Michelle Boggs: Community & Engagement
Michelle Boggs shares her thinking on creating community and expanding engagement across your donors and volunteers. How might a Chief Community Officer help? Also, what your nonprofit can do to improve fundraiser retention, which helps you build solid relationships and community. Michelle is with Classy, the nonprofit affiliate of GoFundMe.
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Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of trauma. Top nia if you took my breath away with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate who happens to be sitting next to me again one more week. Uh The family is still visiting this week. Tell us what is going on. Hey, Tony, we’ve got community and engagement. Michelle Boggs shares her thinking on creating community and expanding engagement across your donors and volunteers. How might a chief community Officer help also what your nonprofit can do to improve fundraiser retention, which helps you build solid relationships and community. Michelle is with Classy, the non profit affiliate of GoFundMe on Tony’s Take Two Tails from the gym. It’s a clean machine were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org and buy pork bun looking to grow your nonprofit. You need a.org domain name from pork bun, instant recognition, trust and visibility. Pork bun.com here is community and engagement. It’s a genuine pleasure to welcome Michelle Boggs. She is the executive nonprofit industry advisor of Classy, the nonprofit affiliate of GoFundMe. She helps nonprofits maximize fundraising efforts by analyzing industry data, examining market messaging and donor relationship building. She was a San Francisco Business Journal, 40 under 40 in 2020. Um That was four years ago. Uh You know, we don’t, we don’t like Laurel rests here. We’ll have to see what’s been happening in the past four years and that’s old news now, but we keep, it’s still valuable, but, you know, it’s what, what’s been going on lately. Michelle is on linkedin and the company is at classy.org Michelle Boggs. Welcome to nonprofit Radio, Tony. Thanks so much for having me. It’s an honor. I’ve been listening to your show for a long time and congrats on 700 episodes. It, I just feel honored to be here today. So thanks so much for having me. Thank you. Thank you very much. I hope you don’t mind a little tease in the beginning. Uh You know, it’s no 40 under 40 is a terrific milestone honor to receive. Of course, you know, I’m just messing with you about uh Laurel resting. I know you’re not, we know you’re not a Laurel. I totally get it as we will find out as we will find out. So I, I peaked at 40 that was it? Huh? Right. That’s like, that’s like when you get your lifetime achievement award. No, I’m not, I’m not ready to surrender yet. I, I don’t want the lifetime achievement award. My lifetime is not over. You know, I feel like I, I’ve never gotten a lifetime achievement award but I feel like if you get it, what are people saying? There’s not much more coming? You don’t have, you don’t have too many more years left, lifetime achievement. You’ve already wrapped everything up. Uh No, I’m not, we’re not ready for that. Uh I got, I got more stuff to do. Um So classy class, he’s got millions of users on the platform. What’s, what’s sort of the state of giving from the classy perspective? Yeah. And you know, as you alluded to Classy is part of GoFundMe. So GoFundMe acquired Classy about two years ago and just for general knowledge because I don’t think most um of your 95% of the smaller nonprofits may be aware of the power within the marriage of these two brands and what we’re really excited about. Um and how the future um and existing state of giving is really helping us develop products that will help people be more generous and help others. So classy and it’s self, Tony supports nonprofits. We have about 6000 nonprofits using our platform. And then on the gofundme side, those are individuals setting up gofundmes and raising money on behalf of other individuals, friends, families, colleagues, coworkers um combined between the two companies, we just surpassed $30 billion raised. And in any given time, we have about about 100 and 50 million active users. Um Interfacing with Classy or GoFundMe. Classy specifically, I came to work here because before joining a technology company, I was a front line fundraiser myself for my entire career, worked at smaller more regional nonprofits, worked at some of the big, you know, fortune 100 nonprofits and did all the things, wore all the hats. Um and it’s been a phenomenal career. But what I started to notice towards the end of my tenure and before I jumped over to Classy was just this, we were really missing the mark in engagement with donors. It just seemed like Groundhog’s Day every year around. Ok, how do we keep our existing donors? How do we increase their giving? How do we find new donors? And it just, you know, kept the numbers just kept going in the wrong direction. And it was really just thinking we’ve got to be doing something wrong here. I mean, people are changing and how they want to engage with brands, how they want to show up in generosity, how they want to support others, what philanthropy means to them. And so for me, it’s been super exciting to work at Classy and GoFundMe and sort of be, you know, at the forefront of defining what community engagement looks like how people give, what the future of giving and fundraising will look like. So some of the big things that I we think about and talk about all the time is just nonprofits are facing such constant change. I mean, look at the news on Friday about the stock markets, you know, imagine going into a donor meeting this week with one of your top donors knowing that might be on their minds. And so it’s just constantly staying abreast of what’s happening. Um increasing support or expectations when they engage with you online or in person, they have evolving expectations, especially depending on their age. You know, if they’re a gen Z, they may might expect to engage with your nonprofit completely different than some of the folks you’ve made your whole career engaging, Tony, you know, a planned giving prospect who’s towards the end of their life and is planning on making a substantial gift to a nonprofit. So th those engagement expectations are changing rapidly and it’s really difficult to keep up with them and then cutting through the noise, think about the ads and the information that’s fed to you every single day. So how do nonprofits cut through that noise land? Their message, acquire donors, keep that interest and engagement, turn it into dollars and then be able to go back and show that impact. So it’s just like a wild and crazy time and, and then you throw in an election year, the noi uh I was just gonna say the, the, your, your point about the noise is uh increased exponentially in the next three months uh election cycle. And one other thing I’ll, I’ll, I’ll talk about quickly is, you know, throughout my career, the majority of sort of how we went about our business was this idea of like relationship building and bringing communities together. So whether that was a gala or a huge run walk or a tour of a hospital, it was always about kind of bringing people together and, and, you know, building that community engagement. And then within the last five years because of digital, it’s allowed us to reach donors all over the world and scale in ways we never thought possible. But I think because of that, we’ve lost a bit of the connection. And so we talk a lot at GoFundMe and Classy and with some of our big partners, Tony, like giving Tuesday, the giving institute, some of these other um big organizations doing a lot of data and research around donor behaviors. We think that people aren’t any less generous, even though a lot of the reports are telling us declining is giving. We actually think they’re just giving in different ways and our engagement is not keeping up with their expectations if that makes sense. So we’re talking a lot about like the future of being able to married both where you’re delivering incredible giving experiences, but you’re also bringing people together and, you know, kind of building that brand loyalty and that deeper understanding of why I show up for this nonprofit every day or why this nonprofit is important to me or do I see value in my gift or my time? Um And so we’ve been talking a lot about like sort of this next iteration of combining the power and scale of technology, but never forgetting the fact that this is a relationship business and that’s our strongest currency is trust and engagement. And actually, and not wisely used those two things can be in conflict, the use of technology and the personalization and the the recognition of being a relationship business. If if you’re not doing those things, you’re not combining those things smartly. Uh you, they can be at odds. Yeah, just before joining with you, I was reading this interesting um report around this survey that was done around producing large scale campaigns as a nonprofit using A I technology and specifically around images that you use. And donors were very turned off by knowing that the images were more like A I generated rather than like super raw and authentic. So even something like that is a great example of like I’m in marketing. I might work at a small nonprofit, I think. Oh, this is great. I’m I’m churning campaigns. I’m able to scale and reproduce at a, at a fast clip and not even realizing, you know, the detriment that that’s having on the donor who’s receiving that information because it’s lacking that, you know, that personal human community relationship piece to it. Authenticity. Yeah. If you’re, if you’re, if you’re inauthentic in your, I don’t know if you’re inauthentic in your webinars. If you’re inauthentic in your one on one donor meetings or small, small events in people’s homes, I mean, people see through that, uh just like they’re gonna see through an inauthentic image. I’m not saying we can spot every A I generated image. Uh I mean, that’s not, that’s not possible. But uh I don’t know, I, I think that would be a symptom of a larger lack of authenticity. Like a willingness to use fake images, you know, to, to promote your work. I mean, you’re doing the work, show us, show us the, the show us the reality. Yeah, you shouldn’t have to generate from artificial intelligence. All right. Yeah, you’re right. That’s a perfect example of the business of relationship, fundraising and artificial intelligence being at odds is a perfect example. Thank you. Um What, let’s see. Uh There’s something that makes that I, I think of when we’re listening to your explanation of, you know, where you think things stand now and, and I’d like to get into a little more about the, the future. What you’re thinking about the future of fundraising is uh and relationships. But, you know, the, the fact that the uh percentage of our gross domestic product that is fundraising that is comprised of fundraising revenue or represented by fundraising revenue is, has been stuck for decades, decades. And like, so you see different estimates like 2 2.5% of GDP. I’m not even sure I’ve seen 3% but, you know, certainly we’re not approaching 5% or, you know what, you know what I mean? In decades, we’ve been talking about this. What do you see as the ways of overcoming that? I mean, I, I would like to see GD uh giving like double to five or 6% of, of GDP, you know, and we’re talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. What do you, what do you see as the obstacles you’ve been in the business for a long time? Yeah, it, you know, um to be vulnerable, I had never heard that statistic until I guess it was February. I attended Microsoft’s inaugural Global Leaders Summit around nonprofits in Bellevue, Washington. And this gentleman gave an amazing presentation around the fact that that number has been stagnant, like you said, and what would happen if we were able to double or triple triple it? Like, could we get rid of food insecurity, could we solve for homelessness, et cetera? It was a really powerful, but again, I had never heard that statistic because when you hear things like $480 billion you’re like, we’re doing great. That’s so much money. That’s amazing. Um When, in fact, you know, there’s so much more to be done. But, yeah, I, I think it’s, um, I think it’s so many things, a lot of it, in my mind when I would work with teams or coach teams is a lot of it is we tend to just set the wrong metrics as nonprofit leaders. You know, we set metrics that don’t always drive long term donor retention and long term outcomes. It’s all very short sighted, you know, where you have to have this many meetings and this many proposals and you have to raise a million dollars in year one. And if not, you’re a failure. And so it doesn’t feed this culture around. It’s OK if it takes me three years to work with Tony, but I have my eyes on, you know, him leaving us at a quest of $25 million. Um And so there’s like, not a lot of long term planning that goes into much of the goal setting and strategy so that I think is a big piece and we talk a lot about organizations around like how could it look different to motivate the behaviors that are going to give you some of those better indicators around donor retention, larger gifts. Um Things like that. I think a big piece of it is this idea of philanthropy in general of like it’s not for the regular person and my everyday gift isn’t going to make a difference. And I think crowdfunding a platform like gofundme, all the stuff I’m sure you’ve seen on tiktok and Instagram about just everyday people changing the lives of someone. You know, there was this amazing story of this um this Vietnam vet who was working in a grocery store and he was the shopping cart. Um like he had, you know, gathered the shopping carts and some, you know, 30 year old man saw him and just thought that doesn’t look right. He looks, you know, much too old to be doing that and it’s hot out here and like, gosh, you know, and so we approached him and found out that the man had to do it to like make his, you know, rent, et cetera, pay his expenses. And so they started a gofundme and, you know, before you knew it, I think they raised like a couple $100,000 and the guy will never have to work again. But it’s this power in like these small donations can make a difference and that’s changing. Thank goodness. But I think for years myself, like the bottom of the donor pyramid, we just handled with, you know, large scale direct mail or emails or newsletters. And there wasn’t a lot of promoting this idea that the everyday donor can make a difference. And so there’s a lot of power in that. And then of course, looking at the data of those donors and having access to make more data driven decisions to say, ok, we have 9000 active donors. We should really spend some more time with 700 of them because the data is telling us not only do they have propensity and wealth, but they’re super engaged with us and we should be asking them for more and we should be asking them more often. So I think there’s been a lack of insight into powerful data for nonprofits to run more like businesses and um do more with less. And then um I think the whole, you know, impact piece has been a struggle as well is like, am I really making a difference? I mean, I experienced this a lot at a big disease, health and human services organization I worked at is like we were doing huge things on a national scale, but it was hard to get local regional people to feel like their involvement was really making a difference. So across the board showing powerful impact and outcomes is a challenge. So I could probably go on and on. But I think some of those things are what stick out to me. And I’d love to hear, you know, what you’ve heard from some of your guests or your perspective, Tony on why that number continues to be what it is. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds, both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers, just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more now, back to community and engagement. Well, thank you. All right. Turn the, turn the tables on me. Um Usually I don’t, usually, I don’t like that. No, no. Um Yeah. Uh I think uh related to your, your, your first valuable thought on this uh uh about the relationship building and the taking the time. Uh I think another contributing factor is the employee turnover in, in development, in fundraising. We’re, we’re not retaining, are some of our best fundraisers, you know, isn’t something like every 18 months. I think a major gift officer moves or somewhere around there. It’s not what you’d want it to be. I, I’d like to, I’d like to be like six or seven years. So I know it’s nowhere near that whatever it is. You know, if it’s two a year and a half, two years, you know, uh that doesn’t, that doesn’t lend itself to building the kinds of relationships that you and I are talking about. You know, you use three years as an example off the top of your head, which I think is a great one. Yeah, sometimes gifts do take three years. Well, if, if, if the average is a year and a half and then the employee is gone, that’s two major gift officers or two giving directors. Well, now, now the gift is going to come to the third one. I mean, where’s the, so, you know, where, where’s the role? Not only, not only that, like the other thing that’s happening there with that, you know, revolving door is that any trust or progress that was made, you know, completely. In fact, it sets you back even more because the donors thinking, well, I got to know George or Martina and I liked them and now they’re gone. And so I wonder what’s going on over there or whatever it is, you know, but I think some of that turnover in my opinion ties back to the people do not stay where they don’t feel successful. And if we’re not setting them up for success, because we’re putting metrics and goals that are either unrealistic or do not allow for powerful, strong long term relationships to be built. And then you’re gonna leave, you’re going to go somewhere else where you’re going to feel successful. When I was a director of Planned Giving decades ago, I used to track and, and thankfully, the vice president who I worked for uh accepted this meaningful contacts, meaningful, it had nothing to do with dollars and that I had, I had dollar metrics also, or number of gift commitments more likely than in plan, giving more commitments than dollars. But meaningful contacts, you know, a meaningful contact could be, uh, a heartfelt email. It doesn’t have a meaningful contact is not necessarily a face to face meeting. Certainly that counts too. But, um, so, you know, I think meaningful contacts just in terms of, you know, I sent a birthday card, a meaningful contact. I sent, I sent a card on the anniversary of your very first gift to the university. Yeah. Imagine that nobody remembers the first year they gave. No, nobody at all. But you have it. It’s in your CRM. When was the first year the person? Oh, my gosh, they gave 15 years ago. We’re coming up on the, the day and the, the exact date of their 15th anniversary giving to us, even if they lapsed a couple of years, it’s still, you know, if they’re still reasonably current 15 years ago, it was your very first gift to us. People are bowled over by that. It, it’s in everybody’s CRM. So I love that meaningful contacts. Yeah. The anniversary of the first gift. That’s a, that’s, that’s a really valuable, easy touch point, easy. Every single donor, you, you have that information on every single person in your CRM database. Um, so, all right, you know, I wanted to add one other. I wanted to add another thing. Um, when you were speaking about the meaningful contacts is, and this might come up later. But I think also we’ve done a terrible job as an industry with connecting our supporters, our volunteers, our donors, our benefactors with one another. So the communication is typically like nonprofit to donor, maybe we’ll let you give us some feedback. But usually it’s only if you’re a big donor or a board member, otherwise we really don’t want to hear your ideas or, you know, whatever and I’m being facetious. But my point is the more that we can connect them with like minded individuals and people that care about the same things and they’re gonna have a stronger affinity and responsibility towards us. So like to bring that to life, the only really philanthropic thing that I do because I have four Children and I work a lot is I’m a mentor and I’ve done it for about, this is going to be my seventh school year. I mentor for an organization in Florida. And once a week I meet with my mentee and, you know, I had one through high school and then now I have one who’s going to be a junior. But anyhow, I’m very dedicated to this. We meet once a week. I get so much out of it. I love my relationship, blah, blah, blah. Um and I give also to them monthly, but I always think, you know, I would care so much more about this organization and there would be such a slim chance of me ever stopping to mentor if I had met other people that are doing this. Like, I’ve never been introduced to other mentors. They’ve never gotten us together. They’ve, you know, we’ve never had moments of saying, like, let’s throw a holiday party for the mentees. Like, hey, I have this mentee that I’m really struggling to connect with. Like, do you have advice? They’ve created no network amongst us. And I could easily if work changed or something with my kids, especially if it was a new mentee, Tony that I didn’t yet have that relationship. I could easily see myself being like, uh I just don’t have time for that anymore. But if I’m dedicated to this other group of people and I’ve made friends with them in relationships, I’m just gonna have a stronger likelihood of staying on and we also don’t do that. So like folks will come to a five K race maybe for a hospital around pediatric heart patients. They come to the race, they raise money. We say thanks. We ask you again next year to participate. We typically don’t ever introduce you to these other heart families or create these moments. So I think that’s a big piece of it as well that we’re just, we’ve really stunk at. That’s really interesting. I wonder if that organization that you mentor for keeps data on when the mentors leave. You know, if, if uh I guess it sounds like if someone graduates from high school and that’s the end of the relationship. How many people do they leave? How, how many, how many mentors end the relationship? The me, the mentoring when the, uh, when their mentees age out of the age out of the process, but you’d be more likely to stay, as you said, if you had a, if you had a relationships with the other mentors, but you might even feel like you’re letting others down. Exactly. That’s what it comes down to. It’s like, I don’t want to let anybody down and you’re not letting, right, and you’re not letting your mentee down because you saw them through the, through the full process until they graduated high school. So you, you haven’t disappointed your mentee that’s critical. I bet a lot. I bet very few people do that. But then what’s the, what? I don’t know, there’s a technical term but what’s the drop off after a mentee graduated? And this is even not a great example because I have ownership to the mentee. But think about more, you know, traditional nonprofits where I’m literally just giving a gift in hopes that it’ll do something around, let’s call it sex trafficking. But other than that, if my finances change or I move or there’s a change in my career, it’s so easy for me to just be like, uh, I don’t support them anymore because there isn’t any responsibility or ownership or to your point. I’m not letting anybody down. So, yeah, I think there’s a lot of opportunity there. You hit on something else. Uh You just briefly mentioned, I wanna pull a little thread on, uh, surveying. You know, you were saying we, we only send surveys to certain donor classes or, or, uh, and then another thing that I find disappointing is when, when some organizations do send surveys and they ask for information, then they don’t, they don’t honor it. They don’t, they don’t honor the communication preference. Uh They don’t honor the program preference. You might ask the person’s birthday, but then you don’t send birthday cards. You know, if they give you the birthday again, something buried in your crm. Uh if you asked for birthday and they gave it to you, you know, use the, use the, use the data that you asked for. So, you know, just generally, you know, don’t survey if you’re not gonna respect the, the preferences and the, and, and, and use the data in, in valuable ways. It’s so true. And, you know, that was one of the biggest drivers for me wanting to come to classy and go fund me is the fact that as a joint company, we sit on the most unique, powerful philanthropic data sets. You think about all the people on gofundme giving to people, all the people on classy giving to organizations and there’s so much that we can dig into that data and learn. But yes, I mean, it’s got to be mirrored to like your most beloved brands. You know, Starbucks asked me for my birthday because guess what? They’re going to send me a free coffee on my birthday and now I’m more and more engaged with Starbucks. I’m loyal to Starbucks. And so it’s not like nonprofits have a lot more data than they think. And they’re just not always using it or thinking about it in those meaningful ways. Like something like you said, you, you’ve mentioned it a couple of times now. The birthday thing is so easy. It’s like we remember it’s your birthday, Tony. We love you over here. It takes two seconds to, you know, shoot a iphone video with your team at your nonprofit. Hey, Tony, we love you. Happy birthday buddy. That takes two seconds when Tony gets that. You better believe he’s thinking like, man, I love them. You know, not only am I gonna give my gift, but when they asked me to have a coffee in a month, I’m gonna remember that and I’m gonna carve out time for that coffee or whatever it is. So, yeah. Could not agree more. It’s time for a break. Pork bun.com named the number one domain registrar by USA today for 2023 and 2024. Pork bun helps you share your organization’s mission with a.org domain name dot org. And the entire.org family of domains are at the heart of change makers and philanthropies worldwide. Join an international community of individuals and organizations sharing a common goal to make the world a better place. Your.org domain name gives your website credibility is easy to remember and helps bring better awareness to your goals. Every domain at Pork bun comes with free features like who is privacy ssl certificates, website and email hosting trials and more. You can manage everything about your domain from one place backed by five stars support 365 days a year. Get your.org domain name for a low price at Pork bun.com. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Let’s swing this mic over here. Thank you, Kate. Hope you’re enjoying your, uh, your beach weekend, your beach week, beach week vacation. I do. It’s very nice. Very hot, but it’s fun. You want, you want hot weather for the beach or at least not raining. But uh, yeah, hot is ok. We, we sit under umbrellas very, very unconscious this week. Uh More tales from the gym, but it’s a positive message. Positive. I am grateful to the folks in this little community fitness center that they are so scrupulous about wiping down the machines after they, we use them. Of course, you know, I, I wiped down. So we, everybody is so cautious. Uh There’s, there are three different places where you can get pa uh towels, you know, pa paper towels, three different paper towel dispensers in this gym that’s probably only about 2000 square feet, maybe 2500. And there are multiple bottles of disinfectant and Purell. So there’s plenty of availability and people are good about it. It’s, and these things are not just hanging out there and nobody’s using them. Everybody is so scrupulous and I think that’s very thoughtful uh of all the folks using the community gym. And then there was one time when somebody did not wipe down the machine, but there was a very pleasant interaction. Uh One of the seniors, uh not one of the loud ones who I’ve talked about like the boat guy with the, the boat, uh the the engine uh refurbishing uh tutorial and, and there was the guy, I think it was the same one with the uh the Blue Angels narration. Uh And then there was the woman, of course, with the uh the incident, the assault. And uh it wasn’t, it wasn’t somebody who I know uh though not, not one of our cast of characters, maybe I should, I should have signed these folks names maybe or try to learn their names but not ask them. I don’t wanna ask what’s your name? Because then I’m in uh I’m in for a 45 minute, you know, conversation every time I go. But these are nice people. Uh So they um so one time somebody didn’t, may have been a visitor because this is a beach town. We get a lot of uh uh visitors. So people renting for a week or even maybe a month so you can get a day pass to the gym, you can get a weekly pass. I don’t know if we have monthly but I know there’s day and week. So, uh, may have been a visitor, you know, uh, and someone went over and said, you know, uh, you really should wipe down the machine. You know, we, we just, all, we do that for each other. And I thought, well, that’s a very, that’s a very thoughtful way of explaining. I mean, who’s gonna disagree with that? You know, you’d have to be like a psychopath or something to say. I don’t, I don’t give a shit about the rest of you, you know. So uh it was very well explained, you know, we do this for each other. So my uh my thanks to my uh gym, fitness center comrades for keeping the equipment clean. We’re all very good. We’re all doing it for each other. I think that’s very admirable. And that is Tony’s take two Kate. It’s good that you found something positive about your gym. No, a clean gym is a good gym. It’s about time. Something positive from this nasty New Yorker transplanted to North Carolina. Well, we’ve got Buku but loads more time, here’s the rest of community and engagement with Michelle Boggs. You, you mentioned, uh you know, getting through the noise and we talked about uh how noisy it is in these uh until election and then even probably after the election. I mean, then there’s gonna be noise about what, what’s coming, the new administration, how, what, what ideas do you have about sort of breaking through and, and getting heard even the, even next year when the election is over and we have a new administration, you know, just even, just generally. Yeah. So I, I hate to give tips that aren’t as useful, but like back up to January, February, we started having really strategic conversations with our nonprofit partners around like how are you preparing specific to an election year? So thinking about things like avoiding key dates of, you know, things that might be happening politically that you wouldn’t want to compete with thinking about an increase in ad spend costs starting probably summer to fall. So can you, you know, bulk up your ad spend at the beginning of the year to save money thinking about um you know, depending on which candidate becomes president, you know, sometimes people may rage, give or, you know, get passionate about something. So just preparing proactively. So we’ve had a lot of conversations around that um and getting in front of your donors face to face and just having, you know, a transparent conversation about, do you anticipate your giving changing in any way, you know, that sort of thing? So some of that stuff has been happening and you have to think proactively and strategically about it. But I think when you just think about cutting through the noise, it goes back to like that personalization, it’s communicating with me in the way that I want to be communicated with, of course, is going to obviously increase your ch your chances of conversion or reaching them in that moment or activating generosity. So if you know certain donors do really well with text, do you have those tools and capabilities to do that? If you know some of your donors really do prefer a quarterly sort of impact report that they can read more at length things that are happening. So I think a lot of it is like that segmentation and personalization of your donors. So not a one size fits all message. And then when it actually is time to give, what is that experience like? So before coming to class, I worked in a children’s hospital, I was president of the foundation. I’m like two months into the job. I get my first email from the foundation asking me to donate to something. And I’m like, oh, you know, I work here now, I really want to lead by example, I’m gonna make a gift. So I scroll down, I click on the donate button and the experience was terrible. I’m on my phone and I’m like filling out all these fields and you know, it’s not mobile optimized. I can barely see what’s happening. I get down, I get down to the moment of the gift and they only took credit cards and I’m like yelling to one of my kids, like, can you go get me my, you know, purse that was, was nowhere near me. And I was like being lazy. And I remember messaging our marketing person, like we don’t have like mobile wallet or like, you know, any of because I’m thinking I was determined to see that gift through, but if I’m an everyday person I’m giving up anyway. So, you know, that that experience has to be quick, modern intuitive. Um So that’s a big thing obviously. And then, you know, there has to be, there has to be ways of, you know, flexibility. So are you making it an option for me to become a recurring donor? I mean, think about the subscription economy, Tony, think about probably all the things you subscribe to that you probably don’t even keep track of. It’s like, what’s another eight bucks a month? Are you making that an option for your donors where they can maybe give smaller amounts, but over the course of a year and they’re giving monthly? Um So I think it goes back to just control what you can control. And some of this, we can control as nonprofits, we can use our data better, we can create more personalized experiences, we can create um giving experiences that are on par with checking out at Amazon, you know, those things we have control over. So that’s at least one way to try to cut through the noise or some ways to try to cut through the noise. You all think about a uh a chief community officer. Uh What, what’s your thinking there? Because I, I think it’s very related to what you, what you were just saying. What, what, what, what are you advocating for uh in a, in a, in a chief community officer? Yeah. Um And thank you for asking the classy every year does a uh nonprofit conference for the social sector. It’s called the Collaborative. And this past year we did it in Chicago and we had over 700 attendees and our um president of Classy and um Chief operating Officer of GoFundMe Soraya Alexander. Her whole keynote opening speech was about this concept and it was so well received, but it’s this sort of disruptive idea of a lot of what I just talked about is like, you have a chief development officer, you have a Chief Revenue Officer and it’s like, don’t get so obsessed with that, get obsessed with bringing people together. And so as a chief Community officer, you’re thinking about how can I find those rabid believers, those people who show up, who open my emails, who come to my events, who donate, who volunteer, who give, you know, in kind donations. And how do I start to think thoughtfully and strategically about putting those people in contact with one another? And so, um you know, as an example, maybe instead of doing an annual report at the end of the year, you bring together that group of 100 of your best supporters and you do a presentation or you do an interactive workshop or to your point, you know, we’re always looking for information, bring, bring a focus group together of people that are like minded that care about your organization to talk through some of those questions that you’re dying to know the answers to that you might otherwise send out in a survey or whatever it is. But it’s being really intentional around doing what you’re already doing. But adding on another layer of bringing people together and giving more power back to those believers and supporters to do it for each other. So, a good example, I love to share this story is um this organization called Moz. They’re a huge proponent in men’s health. I mean, you know, started in Australia and they do this really well. So they’ve got these like people and I’m drawing a blank on what they are. They have like a really fun name for them, but it’s this group and they’re all introduced to one another and there’s promotions around, you know what Tom’s doing to promote and raise money and what Carl’s doing. And so they’re constantly connecting and sharing stories and sharing impact and they feel like they’re part of this family and this commute. So now they’re not just responsible to November, they’re responsible to these mo bros. That’s what they’re called. Um So again, like thinking about as a chief community officer, where are those gaps in me bringing these supporters together? And it doesn’t always have to be a huge lift because I think sometimes event people, their mind goes to, oh, I don’t want to add another event. We don’t have the money to do that, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I think it’s just putting the power back on your supporters around. Like we would love to bring you guys together in a meaningful way. Would you host something? Would you plan something and so enabling and empowering them to do it in ways that are most meaningful to them. So let’s say that this organization I talked about in Florida came to me and said, you know, Michelle, we’re having a hard time retaining our mentors year over year, especially after graduation. Do you have any ideas of how you could help and roll up your sleeves? You better believe I’d be like, that’s really cool. Let me think about that. You know, let me give me a list, sir. Let me start an email. You know, we’ll meet up for coffee and we’ll talk about it. So I just think, I just think again, we we the more that we can think about people don’t quit their friends, they quit nonprofit. So how can you be that you want to build community? Like by the way, thank you, retention. That’s the that’s the technical term of art, technical term of art that I couldn’t think of retention, keeping, keeping people, yeah, retaining. Um Yeah, you wanna, you wanna build community, I mean, you want to build a community of mentors centered around this organization so that, you know, like we said earlier, you’re not letting down your community if you leave, but you’re not, you’re not your community down by leaving. You’re not because you’re not gonna do it, you’re gonna stay as long as it’s, as long as it’s at all feasible, you’re gonna find a way to keep giving to your community through the mentor relationships. And as you alluded to it sounds like you had a really, you know, super cool forward thinking leader when you were doing planned giving, who, you know, was who honored these meaningful interactions and didn’t just always hold you to the numbers. So, you know, as leaders, I think there is an opportunity for us to honor some of that community building and rewarding that and recognizing that because of the long term play around retention around, you know, help having your donors acquire donors for you on your behalf. You know, they’re gonna people give to people, you know, that’s why social media fundraising is so powerful and successful. Because if I send out emails or a Facebook, people are going to give to me. So again, we don’t really leverage our supporters to help us with that peer to peer fundraising either because oftentimes we don’t always set metrics to that November is, is that not the one where men shave their heads in the month of November? Isn’t that the one that they’re the ones that grow the mustaches? I think the other one is Baldwin’s Ohs. Baldwin, right. Baldwin. Of course, they shave their. Ok. Thank you, November. They grow facial hair. I knew it was something to do with hair. Ok. Just really quickly on November because I think this is another tip for listeners or like the evolution of the future of giving is we also can’t be too prescriptive and constrained around how you support our organization. So November has really evolved in this. So they don’t say to everybody, the only way to support us is to grow a stash, you know, they’re going to alienate people, they say support us in whatever way is most meaningful to you. And so they’ve really, they’re kind of risky. They’re kind of um bold in some of their marketing. And, you know, some of these more old school nonprofits might be like, oh my gosh, I would never do that. But again, you have to let go of some of that control as a marketer to meet younger donors where they are. And so I always tell this really quick story about November, but they had a college kid whose grandmother or mother, um, sewed the costume of like a male anatomy part and he like ran around on the college campus, raising money around men’s like prostate health or testicular health or something. And I think some organizations would be like, absolutely not, you know, if I’m too afraid of our brand, I’m too afraid of the backlash. They didn’t and they let him do it and he raised all this money and now all these other fraternities on different campuses are doing things. So I think, you know, I think back to my career, if community supporters said we want to do a third party fundraiser for you, we want to do a small fundraiser, we want the proceeds to go to you. We would give them a tool kit. I mean, that’s not that inspiring. It’s like this is how you do it, you know, make sure it’s approved by legal, make sure you don’t screw with our logo, you know, that’s not very inspiring. So again, I think there’s a balance in obviously brand integrity and keeping that safe. But there also needs to be creative, creativity and flexibility and meeting people where they are because they might come up with some really amazing ideas of how they want to support you. And if you encourage that and support that they’re going to come back. So there’s a piece of that too that I think um is a huge opportunity for us as a sector. An example of giving those tools and empowering people is uh the wildly successful giving Tuesday. It’s totally, it’s totally decentralized. You know, you do giving Tuesday the way you want to if you want to, you know, obviously still mandate, but, you know, just use our use, use some basic branding and they, of course, you know, they’ve expanded and there’s wild, wild amounts of support and ideas and they do have a community for sharing ideas like what, you know, this is our first giving Tuesday, what should we do or? Um so, you know, that’s, it’s just an example of empowering folks to go out and, and fundraise in, in their way. And I think so many orgs myself included is like you do the Giving Tuesday, that’s such a great acquisition tool. We got 45 new donors to giving Tuesday. What are you doing with those donors? You know, is there a plan in place once they come on board on that? I think it’s December 2nd this year. You know, I would challenge listeners to be thinking now about, ok, how do I get to know these new donors because I know they’re going to come and how do I start to build that meaningful relationship with them so that it’s not just every giving Tuesday, I’m trying to replace those donors because that’s what will happen. I, I just wanna make something explicit for listeners. You know, we talked about a, a chief community officer. Uh our listeners are in small and mid size nonprofits so they may not have the luxury of appointing someone, a Chief Community officer. But all these things that you and I are talking about are still eminently doable. You know, maybe in pieces by someone who is, you know, maybe it’s the vice president or maybe it’s the Director of Development or, you know, maybe it becomes a, a partial responsibility. You know, it’s, it doesn’t have to be that you have a new full time hire with, with all that, with all that expense that’s called the Chief Community Officer. These ideas are eminently employable, even without someone being appointed to that title 100%. Yeah, I’m so glad you said that. It’s like the idea here is like, this is everybody’s job and everybody’s responsibility. You know, it should be a, a plus one on everybody’s title. And so just even changing the way you engage with your teams, if you do a team meeting or, you know, you do a regular cadence of engagement, adding this as part of the conversation. Ok. You know, for the next three months, these are our plans, let’s add on and see how we can make them even more impactful and how we can start to think about thoughtfully putting people together and it becomes like a group exercise where everybody’s weighing in and everybody’s being able to um influence this. So, yeah, I, I definitely, you don’t need to hire a Chief Community Officer. It’s really, everyone’s sort of just shifting the way they think about this whole idea and concept and we move the needle when we pay attention to things. I mean, you know, I, I see that in my own business and my own work, I see that in organizations when you start to report on something and measure it and maybe, you know, just like small measures, you know, but when you start to report on it regularly and measure it now you’re, now you’re putting institutional momentum behind it, things are gonna move and it, it, it may be a small movement in the first six months or even the first year. But you’ve taken steps toward building a community of where you already had the people in place that all your constituents are with you, all your people, let’s call them people, not constituents, all the people you in different different categories. But now you’ve, you know, now you’ve broken down silos and put folks together and you’ve built community where it didn’t exist among your, among your, your populations. There you go. There’s a, there’s like a worthy six month goal or even a 12 month goal. I think also it’s a great exercise to get like partners, stakeholders, boards involved. I mean, it’d be an awesome board exercise to just present this whole concept of like we’ve not done a good job of bringing people together of allowing constituents to speak to constituents, allowing donors to meet other donors. Like people want to feel like they’re a part of something bigger. We’ve always just done this one way. Communication board. Let’s talk about this. You know, how would we think about doing this differently? I mean, that I think could be a great exercise. Now, your boards more engaged and they’re not always just, you know, not that people do this, but I, my fear with my, a lot of the boards that I worked with is like, it was a report out during a board meeting and then we usually, you know, got on them about their giving and even as a board member, it wasn’t super inspiring or there wasn’t a lot of work happening in between board meetings. So even getting them as like your tests, early adopters um could be a great place to start regardless of your resources or size of your team. I mean, use those individuals to start to build out this concept, Michelle, let’s flip to the future a little bit. Uh What, what do you, what do you see coming even maybe just in aspirational terms and what would you like to see? But you know, what does classy see coming in the next, you know, like 3 to 5 years? Yeah, I mean, classy is super focused on, I would say three kind of big buckets. The first is like best in class giving experiences. So what we’ve sort of talked about over the last 45 minutes is that when there’s that moment of generosity. Is it a wonderful experience on par? Like I said, with your normal um e commerce experiences? And does it feel like they know me as a donor? Um That’s gonna be huge. I think that’s how we’re gonna drive engagement. That’s how we’re gonna start to tap in two pockets of people that we don’t even know exist at the moment because we’ve been going at it with really this one size fits all. So incredible donor experiences. The second bucket is really that data and intelligence piece. Again, we’re sitting on this amazing data set now, what do we do with this knowledge? So, you know, a great example is like giving behaviors for people using Androids versus people using apple, you know, giving behaviors when people are asked on certain days of the week, like there’s so much crazy stuff. It’s, it’s why I always tell the story. It’s why Amazon bought RBA. Amazon already had their own vacuum. They bought RBA because they wanted the data of people using RBA, they could get data on their homes and their behaviors. And so it’s the same idea, right is how do we unlock this data into delivering, you know, the best products for not only our individuals helping others on gofundme, but also our nonprofits using classy. So we’re really, really excited about what we’re going to be able to do with this data. And then the third is this idea, can I just stop you Amazon having data on the, the, the floor plan of my home. I never thought I don’t have a Roomba but, but, but I mean, they can figure out the schematic. I mean, he said, ok, this person has a counter or this person has an island in their kitchen. Uh, they have so many uh bar stools around the, around the, around the, the uh countertop. Uh So here’s their TV console. Uh We don’t, we don’t see a TV console. So it must be wall mounted because this is clearly clearly a living room, but there’s no entertainment console. So they have a wall mounted TV. You know, I mean, it’s, that’s incredible. I never thought of the value of, I mean, it’s uh like a lot of things in data. It’s, it’s scary but they, they could, they have millions of schematics of people. So we, we to bring that to life, fasi launched um intelligent ask amounts. So we’re empowering our nonprofits to actually put the right ask in front of the right donor at the right time. Instead of, again, no matter who you are. If you log on to my nonprofits website, it’s gonna say $20.50 dollars, $100 it’s going to give you different amounts based on your data, your giving background, your wealth, your zip code. Um And so again, like we tell the story of the, there was a gentleman who had given like a pretty large, you know, online gift to an organization. I think it was like $1000 at the end of the year, which is substantial to me, you know, for a person to give online. And then the next year received a campaign with those smaller amounts. And of course, that person thinking, oh, is that what other people are giving? And so, you know, sort of not meeting them where they are. So the intelligent ask the data, all that is going to be um so exciting. And again, one of the reasons I love being here and working here is is being at the forefront of some of this. And then that last third bucket is that community stuff. I mean, the future of peer to peer, the future of events, the future of how we build communities is um you know, something we’re thinking about and talking about every day because there is going to be there. We’re going to need to shift engagement to change that gross domestic volume number that you talked about has not moved and to think about this next wave of philanthropists, this younger people. So some big shifts have to happen. And so those I would say are the three kind of exciting things for the future for us. Do you have anything on the, on the personal side, uh nonprofit related that uh that you aspire to or that you wanna see? Yeah, that’s a great question. I would like to see this is just like kind of random. But a big part of my role at Classy is um sort of getting our name and our brand out there. So being this like ambassador, so I attend all the conferences. So my travels crazy, but I’m at all the big conferences and I think there’s like this, it goes back to like personalization. I I think some of the content that we deliver at these conferences is like very stale and regurgitated. And so I would like to see some sort of incubation innovation, something where leaders within certain nonprofits can come together and just have the freedom of experimentation and what if and what would it take? And I don’t know what that looks like, but unless I feel supported and free to do that and surrounded by peers who are having these really groundbreaking innovative ideas, I just don’t think there’s a lot of access to that um as a nonprofit leader who’s trying to do so much. And so I find myself sort of being attracted to these organizations or these leaders who are kind of bucking some of the old ways and trying new things and feeling the freedom and failing. But just knowing, you know, we can’t keep doing it the way we’ve always done it. So a community, like you’d like to see a, that’s an awesome idea that like a community of CEO S because it’s lonely, you know, it’s lonely at the top even, I think you have it so much on the for profit side, but on the nonprofit side it just doesn’t seem to exist at least what I’ve seen. Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off, Tony. No, no, no. Uh, it’s, it’s hard at the top so to have a community of like minded, like, like similarly placed CEO S and directors safe space to share. You know, nobody’s got an ax to grind about the other team or, you know, hard bad feelings or animosity or something. It’s nobody, nobody’s got a dog in the, but I’m not good with sports. I don’t know, nobody’s got a ball in the game or a ball on the, a ball on the field, whatever they so uh yeah. No, you’re right. Uh It, it’s related to a lot of what we’re talking about, but it, so it sounds to me like you’re envisioning AAA community of CEO S Safe Space and even just at a conference, you know, maybe, maybe it’s just like a, a two hour drop in or something. But it’s only for the, it’s only for the CEO S and executive directors. Yep. I mean, they’re people too, you know, they deserve safe space. Executive directors are people too. Alright. Is there anything you’d like to share that? I haven’t asked you about, we didn’t talk about. Yeah, I, I’m, I’m super active on linkedin and I love to meet new people. I’d love to hear any feedback from this conversation or challenges to my ideas or, you know, different perspectives or ways of thinking about some of the stuff I’ve talked about. And so we just love, if listeners found me on linkedin, would love to meet you and talk to you. And um I don’t have a lot of superpowers, but I think one of mine is really just connecting with people. I love to do it. It, it fills me up. So I would love to meet anybody that’s listening that wants to talk more. OK. Well, I promise you that uh I’m gonna send you a linkedin, a linkedin connection invitation. All right. So don’t turn it down. I mean, you’re gonna, you know, I already, I already sent you one. So. Oh, you did. Oh OK. All right. Thank you. All right. All right. You beat me. OK? No. And just one more thing, you know, thank you for doing this. I’m sure it’s a heavy lift and a labor of love and the content you’re putting out is amazing. And congrats on 700 episodes and just really appreciative of what you do. Thank you for your gratitude. Thank you very much. It is a labor of love. I do. Yeah, it is. So, thank you very much Michelle Boggs, executive nonprofit industry advisor at Classy. Michelle wants you to connect with her on linkedin and be in touch. You’ll find her there. Boggs Boggs. You have no excuse now. Not to connect with Michelle and you’ll find the company at classy.org. Thank you again, Michelle. Thanks Tony. Next week, a different take on donor retention. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org and buy pork bun looking to grow your nonprofit. You need a.org domain name from pork bun, instant recognition, trust and visibility pork bun.com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation study. You’re with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.
