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Steve Daigneault: Everyone’s A Winner
When it comes to digital testing and learning from the results, there are no losers. Steve Daigneault and I step through lots of tests on font type and size; wording; single-button versus multi-button appeals; and several more. He’s senior vice president at M+R consulting and we talked at the 2016 Nonprofit Technology Conference.
Maria Semple: Political Giving
What’s the value of knowing your potential donors’ political donations and where do you find the info? Maria Semple is our prospect research contributor and The Prospect Finder. Her latest book is “Magnify Your Business.”
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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the embarrassment of dis navia if you talked about missing today’s show everyone’s a winner when it comes to digital testing and learning from the results, there are no losers. Steve daniela and i stepped through lots of tests on fun type and size wording, single button versus multi button appeals and several more he’s, senior vice president at m and r consulting, and we talked at the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference and political giving what’s the value of knowing your potential donors, political donations and where do you find the info plus summer conference is you need to know about maria? Simple is our prospect research contributor and the prospect find her on tony’s take two time off. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com here is steve danu with me from the non-profit technology conference. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc the non-profit technology conference this is also part of an tck conversations. You know where we are. We’re in san jose, california, at the convention center. My guest is steve danu, he’s, vice president at m and r, and i’m going to talk very shortly. First, have to do the obligatory ah swag item for this interview, which is a coaster and t shirt from. Q give, and they are color coordinated. If you’re watching the video, you can see that if you’re not watching the video, you can go. Teo riel, ariel, tony martignetti, which is my youtube channel, and find the video there. This joins our swag swag pile for the conference. Not much of a thud on that one. Sometimes they thought, you know very hard, but not that. Steve. Welcome. Welcome, todo. Thank you. You are senior vice president at m and r what is m and r? We’re em plus sign on. Plus our yeah, exactly where, eh? Ah, consulting agency. We have one hundred five people around the country working to make change in the world. We will only work with non-profits sixty five of our staff for sixty seven work on our digital team doing digital fund-raising and advocacy strategy campaigns reporting acquisition fund-raising all that’s alright and those sixty five are related. Tio what? We’re going to talk about your your session topic was step right up. Everyone’s a winner that’s because you ran it like a sort of a carnival sideshow type. Correct, but the the meat of it is bunch of digital tests exactly you’ve you’ve done or you’ve seen done or yeah, no, they’re they’re actually. Ah, digital test that we have conducted with our clients just in the last six to twelve months. So they’re actually recent tests very current and the audience was to vote up or down whether this was ah, successor. A failed test item. Exactly. We had scorecards. People voted, they kept score. And at the end, we had a winner on a carnival prize that we give away what you give away the giant stuffed pink teddy bear which was very embarrassing to carry around. And we encourage the person to carry around all conference. I have not seen it. I know i haven’t either. So i don’t know what happened. Then maybe the person is s o committed teo, fulfilling their promise that they just decide to stay in their room. I feel if i go public on i have to wear this. Strap this thing on my back or carry it around. Yeah. No, i’m not not gonna go public, all right? So you have a bunch of we’re going to get to all of them. But you have a bunch of these digital tests? Yes, very short. And you flashed them on the screen. People voted yes or no, right? Whether this was good or bad. Exactly. Well, there was you either voted whether the control one we had a control, which is the existing version of whatever it was we’re testing against. We have the test version, which was the thing that we thought would do better. Okay. And then we had a third option, which was a thai where there really was no difference between the two. Okay, and that’s what people would vote on? All right, so let’s, get started. You’re going to use your laptop. But you also explain, since we can’t see the cards what’s gonna nudge to prospects. What does that mean? S so we actually had a bunch of these tests. Several clients of ours tested what we call a nudge, which is on a donation form where you see an ass string, various dollar handles, and we’re okay now already. Stop tony martignetti non-profit radio. We have george in jail. Oh, now everybody must not know a nascar string. And what was the other one? I don’t remember your jargon. Dale’s. Great. Serious. Okay, no, don’t scoff it, jorgen. All right, let’s. See, let me start over. He asked on a on a donation form a tte, the top of a donation form. There are little radio but ends or other buttons with ah, gift amounts. You know, like you would select a twenty five dollar gay. After you select the button with the thirty dollars gift or hundred dollar gift and that’s how you start the donation form well, on a nudge test. Well, that’s an ask drinks. So that’s called a nasty trick. That’s called a mastering. Exactly. And each of those dollar amounts inside of a butt in each of those are our, um, dollar handles. No, sorry, they’re not dollar handles, but what we’re testing is a nudge is a an arrow that points to one of those dollar amounts with a little sentence that says most people are giving one hundred dollars right now, please give what you can so it’s a is that a true statement for most of these organizations? Yes, it is a true statement, but, you know, and fund-raising sometimes there’s a little wishy washy licenses taken on way point to and say that most people give it this. Yeah, but actually, i would say most of our clients of the people we’ve worked with have you no kind of they want to be truthful on this. And they and they did. Most of the tests were actually truthful. Okay, s o okay, that’s. A nudge. So that’s a nudge exactly it’s a suggestion it’s an and so the nudge to prospects the prospects are non donors. They’re people who are on your email file who have not donated yet when they click on the appeal linked to donate, they’ll get the test version that says, you know, most people are giving this amount, and we’ve tested this a bunch of times and what’s the answer doesn’t work two percent of the time we’ve tested it, it works, it actually improves either it will improve the average gift that’s more likely, that is that’s. The place where you more likely to see on impact is on the average gift. It will improve the average gift, or sometimes it also improves the response rate. But fifty percent of the time it works all right, fifty percent of the time we tested it, it had no impact, and when we’re looking at the difference and these were all tests, we were running in the last six to twelve months. When we looked at the differences between the tests, we noticed that it was important one of the things that was important to do if you’re doing a nudge was to use language that had some urgency in it. So the ones that worked where ones that said, you know, most people are giving one hundred dollars, right now or today, something like that, and so that was that was one of the recommendations we would make. Latto organizations that want to try this is to include some kind of language that has emergency in it. Okay, all right, you’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way dahna well, what else we got? That’s. An excellent one nudge to prospect way learned from technical language. Okay. Yes. All right. So for a couple of groups we’ve also test. Sorry. I just had outstanding. Okay, good. Yes. Excellent. I’m sorry. No, no, no. I have information. You thank you. Thank you. We’ve also tested font type and size inside of email appeals. This is typically we have a couple of clients that have older. Ah lot of a lot of our clients have older audience, especially donors or older audiences. So we wondered if you know a font type where that maybe the letters and spacing of the letters are a little bit more open or the font size. You know, something a little bit larger would improve the response of the appeal, and in one case, it did improve it thiss was toothy aarp foundation so sort of makes sense. But it was it was a slight increase. Howto eight percent hyre conversion rate thie appeal that used instead of using aerial, it used cally brie, which is in a more open font. And the font size went from twelve point two sixteen point, so eight percent way. Through significant it is it all of these tests well are statistically significant that is the technical term, but an eight percent hyre conversion rate is a little bit better, it’s not an enormous amount, but it helps. Ok, yeah, all right, another pretty common test that we’ve run something we’ve run more than once and we’ve seen work often is a five making a five dollars suggested asked to prospect so that’s two non donors again and inside of the appeal this test in particular that i’m looking at one version had make your tax deductible gift of fifty dollars or whatever you can afford and the test version said, make your tax deductible gift right now pitch in five dollars or more and the that my boy is non-technical days are pigeon pigeon, like i’m thirteen pitch in all right, so that’s a pitching instead of making a donation? Yeah, so there’s a sort of some other differences there, but the the thing that we’ve tested more than one place is suggesting a much lower dollar ask so five dollars versus fifth and the test group in this case had a twelve percent hyre click through rate a thirty three percent hyre conversion rate. And um although the control group, which is the group that had the fifty dollar group overall, had it hyre average gift, the test group raised more money and had mohr revenue per recipient. So that ended up being the winner. So the test group, even though it had a much lower average gift overall, it converted many more donors and had generated much more revenue. I’m standing all right. It was only ten percent of the of the other asked, but it generated more revenue. Yeah. It’s. Amazing. Important. I think that’s important to point out and the conversion rate is converting a prospect to a donor. Exactly. Ok. Yes. Ok. Yes. Ok, cool to five dollars. Ask five dollar. Ask it’s. Definitely a good one to try. Pita, you know, we we we tested the five dollar asked for peeta. This was interesting. Um and it’s it’s killed it. I think that the five dollar asked generated more almost three times as much revenue as the version that didn’t have asking it on then our client contact said, well, why don’t we try ten dollar? Ask against the five dollars. See if we because the average gift was low. I mean, that is the thing that happens when you suggest five dollars. You do get people that give only five dollars. So we tested ten dollars versus the five dollars, and the five dollar asks. Still one still generated more revenue. That’s something. Yeah, now that i think it’s something i think would depend it would really vary across organisations. I think that is true for peter because, you know, we tested it for pete, and we know that’s true for their audience. At least right now it is. But for other organizations, that might not be the case. And you might see a ten dollar win. Okay, um, so adding paypal on the donation form as a payment option? We’ve tested that a couple of times. Um, and this is interesting. I think pretty much every time we’ve tested it. I would say at least if not every time, almost every time ninety percent of the time we test this, it wins. Adding paper papel helps improve the conversion rate. Um, how much it helps? Depends on the organization. We we do see that, like, for peeta again, for example, they they actually receive a fair number of international visitors and donors to their donation form, and that audience in particular likes to use paypal. I think it’s it helps to avoid the us specific fields they khun use the fields that they have in papal, and we also see that sometimes papal, adding the papal as a payment option can help improve the conversion rate of your mobile donors. People who are visiting your website on a mobile device you know, it’s a pain in the neck to kind of enter in all of those fields on a mobile device. When your aunt, when you sign into papal, all that stuff’s already entered and so you just have to enter in your user name and password and boom, you can make your gift alright, esso, in this one particular option test, i’m looking at the adding paper only improved the conversion rate by eight percent in other tests i’ve seen improve it up to thirty, forty percent. All right, another interesting test i think that i was sort of surprised by, but we’ve tested it multiple times with different organizations and it always wins is using the word renew two prospects so asking non donors instead of, you know, typically what you would do to non donors is you would send them an appeal and you would say, become a member or donate yes, ah, the test version would say instead, renew now renew your support and in this case, union of intern scientist when they tested this, the renew language had a forty eight percent hyre response rate and an eighty eight percent hyre revenue per recipient. And you said this one, although that was pay palate. You’ve always seen it increase. Oh, no, this one you know, this one to this one, this one always work to be you’re ignoring the fact that i’ve i’ve never been a member don’t insane. It is completely a lot it’s insane, it’s really weird counterintuitive what do you think is behind us? But i know i would read that say we’re how connive freakin renew. Well, what’s funny, you know, i’m i’m renewing what’s funny is, you know, sometimes when you go to these focus groups, you know, sometimes non-profits have focus groups of their donors or their supporters and though include people that are on their email lists in these focus groups that have not donated, along with people who have donated and people don’t remember they don’t even know or remember who a lot of times this is true, they’ll you’ll have non boners in a focus group talk about how they’ve made a gift and how of course they’ve supported this organization that’s remarkable and and i think it’s just it bears out that, you know, sometimes people think of their support and, you know, if they’ve taken an action or they’ve given you their email address, they feel like they are supporting you in some small way, and so maybe, you know, using this word renew sort of like, i don’t know, i don’t know what’s behind it, but that was a wild one. Let me see if i can find find the other one here because it happens every single time we test it on and it’s and it’s crazy, i would say, you know, if you took some action but didn’t donate, maybe then further your support would apply but not renew renew suggests i’ve i’ve already given i’m a member and i’m renewing my membership or renewing my gift. Yeah, eso this what drives? Me crazy. All right, great to know it is, yes, all right, let’s, get over my amazing what else we got? Um let me see here. So we ah, this was an interesting test. We ran with the central park conservancy. Um, they were you know, sometimes when you go to websites, you’ll get a little light box that pops up asking you to give your e mail address. Sign up for their email lists like boxes is not the not the hijack. Its the translucent one. Yeah. See the page. You can see the website behind it. Yes, it is. It is ajar durney term. I thought maybe you would be. I would be put in charge in jail for using the word like box. You’ve heard it before. Okay. Okay. All right. So what is the right language to use on a light box to encourage people to give their email address? That was the question we’re trying to answer. When we ran this test with central park conservancy s o we had we had a beautiful image of the park with a very simple email form to fill in your e mail address in your zip code with a button on. Three different versions were essentially testing the language inside of the light box. The first version said me see if i can pull this up a little bit bigger so i can see it love central park sign up for insider info and ways to support the park version two said get the inside scoop on central park be the first to know what’s going on in the park unearth park secrets and get special offers and mohr version three said love central park then you’ll love our emails. Ten out of ten central park squirrels agree get the best of central park delivered to your inbox s o all right, and i was i was down on number three until you invoked the squirrel naralo first line number. My voice again the first line on number three was turning me off. But ten out of ten since quarrels that one turned me. I did a complete one eighty on those three. So i’m gonna vote for version three. As as the winner. Winner yes. And ah, the one that one was the not so cute more planes playing and straightforward one which was get the inside scoop on central park. Give us your email address. Version three. The cute one with squirrels came in second, so so so it was actually version two version to one exactly, and just say it again. What version to say, version two said, get the inside scoop on central park, be the first to know what’s going on in the park, on earth park secrets, get special offers and mohr. Alright, first to know special insider people like that it’s also the most sort of straightforward one it’s like. Listen, give us your email address, we’ll give you some things back. The other ones are a little like mohr keet see, like love central park. My squirrels were cute. Yeah, disappointed. They didn’t win. All right, this was an interesting test. We ran with the american cancer society, which was. Does putting a dodie does putting a video on a donation form help? Getting a video on a donation form so this is where the person is click through already, they’ve already clicked. Donate now button yes, and they’re on the actual form they’re going to fill out. Yes. Is there a video and there’s a video embedded on the form? Exactly. And this is a very common question that non-profits have. Okay, the question is, does it raise the average? Yeah, person’s already donating so well, there has the conversion stage there. No, there, they haven’t donated yet. Well, they already committed to write. They’ve they’ve clearly made some kind of ah, they’ve done something to show some interest in donating law they would say made us took a substantial step. Yes, they have taken this step there, there on the there on, you know, they’re almost through the process of giving and a lot of non-profits want to know, like, you know, should we use these? We have this great video or they think, it’s a great video. So, you know, i think it’s subjective ah, and should we use it or not on our donation form, maybe it’ll help. And so we tested this with the american cancer society and there was no difference, okay, there was no difference. Now i won’t say that is the answer for any non-profit i think it really matters the video. I mean, what is in the video really matters that really counts. I think in this case it didn’t make a difference, and i think the people at american cancer, our clients, i think they wanted to use the video and so were like, if you want to use it that’s not having a detrimental impact, go ahead and use it. It’s fine. All right. Very, very diplomatic. Yeah, exactly. Um, you want more testers? Let’s? Do i just you scrolled through multi boat button versus single button. What was that about? Ah, sure. This was kind of a very specific tests that we ran on the website of the smithsonian. They had a promotion, sort of a promotional area on their website that encouraged people to donate, become a member or sign up for their newsletter. And so there were that that was the control it was the promotional area had three different things. Was asking the site visitors to do one of these three or all of these three things. And we felt like if we made that promotional area, just focus on one thing. We would see an increase in revenue. And so we tested the control, said, you know, there’s a little text that said make wonders happen, give jay or become a member. There’s a little bit of, you know, copy couple sentences saying why should become a member. And then there were three buns. Donate now membership get e news and the other promotional area had essentially the same text make wonders happen, give today or become a member. But there was just one button and it said, join us ah, when we tested it, there was no difference. So, uh, so your own hypothesis. Yeah, i mean, failed. But this is why we test. Yeah. I mean, i would say, actually, ah, it’s it’s ah, if we have a good hypothesis when we test it it’s never a failure, we always learn something. So what we learned was, it doesn’t matter. Okay? It doesn’t say i’m not using diplomatic language. It’s not diplomatic know fairly. There are no failure. Thie digital test whoa! There’s that’s, right, everybody’s a winner. That’s. Why you’re everyone’s a winner? Listen, like, when you are testing your learning and when you’re learning, you’re winning hyre i have nothing to say xero this is this was a super interesting test? Actually, we just got the results of this. This is a very fresh test that we just finished in january for peeta, they run are actually why i think it was in february, we ran a monthly giving recruitment campaign, huh? This. Ah, you know, we try to take one time donors and convert them to become monthly donors, because then the retention rate goes up, their value overall goes up a lot on dso. In this campaign, we tested on the donation form. You, you know that the control donation form had, eh and ask string, which that’s that’s jargon, but we’ve explained earlier, so had radio buttons where you select the gift amount. Eighteen dollars monthly, twenty one dollars monthly. Twenty five dollars monthly, thirty five dollars monthly or enter your own amount. And the test version. Had a new addition next to eighteen dollars monthly. It converted that eight that the dollars per month amount in two cents per day. So it said eighteen dollars monthly. Just sixty cents a day, twenty one dollars monthly. Just seventy cents a day. Twenty five dollars monthly. Just eighty three cents a day, and so on. When we tested this actually the cents per day lost the control that on lee had the dollar amount ah, converted mohr one time donorsearch co-branded and what i mean, there is it didn’t have there wasn’t a difference in the amount of monthly donors that converted, but when you get to the page, there is a way to not donate monthly and just donate one time as well. And the simpler ask string without the sense per day converted more one time donors and so overall it generated more revenue, and this is we’re not sure why that happened. We kind of want teo test it again, honestly, because we felt like, you know, this it helps to break down the monthly gift in a smaller amount, but very intuitive. Yeah, but and and you see, it used a lot, you know? You see it on tv and those d art direct response television ads where you see, you know, but that just means there’s well, there could be a few things going on. They don’t follow everything that every that you see other people do because they could be falling off a cliff, right? This could be organization. Specific, right? Right. You’ve made that point four times, right? You know, but i have to highlight with the first one on first when i said there’s, a lot of bad practices out there. Yeah. See something commonly done, right? It’s the best way. That’s, right? Yeah. Okay. That’s. Why we test that’s? Why? We want the winner every right. We’ve gotto give us one. Give us one. You could explain quickly. We got time for one more. One more quick one. Alright. Ah, let me see here. All right, so, here’s a quick one. Not due in less than a minute. Okay, so we’ve all seen? I don’t know, but maybe you’ve seen a lot of the the president obama donation form. It starts it’s a it’s multi step. You’ve got one screen where you select the dollar amount. You click next. The next screen you enter in your name, you click next-gen next screen versace, all of the fields on one page you tested that we’ve tested that we’ve actually tested it multiple times. We have to move ahead. Go ahead in this in this in this test that we just ran, there was no difference we’ve tested. It previously with other organizations, we have seen a improvement using the multi step form. Yeah, so sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. Okay, we’re going. We’re gonna leave it there. Ok? Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But how do you know? Test? Yes. All right. Yes. All right. He is steve danno, senior vice president at m plus r. Thank you so much. Thanks. Yeah, thanks for sharing. Great. Great. Sure. Absolutely. Thank you for being with tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen and t c political giving with maria simple coming up first pursuant velocity it’s one of their online tools. It keeps your fundraisers on target by prioritizing their work, their activities day in weekend, week out measuring time against goal making smart decisions about what to do day in, day out, following up on time i’m filming up with donors following up on time. I don’t know what he meant by that. But following up on donorsearch meetings and potential donors and of course, the dashboards, the management tools that go along with all this fund-raising management leadership you gotta you gotta have administrative tools so that other people can see what the progresses day to day, week to week it’s all about time against goal. This tool was created to help pursuant fund-raising consultants manage their own client campaigns. That means you get the pro tool to manage your campaigns. You don’t need the consultant. You could just use their tools. Well, you got one friendraising or or it’s a whole team velocity. Check it out. It can help you raise more money. You’ll find it at pursuant dot com now, tony steak too. I urge you take time off this summer. You are in a e-giving profession. You work hard, acknowledge that accept it and in orderto give to others. You need to take care of yourself. So i beseech you, take time off this summer and disconnect. That should be mean. Ideally that’s. No email, no work phone, no work texts, no posting and social media for the week or however long you could get away it’s breaking away from work you’re giving and giving and giving you have to take for yourself. So i do urge you take some time for yourself so that you when you come back and for the rest of the year. You know, you could be at maximum giving for those people that you’re helping and working with day in and day out. Take care of yourself this summer, please. That’s tony’s take two maria simple you know her she’s, a prospect finder, she’s a trainer and speaker on prospect research. Her website is the prospect finder dot com, and her book is magnify your business tips tools of strategies for growing your business or your non-profit of course, i should say that’s, her latest book, she’s our doi end of dirt, cheap and free, you’ll find her on twitter at maria simple. We’re simple welcome back, so great to be back with you, tony. I’m very glad. Thank you. Uh, i’ve missed you. I don’t know maybe it’s been more than a month. I’m not sure if it feels like it’s been just has been too long, so i’m glad that it has been awhile. That’s that’s ok, i’m so glad to be here. Thank you very much. All right. Political giving it’s a presidential cycle that is big news, but tune into time non-profit radio for breaking news we’re in a presidential cycle this year. Uh what? What do? You think the value of knowing political donations is, well, you know, it could be interesting to track this for some of your major gift donors before seeking a visit with them. It could it could give you an indicator really, of how much they’re able to give to your organization. So, you know, it kind of speaks to that capacity piece of the picture, um, so you know, they’re regularly donating large sums of money to political campaigns, you know, they could be likely a major gift qualified, you know, candidate for your organization, um, and and also if you’re of organization happens to be, i don’t know politically charged, one way or another, it would be good to know, i suppose you know where your your donor’s life, but also, you know, maybe maybe, uh, let’s let’s say, for example, a non-profit has its its mission somehow in, you know, in arts education, and you find that your prospect has donated maybe teo somebody who’s who? Ah, a candidate or, you know, a current, um, senator, congressman, whatever it is that is also involved in creating some sort of funding for arts, education or arts organizations, you know? It would be good to know that they already have that particular, um, tensions, right, for wanting to give to your type of a cause. So it could have, you know, a number of things to do with donating to non-profits and it’s. Kind of interesting, because many of the elektronik screening tools really build that into the level of data that they provide for you. So all the major screeners bring political donations into the reporting. Well, interesting. Okay. I haven’t seen one of those lately. Now, one of things we don’t want to do is start talking politics while where having lunch with our potential donor. Yeah, it’s probably a good idea not to do that. But again, just this part of you know, when you’re when you’re sitting down doing your your your donor profile in advance of your visit with them and you’re you’re looking at all the various data points that you want to collect because you’re looking for capacity to give but also affinity, right? So in in looking again at that capacity pieces especially, you know, what are they giving politically? You know, this year over, you know, how many years of period of time you want to go back and take a look at at the donor, the political records. So, you know, you can really kind of get an interesting picture to see, you know, even, you know, has somebody given democratic and then republican and then back to democratic so it’s kind of interesting to see too sometimes, you know, are they giving across the board, or is it really very focused? E-giving in their political donations? Okay, that sounds like enough motivation, right? For why this can have value for you. Definitely. Yeah. Okay. Nothing else you want to add there? No, i think you know it’s. Just it’s a good piece of the puzzle to have in your donor’s crow file reports. I include it whenever i’m doing ah donorsearch profile for one of my clients, i always look at at whatever i consigned online in terms of political donations and just really include thie. Just a snapshot of what that political e-giving looks like. All right. Cool piece of the pie. One one thing. One thing to look at, not not to give it or undue weight. Alright, well, your are doi and of their cheap and free. So i’m hoping you’re gonna come up with some, uh, some resource. Is that that we might turn two? Absolutely. Well, really the source of all the data. Even all the other organizations that might be compiling the data. They’re all getting their initial source from the federal election commission. So that website is f e c dot gov and so that’s really the place where you know any other people that are compiling the information or getting it from anyway. So you may as well go straight to to that source and get it directly there yourselves at ftc dot gov, can i just start searching? For people’s names, you can you definitely can. You can look by individual contributor so you can have a little information is just their their their last name, their first and last name? Um, and then, you know, with with more common names, i typically like to look at the more advanced search page, you know, and stead of just looking at the portal that that gives you access to, you know, searching just by name. It’s great to be able to search by state, for example, on dh, so you would want to click on the advanced search tab for sure so that you can focus it down, especially when you have a common name, you know, it’s tony martignetti you’ll probably find him without too much trouble. Oh, yeah, i’m eminently findable doesn’t doesn’t matter. I don’t need ftc dot gov, just just new tony martignetti at the very highest levels and you’ll find it. Ok, well, now if if we know the person owns a company or controls the company or founded a company, should we, i presume also be searching that company name. You know what will happen is part of the data output you will. Get that company name um, so, interestingly enough, when when you are looking at the thie, the list of contributors uh, are you looking at a specific contributor? Let’s say and in this case where you look, you have an individual’s name, you’ve looked them up, and you found their record. You can actually get quite a number of interesting pieces data from that i’ve actually found people’s home addresses because i’ve been able to find them as giving a political donation, and they might be an unlisted person, you know, in the phone book, for example, but if i have a sense that they might be a political donor, i’ll go straight to this database and i’m able to pick up on what a home address would be. Ow goldmine there, you know, right? Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. So you get their home address, you get their, uh, their employer name and you get there. They’re title, uh, at the company. Oh, outstanding. All right. Well, let’s, let’s, pursue these gold mine. Now i have their home address. Right where you’re the you’re the researcher. Where? Why? What can i do with that now? Well, if i were, you know, at this point, then i would say, all right, well, let’s, get a night now that we know where they live, let’s get a sense of okay, well, what? How much is that property worse? Do they own other properties, secondary homes and so forth elsewhere? And so, you know, again, that’s all part of public records, so you’ll be able to find that information pretty quickly to determine what their home is assessed that what they’re paying in taxes, property taxes? Um, you know, again, and you could do that for their primary and secondary properties that they would own now, we didn’t prep this, but can you share some of the sites that you use or maybe just one hundred for for home of home value and property taxes? Well, every at this point, pretty much all tax assessors, um, are are searchable online, even for free. There are a number of fee based services, however, what i found is that if you just google the name of let’s, say the city you’re looking for, so if you’re googling, you know, i don’t know like where i am, bridgewater in new jersey, you’ll probably be able to find it, um, sometimes is the state. Some of the local papers have a have databases. Public records type databases available like like we have here locally tow us. I usually can access a statewide database of property records. Right that way. Right through. Ah mei mei, central jersey. Dot com it’s called, but it covers the entire state of new jersey. Excellent. Okay, now you mentioned thank you for that. You mentioned secondary home addresses. How would you get that? Does that show up? Ftc dot gov also? Well, if they happen to be linking their political gifts to that address, yes, it would show up there, however, usually for me to find a secondary property. I’m looking i’m most of the time i’m using a database that i’m paying for related to property searches and most people who will have a secondary home. They still have tax bills and so forth, their address on record for that secondary property is still going to be tied to their primary property. So very often, if i know the address of the primary property, i can go into one of my fee based databases that i use and then find out what? Other properties are owned and tied to the primary property. All right, so you have to go feed based, typically to find the secondary property. Yeah, well, unless they happen to be listed, and if they are a listed person, if you have a sense, that or maybe ah, boardmember has said, you know oh, gee, they happen to own, you know, property near a ski resort in colorado on dh if you could do it, you know, a search for them online and find an ad. You know that name in, like, a four one one dot com, you know, phone record or something that might be a lead for you to at least go on. All right, all right. But at least if you get, you’re gonna get the primary from fc dot gov. Yes. Okay. Very often they will build. They’ll disclose their home address there. In some cases, they provide their there, tie it to their company address. But i find very, very often people are using more often than not. They’re using their home address for that political donations. Okay, excellent to know. And thanks for pursuing that aggression with me on on home address. But like i said, that’s gold one drill down into that. Okay, so what else? What else? We’re going to see it ftc dot geever we still there with our searches? Yes, yes. So you know, you you’ll find out how much they’ve given on dh you can actually on that advanced search page. You can actually search by a date range, right? So if you were interested in finding out, i don’t know how much money bill gates gave just over the last two years, for example, you could run such a search from that particular sight and then find out all the political donations he’s made just in a two year period of time. All right, that’s, far back as it goes two years. No, no, it goes back much further than that. But what i’m saying is you can actually focus it down, if you know, sometimes you think all right, well, is it really important to know what somebody did in nineteen, ninety seven? You know, it was like so long ago, but, you know, if you’re only looking for, you know, a little bit more currency, go back two years, five years, you know, whatever. You would consider to be current for your reporting on and you know you could make a decision in your own development office is how far back you’re interested in and collecting political data. Gotcha. Okay, you’re restricting yourself, okay? Yeah, yeah, you could definitely self restrict search. All right. Anything else about ftc? Dot gov? I want i want exhaust this free research. I mean, free. Oh, yeah, there’s actually is actually a lot more to talk about. So one of the interesting things that you can do but should not dio is you can do you know, we’ve talked about proactive ah, prospecting tony in the past where we’ve said, all right, well, how can you go out and mine a database so that you’re coming up with names of new new names of people? Right? That’s, that’s a big thing for non-profits who are the other wealthy people in the community or whatever? Right? So you hand mind the data in such a way to find out, put in a zip code and find out who are all the hyre political donors in that zip code. However, you have to be extremely careful. There are there are rules there’s something called the sale and use restrictions of the data, and they say that they saw the data. Have you ever heard that term before? Yeah, they put bogus ones in that that are like fcc employees. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So they can salt each report with up to ten fictitious names. And so what? What ends up happening then is if you send some sort of a solicitation or commercial mailing toe one of the fictitious, fictitious names the committee is going to know that somebody has illegally used the names of the contributors disclosed on its report. So i would just really caution anybody against using it, um for proactive searching because you really don’t want to get caught in a least, i don’t that’s for sure. I don’t know. I don’t know about your lister, of course were, of course, but this is an ethical group, of course, disparage, and i know you’re not disparaging, okay, let’s. Ah, let’s, go out on a break with that with that caution, stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s, aria finger do something that orc. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m dana ostomel, ceo of deposit, a gift. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Thank you very much. Dana ostomel maria. So i can use the zip code, search on dh, scroll through and find all my neighbors and see who they give, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely could do that. Okay, now, of course, zip code is going to be that’s pretty broad. I mean, you could easily just do it. Name by name, too. But if you wanted teo okay, there’s there’s, a lot of data there in zip code search. Wow. Yeah. All right, all right. Be careful how you use. Yes, it zits seated seated. You said that they say it’s salted or it’s seated. I always thought it was seated. But in prepping for this show, i noticed that they use they actually go. They have a whole paragraph on assaulting and that was my first time ever seeing it. So i learned something new. Justin prepping for the show. Thank you. Yeah, i think they’re brought thie f p c. I don’t think that i don’t think you have a grammar heated. They salt each report? Yeah, i don’t think they have a grammar. Linguistics on entomology team it at fcc. Which which is you know what? Tony latto set him straight. Ah, uh, yeah, i don’t know. There’s something they’re not well. Let it go. F e c. Okay, um, what else? What else? Sounds like this is rich. Yeah, so so here’s. Something to keep in mind too. There are actually contribution limit, so it could very well be for any given year that somebody would like to have given more, but they have hit a contribution limit legally. So for individuals, for example, um, you and i as an individual, we cannot give more than twenty seven hundred dollars to each candidate. Okay? Yes, our election, right? And then there’s also limits for, like, how much individuals can give to political action committees. Um, and, you know, there’s a whole big breakout. So, you know, you could go in there’s a number of websites that cover even if you just google you know what? The contribution, you know, political contribution limits, you’ll get various charts and so forth on this. But it’s very interesting to think that. Okay, well, you know, they you know, they couldn’t give directly to that candidate more than that amount, so what they do is they end up giving tea, you know, they give to these political action committees they give to, you know, you’ve heard of soft money score so there’s there’s ways, kind of around it and that’s why a lot of this discussion happens about, you know, reforming the way, you know, political donations are going on in the country, but, you know, i didn’t want to, you know, just let everybody know that there are indeed limits as well. Now, maria, no amount that you and i could give. Are you aware of any? I don’t know, maybe there’s shadow places where we can weaken gets info on some of this dark money? Um, well, you know you can you, khun? Definitely, you know, from through the federal election commission also there’s another website called open secrets dot or gyu khun definitely look through, look through some of their reports a cz well, um, yeah, i mean, really, if you just google it, you’ll come up with a number of places where you can get all this data for free, but i think if you know, if you kind of bookmarked for yourselves the website and open secrets some he’d be doing pretty good. Okay, cool. Open secrets. All right. All right. Um, what else am i going to know, too? That non-profits themselves. And, you know, i’m sure most non-profits know this, but they’re actually prohibited from making contributions to federal elections. I think, you know, most of us know that. But since we’re talking about political contributions and this is a show dedicated for non-profits, i thought we should leave. But that out there and we’re going, we’re going to have jean takagi on in the next week or two a couple weeks talking about the limitations on political activity. So all right there we already do that show. We did that show he’s not coming up there. Here. He did it, it’s coming up. Sam says, coming up. Okay, yeah, you know what, it’s a good year to be talking about all this force top of mind for everyone. No, i’m trying to think whether we did it already or it’s coming up, i think we’ve done it. Yeah, we did it. We did it like two months ago or so. Yes. So, jean takagi, you googled you. Go to my site. Twenty martignetti dot com look for jean takagi. All his shows will come out. And yeah, we talked about the limits of of permissible activity and and the grey areas and the tests and all. Yeah, yeah. That’s already been covered for god’s sake. I got to get with it. All right, it’s already done. It’s done making promises that are making promises that already kept was talking about talk about under promising, promising things that i’ve already done. Okay, what else you got? F come on f uc dot gov. Well, you can also, if you were interested in finding out starting with a political candidate’s name or even buy, you know, political committee, you can you can really drill down the data. So so, for example, i’m looking at a page right now for the twenty sixteen presidential campaign finance. And so it has how much money has been raised by all candidates and then they start breaking it down. Democrats, republicans. And then they start naming the individual candidates. Um and so what you can do is from there, you can start drilling down much further. And saying, ok, who’s giving to a particular candidate. And then from there, you can drill down even by state, and a man buys it. Okay, okay, this is all in the advanced search, so we’re still nfcc dot gov, right? We’re still on the f d yes, you look for presidential campaign finance reports and you’ll be able to find exactly, you know, how much is being given by people in your state to a particular candidate. Okay, that could be interesting. All right, now we have just about a minute and a half left. So is there anything we haven’t covered that? Anything else anyplace else? We got to go besides ftc dot gov and an open secrets, you know, there, there are definitely other places. But these are the two that i seem to, you know, they’re the ones that i go to all the time because i know that, especially with the ftc that’s the source of the data that everybody else’s, you know, accumulating anyway. So, you know, i like to keep it simple and just go straight to the source right to the source, okay? Any other restrictions that you’re aware of besides that? One that you cautioned us about on the seated salted, salted sounds like maybe that somebody who’s like a margarita fan or something, so they’re salting they’re they’re salting their rim and they’re writing their narrative for the site of the same time. I don’t know, but salting is not difficult correct arm seeding is the correct term. Anything else that we need to know about restrictions? Well, they do have an exception that they do list here, so that this is kind of interesting, so for some non-profits that i don’t know, maybe could get around this. Um, it says it says specifically here it says that the sale and use restriction does not, however, applied to the use of individual contributor information in newspapers, magazines, books or similar communications, as long as the principal purpose of the communication is not to solicit contributions or to conduct a commercial activity. So if there are non-profits listening, who, you know, do some type of research reporting, you know, if if the primary focus of what your non-profit does is to report news of some sort, then then you can go ahead and pull together thiss individual contributor information again, so long as you’re not using it for the sole purpose of soliciting a contribution, all right, we have to leave it there. Maria simple. The prospect. Find her, you’ll find her at the prospect finder, dot com and at marie, a simple thank you, maria, you’re welcome, great to have you back next week. Bring joy to your donors with marcy hime. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. Pursuant dot com. Our creative producer was claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez. On our music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Buy-in what’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out some death golden 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 p m so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address card, it was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s, why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It zoho, 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 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 percent.
