you at the reunion there. Are they all the other aliens happening? Okay, but i think the point is that that degree of flexibility, yes, that’s, when someone wants to take the ball, including using your, you know, piggybacking on your organization fund-raising page, you allowed it. Oh, of course. I mean, you want that. I want them to feel comfortable putting those messages out because of those people who are pushing the message out are going to be much more effective in their outreach. Then we could be talking to their friends exactly as close as you get. You know, you won’t ever have the relationship that they have exactly with their friends, talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Do you need a business plan that can guide your company’s growth? Seven and seven will help bring the changes you need. Wear small business consultants and we pay attention to the details. You may miss our culture and consultant services are guaranteed to lead toe. Right groat. For your business, call us at nine. 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It will make you smarter. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com oppcoll have other other online strategies, but so well, we’re also wanted were dipping toes. I mean, we’re on twitter and a lot of the messaging there has been focused around current events happening at the house kind of as they’re happening, so there has been some live tweeting. I know we did some live tweeting of our gala that was on tuesday because we were honoring big named more more i could do more name dropping if you if you so desire, go ahead, drop one that’s not your no, my problem was you’re promoting yourself it’s a good thing you have written a book yet you would’ve heard that six times by now for ten minutes in i would have the title six times. I i’m a long way to go before i’m writing a book, but fareed zakaria is one of trust. Oh, how standing on end and yet fareed zakaria gps unit and sundays he was one of the people we’re honoring he’s going on our board for ten years. Eso he got our award for promoting international understanding. He was among the very impressive group that were there s o i know there was some of the trustees were live tweeting, but also we were live tweeting for constitutional account, okay, just so that people could see oh, this is really happening over its cars, getting his award and all paul volcker speaking and okay, and how do you feel this all relates back to donor retention? I think it really laid back latto things like live tweeting, let people see things are actually happening let them see that we brought a group of residents there to make sure that the special event donors really get a really a clear understanding of the house and what it is are really mission is all about because if you it’s one thing to have a special event, raise all this money and then everybody goes home and feels fine. But it’s it’s always been a priority for us to make sure that the residents were there so they can sew the donors can meet them because a lot of a lot of special event donors, by virtue of not being annual fund owners per se are not necessarily being alums do not come to a lot of our events, so we’re trying to capitalize on the opportunity of having them all in one space to say here, meet some of our impressive scholarship recipients here metoo of the residents have done really impressive things, and i have plenty more to do in their careers so that they can really start to see the value that they’re providing to our community. And for those who can’t come, you’re able to engage them. They think they can see it on twitter. They can book a cz more photos air coming in from the photographer were trying to push those right back out through links on our website on dh through facebook and twitter so people will, then they say all way or if you were there, you know, someone who was there, you could go through the photos and say, oh, oh, oh so until i got to talk to frieda cardio that’s impressive. So it’s i think it meets a lot of different purposes without nearly as much effort as it could take. What is the international house doing? That’s ah, you think really exemplary in donor retention slideshare em flurry dahna retention that’s a very good question. Well, that’s, that could be another opportunity for me to pat. Myself on the back, so i’m going to seize on this because you did a perfectly tony, i would think thee one on one reporting we’re doing now for a scholarship recipients, because there are a lot of scholarship funds that have been created probably in the last forty years, some through capital campaigns, some kind of muchmore independently as someone gets to that point in the major gift cultivation process that they decide they want to create a scholarship fund. Um, that stewardship is also has really been really important for us because a lot of those donors again are not in new york city don’t get to come to our events or meet residents at all, and the residents are everything whenever i in the spring is usually when i get to do all my interviews with scholarship recipients, and i really enjoy it for one just because in the development office there’s so few opportunities to just engage with residents and just kind of here about what are they studying? What do they want to do in their careers? But this is a great opportunity to come in, talk to them, get there, kind of get their story figure out what it is they’re really focused on, and then be able to share that information with a donor who can say, oh, i made a gift five years ago, fifteen thousand dollars and its supporting great people like this so especially, i think, it’s i think it’s even more important for people who are not in the new york area than for those who usually do come to events and kind of have a feel for the people that live at the house because i think we’ve gotten some really positive feedback from people about, uh oh, i had forgotten about this there. Oh, this has been so interesting and engaging, i feel like i’m really a part of what’s going on at the house, even if i live in another country and for us that’s that’s the heart of it because we have alumni spread out literally around the world and it’s hard to keep them engaged, keep them feeling connected to the work that’s happening in new york while they’re also alumni that’s going on all over the world, but they don’t always get to meet the residents. This reporting lets you know it’s broaden. It for non-profits that may not have alumni and followship maybe in something different. I mean, you’re essentially talking about outcomes reporting yes, little really see okay, you’re your fund of fifteen thousand dollars produced let’s say two thousand dollars in the last year that two thousand dollars supported two or three to three residents, and they’re thieves, they’re they’re what they’re going for in their careers. This is what they’re studying, and this is what they’ve done in the last two years while they lived at the house that has really changed, expose them, open their eyes to different cultures, expanded their horizons and let them see a lot more potential in the areas they wantto work. Yeah, those are all valuable outcomes impacts that donors air now, you know, within the past four, five years, much more interested in that’s, right? Of course, other other methods of sharing impact at a place like international house, where we’ve been experimenting with some video, i’d like to do mohr video right now, of course. Well, but this is not that i’m not going teo sametz out any donorsearch they’re not going to be interesting. Yeah, it will hurt your i don’t want to hurt your e-giving thank you very much. Ah, but no it’s really more in the last two years ago, some residents actually created their own video just kind of encapsulate there i house experience that we’ve been able to use from youtube, okay, but i really like to do something probably every year, every two years that maybe some scholarship president’s talking about their experience way have a whole lot of some of the different participants in the leadership programs just so that people can people outside of new york and don’t get to be there really just get to see and even for use at special events where people don’t know what it is we do it’s an easy way to say watch this for two minutes at least you’ll have a flavor for what it is we do. They the caliber of people that lived there and the really impressive people that also have participated in our programs. How many residents are there in a given calendar year? It’s usually between seven hundred and a thousand oh, my gosh is much bigger than i thought, and seventy percent of the resident population is always international. We usually try to keep it to seventy percent international, thirty percent domestic on and they can stay for a short is thirty days and as long as three years. And is there just one location, or do you have multiple residences where i mean, there are there are multiple international houses were the only one in new york we’ve been open it’ll we will be ninety next year. Excellent. Where where is it? In new york, we are on riverside drive, almost diagonal from grant’s tomb and next across the park from riverside church. Oh, man. View of the hudson. We have great. Some of some of the residents have amazing views across the river. Some have great views through secure a park and onto riverside church or grants tomb s oh, there are it’s a nice views considering where you are and we one of them. Anything one of the many things we’re doing for the residents a za part of our operating support. In addition to found scholarships and fellowships that we provide help them put on programming for the community. We’re usually subsidizing residents by at least twenty five hundred dollars per resident. Based on what? They would be paying to have to live in the same area have the same amenities at their immediate disposal on dh that’s really important to us in addition to providing between four hundred, five hundred thousand dollars a year in scholarship and fellowships, so that it’s easier for them to participate in the community, because that’s, the way we really believe that they get the most out of their time, thereby being engaged in the community by attending program’s, getting to know other people from other parts of the world, because our alumni are always very proud. Tio lee, go out and then say, oh, if i find myself in sri lanka, i’ve got five people i know i find myself in djibouti i know three people i’ve been to srilanka by the way i was bluhm bo the capital, your and then i went north into the jungle, and tio advomatic fora long i spent about four foot now better part of a week, five days or so orwell longfield more well traveled than i thought let’s let’s bring it back to dahna pretend yes how how important do you think the annual fund is for us? I’m sorry, i don’t mean the annual fund. I meant the annual report. How important is that? Donor-centric attention, i’m probably going i’m probably going to i’m going to have to say they’re on some levels very important, but to other people totally inconsequential. I mean to i think for the higher level donors, it’s i think with a higher level donors it’s going to be it’s always going to be of interest, to at least be able to have something tangible and see a while in a meeting. Oh, oh, this is this year. This is last year’s annual report and this is what? Okay, we meet met thes three these big objectives, here’s, some photos, here’s, the important financials. We added these people to the board and they’re bringing all this extra capacity to what we’re doing. But i think also for the annual fund donor-centric dollars a year, i don’t think they are, in my experience, at least working with them. They seem to be less interested in that it’s much more. Okay, tell me about the residents and what they’re doing on, much less of the hard core metrics. Hardcore financials. What what’s really actually happening, but that’s that is obviously a generalization because we have thousands of dollars. What about the house website the isles website terms of not don’t just describe it, but in terms of donorsearch engagement in retention ah, this will cause. We recently released a new website unveiled it rather, andre were very intentional about providing and as one specific area where we are sharing quotes from residents. I don’t think we have any video clips up yet, but that’s one of my goals for the next the school year that’s really focused about how do your gifts impact this community? And how does it mean so that’s? I mean for us, i think it’s, i’m hoping for the future going forward. People will be able to go to the website and really get to be able to see very clearly if i give international house one hundred dollars, what am i supporting and to know reasonably ok it’s going to be supporting leadership programs, scholarships, fellowships, outings that we do all over the city and within the region for people to learn more about the city and the u s but also have those opportunities to get to know each other. That noise behind dan is a spinning wheel. The booth adjacent ours is giving away either kapin t shirts, mugs or a chance to win an ipad, and you spin the wheel for the chance and that’s what you’re hearing. So so yes, we’re not we’re not having a dan does not have any kind of speech impediment have this ability to make a native american i don’t clicking sound while he’s talking and speaking code. There was no code underlying what dan was saying strictly a raffle wheel thank you for that very talented man, but does not do the clicking sounds as he’s, you know otherwise, i think you work for the national security agency if you were able to. Ok, i’ll take it all right, let’s say, well, let’s dahna retention let’s leave listeners with one mohr one more. One more thing they have advice for small and midsize shops, you know, not alumni related like international house, i would say be sure that you are tracking when you send out whatever sort of fund-raising appeals you’re sending out, whether they’re direct mail, email, web based, make sure you’re tracking who they came from what’s kind of. The tone that you’re taking, whether you’re talking specifically about impact or just really about good works. And then kind of the basic metrics of response rates. So you, khun, be able to compare over maybe two to three years to say, okay, what do more are more donors responding to a message from a trustee? Are more donors responding to mess from the president of the board? Someone who’s actually benefited from our programs, and if we’re talking specifically about impact, do a certain kind of doughnut respond to that one. And because all of this information really will help you better cater your message to the various constituencies that you have. But if you know certain donors on a regular appeal will give you fifty dollars. But when you talk specifically about you provide a clear picture of one resident, one person who has benefitted from your cause, they are, they’ll go from fifty to one hundred dollars. Then, you know, you need to keep sending them impact pieces and not just generic and ask pieces. So that’s that that’s an easy ruling road we can and we can explore that a little bit more. We got a couple minutes basically talking about testing. Yes, right. So it’s a little more about how you how? You conduct your test for me, it’s thus far, it’s really been been able to look back at i think i usually go at least four or five years back to say ok, which appeals? What was really the response rate? Let’s. See how many people were we mailing to? What did that mean? And then say how much money was raised? Obviously. Average doner average gift by her donor on dh then kind of try to figure out, even though it is. Every appeal is always different. You can it’s hard to pin the differences on any one thing. But if you’re seeing a trend that people are responding mohr two appeals from trust members of the board of trustees. Theun. Then you know, that’s that obviously needs to be something you’re focused more on. But you have to set up a method of tracking these things. Well, yes, i mean, for me, i do something. I keep it very basic. Usually tracking all in excel brothers. The response rates, the author’s kind of the tone way have what other variables you do control for still average average. Give her donor donors that actually responded the number of gifts. Just so that, you know, just it’s much more about having for me having as much information as possible because you could even see in the economic downturn. Yes, while we may not received as many gifts, the percentage is still stayed reasonably around. What are averages have been okay, so it wasn’t. It was an opportunity to say yes, our totals are down like everyone else is in america, but people are still giving at or above the usual rate, so we really don’t have it. It’s not like we not like we lost fifteen percent of our donor base just because the economy was a mess. And then this way you also have this data that you can go to your supervisors with you’re bored with to justify perhaps increases. Yeah, in spending in certain ways by saying, you know, we’ve got the evidence that more money spent here is very, very likely to have more money to bear more. Yeah, exactly. All right. We’re going to get their damned like, well, that sounds good to me. I appreciate the opportunity to be with you and get to your listeners to my pleasure. We’re connected in lots of different ways on the social networks. Oh, yes, ok, it’s, good to see you in person, that i am blakemore’s. The thank you is the assistant director of development for individual giving international house in new york city, and we’re in new york city with live coverage of fund-raising day two thousand thirteen. Thank you very much for being with us. Very happy, teo provide that from dan blakemore. Very smart guy let’s do some live listener love we got the netherlands checking in we’ve got seoul, korea and han nam korea on your haserot ni hao for all our visitors from china, beijing chung ching and shen juan doe welcome munich, germany checking in also uh, i missed a couple of shanghai and zang zhao, china here in the u s new bern, north carolina and someone masked on itunes radio can’t tell what city you’re from, but live listener love i’m able to go to conferences like fund-raising day i did in june and get recordings like i did with dan blakemore and about a dozen others that day, because we have sponsors and i’m very grateful to our two current sponsors. Rally bound, rally bound dot com they make reliable and very simple to use peer-to-peer fund-raising software it’s friends asking friends to give to your cause through runs, walks, rides, races as a non-profit listener rot non-profit radio listener, you will get a discount, you can pick up the phone and talk to joe mcgee he’s, the one who will help you set up your campaign you can reach them at triple eight seven six seven nine o seven six i’ve talked to john magee. I’ve worked with joe magee very good guy. I’ve met the ceo at rally bound shmuley, also a very good guy. If you don’t want to talk, you can check them out on the website, as i said, rally bound dot com trc cost recovery also supporting the show yourself, rabinowitz he will go over your past phone bills and he’s looking for errors, omissions, services that you didn’t order and well above market pricing. And when he finds them, which he does over ninety percent of the time, he picks up the phone and he’s, the one who fights the phone company to get you the money back that you deserve. He had told me about a non-profit that he saved very close to twelve thousand dollars for because he found over three hundred dollars a month in mistaken charges, and he was able to go back three years yielded the non-profit roughly twelve thousand dollars, and i think it’s very telling that that referral to the non-profit came from someone who used to work at a company that yourself had. Done telephone bill consulting for that was the company. You heard me that mention this last week. They were making a part for the mars rover. And the woman was so impressed that when she moved to a non-profit she referred t brc and youssef and that’s when they got that twelve thousand dollars savings, you only pay yussef if he actually gets you cash back. I’ve known him for almost ten years. He is at t brc dot com or two one to six double four nine, triple xero which could also be to one, two six four four nine thousand. But i like the english way. Six double for nine. Triple xero with the two one to area code tony steak too. Some customer service reps, one at best buy and the port authority. Thie airtrain from jfk got me thinking that in your solicitations you need to ask for exactly what you want and ask confidently and not humbly and simply and that’s what those to customer service reps did and got me thinking there’s a lesson there for our fund-raising solicitations there’s. Much more on that at my blogged, which is tony martignetti dot com also. Deborah askanase our social media contributor i’m sorry, our social media dahna presenter, she does the social media for the show. Our social media contributor is amy sample ward, but deborah askanase does the social media for the show, and on her blogged she talked this week about facebook ad grants for non-profits so muchmore of facebook is address even now that they have a new algorithm for what gets seen in people’s news feeds. And so you’re probably seeing your reach dropping drastically, and that makes facebook now pretty much a pay to play place and non-profits need some help with that. So debra is suggesting that facebook give advance it’s too non-profits and there’s more on that on her blogged, which is community organizer two zero dot com community organizer the number to the number zero dot com that is tony’s take two for friday, twentieth of december forty ninth and final show of the year. I don’t know why we didn’t get fifty shows this year did i don’t know if i miscounted or ah, we got screwed, i don’t know, but i count forty nine, we’ll have tto look into that, but this is definitely the final show of the year. And here is marie a simple what happens if goodbye google lorts happens in twenty fourteen maria samples with us to talk about the possibility of google alerts going good bye. How are you, maria? Simple. I’m doing well, thanks. How are you today? Terrific. Thank you. We know maria she’s, the prospect finder she’s a trainer and speaker on prospect research. Her website is the prospect finder dot com and her book is panning for gold. Find your best donorsearch prospects now she’s our doi n of dirt cheap and free you’re going to prove that today is gonna live up to it. You can follow maria on twitter at maria simple. I see some disenchantment with google alerts is that is that part of the problem? Yes, you know, there has been some disenchantment with it. I’ve been seeing other colleagues in the prospect research profession kind of complaining about the alerts not working as well and so forth. And, you know, i had found that myself and we’ve talked about this before, right? Tony on your shows where, you know, talk about how to tweak the alerts and maybe you’ll get more. Results, but now i’ve actually started seeing some articles in recent months, nothing has been confirmed by google that i could find on their own website that have said that a google alert might actually be dying off. It might just go away. It might not be something they offer anymore, and that got me quite concerned because it seems like they’re not really maintaining it because the number of people are complaining that the number of alerts they’re getting has been reduced and the number of alerts within each message has been reduced and the ones that they’re getting are not so good quality, not not like they used to be, right, exactly. So i thought, well, there must be some alternatives out there and fortunately, some of the articles that i referenced, which, by the way, i can provide those article links if you like, on your social media sites telling readers, will have access to them. They gave some interesting alternatives, and i started playing around with them a little bit myself in preparation for today’s show, so i thought we could just sort of talk about what some of those alternatives are and also what you want to be setting up alerts on right? I’m sure that we can do that. So what do you and your promising, i think all free or free ideas today? Uh, yeah, well, i’m gonna provide you with some alternatives that all have free components to it. And then if people feel like those alerts aren’t yielding enough results, they could always go with some of the sea based resource. Is that those components also offer. So you like to give you a list xero options? Shall we? Ok, there, our listeners, maria, our listeners please share that share the lizard shared listener love. There are listeners. Okay, so, uh, what’s the first one you wanna talk about so one interesting when i came across that i’ve been testing for a few weeks, actually it’s called talk walker dot com uh, so they have free alerts that you can set up, but they have a fee based online service. But from what i have found in using it for the last couple weeks, i’ve been getting alerts from them on the same exact alerts that i had set up on my google alerts account, and the results definitely have been different? I can say that. Okay, it’s not supposed to be that way. But if google is not keeping up, are maintaining it’s alerts than i guess. It’s, i guess that’s the explanation. Okay, so so what is it you like about talk, walker? Well, i like the fact that you can set up those alerts for free. You can still have those alerts delivered to tear email inbox. So again, it’s sort of that push technology that we’ve talked about in the past set it up once. Once you’ve got it set up the way you want it, it’ll just keep delivering those those results to your inbox. So i really like that feature very much on talk walker. Also, you can set it up to be able tio send it to you as an alert as often as you like, you can set it up, you know, once today, as it happens or once a week. So you’ve got a few options there and how often you get those alerts delivered very much like google. So i think anybody who’s familiar with google alert, they’re going to find this interface to be very similar, so the interface is is similar, but the quality of the results is much better your seeing a difference? Obviously, yeah, i have been seeing a difference. I’ve been finding more alert that air coming through where there are mentions on blog’s on dh, some other social media related sites. So i thought that was definitely kind of interesting there, you know, how those alerts air coming through and how it seems to expand upon just the number of sources that it seemed to be picking up on, for example, i haven’t alert set up on my name and there’s an author, maria sample, we’ve talked about this before, and, uh, so i was able to filter out the results where her book title was also mentioned in the search results, much like i would do for aa for a google alert, for example. So is this shortcoming that you see or part of the shortcoming that you see in the google lorts is that it’s not indexing and searching blog’s or yeah, this is part of the services that i’ve looked into seemed to be covering more on the social mentions side, which, as you know, could be really important for a non-profit to be monitoring when they’re, you know, looking to monitor their own brand or who’s talking about them on social. So i thought that was really pretty cool, okay? And you’re not seeing those results on the google alerts. Not as extensive. No. Okay, interesting. So you’re doing side by side comparison because you said the alerts you’re setting on these test sites are the same as the ones you have set for google. Okay, avery, right. And the only one that i set up for the last few weeks is on the talk walker site on the others too, that i really kind of test sit out in preparation for today’s. Show it. I didn’t. Mora’s, you know, live looking at the search search results. And i i did look atyour name to see where some of this came up on social one of the other sites that that we’ll talk about called mentioned dot net that the only one where i definitely different is that the only one where i appeared is unmentioned or that’s. Really? Where you set the alert for may? I said it i that was the one where i set up. Thea the alert. For you on dh then yeah, definitely. That was one where i set up toe look at tony martignetti and i’ve noticed something that came up on philanthropy dot com for you and this is on mentioned dot net that’s going, we haven’t talked about yet. Why don’t we move someone? We moved to that one since ah, it’s, it’s all about me and thiss must have been the most interesting a sight in your searcher, and you’re testing because so was it mentioned dot com it’s actually mentioned dot net okay mentioned dot net? Yeah, and uh, so they had a neat analytics tool is built into it. You can get emailed alert, which i did not set up the email alerts. I just kind of monitoring what was going on on the site itself. Thie alerts can actually be shared with a team of co workers, so i mean, think about this in a team of non-profits i mean, a non-profit development team or development committee or something like that in a smaller non-profit where you would want to make sure that people were also sort of aware of where your key donors might be mentioned or where. Your organization name might be mentioned, so i thought that was a pretty neat feature. Yeah, saves you having to get the e mails and then forward them to people. Right? Exactly. But i understand you want you want getting using yours? Yes, i did come across some mention of the tweet that you had sent out about listening toe episode one forty nine i saw you mentioned on ah blawg for n green non-profit dot com. I saw your mention on philanthropy. Dot com where else would i see? Uh, do you do you know a person named david durin, jer? No, i don’t attorney no, no. Well, yeah, he was talking about me, and i appreciate it. That’s. Fine. I’m happy to have people talking about me. Who i don’t know that they’re the ones who’ll say the best things cause they don’t they don’t know me that well. Um okay, so so this actually goes into tweets too, but but now i send tweets under my name many a day like, i don’t know it doesn today or something. Would it? Would it not be finding those for some reason? Or is it only people talking about? Me, not me, not not my own content. Maybe that’s it right? So it was i just did it on your name. I didn’t do it on your twitter handle. I did it on tony space martignetti is what i’m having it track on mentioned dot net on dso it tell it told me that, for example, seven hours ago is when you tweeted out that tweet about listen toe episode one forty nine you know, etcetera, so it’ll it’ll tell you how long ago this mentioned was also mentioned online are xero so, you know, i just thought it was definitely something that could be interesting for organizations, you know, where this got me to really thinking it could be fascinating would be an article that i read i don’t know if you you picked up on that in the june issue of the chronicle of philanthropy, and that particular issue talked a lot about raising money online and one of the things that brought kind of to the forefront. For me, the ability to use these alerts was the organization, the environmental defense fund. I don’t know if they’re listener of your show, but it turns out that the article mentions that they’ve trained their data specialists to scour the internet to find out who is advocating on behalf of the organization online, and then they conduct research to find out what would swayed the activists to make a first time gift and then give again okay, so that got me to thinking, wow, this is just sort of a way to find out who’s talking about you, perhaps start connecting with them online, bringing it to the attention of your front line fundraiser that you’re being talked about by this particular person and this could be a real advocate could be somebody you should get to know. Yeah, for sure using i mean, that that’s the value of the prospect research, right? I mean, they’re they’re feeding their feeding the pipeline with potential prospects with right suspects, become prospects or suspects could could become prospects. Okay, absolutely. Now, do you see differences between mention and talk? Walker? Yeah, definitely the interfaces is a lot different and, you know, i think that people just take a look at it and see where they’re you know, most comfortable they do have a zay said they also provide that emailed alerts and analytics tool. And this company actually does provide certain levels of service so that you can have plans. They range from six, ninety nine a month to sixty five dollars a month. And so again, there, if you’re finding that you really like this service, but you’d like to have many more search results than what you’re getting, or you want to track a lot more alert than you, you know, maybe you’ve got a twenty donorsearch teamviewer want to track or something like that. Then you know you you might have to go into some of the fee based services. Okay. Okay. So there’s limits on the number of alerts for the for the flint. This window. Limit the alert. Okay. Okay. We have about a minute before we go away for a couple minutes. Another site you want to talk about besides talk walker and mention yes, there’s. Another one called social mentioned dot com and, uh, they have set up. That is again similar to setting up your google alerts in terms of being able to set up in advance search like the filtering service. And before we go to break just a teaser, i’ll just save your listeners come back, because you want to know what we’re talking about here when we talk about a passion score for, uh, for social mention, okay, look at maria, give it doing little outro to the break that’s. So that’s, so skilled, passion score sounds, sounds pretty cool. We have passion in the studio every every week, i believe, okay, we’re going to take that break that maria just brought us into, and when we come back, she and i’ll keep talking about the alternatives to google or it’s, just in case they go away, and to me, it sounds like even if google lorts doesn’t go away, she’s got alternatives. That seemed better, so stay with us. Yeah, you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Schnoll are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Talking alternative radio, twenty four hours a day thing. Hi, this is claire meyerhoff from the plan giving agency. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at tony martignetti non-profit radio. Welcome back to the low qui loki sesquicentennial, loki, sesquicentennial show maria, why don’t you tell us what the what the passion score is at social mention dot com so the passions score as they define it. They say it’s, a measure of the likelihood that individuals talking about your brand will do so repeatedly. For example, if you have a small group of very passionate advocates to talk about your product or brand all the time, you will have a hyre passions score. So imagine in a situation where you’ve got people who are who are just really, always tweeting about your organization. Uh, i mean, these are people that are right there, add they’re they’re advocating their retweeting your stuff, etcetera, this’s something that you want to be aware of is and this is free. We could get our passion score for free from social mention. Dot com. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Absolutely. So, for example, i had gone in and just on a search and put in my name in quotes like i would on an advanced search of for google because i wanted to search for maria semple is a phrase, and then i wanted to knock out any of the search results where that other author was mentioned. So i knew what keywords to put in there to knock out the results, and i came up with a very interesting set of searches search results, i should say that included photos that were taken of me speaking by others and posted on flicker ah, video that i had created and placed on youtube. Um, what else did i come across other videos where i appeared like a non-profit times interview, so i just kind of left it open for all dates, but you could also, if you find the search results are are too high, you can also filter it down and say, well, i’m also only interested in seeing, say, up to the last thirty days worth of results as to where your your mentioned excellent. So you want to share your passion score? Uh, actually, it said it was fifty percent when i did that search in that way, so i thought that wasn’t too bad. Ok, i’m going, i’m going to try this one. I like this one on dh if my passion score is higher than fifty, then i’ll reveal it, and if it’s not, then we’ll just forget about it. Yeah, and then i thought, well, let me set the sectors and alert, and unfortunately, right now they’re alert service is disabled so you can go to the website without having toe log in and create an actual account or anything, and you can you can go ahead and do a search on social mention dot com and see what the search results are and trying to filter them down. But in terms of then linking that particular search up to be constantly sent you through email or like we talked about before, they’re alert services currently disabled, so i hopefully i mean it says it’s coming up in the next week or so, maybe they’re just revamping it, making it bigger and better. I’m not sure, but that was that was a little disappointing to see i couldn’t actually test the alert feature tio it’s good for listeners to understand we’re recording on tuesday the ninth so by the time you listen, maybe will be back-up but it sounds pretty cool, but can we get the passion score without the alert feature being up? Yeah, yeah, so i just went to social mention dot com i put in the search that i was looking for and it came up with a passion score. And then they come up with something also called a sentiment score. Oh, and they say that that’s the ratio of mentions that are generally positive to those that are generally negative. And i have no idea how they define positive versus negative. But ah, this was out of the search. The thirteen let’s see out of the twenty six mentions, they gave me a sentiment score of thirteen xero meaning that i guess it was mostly a positive i hope that’s what the issue is not okay, i hope it’s positive to negative not negative to positive for your for your benefit, right? Tell you what, why don’t you just do a little have a little fun? We only have a few more minutes and i still won’t talk about what you should be monitoring. Why don’t you put my name in quotes in social mentioned dot com let’s see what we come up with, like passionate zoho are put it in it’s tony martignetti passion vs see what we come up with. Versus the other one sentiment and okay, but let’s move let’s, you and i will get to that before we get seven percent passion score. Tony, i killed you. It’s around it’s? Not even close. It’s not even close. It started in krauz it’s a route cream and clothes wearing that t thiss tony martignetti a seven percent passion scores your sentiment score came up three to zero three. All right, let’s not talk about that sentiment score clearly is not. I’m looking at things in here from fund-raising day in new york. Somebody’s gotta blogged on youtube videos about you. Well, clearly the sentiment score that’s inaccurate. So we dismissed that that that that function, that function is not working clearly. So don’t pay any attention to what you get for the sentiment score the passion scores very accurate. But you know, these vanity mary-jo vanity and you believe that these are vanity metrics? We don’t pay that much attention. I killed you, but we’re not paying that much attention. Really, teo, vanity metrics smear, but they’re not really that important. Let’s talk about what? What? We should be monitoring because only have a couple minutes left. What should we what should non-profits be paying attention to and setting in these different of these different sites. Okay. So the name of your organization again here that will help point you toward people who are advocates on your behalf. You should be setting up alerts on your top donors. Think about reasons tohave to send out and reach out and have a touchpoint with your donors that don’t involve asking them for money. So this might alert you to wear. Your donors are mentioned in the press. It might alert you, teo, on somebody having ah, major appointment or advancement or appointment to a board of directors somewhere. So your top donors, okay, the companies were your donor’s work. So again here, if that’s important for you to also maintain a relationship with the company because it’s a large corporation or if it’s one of your donors, private companies that’s almost more important, i think because whatever is happening in that donors world related to his his or her private company, you’d want to know about those those major, you know, advancements in the press, for example. So again, here it’s an opportunity for you to perhaps pick up the phone send out an email sent out a card somethingto have some sort of a touchpoint thatyou noticed, right? And we could add foundations to that too, for the same purpose, right? We like. We like to keep in touch with foundations just like they’re people because they’re they’re staffed by people. So foundations that are funding you, you might find a reason to write to them and you’re not, uh you’re not sending ah, request for, you know, a grant grant proposal. Exactly. Okay, we pretty much have to leave it there. Maria. Excellent advice, as always. Thank you very much. You will find maria at the prospect finder dot com and also on twitter at maria simple. Thanks, maria. Thanks so much. Excellent. Um, i was reminded of that routing in the passion score. So cool, so cool. Got more live listener love here in the u s lynette singleton is listening from lawrenceville, georgia. I know that because she’s using the hashtag non-profit radio and we’re monitoring it here in the studio. Hello, lynette. Also east lansing, michigan. Alexandria, virginia live listener love to you, australia checking in craggy burn i loved that. Some of some of the towns in australia just wonderful. I met someone from blues bay ones just sounds so nice blue he’s bay she’s an artist but live listen love whether you’re in virginia, michigan, georgia or australia, i didn’t mention japan got a shoutout, japan lots of listeners from japan actually too many to name, so i’m just going to say konnichiwa next week. It’s merry christmas to those who celebrate christmas, i hope that everyone enjoys the holiday and time off with family. We will be back on january third with consultant janet folk she’s talking about your twenty fourteen media relations plan. Also, amy sample ward returns with best social media platforms to watch for in the new year you have my best wishes for a very, very happy and healthy new year. Really, i hope that it’s successful for you and i hope that you in the transition between years get to take a little time and reflect and i thank you very much for loving non-profit radio in twenty thirteen, thanks so much. Remember we’re brought to you by rally bound dot com and tb r si dot com that’s telephone bill reduction consulting they’re very good people. Please talk to them. Our creative producer is clear, meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is our line producer. The show’s social media is by deborah askanase of community organizer two point oh, and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico. Of the new rules are music is by scott stein. Happy new year merry christmas, hope to see you with us on january third, twenty fourteen, one p, m eastern at talking alternative dot com. Didn’t didn’t. Didn’t dick tooting. Good ending? You’re listening to the talking alternate network, get in. Nothing. Cubine are you a female entrepreneur? Ready to break through? Join us at sixty body sassy sol, where women are empowered to ask one received what they truly want in love, life and business. Tune in thursday, said noon eastern time to learn tips and juicy secrets from inspiring women and men who dare to define their success. Get inspired, stay motivated and defying your version of giant success with sexy body sake. Soul. Every thursday ad, men in new york times on talking alternative dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. You’re listening to talking alternative network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. The aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Fund-raising board relations. Social media, my guests and i cover everything that small and midsize shops struggle with. If you have big dreams and a small budget, you have a home at tony martignetti non-profit radio friday’s one to two eastern at talking alternative dot com. Are you concerned about the future of your business for career? Would you like it all to just be better? Well, the way to do that is to better communication, and the best way to do that is training from the team at improving communications. This is larry sharp, host of the ivory tower radio program and director at improving communications. Does your office need better leadership, customer service sales, or maybe better writing, are speaking skills? Could they be better at dealing with confrontation conflicts, touchy subjects all are covered here at improving communications. If you’re in the new york city area, stop by one of our public classes, or get your human resource is in touch with us. The website is improving communications, dot com, that’s, improving communications, dot com, improve your professional environment, be more effective, be happier, and make more money improving communications. That’s, the told you.

Thank You For Helping A Listener

 

Image courtesy of Iain Farrell, Creative Commons license
Image courtesy of Iain Farrell, Creative Commons license

Nonprofit Radio listener Matt asked me what to do after a direct mail mistake. I blogged his question and our community stepped up in grand fashion to help him.

THANK YOU!

His office sent thousands of appeal letters misstating previous gift amounts. He wondered what to do and these generous pros stepped up to give smart advice:

Ruthellen Rubin
Kris Gibson
Richard Freedlund
Pamela Grow
Rick J. Blount

THANKS TO EACH OF YOU!

You’re proof that our community can come together quickly and generously to help someone in need. I’ve always felt the nonprofit community’s energy and commitment to the greater good–and each other.

Places like #fundchat and Joanne Fritz’s about.com column stand out as great examples.

So what was our advice for Matt?

Send a quick, sincere apology letter–signed by a senior person–stressing a commitment to accuracy and pledging to take steps to prevent a similar mistake.

I agree. Openness, transparency, honesty and contrition are most respected when you’ve made a mistake. They’re never easy but they’re always best.

Have you got a question for our community? I’ll blog it and ask it on Nonprofit Radio.

What’s on your mind?

 

Let’s Help A Nonprofit Radio Listener

Image by Daniel Go, Creative Commons license
Image by Daniel Go, Creative Commons license

Nonprofit Radio listener Matt emailed me, asking for advice on a sensitive direct mail fundraising problem at the Minnesota charity where he is a gift officer.

Let’s help him!

With a bit of editing for conciseness, here’s what Matt says:

“We have a direct mail that just got out the door and was delivered to 6,000 donors today.

“I just received a call from a confused donor who received this letter. She has given to our organization before, but at a smaller level, but her letter said she has given a gift of $1,500 in the past and asked her to give over $2,000 to this appeal (she actually gave $50).

“Obviously, somewhere our spreadsheet that was exported out of Raiser’s Edge was in error.

“I was wondering if you have any recommendations on how to follow this up? A second letter acknowledging the mistake? Ignore the mistake? Etc.”

Thoughtfully, he asks that other nonprofits take care in their appeal mailings. He wants others to learn from his office’s mishap.

Matt and his office need help fast. They’ve got to make a decision and execute quickly. What’s your advice?

I’ll get us started, but feel free to disagree with me. Good decisions come from open dialogue.

Matt, I suggest you send contrite emails and then letters to each person whose letter is wrong. Explicitly apologize. Assure them the organization tries very hard to achieve 100% accuracy in its work and you regret that this time you fell short. Your CEO should sign the letter.

Time is of the essence. What’s your advice for Matt?