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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’ve endured the pane of glass a tricky if i had to speak with harry words you missed today’s show you’re online giving plan change is a constant in the online space what does that mean for your fund-raising plan? This year fund-raising consultant joe garrick shares his wisdom on tony’s take two lose track of time. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna i’m a slash pursuant radio and by wagner cpas guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream tony dahna may slash tony tell us i’m very glad to welcome joe garrick to the show. He is president of garrick fund-raising associates. He has nearly twenty years of experience helping non-profits build donorsearch sta mes to increase their fund-raising he was founder of the fund-raising authority, providing online fund-raising training before consulting, he was an executive director and the development director. You’ll find him at garrick tw dot com and he’s at joe garrick and he’s on non-profit radio welcome, joe garrett. Thanks, tony. I’m really, really glad to be here with you today. Thanks for having me. I’m glad you’re doubly glad. That’s cool. Thank you. Thank you. Um, okay, let’s, talk about online. We got a good amount of time together. This space, as i said in the intro, is always changing. But how do we, uh, how do we adapt? Yeah, it’s a great question and it’s one that, you know particularly bedevils small and mid sized non-profits because there’s a ton of information coming at fundraisers about online fund-raising it comes from what they see, large organizations doing it comes from what vendors are trying to sell them, and a lot of times it comes internally. I can’t tell you how many non-profits i’ve worked with where the fundraisers say to me, hey, i was talking to a boardmember and they said, we’ve got to be on blank and blank is usually a social media platform or ah, blogging platform or a crowdfunding platform. Okay, and so they’re kind of getting it from all sides. And so one of the one of the biggest things like right up front here that i want to say to non-profits is, um, kind of relax about online fund-raising it’s important, but just like every other kind of fund-raising it’s important to develop a plan and a strategy for your online fund-raising and to implement it and give it time toe work, you know, a lot of non-profits i’ve found feel like they’ve got to keep up, you know, every new thing that comes out, they’ve got to keep up with, you know, they’ve got ad, they gotta take bitcoin donations, they’ve got it beyond another social media platform, and the truth is just like every other kind of fund-raising this is fund-raising it’s a process, you need to develop a plan, and you need to stick with it. And then after you give it some time to run, you contest and iterated, you need teo, but it’s, it’s, knowable and it’s doable for every non-profit stick with it long enough to toe do, in fact test and and see if there’s if there’s traction among your constituents, i mean, you’re not going to know that in just like, four to six months that’s, right? That’s, right? I always say you know, develop a plan and give it, you know, at the very least a year so that you have enough data, enough contacts with your donors, with your prospects, with the network as a whole, to really see where it’s going for your non-profit again, it’s, just like, you know, just because we say it’s online fund-raising doesn’t mean it not still fund-raising, you know, non-profits wouldn’t, you know, launch a they wouldn’t launch a capital campaign and give it a month, and if they don’t have, you know, a certain percentage of gifts dropped the campaign right away, they’d carefully consider whether or not they were ready to run a crowd i mean, a capital campaign, they develop a plan for it, and then they’d implement that plan and on lee after they’ve implemented, would they be able to really just make decisions about changing that plan and it’s the same with online fund-raising need to really think it through before you dive into a new strategy or a new tactic, and then you’ve got to give it time. And and also you really need to make sure that your online fund-raising strategy works with your overall fund-raising strategy so many non-profits have limited bandwidth in terms of time and money. I mean, rare right is the non-profit that has too much band with all it never happens. So you have to make sure that you’re making wise decisions because everything that you’re doing online, it’s time that you take away from offline and everything you’re doing offline is time that you’re taking away from online. So you have to kind of see where those where those tactics strategies fit together in your overall fund-raising plan. Yeah, and we’re going to talk a little about the offline, too, because they do need to align. What do you do with that? Boardmember or ceo that says, we need to be somewhere can can the existence of a plan help you and be sort of a defense and say, look, we’ve got a plan, we’re executing, you know? What can we say to that person who was above us that says, we gotta be on this new this new ah shiny platform? Sure, yeah, i think your biggest the biggest tool you have is a fundraiser foran executive director when those ideas come at you is a plan. Now, if you’re developing the plan because you’re getting those ideas, then you may have a problem because now that’s all for today? Yeah, why isn’t idea and that playing but if you if you take the time to develop a plan ahead of time about how your non-profit is going to pursue engagement online, and if that plan has phases and deadlines and metric and, you know, testing and looking at maternal investment and it really just is a good plan and it makes sense, then you’re able to, you know, take that to your boardmember why usually like to say to boardmember xero first of all, that’s a really interesting idea. Thank you so much for being think, you know, for thinking about this for our non-profits top of mind that you’re generating these ideas, i want to let you know i’m definitely going, we’re definitely going to consider it right now, we’re in the middle of our online and he’s been playing online fund-raising plan for the year and were, you know, at band with capacity, and we’re going to implement this, and at the end of the year, we’re goingto look at how we did and if there’s you know, if there are some things that are underperforming, and we think that this strategy will, you know, outperform those we’d love to take a look at it. So, you know, stay tuned, i promise i’ll report back to you at the end of the year, and then you know it, you know, an animal, so i hope that non-profit that you’re working at, you know, whoever, whoever you are, dear listener, that you are not in this situation, but if you’re in a situation where boardmember they’re saying no, no, no, you definitely need to do this this year, right now, then my suggestion always is saying to them, that’s, fine, we can do that, but what should we cut? You know, that’s the big question, what should we cut? We’re running at capacity in terms of band with so let’s, take a look at the fund-raising plan and you tell me what to cut out of that fund-raising plan to be able to fit this and normally that gets boardmember thinking more about the fact that while fund-raising capacity is not a zero sum game and it’s a world of abundance, you were fund-raising resource is and staff resources are your something certainly xero some game? Yeah, that’s i like that. Like that method of handling certainly give the affirmation that your your idea is meritorious, but where? You know, you said we’re in the middle of executing a current plan. Hopefully you don’t have that kind of micromanagement if we had many guests on, you know, saying that your board members or others senior volunteers, if you like, should not be micromanaging your you know, the day to day tactics that you’re that you’re executing, i’ll tell you what you were going, we’re going to take our first break, so hang with me, please. Great. Pursuing the field guide for data driven fund-raising it’s, the latest resource on their listener landing page now at tony dahna slash pursuing to radio there’s so much data available to all of us. It’s overload. So what you gonna do with it? The field guide is comes in to make your data less daunting. What’s in it. They’ve got five high level steps that you can take quickly to translate your business objectives into actionable data. That’s, that’s manageable real world case studies showing you how some other non-profits are using data, in other words, do some benchmarking and learning worksheet with some conversation and thought starters to help you your team. Maybe even some of those key volunteers board members find the right focus to begin a data driven culture. It’s the field guide for data driven fund-raising tony dahna slash pursuant radio let’s go back to joe and your online giving plan, and my voice just cracked, too. How are you still there? And i know you are, joe, all right? Yeah, well, i was just mentioning the micromanagement. Anything you want, you want to be among the countless guests who have said that you should not be allowing your board members to micromanage tactic like that. Yeah, well, obviously, i concur. And i would i would say again that a planning process and developing a plan is your best defense against that. And i were talking about online giving today, but just, you know, i’ve found that developing an overall development plan fund-raising plan for your organization and if you’re a smaller midsize organization actually, going through the step of having your board approved that plant vote to approve it, hopefully lead by the board chair is sometimes a way that you really can, you know, provided defense against that because then you can go back and say what we were all on board with this plan is we’re going to execute the plan as as we, you know, as we all agreed, as we got the buy-in yeah, we get that board. Buy-in okay, right? So as we’re looking at our our our plan, how do we figure out what’s the best mix for our organisation? Of course, there’s no, no universal formula, how we figure out what, what fits us best. What mix? Sure, and you’re right, there’s no universal formula for online fund-raising but the closest we can get to a universal principle for online fund-raising right now is that email is the most effective method for online fund-raising now, that’s not to discount the impact of social media were crowdfunding or, you know, or your website, they’re all important, but email is the only knowable and really active medium that your organization controls. You know, we’re in a situation where when you’re posting on social media, first of all, you don’t own the social media profile the social media site does and that’s been proven by the fact that, you know, when you, when facebook first started out, if you were a non-profit on facebook or a company on facebook and you were, you know, you had followers, the vast majority, then we’re going to see the posts that you put up right now, you know, that used to be remember that remember that time? Yeah, and that mystery companies and non-profits fuel hoodwink you probably remember facebook was getting people to buy advertising to get likes on their page, as opposed lynx clicks to their links with the idea that if you got people to like your page, they would then see all the other content you put up essentially for free, you know, once you’ve got that buy-in and now now, you know, before the latest algorithm change, they you know, facebook was only showing you were posted less than ten percent of the people who liked your page unless you’re paying for advertising and that’s going down again because of the latest algorithm change. So so clearly you don’t control you can’t control the volume and pacing of your messages to donors on social media. That’s true of every social media site, unless you’re paying for it, your website’s, kind of similar, like i love when donors come to our organization’s website that i’m working with, and click that donate now button, but most donors aren’t going to do that, and if they don’t do that, then unless some using, you know, expensive retargeting advertising tools of paying for a car for advertising on other sites? I’m i don’t know who’s coming to our website, i don’t know who’s stopping by if they don’t taken action. Yeah, andi so that’s kind of passive as well. Email right is the only active mediums that a non-profit controls. If you have someone give you permission to use their email address for your email newsletter or for other communications, they’re going to see your messages. Almost everybody in the united states certainly checks their email address their primary email address almost every day. Oh, it’s, hundreds of the stats are like we checked, like like one hundred twenty five times a day or something, you know, right it’s just beyond me. Yeah, and particularly because a mobile right everyone’s looking on their email on there, you know, and so and and how do they check it, they skim basically, if he doesn’t land in the junk folder, they’re going to see your name and the subject line, which gives you a fighting chance of having your email open and so sabat i always advised, but i’m building a new online fund-raising system for a non-profit my advice to them is funnel everybody as many people as you can do everything you can to collect that email address, because then you are in control, you’re in the driver’s seat. So, you know, your original question was, what is the mix? The right mix for? Non-profits and i would say that for most, almost every non-profit the right mix is ah, hub and spoke system where your website is the hub, but the purpose of that hub is to collect email addresses from all the spokes, which is all of the places that you will have a presence online, whether it’s paid or earned or social. Okay, you said, you know, once you have that email address, you’re in the driver’s seat, but that’s with the with the qualification that you’re you’re adhering to the permission that the person gave you in terms of what? Subjects they want to hear from you about if you’re sophisticated enough to be asking when and how often but you want to keep to those to the parameters that the that the potential donor has given you absolutely, absolutely and so for, you know, for more sophisticated non-profit not only is it, you know, you know, the ethical thing to do to try and segment somewhat and determined the volume and the messaging, but also is really effective. Fund-raising right, if i, if i can determine by asking donors and tying their responses to the email address what they want to hear about how they want to hear from me, how often they want to hear from me that’s going to make our fund-raising program more effective, but for every non-profit you know the goal of collecting the email address, you know, what i kind of said was you want to collect email address, but you really want to collect permission to use it, right? You can go find email addresses, you come by list, you can do all this other stuff that’s, unethical, you know, in some cases, particularly for-profit businesses, it may be illegal or, you know but but what you really want to do is focus on getting permission and easiest way for smaller non-profits to get that permission is by signing people up for an email newsletter by signing people up to get your your non-profits email newsletter and other updates is usually the way we on brother and other communications is usually the way we try and freeze it and that’s broad and if that’s a starting place, if you’re more sophisticated than you contrive segment further, right, right? Based on topic and as i said, maybe even frequency they’ve even time of year. I’ve seen questions. Yeah, on that can come later to when you khun survey later on, once you’ve i mean, if you’ve got there, if you’ve got their permission, and if you have the wherewithal to to execute on the segmentation, you might survey your donors, you’re not even just your donors, but survey your your the people that are accepting your communications and ask what their preferences are. Absolutely, andi, assuming you have the capability to adhere to them, you know you alluded a couple times, teo spending let’s talk a little about that how do we decide whether we should be spending on, uh, what i’m thinking primarily facebook, twitter? Sure, sure. Well, i mean, obviously there’s a there’s, a lot of benefits, two advertising on those platforms facebook in particular has a ton of targeting tools where you can really i mean, it’s a segue mentors dream right? You, khun really dahna drill down and really heavily segment you were you’re you’re advertising audience, you can say you wantto segment people who are thirty five to forty years old who live in indiana and who follow a certain, you know, a certain would have liked a certain page that’s really, really powerful the key, as you know and as any you know for-profit market or nose, the key is figuring out the return on investment and really trying to get your per click advertising spent down as low as possible, first of all, and i’m not, i wouldn’t say there’s a universal agreement with this, but my strong recommendation and on properties there’s really only one crew action you want to be paying for on facebook, and that action is getting people to click over to your website, right? I i don’t i don’t think it makes sense anymore to pay for like, i don’t think it makes sense to pay for other actions. I want to get people to click on links to my website to come over to my website where they can do what, where they can sign up for my email news longfield email drive him to that home. Yeah, but i own that connection. So your goal if you’re if you’re deciding to spend money on social media, is to get the cost per email acquisition is really what you’re trying to do as low as possible, and you know they’re through testing you really can get that down. You can certainly get the cost per click to your website down into the ten fifteen, twenty cents per click range, maybe lower, depending on what you’re targeting and then figuring out how many of those people sign up for your email newsletter. So i think that’s the, you know, the really the only consideration with online from a fund-raising perspective is really, you know, with all nine hundred advertising his return on investment now bigger organizations can afford things like i talked, you know, i mentioned earlier, which was like a retargeting. On bacon, you know, that’s, those ads that follow you across the web, you know, you could you look up, you know, non-profit radio and then you’re on another website and all of a sudden there’s a non-profit radio ads on that website and it’s, because you’re being targeted, you’re being followed buy a cookie that’s, you know that that impact your return on investment, but it’s really something that’s reserved two muchmore advanced organizations who have more money to spend on the testing because with all nine fund-raising really the fortunes in the follow-up it’s your spending money? If you’re paying for online engagement, you’re spending a certain amount now with the goal of making money on the back and and the way you’re going to make money on the back end is not by getting people to constantly, you know, come to your web site and clicked one ofthe donate now buttons it’s by using email to stay in touch with them, to solicit them and to try and build a path for them to become a regular giver to your organization. I admire that you kept yourself out of jargon jail by defining retargeting thank you, i was i was i was chomping at the bit to get you, but it was short lived because you immediately explain what we targeting is those those those ads that yes, you did you’re you’re free of drug in jail. Those ads that i consider annoying, i guess there are people who like them or if even if they don’t like them, they’re obviously successful because their companies making aa lot of money filtering adds segment in ads. Teo individual people i know, i know it’s a lucrative business i find i find that stuff annoying, um, creepy, but can be lucrative. Yeah, it is on dh it’s both i think i think it’s both on and then the other one that i didn’t mention our one hundred facebook. Of course, there is the possibility of google adwords and we’ve we’ve covered this on the show a couple times you could search that phrase tony martignetti dot com and we’ve had detailed conversations about how to take advantage of the ten thousand dollars per month that’s hard to spend that much money but it’s up to that maximum that google provides in an ad free adwords if you want to. And you could do much, much smaller campaigns. You don’t have to spend ten thousand dollars, but we’ve had guests talking about that and that’s another that’s, another possibility in the spending category, but it’s free because it’s tze a grant from google um okay, let’s. Um let’s bring in some some coordination between online and offline, as we’re thinking about what belongs in our plan three offline i’m thinking of is face-to-face meetings and u s mail. How do we how do we coordinate thes this with our with our online? Right? Well, good, great question and it’s two great questions you’re living me with thank you if you don’t have to keep it out, that is not necessary, you know you’re you’re a guest, i’m not going to cut your mic off so it’s not necessary to keep saying i got you the the you know again, i don’t want to make a i don’t want to make a sweeping generalizations because every non-profit is different, but if in general right the the most there is a hierarchy of fund-raising ass strategy’s where and it and it tends towards the more personal right so a in person ask. Is more effective than a phone ask a phone ask is more effective then a ah direct mail snail mail asked a snail mail ask is more effective than an email asking email ask is more effective than like social media ask now that you know, some donors don’t want to get a phone call or don’t want to get in person, you know, meeting and they want to be selected by the mail and that’s great, and we need respect what our donors you know what our donor preferences are, but in general that’s the hierarchy and if that’s the hierarchy, we need to respect that and realize that, as with all things there’s, ah, there’s a curve in terms of our time, and we should be spending more time on the more effective strategies. Now. The good news is that one of the reasons direct mail’s effective because it doesn’t take much time to talk to lots of donors. Your your average gifts size is going to be lower, but it’s relatively easy emails, even easier right it’s emails and even easier method your average gifts eyes is likely going to be lower than your direct male average. Gifts, eyes and so, you know, the things that go into your decision on your strategy for the year are go where the money is, what, you know, what kind of time do we have to invest in those things? And where our donors i mean that’s, really? Another question is, you know where, where our donors, if you’re a small organization that happens to have lots of donors scattered throughout the country for the world, then in person meetings aren’t going to be, as, you know, big a possibility for you, and you may have to rely on you no more on the mail in the morning. I don’t know. Not only where are they physically, but where are they? Virtually what platforms are they on? As we talked about, you know what preferences do they have for communications? And where do you find the bulk of them? You know, you may have more fun on facebook, but you’ve got you’ve got a lot more activity and engagement, riel engagement on twitter so you need to be spending more time there. I and the other just one other thing i wanted to put a little spin a little little point to is, of course, another factor with direct mail is the cost postage printing, the collating however you do when you do it in house, you pay somebody to do it, you know, there’s there’s a much bigger cost to direct mail. I’m not denying that it’s it’s ah it’s up there, you know, it’s it’s right below face-to-face ass, i’m not. I’m not quick challenging that, but just the cost factor of that the u s mail. Oh, yeah, and that’s, why return on investment is the biggest consideration when you want to direct mail testing intestine, right? If you don’t have the capacity to test and then the money to invest in testing, you shouldn’t particularly direct mail. You should not be doing prospecting mailing because you know it doesn’t. It doesn’t make any sense. I think you know, in developing your overall, you know, strategy email, you know, for most organizations, the email newsletter is the backbone of the donor cultivation and stewardship sabelo more about that. You alluded to that before, when you were talking about the hub, trying to get people to your site. You want that email address newsletter is the is the center of your communications plan. It sounds like for you, right? Yeah, that that that is true. You know, email emails are super popular for a couple of reasons. One is because they work. I mean, they’re away for for non-profits that would never get a monthly snail mail newsletter out the door or have any other way to connect with their donors monthly or even quarterly in a method that’s just cultivation and stewardship. That’s not on aska truitt for them to stay in touch with their donors on a regular basis, it gets to the donor the donors who are interested, we’d those newsletters, those who don’t can just delete them. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s effective, but but it’s also the backbone of most donorsearch altercation zsystems because of those other things we mentioned it’s cheap it’s, easy, it’s, easy to do. You know, it’s. Not like the old days where it was real hard to create a good looking email newsletter. You got services that constant contact in a weber and male chimp and you know you’re donordigital based all of them send out beautiful, you know, emails at a really, really cheap costs far less. Obviously, than the cost of direct mail, so for most non-profits it makes sense that that the backbone of your entire donorsearch altum ation system not just your online donor cultivation system, but your entire donorsearch conservation zsystems his email communication, it’s, it’s email newsletters again, you’re still gonna want with your certain segments of donors have much more personal contact that they didn’t want to invite them to cultivation event you’re going to want to talk to them in person, you’re going to want to go out and see them. You’re gonna want to send a personalized notes, but but email the email newsletter the email cultivation is something that ties almost all of your donors together. Okay, um, let’s, let’s, take a break there. Okay? George arika okay, sounds good. Regular sepa is this testimonial quote, this is my first year and we’re growing non-profit regular gps was completely attentive and gave the impression as if they were right next door when handling our review engagement. Even though we’re in a different state, they made me feel like we were the only client they had that’s like that. And like the whole thing, they were able to walk. Me, through starting up our accounts to finishing our yearly statements, nothing was too small of a task for them to handle their always available for questions and concerns customer service was exceptional and was greatly appreciated. I received great advice and guidance for better business practices. This is talking about the cps for god’s sake. Listen to this gushing thing, it’s it’s incredible! That was my part that i didn’t write that all from a professional while feeling supported and genuinely cared for in the process. Wagner stupas really stands out as a partner, and i could not be happier with the results and quote that’s from the small cancer research non-profit on the east coast, supported and genuinely cared for are they limo drivers, wedding photographers, makeup artists, caterers, florists alright, you hear the wedding theme? Are they pre op nurses, interventional cardiac surgeons, home health workers, chaplin’s, social workers, none of the above their just wagner, cps but they’re more they’re more than cpas, trusted advisors to their clients. You’re supposed to change our two firms every three years to get that fresh perspective, you want the advice of a firm that goes broad and helps you. Beyond just the numbers. That’s them right beyond the numbers. You hear me say it, talk to them. You know you can talk to at wagner. You coached him? He’s been on the show. He’s been guessed twice. I’ve had lunches and dinners with heat right here in new york city. You can speak to him, he’s a live person. And ah, well, the people i meet for lunches and dinners for the most part. So, you know, get to know them. See if wagner cps can help you beyond the numbers. Okay, i’m gushing, but ah, i like them. I like eat. I like i like wagner, wagner, cpas, dot com now time for tony’s take two. I was on a cruise last month, totally disconnected. Totally offgrid or just, you know, don’t you want to modify it? Just offgrid i was offgrid and it felt luxurious. I lost track of time. There were there were blocks of ours, ours strolling by with my ties on drum punches. And i did not know what time it was the only reason i had to ask people. And i’d asked me because i kept my phone in my room the whole time. Ah, it zoho i wouldn’t show up for late, late for lunch and dinner breakfast. I was on track, but that, you know so my advice can you get a vacation where you’re not only napping? You’ve heard me talk about the beneficial impact of naps, but when you actually when you lose track of time one of those, what time is it? Vacations or a piece of vacation where you just you’re unconnected and you don’t even know what time it is. Okay, that’s, my video is from st thomas and it’s at tony martignetti dot com. Now, let’s, go back to joe garrett and you’re online e-giving plan. Thank you, joe garrett, um, i need to be here before you were really, really glad now, you just now now, it’s, not so much anymore. Just clouds the middle of the show. We’ll get her energy back-up oh, jeez, you’re in a slump. Cutting mike off. I’ll tap dance myself. I got i got playing giving god again gush with plan giving for all right. You’re not in a slump. I know you’re not, um by way you got a nice radio voice like you got a basic kind of voice. Thank you. Yeah. Um, how about should we that’s? Just something that i’ve talked to guess about? And i’ve heard different philosophies. What about converting online donors too? Latto offline donors, first of all, should we mean with all the things that you and you’ve just said should we be? And then if you think we should, i’m not. I’m not suggesting that’s what? One answer or another. But if you do think we should how do we do that? Let’s, start with that threshold question. Should we even be thinking about doing that, right? Yeah, i do think that you should try and convert all flight vote. Well, let me let me go online online to all i would like to offer you. Yeah. You you should be trying to move those online donors who won tohave offline contact with your non-profit to offline status. Now, there’s. A reason for that is because you have muchmore there’s much more ability to cultivate and steward those donors in a more personal fashion. If they’re offline, donors, very rarely will will a one hundred percent online donor moved from small gift to major gift to plan gift all online without ever talking to people face to face her on the phone or at an event with your non-profit and so i find that it’s, beneficial for the move donors over took to be offline donors, but again, ok, only if they want to move over because not everything. There are plenty of donors today who like a little bit of anonymity, who like a little bit who liked who liked to make those donations online, who like to read your email newsletter, look atyou on social media, but not have that personal that more personal touch, so my suggestion would be yes, now the trick really is to moving your online donors offline. Is tio seat as a system? You know you need to build a lot of non-profits crying kind of haphazardly one off, like they’ll do the price. A certain tactic to move those donors offline, maybe it’s doing some well screening and doing some calls or sending out some snail mail letters and and then it will work or it won’t work. And then, though, so it’ll be discontented and they’ll move on to something else. If you want to move your offline, don’t order. Online donors offline you need to put a strategy behind it, and you need to treat it like you do kind of direct mail prospecting or other other real measurable types of fund-raising you need to measure what you’re doing and see if it’s working and if it’s not working, then you know, try something else, but you need to you need to put a system behind what what suggestions have you got for for it, including our system? Sure. Well, there’s really? Two the two primary ways that non-profits trying move online donors offline our events and mail. So, you know there’s there’s non-profits that have success, particularly if most of their donors are local, you know, in a certain region or certain metropolitan area with having donorsearch collectibe ation events were donorsearch dank u events or larger types of types of events, or a regular system of cultivation tours of the facility, things like that, and they invite their online donors. Teo, come and connect through those types of events. Obviously the vast majority of the donors are not going to do that, but the ones who do are weeding themselves out for you there segmenting themselves for you they’re kind of raising their hand and saying, i’m super committed because i’m willing to come teo to a tour of the facility, even if it’s building is a donor thank you. Event that’s an actual investment time and energy on the other the other way that non-profits try and move online donors offline is male. You know, they try and do a do a mailing fund-raising mailing that converts some of those donors to essentially male donors, and then they try and move the donors up with line that way through a traditional capacity screening and, you know, male donor engagement strategy to move, though toe move up, move the donor’s through the funnel who have the capacity to give mohr. I’ve seen non-profit set up six have had success with both strategies. Teo do the event strategy. Obviously, most of your donors have to be local. My suggestion is to test both of them to test both of those strategies, and certainly, if you have wealth screening tools there you can. You can bring those into play and the other, frankly, the other riel indicator of an online donor. Is the number of the amount of engagement they have with your non-profit how many times do they donate online? How many times today, you know, respond open your e mails, how many times today engage with you on social media? Those are the type of metrics that show that there really engaged with your non-profit online and maybe ripe for moving off line or even moving to another level of online giving, like monthly giving entering that recurring credit card doing occurring right, an example of that, it could be an example of a hybrid between online offline depending how you structure your campaign is giving tuesday you are do i have it right? Are you e-giving tuesday denier? I am ok, i want to give. Okay, i want to give one to give voice to that we’ve had folks on from ninety second street y and in fact, this year i’m going to try to have ah to like one in may and one later, closer to the event, but i want to give voice to the to the denier, deny your camp what’s your opinion of giving tuesday. Sure. Well, i’m a big fan of giving days. For non-profits i’ve i’ve seen a lot of success with e-giving days that air run specifically for a non-profit for a particular non-profit i’m a big fan of crowdfunding in peer-to-peer campaigns online, what i’m not a fan of is particularly and and the non-profits i work with are particularly small and on the small size of side of mid sized non-profits i’m not a fan of them using what are very limited resource is for those organizations on giving tuesday because of the sheer volume of communications and fund-raising campaigns that are going on around that day, i would rather them take all the tools that they would normally use to run a successful giving tuesday campaign, which, as we all know as i’m sure, the folks who have had on who have been successful with that, i’ve told you, it’s more than just a day, right? A lot of prep work that goes into a successful giving tuesday for sure, and i’d rather than take that and move it over to e-giving day, just for their non-profit where there, what? They don’t have to compete with all of the many messages that their donors are getting, i don’t know if you’re like me, you probably are because you’re in the industry, i, you know, on giving tuesday and the days before leading up to it, i get i mean, dozens of e mails from non-profits about giving tuesday social media is packed with messages about giving tuesday and, you know, there’s two sides to argument, of course, that that buzz is going to boost it is going to raise all the ships that, well, that’s a mixed metaphor. Yeah, but you get, you know, you know what i mean? Yeah, right. That’s the argument and for me, for the organization’s i’ve worked with who have done giving tuesday, i’ve found that the amount of time number your number of staff hours that go into rising above the noise, or getting to a certain level with your donors, with awareness for your non-profit for a small non-profit that that number of hours would be better put into other fund-raising methods and moving the e-giving the e-giving daito, another day away from giving tuesday so that’s kind of my take on it. Okay, good on jeez, that was that was that was quite a mixed metaphor, but buzz raising ships. But what did you come up with this nonsense? If i had an intern that we we do? I mean, it’s not like anybody writing this it’s just all for mei apologize. Um, okay, you mentioned crowdfunding menu. We were sort of following the same sequence you like you like crowd? Well, wait, before we get to the generic crowdfunding. So what would you like to see people do on? Give me some client examples, perhaps if you like, of their own individual giving day? Sure way. You know, we have organizations that i’ve worked with where, instead of, you know, instead of doing on giving tuesday, we need we pick a day that makes sense with the organizations with their editorial counter with their market encounter with their fund-raising calendar where we name that day for that organization. You know, we call, you know, maybe it’s april third is, you know, killing off your children’s alliance day or that’s very presumption we stop that’s that’s very presumptuous of your client’s, isn’t it? You got it. You got to get out there and shake it up. You don’t have you don’t have a mayoral proclamation or anything like that, you’re just doing it on your own. It’s a great idea. We haven’t done that yet. But that’s a great idea. Yeah. Get the mouth that the mayor of philadelphia behind you. Yeah, yeah. So we we name that as our day, and we build a campaign message behind that day. And we just as with e-giving tuesday or with a with an online crowdfunding campaign, we set a goal for that day with a riel hans will outcome for that goal. You know, we say something like we want to raise twenty five thousand dollars on speak up day because we want to do x y and z we want to provide this number of scholarships or we want toe, you know, provide this number of warm meals, you know, hot meals to the homeless, and then we do all the normal things to build up to that day we put i like to put a committee behind it of people who, just as i will with a crowdfunding campaign. People who are commit to not only give that day right in the morning to show some to show some traction, but also who commit throughout the day send out an e mail to their network to be active on social media to really try and help us push it. Then we do a sequence of emails to our tow, our newsletter listeningto our donor base to prepare them for this day so that by the time the day comes around and we hit, send on the on the email that isa announcing that the day is now open, people are expecting it. People know that it’s coming, they’ve at least heard of it. And then, well, then we’re very active throughout the day. It’s, a one day crowdfunding campaign just like e-giving just like you’re giving tuesday. Sure effort is essentially a one day crowdfunding campaign except here, hopefully and that, you know, it’s not always caves, but hopefully really the only massive fund-raising messages that your donors are getting in the email and their email on social media and things that day are primarily from your non-profit yeah, it’s, your it’s your day. All right, i got it. It’s presumptions, but bold. You’ve gotta be bold, but you gotta you gotta be out there. Okay. Um, what about what about the blog’s we’re talking about online? Ah, let’s. See? You know what? I’m going to let you ruminate on that topic for a minute while i take our last break. Okay, okay. Tell us. Credit card, payment processing. Check out the video it’s at tony dot m a slash tony tell us goes through the process of businesses switching to tell us and remember how you are going to get fifty percent of telesis revenue. That’s passive revenue for you each month. You thought i was just i had lunch friendly. We’re talking about passive revenue, you know, into into retirement way. Get passive revenue some he he rents hubei’s properties and rinse them. I pay rent so i don’t have passed a revenue. But no, i don’t pay rent. Um, but you pass a revenue it’s a it’s. A good thing. You know what it means, right? It means you’re not working for every dollar. It’s just coming that’s it just comes and it comes routinely. That’s what happens a cz long is the businesses with tell us for credit card processing you’re going to get fifty percent of what tell us earns from that business times the number of businesses that you think of in your community ah, there’s a hundred percent satisfaction rate among among their non-profits and the businesses that are referred to them. Remember, if teller’s can’t save them any money, then you are going to get two hundred fifty dollars. But that’s, the that’s, the short term and that’s a short play. You don’t really want that, it’s. Not likely because tell us is probably is going to save the money. Otherwise, you’ll be writing a lot of twenty fifty dollars checks. Right? So you don’t want the short money. You want the passive revenue indefinite that long tail. Tony dot m a slash tony tello’s. Check out the video now, let’s, go back to joe garrick and wrap up with your online giving plan. Okay, so what homework did i give you? What did i just ask you to ruminate about? Do you remember what let’s talk about block? There we go. Yes. Much better than i am. I know, i know. Okay, uh, should we have a block to it? Is it is it essential anymore to have a blogger? Well, so in my mind, having a quote unquote blogged is not essential. It can be. It can be an important part of what you do but it’s not essential to have a separate page our link on your site necessary that says block what is important, whether it’s through your block, which is probably the easiest way to do this or through your sight as a whole. It’s important to have your your sight be updated regularly and to be something that makes donors want to come visit fresh, fresh content, right fresh content. Yet most non-profits have essentially a static brochure up with a donate now button and you know if they’re advanced, maybe they have a video at a newsletter sign up box, but it doesn’t change, and i always come non-profits your website can be in a really, really crucial part of your cultivation and stewardship stress, but it’s only important it’s the hub, right? If the hub is where the heart is weak, then the spokes are going to loose. Exactly exactly people don’t think that your website is that metaphor that was that was a that was a good metaphor. I’m sorry, but that was an example of a good metaphor. If they don’t think it’s informative or entertaining or, you know, compelling, they’re not going to visit it, and then it doesn’t work. So one of the mean, the easiest way to keep fresh content up on your website is a blogger there’s nothing. I hate more hearing more from non-profits then when a fundraiser says something like while we can update our own website, right, we’ve gotta get our web design team where we got that that’s crazy. You mean that there was a time when if you’re one of your website, to look nice, you had to do that, you had a have you had to make it such that you couldn’t update it yourself, but with all the modern back ends like wordpress that are available, there’s no reason that someone at your non-profit can’t go onto that website once a week or every other week or once a month and post something new and there’s a ton of things you can post there’s donorsearch stories and staff stories and clients, stories and things about your mission and things about your outcomes, things about events coming up and, you know, there’s, you know, thought leadership pieces. There is no end to the amount of things you can put up there. And what stops non-profits from doing that is they think that they have to write essentially a white paper or, you know, a master species every time they post something, they’re worried that they have to be fifteen hundred words and footnoted and it three hundred, four hundred, five hundred words up on your website that’s compelling that’s decently written that you mean, frankly, we talked about george, and earlier in the show that three of jargon that’s, you know, not technical that’s written at that sixth or seventh grade level that’s just up there that’s information, you know, informative or entertaining that gives donors a reason to at least check your website occasionally and that’s what you want. You want to give him a reason to keep coming back, so i’m a big proponent of like you said tony, fresh content up on that web site on a regular basis? What if we are hearing joe garrett say, oh, my god, three hundred, four hundred, five hundred words, i don’t i don’t i don’t think i have the time to come up, even with the low end of that three hundred. Well, i’m thinking about hiring, uh, what about what about outsourcing? Some of this what’s your opinion of getting an outsider tio provide that fresh content for you? And maybe maybe that’s not even on ly blogged, but could be facebook, twitter, your corporate page on linkedin, instagram, etcetera? Yeah, and you and you certainly can do that they’re you know, they’re certainly plenty of vendors out there we’re going to do that free it’s still going to require your time because what you don’t want to do is have a vendor who’s putting up kottler who’s, sending your content that that essentially could apply to any non-profit that sometimes what happens, right? We we get content from the outside from an outside vendor, and really, if you change this non-profit name out, it could applied any non-profit or it’s basically just rewording your case for support over and over again, or something like that in orderto and and i don’t want to suggest that that the way all vendors operate, but if you’re going to really get great content from an outside writer there going to be great at writing, they’re going to try and immerse themselves in your non-profits mission and what you do, but no. Matter what you do, they’re still going to need you to tell them about your latest outcomes your new programs you were you were, you know, help you collect your help them collect omer stories, clients, stories, things like that. So i would say, you know, if you’re if you’re thinking about, for instance, starting a block and you’re really, really concerned about the amount of time it’s going to take, i would say start from the real real low and meaning try and make a commitment that once per month just once per month, you’re going to come up with three hundred words right? On three hundred words less, which is less than a, you know, eight and a half by eleven piece of paper of one sheet that you’re going to come up with three hundred words to put up on your on your website and then then see how it goes if that works that maybe you could expand it a little bit if that’s not working. If you find that you don’t have the time in the band with, then investigate, you know, outsourcing it, but i would i would suggest, given it a shot first. And realizing again, it does not have to be we’re not talking about something that has to be perfect, it doesn’t have to be the greatest story in the world. In many cases, it just has to be something that goes up there that at least somewhat compelling to your donors and supporters. Another possibility for content is curating the content of others that’s that’s related to your mission or related to your community, you know? Ah, you know what interests your constituents, you know, you confined content from other people and, you know, call it a round up, i say we found on the found on the web and list the board, you know, bullet with links to, like, two to two or three things and there’s a lot of great content out there from others that you can use to supplement your own right. That’s exactly, i mean, and you’re right, there’s a lot of great content from from other people there’s also a lot of internal resource is that might be willing to provide content. Now, obviously, as a fundraiser, you don’t want to be in a position where you’re loading work onto the program’s staff, but you may have program folks who are excellent at writing about their experiences in the trenches that’s a green, compelling piece of content you may have boardmember who loved to write and who would love nothing more than to write a write an article where to interview a donor or two, you know, given explanation, you know, provide a provide a story about a kn event that you held that they attended. So there are a lot of ways where, you know, you’re looking for essentially, at a minimum twelve pieces of content a year, and if you can farm some of that out, then maybe you as a fundraiser are only writing a piece every other month or every third month because you have other re sources that are helping you create that content and ah, perfect example, tony, is what you said, which is to around up, post or a top ten, you know, top ten tips post, you know, if your if your organization that’s working in, you know, in healthcare non-profit maybe you’ve got a tip post you can post about how people can stay healthy in a certain respect so there’s a lot of different ways to go about it. You have ideas around personalized video for cultivation. Now we just have about two minutes left, joe garrick so you know you, teo constrain yourself, but what advice do you have around personalized video, right? So one of the new ideas one of the more innovative ideas that i’ve that we’ve used and that i love, is using personalized videos to stewart and cultivate, particularly stuart, you were mid level donorsearch if their donors out there who were giving it a level where he would like to offer them more cultivation, but you don’t have the time or and it doesn’t make sense, go out, meet with them. One thing, some non-profits air doing is a development director or a board number will sit in front of the computer and record thirty second videos using the donor’s name, personalizing it to their gift, thanking them for their gift and then emailing it out to them and it’s a way that you could do personalize stewardship. You can do, you know, fifteen or twenty of these videos in an hour and send them all out in the same amount of time it would take to meet. With one donor. Awesome. You did that in just one minute. Okay. Okay. Andi, you have clients doing that successfully? Yes. Yeah, very successfully. And and donors tender. I mean right now, it’s kind of new nobody, not many organizations. They’re doing it. So right now, i would say get double. In fact, in fact, we’ve had clients where significant a not insignificant number of donors actually call. Call the person who sends them the video to say how much they liked. The video, you know, leads to a whole different level of interaction. Not surprised. Awesome. That’s a great tip. Toe end on he’s. Joe garrett, president of garrett fund-raising associates, garrick dot com. And at joe garret joe garrett. Thank you. So, so much. Thanks for sharing. You bet. Thanks, tony. My pleasure. Next week, build your grantmaker relationships. If you missed any part of today’s show, i’d be seat. You find it on tony martignetti dot com were supported by pursuing unlike tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant radio wagner, cps guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com tell us. Credit card and payment processing your passive revenue stream. Tony dot, m a slash tony tell us our creative producers, claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Shows social media is by susan chavez, and this music is by scott stein. You with me next week for non-profit medio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Treyz what’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s, why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge. Somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were and, uh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five.