Tag Archives: donor retention

Nonprofit Radio for June 23, 2025: A Conversation With Art Taylor

 

Art Taylor: A Conversation With Art Taylor

He’s the recently appointed president and CEO of AFP, the Association of Fundraising Professionals, so we’re on hiatus from our 25NTC interviews for one more week. Art explains the value of AFP in our community, including enforcing professional ethics; reflects on our challenges and how to advocate for our sector; shares his thoughts on fashion, guided by his wardrobe stylist wife, Yolanda; challenges us to improve donor participation; and urges us to take responsibility for our community’s image and performance.

Listen to the podcast

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts

 

 

Apple Podcast button

 

 

 

We’re the #1 Podcast for Nonprofits, With 13,000+ Weekly Listeners

Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
View Full Transcript

Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Last week, we promised a return to our 25 NTC coverage this week. Uh, it’s not happening and I blame the associate producer. On another topic, this is show number 745. That means we are 5 weeks away from the preeminent 15th anniversary and 750th show. Stand by 5 weeks to go. Oh, I am glad you’re with us. I’d be hit with auricular hypertrichosis if I had to hear the hairy idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate, with what’s up this week. Hey Tony, we’ve got A conversation with Art Taylor. He’s the recently appointed president and CEO of AFP, the Association of Fundraising Professionals. So we’re on hiatus from our 25 NTC interviews for one more week. It’s not my fault, blame the pod father who writes my script each week. Art explains the value of AFP in our community, including enforcing professional ethics, reflects on our challenges and how to advocate for our sector, shares his thoughts on fashion guided by his wardrobe stylist wife Yolanda, challenges us to improve donor participation, and urges us to take responsibility for our community’s image and performance on Tony’s Take too. Hails from the gym. Another semper fi moment. Here is a conversation with Art Taylor. It’s a pleasure to welcome Herman Art Taylor back to nonprofit radio. Art is president and CEO of the Association of Fundraising Professionals AFP. He had been president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance from 2001 to 2025 this year. At the Wise Giving Alliance, he co-authored the overhead myth letters with the guide star and Charity Navigator CEOs. That was 2013 when art was last on nonprofit radio with the two other CEOs. He’s been a lecturer at Columbia University and adjunct faculty at the Indiana University Lilly School of Philanthropy. You’ll find Art on LinkedIn and AFP is at AFPglobal.org. Welcome back, Art. It’s good to see you. Tony, thank you for having me back. It’s been a while, but, uh, obviously I’ve been following your, your amazing journey with this platform, and it’s just been, uh, unbelievable that you could stick to something as long as you’ve had. Well, thank you. Yeah, we’re coming up on our 15th anniversary will be in July 750 shows. But congratulations to you on being appointed president and CEO of the enormously wildly popular and important association of fundraising Professions. I’ve been following you. Congratulations. Well, thank you, Tony. It’s a great honor to serve the fundraising profession in this way at this point in my career, and it’s obviously quite adjacent to what I’ve been doing over the last 24 years. So it’s uh a great uh way to see how a person’s career can come together and in my opinion fit pretty squarely within the the bounds of what fundraisers are trying to do both from a performance and an ethical standpoint. Obviously, a lot of people agree. Otherwise you wouldn’t be president and CEO apparently, right? They do. Uh, I didn’t include in your bio your law degree. You and I went to the same law school. Temple Temple it’s the Beasleys. I don’t call it that reminds me of Mrs. Beasley. Remember the little doll from uh the, the TV show with Sebastian Cabot, a Family Affair? I do, I do remember, uh, Brian Keith. Sebastian Sebastian, the little girl had a doll, Mrs. Beasley, uh, so I don’t call it the Beasley school, but I think you left when I got, did you, did you get your degree in 1989? 1989. That’s right. And did you go full time or at night? No, I went in the evening. I worked at a nonprofit, uh, all day long as a CFO, and then, um, at, at night I would go to classes and it’s quite an experience. Uh, I started in 1989, so you, you graduated, but I always admire, I went full time, but I always admired the evening students because I knew they were go-getters, you know, they didn’t, they, they weren’t, uh, their jobs were demanding, and here they were 4:30, 5 o’clock, 6 o’clock, walking up the steps at Temple Law School, and they’re sitting in for another 2-3 hours of class as I’m walking down the steps to go home. To have some dinner and, you know, and start studying. So I, I always admired the evening students, uh, the, just the, the ambition that it takes to get a law degree while you’re working full time. Yeah, well, you know, when you start out, you don’t really think about it that way, um, and then when you get in it, there’s so many other people who are doing it, you just kind of go along with the stream of activity, you know, you just, you’re just kind of in it and it just becomes a part of your life. But it was challenging, um, also extremely rewarding and, um, got to meet some really fun and interesting people. And learned a lot to uh carry with me even though I never practiced law, believe it or not um it has helped me in enormously um important ways everything from how I think about a problem to understanding some of the legal ramifications of issues that we get into um even policy, Tony, it, it helps you shape how you, um, envision creating policy internally and externally. And risk management issues, um, and also, you know, when I got in, the reason I wanted to go to law school was I was practicing as an accountant and my thought was that accountants sort of account for what happened, you know, we sort of keep track of what happened, but lawyers kind of create these transactions legal instruments and make it, make it happen, yeah, and I sort of felt that this would be a complete. Um, full circle way of, uh, growing in my career, and it did, it helped me quite a bit in that way too. Yeah, law degree, very valuable. Yeah, uh, enormously. I only practiced for 2 years, uh, but I, I agree with you. I find that having the law degree enormously valuable in the way you attack problems, think about things, yeah. Well, Tony, you know, the big difference today though is. I think when I was going to law school, it may have cost me $3000 a semester. I don’t think there’s a place you can go for that price today. Uh, it’s probably 200 times that now. Um, so let’s talk generally about uh AFP, you know, just acquaint folks with the, the work of our association of fundraising professionals. Right, so, uh, AFP has been around now for almost 70 years, and, um, it is the, I think most discussed organization focused on the fundraising profession. Uh, we have about 25,000 members who work in all aspects of the nonprofit field. Um, both educational institutions, healthcare institutions, um, museums, nonprofit organizations, large and small, um, people both in Canada, in Mexico, and some sprinkled in other countries around the world. And so it’s um a pretty broad and wide uh membership and um people through all aspects of their career. Um, from the beginning until even into retirement, remain members. And it’s, it’s quite remarkable to um know that people find our organization as valuable as they do. Um, we’re focused though primarily on helping our members do their work better, more effectively, um, but also ethics. Um, we think it’s really important that members do their work ethically because as you know, if donors trust our people, our fundraisers and even our organizations, they’re going to give more. And so the ethical piece of this is really important, and we have a code of ethics that all of our members must sign off on before they become a member. And um in cases where there are challenges to that members notice to their code of ethics, we’ll even adjudicate a case where a person can be sanctioned for violating the code of ethics. In fact, I was on the ethics committee before I joined AFP for about 8 years. And we hear cases where a member accused another member of violating that code, and we would go through a process whereby a person was either determined to have violated or not violated that code. What are the common violations that you see. It can be any number of things. Um, it can be someone stole another person’s um uh content. It could be someone was accused of getting paid on a commission basis, which we don’t allow um a percentage basis which we don’t allow, or any number of other violations, Tony. And when they come, as I said, there’s a committee, there’s a group of us who would be assigned to hear that case and we make a determination and the member will be sanctioned anything from um losing their membership for a year or permanently to Um, not being able to participate in certain activities, um, we try to uh make the sanctions match what the offense was. I did not know that there’s enforcement of the code of ethics. The code of ethics, I think, is widely known. I hope it is. I didn’t know that there’s an enforcement mechanism too. Yes, the AFP code, the AFP code, and we have the ethics committee that really does that, and it’s an independent group from a, well, the board of directors obviously sanctions it, but it doesn’t participate in those cases. The ethics committee does all that work. Well, Art, uh, the, the challenging times we’re facing, you mentioned, you know, trust, not only of fundraisers, but trust of nonprofits, uh, the, the trust of the nonprofit community. Some, some individual nonprofits like Harvard and Columbia Universities and National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Planned Parenthood, so we’re seeing it on a micro level and we’re also seeing it on a macro level. Just last week or two weeks ago, I think it was 2 Wednesdays ago there was this uh charade of a congressional committee hearing. About how it was called something like NGOs gone wild. You could tell, you know, it was, it was objective, uh, it was a very objective assessment of our nonprofit community, not, um, you know, the, the look, the Trump regime is challenging our sector badly. Uh, months ago, Elon Musk called us a Ponzi scheme, uh, and just, just a week and a half ago when you and I are recording, there was this, I think, shameful committee hearing, uh, the, the, uh, at the department of, or the, the committee for the, for the, the support in support of the, uh, the doge work. Um, what are, you know, what is AFP doing? Well, first of all, we’ve been trying to stay abreast of all of these activities and keep our members informed and we have um great government relations work that um we um are hearing from on a regular basis, both about the challenges but also about some of the opportunities. Right now we’re pretty focused on the the this big beautiful tax bill. And there are some opportunities within that, particularly for us to finally get a universal charitable deduction for all of, um, everyone who files a tax return, regardless of whether you itemize. And that will be wonderful because we. Anticipate through studies that it could raise about $40 billion more in charitable donations and so we’ve been really trying to get behind that to get legislators to support this and it looks at this point like it has a good chance of passing with this bill and you know they we’ve also been trying to work to eliminate some of the more challenging uh provisions in this tax bill that could affect nonprofit organizations such as. Uh, extra taxes on foundations which could obviously hurt, you know, what nonprofits are able to get from those organizations and, um, um, making sure that um there’s no provision to single out particular types of organizations to be penalized in ways that um would make all of us in some ways vulnerable to that kind of attack. So, um, we’re, we’re paying obviously a lot of attention to that and trying to make sure that through our legislative processes we’re able to help. We had success, uh, in the House of Representatives where the, uh, the provision that allowed the Secretary of the Treasury to unilaterally designate a charity as terrorist supporting got stripped out. Uh, we need to keep that out, you know, we don’t want the Senate to add that back in. That’s another, that’s another talking point that I’ve been encouraging. Um, but yes, the universal charitable deduction, that’s outstanding. So non-immis, non-itemizers can get what is it, it’s, I think it’s a $150 individual deduction, $300 for a couple, right, that’s valuable, but there is a lot that’s bad in this bill for, for the sector, you know, these, these individual charities being attacked, um, financially. We, we just don’t know, you know, I, I use the metaphor of a domino row. Like those are the 1st 4 dominoes, the 4 I mentioned. Who’s the 5th which is the 5th domino? Might it be your nonprofit is number 5 or 6 because we know what happens when the 1st 4 fall. So, uh, so we have, so AFP has, I’m sure you have. Uh, government affairs, government affairs, either contractors or, or employees, and, and our, our contractors are also similar to contracting with other, uh, similar organizations and, and who are making sure that we’re all informed. So what you’re, what you’re experiencing with this work is a concerted effort. It’s not just AFP, but we’re joining forces with other organizations through our um legislative support. To make sure that many organizations are a part of what’s happening here and, and also being formed and, and weigh in where necessary. Does that include working with the National Council of nonprofits with Diane Yentl, she, she does, yeah, she was the sole positive voice at that uh at that committee hearing. Yeah, it was awful. It was awful the way she was treated. Oh, she was personally attacked. Yeah, it was awful and, um, you know, I think that. Uh, I actually thank God for her courage and uh for her commitment to this work. And, um, you know, all of us in the nonprofit sector owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude for what she’s been willing to go through, not willing, but she’s doing it because she knows she’s, it’s, it’s what she does. It’s the kind of person that she is. And um I can’t thank her enough on behalf of our organization and um many others who may never come in contact with her for her commitment and strength and um her willingness to stand up for all of us. Does AFP have any lawsuits against the regime? We don’t we don’t have any lawsuits as of now, but supporting the councils, yeah, OK, OK. Um, What, what, what can you encourage folks to do, uh, on an individual level? Well, you know, we’re having our virtual Hill day this week. And so we’ve asked our members to reach out to their congressional um delegations to talk to them about the importance of some of the issues that we’re talking about right now and to be supportive of the great work that the nonprofit sector does. I think most people kind of understand, but you know, we aren’t great in our sector at talking about ourselves. And it’s understandable I guess we don’t spend a lot of money marketing our work, we just go out and do it and so what you have are um people who don’t quite uh connect that some of the good things are happening are happening because of nonprofit organizations and um some people don’t even understand that the service they received was through a nonprofit organization. And so we’ve got to do a better job of telling our stories, but um we’re asking our congressional delegations to be supportive of the great work that nonprofits are doing in their districts and in their states and to look at, look for ways to assure that the field is such that we can continue to do this important work and uphold our democracy. You know what I fear, Art, is that we, we’ll get the universal charitable deduction at, at some level. Maybe that’s, it doesn’t really matter. Let’s say it stays at $150 per person, $300 per couple. We’ll get that, but we won’t get the attacks against the sector removed from the bill, both on the micro level, those 4 or 5 I mentioned. And on the and on the macro level in terms of USAID, State Department funding, you know, so like they’ll throw us a bone. With the deduction but end up hurting the sector very badly and the, and the image of the sector. Yeah, well, I worry about that too because along with the money comes the vote of confidence, right? I mean, when government says we think that there should be a robust and free nonprofit sector, it’s basically saying to its citizens, this is good for us. And when government attacks it and fights it, you know, people get a very different impression of what we’re doing. However, with that, I’ll say. That Regardless of what happens, you will always have nonprofits. People will fight, people will struggle, people are gonna support each other because it’s the human instinct to be supportive and helpful to each other. What we have to do, I think, Tony, is make sure that our Congress and our um our senators understand the extent to which we’re under attack. We’re not sure that they all do. We’re not sure that every senator and every congressperson has focused on these issues, and we’ve got to make sure in our own organizations and organizations from people who are hearing this, hearing this show that you can make outreach to those people in your, in your area to make sure they understand that we’re under attack, that these are real. Policies and potential laws that are going to be enacted that could have a deleterious effect on what we’re able to do locally in our communities. It’s really important that you not take for granted that they already get it. They don’t get it in every case. We have to get out there in front of them and make sure that they do and. You know, I know that there’s some fear that people have right now, um, of being critical of what’s going on, but I would hope that we could get beyond some of that fear and at least tell the story. I mean, we don’t have to be particularly critical. We can just say, you know, in our organization because of the resources we get, people get fed, or because of our organization, people who can’t get to their cancer treatments are able to get there, or because of our organization. You know, people who are, um, depending on uh being having a free access to their religion can actually do that because of our services, you know, we have music for kids who are trying to learn how to play instruments and they don’t get that in school. Um, and because of our organization, kids can get college educations and, and community colleges can thrive. So the kids who are trying to get the best value out of education can do that through a community college. Kids can get student loans. And let’s talk about that. How many people can go to college today without some type of student loan? And these could potentially be under attack too. So let’s not assume that every congressperson understands the value in what we do, and we need to get out there and make sure that they do. Because there are so many constituencies that are hurt by this big bad burdensome budget bill, uh, you know, the, um, Medicare, uh, Medicare, yeah, the, the potential Medicare cuts, uh, potential Social Security cuts, you know, so there’s so many cons and and other things, there’s so many constituencies, um, we need to make sure our voice gets heard. And, and you’re right that It, it should be directed to the levers of power, you know, sometimes I, I get concerned that we, we share each other’s posts on LinkedIn, you know, but that’s just that, that’s our echo chamber. Everybody, everybody we’re connected to on LinkedIn is already aware of the problem. Your, your LinkedIn connections are your, are your nonprofit colleagues. And we’re all in the community together, but beyond the our echo chamber to the levers of power and, and to the extent it’s possible to the public too, because, because our, our image is being. Badly, not worse than just tarnished, it’s being badly destroyed by the, the words in, in Congress and from uh the executive. Yeah. And I can’t believe that most Congress people want to hurt nonprofits. Um, many of them are parts of nonprofits themselves, you know, um, many of them were able to get elected because of their service in nonprofits. You know, they became popular because of the good they were doing in their communities through those nonprofit organizations. So, you know, let’s just be real here, and let’s be real. I mean, if you’re a congressperson or even a senator, there’s a nonprofit in your community that you’ve been connected to. Are you really willing to stand back and let that organization suffer for no reason? Um, and that’s basically what we’re talking about here. Someone decided that it’s time to hurt nonprofit organizations or to make them, um, operate in a way that we want to see them operate instead of giving them the freedom to operate in a way that they can best serve people. And are you willing to just stand around and let that happen? And that’s just kind of where it is. It’s really that basic. It’s not anything more than that in my opinion. And we have to, um, hopefully, you know, with our energies and in our concerted efforts, help them appreciate that um they’re connected to these organizations too. And if you’re really about delivering constituent services, how are you gonna do it if you’re not you’re doing it through government because you’re cutting all the government services out. And, and nonprofits which have been um great partners with government in delivering services to constituencies in every state. It’s time for Tony’s Take two. Thank you, Kate. I’ve got no tails from the gym. This one is, uh, and another semper fi moment, two Marines meeting in the gym. Uh, our last semper fi moment was uh back in March. Uh, it was actually the March 31st show. Two Marines met then, two Marines met this time. Uh, one of them is the same, uh, Rob. I’m not sure I knew Rob’s name at the time. I, I actually, I think I did the other guy, the other guy couldn’t get his name in. Because Rob was a little, little chatty, chatty former Marine, and I don’t, I did not catch the name of uh this uh second Marine uh this time either. But what I just admire is the way these, these guys have this love of the Marines and this camaraderie years after having served and, and, you know, they didn’t know each other, they didn’t work together in the Marines that, but these, you know, former Marines, they, they come together and uh. They just, they bond over their acronyms and Marcom and whatever, you know, I didn’t, I didn’t catch as much of this conversation as I did the uh the one back in in March, but it’s, you know, it’s two Marines. It’s just, it’s just very clear and, uh, and they always end, they end the conversation, you know, they don’t say goodbye, goodbye is or take care, that’s not the last word. The last word is simplify. And then they and then they part. So it’s, it’s admirable, uh, really, I, I, I’m not mocking it at all. It’s just, it’s a strong bond among former Marines who never served together. They just have that common Marine Corps bond between them. So, simplify. That is that no, I’m not qualified. I can’t say simplified. I was not a Marine. I was in the Air Force. We didn’t have, we didn’t have any mottos. We just, uh, I don’t know, we were like the sissy boys of the military. I don’t know. See that seems to be the stereotype anyway. It’s not true. We were not sissy boys, but that seems to be the stereotype that’s out there among, among the, uh, the more. Highly testosterone laden, uh, army and Marine Corps and navy seems to be the the misguided stereotype. So I won’t say simplify. I’ll just say that is Tony’s take too. Kate. You didn’t have like a motto, you didn’t even have like a goodbye. No you can remember? No. There’s no secret handshake, no motto, no, I mean, there was codes of conduct, of course, but nothing, nothing like the Marines have semper fi. We didn’t have anything like that. We were just the sissy boys. I don’t know, sissy sissy boys. I’ve never heard of that. Uh, you weren’t in the military. Uh, I don’t know. I, I mean, you don’t, you don’t hear it among the Air Force, so we don’t, we didn’t call each other that. But once since I’ve been out through the decades that I’ve been out of the Air Force since 1989. I’ve, I’ve heard that, uh, the other branches of the military think that Air Force personnel are the sissies. Oh wow. Well, we’ve got booco but loads more time. Here’s the rest of a conversation with Art Taylor, with Art Taylor. Going back to uh LinkedIn, you, you posted about a, you posted about a month ago on LinkedIn something personal. You, you, you posted a brief bio, uh, you told us that you’re a citizen of the United States and where you were born, your parents, who your parents were, and that you have a birth certificate and a passport. What motivated that post? Obviously, um, you know, we’re in an environment right now where people are being, um, Detained for many cases, no reason. Um, we have concern now that um even people with legitimate documents are being swept up and taken away. And um I just wanted to bring some attention to this issue, and people have interpreted my um my LinkedIn post in many different ways. Some people have pointed out that By doing this, I might have normalized the behavior, right? I mean, oh, so, so now everybody has to let the world know that they have documents. What about the people who don’t have documents? Are you basically saying they should go? And I understand that and and that wasn’t my intention, but I think it’s important to bring attention to this issue. Um I wanted to make sure that, you know, my wife and I talk about this from time to time. She says, well, what if you go overseas? Are you gonna be able to get back in your country? I said, Well, maybe I should let people know. At the time, you know, there were people who were being detained for no reason, and I said, well, um. If I make a public statement, at least the world will know. That I am indeed a US citizen because I put my bona fides on a social media platform. If that’s what they’re looking for, you know, for some reason you say I don’t have a passport when I get to you, I actually do have a passport and you can check it out and the world knows that I have a passport. So there’s some protection and just people knowing. But the main thing was to really bring attention to this issue. You know, I. I, I’m not a person to um. To really um express what our immigration policy should be here in this country. But what I do know is, um, throughout the existence of this country, people have come from other places and have contributed mightily to what we’re able to do as a nation. In fact, I would argue that we would not even be America if it weren’t for the energies, the enter enterprising nature of people who come from other places, combined with the talents and skills and willingness to work together with people who are already here. um, and then we have a large obvious, um, um. Gathering or not gathering, we have a large uh population of people who are indigenous to this country, who deserve our respect and appreciation and reverence really for laying the foundation for what later became this country, and we can never forget them too. So, um, in my mind, people are people. They want to create opportunities. So that they can thrive in our society and so that people who um get here at one stage can move up through our, our society and become uh more economically viable and educationally successful and, and go lives for their generations after them. That’s what America is all about. And it just hurts me when I see that we’re looking at ways of, of curtailing that or limiting that. Now, I understand, you know, we wanna make sure people come here legally. I get that. And we wanna make sure that um people are given um the right vetting, so that the right people are coming here. But I, I think the idea of just saying, you know, you look a certain way or you may have had a history of being in a certain country and therefore you should be gone. I don’t quite understand that. And so, um, you know, that’s just my personal opinion. That’s certainly not AFP’s, you know, position. I’m speaking about how I see things. Um, and so I, I don’t, I don’t necessarily go along with that. A lot of people would disagree. You know, everyone has the right to their own opinion on this. But I feel that um the, the people that I’ve interacted with from other countries have for the most part been hardworking, rising, and looking for opportunities to grow and help our country thrive, and they should be given that opportunity as far as I’m concerned. I was in New York City just last week and I intentionally took a ride on the Staten Island ferry so that I could go by the Statue of Liberty. I wanted to I wanted to see it and you you see it both ways on the, on, on the ferry to and from Staten Island. Um, and it You know, it, it struck me in a different way than it has in the past. I, I, I, I, I took it for granted in the past when I would ride the ferry or see the Statue of Liberty sometimes you see it from an airplane as you’re going in, especially going into LaGuardia, um. It, it took on a different meaning, uh, or, or it, it took on a greater meaning because the, the, the liberty that it represented for, for millions of, of immigrants is, um, is in question, we’ve got a regime that is, uh, and I intentionally call it a regime. I don’t think it deserves to be called an administration. That’s me, that’s Tony Martignetti. uh, I don’t, I don’t think it deserves the uh imprimatur or the, the, uh. The respect of an administration. So, you know, uh, there are elements of people in the elements, there are individuals in the, in the regime who want to make this a more white country. Uh, they, uh, they, they, they’re all for, you know, the 1st Amendment and the 2nd Amendment and due process for the right colored people, the white folks, and everybody else is, uh, A little suspect to these, to these. People in the, uh, the senior levels of the regime. um and uh and so the the the Statue of Liberty, you know, it, it, uh. It means something and, and then I, I also thought of it at a different level as a gift, that was a true gift to the nation. I, I, I don’t believe that the, the Qatari jet is a, is a gift to the nation. Um, but that was a secondary, uh, that was beneath my My first thoughts of just what that statue represents for millions of people, uh, and it’s, um, what it represents and, and what it claims, you know, give us your tired, you’re poor, you’re hungry, your huddled masses doesn’t say anything about what skin color they are, what country they come from, what their work visa status is, what, what they can contribute, where they, you come and you become an American. And, and that’s under threat. Yeah. Well, um, you know, the, the racial thing has always been, um. Just uh a scourge on our country, I think because the bottom line here is that we need everyone to be productive and uh vital in um delivering the best that they have to offer to the development of our country. And so, um, it, it just doesn’t make sense for us to say, you know, here’s a category of people that we’re just gonna relegate to the, the bottom of our society because of how they look. It makes absolutely no sense. It’s never made any sense. And obviously people of various um racial backgrounds have contributed mightily to the success of the country. And you know where we are today, it seems that. We those of us who have been discriminated against in the past because of racial um. Because of racial issues. You know, we now, um, we fought for integration into our society. We had to fight for that integration. And um we were getting closer to full integration and now it seems that the people who um didn’t want to see that happen or people who fought against that are basically saying um you were never discriminated against to to begin with and so um. You should just uh go back to being the way you were, and you know it’s interesting cuz. There’s some people who are now saying fine if you don’t want us to go to your restaurants or if you don’t want us to participate in your businesses, we’ll do our own thing. And so we start doing that and then you know the question comes up, well wait a minute, you’re discriminating against us you’re discriminating. You’re you’re canceling me. My restaurant is canceled. Yeah, they’re fine. If you don’t want me to go, then I won’t go, but But now, if we create our own, now we’re discriminated against you. So it’s, it’s kind of a weird dynamic. I mean, we, we can’t be integrated, but if we try to do our own thing, then, then we’re not being uh fair to, to others. So it’s, it’s really strange, uh, Tony. I mean, what are we supposed to do, right? Really weird Well, What we, what we need to do is push back at this point against the uh the budget bill that’s now in the Senate, it’ll certainly go back to the house because the Senate will make changes and we need to influence those changes. Um, Yeah. You mentioned on a little lighter subject, uh, your wife, your wife, uh, Yolanda. She’s a wardrobe stylist. That’s how, that’s why you’re always styling. I see. I love black turtleneck. You’re you’re great with black, black turtlenecks. You must have drawers of turtlenecks. Um, yeah, she’s a wardrobe stylist. I love that. Talk, talk a little about your, your wife Yolanda. Oh, Yolanda is unbelievable. You know, my wife worked 31 years as a flight attendant for Delta Airlines. And When COVID hit, it was clear that it was time for her to retire. And so she’d always been styling women just as a a courtesy, you know, she’d see how. People were dressed or they would come to her and say, hey, what do you think of what I’m thinking about wearing and she would give them ideas. But when COVID hit, she said, you know, maybe I’ll do this full time as a business. And so she started at the style table. And it’s been a remarkable journey for her. Um, she has gotten so many interesting clients. She was featured on. The Today Show, um she’s been on uh local uh TV here in DC because of the work that she’s doing. And her whole orientation is to try to make women feel great about themselves and to be confident with what they’re wearing so that they can be confident in their lives. See, for many people, clothing is either a stressor or it’s something that gives them uh great confidence. And um if your clothing isn’t, uh, if your closet isn’t organized, well, it’s a stressor because you’re now thinking about what do I put together, where do I find it? And, and so she will help women get their clothing in order and then help them find. The many outfits that they already have in their closets. Uh, data says that something like 20% of the clothes we have is what we wear, so 80% we just have sitting there. And when she goes in to do what’s known as a closet edit. It’s a whole psychological thing that women are going through. Why do you have that? Um, I don’t know. Well, you know why? Tell me. Well, I was with so and so and he bought it for me like 20 years ago and I can’t. Well, where is so and so? He’s gone. He’s not why are you holding on it. And there are emotional reasons why people hold onto their clothes. So she’s, she’s working with them to help them get rid of those and help other people, get them to people who can relove them. Including donating some of those clothes, and she’s also very big on environmental issues where, you know, fast fashion can be a problem for our environment. And so she tries to get people to use, you know, more classic items that they can repeat and rematch and remix, but it’s an, it’s an amazing process that she goes through with her clients and they love her. I mean, I, I know who’s talking about my wife, but. These women actually love her for what they’ve done for her and so I appreciate you letting me talk about her because I could talk for the whole show of course at the business is at the table. Her, her advice about classic pieces strikes me because that’s what my mother always used to recommend get buys basic classic pieces that will last, whether it’s jewelry or foundational wardrobe pieces. Um, and by good quality and you’ll get a decade or more out of use, decades, uh, from them, um, and, and they, and they’re very likely, you know, not gonna go out of fashion. Um, that’s right. So, so she helps you. Does she help you? Does she, she, well she tries, but I, you probably her toughest. I’m, I’m probably her toughest customer, but I’ve been trying to, um, be a bit more, um, open to her style. So my, my problem, Tony, is when I grew up I didn’t have any money. But um there were people in our neighborhood who sewed and they would always look great. So they get fabric and they make their own clothes. But I didn’t know how to do any of that, you know, I was an athlete and had no money. And so, um. What happens is you realize that you can’t compete in that field with, you know, some of your classmates, so you just kind of let it go. Just surrender, surrender, you know, I’m, I’m not in. I can’t surrender take any pride from that jeans and jeans and a t-shirt we just do every day and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll wear a different t-shirt, but yeah, all right, and then, you know, you kind of grow up thinking that, OK, I have to do other things so that people will overlook how poorly I’m dressed. I need to overcome. What was your sport or sports? Oh, I’ve played baseball and basketball in high school and college, yeah. Where did you go to college? Franklin and Marshall, yeah, F&M, yeah. So it was, you know, it was, uh, one of those things where, you know, I just can’t compete. And then when I was old enough to maybe have some decent clothes, I just never thought about it. And I would just do maybe the minimum, you know, and never really thought about how. The way I dress can influence how people perceive me, and it’s true, you know, the first impression, right? The first impression before, before there’s a word out of your mouth, before there’s a hand extended to shake, you, you look like, you look like something. People are, people are looking at what you look like. So you know, I’m trying to get better at it and she’s, she’s a real assist. I, I. I tell people, do not judge my wife based on how I’m dressed. Believe me, she’s a lot better than what you see being interested in me. You get a lot of perks being married to Orlando, the perks from 31 years with Deltas and now wardrobe, uh, in-house wardrobe advice. She’s, uh, and, and I couldn’t, that’s only the beginning, you know, she says I married her for flight benefits, but I tell her, no, no, no, there’s so much more. My wife is. Uh, a person who just loves people. She, um, always has a project that she’s working on and the project is a human being. Uh, a day doesn’t go by where she’s telling, not telling me a story about someone she’s trying to help who’s in a tough spot right now. And. Um, sometimes there are people that she barely knows. You know, I, when I was at the Wise Giving Alliance, we’d have this debate back and forth about whether she should be giving money to people on the street. Because at WGA, you know, we’re always saying you should give thoughtfully and you should give, um, obviously based on a heart too. But um I would say to her, so, um, every person we pass you’re giving money to is that the wise thing to do. She says, I don’t care about whether it’s wise. It’s what I think I need to be doing to go to heaven. And you know, God has been good to me. So if someone needs a few dollars and I have it, I’m gonna give it to him and I don’t care what they do with it at that point. I hope they do something good with it, but if they don’t, you know, that’s kind of on them. So that’s, that’s kind of how she is. She’s just um. A very special individual that um I have been very fortunate to have come across and have in my life and to be married to. Well, give her, give her our regards from nonprofit radio. You’re not a lost cause. Tell her, don’t give up. Don’t, don’t give up on art. You can go to heaven. You can go to heaven if you can help Art. Keep, keep helping your husband. Um, all right, so, you know, we, uh, going back to the, the challenges that the sector is facing, we did have that big win in, in the House of Representatives where that, that burdensome provision got removed and, and we, uh, from what I read, it’s not likely to come back, but we still have to be vigilant about it. But you know, so building on that success, you know, our voice makes a difference that that didn’t just happen because. The House of Representatives, you know that your members of Congress thought, oh, that, that, that doesn’t sound like a good idea. They, they didn’t even know about that provision in this enormous uh 900 page bill or so 1500 page bill, whatever it is. They didn’t even know that that provision was in there until we in the charitable sector brought it to their attention and got it removed. So our voices do make a difference. We’re not gonna win every time. We’re not, but we can win some. We can win. So, well, with, uh, leave us with that, that, that, that encouragement, please, yeah, I will. And but I’m also gonna suggest that we have other issues aside from government that we need to begin focusing on. Um, one of which is the massive decline in donor participation that you may have been tracking, you know, if you, if you border off 2018 and go back 20 years, we were giving at um 66% of families were giving to nonprofit organizations. By 2018, it’s gone down to 49.5%, and that number continues to go down. So we have a big problem, I think. In donor participation. And why is that important aside from the money? Well, Those everyday donors give nonprofits the freedom that they need to do the kind of work that only they can do in their communities without the um extra stress that could come from large donors pushing these organizations to do work a certain way. It also gives them the ability to operate independently of, of, um, programs. So a lot of times you get a large grant and that program money doesn’t cover the administrative costs and organizations must have freedom to operate administratively, right? to run a good organization. So, um, What’s happening, you know, the Generosity Commission released a report. Um, telling us some ideas that we could begin focusing on. I was co-chair along with, um, uh, uh, my colleague, um, from the Kaufman Foundation, John, um, Gosh, I’m blanking on John’s name. He’s gonna kill me for that. But we, we co-chaired the government relations and Policy Task Force. For the Generosity commission. And as a result of that, we were asked to share ideas for what we could do to strengthen everyday donor giving and participation. And lo and behold, there were some things that we found that we could do with government. Many of the things that we’re trying to do now, increase the The universal tax deduction for people, but a lot of them were cultural. Meaning that there’s something going on in our culture right now that drives people who are generous to give things other than Institutions or nonprofit organizations. And we’re very concerned about that. It could be just a general lack of trust in institutions that are driving people not to give to nonprofits. It could be a different orientation toward giving. Than we’ve seen in past decades or generations where people don’t feel like um giving to an organization is the right thing to do or they maybe come from places where government does a lot more and it’s odd to be giving to an independent organization. It could be that younger people are feeling they don’t have money to give right now. Because they have student loans and they have uh families that are needing their money and they’re not making as much as they need to make to make ends meet. It could also be that, you know, Tony, remember when when you and I were starting out. Um, we go to work and there was this campaign. That the United Way would launch or other organizations would launch in a workplace and someone would come around with a pledge card and say, hey, here’s um a pledge card we need you to give $5 out of your paycheck every week so that our company can compete with all the other companies in our city to see who’s the most generous from our employees. That’s hardly done anymore. But that was an engine for massive amounts of small donations. Same is true with the combined federal campaign, which is just a fraction of what it is, uh, of what it was, you know, today, for federal for federal workers and then and then later on the the current attacks against the sector, hurting, hurting our image and, and therefore our, our likelihood of getting donations. And, and then, you know, the fundraising profession has done what it does, right? It, it looks at, well, where, where can we expect to get the most money with the least amount of resources. And that happens to be large donors. But of course, during this time, we’ve seen a separation between the middle class and the really wealthy, right? The wealthy have gotten far more wealthier than people have entered the middle class. And so fundraisers are saying, well, that’s where the money is, so let’s begin going after those folk. And so more campaigns are geared to getting large gifts than they are, you know, direct response kinds of campaigns. And then if you add the religious aspect, people aren’t attending religious services as much, which was also a place where large amounts of small donations were gathered. So, there’s some things going on in our sector that we’ve got to come to reckoning with. If we’re going to continue to see our democracy thrive because we also know, Tony, that when people give, they also participate in civil society at a much higher rate than when they don’t. So, um, voting, going to school board meetings, participating in community rallies or community town halls, all of these things. are highly more likely to be engaged in if people donate to nonprofit organizations. So, um, we’re, we’re gonna see some, we’re gonna see a shift in how America operates. And if you add on to that, what we’re seeing right now, you can see some real challenges as we move forward. So, while we are talking about the the challenges that government is putting on us right now, we also have to begin to think about What we’re doing in our own society outside of government, that could be keeping everyday people from giving to our organizations, we have to find ways to address that. And there’s some good news too. I mean, we do know that people are generous. And we see days like um activities like Giving Tuesday where large amounts are are collected via digital platforms, which is fantastic, right? And we just need to amplify those efforts and find other ways, maybe through culture, maybe people who we respect. If we don’t respect our politicians, maybe we respect our athletes and entertainers, maybe there’s a way for them to help normalize and um make giving fun and exciting and the right thing to do if you’re part of our country. Maybe they can help um. Influence what we’re able to do and that and make it something that people see as important, giving to institutions again. You know, one last thing on this, Tony, and I know I’m going on and on, but you know, I have a sense that With all of the activism that we’ve seen in our society. Designed to point out the problems associated with institutions. That we’ve also begun to think that, well, maybe these institutions just should go away, or maybe they’re not important anymore. And that’s, I think, sad because While you can point out flaws in institutions, flaws that probably always existed, by the way. Just today, we see them more because we have more ways of being um of, of creating transparency in these institutions, right? We see more things now. But these things always existed. It’s not that organizations, in my opinion, suddenly got worse. In fact, they may be better now than they were. In fact, I know they’re better now than they were. But what we see now can be troubling, and the it’s the flaws they get amplified, right? And so. People look at these things and they say I’m not gonna give to that. I’m not gonna be a part of that. Then what are you gonna do? When you tear something down, what are you gonna replace it with? You can’t get real work done outside of some kind of institution, some kind of organized effort is how things get done. So while we’re critical, and I, I certainly encourage criticism, I also want us to think about, well, what are we going to do once we finish criticizing the thing. Once we get done complaining and once our voices are heard. What do we do? Because we have to fill that vacuum with something that’s actually going to solve the problem. Tearing down doesn’t solve a problem. It just ends what was ever causing harm, but it doesn’t solve the problem and we need to make sure that we’re supporting things that actually can solve the problem too. And so that’s my um my encouragement to people. I love that people are activists, I love activism. But we also have to think about how we form solutions, and it’s not just by tearing down. Herman Art Taylor, president and CEO of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. You’ll find art on LinkedIn. AFP is at AFPglobal.org. And Art, I thank you very much for sharing everything. Thank you Tony. I, I really love that you’ve done this for so many years. You’ve made such a huge difference to so many people doing this. And I’m just honored that you’d have me come back on the show. Well, thank you for being a guest and, and thank you again for sharing. Next week, let’s really and truly get back to our 25 NTC coverage with tech to amplify youth voices and donor diversity. Yeah, you said that last week too. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. I hope we can trust you going forward. Mhm. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti, the one and only. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for September 9, 2024: A Different Take On Donor Retention

 

Kerry Hecht: A Different Take On Donor Retention

Most donor retention research is on process. Like, get your acknowledgment letters out within 24 hours. Kerry Hecht’s research takes a fresh look at how to keep folks with you. She shares her thinking on getting people to donate time (volunteering), and donating through purchases. Kerry is CEO of 10k Humans.

 

Listen to the podcast

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts

I love our sponsors!

Donorbox: Powerful fundraising features made refreshingly easy.

Porkbun: Looking to grow your nonprofit? You need a .ORG domain name from Porkbun.

Apple Podcast button

 

 

 

We’re the #1 Podcast for Nonprofits, With 13,000+ Weekly Listeners

Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.

View Full Transcript
Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of politico phobia if you campaigned for the idea of missing this week’s show, here’s our associate producer, Kate with the highlights. Hey, Tony, this week it’s a different take on donor retention. Most donor retention research is on process like get your acknowledgment letters out within 24 hours. Kerri Hecht’s research takes a fresh look at how to keep folks with you. She shares her thinking on getting people to donate, time volunteering and donating through purchases. Ky is CEO of 10-K Humans on Tony Steak. Two hails from the gym, the loudest voice in the room were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org and buy pork bun. Looking to grow your nonprofit. You need a.org domain name from pork bun, instant recognition, trust and visibility pork bun.com. Here is a different take on donor retention. It’s a pleasure to Welcome, Carrie Hecht. She is the founder and CEO of 10-K Humans, a company paving the way for a more forward thinking and people centric approach to market research. They’re dedicated to elevating synthesizing and counting every voice, demonstrating that harmony between people and data is within reach. You’ll find Kerry on linkedin and the company is at 10-K humans.com. Kerry. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thanks so much for having me. I’m glad you’re with us. We got some, we got a, a very interesting spin on a very common topic, but you approach it from a little different perspective. Uh donor engagement and literally 15 minutes before we were gonna begin our recording. I got an email from the chronicle of philanthropy. The subject is how to stem the decline in donors. This literally came 15 minutes ago. Uh They quote some stats. I was gonna ask you, but with your indulgence, I’ll just run through the dismal retention stats. Uh donor retention was down 3.5% in 2023. This follows 4.3% and 4.1% declines in 2021 and 2022 respectively. When viewed by donation amount, the retention rate for donors of $50,000 or more was down 5.6% for donors of 501 to $5000. It was down 5.4% and for donors of $100 or less, it was down 4.2%. The Chronicle, of course, they have uh some advice and their very first piece of advice is provide volunteer opportunities which leads to what we’re gonna talk about first. Uh But I wanted you to acquaint our listeners with your research related to uh your, which drives your advice. Yeah. So we started working with nonprofits for a couple of different reasons. Um The first of which was trying to go through the world in a more purpose driven way. So we started building into our work travel when we would go to different cities that we would line up. Um, you know, set up some meetings with charities where we could talk to folks and whether it turned into something or not was really not even necessarily the point. It was sitting down and talking to people all over the world who are solving the biggest problems. And what we realized in doing that is, um they didn’t really have a strong understanding about how to leverage the assets that they had in order to make smarter decisions around things like uh donor retention, um increasing their donor base volunteers as well as understanding and relaying back to the other stakeholders. The impact the beneficiaries of their service were having. And that is a conversation that, um I actually had earlier this morning too serendipitously. Um And it, it is one that just repeats itself over and over and over again that charities much like uh you know, businesses don’t they have in their head, what people think of them, which doesn’t necessarily align with what they actually do know or think about them and it could be donors, it could be volunteers and there is no feedback loop that gets back to the donors about the impact the services are having. And volunteers don’t really understand all of the different ways that the organization helps or all the different ways they can engage with the organization. This is, and this for me now on conversation 35 seems to be a universal truth. So your um your advice is around uh the reason I said it’s, it’s different than the, the typical take on. This is that uh uh uh the typical take is more related to the transaction. Uh The transaction of donating typically, like, you know, do an acknowledgement letter, you know, if it’s an online donation, the the person should get their first thanks within five minutes and then they should get a more formal thank you by mail within 24 hours or so, you know, it’s more involved around the transaction that way at all, we care about you. You’re thinking about, well, two things donating time and donating through purchases. I mean, so donating through time, you’re talking about volunteering. Yeah, so volunteering, but we’re so donating through time is obviously volunteering. But really one of the things that in and you know, maybe this is going in a sort of a slightly different direction. Our biggest thing is working backwards to make sure that people have the information about what you do and really understanding. So you’ve got, if you think about any charity got the three stakeholders, right? You’ve got the beneficiaries volunteer base and then the donor base and the donor base is going to increase. If they understand the impact, the volunteer base is going to, to grow if they understand the impact and the opportunities as well as what it can do for their lives, right? And then you’ve got um the purchasing aspect of it, which I see as something that becomes a natural consequence of these other two things. So in our mind and what we have been, how we have been working with charities is working backwards from making sure that the in the appropriate information is getting to the appropriate people because without understanding how it is what the charity is doing, that is impacting it and what their value proposition is and how they’re delivering on it. Those stakeholders don’t have the information they need in order to determine whether to donate their time, their purchasing power or their dollars to you or another charity. OK. So let’s talk about that, starting with the the donating time, the volunteering. So, you know, just uh uh as a reminder, you know, why might folks, uh I think there are several reasons why folks might volunteer uh and spend uh a different precious resource. Money is a precious resource. But time is as well, including, including for older folks who might be retired. Time is still a precious resource. Uh There are still opportunity costs for every hour they spend donating to your nonprofit. They could be doing something else and for a retiree, it might be golf or it might be the grandchildren. Uh, you know, for someone working, it might be more pressing or what you might consider more pressing. But, uh, uh uh sometimes II, I hear golfers talk about their precious tea times. So, you know, I’m not, don’t, don’t, don’t presume that work is more important than golf to, to workers versus retirees. Yeah. Well, if you think about what that tea time actually represents, it’s bonding time, right? It’s bonding time with their group of people. It could be, um, bonding time with work associates. It could be bonding time with friends or family. So, when we interview volunteers, that is one of the first things that comes up is that they talk about it becoming um, an exercise that they can do with their peer group that they can do with their families that they can do with their friends or colleagues that they can create uh organizations within their universities or within their, um even their work environments where they create these, these, you know, pods of people that are like minded and then they collectively go and volunteer their time for something and they do it together and it gives them not just an activity to do, but then a commonality within the group. And then, uh, you know, even as, as advice for a young person, as you’re looking to differentiate yourself between competition, um, in the hiring pool, this is something that people are looking at. So there’s a lot of reasons to volunteer that fit in exactly with the same reason that you would go see a base ball game or that you would go play golf or that you, you know, imagine a scenario where a grandparent is volunteering with a grandchild, right? These are activities that you can use for camaraderie, social bonding, growing your resume or your CB, all of those things exist, but we don’t really talk about that very much. I, I wanna pull on the one thread, uh expanding your CV. Volunteering is a great way to show that you have interest in a AAA mission or an organization that you might end up wanting to apply to. But if not that specific organization just that, that type of work that you devoted, you know. So if you don’t have experience in uh saving whales, but the, the work moves you and you might want to work in an environmental cause or an ocean, ocean preservation cause or something, you know, then, then donating your time is a, is a very savvy way to prove to potential employers that, that you do have interest because you’ve devoted a precious resource to it. Well, right. And there’s additionally, you know, if you look at the statistics around uh who becomes a leader within organizations, it is there’s direct correlations to the earlier you become involved in volunteer programs, especially when there is a longitudinal nature in your relationship with whoever it is that you’re volunteering with. I have an affiliation with Explore Austin, which is an outdoor um uh provides outdoor activities. This is understates it completely to underprivileged kids in Austin, it’s a five year program and you have a group of 15 kids that stay together for that five years. And then a group of um five mentors that stay with that group of Children for five years and they go from middle school all the way through high school. Um And when they start, often, they don’t even know how to ride a bike. And then by the end of it, they are leading um hardcore camping excursions into the mountains in Idaho. And um you know, so if you think about the leadership skills and the mentoring relationships that go along with that, you know, that has taught that kid how to be a leader, how to be a good member of a team and then how to be a mentor because they start as a mentee and end up in, you know, as a mentor. And I think that that is applicable um for all of these things and, you know, there, I read an article recently about, um, you know, kind of how to cut through the clutter of, of, of applying and how there is a decrease in, um, Bachelor’s degrees being the relevant reason to hire a person. You know, that there’s just not as much, um, cachet associated with having like everyone. It’s table stakes now. Right. And that there are a lot of people who don’t want to take on the debt that is associated with the bachelor’s degree that isn’t going to get you further. So there is this whole strategy behind cultivating your own experience through auditing courses, engaging with charities. Um becoming, you know, part of leadership groups and mentorship groups and things like that, that is setting people aside when it comes to looking at the talent pool. And so I think that there’s within charities, you can, you know, to your point, you can cultivate whatever experience you want. Let’s just say that you’re going to apply to grad school. Um and you’re looking to be a clinician of some kind, very hard to get a research assistant job. Well, volunteer your time at the Trevor project, volunteer your time with doctors without borders. There’s a million different ways that you can cultivate that big experience yourself. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. Now, back to a different take on donor retention. Another maybe more fundamental reason folks volunteer is they may not have the money to donate to your cause, but they still love your cause. And so you wanna make sure that they have the information as you as you’re recommending so that they know that there is an alternative. We don’t, you know, our, our organization doesn’t only want your dollars if, if um if there’s another way that you prefer to give or another way you need to donate, you know, we have opportunities. I, I completely agree with that. So what should we share? What, what, how do we, how do we encourage now? Now we understand why folks might do it. Uh How do we encourage volunteers to step forward? Yeah, I mean, I think this is, there’s, there’s, I mean, that’s a great question. Um So we were working with an organization um in Tokyo and they started doing advertising campaigns. So they were one of the largest organizations, charitable organizations in um Japan. And the reason why this is so interesting is that culturally volunteering is not something that they do versus the United States. Um where we are often trained from a very early age, either through school organizations or religious organizations that service back to the community is something that is kind of woven into the fabric of, of, of how we go through the world. Um And so they were talking about, uh so we did a lot of research on the benefits for the volunteer and then we created advertising campaigns around that. And I think that there are a lot of opportunities for organizations to work with corporate sponsors, perhaps the corporate sponsors that are giving them money, they can also work within those organ. And we saw this in, in what was happening in Japan working with those organizations to create corporate volunteer banks and the people in the corporations that were volunteering would get acknowledgment within the organ organization that they worked for. So again, that is a way to get something besides money even from a large corporate donor, working with schools, working with college campuses and really articulating the benefits of it to them. So, you know, if you think about the different things that we’ve even talked about already, which are camaraderie, skill set, um Cooper experience with, you know, intergenerational co-operative experience um with your family, all of those things can be the same thing that you would treat a brand different pillars of advertising campaigns and then you would hit them up in different places right. You know, you could hit them up at, at college funding, you could hit them up at, um, career fairs. You could hit them up around the holidays when you’re looking to create warm fuzzies would be no different advice than we would give to a brand that was looking to sell something. You also want to share the impact that these volunteers are having, that you can have as an, as a volunteer even if it’s a solo volunteer. Um but a, as a, as a solo or as a group, you enter families, companies, neighbors, I guess maybe a giving circle, you know, whatever, but you want to share the impact that you’re volunteering will have as well. Of course, I I’m sure of sharing the impact with the current volunteers that, that, that they’re having so that so that they, they feel good about the time they’re spending already. Yes. Well, and it’s all about the stories of the people, right? I mean, and that I think is what, what we in market research are doing, you know, aim to do is to bring those stories to life because, you know, behind every number, behind all the statistics that you listed, there are human beings who are, you know, the reason that their donations are declining could be economic, could be cultural. Um You know, what is going on in the world. There’s so much uncertainty, it could be competition for resources. Um It could be they just lost, uh, you know, track of, of the organizations that they were donating to. You know. So there’s, there’s, there’s stories behind all of it and it’s important to understand those stories. And again, you know, I think that, that, that human beings proved time and time again when you give them a compelling reason to, um, to, to give, they are, they want to, right? They want to help, they want to participate. You know, even on like a personal level, if I think about when I got into volunteering as a, as a kid, it was because we had to, right. It started with brownies and, you know, so that has a service. I remember brownies. I was, I was a boy scout. I remember brownies. Of course, before, before boy scouts you have, we blows or girl scouts, you have brownies. Right. That’s right. And then we had, when we were in high school, we all had to be candy stripers at the hospital. And then, um, as a person that’s moved around the country quite a bit when, um, you get to a new city, there’s no other, there’s no better way to. Number one, learn how to fill up some free time before you’ve got your friend circle. Um, then to start volunteering in places when I, you know, moved to Brooklyn, I was volunteering at the Brooklyn Zoo, um, volunteer at animal shelters and it just gives you a way to get sticky with the community quickly and I was doing that on an individual basis. Right. And that was literally to just acclimate. Where did you, where did you live in? Brooklyn? What neighborhood? I lived in Park Slope and Williamsburg. I was a member of the Park Slope Food Co Op for about 18 years. Yeah. Yeah, they’re, they’re great neighborhoods. Right. And, um, I loved going, my, one of my volunteer jobs was to protect the goose from Children trying to interact with it. So, you know, there’s all kinds of, I don’t know, the goose, the goose, the Goose war, the Brooklyn Zoo at the Brooklyn Zoo. Oh, ok. Oh, things get a little too handsy. Like, leave the goose alone. It’s very stressful. Yeah, it’s very stressful on the goose. Right. Um, all right. Well, there’s opportunity for everyone. Pardon me? I said there’s opportunities for everyone. Absolutely. Uh, just since you mentioned, you know, moving around all over the country before we started recording, you and I were talking about the places where you, you move around now, acquaint folks with, uh, where you have residences at three different places. Yeah. So I have, um, a place in Los Angeles, which would, I would say is my primary home base. And then I have a place in, um, Austin, Texas, um, which has been great and, you know, I’ve, I’ve gotten involved with a lot of different organizations there and you talk about sort of the differences between Austin and L A. Um Austin is still a very accessible city where you can get yourself um involved with City Council and involved with charities and and meaningful work. Very, very, very, very quickly. It’s a very progressive city. So in addition to that, they’re looking for people who are committed to making um life in, in the city better for the people who are struggling with perhaps rising cost of living and so on and so forth. And then Haines, Alaska, which is a um very small city outside of June. So you have to take, it’s like planes, trains and automobiles to get there. It’s a puddle jumper away from Juneau. Um which, that’s where I, as I was mentioning before, I’d like to go to clear my head. But even there, they have um farmers market every Saturday in the summer and they’ve got an Eagle Preserve. And um I like to volunteer my time when possible when I’m there to either of those things because it’s a great way to meet people who live there year round and become part of the community. You can’t drive from Haines to Juneau. You can, but it’s gonna take you a while. I mean, so, you know, it’s a 30 minute, 30 minute puddle jumper or an 8.5 hour drive or a four hour ferry ride. But however, you decide to get there, it’s, it’s an amazing visual experience and how much time do you spend on an average year? How much time would you spend in Haines? Yeah. So, I’m building a house right now. So, the hope is that I will be spending more time. But I try to go up there at least for a week every other month, especially while the house is being built. Um, just to make sure that it’s like that, that is tracking and doing its thing. But you have to be, um, you know, there’s, there’s often no cell reception. So if you’re not at your house, you don’t have cell reception and there’s, there’s a lack of um you know, infrastructure. So there’s, there’s literally no pharmacy, no hospital, no doctor, there’s no stoplight even in Haines. And so, you know, you, you need to make sure that you prepare well, in advance that your work is going to be covered or, and you know, that kind of thing because once you get there, you’re, you’re a little bit out of touch. Interesting. All right. So like how do you do uh supermarket shopping when you’re, when you’re in Haines? They have, they do have two, they’ve got three supermarkets. Um You got food. Yeah, but they, they, the biggest difference for me is that in Austin and LA, I am very store averse. So I tend to be an exclusively an Instacart shopper. Uh even though there is a grocery store right across the street from my house and I actually have to go to the grocery store when I’m in Haines because nobody will bring it to me. Yes, I see you. You’re, yeah, that’s roughing it when nobody will. That’s a real camp. You, you feel like you’re on a camping trip then nobody’s gonna deliver my groceries. All right. Um, all right. Now, it sounds like an interesting. I, I don’t know. Uh, yeah, I mean, uh, it’s kind of isolated. Like, no, you’re saying no health care in the, in the, in the town. I was climbing the top of a mountain um, to the top of the mountain and I got cell reception when I got to the top of it. And I, and in my, um, I had gotten some calls from some doctors and my phone started like blowing up, you know, had the voicemails on like Blip Bloop and they’re like, where are you? And I’m like, well, I’m on the top of a mountain in rural Alaska and they’re just like, got to stop doing that. No, I hope they didn’t discourage you. Your doctor, I would, I would think would be encouraging you. All right. Um So let’s, let’s uh let’s pivot a bit. So before we pivot to purchasing, donating through purchasing, is there anything more you want to share about volunteering and getting folks to donate time and reassuring our existing volunteers? Um I would just say it’s always worth it. And, you know, there are so many opportunities out there that um and there’s even services that match you with the kinds of things that you are interested in or have a natural proclivity to. Um And there are, you know, when, when I was growing up, of course, the, the internet was brand new and um now there are services that will allow you to volunteer your time through organizations that will also help you see the world. I mean, so the opportunities are really quite endless. And I think that, that, you know what that means to me is there’s something that, that can fit every scenario or every stage of life um and every interest. So I think that it’s, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s all I’ve never had anyone say that it wasn’t worth their time. And I think that if you weave that into your business, you weave it into um you know, how you interact with your friends and your family. Um It can be really quite profound across the board and from a purchasing perspective, you know, if you’re, if you’re looking at, um you know, there’s a, there’s a whole different conversation to have there, which is, is probably its own um you know, two hour long conversation. But, you know, if you, if you as consumers um being purposeful and how, and where we spend our money uh and making sure that you’re doing the research to make sure that it is doing good in the world. To me, it’s just a very important value. And I think that, you know, a lot of corporations are in that space now, but again, a lot of charities are getting, are funding themselves um through having uh commerce, like ecommerce websites or by selling a service. I just talked to a patient advocacy group who pays for the services with um that they provide to patients by providing market research services. So, you know, paying attention to the kinds of businesses that you’re doing that you’re working with and um you know, trying to align as much as possible, whether it’s partners, things that you purchase that in a way that, that aligns with your own value system, I think is important and worthwhile. It’s time. Frere Pork bun.com named the number one domain registrar by USA today for 2023 and 2024 work by helps you share your organization’s mission with a.org domain name dot org. And the entire.org family of domains are at the heart of change makers and philanthropies worldwide. Join an international community of individuals and organizations sharing a common goal to make the world a better place. Your.org domain name gives your website credibility. It’s easy to remember and it helps bring better awareness to your goals. Every domain at pork bun comes with free features like who is privacy SSL certificates, web and email hosting trials and more. You can manage everything about your domain from one place backed by five star support 365 days a year. Get your.org Domain name for a low price at Pork bun.com. It’s time for Tony Steak two. Thank you, Kate. I’m a little sad. You’re not with me this week. I enjoyed it the past two weeks. Side by side. I know it was, it was a lot more fun. Felt the vibes a bit more with, yeah, with your uncle. So I have some more tales from the gym. You know, I should have brought you to the gym. I didn’t even think of it. I could have uh I could have shown you the gym just so, you know, it really does exist. Um Yeah, the loud guy. This is, this is a new voice. I think. I recognize this guy from long ago many, many months ago before I started the Tales from the Gym series here. But he hasn’t been around for a long time. And today he was the loudest guy even, you know, above the boat mechanic and, and the other folks. And actually, and he was talking to Tim. I remember Tim. He was the needy guy with the birthday. Had to tell everybody, including me that it was his birthday. So everybody would say happy birthday and I thought that was pathetic. Um He was talking to Tim so he had an audience of one and they’re standing right next to each other. You know, they’re not even yelling across the gym. Nobody does that. But they’re not even doing that standing right next to each other and, and he’s the loudest guy this and he’s, he’s political pontificating. I, I listen to how all the candidates are. Both, he was talking about the presidential candidates and both used car salesmen. Tim is just kind of nodding. I think Tim was kind of get away a little bit. I was on the elliptical at the time so I could watch out of the corner of my eye. Tim was given some negative body language like folding his arms and, you know, but it’s North Carolina. So everybody’s too nice to say, you know, you’re an idiot or I disagree with you or anything. Uh You know, we just, 00, that’s, is that right? Oh, they, they both are used car salesmen. Oh, ok. So just, you know, it got me thinking the, the loudest voice in the room is not the smartest voice. This guy is spouting off, you know, his political opinions and I just hope that you don’t let that happen in your board meetings or Zooms or, you know, whatever that the loudest person like has the credibility. Oh, they must be right because they’re the noisiest. Those two things are not even correlated. There’s no relationship between volume and in sight. So don’t let that happen. Especially on Zoom meetings. I was thinking, you know, people can bowl over each other and dominate and, you know, you can’t even tell most times that somebody else is trying to talk if they, unless they’re, unless they continue talking and then the two people are, you know, competing. But if one backs down on Zoom, you can’t even tell that somebody else is trying to speak. So don’t let that happen to you. Men are probably the worst of it. Uh, the worst offenders. Uh, I’m not saying it’s universal but generally, like men tend to be the, the blow hards. So don’t let that happen. Don’t let that happen, uh, in your spheres of influence. And thats Tonys take two Kate. Oh, I’m so happy about the Tim update. He, he’s my favorite out of all of your tales from the gym because I feel like he’s just from what your stories are. He was like the kindest and like, not annoying, like the, the woman who had her spot, you know, and she kicked you out of her spot, that kind of, or like the, the guy with the bow, you know, those are like, I wouldn’t associate with them. I wouldn’t associate with Tim. He, he is, he, he probably is the, uh, the, the most quietest, uh, quiet spoken. But, you know, he had that needy episode on his birthday. I think next year if you remember what day it was, I think you need to bring in a cupcake or something, you know, a little, one, little candle, something I did not mark it on my calendar. Uh, I forgot about the, uh, the Turf warrior lady. Yeah, I forgot about her. Right. Right. My first class, first class, I went to a class when I was there and I should have taken her spot and, oh, yeah, you could have. Right. Because we could pretend we didn’t know each other or, you know, or you just, it’s your first time there. Right. It looks like it was mine. I’m gonna stay here now. Yeah, I still see her. She is in good shape. I have to give her that. But uh turf, turf battles. All right, we’ve got just about a but load more time. Here’s the rest of a different take on donor retention with Carrie Hecht, you know, specifically for our purposes. You know, with our, our listeners obviously have their own purchasing decisions as you’re suggesting you’d be, you’d be purposeful about. But, you know, our listeners are also working in small and mid-sized nonprofits. So, you know, we want to talk about, uh I wanna, I wanna pull on that, the, the uh thinking about what your nonprofit might be able to sell, right? And this is what we’re talking about, purchases, selling in terms of services or products, you know, that you may not, you may not now be uh exploiting, you know, how to, how to think about that, what you might embark on the, the types of, you know, what you need to know about the market. Uh Let’s let’s um let’s, let’s start where we did with volunteering. You know, why folks might, why, why you might be able to induce people to purchase products or services from your nonprofit? Yeah. So we work with um a clothing brand uh out of Australia who they’re an urban streetwear brand, um called homie and they’ve cracked this right. They have. So what they do is they focus on, on providing skills to people who are bordering on homelessness or at high risk of becoming homeless. So they don’t focus on the shelter aspect of it. They focus on um literally teaching them how to be marketers, how to work in stores. Um They work, teach them how to make clothing. Um they teach them how to navigate uh conversations with much larger brands to get their defective products where then they take them and turn them into limited edition. Um you know, cool street wear that it becomes collectors items, right? And they have some, they’ve got a two year program that they bring people into where they teach them this skill set and they have something like a crazy, like a 97% success rate. Um and they have stores, you know, all over Melbourne and they’ve got an ecommerce website and things like this. And so that, that is just one example of not just creating a tangible product, but creating a skill set to create that tangible project project and then becoming something that is um as cool or as hip as anything could be. I mean, they’re like, you know, they’ve won all kinds of awards um for just how they’ve been able to crack that code. And again, this, this company that I was talking to yesterday um about the patient advocacy. So, patient advocacy is an incredibly important um and necessary thing for people, especially who have chronic illnesses given how complicated doctors and insurance and everything else are. So they, they, you know, they, they didn’t start in a place where they were a market research company. They started in a place as a patient advocacy group. And then in order to pay for it because they weren’t able to get the amount of donations that they needed, they’re like, ok, great. Well, how do we product ize what we’re doing and so what they’re doing is they’re interfacing with um you know, patients that are often have rare or rare diseases, doctors and organizations. And so they leverage that by providing brands um and different kinds of corporations access to those people. So that’s how they make their money, which I think is really quite brilliant, right? You know, especially when you think about market research is often looking to make the lives of um people better, especially when you’re talking about things like that. So they’ve monetized it in a way that um that, that doesn’t impact who they’re trying to serve. So I think that there’s, there’s a lot of clever things to do out there help us understand how you, how you start to conceptualize this. I mean, if I’m in a small or mid size nonprofit, you know, I’m II I can’t see myself starting a AAA brand and, and having stores selling the brand, I can’t see myself there. But how can I think about what products or services might be, might be appropriate for me to explore? Yeah. Well, so, so interestingly, both of the examples that I gave one was uh started with two people and they started with an ecommerce site, right? Um And then the other one was, um and, and there’s this story is, is, is familiar in market research, um that it was a lady who started a business at her kitchen table, right? So both in both of those cases, they actually were um, you know, one man, two man shops that just were clever about how they were thinking about it. So for, I think the smaller to mid size um nonprofits, it’s kind of the same way that you would think about a small to mid size business and getting, you know, your products out there. So, you know, let’s just say I’m trying to think of some other examples that could be um uh let’s use an animal shelter as an example. So we often will see um things here where it’s like rent a dog for a day, right? So you get people who then they’re not necessarily volunteers, but maybe they’re in the city and they want, are looking for something to do. And so they donate some money to the charity. They get a dog that they can then take out on a hike and spend the day with and then they return the dog. Now that dog has been paid for, you’ve earned some money and that person’s had a wonderful day and a positive experience and now has a positive affiliation with your charity. So I think there are lots of different kinds of things that you can do that are um whether it be experiential. Um You know, if you think about the, the patient advocacy group is a combination of experience for the um you know, the people that they’re advocating for and then monetizing that by giving companies access to it, which in essence, makes these people’s experience even better experiential with the example of the dog. Um You know, even if you think about, um you know, charities that are um affiliated with, you had mentioned the co op before or for example, me with the, the farmers market in Haines, I do that so that I can spend the day there with them. So they’re selling um you know, vegetables that they have grown. The Eagle preserve in Haines is selling um you know, the experience of coming in and looking at their eagles, right? And so, you know, you pay to get in, you pay to listen to someone, talk about their program, you pay to listen to, um, you know, you get to see things up close, that’s a product and a service that you’re selling right there. So, I think there’s lots of different things they can do that don’t cost you really any money to set up. Um, you know, Ecommerce website doesn’t cost you anything to set up, giving access to, um, you know, the back end of an animal shelter and, and providing someone with the knowledge of how the ins and outs of that work doesn’t really cost you anything to do. But people will pay for experiences, think inherent in what you’re saying is that you don’t wanna take for granted the, the experiential possibilities that you have just because you’re, because they seem mundane to you because you’ve been seeing it for the past 4.5 years. I worked there all this time, you know. Well, it’s no big deal. What happens at the back end of the shelter, you know, we shovel dog poop and, yeah, but there’s, there’s medicine and there’s, there’s, uh, uh, volunteer opportunities and there’s, uh, I, I mean, even I was at an animal shelter that had a small surgery center could witness surgeries from behind the glass, you know. Um, you could maybe even assist somehow. Yeah, I don’t know. You know, you don’t want to take for granted what’s mundane to you. Just, just because, uh, you know, you’re limiting other people’s perspective based on your own. Right. The rent a dog thing, if you think about it is one of the most, you know, for an animal shelter is sort of the easiest possible thing to accomplish. You know, you’re giving people, let’s just say that that three people took you up on it, it probably costs you nothing to put that on your social media. You know, something that can ultimately pick up some traction as more people do it. They have a good experience. They come back, they do it again, they tell their friends about it so on and so forth. Great for the dogs because they’re getting socialized. Great for. And there’s a bunch of pictures of the dog on the website out with their partner for the day, you know, smiling in the, in the woods instead of in a cage. Right? So there’s these, again, this feeds what the goal of the charity is, right? So there’s lots of different things like this. We did some work with a charity called, um, Surfers for Strays, um, which is in a, a dog and animal rescue as well as clinic in, um, Mexico, uh, where they do spay and neuter clinics in, in very rural Mexico. And she has a, um, so you come, you pay to go stay at, with her in her, her compound. She’s also, um, a yoga teacher. So your, your experience is a combination of having, you know, morning yoga classes and then helping take care of the animals and then, um, you know, and then that funds the charity. So she’s giving what she has on a personal level as an experience and then that combining that with the experience of the charity. So you’re getting yoga and warm fuzzies and learning about, um, you know, cultural differences and how we treat animals in different countries. All right. Yeah, I just, I want folks to feel empowered that the, just think, think about what value you have and, you know, like we’ve said, and there, all right. So there are some market uh like practicalities too to, to sort of constrain our thinking a little bit. Uh But I don’t want to constrain it too much but, you know, value, right? You have to, you do have to provide some value. It’s not, it’s not gonna be sufficient that you’re supporting the organization. Correct? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you, you, if you think about anything, it has to be sticky, right? So, if you think about a con even a conversation that you have with a person, um that is a one off conversation. Some people you end up becoming lifelong friends with and some people, that’s it. Right. So what is the difference? It’s having more things in common, perhaps inspiring each other a little bit. And that’s gonna be the same thing with any relationship that you have, whether it be with a brand or a charity or a human being, right? That if you, if you can find ways to um, interest, engage and elevate each other, then you will, you know, you’ve got that two, the two sides of that working together. And that’s when you really start developing advocate networks and things like that. You also have to think through, you know, who you’re gonna be promoting this to, you know, your target, your target market. I mean, this is right in your wheelhouse as a market researcher. But, you know, I just want uh I’m trying to just uh constrain a little bit with the the business realities of what, you know, what, what you can do. You need to know where you’re gonna be selling this too. Yes, for sure. And I would say, I would say, you know, my advice is always to be responsive and agile, right? So if you are dealing with, with often, you know, small charities or even small businesses, you’re dealing with um tight timelines, small budgets, um not enough people, right? So I would say, you know, there’s, there’s no reason why you can’t try something that is small with very limited resources, but then pay attention to the outcome and iterate quickly. And I think that that is the same advice that you would give to any small business owner or any start up, right? It’s, you know, keep your eyes open and keep your ears open. Look for what is impacting people and then have the conversations, you know, I just getting feedback, doesn’t have to be large scale. You can get feedback that even if it’s anecdotal is still actionable. And I think that that’s so we’re talking about constraints, you know, I tend to be an eternal optimist. So I’m trying to like immediately and, and naturally pivot to, yeah, but don’t limit yourself. Right. Because you could have three conversations, one with a donor, one with a volunteer, one with a beneficiary and you could come up with, you know, even though that is anecdotal in, but that may be all you have the resources for, there can be actionable things that you can pull out of that. So don’t be afraid to start the, I mean, the first thing to do is just start having the conversations, just start looking at what resources you have already in house from um you know, your mailing lists and from, you know, the the organizations that you support, the people that you support. You know, there’s many things that you can do that cost absolutely nothing to start gathering information and then that information becomes actionable. Yeah, you have incredible resources just, just in house. Talking incredible resources is yourself. Yeah, talking to the folks who are doing the work or meeting the service beneficiaries, you know what, what you’re just having the exploratory conversations. Uh Yeah, it is, it is all anecdotal but, but it’s, but it’s valuable still it’s anecdotal, but it’s highly informed. Right. Right. Well, and then you have five anecdotal conversations and then you’ve got enough information to put together a small survey that you can then send out that costs you nothing because there’s plenty of free services out there that you can send out to your donor base or your beneficiaries or your volunteers. And then you don’t have then, but then we’re past the anecdotal, then we’re into the numbers, right? So, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, I think that it’s just don’t be intimidated by it, don’t be afraid of it. And, you know, everybody has to start somewhere and everybody doesn’t get it right the first time. Like literally everybody iterates on every idea that they have. Oh, absolutely. I mean, look at, I’m looking at my phone to make sure that we don’t go over time. I mean, you know, Apple didn’t launch iphone 15 uh in, in 2007 or whenever that, you know, when they launched Apple, the Apple phone and then it was 2.0 and three. But now we’re 15. So, of course, you know, it, you know, it goes back to your uh uh on a smaller scale, your advice to iterate, you know, be agile, listen to the people, listen to the three people who took out the first three rented dogs for a day. What did they say when they came back? You know, not that you had to talk to them for an hour. But how did they feel? What did they say? Was there any, was there any problem? Yeah. Would you do it again? What would you recommend? You know, we’re just getting started. You know, there, there’s 33 data points, uh, highly informed, they just went through your process. So, learn from those three and then do another five or six and there you go. Next thing, you know, you’ll be at the iphone 15. That’s right. And, you know, I always personally have the um the philosophy too that you should be generous with your time and generous with your spirit. And I think that when you go through the world, that way you end up surrounded by people who are also generous with their time and their spirit and leverage that. Right. That’s because that’s because the people who are uh uh uh what’s the opposite of general are, are uh generous. I was gonna say that guy, it’s Scroogey, Scroogey. They’re scroogey with their time and their spirit. You know, they’re gonna naturally sift away from you. You’re, you’re, you’re gonna naturally sift them out. Um They’re, they’re just gonna fade away because you’re not gonna spend time with the Scroogey people. Yeah. That’s right. That’s right. And I mean, I think about, um even in my own career, um I had so much help and so many good mentors and, you know, we have woven that I think fairly successfully into um how we bring people up within our own organization. You know, and there’s a million free resources out there to get people. Stingy. Stingy is the word I, 62 words sometimes have diminished accessibility. Stingy is the word I was trying to get for. Ok. But stogy works too. I’m sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, I was just saying, you know, there’s, there’s, um, you learn a lot about yourself and other people when you help open doors, right? And there’s, there’s, you know, using this would be applicable to charities and small businesses as well. Like if you’re looking to cultivate skill sets, um you know, there are a million resources out there that are low cost or free Coursera, for example, being one. So let’s just say again, you don’t have, um you have limited budgets to hire people, but you need them to become advanced Excel experts. Well, it cost you 40 bucks to take a course for a whole month of as many courses as you want on Coursera. Boom. Now we’re, we’re, you know what I mean? So, so get out there and really start, you know, don’t, don’t think about the things that you can’t do, think about the things that you can, you know, I’m routinely saying something that’s directly a corollary to that uh focus on how you can not, why you can’t. Right. Yeah. And we’re saying the same thing, I just put it in different words. But, you know, I tend to think that anything and everything is possible until proven otherwise. And once in a while I am. But, you know, and it’s usually, you know, a little bit of a painful lesson but then you iterate and you make it possible. So, navigate around the, the hurdles and if you’re looking for reasons why you can’t do something, oh, they’ll, they’ll, they’ll jump at you. You’ll find a dozen reasons why you can’t, we, we don’t have enough time. Uh It’s not the right budget cycle. Uh We’re a little short staffed now. We’d have to fill this position first. Now, we have an open board seat. Now, we have, you know, I have to focus on that. Now, the gala in six months now, I just, uh, you know, hypothetical organization, I just named like eight reasons why you can’t do something. So if you’re looking for those, the, they’ll jump out at you focus on the how you can. Exactly. Right. And, and, you know, the other thing I would say too is tick as many boxes as you can, right. So when we started the, the, the, the line of, I don’t even call a line of business because it’s not. But the, the internal initiative um that we call 10-K causes, which was doing this pro bono work for charities, right. So we had a bunch of different reasons that we were doing it and it was to create a sandbox and training ground for our employees. So when we had employees that needed to be upskilled, um or were looking to level up in their career, you know, that we could, we could create this environment for them where we could experiment. So and then experimenting with new technology, you know, maybe we don’t understand it well enough to run it on a live project. So let’s experiment with it. It gives us collateral material and case studies because most of the work we do is under nd A. So there’s, you know, so if you think about it, we’re helping these charities, but there is for sure, a self serving nature to it as well. You know, and it’s, and I think that that’s, that’s really if I could drive any point home that it’s like it goes back to that those relationships that I’m talking about that become sticky that it’s like these are mutual beneficial things. We’re learning about the world, we’re learning about our business, we’re learning about what we can do. And in the meantime, we’re helping small, you know, helping charities learn about their potential and they can take, you know, what we know natively to brand building um consumer insights and apply those learnings to their own um organizations. So it’s, it’s, there’s absolutely a mutually beneficial aspect to it and there should be to all of these engagements, outstanding uh advice, uh thinking uh stuff that folks can take back and, and advance or at least think about it on their own and then advance. Uh Why don’t you leave us with some, some parting thoughts on, on your, you know, this research and ways that we can, you know, leverage what everything we’ve talked about for all for the good of donor retention. Yeah, I would just see, be end curious, right? Be end curious about why, what your organization is doing, how it’s benefiting people don’t take for granted that you know what is important to the donors and the volunteers from an information standpoint, ask them what important and then go and build on that and give them more than what they, what they’re asking for because the more they know the more likely they are to stay engaged. And I mean, I think in a nutshell, that’s what I would say. Information, feedback, loop, information, feedback, loop, information, feedback loop, Harry Hecht, founder and CEO of 10-K Humans. You’ll find carry on linkedin. The company is at 10-K humans.com. Thank you very much for sharing your thinking, Carrie. Yeah, I appreciate it. This was great. Next week, Professor Russell James returns with the right words and phrases for fundraising. If you missed any part of this weeks show, I do beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org and buy pork bun. Looking to grow your nonprofit. You need a.org domain name from pork bun, instant recognition, trust and visibility. Pork bun.com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that. Our permission, Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for September 11, 2023: Donor Retention

 

Dennis Fois: Donor Retention

The challenges are real and widespread: Aging donors; smaller gifts; and abysmal retention rates. Dennis Fois brings strategies and tactics to raise your consciousness and turn things around. Let’s talk about emotional connections, multithreading, and multichannel, just for starters. He’s CEO of Bloomerang.

 

Listen to the podcast

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

 

I love our sponsor!

Donorbox: Powerful fundraising features made refreshingly easy.

 

Apple Podcast button

 

 

 

We’re the #1 Podcast for Nonprofits, With 13,000+ Weekly Listeners

Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
View Full Transcript

Transcript for 657_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230911.mp3

Processed on: 2023-09-08T14:45:42.314Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2023…09…657_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230911.mp3.230060681.json
Path to text: transcripts/2023/09/657_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230911.txt

[00:00:35.77] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti Nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I am your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be hit with Bera France if you lit me up with the idea that you missed this week’s show, Kate, our associate producer. What is up this week?

[00:01:10.67] spk_1:
Hey, tony, it’s donor retention. The challenges are real and widespread aging donors, smaller gifts and abysmal retention rates. Dennis Fo brings strategies and tactics to raise their consciousness and turn things around. Let’s talk about emotional connections, multi threading and being multichannel just for starters. He is CEO of Boomerang on Tony’s take two.

[00:01:13.14] spk_0:
It’s September 11th

[00:01:46.46] spk_1:
were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor Boxx dot org and by Kila grow revenue, engage donors and increase efficiency with Kila. The fundraiser CRM visit Kila dot co to join the thousands of fundraisers using Kila to exceed their goals. Here is donor retention.

[00:02:14.42] spk_0:
It’s a genuine pleasure to welcome Dennis Fo to nonprofit radio. He is CEO of Blue Marang. He’s had a broad international career spanning more than 25 years developing and leading high performing multicultural teams in the technology, customer experience, relationship management and financial services sectors. He’s on linkedin and the company is at Boomerang dot Co, Dennis Fois. Welcome to nonprofit radio.

[00:02:23.67] spk_2:
Thanks very much for having me on tony.

[00:02:25.64] spk_0:
Pleasure. Pleasure. And uh where are you uh speaking

[00:02:28.54] spk_2:
from? I’m speaking from Carmel in California.

[00:02:35.88] spk_0:
Carmel, California. All right. Uh And the, the, the business is in Indianapolis, is that right?

[00:02:58.75] spk_2:
Originally started in Indie? And um as I think a lot of uh technology companies post pandemic has ended up all over the place. So we are very much scattered around the US. We are remote. So most of our employees work from home and then we, we work together, uh when we meet, we have events around that. But uh I want to mention about 30% of our employees in India and the rest outside of India nowadays. Ok.

[00:03:08.92] spk_0:
Ok. And it sounds like you’re intentional about getting the team together in person. Is that you, you find that, uh we, we’re, we’re digressing from our main topic. But, uh I’m, I’m, I’m interested and I think listeners are too. You, you, you find that important for uh for a uh a virtual team,

[00:05:30.12] spk_2:
super important. And I think um you have to be very intentional, deliberate about it. I, I mean, I’m one of those people that um as we all went into the pandemic and we had to do certain things that were just basically necessary. I did want to take some learning side of it because we did learn a lot. I, you know, I, I was an office rat before the pandemic or first in, first, last out and I sort of noticed a few things during the pandemic. They were actually very pleasurable and I think it doesn’t work for every company. But if you take, take hours, for instance, we work for small to midsize nonprofit organizations all around the US, what’s really cool is is that if you have your employees all around the US, you can actually give some time for employees to do something locally and that opens doors so you can create a better connection. We now have employees everywhere. So if there’s a customer, you know, I’ve, I’ve got customers here in Carmel. I did, I didn’t know that. So now we can connect, we can meet for a coffee. I can do. So I’m actually volunteering some with a local dog rescue. So it creates this sort of more emotional connections. Folks can pick up their Children from school. It’s a, it’s a, it adds an interesting layer to your company that in my opinion, can create a deeper connection with employees and potentially higher retention rate. So I’m not, you know, there is a, there is a shrewd business side to this too, right? Um And that is that employee, we talk about donor attention to the employee retention is a topic too. And um uh embracing some of the learnings that we’ve taken away rather than going back to an old model. Seems to me, uh it feels like the right thing to do. So we, we’re, we’re making it work. But yes, you absolutely have to be very intense about uh when you get together and what, then you shouldn’t be staring at presentations that you need to make it about human connection. And uh and that requires a lot of thinking. Um So it’s not because we don’t really have a good model uh where we, where we can learn from each other. So we, we’re figuring it out. Yeah,

[00:05:34.13] spk_0:
we’re working it out and you’re, I, I understand intentional and it’s worth investing in clearly,

[00:05:39.39] spk_2:
for sure. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

[00:06:20.36] spk_0:
All right. All right. So, thank you a little digression. Uh But as you said, yeah, we’re, we’re here to talk about uh donor retention. Uh What? Uh Well, II, I think it’s pretty widely known that we’re doing quite poorly as a sector in donor retention. Uh It’s 75% or so of one first time donors are, are lost after, after that first gift, which is abysmal. I mean, it’s un it’s, to me it’s unsustainable and unless, unless you have an enormous acquisition pipeline which you’re spending a lot of money on, which is quite a bit more expensive than retaining, uh, it, it seems unsustainable but, but it, but our, I, I’ll call it, our donor mortality rate continues to be very bad.

[00:10:01.84] spk_2:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s, um, if this was a business, we would be out of business. Right. Um, I agree with you entirely. The statistics are a little paralyzing at times I feel and, um, I would say, and sometimes there’s a lot of uh sort of negative communication around it. Some folks getting, getting very stressful about it, I would say in part, it’s also down to uh execution, right? Uh So what I mean is if you see uh your organization in 11 half of the organization about is about heart is what you care about what you’re passionate about. But the other part of it is the the brain part is where you do need to run it as an organization and what we are seeing a fair amount of in the small to mid size, say from 250 K to 25 up to 25 million. That is, it’s, it’s, it’s really not really approached and run like a business, you know, as a business, the moment you’ve acquired your first customer, this is the first donation, you, you be Fighting Tooth for Nail to retain that customer. We all, we all know that it’s much cheaper to retain existing customers. So, so it’s, it’s bizarre to see but, but then I started sort of digging in because, uh, you know, you get, you get to, uh, you get to ask why, well, why, why is it? It’s not that it’s been 30% that it’s 70% now, it’s been structurally like this for a very, very long time, you know, that better than I do even. And so why, why is that? And we don’t really have great answers. But for me, it comes down to a lack of establishment of emotional connection. I think that ultimately why most of us give is because there’s a level of feeling associated to it. It’s not a transaction for most people to donate. Whether it’s a small donation, there’s a, there’s a, there’s a feeling whether it’s a feeling to make yourself feel good or whether it’s a uh altruistic Phil philanthropy, what whatever the feeling is, it’s about feeling. And when you think about that, you and then you ask yourself and say, ok, what am I doing to, to help that person get more connected to my organization? That’s where it starts to unravel real quick. So, capital campaigns are about transactions and numbers. Um when we, and, and it’s very knee jerky. You know, when we, when the numbers are low low, we’ll run a big campaign and it feels a little bit like a transactional approach. Well, thanks very much. Our course was to raise so many thousands. We did it, we did the sele, but we’re forgetting the basics. Let me give you one which I found shocking statistic you and I experience this. You’d think that saying thank you when somebody’s donated would be pretty common practice, right? So I’ve just donated in whatever form I’m receiving some form of. Thank you. I’m not even talking about the most impactful way of doing it. I’m just talking about. Thank you in a way, an email, whatever it, when you look at it, the statistics are pretty bad. So we, we, we, we look at this because we, we work with our prospects and customers about how, where can we improve some things if I give you sort of an aggregate number saying thank you within say the first two weeks of a donation happens in less than 13% of cases. No, 13

[00:10:07.11] spk_0:
what two weeks? It’s supposed to be 24 hours, 24 hours for a perfunctory and then maybe there’s a follow up, you know, I like to see a follow up call or a handwritten note or something, but the perfunctory should be 24 hours and you’re saying two weeks and it’s 2 13%

[00:11:15.01] spk_2:
13, 13. And then if we lengthen the time to 30 days, at which point, I don’t even remember what I’ve done to be honest with you, but then that number goes up to 18% 18. So it’s, it’s a crazy number if you think about if you set that number up against 75% 1st time donor retention rate issues, right? And you say, say, but we never say thank you to me, rather than looking at really structural societal, economic reasons for why things are the way they are, we should really start to look at, are we doing absolutely everything we can to establish an emotional connection? And frankly, if you miss a thank you. Yeah. Yeah. It sort of feels like you’re, you’ve, you’ve, you’ve got a, you had a false start, right? Yeah. Now

[00:11:35.34] spk_0:
you’ve, you’ve, you’ve blown the, you’ve blown the opportunity if, if, if you’re responding with a, a even a perfunctory. Thank you. As I said, I’d like to see 24 hours but within 48 hours that you’re going out to two weeks and it’s only 13%. Uh, and what, what is, what is that? I’ve never heard it that low. That awful, what, what is that based on that? That’s boomerang clients. Yeah,

[00:12:48.42] spk_2:
we look at and prospects. So we, we, we, um, uh, I, I’ll give, I gave you sort of an aggregate number. Some folks are much better, better at it than others, but you’d be surprised. It’s certainly not in the, it’s never in the high 80% or something like that you’d be. And there’s always a reason why people say I didn’t have whatever address or there’s always some reason, but there’s also no reason because if you and I would be running a business, there’s always a way to say thank you to someone. Right. So, so it, it feels to me, uh, there’s plenty of, you know, hurdles that we can keep up with. I didn’t have the right email address, didn’t have the right phone number or something happened. I didn’t do it, whatever, but it’s structurally super bad and it’s always in the low single digit percentage across the board. In fact, we often, um, engage with prospects like that when we look at sort of, uh, they might have other systems or other tactics and as they’re looking for another system, they want to also improve the processes. Right? And we often do these sort of assessments where we, um, uh, that’s what we do. We actually make small donations on behalf of us and we should see we track what, what happens and that’s, that’s how we get that information. And, uh,

[00:13:14.60] spk_0:
if you, if you’re not responding within 24 hours, I think it looks like you just don’t care. Right. Talk about grabbing someone from the heart first, you know, to, to give them a feeling, AAA warm feeling anything more than 24 hours. Looks like your gift doesn’t really mean too much to us. In 30 days. 30 you may as well not, I don’t know. To me after two weeks, you might not even bother it. You’ve already, you’ve already blown the relationship unless I don’t know unless you call with, uh, uh, some kind of catastrophic story, uh you know, which is not, not likely, uh you’ve blown it, you’ve blown the opportunity.

[00:15:41.99] spk_2:
Yeah, completely. And, and, and we often get uh a little bit of setback when you sort of look at and say, hey, am I supposed to say thank you? Like do I, what, what does it matter if I say automated email, for instance, as a thank you to everyone that’s not very personal, it’s not very emotional. And I agree. But if you start by saying thank you to your first time donors and have different means to engage with your retained donors, that would be a good start. You can’t tell me that you, you have so many first time donors that you can’t deal with the volume like that. That seems, that seems like a that’s a very high bar to achieve. That’s not what we are seeing, right? So I think if you just narrow it down and say just hit the notes I had um I wasn’t, I had a, a charity rally where we had sort of a thing with old cars and this was to support a local dog rescue. And uh we did a bunch of things like auctions and stuff like that and we made a donation and it was so amazing that the following day um I got a voice mail so they didn’t get with me, but that voicemail was fantastic. It was just a voice mail from the executive director and it was just like, it was just a, a very nice warm, I heard the voice. It made me feel super good. I thought I did the right thing and, um, and now there was a, you know, a typical newsletter that follows. So I actually read that newsletter now. Right, because I’m, I’ve got something there. Actually, I love that lady. I love how passionate she is about making sure that these dogs end up in the right homes and how deliberate she is about all of that. Um And she’s, she’s got me like they’ve got me, I want to do more and, and I thought it was as simple as just dropping me in a a voicemail. She didn’t even try to call me. It was just a voicemail straight into my inbox, but because it was a voicemail and not an email, it was much more personal and I’m pretty sure that day maybe from that event, let’s just be generous. Say that she had five or six new donors, right? New first I done this. Is it really that hard to to send five? Thank you. Um I don’t know, seems like it seems like it’s doable.

[00:15:45.98] spk_0:
Now. You, you’ve mentioned this dog rescue uh a couple of times now. So why don’t you shout them out properly? No, I

[00:15:50.85] spk_2:
can’t. I can’t because this built a pool. They,

[00:15:57.27] spk_0:
they, they all right, you’re a big, you’re such a big dog lover. You can’t shout out to you. All right. All right. All right. Well, we know we

[00:16:03.26] spk_2:
have the opportunity though, tony, but I think I’m gonna get it. Um I’m gonna get it wrong somewhere with someone. It’s a very

[00:16:10.28] spk_0:
small town, right? We know we have a dog

[00:16:46.14] spk_1:
lover. It’s time for a break. Donor box, quote, donor box text to give led to one of our more successful fundraising events, a concert sharing the keyword short code and scannable QR code made giving easy for our supporters. And they did give that’s from Josh Young executive director of hydrating Humanity Donor Boxx, helping you help others donor Boxx dot org. Now back to donor retention.

[00:17:09.28] spk_0:
So in with automation, I mean, this, you give a gift, you have to provide an email address and and or a phone number so you can send them an email or a text again, this perfunctory, you know, within 24 hours. I I just don’t see any reason why with, with automation that are pretty standard, right? And you should be able to send an immediate

[00:20:01.36] spk_2:
technology problem. It’s not a technology problem. There are no technological hurdles here. I mean, systems might be difficult to use and what have you but you can, it’s not rocket science. Once you’ve done it, once you can, you can figure it out that I think the, you know what it’s the way I think about it, which is fascinating. I think we have three big challenges that we need to think through. They’re gonna be pretty structural. We’ve got aging donors, we’ve got declining small donations. So from uh gifts up to $100 and from 100 to $500 are down across the board and we have a very hard time retaining first time donors. Those are the three like big uh themes if you can call them that or headwinds, whatever you wanna call them that we need to think through. Ok, these are gonna be here for a while. How, how do I, how do I respond to those? Right. And the bizarre thing is that because we have aging donors, we need to think about our uh our donors as a whole. We need to think about. Ok, how do I tap into younger donors? How do I tap into, how do I broaden my connection to household and not have a singular donor within a household? So you need to think about that. And it’s remarkable then that when we’re presented an opportunity to have a first time donor that we would, we wouldn’t be obsessed about retaining these donors in some way either by and if and if the friction is around the donation, I’d rather take a small recurring donation over a haphazard first time donation. There’s a, a strategy too. So we have all the tools in place. It’s just that it’s almost like we are applying principles that we have. We, we, we’ve applied for years to today. But today things are really starting to accelerate. So when we think of don, you know, frankly dying donors uh and not being part of estate planning and such, we really need to think about tapping into different generationals. And now that generation uh you have then you have other questions which is, is email, the best medium, et cetera, et cetera. But um uh there is an amazing opportunity there in my opinion, to, to, to tap into because we are getting the first time donors in, we are getting them. So it’s not like the next generation is nonn generous. It’s quite the opposite. Actually, the generation that we all love to hate the Gen Z and the millennials are extraordinarily driven by impact and doing good for the world. They are probably one of the most in tune generation. We’re just not connecting with them and uh and their rotation rates will continue to show what they’re showing if applying these type of uh methods here. So it’s a, it’s a challenge.

[00:22:16.22] spk_0:
I, I wonder if some of the problem with connecting with the millennials and Gen Z is that the leadership are baby boomers and they’re not listening to their own millennial and Gen Z employees or the or they’re not even seeking the advice of those younger folks about how to, how to connect the younger donors again. Emotionally. I, I think, I think if you start with the heart the brain follows. So you had that heartfelt genuine sincere voicemail, just a voicemail and it, it, and it’s drawn you in and that’s so that’s an example. Um They’re so they’re not, they’re not taking the advice. And I think these boomers of which I’m one, a young one, a very, a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very young boomer, but I am just barely a baby boomer. You know, uh the generation is not taking the advice of younger folks, seeking the advice of younger folks, but how to connect with younger folks and that and that they are your future planned giving donors. Planned giving is what I do, fundraising consulting and strictly in planned giving. So if you wanna have that pipeline of long term, you know, the the ultimate, the ultimate gift for a lot of people is in their estate plan. If you want to benefit from that ultimate giving, you need to be treating these folks well from the, from the jump from that 1st 24 hours that we’re talking about and, and then beyond and you know, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve broadened beyond the, the the initial thank you. But um you know, that’s, I mean, that’s a again back to a business, I mean, that’s how a business maintains a, a pipeline of customers. But you know, you have, we have to have a pipeline of prospects right throughout the, throughout the age spectrum, throughout on all the different ways of giving monthly sustainer and major and people give just once uh once a year or, or give just to a particular program, just give around the gala. If, if we’re suffering an event like that, I don’t want to get into the difficulties of event, major event fundraising. But you know, we’re, we’re just not, we’re not, you’re right, we’re not creating like think of it like a business and we’re not, we’re not treating our pipeline of prospects and donors appropriately.

[00:25:47.71] spk_2:
So, you know, what strikes me is, um, a a because it, I, I can imagine that it’s, listen, it’s hard. There’s a million things to do your research constraint. Um uh it’s, there’s a, there’s high stress involved with fundraising, but there seemed to be some opportunities to rather than try and figure it all out on your own. There’s a, a dozens and dozens of millennials that want to do volunteer work and instead of doing, letting them do volunteer work on your core nonprofit course, why don’t enlist them to help you with the communication using social media? And just the, there’s so many of these, of that generation is so in tune with it. But what I’m seeing over and over again is we are recruiting them for helping them with the local dog rescue. I had that conversation with them. I said, I noticed that one here. This is why I, um I, I’ve been a very long time. Uh, uh donor of and they, what I noticed is, hey, I get all these lovely updates about dogs that need a home and placement. But I hardly ever see what happens after and the real reason why, like, what I care is I wanna make sure that those dogs go to the right place and I believe in your ability to do that. And that’s why I, I, I’m prepared to sort of help out. But the story that I really want to see is a happy dog in a happy household. But I never see those stories. Yeah, occasionally there’s one in the newsletter but you’re placing like so many dogs and, and then the penny drops, as we would say is, um, why don’t we get some of the, there was a volunteer, like there was a, there was a girl that was sort of helping with the shelter and, you know, helping to take care of the dogs and getting them ready, you know, making them look good for, uh for these, uh for the visits. And she was very, very skilled at social media. She was on Instagram. She was all this book and it, and she saw them well, now why don’t we just get these new families to record a little short video on their iphone uh after, you know, a couple of days in the home, like the first week, you know, the first week with Fluffy and it needs to be a very like badly shot video not produced. It is what it is. And then they said, what do we do with the video? You just give that video to me. I’ll take care of it. She said, and it was wonderful. And within a honestly, within a week, I think it turned into this whole thing that now they basically say, hey, as part of the placement of the doc, we need you to give us an update on how it’s going. And that update is a simple little video. They send it to it that now goes on the social base that gets connected to the newsletter, goes on the website. And now there’s a whole different audience that they’re tapping into and these dog stories are starting to do their rounds. Now, what did that cost? Not very much. Uh would a ba baby boomer be very good at executing that? Probably not. But you don’t have to like, you can use volunteers in different ways that you can use volunteers to help you with reach. And in fact, might actually be more helpful because we, that generation probably connects better to their own. Then sort of a grumpy, old boomer or young boomer uh grumpy.

[00:25:52.68] spk_0:
Now you added grumpy. That was not, it

[00:25:54.84] spk_2:
was affecting to myself.

[00:27:08.24] spk_0:
All right. Well, you take that on yourself. Fine. I take about grumpiness. You, you threw that in, you tried. All right. Yeah, it uh it just, you use the, that you have, whether it’s volunteer, it’s on your team. Uh Maybe it’s a consultant. You know, what you’re describing is, it sounds precious. The, the production value is meaningless. It’s, it’s the, it’s the substance and, and, you know, they, they probably now, you know, or they, they will soon have courses of these videos videos that they can repurpose on Instagram, tiktok, Mastodon, youtube, uh their, their own site, of course, uh uh links in newsletters, you know, uh 30 a AAA compilation of uh you know, 32nd videos or something. It’s, and, and that, and that’s the impact that, that, that’s the impact that a lot of people want to see and, and especially well, donors really, I think across the age spectrum are much more cognizant of impact, much more interested in impact. But I, I think younger folks are even more so um Dennis, let, let’s talk some more about some tactics of drawing in making that emotional connection, getting the heart and, and letting the brain follow.

[00:32:02.04] spk_2:
Yeah. Um um a, a couple of things um on that. I think we, we as an industry rely very heavily on email and I’m not so sure that’s a great idea. Um I think email is useful and helpful, but I don’t know about your inbox what that looks like. Um Mine looks pretty challenging. I’ve got a work one and I’ve got a private one and I take a deep sigh in the morning. When I have to sort of make weed my way through whatever, you know, irrelevant stuff, it starts with deleting a whole bunch of stuff and then hopefully I haven’t deleted it too much. So, email is challenging to get attention. Number one and two, it’s actually not easy to make email, uh, create a sort of reinforce of establish an emotional connection because you have to be actually quite good, quite good with, with words. And that’s a high bar, I think um that to, to there are some science out there about how you should write. I mean, the dr is always right about these stories. So the more of these stories you have to your point on impact, the more you should do it. But relying on email alone and then thinking that you have done it, I think is a pretty big mistake. Um I think you have a I like email as a uh uh you mentioned a couple of idea of uh of things like a newsletter or an update. So something that we basically uh is periodic. Uh So, hey, we’re here, this is what we’ve done. That’s great. That’s wonderful. Um But I much prefer that folks and we start to see that experiment with different media and voice, for instance, is still very much underutilized. So people don’t really use Zoom voice. I I there was actually an email that came in for someone that just recorded um a blurp like they had like a, it was like a zoom like we’re doing now today and they included that zoom into it, but there was no video, it was just voice and they were just telling, uh, there was an update of the month but they said we’re gonna try something different. We’re gonna, I’m gonna, so the executive director spoke on the zoom. I thought that was nice. So it was, so that was unusual. So I had a voice, I had him talk. There was a bit of a, a funny moment so you can hear them laugh as they said that I, I had it plugged it in my airpods as I was walking so easy. I don’t have to really uh you know, be concentrated on my, on my desk to read it all. So I thought it was a great, great way to use it. Video is still very underutilized. We all like, you know how it is, it’s not that difficult anymore to uh to have the video. You can still use your email to send it. Um And so I think when it comes to tactics that we have to be careful not to rely on one and just set it and forget it, right? So you basically say, oh yeah, I’m I am communicating with my donors. I’m sending an email. I send a, an um a newsletter every month. Uh Yeah, you know, is that the bar like is the, what is the latest. What is the late, what have you tried? What other things have you tried? Do you know whether they open it and read it? Do you do? Do you have that? Because nowadays we know? Right. We have a pretty good idea of, uh, whether folks read it or not and then what do you do with that information? You just continue sending stuff the other question I have. So that’s one thing it is about the tactics is don’t rely on a single attack. They just set some sort of a goal that every year or every quarter of it, whatever it is feasible, you try something new and see if it sticks, just stick it and stay with it for a few months but just try it, try it. Um, the other thing I would say is as much as there’s a reliance on, uh, the medium, email, phone video, whatever, there’s also a reliance on, uh, the recipient, which is who we’re sending it to. What I find. There’s a concept in business that’s called single threading, um, which is, uh, never referred to as a positive thing. It’s a bad thing. The single, single threading. So what we, what, what it means is that you’re basically when you’re trying to, uh, connect with an account with a prospect, it’s usually a business. And when your single thread in the account, it means that you’re only speaking with one contact in the, in that organization and you know, that a decision usually has to make with multiple people. And very often, even if there’s a CEO CEO would want to make sure that her team is consulted, et cetera, et cetera. So whether these folks are making, whether others are making the decision or influences is irrelevant. It’s very rare that one person calls all the shots. It’s much more common that multiple people have to be engaged, consulted and informed.

[00:32:50.86] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Kila increase donations and foster collaborative teamwork with Kela. The fundraiser, Crm maximize your team’s productivity and spend more time building strong connections with your donors through features that were built specifically for fundraisers. A fundraiser, Crm goes beyond data management platform. It’s designed with the unique needs of fundraisers in mind and aims to unify fundraising, communications and donor management tools into one single source of truth visit, Kila dot co to sign up for a coming group demo and explore how to exceed your fundraising goals like never before. It’s time for Tony’s take two.

[00:34:17.23] spk_0:
Thanks Kate. This week’s show gets published on September 11th, the anniversary of the day that changed our country changed the world profoundly. We all remember where we were, I was uh an employee. It was the dark days of uh employment for me at Saint John’s University in Queens, New York and Saint John’s is up on a hill and we could see downtown Manhattan. So it was in a distance but we could see it happening live. We were going between watching, live and, uh, for real and watching on TV, you know, more close up, of course, but everybody’s got their story of September 11th. And, uh, I think we should just, um, use the anniversary as a, a time to remember to keep in mind the victims, the immediate victims, uh, this week, uh, and also, uh, not only the ones who died that day, but those who are still dying from their service there and from exposures, let’s just remember those folks this week that is Tony’s take two. OK.

[00:34:23.98] spk_1:
You reminded me of a saying I once heard they’re gone but never forgotten.

[00:34:27.55] spk_0:
Yes. Yes.

[00:34:30.29] spk_1:
Let’s go back to donor retention with Dennis Fois.

[00:35:31.20] spk_2:
So you want to become multithreaded to increase your alt of success, in my opinion, the same is true for a household. If you solely rely on the first contact that you ever had, that is the the donor that has actually made the donation. But you know that they’re part or you might not even know that they’re part of a household and you’re not making any efforts to deeper connect and create more contacts in that household organization. You’re missing a big, big, big trick and a big opportunity because I think that the more we can establish an emotional connection at the household level, the higher, higher the chances that things make sense as part of a state planning this is a long drawn process but being simply relying and only communicated to a single donor, in my opinion, is a risky affair. And so doing events where my partners or Children are involved, do whatever you can. You obviously can’t ask who else is in your household. Give me their email addresses, understand. But there’s not, but you could make events deliberately and purposeful, designed to bring the family together, to bring them all in and then start to collect data as part of that event, right? Uh I don’t see a lot of that. Yeah.

[00:37:28.92] spk_0:
Yeah, it’s consistent with your first ideas, not be singular channel, you know, be multichannel, uh be multi thread within the, within the household. Exactly. Yeah. Iii I see that play out a lot uh in events where the there might be a couple there. Again, I do planned giving. So the events I’m going to are usually for older folks. Uh not necessarily plan giving age, but plan giving prospect age. And there are a lot of couples uh whether they’re married or partnered and I see a lot of conversations with one person in, in the couple and it’s, it’s usually, it’s usually the male in, in a, in a, in a traditional hetero couple. Um And, and the, the female is, you know, largely ignored but, you know, but whatever the couple dynamics, I i it’s a mistake to just be talking to the one person because you, you you want the support, you want the buy in, of, of, of the couple. Um, just, it just, it just makes things so much smoother. Uh, you, you reduce any contention around giving that might be playing out in, in the, in, in the home that you have no idea about. You know, so don’t, don’t talk to one person to the exclusion of the other person in, in the couple. Right. Iii, I see that a lot and I bet in person events, right. That, that’s a mistake.

[00:40:20.01] spk_2:
That’s a big mistake. And I bet tony that it’s if you were to go back, even if they’ve spoken or connected in some way, I bet that if you go back and look at the database and say, let’s say the household and we had a nice conversation with me and my wife that when you look back at the database, my wife’s contact information is not in that database. Right? So, because it’s again, none of these things happen with one conversation that like it’s, it’s very rare. I mean, as a magical when it happened, it’s wonderful, but it’s usually it takes time, it takes repeated connections, interactions over a long period of time. And so the best chance we have is if we broaden our reach, but not just broaden our reach, we’re constantly trying to find new people all the time. To your point, this big funnel machine. But if we can expand within our existing donors, we absolutely improve our retention rates. In reality, if you improve your retention rate by about sort of 10% or so, you triple the lifetime value over time over your, over your donor base. So it’s, it’s, it’s, it behooves upon all of us. How do you improve retention rates? Well, it’s not just constantly talking to the same person and sending them more stuff. That’s, that’s, that’s, that’s, you know, that, that has a diminishing return. So, and I feel that we probably need to talk more in the industry about it and share ideas or how others are doing it and talk more about these tactics because I feel that some of the uh some of the nonprofit organization that we talk to want to do it, they, they, they, they’re not afraid of experimenting but sometimes sort of lack the applicable ideas because the industry has started to become quite academic and we talk about things, you know, theoretical concepts and big numbers and scary numbers and frankly paralyzing numbers at the time, it like doesn’t inspire me to act, right? And I think we should maybe need to do a slightly better job as an industry. And I think you do that with your things like your, your podcast where you get deeper into the things and just ideas that I can sort of, you know, walk away but give me one or two ideas that I can do tomorrow then and I can at least I can sort of figure out whether it works or it might work for some, it won’t work for others. But if you don’t try you don’t know. And the reality is there’s no one approach that will work for everyone but relying on email alone and only talking to your donor is a guaranteed, guaranteed, uh, path that sets you to become part of the statistics. Yeah. That’s basically how they’ve been built

[00:41:00.80] spk_0:
on the wrong end. Yeah. Yeah. It, it’s shallow. It’s, it’s not a, it’s not a hard, uh, it’s not a heart to heart connection. Um, you know, as you were, as you were speaking, I was thinking, you know, when, when you call, if, if the, if the non, the non primary donor answers, do you just ask for the donor or do you say? Oh, hello. You know, and wouldn’t it be great if you could hearken back to the, to when you had the conversation at the last event with that other, the, the other person? Oh, it was such a pleasure to meet you, you know, or, or do you just say, you know, can I, oh, hi. Can I speak to Dennis? You know, that, that, that’s, that, that’s, that’s a, uh, it’s a turn off. It’s perceived by, by both people in the couple. Uh, it, it may not ever be spoken about or, or even worse. It might be, but it, it’s detrimental in either, in, in either case. Um, it’s just a, you know, it’s, it’s fundamental respect for, for people.

[00:42:38.17] spk_2:
Well, I agree in respect but also, um, sound business mind. Right. If you want to, like, if, if it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a good business practice. So there’s, there’s the head and the heart that comes together if you were to think that any time that you connect with someone, the donor, but you get somebody else on the phone as a prospecting opportunity, that might be the right mindset. You know, because you, that’s how you treat a new event. When you, when you with this new families and new folks coming be all overdose, right? To tell the story and why you started the uh the organization. Uh the same is true for this prospect with the big benefit that it’s a warm prospect. It’s not a cold prospect, right? Because there’s no connection. So if you think about how do I increase donation sizes, how do I become maybe part of recurring giving? Those are, those are the situations where that happens where both both partners have an emotional connection with the cause and stimulate one another and say, hey, this is something we want, really want to support as a family now that always leads to more sustained and higher donations. Um First, as being one of the two partners that supported because this is their uh their charity of choice.

[00:42:48.49] spk_0:
Other, other thoughts Dennis about tactics that folks can at least experiment with.

[00:45:17.14] spk_2:
Um, yeah, well, so what is, what it has been pretty successful? This might be, um, a little sort of personal but what has been successful here locally? Um, II, I, it was actually quite interesting. So we, um, there are these groups of, uh, people that get together for hobbies, in our case, I’m part of a club that likes old cars. So old people and old cars come together once in a while and they, they do, they take whatever excuse on the wrist to sort of drive these things. And, uh, but we wanted to add a little bit of more depth to it. So we started to, um, to seek out whether there were uh interesting nonprofit organizations around us that we could support somehow. So to make the, so we would basically say, hey, as part of this drive, there is a cost to the drive and that this, this cost was basically fundraising. So we would raise through these drivers a donation and we would then have a, um, have that money go to a, uh a charity of choice, right? One that we would say, hey, this month we’re gonna be supporting this. What I found remarkable is that very few nonprofit organization had identified that a lot of these events were happening. I’ve got a local tennis club, there’s a local, there’s a very, very big car community here in Carmel and Monterey. It’s just a thing. So everybody that lives here knows that. But what I found staggering is that it was actually hard work for us to find. We actually had to seek out nonprofit organizations and explain that we wanted to do some events. And then once we had that people were very generous and said, oh, we come over and speak, we can say a few things about what we we will do and we would attach an auction, little auction, something around to just make sure that these are affluent people. So, you know, making donations is, is a, is, is not a high friction situation. Um But what I found remarkable and a missed opportunity which we’re now making more available is tap into these um communities. So, you know, there are in Indie, it’s the same in Indianapolis. There’s a lot of communities that have certain themes that folks that get together, a lot of them would be very happy, supported co courses. And so what I’m seeing, but

[00:45:34.49] spk_0:
pardon me? But these are essentially giving circles. They are. And I, I had the, I had the evangelist for giving circle Sarah on the show just within the past six weeks or so. Um So, you know, whether it’s a car club or a bunch of folks who meet once a month in someone’s in rotating homes or, you know, or it’s some other, some other uh organization that’s willing to do fundraising and, and granting you’re, you’re essentially, you’re talking about giving circles in, in your community.

[00:49:25.30] spk_2:
100%. That’s a wonderful way of, of uh putting it and uh talk about building a funnel and building connection into, into your community. Uh And they very often become repeat themes, especially if there is an emotive connection with the individual. If the executive director does a good job at presenting, being there, telling the story of the organization, you know, you, I would say it’s almost guaranteed, there’ll be some sort of successful. So it’s really worth doing. But again, it’s about being proactive and seeking those out, making an effort to actually find out what, what is around me. Uh That seems to me, I was blown away. Uh It’s now become a thing with us or every month. There’s something that sometimes there’s twice a month or something. Um But what is also interesting is that most of us end up giving to the ones that we are really connected with, right? So there is the, the event itself that produces us, but some of us actually get, we had a, we had a lady that um had a very traumatic situation with her husband and a child and a child had a disease that was very difficult to cure. And it sort of inspired her to create a, a organization or profit organization to help folks with, um with a, in a similar situation. And she, when she told her story, I most most of us couldn’t keep it together to be honest. So it just becomes like a different level of connectivity and accountability. And so, so I I, no, no, I wanna help you. This is crazy. There is no support from um uh health care that this is sort of under recognized. These people are out, out, out, out, all out on their own. Actually with a little bit of money, a lot can be done. So you start to connect the dots to say what I can actually have a real impact here and help to make a situation better. I can fund. If I can fund this lady, people’s life will change. And when you get to that sort of level of this is where my money or time can go and this is the impact I can achieve I want. II I mean, I’ve had a reluctant to say donor for life because we know that that’s a difficult thing, but that’s a level of connection that no email in the world, no phone in the world can be, can hope to achieve. And so if you’re not out there connecting with an audience like that new circles, um you’re making it yourself very hard, I think to find these people that are, that are then spreading the word because I didn’t talk to all this about it. So we know how that all works, right? So I would say those are still very underutilized idea. So this the this idea of using multiple channels of communications expanding within the families, sort of the multi threading thing that we’re talking about and exploring the circles rather than treating individuals of transactions. We have a lot of room for improvement when it comes about executing and doing good, better, best on those. And so in a way, the statistics that we talked about are not that surprising because frankly, if you’d run a business in the way we are running as an industry nonprofit, these are the statistics that you would get. It’s like fast in, fast out. Yeah, it’s, it’s a classic bad business model like,

[00:49:30.53] spk_0:
yeah, uh Boomerang wouldn’t survive that way. No, no,

[00:49:33.29] spk_2:
no, no. My board would swap me out real quick. You had

[00:50:47.46] spk_0:
clients, you had clients for a year and, and 77% of them uh stayed only that long. Um Yeah, loyalty, you know, it’s, it’s all, it’s all the heart, loyalty, connections. Um speaking from the heart, respecting people. And then, yeah, you know, and, and so I, I speak kind of altruistically or, or maybe not academically but altruistic. Uh and uh and lofty and, you know, you remind us that it’s also all good business. It’s all good business to, to think of the partner as a, as a, as a prospect uh to, to have folks telling their own story in a, in a simple iphone video with low production value from the home with dim lighting and, and the sound is cutting out and the Children are in the background but the, you know, but the, but the newly placed dog, uh, pet is, is, is, is barking wildly and, and that’s the, you know, that’s the impact. That’s perfect. So, it’s, it’s, it’s, that’s the, those are the moments that are sincere and genuine, connect with our hearts and end up being good business.

[00:53:29.50] spk_2:
Yeah, I could not agree with you more. And, um, that head and heart thing, we, I think when we, when our organizations get la get larger, nonprofit organizations get larger, you, you, it’s ok to think of a part of it as a business. It’s ok actually because the more effective the organization becomes the greater the impact you can achieve at our company at Bloomer. We, we have often sort of struggle with that balance where you sort of say, well, do, is it all about growing revenues? Is that basically the, the mark of a success for us or how do we measure impact? But the reality is you should not put pit those two things against each other because if you could see uh fundraising volume or revenue, you could see that as fuel and you need fuel. We need fuel. So you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t shortchange yourself or making sure like you feel really good, you’ve done this wonderful thing, but it doesn, doesn’t scale because it requires you to do it over and over. It can scale. But now you’re not putting fuel in a tank and we, we have to have few because the more fuel we have the greater the impact that we can choose the more resource. So the problem is that we have in this, in this industry, it’s difficult for us to attract and retain talent. So as much as we have a donor retention problem, look at the employee retention problem that we have in this industry. And if you become more successful at creating scalable and repeatable initiatives, which you’re experimenting, you’re trying things, you’re making these emotional connections, we can attract high quality people into the organization that can sort of sustain and increase that momentum. So I, I often, when we talk about this, it feels like, yeah, but you can’t run a nonprofit organization like a business. And I said, well, why not? Um why not? Um You, you know, if you, I, at some point, I’d like to work in an organization like this, but you better believe it that I be, I’m gonna be very intense in the work. I’m not gonna sort of be relaxed because I work in a nonprofit because I’m gonna be super intense if we’re wasting money or if we are not following up on things or something goes out, that is a little bit half baked. That is not a high standard. Like why, why wouldn’t those things apply? Isn’t that what makes things better, like striving to better standards doing something, trying something different growing as an organization. So I think we have to be destigmatize the, the brain part uh in this industry and say that it’s OK to pursue growing as an organization because that growth allows to achieve far greater impact than the individual to start. The organization ever thought was imaginable. So we growth has to be part of an obe of the objective of the organization.

[00:54:20.17] spk_0:
Dennis. I’d like to leave it there. Thank you, tony and II I unical agree with you about perceiving our organizations as businesses. Uh III I, I’d take a step further and say, I think it’s essential. We, we don’t, we don’t lose our heart. We don’t lose our mission that the two are not mutually exclusive. We, we can, we can pursue our missions and our values as well as think of ourselves as a business. That’s, that’s not the zero

[00:54:25.96] spk_2:
sum, 100% 100%

[00:54:36.40] spk_0:
Denis Fo Fois. He’s CEO of Boomerang. You’ll find Dennis on linkedin. You’ll find the company at Boomerang dot co, Dennis. Thank you very much for sharing your thinking. I appreciate it.

[00:54:43.89] spk_2:
Huge. Thanks for the opportunity, tony. Really enjoyed it. Thank you. My

[00:54:47.07] spk_0:
pleasure. Thank you.

[00:54:57.22] spk_1:
Next week, donor dominance with Ian mcquillan. If you missed any part of this week’s show,

[00:55:00.36] spk_0:
I’d be you find it at Tomm martignetti dot com

[00:55:11.98] spk_1:
were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor Boxx dot org.

[00:55:20.32] spk_0:
I love that alliteration

[00:55:38.38] spk_1:
and Bikila grow revenue, engage donors and increase efficiency with Kila. The fundraisers, CRM visit Kila dot co to join the thousands of fundraisers using Kila to exceed their goals. Our creative producer is Claire Meyer. I’m your associate producer, Kate Marett. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein.

[00:56:06.34] spk_0:
Thank you for that affirmation. Scottie be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be.

Nonprofit Radio for January 23, 2023: 2023 Fundraising Outlook

 

Sarah Sebastian & Steve Lausch2023 Fundraising Outlook

OneCause’s research study includes insights to help you benchmark, plan, prioritize and improve your nonprofit’s fundraising this year. From OneCause, Sarah Sebastian and Steve Lausch talk us through.

 

 

 

 

Listen to the podcast

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

 

Apple Podcast button

 

 

 

We’re the #1 Podcast for Nonprofits, With 13,000+ Weekly Listeners

Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
View Full Transcript

Transcript for 624_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230123.mp3

Processed on: 2023-01-21T22:41:36.041Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2023…01…624_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230123.mp3.66214119.json
Path to text: transcripts/2023/01/624_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230123.txt

[00:01:36.34] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh I’m glad you’re with me, I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of a fraser because I cannot bring myself to say the words you missed this week’s show 2023 fundraising outlook one causes research study includes insights to help you benchmark plan, prioritize and improve your nonprofits fundraising this year from one cause Sarah Sebastian and Steve Lauch talk us through on tony stake to webinars galore Here is 2023 fundraising outlook. It’s a pleasure to welcome to non profit radio steve Lauch and Sarah Sebastian both from one cause steve Lauch is director of product marketing at one cause where he brings 17 years of experience in automotive, retail, customer relationship management and marketing technology. Sarah Sebastian at one causes Director of corporate communications. She’s a marketer with eight years of experience in the nonprofit tech space. The company is at one cause and at one cause dot com steve Sarah welcome to non profit radio

[00:01:44.96] spk_1:
Good to be here with you Tony,

[00:01:46.85] spk_2:
thank you. It’s great to be here talking to you today, appreciate

[00:01:50.18] spk_0:
It. Pleasure to have both of you. Thank you and we’re talking about the 2023 fundraising outlook. Who’s the best person to talk about an overview of of this, of the study

[00:02:03.86] spk_2:
definitely.

[00:02:04.58] spk_0:
Okay, it’s unanimous

[00:02:25.75] spk_1:
dive in on that I mean this whole project has been such a great partnership with Sarah but as far as going back to the survey that that fuels the study, um, this, this was, I’d say I can dive in on that. So this is really the fifth year of developing the study into the size that it has been at one cause and the third year of releasing the data in such a way that it is served up in the annual fundraising outlook report. So getting some really great research in a rear view mirror and we’re excited to come out again this year with this report. Maybe to give a little bit more color as to what this report is about and how it works. Um,

[00:02:53.28] spk_0:
we kick

[00:02:53.88] spk_1:
it off every year tony at our annual conference. So the one cause raised conference and spends about a month in market where nonprofits are engaging and responding to the survey and this particular year, 890 nonprofits raise their hands and said, hey, we want to weigh in on this. So 890 voices from nonprofits,

[00:03:16.43] spk_0:
Let’s just call it 900,

[00:03:18.41] spk_1:
900

[00:03:20.48] spk_0:
900,

[00:03:52.42] spk_1:
900 all shapes, all sizes, all segments. We even did some really cool cross tabulation. Looking at annual operating revenue. I’m sure we’ll talk about that at some level. But you know, every year we ask ourselves as well, tony are we, are we getting the right voices. Are we getting the right um, inputs so that we’re capturing all the right information that is helpful to nonprofits and this year in particular, nearly 30% were executive directors, 31% Deb director Development VPs had a great voice from event directors and marketing professionals. So we really are getting the right voices. In fact, 81% of those who responded are involved in making a technology decision. They may even be the ones pulling the trigger on deciding how we’re going to move forward in the next year with technology to help drive our nonprofit mission. And a lot of that goes to fundraising as we’ll talk about.

[00:04:43.56] spk_0:
I also appreciate that the population is very much in line with with our listeners. You know, small and midsize shops. I see 48% have revenue of a million dollars or less. Annual, annual, your, your annual operating revenue a million dollars or less and 31%. So a third basically 350,000 or less.

[00:04:59.16] spk_1:
It is so important to to have the representation of that beautiful bride call at this broad base of the nonprofit world that is just those who are maybe just getting started in their garage or their bedroom or wherever they happen to be. But they have a passion for their mission and maybe those that are starting to add more and more volunteers. Perhaps that 1st, 2nd or third full time employee. But whatever it is, it is that beautiful broad base of the nonprofit world that we’re looking at

[00:06:15.87] spk_0:
11% were all volunteer. So just like a 10th or don’t even have full time employees. And I saw 49% have 10 full time employees or fewer, though perfectly in line with with our listeners. Now there are, there are large organizations represented over $50 million dollars in revenue. Um, if there are any of those folks listening, uh, let me know and I’ll shout you out because I bet I bet the list is small. Most of the vast, vast majority, vast, vast, overwhelming majority of our listeners are in small and mid size shop. So those are those who were, I’m channeling. Um, let’s define this. It was a little unusual to me the A. O. R. Which I look at as album oriented rock, but that’s because I work up, I was raised on rock and roll. So, but that’s not what you mean by a. O our annual operating revenue. So I mean is that annual budget sarah? Is that, is that annual budget or is that something different? What’s annual operating revenue? Because you segment by by this A. O. R. So it’s important for us to understand,

[00:06:45.95] spk_2:
so annual operating revenue, how much money folks are bringing in and then when we touch on budget, how much obviously they’re able to spend for the year. And I think some of the stuff that you just touched on and you’re talking about, like the volunteer numbers and everything that’s really going to come out when we get into some of the challenges. Some of those smaller organizations with uh, the smaller annual operating revenues are really going to be, um, feeling a little bit of a pinch in some of these areas that will take a look at. So I think it will definitely be some good data for the audience at home right now.

[00:06:59.70] spk_0:
Is it fair to just call? Not, I’m not going to change the term on you, but is it fair to call annual operating revenue? Like just annual fundraising revenue?

[00:07:08.94] spk_2:
Absolutely.

[00:07:09.64] spk_0:
It’s the fundraising revenue. Okay. Okay. Report calls it the uh annual operating revenue.

[00:07:16.56] spk_2:
Alright. Yeah.

[00:07:49.81] spk_0:
Okay. Um, so let’s dive in a bit. I see uh I see some challenges facing non profits of of all sizes really that this was, this was kind of interesting to me. Um, the the challenges that are rated sort of critical critical are definitely a concern. I mean they cut across all the, all the all the the annual operating revenue segments like donor engagement, all all all five of your segments, all six of your segments rate donor engagement as a, as a, as a top five problem. And donor fatigue shows up in five of the six categories. What do we do? What do we know about donor donor issues?

[00:09:13.98] spk_2:
Sure. So things things have Changed a lot since the last study. So the challenges that were related to planning around the pandemic dropped significantly because those were at the top of the list in the past couple of years surveys, but don’t get us wrong, like we’re not saying it’s not a challenge anymore. It’s obviously still a challenge, 71% reported that planning related to the pandemic was still challenging for them, But it dropped from number one to number 10 in the list. And those donor-related challenges that you just mentioned, those are coming back to the top. People are starting to feel a little bit of relief and they’re able to shift back to donor engagement worrying about hair. We fatiguing our donors with all of this messaging and everything that they’ve been through over the past few years and donor retention is coming back up into that top four to um recurring giving was something we saw that came out as a top challenge as well. And for the view of challenges that you’ll see in the report first where everything’s kind of rated, it was folks who rated items as critical, definitely a concern or somewhat a problem. And that’s where we came up with that donor engagement, donor fatigue, the recurring giving and donor retention were all there in the top four. So things have changed a lot steve, did you have anything like a little bit of color from the past or anything about like varying sizes? How that differed?

[00:09:31.07] spk_1:
Well, let’s start, let’s start with sizes. And then I think there is something to be learned as we look longitudinal e over the study over the past few years. But as we looked at non profits of varying sizes again by that annual operating revenue marker. Uh, that donut retention really fell into, became notable in the top two places for orders that were a million dollars A. O. R. And above. And then

[00:09:48.43] spk_0:
excuse

[00:10:15.24] spk_1:
me looking at the top three places really tony for most of the market. So we’ll call that the 350,000. 0. R. All the way up the scale. Um, recurring giving was something that became very much apparent in that. And, and I’ll say real quick, um, as your audience accesses this report and downloads it, there’s a, there’s a lot of data right in this one question and becomes v very visibly and visually better understood when you kind of see it, how we’ve laid it out. So I know we’re throwing a lot of numbers, a lot of information, but boy donor fatigue was definitely the top voiced concern that made it into the top five concerns for every segment every strata of the nonprofit nonprofit world. Um, what’s interesting about that for me

[00:10:41.49] spk_0:
though,

[00:11:03.24] spk_1:
is that while retention has a number, we can put on it. Um, while recurring giving has a number that we put on it, fatigue is a lot more of a perception metric. And uh, it’s, it’s interesting to me that, that, that had such important placed on that particular metric as you look at the data. Now, I’ll also say really quickly we saw staff turnover work its way into the top five challenges, especially as you kind of go up and that was for

[00:11:16.48] spk_0:
the larger staff turnover was

[00:11:18.39] spk_1:
you got it. Yeah,

[00:11:20.21] spk_0:
Over $50 million. They’ve got hundreds of employees

[00:11:24.88] spk_1:
well. And look what happened over the last two years. Right. I mean

[00:11:27.50] spk_0:
things talk

[00:11:54.70] spk_1:
about upset the apple cart, right. And that, that large organization perhaps felt the, the need for agility more and the need for finding out how do we get through this and with such a large staff, it’s just, it was, it was an unfortunate story. We don’t have to dwell on here today. The good news is that, um, is that those nonprofits are working through those challenges. I’ll also add that acquisition and management sponsors and sponsorships also is a challenge that we’ve tracked year over year every year, every year these last few years. And that has surfaced for a number of the segments of nonprofits. So there’s some other, there’s some other color there. But sarah, I’m sure you would agree having released the report yourself. It’s far more visually understood for, for those who can access this and download the report. Yeah,

[00:13:14.30] spk_2:
I agree. There are a lot of ways to look at, especially the challenges, um, by breaking it down by revenue level and looking at what’s critical are definitely a concern compared to having like the somewhat important mixed in there as well. But I do kind of want to touch on that donor fatigue because we have been hearing a lot about it and tony I don’t know if you’ve heard this throughout your career to that there’s, there’s been kind of a historical disconnect between nonprofits and donors when it comes to donor fatigue. I’ve done a few studies at various companies in the past where nonprofits said one thing they thought they were really fatiguing their donors and donors are like, no, you’re not. We want to hear more from you. But I think what it comes down to that’s important here is that you have to remember that the communications that you are sending out, if they’re engaging, they’re worthwhile, they’re giving something to your donor, then they’re not going to be fatigued. I know around like holiday giving season, even on linkedin. And I noticed there were a lot of folks popping on that consultant saying, I got this many emails from this, these nonprofits. It’s too many emails and only enough. A couple of donors popped and they were like, oh, I like getting those emails. They told me what was happening. Like how much they were raising from there giving Tuesday campaigns, etcetera. So as long as you’re giving them something that they want to hear. I think they’re going to stay engaged. They’re not going to get fatigued. Have you heard anything about that,

[00:13:53.67] spk_0:
uh, from some guests? Yes. Um, let’s first, let’s use this opportunity to remind folks or let them know where they can get the get the study because it’s, it’s very visually engaging as both of you have said. So. One cause dot com. And then where do we go after that?

[00:13:57.83] spk_2:
Sure. It’s one cause dot com backslash research. And you’ll find the study there. There are a lot of other resources on our website as well as well as past reports. So if you want to dig in and compare to past reports as well, they’re on that site.

[00:14:56.34] spk_0:
Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Um, All right. So this idea of the fatigue, you know, as as steve said, it’s it’s a perception. It’s it’s not something measurable, but it’s, it’s a perception internally. Right in in everybody’s office. What do you, what do you think is, what do you think is causing this idea that we’re fatiguing our donors where Sarah you’re saying they actually want more. And I’ve heard that also, I’ve heard that especially among among and about boards members that, you know, we’re giving our board members too much. No, actually, they want more because they’re your key volunteers. And they the fear is that you’re giving them too much. Um, so I’ve heard it in that respect, but we don’t have to, you know, we have to stick to board. I know that’s not your, that’s not the study, but that’s, that’s where I’ve heard it even even more? What do you think is causing this belief that we’re fatiguing folks

[00:15:24.30] spk_2:
right current state. I honestly think we all feel fatigued after going through a pandemic, going through you know political ups and downs. We’re still in this big mindset of uncertainty and I know everybody has heard that word 1000 times but it’s still there and it’s just making everyone feel very unsettled and very tired. So I think sometimes that just kind of bleeds over into our everyday interactions

[00:15:28.65] spk_0:
were contributing to it. Yeah we

[00:15:31.08] spk_2:
must be doing it too. We must be adding onto the pile but

[00:15:34.18] spk_0:
we see it we feel it we must be contributing to it because we send mail and email. Alright.

[00:15:39.80] spk_1:
tony I think I think I want to

[00:15:42.53] spk_0:
don’t be so hard on yourself basically.

[00:15:55.78] spk_1:
I want to jump in here real quick. I do wanna I do want to suggest here at this point that fatigue is a it’s a complex metric to unpack. It is not as simple. I mean I think we could probably spend the next hour kind of um in a conjecture of sorts of how to unpack this. But fatigue comes because as Sarah said it’s something we feel elsewhere. And so we translate that to I’m sending one emails to emails, five emails ergo my donor base must be fatigued.

[00:16:21.53] spk_0:
And

[00:16:42.39] spk_1:
when we actually look at the data as Sarah has said. In fact some of the great reports that we have available at one? Cause dot com actually give you the perspective of the donor as is our research done every spring. So this is the nonprofit voice every fall compare that to what’s going on in the spring with what donors are saying? Yes, they want the communication. I want to see those emails in my inbox and if I open up one or two of the five, it’s okay. I’ve heard from you and I can digest that you are not asking too much of me. You are not giving too much to me. It is not the fatigue level that perhaps we are putting on on our shoulders ourselves.

[00:17:04.36] spk_0:
Sarah, you have many years in your background with ford motor company, right? Oh, that’s steve I

[00:17:13.54] spk_1:
carry, you know, you mentioned that in the intro. I carry a good number of years in the automotive retail technology side. Um, and six years now or coming up on six years in the nonprofit world. Two very different worlds. But yes, go ahead. tony on.

[00:17:28.74] spk_0:
Do you know, does, does, does the ford motor company worry about fatiguing? It’s uh, potential customers like do they worry about sending too much buying too many ads? Sending too many messages to folks who have signed up? Does the ford motor company? Uh, do they worry about things like that?

[00:18:22.10] spk_1:
I would say in general, the automotive world perhaps. Um, let me say this first. Any good marketer understands the sensitivity around sending the right message at the right time to the right audience for the right response. Any good marketers, there are perhaps markets in our ecosystem in the world that are more sensitive to doing that and there are perhaps markets that are less sensitive to doing that. I do find that the automotive world sends a good number of emails and there perhaps, maybe those what you’re getting at, not as worried about fatiguing me at least as a recipient. So I’ll let you put a bow on that where you were headed. But

[00:18:53.72] spk_0:
No, that was it. I just, that was, that was my suspicion. But you know, I don’t talk to, uh, Fortune 100 folks, um, ever or even. So I was seeing it in your background. Uh, I was just curious about it. Um, let’s talk some about events. What Sarah, can you talk about, what, what, what is planned and I see more more hybrid being planned. Can you flush that out for us?

[00:19:51.24] spk_2:
Sure. I think if we start with a little bit of an overview from 2022, it’s a helpful kind of foundation. Um, so in 2020 to 95% of nonprofits who took this survey said that they held at least one online camp, 93% said they held at least one event in 2022. So vast majority of nonprofits there and that makes up the bulk of quite a few nonprofits fundraising budget, their revenue for the year. So 56% said that they raise 21% or more of their annual fundraising revenue from online and event fundraising. And an additional quarter of those nonprofits said that they raised 41% or more of their annual fundraising budget from event and online fundraising. So it’s huge. It’s very important. Um, and looking back at 2022, as far as how supporters participated in events, I think Steve Do you want to touch on that data for me?

[00:19:59.61] spk_1:
Sure, Sure, Absolutely. Yeah. This was really great to see tony So we asked these nonprofits, how did your supporters participate in your 2022 events and then followed up with how many of the following fundraising events do you plan to hold in 2023. So we have to look back, we have to look forward and again

[00:20:20.61] spk_0:
for

[00:20:47.57] spk_1:
Context, this question was asked an end market with the survey in September so nonprofits were giving us a good view into most of the year to 2022, but they were forecasting into 2023, still sitting in their third quarter of the year. So with that in mind, looking back in 2020 to 32% of nonprofits held in person only events. Now, just I let that just sit for a

[00:20:51.21] spk_0:
second and

[00:21:52.57] spk_1:
We look back in the rear view mirror a year or two and to consider how we were in 2020, early 2021. No way were one in three only having in person events. So what a great comeback in 2020-1 half of nonprofits, 56% did. In fact, as you said earlier, Tony Lean to that hybrid side, which is fantastic. So let me fill the blanks on the, on the rest here and I’ll come back to the hybrid 9% only virtual 4% no events at all. And for various reasons, I’m sure. But over 50% hybrid tells me a couple of things. You add the only in person and the 56% hybrid together and you have a mass of the, of the nonprofit world that is back in the ballroom. But so much of that is, is uh, an event that is in consideration of that virtual audience. So we learned from the last three years, we learned that people want to engage with with us differently. And so while we’re back in the ballroom, we’re not going to forget that virtual audience, we’re gonna include them. It may be for the whole event. It may not be for the whole event. It may just be for the appeal. It may be for other programming that we wanted to share with them. But the Great News is that we are back to the ballroom in 2022. Now that was of course last

[00:22:19.78] spk_0:
year, what

[00:22:31.18] spk_1:
about this year, september people are answering this survey and there’s looking forward and guess how many say we are going to hold an in person event, 83%. Look forward in time and with such confidence and Sarah maybe you can, you can elaborate on this. They’re willing to say that over 80% were absolutely back in the ballroom for at least one in person only event.

[00:22:59.78] spk_2:
Yeah, I think the confidence levels, that was a real takeaway for us. How much they changed confidence levels about in person events just kind of shot through the roof in this year’s survey. Um, nonprofits who said they were undecided about holding those in person events dropped to 8% this year, down from 20% in last year’s survey. So people are feeling really good about heading back to the ballroom. Like Steve said, uh,

[00:23:13.83] spk_0:
I, I saw that golf outings ranked as the number two most common event after after something social. So I’m assuming that’s a gala type event.

[00:23:25.60] spk_2:
Yes. I think that the in person auction events and then

[00:23:28.12] spk_0:
the person, we’re

[00:23:29.27] spk_2:
very successful as well. Yes, absolutely.

[00:23:43.28] spk_0:
Now golf outings and hybrid. I don’t know, can we, I don’t know are they playing like minute, are they playing golf? They have their favorite golf app or they, they’re, they’re in there, they’re in their stroke trainer, you know, maybe it’s videoing them while others are actually playing. I don’t know, can we do a golf outing hybrid.

[00:24:13.74] spk_2:
I have actually seen, I do not remember the name of the software or the company, but there was a virtual golf software that a nonprofit for an event. So I know it’s possible it’s out there. People really made some as we’ve all heard major pivots to, you know, fit the pandemic in our way of life changing. So it’s definitely out there. I’ll have to look into that and see if I can get that over,

[00:26:49.39] spk_0:
you know, the dinner, the dinner or the lunch after. I mean I could see that being a hybrid but I was just wondering about the golf experience itself. I don’t know, maybe golfers are out there with caMS on their GoPro’s on their heads or something. And so you vicariously. Oh, that shot sucked. Oh, you’re terrible camera to somebody else please. You’re awful. It’s time for Tony’s take two. I’m talking a lot about planned giving in January and February. I’ve got 15 webinars and podcasts on planned giving uh just in in these like not even the full two months. It’s more like six weeks january and early february. A cornucopia of webinars uh podcast, a prodigious profusion of podcasts. I’ve got coming up lots of content. Um, if you are at all interested in learning about the basics of planned giving, launching, planned giving at your nonprofit then you may very well be interested in this Horn of plenty of content that I’m doing with other folks who are hosting me for webinars and podcasts. You can keep abreast of what I’m doing by following on linkedin or maybe I should say more correctly connecting, connect with me on linkedin. Uh, follow me on twitter. And another way is you could sign up for the nonprofit radio Insider alerts at tony-martignetti dot com because I let folks know um, on that, who, who is hosting me and uh, where you can hear me speak. So if you are interested in launching planned, giving, planned, giving basics, I’m doing a lot of talking about that in january and early february. That is Tony’s take to imagine that We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for 2023 fundraising outlook with Steve and Sarah Sebastian, imagine that data, Let’s talk about data. You’re a data driven type organization and what, what, uh, you had some takeaways about data access.

[00:27:15.32] spk_2:
Yeah, I think this was our surprise, not surprise moment really when we were looking at data because we all know that a lot of nonprofits do struggle with data, whether there’s too much of it or what to do with it. Uh, so we found that making it accessible and actionable just continues to be a concern for nonprofits like, okay, yeah, we know that already. But when we actually saw the numbers, that was kind of the moment where everyone on our team Kind of got slack jawed whenever they heard the stats. Um, so only 18% of non profits who took the survey said that they actually have access to all of the data that they need 18%, that’s

[00:27:26.46] spk_0:
it and

[00:27:35.91] spk_2:
that they use it to make decisions. Um, and of course those smaller nonprofits did report having even less access to the data that they do need. So it’s a bit of a struggle and steve, I think, I know you have something to say,

[00:27:40.78] spk_1:
Oh, I always have something to say

[00:27:43.25] spk_0:
That that’s, that’s dismal. You know, one

[00:27:46.68] spk_1:
in five,

[00:27:47.80] spk_0:
one

[00:27:54.77] spk_1:
in five. Like if you’re sitting down around the table right with five nonprofits and one of them says I have all the data I

[00:27:55.86] spk_0:
need, I

[00:28:04.99] spk_1:
have it in the place where I need it and I have it served up to me in a way that I know what to do with it. Make a good decision. That’s dismal. That’s a great word for it.

[00:28:07.05] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:29:21.91] spk_1:
And then we looked at some other aspects to this tony and okay, if if you do have a lot of data, Then what’s holding you back from using it every day to make meaningful decisions in your fundraising strategy 26%. So again, another like, well in this case, one in four, I suppose roughly so that they don’t have the time to form the insights they have the data, but maybe it’s just it’s just a matter of time. We all get that we, especially your audience, as you said, the smaller nonprofit world is there’s never enough time in the day. So I think there’s an opportunity for us, especially as you said as our data providers, technology providers that, that work off the data serve up data help nonprofits live off data. We need to serve it up in a way that makes sense that it doesn’t take time. Another one that I’ll share another one in five said that they don’t know how to form actionable insights. Okay. So I have the data, but again, it’s, it’s, it’s not and it may even be like right there for me, I don’t even need the time to go dig, you know into it and pull a report and compare and pivot tables and all the, I just don’t even know how to form an actionable insight based on what I’m given. Again, I believe that this is on us and our world to say here is what your auction data is telling you

[00:29:35.32] spk_0:
this is a data literacy issue. Then people not feeling comfortable making conclusions from the data that they do have. Is that isn’t that that data literacy,

[00:31:16.58] spk_2:
I think to some extent it is. But I also think the data can be intimidating just because there’s so much that can be measured and there’s, there are a lot of numbers obviously coming out of fundraising. What do I do with all of this? And I think people, especially non profits, you know, they have big jobs, they’re trying to make the world a better place. They want to do big things. And I think when you’re looking at data, you have to narrow and pick something small first and focus on that. Okay, I’ve got this piece master now I can pick another metric and focus on that. And I guess trying to give an example of that if you have part of your fundraising strategies to boost your recurring revenue this year. Great. Okay, where do I start? What do I do? What data do I look at start by going into your crm and looking at donors from 2022 who gave maybe three or four times. And I use myself as an example for this because this happened to me, I gave I think four or five times two best friend animal at best Friends animal society last year, just throughout the year as I was giving an honor of friends, pets, my pets, etcetera. They called me after running a little campaign and said, Hey, you know, we noticed that you’ve offered ongoing support last year, thank you for these gifts of these amounts. Would you consider becoming a recurring donor at $25 a month? Why not sure I can, I can spare that. Great. And even with just those little incremental increases across a couple of 100 people, you’re boosting your revenue there. Alright, you’ve boosted revenue using this one small metric that you focus in on what can you do next. So start small. Don’t get too overwhelmed to try to find somewhere to start, got to start somewhere.

[00:31:23.02] spk_0:
Let me give you a generous softball shameless self promotion opportunity because we’re talking about data being overwhelming and, and, and uh, like frustrating, how does, uh, how does one cause overcome that?

[00:31:44.28] spk_2:
I

[00:31:44.45] spk_0:
think the great,

[00:32:02.93] spk_1:
the great news is we help in a lot of ways. I mean we help connect nonprofits with more donors. We help that connection be meaningful in a way that it, it truly helps them engage with those donors. And we talked, we talked about donor engagement back when we were looking at that Finding around challenges, Tony Right. And so once we connect with more donors and engage with more donors and do that through a number of different ways to fundraise. That’s one of the things that we found and maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here. But I know we’ll talk about priorities for 2023 that nonprofits had told us about.

[00:32:21.12] spk_0:
But looking

[00:33:36.68] spk_1:
at new ways to fundraise to find new donors, acquire new donors and then use that engagement to retain those donors are nonprofits find that they are more highly satisfied with the technology that they acquire that they, that they purchase, that they use every day. And uh, it drives our mission and that’s what it’s all about. I I tell, I’ll give you a little anecdote here. tony but tomorrow and every Tuesday first Tuesday of the month. I help onboard new 11 cost team members that join our company. And I tell them, hey, you’re gonna have its work. You’re gonna have a bad day every now and then. But what we do, even on those bad days, we help make sure that another child is educated, another family is fed. We’re taking two steps closer to just finding that cure. Right? And this is all executed through these amazing nonprofits, all over the nation. How do we get involved with that? Exactly what I shared with you before, helping nonprofits find those donors engage those donors retain those donors and building a wonderful relationship that helps build a better tomorrow. Softball question back at you. Nobody

[00:33:38.05] spk_0:
answered. I was waiting. Yeah, I’m glad you. Thank you for stepping

[00:34:32.11] spk_2:
up. I do have something. I think since I just started talking about focusing on small things, something popped into my head while steve was talking about connecting with more donors. We run a campaign every year called in detectives where companies sign up and fundraise for nonprofits in the Indianapolis area. Um, and we use our peer to peer system for that. So we get in there, we use it, we fundraise for, we would fundraise fundraise for make a Wish Foundation this past year and looking even in just our peer to peer tools, we’re talking about starting small, There are little data points in there. Even for our donors where you can trap how far your social posts are reaching, how far different campaigns are reaching. So even donors can look and see what’s working to get the word out about a campaign and shift their strategies to use that particular social platform or that particular technique. So there are things built in throughout the system to even help donors analyze data, which I think is really interesting and something I haven’t seen with a lot of other fundraising platforms to be honest. So I think there’s something helpful there.

[00:34:45.38] spk_0:
Thank you. Alright, let’s let’s let’s go back to the, to the fundraising outlook. What are their takeaways are there that we haven’t talked about yet that you like to highlight you think are important for small and midsize shops to know the benchmark against.

[00:36:55.44] spk_2:
Sure, I think I would like to touch back on the hybrid fundraising aspect quickly, Quickly calling out again, steve touched on that 56% held hybrid events in 2020 to 32% held in person And looking at 2023 as nonprofits were looking ahead 45% said they were going to be holding hybrid events in 2023, which is really good to hear. Um, those hybrid and in person events were what we saw as most successful budget wise, performing against budget. And when we looked at, um, how they were performing against their budget was 80% who held either an in person or hybrid event reported that they were raising in line or more than their budget for the year. So great. We definitely want to focus on in person and hybrid. But I think Steve touched on this point a little bit The good part about this is that people are listening to donors. He mentioned some earlier research we had done with giving experience study earlier in the year where we get donor perspective on everything. And in that particular report, 56% of event donors said that they wanted some sort of virtual option. So I think that’s something that’s really important for nonprofits of all sizes to listen to, especially the small and midsize shops. We understand that hosting a hybrid event, there’s a lot of work. It’s, it’s tough. We held our race conference was hybrid this last year and it was hard. So definitely empathize with that. And but you’ve got to listen. It’s worth the effort if your donors are telling you this is what they want to give it a shot. Look at that event calendar. See if you can fit in some sort of virtual option in there somewhere. If it’s not on there now because that’s what people are saying they want to do this year. And of course keep an eye on the news because we know we’ve been hearing from here and there. There’s some, some numbers numbers going back up with covid cases, fingers crossed. Of course we don’t want anything to happen. But in the event that it does, It’s good to have that in your back pocket as an option for your donors.

[00:37:03.27] spk_0:
Do you think it’s worth surveying.

[00:37:06.20] spk_2:
Absolutely.

[00:37:26.27] spk_0:
Or do or donors like is everybody going to say I want the hybrid option. But then the fewer people actually sign up for it once it’s offered, everybody wants the option and then we set it up. We spend the money on the production and the platform. And, and then a disappointing number of people actually subscribe to it, join the stream. What do you what do you think? Yeah,

[00:37:46.92] spk_2:
I agree with that. That is kind of a sticking point when planning events as well. But if people have been telling us this is what they want, give it a shot. If it’s a total flop, then, you know, but I do agree that serving finding out what people want to do. Sometimes people are going to say yes and then they change their minds. I mean people change their minds all the time. You never know. But we have had customers who have said when they did offer that virtual option, they even wound up just getting donations from people who couldn’t attend the event in person and didn’t wind up, you know, going the virtual route. So offering that donation option along with that registration could be a possible solution to that as well to make up some of that. If people decide they’re not going to go the virtual route?

[00:38:16.65] spk_0:
I I saw that um, the fundraising, the priorities

[00:38:20.55] spk_2:
looking

[00:38:36.37] spk_0:
Forward are consistent with the challenges. So that’s that’s good. Our our community is aligned with what they see, where they see problems and where they know they have to focus. So 97% of of your respondents said that donor acquisition is going to be a key focus. I mean that, you know, it may as well call it 100% and nine right. If we’re going around 8 92 900 we could certainly around 97 to 100. Um and 96% right is right there to say donor retention is a key focus areas. So it’s gratifying to see that priorities are in line with the

[00:38:58.80] spk_1:
challenges.

[00:39:00.00] spk_0:
We’re rational, we’re all rational.

[00:39:02.17] spk_2:
It makes

[00:39:03.47] spk_0:
sense that the actor, a bunch of rational actors

[00:39:39.41] spk_2:
Um outside of those, I wanted to run through the top priorities really quickly because there’s some interesting differences in how folks rated those. So you touched on the top two. Um, next up was increasing funds from existing campaigns and that was, that was pretty high as well, 93% said that there was a priority and these were ranked as critical or important by folks who responded. Um, then there’s kind of a draft in the rate here, new ways to fundraise came in at about 82%, a little bit above that was operational efficiency and effectiveness at 84 and I find that kind of interesting

[00:39:41.84] spk_0:
because

[00:40:09.51] spk_2:
you know, if you’re focusing on operational efficiency and effectiveness, there’s probably gonna be a little bit more time in your day to focus on donor acquisition and retention. But there’s kind of this vicious cycle and all of these little things that go into that because we just talked about people being short on resources short on time so they can’t get to focusing on the operational efficiency. So I think there’s some work to be done and figuring out how to address all of these challenges and priorities in a way that’s beneficial to everybody and especially for these small and mid sized shops that are struggling with the resources and I know steve and I have talked about new ways to fundraise and how that can help with the donor attention in the acquisition as well as you want to.

[00:40:39.93] spk_1:
Yeah, I mean that’s that’s the diamond in the rough, as far as I’m concerned because we’re looking at it, this is nothing shiny at this point. It’s 82% for new raise to fundraise when we’re looking at 97% for donor acquisition, but it’s very possible that the new ways to fundraise and, and I think what we tend to do tony we tend to imagine the worst possible scenario, right. If I look into a new way to

[00:40:50.59] spk_0:
fundraise, it’s

[00:41:48.03] spk_1:
gonna take loads more time that I don’t have, it’s gonna take a lot more effort that that I just, I’m not ready to give. It’s gonna, it’s gonna expose me to all kinds of distractions. Uh, let’s go back to something, Sarah said, how about we start small? There are there are fundraising platforms available that allow you to break out of just the event type of fundraising And we then elements appear to peer weave in elements of social fundraising. Be able to tie together your online with your event efforts so that perhaps you are able to, by using new ways to fundraise, acquire new donors, retain some of those same donors because you’re doing it in a slightly different way where you might actually engage them differently. So I would, I would encourage your audience to consider. Okay, what is available to me that I might be able to try a slightly different way to fundraise, engage a slightly different audience and in fact, I may end up acquiring those new donors and retaining my current donors at the end of the day. Even better.

[00:42:08.34] spk_0:
All right, what else? We have some good amount of time left. If we, if we like any, any other stuff that uh, we haven’t talked about that you think is important for folks to know anything else from the study? Let me just remind folks you can get it at one cause dot com slash research. It’s the 2023 fundraising outlook.

[00:42:23.94] spk_2:
Perfect. Anything

[00:42:25.35] spk_0:
else?

[00:42:25.65] spk_1:
I’ll add something. Let’s go back. Let’s go back to challenges real quick, just for just for a minute. And

[00:42:32.02] spk_0:
this is gonna

[00:42:33.23] spk_1:
sound, this is gonna sound a little bit perhaps initially on the negative side, but I’m going to try to turn it into a little bit of a sunrise for us and end on something inspirational. Um, I’ve had the privilege of running this survey for I think I said five years now, five or six

[00:42:51.04] spk_0:
years

[00:42:51.97] spk_1:
And one of the things Tony that we do is we take that question around challenges. And we, we talked about this right donor fatigue, donor engagement retention, recurring giving, etc. And, and there are 13 different challenges that we asked non profit respondents to rate individually so we can track those as individual challenges.

[00:43:13.35] spk_0:
We can

[00:43:13.77] spk_1:
also track them as a collective level of challenge that the nonprofit says, hey, this is my

[00:43:20.98] spk_0:
overall

[00:43:22.26] spk_1:
level of challenge this

[00:43:24.49] spk_0:
year.

[00:43:51.86] spk_1:
We take that average across the entire respondent base. We’ll call it 900 and we’ll link that back to what things look like in 2021 and we can compare that average as well to 2020 and a 2019. And what’s really interesting to me. So two points first one again, perhaps on the surface a little negative is that those challenges are getting more intense. The average of those 13 challenges year over year, the relative rating of those challenges is increasing year over year over

[00:44:00.65] spk_2:
year. I

[00:44:02.10] spk_1:
Would have thought initially that 2020 would have been defining the ceiling and perhaps 2021 a little less and 2022 a little less. That’s not the trend. The trend is actually showing more intense challenges for our nonprofits.

[00:44:20.49] spk_0:
The good

[00:44:21.01] spk_1:
news is that we have data like this report and other reports out there that help us focus in on that right step that, that next right step and how to understand that Sarah was saying to find that one metric, maybe it’s around recurring giving, maybe it’s around looking at my, my uh, tech acquisition. Uh, there’s all kinds of things in this report that we’re not obviously covering in in these few minutes, but

[00:44:50.45] spk_0:
take

[00:45:29.16] spk_1:
This report, find that one or two next steps that you can actually move against in 2023 and watch yourself move be pulled out of those challenges in that one area. Are you going to improve every area? Probably not because not one of us can do everything. But the good news is that we have a clear path to make good decisions to see what our peers are doing with through research reports like this, see what the rest of the nonprofit world is doing, where they’re succeeding and we can point our ship there and really look to succeed even if it’s in small ways in 2023. So that’s, that’s probably my, my, my message of hope and inspiration using something as as, uh, as vanilla as data. But boy, it really opens up the opportunity for us to see what we need to do next. What step we want to take and where we can make progress in the next year.

[00:45:48.63] spk_0:
Anything that sounds like, you know the way one cause hopes that you will use their 20, fundraising outlook. Sarah, what would you like to leave this with?

[00:46:58.64] spk_2:
I kind of wanted to touch on steve mentioned tech acquisition and there’s something in the report about shifts in nonprofit technology investment. I would love for people to kind of look at the particular chart for that. I think about it. I’m looking at it right now on my other monitor actually and there are 36% of nonprofits saying that they’re going to invest more in marketing automation. So that’s kind of in line with, you know, the donor acquisition piece we were talking about in the challenges etcetera. And I’m interested to see, you know, what is the R. O. I. On this once this year happens? How do people use it? Was it effective for them? Did they feel like they had enough training? Were they able to use it? Because I don’t really want people to fall into that hole of, here’s the data and now I don’t know what to do with it. So I’m interested to see if there are enough resources out there for folks related to that marketing automation. Are they getting the training? They need to know how to use it effectively. Um I’m just interested to see next year’s results I guess is what I’m trying to say, but I do kind of want to echo steve’s message. I I want nonprofits to know they’re not Lonely islands. There are other nonprofits out there who are obviously facing similar challenges and looking for solutions. Talk to other nonprofits, talk to your peers, uh something that may have worked for them, may work for you, something that works for, you may work for them. So really rely on your community to talk through solutions that you’ve been working through and share the wealth of those ideas because we’re all in it for the same reason and that’s to make lives better for everyone. So definitely share the knowledge.

[00:47:29.48] spk_0:
Alright, messages of hope and inspiration

[00:47:33.08] spk_2:
from

[00:47:34.25] spk_0:
from two directors at one Cause Sarah Sebastian Director of corporate communications steve Lauch, Director of product marketing. The company is at one cause and at one Cause dot com, The report is the 2023 fundraising outlook, steve, Sarah Sarah steve, thank you very much. Real pleasure.

[00:47:55.96] spk_1:
Thanks for having us

[00:47:57.13] spk_2:
appreciate it

[00:48:21.15] spk_0:
next week, purchasing pro tips If you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. The shows social media is by Susan Chavez Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein, Thank you for that. Affirmation Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%, go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for May 24, 2019: Small Dollar Donor Power & Donor Retention

I love our sponsors!

Do you want to find more prospects & raise more money? Pursuant is a full-service fundraising agency, leveraging data & technology.

WegnerCPAs. Guiding you. Beyond the numbers.

Fundraising doesn’t have to be hard. Txt2Give makes it easy to receive donations using simple text messages.

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

Listen Live or Archive:

My Guests:

Sara Kerrigan of ActBlue and Carrie Mann of Friends of the Earth

Sara Kerrigan & Carrie Mann: Small Dollar Donor Power
Small dollar donors are shifting the digital fundraising landscape. Our panel reveals basic principles of running a sustainable program online. They’re Sara Kerrigan from ActBlue and Carrie Mann with Friends of the Earth. (Recorded at 19NTC)





Laura Cole and Paul Habig of Sanky Communications

Laura Cole & Paul Habig: Donor Retention
Now that you’ve got new donors, learn how to keep them with you: Avoid retention pitfalls, leverage technology and track the right metrics. Our teachers are Laura Cole and Paul Habig, both from Sanky Communications. (Also recorded at 19NTC)





Top Trends. Sound Advice. Lively Conversation.

Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

View Full Transcript

Transcript for 440_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190524.mp3

Processed on: 2019-05-25T21:26:35.729Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2019…05…440_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190524.mp3.673401352.json
Path to text: transcripts/2019/05/440_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190524.txt

Hello and welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio Big non-profit ideas for the other 95% on your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with Skip Tosa Maya sis, if I got infected with the idea that you missed today’s show Small dollar donor power Small dollar donors are shifting the digital fund-raising landscape. Our panel reveals basic principles of running a sustainable program online. They’re Sara Carrigan from Act Blue and Carry man with Friends of the Earth that was recorded at 19 and TC. And don’t a retention now that you’ve got new donors, learn how to keep them with you. Avoid retention pitfalls, leverage technology and track the right metrics Our teachers, our Laura Cole and Paul Hey Big, both from Sang Ki communications that’s also recorded in 1990 si on Tony’s Take two. Be a good American. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising Data driven and technology enabled Tony dahna slash pursuing by Wagner CPS guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com and by text to give mobile donations made easy Text NPR to 444999 Here is small dollar donor power. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of 19 ntcdinosaur. What that is it’s a 19 2019 non-profit technology conference. You know that we’re in Portland, Oregon, at the convention center. All of our 19 ntcdinosaur views are brought to you by our partners at Act Blue Free fund-raising Tools to help non-profits make an impact with me. Now are Sarah Kerrigan seated next to me? Email Director Attack blew and carry man, Deputy Director of digital membership and advocacy at Friends of the Earth. Carry Sarah. Welcome. Thanks. Carrots are looked upon with Welcome. Welcome. Both of you. Welcome the non-profit radio. Okay. Your topic is the largest group of untapped charitable givers. Small dollar donors. Um, Sarah, what do you feel like? Non-profits don’t fully appreciate about small dollar donors. Why do we need this session? Yeah, well, I think it’s really important. I would actually say that non-profit They actually do really appreciate small dollar donors that I’ve that I’ve seen on. Really? The our goal of the presentation was just doing power non-profits to take the case to their boards or their directors and say like, Hey, this is actually like a really good use of fund-raising on. And it’s also a really good way to engage people move their mission forward. Sometimes it just takes somebody to really, like, dive deep into email on to dive deep into those fund-raising strategies for people to feel empowered to take that business case, you know, straight to their organizations. Okay, carrot. So I assume you’re working with ActBlue. Yes, we are. OK. Were you the person that Sarah just referring to? I went to your leadership and said, this is worth investing in. That was before my time. But it’s carried on. Yeah. OK, so so glad that your predecessor did that. All right, All right, So where’s the best place to start? Well, uh, if we’re if we don’t feel we are capturing all our potential in small dollar donors, where What’s the first thing that we need to have in place before we can be effective with the campaign? Yeah, that’s a really good question. Eso actually email is the driver of the vast driver of all contributions. So, really, all you need is an email program, andan email list and just a message, and you can easily write your own emails and send it out to your audience. Of course, you can use an act, Liu wink if you so choose, Um, but, yeah, it’s really, really easy to tap into small dollar donors. Really, all you need is an email address and names, and then you can go ahead and get started. Okay, you don’t have to screen for who the best the best prospects are. Well, now, I mean, there’s also there’s other different acquisition strategies that you can absolutely use. But if you’re just starting from ground zero like really, all you need is an email list, a new email address, and you can get started with your own fund-raising. Okay, Alright, Carrie, how how successful has been at Friends of the Earth? It’s been huge for our programas a hole. When I first started in front of the Earth, we had about 225 2 150,000 people on their email lists, and it was raising a pretty negligible portion of our budget. Now we have about one point 8,000,000 people on our list, and it’s raising over two and 1/2 $1,000,000 a year. All right, all right. That’s, uh, explosive. How do we define what does? Does the definition of small dollar donation Barry from organization, organization or you feel like it’s all pretty consistent, Like we’re talking like 15 $2025? Is that Is that what friends of the Earth that you define small dollar when you have these conversations? Yeah, I mean, really, we aren’t going to turn down $1,000 contribution if somebody wants to do that online. But for the most part, we’re seeing people giving and more of that $1,000 30 to $50 range online on DH. Just giving, sometimes more than once a year, three or four times a year. And yeah, that lower dollar level. Okay, All right. So, Sarah, I have I have small dollar on my T shirt. How does ActBlue define what’s on my T shirt? Yeah, sure. So a small dollar donorsearch buddy who makes a contribution of 250 or less? That’s pretty much the standard that we use, but basically the whole goal about engaging small dollar donors that that goes beyond raising money. I mean, these are people who are marching their protest ng they’re volunteering, and they’re really pushing. Non-profits causes forward and That’s really the message that we want to drive home, that it’s just like it’s not just about like fund-raising. It really is about building of movement, a powerful movement of people on DH. Usually that massive movement of people that we see are small dollar donors because they’re the most engaged. Okay, Okay, um, you’re in your session. You talk about some basics principles of running a sustainable small dollar program. So let’s start with uses were way. Stay with you. I should say, uh, what, you got to start with some basic principles. Yeah, sure, I’m the number one thing. Is this treating your supporters with respect? I mean, we live in a world right now where there’s just so much content, like were saturated with content, especially is Carrie and I are both email professionals. It’s just so important to really look at your email program and say, like, you know, we really should choose a tree. Donors with respect there’s a lot of email programs out there that kind of focus solely on fund-raising and bottom line in our in our position is we really need to build like a sustainable program again, where we just create content where people feel like you know, they want to be on the email list and they want to donate and they want to give and they want to get their time, money and energy towards the mission. How do we show that respect? Well, there’s lots of different ways Way don’t hold off on Don’t hold back on non-profit radio listeners. Yeah, How do we How do we show it took off a couple ways? Sure, eso being honest with people about why you’re asking him to give money is very important. I’ll use an example about recurring donations. Something that we have found really successful is when we just asked people like, Hey, like, can you give a monthly $3 donation to support our cause? A lot of people shy away from that because like, Oh, my gosh, I’m asking somebody to give 35 $10 a month. That seems like a pretty big ask, but really, just being honest and upfront about what you’re doing and why it’s important is super important. Also, being timely, being like relevant to the moment is super important, like people want to be engaged on. People really want Teo hear from your organization, right when the moment happens, thinking about like family separation of the border. They’re just so many people who wanted to be involved and so having a way to talk directly to supporters. Eyes really important. So I was a honest, timely And of course you need to add value, Tio. I mean your email program. It’s definitely a two way street, right? We’re not just sending mathos ostomel just of fund-raising really has to add value to the support of this border has to feel engaged into your mission on DH. That’s another great way that email like, serves that purpose. What is what is friends of the Earth do carry to show this respect that Sarah’s talking about? Yeah, So if you think about what motivates a small dollar donor to give, it’s not necessarily because they care about the specific organization. They’re really trying to advance their values through through there giving, and that’s the way they see themselves as being able to make change in the world. So as we’re fund-raising from our small dollar donors, we want to give them the credit for the work the organization can do. Those aren’t our victories. There actually are donors victories when we win a campaign, it’s because people gave us $5 out of their Social Security checks, and they deserve the credit for that. Like that’s not ours. So how do you share that specifically What? How does friends of the Earth share that? Sure that impact. Yeah. We always use a lot of you language in all of our messaging. So we never say Friends of the Earth And this we say you did this. We want to make sure the word you appears in almost every paragraph in an email whenever we possibly Can you say if you save this or you change the law? Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Okay. It’s time for a break. Pursuant. The art of first Impressions. How to combine strategy analytics and Creative two captive to captivate new donors and keep them coming back. That’s their e book on donor acquisition. It’s still up on the listener landing page. How do you make that smashing? First impression donor-centric keep them. This is how you keep them coming to you. It’s at Tony dahna. I’m a slash pursuant with a capital P make the capital P for pursuing this week. Now back to small dollar donor power. Like, how often do you communicate with you? Share the impact with somebody who’s let’s say, has gives three times a year is only at those three times, not it all way. Always want to be intertwining sametz impact messaging in every communication that we send for friends of the earth. That’s about an e mail a day for most people. So every single day, just reinforcing that narrative of like you can change laws, you can change policies you’re empowered to do. These things, whether you’re giving, are signing a petition or making a phone call to your decision maker. It’s all part of the same set of impact methods. So, like, it doesn’t really matter what way they’re engaging with us. We always want to be rewarding the impact that they’re having. Okay, so someone makes thes donations typically online. I’m assuming we’re talking about small dollar because they’re coming from e mails. All right, so they get an immediate getting immediate acknowledgement. Thank you. Absolutely. Okay. And then what would be the next? Uh, suppose it was a $25 gift. They get immediate. Thank you. When’s the next time would be the next day? You said. You said everyday. Is there any Is there any suspension of suspension of mailing for a couple days to give the person a break or they hear from you is like Day two. They’re going to get going, get some impact message. They could get something to hours later. Even if something happens out in the world and we need Teo, go to them and ask them to respond again. Like, for example, if somebody gives to help stop drilling in the Arctic. And then two hours later, Trump releases his next Arctic drilling plan. We’re not going to hold back that information from our supporters were going to share that with them, even if they just donated and ask them two hours earlier that gave $25 you’ll ask him to give again. We may not ask them to give again, but we would ask them to take action in some way, maybe to volunteer, get old solution way call legislator or something that Okay. Uh, all right. How about, uh, another? Well, honesty. You said honesty. I mean, they got don’t do flush out honestly do we mean? I think is pretty well understood. No, don’t lie to your supporters. Don’t like their potential. Supporters don’t like anyone. I think that’s just I don’t think that’s going further with that another we got lots of We got lots of time together. So still talking about basic principles of, ah, successful campaign, you want to stick with you, Go ahead. Yeah. So I think you touched on a little bit, Sarah, but with urgency and just making sure that when you’re asking people to give its relevant in that moment and you’re convincing them that by giving it will have an immediate impact. Still like, for example, if a bill is moving through the legislature right now like that’s why your contribution matters today, not tomorrow, not two weeks from now. And just constantly reinforcing that like this is the moment to engage. And if you want to have the maximum impact, now is the time. OK, Sarah. Another another principle. Yeah, sure. And she touched on and carry touched on this before. Teo, we really want to focus on building what I call horizontal relationships with our supporters. A lot of times non-profits and organizations across the board say, you know, we have this solution chip in if you want. Like we have this very big idea. We we’ve got it cover, but, you know, chip in to help us. But what we want to do is kind of take that messaging and move away from it. So it’s actually really saying to supporters like Hear that Here’s this issue. Let’s fight on it together. We cannot do it around about you helping us do it right, right, right. And it’s very, very easy on an email marketing to literally put help us in every single email. Ask. Well, Windows won’t eliminate the help us, and we actually really want to bring the supporter in. And I was telling folks during our presentation, There’s a study in the UK about horizontal relationships in sustainable giving, and people who are asked by their peers are actually twice as likely to give, which is really, really incredible on DH. That’s just something that we really want people to focus on for writing emails that sound like they’re coming from your parents. We like a vertical relationship. You probably want to stay away from that. You probably want to make sure that it’s really coming from like a respected here peer-to-peer peer-to-peer rancor. And that’s where that is from. Okay? Yeah. Okay. Um, why don’t we just keep taking off principles of success? I mean, I imagine that was a lot of your was a lot of yourself. Have you done your session yet? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. You’re on the downside then. Okay. I’m assuming a lot of your session was best practices. Basic principles. Yeah. Success in this thing? Yes. In this small dollar campaign. Give us another one. E. I mean, there’s there’s just so many. Another thing Teo is just having, like, a really, really clear email copy and just making it very simple for people to understand. Does that include short? Well, it depends. And email. We always say it defends. You should always, like test, but basically making sure that people the average like person spends 11.6 seconds reading your email, which is actually pretty long compared tto in the past. But it’s still 11.6 seconds. So just making sure that your email copy is super super clear. Your asks. They’re super clear. Your supporter is not left wondering what they khun D’oh! In that moment to drive the whole mission on the whole organization Forward. I mean, a lot of times I’ll see an e mail that has text, uh, wrapped around on action box in the in the upper right tech starts on the left. But if you want to cut right to the chase, there’s the language of the petition that we’re asking you to sign, Right? Just click there. You have to read the text explanation If you don’t want to. Yeah, yeah, and that’s accessible to everybody. Right? Like some readers like like to just immediately go on Like say, Okay, I know what I want to dio that. And then some people really like just like taking their time and background. Some people really feel down Notes of five foot note down the bottom, right, right. And being open to all levels of like readership is really important to we talked about in our training the power using inclusive language and making sure that your email copy is accessible, accessible to everyone, which is also I think that is very important in the state. How do you How do you ensure accessibility it was a couple of different ways to do that. Carrie actually mentioned a really good point with her email program, which I’ll let her talk more about. But usually people are 65 and over on email lists. So, Carrie, I’m going to kick it off to you to talk specifically about how you made it more accessible on your list. Yeah. So one of the things that we experimented with this font size. You know, a lot of people think that if you’re reading something on a mobile device, you want it to be clearly fitting the screen. But we actually found that for our older audiences, we needed 18 point fun on Mobile, which, if you think about what that looks like kind of computer, it’s huge on your phone. That’s like three lines can fit in the screen. But we tested it, and it just universally work better. Okay, Okay. How about what else do you test? What does the mother’s subject line, who signs we test took off? Well, name some names of other things besides everything. So, in one email, for example, if we’re sending a fund-raising message, we might test the subject line we might test the content. We might test the language on the donation page both in the headline of the donation page and on the body of the donation page. And we might test the ask amounts all in the same all at the same time. And so we really want to test every single piece of the experience all the time. Those of the results that were going to get back in a matter of minutes. We also might be doing some kind of long term testing. Like, for example, what happens if we segment based on highest previous gift? We might need to test that for six months to really understand the impact that’ll have. So while we’re doing all of this testing in the moment, we’re also have this backdrop of the long term testing that we’re running behind the scenes. Did you say you have one point 8,000,000 was 1.31 point. Okay, so you have the luxury of having a large, large numbers that you can test with. So I suppose a list supposed listens only 10,000. Can you still do? Abie testing with 10,000 persons list? Yeah. What? I’d like to tell people is don’t worry about getting sister’s school significance or being like a data purest. It’s fine. The goal, really for, like, email eyes just to improve your email content so that you can raise more money. That’s really all it takes. I mean, you, Khun segment off a 10,000 list into, like to, what? 2,000 list for subject lines and just see if there’s a bumper. Not really. Doesn’t have to be that complicated. And again, like our goal. For me, for AC Blue and for Carrie is like to make in this presentation is really It’s like, take, like the fear out of email and actually make it to listen right? Exactly. That’s what I should have said. The whole university invention non-profit treyz right there. There you go ahead. I cut you off. No, it’s okay. I know, but really it’s like take the fear out of e mail on DH to take the fear out of fund-raising. This is something that anyone could. D’oh! Yeah, Okay, Okay, That would be a good rap up play point, but we have another 10 minutes left. Ok? Because this is 1/2 hour segment Yeah, so I’m not letting you off the hook, so that would be good. Rap will come back to you later, okay? In about 10 minutes. So let’s keep talking about I don’t know testing. Is there anything more we can say about testing? Either of you carry Sara about anything more you want to add about testing? I think the big thing is look for the stuff that’s going to have the greatest impact. So you know, you might test two versions of your content, but if it’s only one line difference, then you’re probably going to see a really small change. As a result of that is opposed to completely rewriting the E mail, you’ll probably see a much bigger change. And it’s not really that much more investment of time to create the much more different version and the results that you get well, just be that much more valuable. So we really look for the places that we can make those radical improvements or something we’ll just radically fail. But then at least we know, you know, rather than constantly testing around the margins. Okay, Okay. Test for significance. What have you found about who signs an email. You have signers to your email? Yeah. Now, of course, this is unique. Understands unique Teo, Friends of the earth. Thes result. Your your results may vary, but what has friends of yours found for us? Who signs What? Successful? Yeah. So we test it in two places. One is the sender, and one is who actually has their name at the bottom of the text. We have found that it makes osili no difference whose name is at the bottom of the texts. But the sender could make a really huge difference for us. The organisation’s name is usually the winner. So coming from friends of the Earth beats coming from our president’s name. But the thing that actually wins the most is just like a totally random like climate alert or be action. Something that is about the issue rather than about the organization or an individual. And that’s as a sender. Yes. Oh, interesting. Okay. Okay. Um Okay, so we’ve exhausted testing. We feel like you said everything. It was there more. Anything more. You want to know about testing, testing principles? Yeah, I think it’s just important for all testing. It’s really like optimizing your content ofthe devising your ask amounts, and it’s just a continual thing. Having one test for email is probably a good place to start and again, Really, anybody could do this. Yeah, okay, okay, Let’s continue with our basic principles. That good. Keep going, Sarah. Cool. Another basic principle. Trying to think. I mean, there’s just there’s just so many We went through so many again trying to think, Let’s get carried. You got one. You got one in mind in your mind, I think, like relevance is super important. Like, what do your supporters actually care about? It’s probably not the same thing that your organization’s leadership or even your organization staff really care about. So try to think about it from your supporters perspective. Like, what is it that makes them get excited about in our example? Environmental protection like water, the things that are their core values And how do you speak to those things like it’s probably not the amendment to the budget bill that’s passing through the house tonight. You know, that’s probably not thinking about Okay, right? How do you find that out? How do you know what your supporters were interested in? So I think some of it comes from just listening to the different staff of the organization who interact with supporters. If you have people who work in the community like if your service organization than get their stories go out on a site, visit with them for us. We always talk to our donorsearch Mrs Staff, who answered the phone from donor-centric leave the major donor calls, but the it’s all dollar donors who might give through direct mail or other channels who actually called the office to give us feedback that Khun just give a really interesting perspective on how people are interacting with us and then even things like social media or people who hit Reply on your mass e mail. You know it’s not data driven, but it can kind of guide some of your thinking and get you out of the bubble. So these air folks who call probably to complain about something sometimes I’m guessing most of the time, most of time, right. But you’re able to turn that call around first by satisfying hearing the principles we talk, you know, validating their concern, apologizing, fixing it on. Then you can get information from them about what it is that motivates them around. Friends of the Earth work? Absolutely. Yeah. So staff is all trained to do that. It doesn’t just happen. Doesn’t just happen. Staff is intentionally trained, you know, Let’s get some information while we’ve got these people on the phone and they’re feeling good, um, you’re familiar with the service recovery paradox. I’m not? No. Okay, that’s that because we’re talking about people calling and complaining. Ah, a person will be a person will be mohr committed to a brand. If there’s been a problem and it got solved, then if there was never a problem because they got the opportunity to be heard they had the opportunity to interact with staff on the problem. Presumably get solved. So they’ll be they’ll be more committed than the person who never has a problem, right? I think that that’s why it’s paradox Interesting. Okay, um, more principles. Sarah passed last time. So no person are you, Carrie, You give another one. Since we’re with you, then we’ll come back. So I’m never going back. But she passed up returns. Think if you’re talking about small donor fund-raising, you always want to make sure that you’re giving people the right ascot the right time. So if someone’s capable of giving $30 don’t ask him for five. If someone’s capable of giving $5 don’t ask them for 250. You know, all of our son isms have data, or you, Khun do some analytics to find out what each individual donors has previous gift is or if they’ve never given before you contest into what makes the most sense. But you want to be talking to people and meet somewhere there at rather than trying to, like a massively over sell them in a way that isn’t accessible. Okay, Okay. Before I ask you for principal, I’m gonna ask you, Sarah, how does one become a email? Your director of director of email? Yeah. That’s not a That’s not a major. No, no, we don’t go to college for that. How do you do? You work your way into that? Yeah, sure. So I graduated college and I it worked as a field organizer for then Senate Senator Kay Hagan. So I really liked what state? The state of North Carolina. OK, Yeah. I’m sorry. I should know that I should I own two homes in North Carolina. Really? Pinehurst and Emerald Isle. Okay, but I’m not from there. Yeah, I didn’t know. Okay, Don’t. Yeah. Now it’s now it’s ber until us all right now the current. Yeah, we lost another current guys. Yeah, but I didn’t know. Okay? Yeah. Eso graduated field organizer. I love talking to people, but I didn’t think that knocking on doors was going to be my life’s calling And my life’s work. Eso ended up getting into digital fund-raising Just because I was just you could talk to people at a massive scale which is really empowering and very cool Uses both sides of your brains. You could be like creative. But of course, we’ve talked a lot about testing on this times. You kind of have a science to it. Also right. Eso I’ve spent like 4 to 5 years and political fund-raising, so I work for the DSCC. I work for Revolution Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Okay. Yeah. I worked for a revolution messaging a za consultant there, and I was formally the deputy email director at the Democratic National Committee, the DNC, where we had a multi $1,000,000 programme and I’m up at blue. So I’ve been very fortunate to have really great, like female mentors on work on female teams. And so I credit them a lot. Teo, you know where I’m at today on DH. There is a lot of space for women to be an email. There’s a lot of space for young people to be an email on DH. There’s a lot of space for people who haven’t really been involved in email. Toe start. I was with a panel yesterday, which was called I don’t have you know, I left him back in the hotel yesterday’s notes, but was called grit. Female was basically female technologists go that you’re nodding. I didn’t It’s okay, but it was great how to be a successful female in technology. That right? Very good, Carrie, how’d you work your way into being an email scientist? Yes. So I started answering. Our phone line for donorsearch vis is which is why I feel so strongly about your whole career’s friends of the earth. Yet so far on. And basically I discovered that I really wanted to have an impact on the issue that issues I cared about. But I didn’t really want to be dressing up in a suit and going in meeting with a lot of people on the hill. I really wanted to be, you know, out in the field, talking Teo really human beings. And email was just the right mix of those things where I could ask people for money to help further the mission. Or I could give people the tools to lobby their own. Elected officials are whatever the action mechanism was, it was all in my fingertips, and I never have to put on the suit, so that looks okay, doesn’t it? Okay, so we’re back to you practice. Best practice. Did you think of one since the last time? Yeah, I think so. Back to what Carrie was saying about multi-channel about talking to other people within the organization. I think that that is really, really important. Usually when I started a new organization, or like every three months, I’ll talk Teo, just different folks just to get some authenticity and authentic voice. I mean, people are craving authenticity and email, so that’s a really good way to do it. Another thing. That and another question that I got during the panel was direct mail and email. And how do those two things relate? And can they co exist? My personal opinion is yes, they absolutely can. You can use direct mail pieces and email vice versa. You, Khun, send email to to direct mail folks too for a multi touch, eh? So that’s another thing, too, that I think non-profits Khun really explore its really not one or the other. You can have both had someone on the panel yesterday who said that their donors loved getting. They thanked them for direct mail letters that say thank you for an email gift for non line gift. Yeah, yeah, it’s a really good way to keep your sustainers like, really happy. And that’s like your big donor based. Okay, how often would you thank sustainers as often as I can after every gift every month? Well, usually you could do in personal personalization so you can say, like, Hey, you’ve made, like, a $3 monthly donation and literally you just put Inem dash and say thank you. It’s it could be that simple, or it can be like so extreme that you write like a hand written thank you know and send it in the mail. So it just depends on what your capacity is. But just giving, you know, those donors a sense of like appreciation is super important you want. Do you want to touch them at every at every monthly donation, one way or the other? Yeah, well, I’m That’s my personal belief. I think people like they pretty much know that they’re doing a monthly donation and actually reminding people that they gave him a plea donation for us. Like I haven’t seen any dropoff whatsoever. I know a lot of people are like aholic. I’m nervous about reminding people that they have a monthly donation, but I think for us, it’s like part of a gang. Like the honesty authenticity on being up front with people in where they stand. I’ve heard it both ways. I’ve heard. Set it and forget it. Don’t remind them. But then you risk when the court expires or it gets compromised. They decide they have had enough, and I don’t really hear from them very often. But there’s two sides to that argument, right? Okay. What? Carrie, I’m gonna let you wrap it up. We got just like, 30 seconds or so left. Give us a motivation about small dollar donation campaigns. Yeah, I mean, I think for friends of the Earth, it’s really been a a game changer for us. You know, every dollar you raise online has the potential to be unrestricted. So it means that you can run the programs that you want to run as an organization without being required to do what a major donor wants you to do or what a foundation wants you to do. You could be much more flexible, and you’re empowering human beings in the real world to be a part of your cause and advanced the mission that you care about. And there’s just no better way to do that than building those relationships online. Where people, you know in the 21st century, that’s where they’re at. So we meet them where they’re also thank you. That was That was Cary Man. She’s deputy director of digital membership and advocacy at Friends of the Earth and also Sarah Kerrigan, email director. Attack Blue. Thank you Each very much. Thanks. Much pleasure. Thank you. And thank you for being with Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of 19 NTC all of our 19 1990 seon reviews are brought to you as from our partners at ActBlue free fund-raising tools that help non-profits Macon Impact. Thanks for being with us. We need to take a break. Wagner, CPS. They’re accountants, for God’s sake. Okay, you know you know what they do. Do you need one? Do you need help with your form? 9 90 is the time to change ordered firms. Perhaps they’ve got a deep rich practice for non-profits and they’re growing it. You could be a part of that. You know a partner. You know, one of the insiders Yet which tomb? He’s been on the show. Check him out. Give him, then give you a ring. Get started at wagner cpas dot com. Now time for Tony’s take two. My video is two ways to be a good American Abroad. I was in Paris for two weeks and while in Brussels, Belgium. Short hour and 1/2 train ride away. Ah, I witnessed some some bad behavior. Bad Americans abroad. There were two things that particular relating Teo language and currency and those air. But those are the two subjects. But how can you do them better than these ugly Americans that I witnessed in Brussels. That’s what the video is about. Now, I had said that earlier that my video was going to be a tour in L C C A launch control center from when I was in the Air Force. But I put this one up instead. The launch control center one is coming. I’m not cheating you out of the tour of the LCC, but right now check out two ways to be a good American abroad. You know where the video is? It’s at tony martignetti dot com. So now that you’ve got new donors, how do you keep them? Here is donor retention. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of 1990 si. You know what that is? It’s the 2019 non-profit Technology Conference. We’re in Portland, Oregon, at the Convention Center and this interview, Like all our 19 ntcdinosaur views brought to you by our partners at Act Blue Free fund-raising tools to help non-profits make an impact, I guess now are Laura Cole and Cole. Hey, Big Laura is director of account Services at Sancti Communications. Paul is president of Sank a communications Welcome. Welcome, Laura. Welcome poem Well, thank you. Thank you so much for having us. Pleasure. You’re seminar topic is finders keepers the art of donor of retention? I don’t know how many guests have been on non-profit radio telling us that the cost of retaining a donor is so much less than the cost of acquiring a new donor. More. Let’s start with you. What are what are non-profits Just not getting them. This is not just within the past six months. For years we’ve been talking about donorsearch tension problems. Retention rate is so low, I don’t know what the most current is, but it’s it’s it’s sad, Whatever it is, what are we not getting right? And you’re welcome to give the most recent stat if you I’m sure you know it. So I think it’s a great point and I think one of the reasons why we wanted to talk about it today and in our session. We really focused on it too. Is that this? This December was definitely a challenge for a lot of non-profits, and it was particularly a challenge for getting new donors in the door. And that means that retention becomes that much more important and to your point. Retention doesn’t happen. You really have to tow work and focus on your communications to make sure that you’re building that relationship because it’s donors are going to give. But you have to take that is the first step of the relationship and really work on cultivating them so that they’re going to become lifelong donors. Paul, Why we’ve been talking about this for so long. Why are non-profits not getting the message that Laura just redid? Rated for the 1,000,000 times? You know, I ended the session off with the audience and said to them, You’ve already done. You’ve really done your session this on the down side already on our way to end it all by saying, Don’t be impatient, Don’t dahna Retention takes time. It takes time to improve it. So we did a case study with the African Wildlife Foundation, and we’ve been working with them for like seven years, and we were able to get there Don’t retention right now. Currently in two thousand eight from 2,018 upto almost 70% prior. You’re donors to give again in the second year, and it took years of planning and communicating and it really is the foundation of what we discussed. And what we believe in is that you really need to build the foundation with technology, good technology from the start. And so this organisation, we went through a really important and arduous database and technology conversion for them almost three years ago, three years ago. I think he was closer to 55 years ago, and so we were able to actually put all the pieces that you need to make this a mohr automated process to really focus on things which allowed the organization and us and freed us up to be more creative with how he spoke to donors. The campaigns that we produced for the organization and really give them an engaging donor experience throughout the 12 month period that we benchmarked this morning. All right, so it’s a long term process you need to have. You need to have infrastructure in place before you can before you can hope to move the needle on potential. It is buy-in caps. Elated. This Yeah, I know. The idea is that one of the things we’ve mentioned at the end was you have to invest. Unfortunately, we’ll invest in the technology even before we even get into donorsearch tension versus new donorsearch attention. It is important because what happens is if you don’t have that infrastructure there. Misstep and interesting. It was the way originally were caught. We’re going to call the session howto lose a donor in 10 days kind of pop culture reference for a movie. But it really is true. Is that idea that in the first part of the relationship, if you have a misstep, you probably lose a donor for life if you, you know, code them differently if you personalize something and it’s the wrong information, if you don’t thank them in a timely manner. And there’s a lot of different things that go into that so really kind of making sure that infrastructure is up and running to make sure that you don’t have those early missteps so that you can create a lifelong donor-centric to get to some of the pitfalls you have in your your description talk about pitfalls that are causing dahna patrician. So why did you want Okay, well, naming the person incorrectly. Yeah, Personal personalization is one of our most powerful tools in marketing and fund-raising, but if you call Bob Barbara, you know, you kind of lose a donor for life for sure, making sure that you I already have in motion the idea that if someone comes on brand new, this is like a data problem that people do that you’re suppressing the people who are new versus old and actually figuring out who they are. So, for instance, I make a donation. A lot of signs, some systems is that you’ll go right into the next campaign stream. But I just made my first donation. So what we can certainly do with the technology for our clients is that will create an automated program that will actually capture that new donor-centric, possibly who hasn’t giving but maybe give their email address for the first time and put them on a separate track and making sure that at the same time they’re suppressed from any other campaigns. Generally, the can kapin would have some kind of fund-raising asked. So really kind of setting the stage of their relationship for the beginning and not forgetting that they just made a donation and really trying to the information that we provide in that Siri’s is meant to be engaging in the part where it actually educates them on the mission and deeper into the program versus you know, usually probably what we brought that original donor and is on some kind of urgency, you know, really quick and got emotional reaction. But at that point, then you have there you have their attention, and you have to use it wisely. Okay, and Laura suppress them For how long? So generally, what what will work with organizations to do is to build a really robust welcome Siri’s. And that usually is at least fortified emails that will go out over, say, 2 to 3 weeks. So making sure that they complete that cycle before they start to get the regular stream of communications. So they’re not kind of being dropped in in the middle of one campaign, or they’re not getting the welcome Siri’s and that campaign. But instead they’re really sort of sitting by themselves, getting this very targeted, very tailored Siri’s that’s going to introduce them to your mission to the organization, tell them what their their donation has done before you ask again. So it’s really making sure that those and and to go back to sort of the movie reference that we made its It is like a relationship, and if you make a mistake in the first date or the second date or the third date, you’re probably not going to turn into a long term relationship. But Teo ads that question about how long it does vary from organization to organization. What we discussed this morning would be the organization that we were case studying, which is the African Wildlife Foundation. They have a membership program. So the how long is a shorter period of time because of the membership program and a lower dollar average gift for them. Repetition in marketing fund-raising is key to their success. But some organizations we work with that might start off at a much higher average gift. That’s where you’d have to really kind of b’more conscientious on the frequency and how when that next asks, Come in. So that could be you know what with the organization with membership, you might be 2 to 3 week where you’re suppressing, but an organization that has a higher average gift donor-centric month or two before or really looking at they’re giving history, so it’s not a one size fits all. It really has to be customized to each organization and what their mission and what type of donors they do have. Oh, and and also targeted to the constituent. If you’re talking about a donor that’s giving a small gift, you’re you’re going to want to suppress him for a shorter period of time than someone that gave you $10,000. That person’s going to need a lot longer period of pure cultivation before you make that ask again. Okay, let’s let’s do some more pitfalls like these pitfalls to avoid attrition. Absolutely. Go ahead, I think. One of the big ones. And this is partly why digital retention tends to be lower than direct mail. Is not making sure that you’re updating donor email addresses, whether they tell you that they have a new email address. But even more proactively finding out what the what what? Maybe someone’s new email address is called in a way or email. Change of address process. Something like that where you’re you’re actively saying, let me make sure that I can keep emailing a donor because email addresses changed much more frequently than someone’s mailing address. People don’t generally move as much as they change their email address. Maybe they go to a new job. Maybe they switch from Yahoo Hotmail. So making sure that you can keep talking to them, because if you’re not going to talk to them, you can’t make that ask. You can’t cultivate and they’re not going to get there much less likely to give again if you kind of lose touch. I’m not even sure that non-profits know a lot of them know that there are services that will do it. The email change of address for you, Yeah way the Postal Service with, like, a a national change of address I have now on the way. I have, ah, have a little personal story, my dad’s name and my name or the same Anthony martignetti, but he uses A J. He’s Anthony Joseph. I have the same middle name, but I never used the J. There’s one indicator that we’re different. Also, his his current address is not my last address. I haven’t lived there since I was nine, eighteen 18 years old. I went to college. I moved. I moved from New York City to North Carolina. More than a dozen charities started emailing Anthony J. Martignetti to my North Carolina address Charities that my dad is a is an active donorsearch. For now, he’s a small level donor. Is he’s one of those guys who writes like 15 $2025 checks, and I mean literally he does dozens of these a month. He gives a lot at the end of the year, so they were. So they were aspiring to be proactive. But there were two flags that should have been raised that that I’m not the guy, that he’s not the guy who moved the middle initial and the last address. So that brings us to another pitfall. It’s one of the major pitfalls pitfalls. A lot of non-profits full into his data issues data. Bad data can really harm donorsearch tension. So in your case, these organizations are not actually there. There, there, there, there, looking up your information. It’s either it’s household or individual. And so you can. We’ve seen this happen for organizations where you’ll get a household match, and that’s what you’re what happened with name yes, but versus an individual, which is directly just you and that address. But it brings back the point, which I think we’ll go back to our topic on pit bulls data. It could be the right that for all non-profits not. And it’s the hardest part for an organization that really both invest the time and money and resource is. That’s usually people power to make sure that you have clean data for knowing when someone is active or made a gift recently, and then you ask them by actually ask him to renew when they just renewed a month ago. Or I mentioned the personalization piece or recognizing when someone is, ah, high dollar donor-centric. And that’s one of actually the things that you mentioned. Is it really important? Sustaining giving is one of the differential factors where online retention doesn’t actually start going up from offline retention if you’re really good at recruiting sustainers or monthly givers and then making an active effort. So part of the case study with you this morning was that we’ve been actively growing the sustainers file for this organization, and it right now they’re they’re about 25 plus percent that there digital giving is coming from sustainers e-giving, which each year helped their retention grow, and that’s why they’re close to 70% now on retention because of that. But when we treat sustainers, we always recognize that there are sustainers. So even though that you don’t want to stop communicating sustainers gonna wantto forget about the organization. But we segment and we recognize their contribution and we usually put them in a lot of the engagement campaigns and cultivation. The awesome part about sustainers is they’re so engaged with the organization what I always call the 13th gift. So that will be a monthly Don’t make 12. They’ll make that 13 because they’re so engaged. But you have to really treat them well and so generally will maybe get they’ll get a matching gift campaign, maybe year, and to say, Hey, we have this match going on. We know you’re a monthly supporter, but we just wanted to bring it to your attention. It’s all about the nuance messaging and really think about that. But it goes back to the data being clean and knowing who you’re speaking to, segmenting your audiences and really paying attention to that and bad data. Really, convict can really lead, Yeah, two mistakes like that. Now you know if if it wasn’t my dad I wouldn’t be. Wouldn’t wouldn’t have given them the second chance. I just tossed it or said, You know, take me off your list. Hence, how to lose a donor in 10 days Time for our last break Text to give. Get their five part email Many course to dispel the myths around mobile giving Donations do not have to go through the donors phone company. They don’t have to be small. There aren’t large startup costs. You don’t need to know a lot of technology. You can do this. You can do mobile giving. You get the five part email, many course and it’ll explain how to get started. Um, you get that by texting NPR to 444999 You’ve got butt loads. More time for donorsearch retention anymore. Pitfalls. I liked the men I like taking off these things, that organ ords maybe doing wrong. So so along the lines of what you brought up, I think one of the biggest pitfalls is not respecting when when donorsearch Hey, I don’t want to get mail or you have the wrong address. Please update it. Donors who bothered to reach out and tell you that are very loyal donors. If they’re proactively reaching out and saying, Please send, you know, to this new email or this new postal address or this is the wrong you know, middle initial or this is the wrong no last name. Anyone who reaches out with that cares a lot about the organization. And so it’s making sure that you’re respecting that and that there’s business rules and to Paul’s point, people in place to make those updates right, because the second time, the person when the first that’s right, second request. Then you’re done. This is your you’re hurting. So absolutely that dovetails into a point of really making sure the right hands talking to the left hand, where if you’re running a campaign that you have really good donorsearch vis reps who understand what’s going on with the fund-raising department and can actually feel those questions. So they got a matching gift request, for instance, knowing that when they answer the phone that they were talking about that a lot of time. Our donors donors will call for organization to say well, might give still be matched. I’m a little late, so having someone ready to know that. But at the same time, what we find the organizations have been most successful is when they have somebody on the phone who can really take a donor complaint and make them to a lifelong donors. And it’s just really preparing them and training them on DH, treating someone like a human being and understanding that even their $25 gift is just as important as the $1,000 gift when they when they take the energy to call the organization. And generally you can really kind of swing a donor to be really lifelong supporter as long as you have somebody on the lines and the phone. Many organizations forget about that, and you made a good point this morning, which I’ll let you make about even just the last week of the year. Well, it’s It’s remembering that some of the biggest giving days on the online side are not working days. It’s the end of the year. It’s Christmas, it’s New Year’s. It’s days when the office may be closed. But if no one’s answering the phones when you have donors trying to make a gift, you know if you get back to them in January. It’s too late, you know, a sort of mist that window. And so it’s thinking about customer service, especially on those key days when, even if you know, recognizing it’s a holiday. But it’s when people are giving and needing to be there for the donors. Do either of you know the There’s a paradox service like service repair paradox or something like that in customer service, where if you’ve made a mistake and corrected it as a as a company, you will. You will have a more loyal customer than if you hadn’t made the mistake in the first place. And that’s goes to what you were describing. Pull their end well and Laura, too, that that there’s someone there responsive that actually makes the change or correct the problem. They have to be empowered to correct the problem, and if they do, you’ll have a more loyal well, it feeds over in our in our circle. It does have a more loyal donor-centric to begin with, so we made a point this morning. Another don’t was when your when your service recovery, that’s what service recovery paradox. So we made a point talking about the fact that Okay, so you’re going to make mistakes sometimes. So just say, make sure your emails rendering correctly when someone views it makes sure when someone lands on a donation form, it’s working correctly. However, technology breaks down sometimes, regardless of how much you test how great you are at that. But what I talked to the audience about is as long as you’re both timely with your apology and also just things do happen. And, you know, one of the best examples would have been Steve Jobs. When the iPhone had the antenna issue, he pretty much changed the entire power paradigm for PR in the sense of how he handled that situation where they were. They were roasting Apple at that point, and he actually turned it around and it became the best selling high phone because the way he handled that, he took responsibility and they moved on. And I think the quote was, well, technology breaks down. Actually, all phones dropped calls, and it’s not just it’s not just the iPhone and that quickly the media shifted there, but the whole idea is being quick and nimble and being able to go back out So the non-profit has an issue with their donation form or something with their sight being quick and being able to be. You know, sometimes humor works in some ways and some organization, depending on your mission. But being direct on that and really kind of talking about it and getting out getting in front of it is so important. And again, then you know that that that experience level, we actually see that a lot of the times those correction emails do perform quite well, sometimes even better than the other emails in the Siri’s. When you go back and you’re just really human and honest about what happened and take responsibility exactly that za piece of what a piece of what you’re describing all right, and and to your point earlier about the small dollar donor to remember that for that donor, that’s that’s a big commitment they’ve made for you. It’s a it’s a small amount of money, but for them it’s a big commitment, and so treating them well regardless of the amount of money that they give. And that’s one thing that the digital space allows for is that high touch treatment allows for the personalization it allows for. The customization allows those donors to feel special regardless of how much they’ve given and in terms of numbers. Sometimes the small dollar donors that given year after year and say, Hey, I’ve moved, please update it. Those may be your best plan giving prospect so you can’t dismiss them even if they’re giving you a little amount, because for them, it’s a It’s a lot I do plan. Giving consulting now 1997 carrying on and the ultimate retention I’ve seen lots of seen lots of eyes algorithms, I guess, for you know, who makes a good plan giving prospect. I still think the best plan giving prospect is that person who’s given you 23 gifts in the past 25 years exactly on the most recent one was no more than, like, six months ago or something. Yeah, they are thinking about you every single every single year, and I don’t I really don’t care. Here’s $10 a year. In some cases, I think they’re testing you, but they’re probably testing you for 23 years. But but some of those initial small dollar gifts they may be testing you do I get a thank you is a timely yeah. Did they screw things up in the thank you, you know, etcetera. So I think there’s some of that. Some of the testing on the small dollar lord to your point about small dollar donations. But they are enormously good playing, giving prospects that kind of that kind of loyalty and longevity, even if even if small, small, double digit levels very good plan giving prospects here earlier point about because acquisition is so challenging. Some one plan gift from someone who made a gift for 20 years who can pay for an acquisition program for an entire organization meeting. You know, you you invest that money 20 years ago and then you’re banking on it later on where they’ve left this entire you know, there’s a part of their state to an organization, and so it’s important, actually tracked those folks right to find out what the origin of those folks who do come in because it’s generally as you just said, those low Doyle. The donor’s really do care about the organization. That’s why they stuck around for 23 years. It is important. Look, back-up e-giving history and try and ascertain from those patterns. Hoo hoo! Your other good prospects are. Yeah, and that’s one thing we spoke about at the session is, is the data side of it is is to really track retention and really leverage it. You have to have the data collection in place. You have to know who your donors are. You need ideas for them. So you contract. They’re giving year over year, but you also need to be able to identify where they came from in the first place. If you want to invest smart going forward, you have to know what your investments really yielded in the past. And so the cost of acquisition. What’s the source? The source, the source? And what did it cost exactly? And even if it was a long time ago, being able to know what that was is really valuable. That’s a great transition anymore, Waken say about technology. I mean, well, you both in it a lot. There’s no anymore more strategies around technology that he needs to be in place. So Paul touched on it, and I think it’s important is to recognize that your technology can can work for you or against you and recognizing where it it is working for you and maybe where it’s it’s presenting challenges and and maybe those air too much, and you’re really costing yourself on the retention side for not investing in technology. But it’s also recognizing that technology without the people to really leverage it isn’t going to get you very far that you need data people you need. You know, people who know how to use the technology and can really make it work for you. So I think it’s It’s technology, by itself is not powerful. It’s technology and people and subsided. And what you’re saying is you have to hire the expertise that you need. If it’s not a full time employee, you have to get a consultant freelancer. You can’t You can’t manage this and master it on your own on DH. That’s not your expertise anyway. You’re zan inefficient use of your own time or your organization’s time to try to master something that you don’t know you need to. You need to invest in the talent that you need because the organizations are good at their missions. You know, in many ways, right, it’s not really about marketing or technology or database management. I mean, it does. It does come to that. Sometimes you and I think also a point you made earlier that that I do think sometimes gets lost is that when when it comes to our attention, sometimes it’s it’s fancy technology and automation and behavioral driven content. And sometimes it’s the basics. It’s the acknowledgement. Did you send an acknowledgement? Did it talk about the impact that the gift had did it? You know, thank the donor an appropriate way. Was it sent out on time? So with all the bells and whistles that are out there in technology now, it’s important to not forget those fundamentals and to make sure that those air in place, regardless of whether you have a staff of 10 or one very well said you should be co presidents. Take note of that account services sounds sounds beneath her to mate. We’ve been working together for 10 years. It’s true. That’s good. Yeah, co President. Um, okay, let’s look metrics. You talk about metrics to measure churn and retention. Who wants to wants to kick off the metrics? We got like, four more minutes left together. So you want to start for so the biggest thing when it comes to metrics is, is having the data in place and knowing whether or not you even have the data to track it. And the key for retention is that you’re tracking donorsearch cohorts. So it’s not talking about the total number of gifts that’s talking about donors and specific groups of donor. So when you want to measure overall retention from one year to another, you need to know which donors gave in your one and which donors went onto given year, too. So so if you can actually identify that because you don’t have the ideas or you don’t have the data in biology infrastructure, just talking, you’re not going to get anywhere. And similarly, knowing someone who’s new versus who’s who’s renewed is quite important because going back to the point you made earlier about acquisition, the retention of a new donor right now hovers around 25%. And so really tension of a 1st 3rd 1st time, first time donors so well, so organized organization whose 75% of the people they broke time don’t Yeah, and so there is making sure you have the ability to track these things so that you actually then Khun, figure out you’re targeted strategies towards these groups, treating them separately in some ways and actually having creative and ideas and specific pieces that go to them so that you can retain those vote for people. We kind of haven’t touched upon it. But a lot of the strategies that we’ve been implementing with great success is trying tio convert a lot of those first time donors into sustainers, and that really has helped lift the program’s on the digital side and where digital retention for the overall programs have have been on the rise a little bit, and particularly with this organization that we case study today African Wildlife Foundation that was the sustainers program has been really one of the key to the success of really good online retention because we really quickly move folks from their first gift and have strategies to convert them to sustainers and then due to individual sustainers drives where it could be coupled with the match and really kind of back to really strong, evocative creative that goes back to for there in this mission is, you know, poaching of elephants and the crisis that’s going on there, but it works with other organizations to. And so the success of those programs and then having the data to make sure that you actually keep the retention of your sustainers is another really important factor because that there’s there’s low hanging fruit that that could be easily forgotten or missed by organizations on when credit cards expire and making sure that you really invest in that channel, you know, And it’s actually more channels that we’re discussing this morning. Not only sometimes email does not work to retain a sustainer, you actually need to use offline and send it direct mail piece or take it even further. And sometimes we’ll do telemarketing to see if we can get that boat that person back because their their lifetime value is greater than most other sources. Why do, uh, she would just have, like, 30 seconds? How come some How come sustainers stop sustaining? I think two reasons I think one is some sustainers don’t realize that they’ve became a sustainers so generally in the 1st 2 or three months on stage, it was a mistake, and that goes back to data making sure that when you when you confirm those sustainers that you actually tell them they’re sustainers. OK, there is like a threshold where they passed 13 and four, and then you got them. The other thing is credit cards. A little scripture expire expires. Or they or yeah, exactly. And they decide to have done it long enough because you kind of want sustainers toe almost go on autopilot and, you know, and then really, you still want to engage them, But you don’t need to constantly remind them that they’re making that gift. But you wanted still engage them on your mission. So those air to areas where I’d say that where you would lose sustainers. Okay, we’ve got to leave it there. That flu fantastic was awesome. All right? Yes, they’re both with. Thank you, Communications. Paul is the president, and Laura is soon to be co president, but currently director of account Services. This interview, like all the 1990 sea interviews brought to you by our partners at ActBlue Free fund-raising tools to help non-profits Macon impact. Thanks so much for being with non-profit radios. Coverage of 1990 si next week. Tech accessibility and culture of resilience. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony. Martignetti dot com were sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits, Data driven and technology enabled. Tony dahna slash pursuing capital P by Wagner CPS Guiding YOU beyond the numbers Regular cps dot com and by text to give mobile donations. Made Easy text. NPR to 444 999 are creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. Sam Liebowitz is the line producer. Shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. The With Me Next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit Ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great. You’re listening to the Talking Alternative Network. Yeah, you’re listening to the Talking Alternative Network. Are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down. Hi, I’m nor in Sumpter potentially ater. Tune in every Tuesday at 9 to 10 p.m. Eastern time And listen for new ideas on my show yawned potential live life your way on talk radio dot And why easy? Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business. Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested? Simply email at info at talking alternative dot com dafs Theo Best designs for your life Start at home. I’m David. They’re Gartner interior designer and host of At Home Listen, Live Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. Eastern Time As we talk to the very best professionals about interior design and the design, that’s all around us right here on talk radio dot N. Y c. You’re listening to talking on their network at www dot talking alternative dot com now broadcasting 24 hours a day. If are you a conscious co creator, Are you on a quest to raise your vibration and your consciousness? Sam Liebowitz, your conscious consultant and on my show, that conscious consultant, our awakening humanity. We will touch upon all these topics and more. Listen live at our new time on Thursdays at 12 noon Eastern time. That’s the conscious consultant, Our Awakening Humanity. Thursday’s 12 noon on talk radio dot You’re listening to the Talking Alternative Network

Sponsored by: