Tag Archives: Jay Love

Nonprofit Radio, February 22, 2013: Donor Retention & More Maria Sites

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Tony’s Guests:

Jay Love
Jay Love
Jay Love: Donor Retention

Jay Love is CEO of Bloomerang. We’ll talk about holding on to the donors you’ve got, because it’s much cheaper and easier to keep a donor than to replace one. He’s got strategies to help you.

 

 

Maria Semple
Maria Semple: More Maria Sites

Maria Semple, our prospect research contributor and The Prospect Finder, keeps up her reputation as doyenne of dirt cheap and free. This month she’ll review DonorSearch and ListSelect.

 
 


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No. Hello and welcome to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on tony martignetti non-profit radio i’m your aptly named host it’s february twenty second. Oh, i very much hope that you were with me last week. I’d be aghast to hear that you had missed some raise money while some raise hell. I talked about women in philanthropy, with marshals to panic. She was founding editor in chief of contribute magazine and is the new media adviser to the new york university heimans center for philanthropy. We talked about limbaugh and koman leadership roles, traditional giving and how women organized themselves also, pinterest and slideshare amy sample ward returned she’s, our social media contributor and membership director of the non-profit technology network, and ten she shared how small and midsize non-profits khun reap definite value from these lesser known social sites. This week dahna retention j love is ceo of bloomerang we’ll talk about holding on to donors you’ve got because it’s much cheaper and easier to keep a donor than to replace one j has strategies for you. Also more maria sites maria simple, our prospect research contributor and the prospect finder keeps up her reputation. As doi n of dirt cheap and free this munch this month, she’ll review donorsearch and list select between the guests on tony’s take two the irs publishes a list of charities that have lost tax exempt status each month, and in march, that list will be longer than it has been other months, and i’ll explain now i’m very pleased to welcome j love he’s, the ceo and co founder of bloomerang and senior vice president of avectra both companies serve the non-profit sector only with tools for fund-raising and communications. He was senior vice president of the arts and culture division at blackbaud. Before that, he was ceo and co founder of e tapestry jay’s, a member of the national board of the association of fund-raising professionals. And i’m very glad that his work brings him to the show. J love, welcome hey, thank you very much, tony it’s, good to be here this morning. It’s a pleasure to have you dahna retention. Jay, why is this important? Well, because it’s it’s continued to fall. The main source of the data that i’ve been referring to so often in the last year has been from the fund-raising effectiveness. Project, otherwise known as f d p that was a combined effort of the urban institute and the association of fund-raising professionals, and they’ve been doing this for the last five or six years and it’s the first time that data of this nature has come directly from the donor databases, so that they’re the charities that have the software that’s in used by the various vendors there now sharing the summary data and being able to tell from that summary data exactly what’s happening and retention of donors from one year to the next. And what it’s quite scary, and that that retention rate has dropped from the low fifties now to forty one percent in the most recent survey. Has it been dropping consistently through the five or six years that you’ve had this pair with a year or two that had held pretty steady? But overall, it’s dropped about ten or eleven percent since the time that the study has been an active let’s just reassure any charities that might be using software. You would certainly know if your data was going to be included, right? And it would have been anonymous ized and aggregated absolutely ill. It is summary, data and it’s part of the licensing with the vendors the very nice part about that is not only does it provide information that people can use, but many of the software vendors are allowing you to compare your results to the aggregate results. So you have a very good idea of how you’re comparing against the national average and like i said, let’s hope that your individual charity is doing better than losing six out of every ten donors from one year to the next because, you know, losing nearly sixty percent is a pretty scary proposition. It means that you have to be on a constant treadmill, bringing in a brand new first year donors and the retention rate for the first year donors is even worse in most cases that’s down in the twenties or thirties as far as three tension for those individuals and the next thing i was going to ask, what you just aren’t used answered it so thie retention rates are falling, which means attrition rates are rising and we’re now at fifty nine percent. We’re now fifty nine percent in the most recent study there and like i said it’s a trend we’ve got to turn around because, as we all know, just like the commercial world, existing customers or existing donors in this case are much easier to keep than bringing in brand new ones because the retention rate is at least a little bit hyre for those folks that have already been with you, do we know about how much this costs, how much it costs to acquire a new donor versus those organizations? Do you know that most people know that the cost to acquire a new donor is usually more than the money is received from that donor in the first year? You don’t get tau ah break even status until the second year in most cases and of course, there’s considerable time involved acquiring new donors versus thanking and keeping retaining existing donors. Yeah, and and there’s some basic things, tony, that people can dio, you know, one of things that we tried, teo, allow software packages to help people to realise is if a brand new donors in and it happens to be above the average doner level that you have, that might be a situation instead of sending out that tired old thank you letter that you might want to pick up the phone and call that person and thank them directly and get to know them a little bit, or try to set up that face to face meeting or get them to come take it to review facility or something, because if there’s a telephone contact the retention rate, doubles or triples and we’re going to get to a bunch of those factors that we know influence, retention. But jay, you’re your background is technology tapestry blackbaud now bloomerang and avectra is this strictly a technology problem or there’s a there’s a big donor? I mean, sorry, there’s a big personal factor to these to these relationships as well, very much so i don’t a relationship there is no different than any sort of a personal relationship, a friendship, and i know in some large organizations there those donors are people that you’re only meet via electronic communications or written communications in some way, shape or form. But even that, as we all know, if you had a pen pal, back when you were in high school, there were ways of building that relationship and taking it to the next. Level, even if it was only through written communications so that you can, you know, have that person on the other end of the receiving and feel like they’re more than just a specific there. There there actually are a person that’s connected to your organization into your mission and their money’s air going tio achieve something different than what they could’t someplace else with those dollars. But as well, technology has a role too. Oh, very much so it’s. Like so many things in life just being able to know what your retention rate iss tends to improve it. You know, i think of the old andrew carnegie story of going into one of this steel mill plants and asking the worker on the line how many of that particular widget or whatever that they made for the day and he took a piece of chalk and wrote it down on the floor and said, you know, twenty one and that was how money this guy did. A shift with the afternoon shift came in it too. Well, what’s that number on the floor, they so well, the big guy was here and they wrote down what they did. Well, that shift, they cross it off, and instead of twenty one, there was twenty five and this went on for weeks, until it was up over fifty, uh, to do that, and it was all because someone was noticing and actually saying, this is the number that we’re shooting for, that we’re trying to surpass, and then not long after that carnegie ah, lock down the steel mill on dh kept all the workers out, but that’s a different story, isn’t it that i was kind of humility at least started a foundation, right? Yes, he didn’t gave lot libraries and pools and lots of public spaces in the in the pittsburgh area, but it was a bit of a baronet. I want that to be any sort of ah, witness are a praise for their for his business practices. I heard quite cruel things came out of that i went to i went to carnegie mellon university, so i’ve heard those stories oh, very much so that haven’t. Yes, all right, so this is quite startling mean, we’re on ly retaining let’s round use round Numbers 16:40 were only retaining forty percent of our donors you’re get, i’m sure, you’re comfortable with the representativeness of the sample that this data is from, you know, just to give you a bit of an idea that this is based upon data coming for about thirty, two hundred charities that in the most recent time period raised just over two billion dollars and fund-raising dollars so it’s, you know, it’s it’s, a small percentage of the total of fund-raising world, but it is a very statistically relevant sample that’s being taken from that group. Now this is primarily focused, i think, what makes gives us so many legs, too it’s primarily focused on the small and medium sized non-profit there’s a few larger ones in there, but the vast majority of the non-profits that are in this represented sample are raising less than ten million dollars per year and most of our below five million. Okay, well and that’s the audience for this show, small and midsize charities jay, we’re going to take a break, and when we come back, you and i will talk a lot about some these factors that we know influence, retention and what charity’s khun due to increase their retention rate and i know you’ll stay. With us j and i hope everybody else does, too. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Are you confused about which died it’s, right for you? Are you tired of being tired? How about improving your energy strength and appearance? Hi, i’m ricky keck, holistic nutrition and wellness consultant. If you have answered yes to any of my questions, contact me now at n y integrated health dot com, or it’s, six for six to eight, five, eight five eight eight initiate change and transform your life. 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 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 welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. J love is ceo and co founder of bloomerang and we’re talking about donorsearch retention this segment, j we know that there are a bunch of factors that either positively or negatively impact retention and there’s a lot of lessons that i think donors khun takeaway, i’m sorry charities khun takeaway from these factors, why don’t we? Why don’t we get started with actually some of them know that that, um charities don’t have a direct influence over, like, like the person’s giving, all right on recency. You know, i can’t break these factors into three categories, tony one based upon financial one based upon activities, and then a third one based upon communications. Okay. And if we take a look at the first one there, as you were alluding to is the financial aspect of it, there are certain things that you can tell that are moving that engagement level or that engagement needle up or down such things is have they made a donation in the last twelve months? Was that donation higher or lower than their previous wanted? They upgraded today downgrade did they make? Multiple donations did they did they support multiple causes or multiple funds within your organization so that they’re, you know, involved in in different ways? Are they doing something in the way of pledging or in a recurring gift mode? We know that someone that has signed a pledge card or that’s giving in a pledging our recurring basis, it’s much more likely to be retained from year to year to year than someone that is not did they come in knowing that they were giving to organization rather than supporting a runner in a race or something of that nature? Some those air, all factors that i think from the financial standpoint can move that needle upper down accordingly. Okay, now charities can have an influence and some of these for instance, you you mentioned earlier if, uh, if an office sees that a new donors gift is above the average, they should you’re suggesting reply with an above average acknowledgement and thank you exactly, you know, do something outside of the ordinary whether it’s pick up the phone, calling them, trying to get a meeting, or maybe a hand written note or a handwritten t s several of the boards that i serve on the first part of the board meeting that we do, each one of us writes out ten handwritten notes during the course of the board meeting to a donor that’s an above average first time donor-centric come in and take a tour of the facility, and you’re doing that in every board meeting you take time begin before every boy, every single board meeting there’s the i’m on the board of the local food bank here in indiana, on the larger food banks, and we have a, you know, sixty eight board meetings a year, and that is part of every board meeting i don’t suppose you’re in bloomington, indiana, with the company named bloomerang are you? Well, we’re actually in indianapolis, indiana way should meet sometime because i’m in indiana very often. Oh, wow, i didn’t realize that’s indianapolis in in carmel, i’m there there quite often. Um, good. So there are other things now you mentioned recurring donations that’s a very positive factor and you’re more likely to retain that donor than then someone who doesn’t do a recurring donation. So how can a charity go out of its way, then to think that recurring versus non recurring donor? Well, i don’t think it’s much as much thanking them in that situation, tony, is it isthe trying to see if you can talk somebody or ah, have them be interested in doing a recurring gift or pledge, letting them know that at the time of making their transaction would be nice to be able to support that critical part of our mission on ongoing time periods, so that if you set that up to do that it’s much more, ah, widely used around the rest the world in the united states, of being able to automatically deduct from a checking account or from a savings account, or even a credit card on a recurring basis. So instead of making let’s, say, a one time gift of, uh, two hundred forty dollars, maybe having twenty dollars, per month taken out with no stop date there, that becomes a way of really having long term retention for that individual, so that may be worth looking into for charities that are not offering that. And if you if you want a lot more information on that. My other podcast, which is for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals look back in the archive of that, you’ll find it on the final on itunes. You also find it on the chronicle of philanthropy website, and i had a guest there named mark, and they are see help ert h e l p arty, and he was an expert in e commerce and talked about online giving and recurring giving and how to set that up so you might look back at that fund-raising fundamentals podcast if you want more detail on how to inaugurate a recurring giving program the way the way j love is explaining, would you like to look at a couple of the other factors here? The activities in the communication once tony well, give me a chance now, jay, don’t don’t take over the show, we’re going to get there, you know the answer, it’s just for that know the answers a quick no, you’re you’re off, we’re i’m goingto have eleven minutes of dead air time now. I had planned to be with you, but i’m voting you off now. Of course. Yes, of course we’re going to talk about activities and communications. All right. What do you have? Under what? Do you have under activities? Well, let’s think about all the different activities that you can track that would be involved with especially and you mentioned with some of your previous broadcast some of the social media, but whether or not someone attends an event or whether they attend multiple events, have they taken a tour of the facility? Uh, those were times of thanks that that happened, but the one night that i think really growing in popularity is all the activities that surround the social media have they posted on your facebook wall, they become a friend? Do they say something about your non-profit with a particular hashtag and a tweet or on facebook or in a linkedin profile for that? Are they? Are they active in some way of promoting your non-profit to do that? And i often think about in the days before their non-profits new tohave like facebook pages and stuff like that, we’re, uh, a very active volunteer. I think it was the american cancer site or something like that turn around found out that there was somebody that already had twenty thousand, you know, people following them are liking them and facebook and they were able to help them bring that facebook page over to there usage. But all those factors, if you can follow those and there’s ways of very easily electronically doing that technology has taken us to a whole new levels where you can be aware of those factors. And it can actually become part of your sierra mere database, knowing that someone has said something about you and giving that a particular value and their engagement level. Now, see, r e m. Of course. We have talked about this on the show, but i want to caution you about george in jail, which i have on the show. See? R e m. I just explained cr m in case listeners may not know. Okay. That’s, constituent relationship management durney aram it’s it’s. A fancy name for a donor database. Okay. And we have had guests on talking about c r m but i like to keep listeners on keep everybody on the same on the same foundation. Um, i think the key difference being instead of just being in a database of pure donors and maybe prospective donors it’s everybody that the non-profit touch is in some way shape. Or form so maybe people that are affected by its mission. It maybe vendors it, maybe suppliers so it’s every single communication interaction that’s taking place indeed. And we have talked about that and some of the platforms that support it on the show. Let’s, let’s focus on some of the things that charity’s can have. The most direct impact on you mentioned earlier tour of the facility, and encouraging donors to do that if they’re especially if they happen to be an above average doner first time, but that’s something that and it’s also a positive when you get the person to do the tour, then that’s a positive attention factor that’s something that a charity khun directly have impact on by extending invitations exactly a standing invitation, but just thinking about what their communications are. Some donors have never heard from their charity except in the form of another request for a donation. It’s always someone reaching out with a hand versus sharing information. So think about it. Perhaps you could set up a communication schedule and actually get back to the person and say, this is how we’re doing. We’re tracking ourselves, and this is how well we’re achieving our mission. And one that’s that’s absolutely magical that i just wish everybody would do is just telling every donor but their money’s air doing what if you can specifically say that those dollars went to this particular activity or this particular fund? And this is what it’s doing? And even if it goes into a general fund, you can just say these air what your money’s are achieving force and just share that information without asking for another donation. People tend to feel very appreciated for that being the case. And and i guess a lot of my experience has come over the years, tony, of becoming much more of a donor myself. And then i used to run an interesting experiment adi tapestry and bloomerang, where i would ask the new employees to take fifty dollars, that we would provide him fifty dollars, and say go out and make five or ten donations to five or ten different charities, and come back to me in three months and let me know who build a relationship with you and who did not. Excellent att those low levels. And what what did you find? Oh, uh, it was there were some absolutely marquis organizations that my employees would stumble upon that even for a five dollar gift, right, they would build a relationship. And what was ironic? Some of my employees are still lifelong donors to those organizations after making that small gift that was given to them to make on behalf of the company. That’s terrific that’s great! Listen, yeah, i just it was remarkable how you do it and i told him to try to mix. I said pick between a few national organisations and a few local organizations just to see what’s going on there because i honestly believe any small non-profit i know a lot of your listeners are in that category, tony. All they have to do is try that express themselves, take one hundred dollars and go make ten, ten dollar gifts or twenty five dollar gift to some national organizations and then just copy what those groups are doing. Find out which ones make them feel the best, and start building that into their own processes that they’re doing it. The local charity. Excellent, that za terrific suggestion in a great use, i think of one hundred dollars you khun khun! Survey, i think survey twenty charities for one hundred bucks, right? I mean, you get to do your own little, many mba, your research project for one hundred or two hundred dollars, and because you get to see every type of communication and i would mail some in, and i would do some electronically and see what the difference is listeners may want teo, listen back to some of the three, four months siri’s that i had with amy sample ward are regular social media contributor about riel engagement using the online networks because a lot of what jay talked about posting on the facebook wall replying to a tweet, etcetera, there’s, their real engagement strategies. And amy and i talked about that over four months of her being on once a month. How to really engage through the through the the social media sites. There’s also things just that people can report to the charity like if they if they keep their communication preferences current exactly things like that in the communication area, if you are able to. If your email system and your communication system is tied into your database, you can check real quickly. Does someone open? My e mails i sent to them are they clicking through to a link senate to read further on the stories? Ah, very important one are they forwarding it on to other people? And, you know, are they lying that you can get all that reported back to you? And it could be part of the data base that you can see, and then you hit upon a real important one there? If someone has taken the time to let you know that their address has changed, either their electronic email address or their mailing address has changed. Boy that’s a very special person you want to put a big red gold star something on that? Because that person, if they’ve taken the time to let you know that their address has changed is is probably four to five times more likely to become a major donor or a legacy donor to your organization in the long run, because they care that’s, they’ve done far out of the ordinary what anybody else would dio that’s so interesting because it’s it’s purely ministerial, they filled out a reply card with an updated phone number or address or email address. What can a charity? Do i mean, should there be a thanks for keeping current with us? I mean, because typically now i think the most charities doing nothing, that it goes to the database administrator, the donor services team, the database gets updated and then that’s it. What could we be doing? So i think that record person gave mark that this is someone who took the time out of the ordinary to do that, and that should be made to the attention of either a gift officer or fund-raising person or a plan giving person so that they can reach out and just try to get to know that person. Because if you combine the two, if that’s someone that’s been eh, multiyear donor, even at a small level, and has let you know that ah, and many of you out there i know have read the book the millionaire next door. That may be a good chance that that person falls into that category and could be a very, very substantial legacy donorsearch sometime down the road for your organization here we have just a few minutes left. Let’s talk about your the communications factors that we’re aware of. That we that we haven’t talked about yet, what are some of those that possibly a little bit of the people that have, you know, that opened up your emails and different things of that nature? Another big communication factor is if you can find out who has visited your website and who has downloaded information, i think every non-profit website should give people reasons to come back. That means that there’s got to be new content on there. Ah, and that could be something as simple as block post from the executive director or from other people within the organization are case studies or case histories, but i always love if you make available documents to download. This is this is a document that tells you about our mission that tells you about our performance metrics, what we’ve been able to do to achieve our mission. If there are pds and different types of documents in background information, annual reports, quarterly reports thinks that nature people love that, download them and look at them, particularly folks, that aaron, that the higher level of donors categories to do that, so being able to track those communication activities and then being wired into your front desk or your receptionist, anybody that calls your organization that should always be marked in the database to know that this person has reached out and actually dialed our organization, whether was asking for information or giving us information or something of that nature, those are people that are communicating with you and that’s half the battle. Yes, these air excellent on dh, very simple strategies. Really j we have just about a minute left. I have to ask you, what is it you love about the work that you’re doing, being able to help all size non-profits do their job better because if you could, i’d have hanging on my wall, something that my daughter created for me when she was in the elementary school saying that my dad works helping further missions of non-profits and i still have that hanging in my wall today, and it will always be part of my life, i think. J, thank you very much for being a guest. You’re welcome. Thank you, tony. My pleasure. J love is ceo and co founder of bloomerang, which you’ll find at bloomerang dot co real pleasure. Thank you very much, jay. Thank you very much money. But when we return, it’s tony’s, take two and then maria simple mohr, maria sites. Stay with me, e-giving. Anything tooting, getting ding, ding, ding, ding. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Get in. Cubine 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. Hi, i’m ostomel role, and i’m sloan wainwright, where the host of the new thursday morning show the music power hour. Eleven a m. We’re gonna have fun. Shine the light on all aspects of music and its limitless healing possibilities. We’re going invite artists to share their songs and play live will be listening and talking about great music from yesterday to today, so you’re invited to share in our musical conversation. Your ears will be delighted with the sound of music and our voices. Join austin and sloan live thursdays at eleven a. M on talking alternative dot com. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Lively conversation. Top trends and sound advice. That’s. Tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i’m janna agger’s, senior vice president, products and marketing from blackbaud. Yeah, hi there, it’s time for tony’s take due at roughly thirty two minutes into the hour. I wish i could send live listener love today, but we’re pre recorded, so i cannot do that. I know you’re out there live listeners and i do love you, but i just don’t know where exactly you are this week. My block this week is expect expanded i arrest revocation list in march. Since june two thousand eleven, the irs has released a monthly list of charities whose tax exempt status has been revoked because they didn’t file the annual form nine, ninety or one of its cousins next month’s list march will be larger than usual because the irs is changing the admission standard for getting on the list. It’s not it’s, not like college. This is it’s getting easier to get onto this list not like colleges. Starting next month. Charities, they’re going to get a one month notice that they’re facing revocation and up until now you didn’t get on the list until you were already had been revoked for six months, so you can see next month is going to be a seven month catch up all this. All the ones that are leading up to six months, plus the ones that are one month away from revocation and there’s a lot more information about that on my blogged, including a link to get your tax exempt status reinstated. If you happen to be unfortunate enough to be on this revocation list, my blog’s is that tony martignetti dot com and that is tony’s take two for friday, february twenty second, the eighth show of the year. You know maria simple she’s, a prospect, find her she’s, a regular prospect research contributor she’s our doi n of dirt cheap and free resource is she’s a trainer and speaker on prospect research? Her website is the prospect finder dot com her book is panning for gold. Find your best donor prospects now exclamation mark and you can follow maria on twitter at maria simple fremery a simple welcome back. Hey there, tony, how are you today? I’m doing very well, thank you. Good to have you back. Thank you. You have our doyin has two, two sites why don’t you just give a little overview of what we’re talking about this week? So this week i’m talking about two. Sites that have both a free and a fee based component to them so one will help you both with your reactive and proactive prospect research, which we’ve talked about the house in terms of lives buy-in sorry, no, yes, we’ve definitely talked about proactive and reacting, i would know that’s beyond jargon jail. Now we’re way past that, okay? And then then, you know, and then the other one is really about proactively trying to seek a new new prospects. I’m constantly approached by non-profits that say, you know, we really feel like we’ve tapped out our current donorsearch list and, you know, we’ve done the research and so forth on our list, but we just need to get some new names into the pipeline. So came across an interesting product that i thought might be helpful to at least discuss on the show. Okay, on the first one of these is donorsearch donorsearch yeah, so this is a company that does in depth prospect research, so they are there’s a number of competitors out there that do this on dh donorsearch is based in maryland, and they have they have both a c and a a free product. So i thought we’d start off, at least by talking about the free product first, if you want to do that, what’s the earl for donorsearch first. Well, it’s donorsearch dot net, however, for the free piece. It’s donorsearch lead dot net flash integrated search. Okay, so i’ll make sure that we get that up on to the lincoln. And first yeah, why don’t we do that for both of these sites? Okay, so let’s talk about the free part first for us. Donorsearch so for the free part, you would put in an individual’s name, this is under the assumption that you have maybe an event that you’ve had or maybe a new donor prospect name has been brought to your attention, and you want to do some in depth research on them. Or maybe you have an upcoming cultivation event, and you’d like to know about person in advance of the event so you can put in there their name, whatever you know about them already there named contact info. If you happen to know the company they’re affiliated with, you can put that in there as well and then hit the search button and what it will. Do is it won’t show you the search results on the screen, but it will email you basically, ah, profile of that individual. So it’s really, you know, a quick and easy way to get some vast information on an individual if you’re not already subscribed to a service that would be able to do that for you. So you’re doing this one person at a time, right? That’s, right, it’s one person at a time and you know that where, you know the upgrade to the sea bass portion would be useful is if you’re looking to screen, you know, a lot of names at once it’s going to give you that, you know that capacity, but also they have under the sea bass hold on, i want to i want to stick with the free for the free portion for a couple of a couple seconds more. Is there any limit to the number of searches that you can do on the free? So, no, so if you’ve got the capacity or a gn intern or someone willing to sit there and just plunking a bunch of names and and monitor those profiles coming back through e mails. And and certainly that can be done ok? And how robust are the profiles that you get back? What do they look like? So they cross check the types of databases that would give you both a philanthropic data, but also, you know, the traditional sort of wealth databases, so they’ll give you information about both charitable and political e-giving um and it will give you information about property records, dunn and bradstreet types of reports if they happen to be a corporate insider. Um, political donations, i think i mentioned that if they happen to be in who’s who the marquis who’s who’d database there, their biography will come up there also, if they’re connected to a foundation when their director on a board of directors on a foundation, they’ll come up in the guide star report. So there are, you know, a number of touchpoint that are very useful for you to know about, you know, and the thing i always tell non-profits so it’s really, you know, if you if this is for a major gift, you really don’t want to stop, no matter what company you’re using to get these quick profiles from i would never just stop that, you know, try and go a little bit more in depth look for articles in the newspapers and, you know, whatever else you can find out on the internet free or fee based resource is so i think this is a great starting point. Certainly if you have an event coming up or post event, you want to know some more information about an individual, i think it’s a great place to start it sounds like it’s it’s a pretty, pretty robust profile for for free. Yeah, yeah, it really is. It really is. So, you know, it’s definitely worth looking into. So again, if if you want that that website its donor lee dot net forward slash integrated search ok? And how about there a fee based service so they see the service is at the website donorsearch dot net, and already there’s been some information there about the various products they have, as well as their online screening tool. So, you know, if you’re a non-profit or maybe you’ve just taken over an organization, um, that has, you know, somewhat of a mass of a database that’s never been screened, and you’re new to the job and you’re just not sure g, you know, i’ve got to figure out a way to prioritize these folks a bit, you know, you might want to consider a screening through donorsearch or even, you know, some of the competitors companies out there, but, you know, donorsearch does provide screening services well, okay, do you get a more complete profile if you subscribe versus the free report that you get on donors? Yeah, thie sea based reports, the ones that you would get really as part of a screening would include analytics and what they called predictive modeling to try and figure out, you know, it’ll give you some idea about the person’s capacity, and usually when you have a full screening done, you know, your prospects are kind of raided for you, you know? So you’ll know which one’s elevator to the top as being perhaps the ones you want to focus on first. Okay, so you get something that’s similar to a screening, but you don’t have to buy their screening service, right? I mean, if you want to, well, you won’t have the actual predictive modeling and analytics through the free search, you know you have a batch of names i would, i would really suggest you if you’ve got a few hundred names or a few thousand names that you consider doing it through the sea bass portion. Renee offer, right? But i’m trying to get out. If you do the fee based, are you subscribing to their screening service? Or you can still get individual reports that have the predictive modeling in them? Yeah, you know, when these companies offered screenings generally, you also have access to the database afterward, usually for about a year. So this is definitely something to consider, and then i noticed on their website that they would offer a free screening of two hundred current records to kind of test their full product. Um, so folks are interested in taking them up on that particular offer they can go to donorsearch dot net and check out the information it’s right on their home page. Okay, i’m trying to i’m trying to get at one thing. If you’re subscribing to the fee based service you’re paying for it is that on ly a screening option, like in aggregate? Or can you still do searches of one or five or one? Hundred individuals still do searches afterward of you, no additional names. If they come forward, you’ll have that one off. I’ll go in on dh. Can you give listeners a sense of what the fees are? You know, i really don’t like to get into that type of conversation because sometimes these companies, you know, they change and, you know, this is a recorded show, tony, so i don’t want to really get into that because somebody might be listening to three, five years down the line on ice helps on dh. So certainly, you know, product pricing can change, so i think it’s really best for them, tio maybe just take them up on that free two hundred name offer where at least take a look at these free, integrated search tool that they have on day. If it looks like it’s useful to them, you know, they get into a conversation directly with folks donorsearch okay, i’ve been admonished by maria. Simple. I never. I never said that before. Okay, um, so you had you had talked about this as being a way of generating new prospects? Well, actually, the other tool that’s thay this is really this is really donorsearch is for existing names that you already know, right? Right? So this would be for, you know, screening and so forth, so, you know, definitely if they want to take a look at, you know, integrated search on a free bases, they can take a look at what the output looks like i got you okay? And i liked your suggestion of looking at people after an event, maybe it’s someone came to your event because they were invited by by someone who you do know, and now you’d like to find out more about this, this new person, ways to engage them, which the first segment was very much about today on dh you can use donorsearch to do that, i like that suggestion. Yeah, absolutely. I would suggest that to organizations especially if they’re having hyre cultivation events or even you know, we’ve we’ve you’ve probably talked on your show about these ask events where people specifically come and know that they will be asked to donate well, it might be might be kind of good to know in advance some information about those folks, maybe even advance troop even better. Ok, what’s what’s list select about that’s your next one so listselect is, uh, is by a company the company behind this is called anchor computer company, and they were they were actually started back in the seventies, and what they’ve done is they’ve come out with this product called listselect that could be useful both in for-profit and non-profit world, so it was originally designed for general target marketing, and so it has the names and addresses of close to ninety percent of the u s adult population and it’s compiled from public records and united states postal service data, and then what they do is they overlay it with demographic interest type categories. So i’ve gone in and i, you know, i’ve done a little bit of playing around just to give you an idea of what this looks like so you can actually run your searches just to kind of see, with numbers of prospects might look like, and then you don’t pay for the list until you decide this looks like a list that could be useful to you, um, and it’s. Uh, a list, a rental. I don’t know if you’ve talked about that on your show in the past. So you can either rent this list for a one time use or for a one year basis. Okay, we’re going to go away for a minute. And when we come back, you can talk a little about lister mental, because i don’t think it’s something that i have covered. And we’ll talk more about listselect with maria. Simple. Stay with us. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. 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. Dahna 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. Durney i’m talking with maria simple, the strict taskmaster who put me in my place about fees. We’re going talk about fees anymore att least not in dollar terms will certainly let you know when something is fee based. Um, so what’s the fee for listselect now i’m getting well, actually, i did run a couple of just, uh ah searches that i thought would be kind of fun just to kind of see what the costs might be it’s very evident when you run a search so it’s, very clear up front what you’d be paying for that list, you know, before you, actually so they tell you, and so you can change the parameters, tio, what you’re looking for and really play around with it till it gets to a point where you feel like this is a new four doble list, andi something that, you know, would be useful for your organization, okay? In a minute, we’re gonna talk about list rental, but but do you know what the output is going to look like? What? What? Uh, information, you’re going to get about each person before you have to pay for the list? Yes, i’m told that. You get a first name, last name, address, phone number and in some cases, email addresses as well. Okay. Oh, really? So, it’s, just basic contact information. This is not the complete profile like donorsearch does that’s correct? That’s correct. So this would really be used for true proactive prospecting. You know what you think that you would hear in a sales world of, you know, getting more names, more leads into the funnel. So people who might have a certain affinity on do you know? So we could talk about what some of these parameters are way when we get further into the conversation. Okay, but let’s, talk about let’s rental. Now you’re just you’re renting this list. How does that work for you? So you now let me just set it up. You now have the contact information for these people. Email address? I guess. So you have. What does it mean that you’re renting the list? Well, i i think you get the full snail mail, ok? Yeah, and phone numbers. So you can decide that you need that list for a one time usage. So maybe you’re you’re going to send out some sort of a postcard campaign or targeted mailing some sort or targeted calling phone calling campaign? You know, i wouldn’t, you know, being as i also do email marketing as one of my businesses, i’m very sensitive to email acquisition, i wouldn’t necessarily advocate buying or renting email addresses and then putting them into your database and e mailing out i could get you into trouble with your email service provider because it’s, because it’s unwanted and it’s spam is that could be construed as spam. So i’m just very sensitive to that. I think it would be better to use these list, really? For snail mail and phone call purposes, okay? And what does it mean that you’re you’re renting the list? So you actually then don’t own only information? It truly is just a rental on, so, you know they have, i guess, it’s one see if you’re going to rent it as a one time basis and probably a slightly higher fee. If you need to have that list accessible to you, maybe you plan to do, you know, quarterly mailings to the list or something like that? He would need the rental for the whole year, so you’re going to pay maur if you do want to put that information into your donordigital base, i would think so, yeah, ok, interesting, i think. Okay, so you you mentioned talking about a little talking about the parameters of what you’re what the output is going to be, right? So i just don’t like a couple of quick search is just to kind of see, all right, well, if i were, you know, a non-profit executive, what might some of the fields of information be interesting to me so you could do a geographic search and then, you know, break it down further by certain points of demographic. So i had done just a sample search to see well, i’m interested in people who would have an income over two hundred fifty thousand dollars based in new jersey, who are also classified what they call mail order donors i think in our world, in the nonprofit world, we would call that, you know, male appeal donors, and it turned out that there were there was a total household account of just over fourteen thousand names close to fourteen thousand five hundred, and that costs came out to about in the four hundred fifty dollars. Okay, so that was you know what that parameter came up with our center decided to so these are thes air search these air inputs that you’re that you’re trying to narrow your list by our lorts yeah. All right, well, what if i were a non-profit executive with some sort of an animal welfare agency? I might be interested in trying to target people who have self identified as liking cats and dogs right on. Then i decided, well, i might be very geographically focused, and i wouldn’t necessarily need the entire state, so i thought, well, let’s, see what the costs would be if i were to look at maybe two counties in new jersey, morris and somerset counties for people interested in cats and dogs turned out it came up to nine hundred eighty as the household count on that on that costs turned out to be one hundred fifty dollars. Now, how did you specify cats and dogs? There’s a open field where you can have a word interest category interest, there’s like a main interest. So when you’re when you’re looking at the main interests, you can look at things like arts. And entertainment. Uh, babies, children, uh, education just tryingto slipping through here, some of the ones that would be of interest to non-profits outdoor enthusiast, uh, photography, religion. Um, and then they had what they call us sub interest category. You can really drill down even further. And that’s where i got into looking for people who were interested in dogs and cats, for example, i see. Okay, that’s that could be you could have some fun with the subcategories studio going to break it down by ethnicity. Gender. Maria, how do you find all these free and a fee based? How do you how do you how do you find all these new resource is? Well, you know, usually they’re not sometimes they find may and this actually happens to be a situation where rick hilary from from the company reached out to me through lincoln. And, you know, we’ve talked about the power of lincoln for so here was a situation where he brought this particular product, my attention, and we’ve had several converse stations and back and forth about it. And, you know, i took a look at the test because you can actually just kind of play around with it as i did without paying anything at all. Okay, so that that website you want me to give you that? Yes, give it, but we’ll also put it on facebook and linkedin, right? Sure, though, that website is demographics, research, dot com okay, and what’s the earl for listselect uh, that that’s that’s where the starting point is that’s you there? Yeah, they actually give you ah! Pdf that kind of walk you through, how to use it. And they also give you the log in credentials so that you can log in and try and play around with it a bit way have to stop. We have to stop there, maria simple. You know her she’s, the prospect finder, and you’ll find her website at the prospect finder dot com. You’ll find her on twitter at maria simple, and you’ll find the two of us together. We’re going to be doing a chat and online chat hosted by the foundation center on march twenty first about prospect research it’s a two p, m eastern and my burning question is why i’m invited i don’t know they between the two of us, they think we’re both prospect research experts but between you and me, we know that you are. I’ll be there, tio, i’ll do color commentary or something. I don’t know we’re hearing me on, okay, but you can. I have a i have a couple things to contribute, but not as much as you, but you’ll find information about that on the foundation with center website it’s. March twenty first, two p m eastern. Thanks for being a guest, maria, thank you always a pleasure. Next week, juliet fund had more white space to your life she’s, a consultant and speaker, and she also is the daughter of candid cameras allen funt that’ll be fun. Also, scott koegler is back next week. He’s, our technology contributor and the editor of non-profit technology news. We’re all over the social web. You can’t make a click without smacking your head into tony martignetti non-profit radio, by the way, smacking your head in italian is sparkle a testa i learned that when i was in venice asking for directions to a bar once and someone said, sparkle a testa your head on the wall and then turn and make a left and there’s harry’s bar so it stayed with me, um, pinterest, slideshare even before last week, by the way, we were on pinterest in slideshare, itunes, facebook, youtube, twitter, linkedin, foursquare, wherever we’re connected, i thank you very much for being connected wherever it is that i see you. Thank you. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is our line producer, and the social shows social media is by regina walton of organic social media, the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules. I hope you’ll be with me next friday, one to two p, m eastern on talking alternative broadcasting at talking alternative dot com. 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