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Nonprofit Radio for June 10, 2024: Future-Proof Your Nonprofit With Apps, Tools & Tactics

 

Jason Shim & Meico Marquette Whitlock: Future-Proof Your Nonprofit With Apps, Tools & Tactics

Jason Shim and Meico Marquette Whitlock return from the 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference, with their annual collection of tech to help you manage your tech. From collaboration to inbox management, from transcription to hidden Zoom tools, this panel will help you find greater balance and efficiency. Jason is at the Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience and Meico is The Mindful Techie.

 

 

 

 

 

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Hello 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 suffer with Jejune. Oily, JJ June. Well, uh JJ June, Jun Ol, did you know I, I did you know ill. Did you know? I 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 with Je Juno iliitis if I had to digest the idea that you missed this week’s show. But first we have a listener of the week, Sharry Smith or it could be Chary. It’s either Cherry or Sherry. I’m gonna say Sherry, but it could be Cherry Sharri Smith from Portland, Oregon. Sharri gave us a shout out on linkedin when she was listing her favorite podcasts for nonprofits, Shari Shari Shari Shari. Thank you. Thank you very much for doing that. Uh You had a couple of other podcasts listed. Um Yeah, they, they’re, they’re good, you know, II, I know them. Uh hm. Ok. They’re good. But nonprofit radio is on the list. That’s the one that’s the one you want. So Sharry Cherry, thank you very much listener of the week this week. Thank you so much, Sherry. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s going on this week? Hey, Tony, congratulations, Sherry. This week we have future proof your nonprofit with apps, tools and tactics. Jason Shim and Miko Marquette Whitlock return from the 2024 nonprofit technology conference with their annual collection of tech to help you manage your tech from collaboration to inbox management, from transcription to Hidden Zoom tools. This panel will help you find greater balance and efficiency. Jason is at the Canadian Center for nonprofit Digital Resilience and Miko is the mindful techie on Tony’s take two chatty gym guy were sponsored by virtuous. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Here is Future Proof your nonprofit with apps tools and tactics. It’s a pleasure to welcome back, Jason Sim and Miko Marquette Whitlock to nonprofit radio. Jason is Chief Digital Officer at the Canadian Center for nonprofit digital resilience. How can we harness technology to make a difference in the world? That’s the question. Jason loves to explore with organizations. He’s on linkedin and the center is at CCNDR dot C A Miko Marquette Whitlock is the mindful techie. He’s a workplace well being strategist who helps mission driven professionals prioritize their well being so they can elevate their well doing. He’s also on linkedin and his practice is at Mindful techie.com, Jason and Miko. Welcome back to Nonprofit Radio. Thanks for having us for having us. This is a tradition. Uh We, we didn’t get to talk at the nonprofit technology conference proper, but uh we’re, we’re, we’re filling in now uh with your annual sort of review of apps techs and uh uh apps, apps uh tools and tactics. And it’s actually quite appropriate, I believe because we’re recording on uh May 1st. It’s May Day in much of the world, not celebrated so much in the US and Canada uh celebrating uh labor organizing and labor rights. However, in the US and Canada, nonprofit workers certainly uh have a right to the apps, tools and tactics that will make their work more balanced and productive. So I’m sure you agree, you both agree with that, right? We can come to terms on that. So, so why don’t we proceed? Uh Let’s go alphabetically by uh first name. So Jason, uh you go first, you get to introduce the first uh apps tools and, and tactic. Yeah. So thank you, Tony. Uh So before we jump into the, the tools, I think uh you know, 11 thing that we definitely, you know, keep in mind when talking about tools is, you know, the concept of tiny gains. And so, you know, having um the uh kind of perspective that, you know, uh one to the power of 365 is one, but 1.01 to the power of 365 is 37.7. And so, you know, that that notion of improving bit by bit, you know, 1% each day is kind of how we look at these tools that, you know, it’s not going to be, you know, uh you know, one tool isn’t necessarily going to solve all the things. But, you know, we’re going to be sharing uh various tools that can, you know, help kind of nudge things, you know, 1% at a time, you know, in that regard. So the incremental growth is uh is valuable, of course. Yeah, totally. So, so you know what the first tool that we want to highlight for folks is that it’s, it’s a tool that is actually built into uh Microsoft Word already. But uh um folks may not necessarily be aware of it in as much detail. Um And that’s that, that there’s actually a built in transcription tool, right in Microsoft Word. And so you can actually um uh when you find a little microphone icon on it that you can dictate directly into word, but you can also upload files uh into it. And so that, that’s a feature that’s not as well known uh that you can upload up to five hours per month per user inter software for automated transcription that is bundled in uh with your uh word online. And where is this microphone found? Maybe I’ve seen it 1000 times. I just haven’t noticed it. Where, where do we find the microphone? So typically it’ll be in the menu bar in the uh the, the top right hand corner uh of uh of Microsoft Word online. So if you’re accessing it in the browser, uh it should be in the top right hand uh uh section. OK. We had a session uh uh uh a panel at uh at NTC about tools that you already have that you may very well not be using. And they covered uh all of the office, office 365 has a lots of, lots of value in there that, that people don’t know about. And also Google, a lot of very uh free Google tools. Um Yeah, we, we, they focused on Microsoft 365 and, and Google. Um interesting, you know, they had like a dozen things that, that are, that you’re already paying for or getting for free and you’re just not, you, you just don’t know that they’re there, they’re hidden. So, OK. So consistent with that is the uh the transcription tool. OK. So up to five hours, you said up to five hours a month. Yes. And it’s, it’s super handy if you’re doing, you know, things like uh interviews or if you’re doing um uh uh yeah, the meeting notes, you know, those types of things, you know, some other tools already have, you know, the transcription part built in. But in the specific, you know, use case where, you know, you may be doing, uh say uh a program interview or something like that, that this is an additional functionality that’s uh that’s in there. So you’re uploading the audio file. Yes. All right. Interesting. I know, I know a guy who does a podcast. Uh II I believe he already has a transcription process in place. But uh I have to re evaluate because uh maybe this is, maybe this one is simpler. Uh And I don’t know if he’s paying for the uh that transcription process. I, I can’t recall what he’s, what he’s been doing for the past several years around transcription. But uh I’ll have him look into it. Miko. Welcome back, Miko. Good to see you. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. Congratulations. Also on your new book, uh which you and I will be talking about in a couple of weeks. We’ll, we’ll get you back on exclusively for uh how to thrive when work doesn’t love you back. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yes, I know you and I will be talking in a couple of weeks. Um What’s next? What’s next on our uh hit parade of uh apps, tools and tactics. Well, so if you want to stick on the theme of things that people aren’t using, I would add Zoom to this category. And if I could, I wanna walk through just a few things that I think are pretty interesting in terms of developments with, with Zoom. So similar to Microsoft Office and Google workspace. Um Zoom is one of those platforms or tools that many organizations are using. Many folks have at least a basic paid subscription at the organizational level. And um these are tools that are constantly evolving. And so sometimes because we’re using them all the time, we’re not aware that there are certain features that have been added. Um So I’ll, I’ll share, I’ll just go through these really quickly. So the first is for lots of organizations, you know, it’s important that when people are identifying themselves, important, people identify pronouns. And so one of the ways people have been doing that is they modify the name in the way that that shows up and they add their pronouns. Uh But now for folks that didn’t know Zoom actually has a dedicated pronoun field, so you don’t have to do that. So um if your administrator has enabled this in the web-based um login for Zoom, um You can set that by default for your, for your own profile. Um And you don’t have to update your name when you pop into zoom to do that. It’ll your, your pronouns will appear automatically. So I think that’s one cool feature um where, where that’s appropriate and where that uh makes sense for folks to, to look into that uh another option. And this is about accessibility. This is also about making sure that um we recognize that people learn and process differently. And so you and I are talking uh we’re able to see each other um Right now as we’re recording this interview. Uh But for some folks, maybe they process differently and they actually need to be able to see the, the captioning, they maybe need to see some form of a transcript to be able to follow along and process information. And so for that, there is automated captioning that is built into zoom. Now, it’s not 100% perfect, but it’s there. Um It’s uh essentially computer generated captioning. Um There are a lot of languages that are covered by default in your basic paid description and similar to the pronouns field, your administrator or whoever is managing your Zoom account for your organization and log into the web based portal and enable this feature if it’s not already uh enabled. And what this allows folks to do is if someone is in a meeting um and they need access to um to, to close captioning that particular individual can enable that um for themselves. And for folks who don’t need it, they can leave it turned off or if they’re turned on by default, people can turn it off, uh, completely up to you as the user in terms of what, what you need. Um, I’ll share one final, um, thing and then we’ll toss it back to you, Tony. So one final thing that I think is pretty cool. So, uh, you know, many of us have probably seen like the news, um, where they’re doing the weather report and you have this, this person standing in front of a screen and they’re pointing here and they’re pointing there generally, what’s happening is this person is standing in front of a, a green screen and their technical team is projecting the images. So it looks like this person is actually pointing to a map of where you know, fill in the blank wherever you are, right? Well, you can actually simulate that when you’re presenting. So many of us are used to traditional screen share where you share your slides or you share your screen and then a box if you appear in a different place in zoom, but you can also share your screen in such a way that you are overlaid on top of your slides so that you have that weather man or weather person effect as well. Um Now the caveat here is you have to be aware of how this is showing up your lighting. In some cases, you might actually need to have a green screen in order for this to be effective. And it’s gonna require you to format your slides or your presentation a bit differently because obviously you’re taking up now a slice of the screen in addition to the content that you have on the slides. But a really interesting way to create a different type of experience um for folks that, you know, you are meeting with um or doing a webinar with, I think you can have some fun with that. Uh Like at the beginning of a webinar, like you’re immersed in your slides, you know, I’m, I’m surrounded by my valuable content. Uh you know, you could have, but I don’t know, can you uh can you control where you are or how much of the frame you get in proportion to your slides behind you or whatever, whatever the content is, I guess let’s just use slides. Yeah. So you like, I’ll be in the lower left so that you would make format your slides so that the lower left is always blank and you can do it that way you choose where you would have to test this out and, and, and, and try it out. So there are some limited features that allow you to do this directly into zoom. Um The other which is thinking about physically positioning yourself in reference to the camera. So you think about where you’re going to physically be and try that out, test it out for yourself. The final thing I’ll say is there are third party tools that work with Zoom that do this better. But nonetheless, I just wanted to point out that Zoom does have this built in feature for folks that at a basic level that want to try it out and have some fun with it. OK? So that’s the uh so pronouns can be uh automated, automatically populated, you don’t have to go and change your screen name. Um There’s the automated captioning and then the what is this, this background feature called? It’s called, it’s called set powerpoint as virtual background. OK. It’s aptly named, said powerpoint as virtual background. All right. Um Are you guys familiar with or, or recommending any zoom alternatives? I mean, there’s, I know there’s teams, of course, uh although most people iii I don’t know, 95% of the meetings I’m in are on Zoom. Uh Are you, are either of you finding alternatives to zoom for any, for any reason or, or something that other folks are using? That’s valuable. So what, what comes to mind is uh well, this isn’t necessarily an alternative to zoom for the video conferencing itself. Uh There, there is a tool called the O BS uh that if folks are looking for advanced uh video streaming capabilities, uh that uh O BS actually sits as an additional layer to your video feed so that you can further customize some of the green screen effects or being able to move um yourself uh uh into a corner, you know, like uh like Miko described, but it uh it gives a ton of functionality as well and it kind of sits as in um sits in between your video feed and something like Zoom or Teams or Google Meet and allows you to, you know, do all sorts of things like you could um the directly do like a picture in picture, you know, type thing if you want to do like an advanced video broadcast. So O BS is used quite a bit by uh uh streamers and such. But that, that’s uh uh definitely a tool that uh if folks are looking to explore uh for some more advanced functionality, uh it’s called uh O BS and it’s uh uh available and free. Oh OK. Cool and live streaming, live streaming. Yes. Yeah. Not just for live streaming. It’s also like if we’re on a Zoom call, that isn’t necessarily be live stream that you can activate it and it will uh you know, it will help you control, you know, some of the outputs of your video feed that way. So yeah, O BS stands for open broadcaster software. So essentially go to build on what they are sharing. So going back to the example of the weather person, if you wanted to create a highly produced and polished uh you know, presence that doesn’t look like a typical, you know, zoom or uh teams meeting um screen or presentation, you could add lower thirds, you can change a ho there are just so, so many different cool things that you can do using what Jason was was saying. Um And to pick up on, you know, your original question around alternatives. So to my, in my awareness, um you know, the Zoom, there’s Google Meet and teams I think are probably the top three and there’s, there’s a good reason for that, you know, there’s, there’s broad compatibility across um platforms and devices. Um And there’s, you know, some built in trust there that organizations have in terms of those, those big three. that, that said, I think it’s also a good point to make in terms of thinking about when we think about the expansion of tools we don’t have to use necessarily the the latest and greatest. Everything doesn’t have to be high tech, right? Everything there, there’s a, there’s room for mid tech and low tech and when it comes to meetings and collaboration, sometimes we forget what happened when we didn’t have these tools, right? We picked up the phone, we, we met in person. Um we had conference lines where people called in and we, we couldn’t have seen each other. You know, when I first started working in the tech space, I work with colleagues and manage teams that of people that I actually never met in person. And, you know, we would have phone calls and conference conference line um conversations and meetings. And that was the the primary way that we communicated and collaborated. And we’re seeing that in terms of digital wellness, there’s actually a benefit to that, right? Because we’re spending too much time in front of our screens. There’s research that shows that it increases, you know, cortisol levels and increases stress levels. And over time, too many of those back to back video mediated types of collaboration actually reduce engagement, reduce productivity. Um And actually, in some cases can be counterproductive. So we wanna be able to find that balance and also recognize that, hey, depending on what your intention is, what your outcome that you’re trying to get to sometimes just having an old fashioned phone call or working asynchronously um can be just as effective or sometimes more effective to get to where it is that you’re trying to go. Thank you for that. That, that’s a valuable reminder. Uh Yeah, because you can feel like, you know, unlike an in person meeting with, with many people, several people, you know, you can feel like you’re being stared at uh or, you know, you’re not, but people are looking at their screen, they’re not necessarily looking at you, but it looks to you like everybody’s looking at you and uh I can see why that interesting that cortisol levels rise like by the after a few hours of this, I guess or. Absolutely. And, and what you just described is a very real phenomena. So part of it is um the self view, right? You seeing yourself on screen and being self conscious about that and you can turn this off in zoom. So this is another feature you can you can turn off self view. So if you click on the three dots on your particular image, there’s an option that should be allowing you to turn off your self view if that’s an issue. Um The other thing, others are still so others are still seeing you. So you’re not, you’re not stopping your video, but uh you’re stopping your own self view. OK? And uh one final consideration here is that there’s, there’s research from Stanford University that actually shows that um this particular phenomena that you just talked about is, is compounded for women. Uh because we have different expectations about how women are presentable and show up on screen. And oftentimes there’s this um un assessed costs that we, you know, we just take for granted that that in some cases, women have to do more work in order to be what we think, what we deem of as presentable, right? So if you’re requiring folks to be on camera all the time, that sometimes is one of the the side effects if you’re not aware of that. Excellent. Yeah, valuable reminders. Thank you. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtuous believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver. It’s their mission to move the Needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers. Responsive. Fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and gross giving through personalized donor journeys that respond to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM, fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact, virtuous.org. Now back to future proof your nonprofit with apps tools and tactics. Jason, you have, you have something else for us. I know you do. That’s a rhetorical question. When I’m talking to me and Jason, we can go on for hours. It’s purely rhetorical question. Absolutely. So, uh the next step is, uh you know, along the lines of we talked about transcription earlier is uh some of the text to speech tools. So they’ve developed quite a bit in the last few years. And you know, the there’s a few that are out there that I’ll rhyme off, you know, Natural Reader 11 labs. And uh nr and so, uh in particular, um I’ve used Naet before and it’s super helpful when you need to record uh voice greetings. Um And if anyone’s ever experienced, you know, having to record a voice greeting and say like for a voicemail and you have to do like 20 some odd takes to do it that, you know, something like Naki can, can help streamline that. Now the, the special thing is that they have a lot of uh voice models that are available in different languages as well. So it really nails uh some of the uh the accents around the world as well. So, you know, uh given that I live in Canada that when recording, um some of the uh greetings for an organization that it uh uh it needs to be delivered in English and Canadian French. And they have specifically Canadian French models as well as many other language models uh uh for the, the text of speech so that we’re able to provide a script in both English and French and that it’ll read it off and, you know, you’re able to get it in one take rather than having to do, you know, 10 or 20 takes or trying to get multiple people to coordinate around the recording of that. So that’s an example of a tool that can help streamline uh in that regard. And, you know, there’s many other, you know, potential use cases that one was called is called N Yes, like parakeet with an N N and also natural reader and 11 laps. Sorry. What’s the last one? 11 labs? 11 labs. Yeah, and similar to the, uh you know, text speech and also uh editing you know, audio files and text uh is uh there’s a few different tools that, that do this, but the one that I, I’ll name specifically, um you know, with this functionality is a descript. Uh So descript is a tool that can help with things like uh let’s say if you have a transcript, um we have an audio file that you’ve uploaded to uh to descript is that they can do filler word removal. So, what it does is that it imports an audio file and then it produces a transcript for you and you can edit it like a word document and it’ll detect things like if you say, um ah and it’ll, uh it can automatically help you remove some of that. So, you know, let’s say if you added a few extra words and you’re speaking and you can edit the text that is uh in descript and it’ll automatically remove it from the audio file. Uh So, uh it without having to, you know, uh splice the audio file itself and looking at the waveforms that you can do it as uh edit the transcript and it’ll give you a clean audio file afterwards. That to me is, that’s incredible that you can edit it as text and then it, it goes and does the, applies those edits to the audio file? Yeah, it’s good. Uh I, I don’t know. To me that’s amazing. I don’t, I, you know, descript, it’s called D the letter D script. Yes, de D E. Yeah. And there’s additional functionality as well uh in, in the script called overdub. So let’s say if you are recording something and you left out a word that overdub can actually fill in the word for you. Uh If you, you trained a voice model to do it. So let’s say, you know, if I intended to say um you know, an extra word or a phrase or something that, you know, similarly you can enter in, you know, the word that you intended to say and it’ll uh fill it in for you so that it can uh it sounds seamless uh there. So, you know, for something like a podcast or, you know, whatever other um uh function that, you know, folks may be looking to accomplish there is that it really helps streamline some of the audio editing process rather than having to rerecord an entire section against placing and placing and everything that uh you can uh just, you know, type in the word and it’ll drop it in for you uh in uh your voice. So it learns from the rest of the file, how to pronounce the word or words that you’ve just inserted into the text file. You, you, you, you, you may have to do some training on it where you um Yeah. Uh but it, it does use E I voice cloning to uh to replace some of the uh the audio there. Damn. And, and I’ve used this, so I’ve used it for my podcast. My podcast producer uses this and um it’s, it’s, it’s saved us so much time. And as a matter of fact, Jason was one of the folks that we interviewed for the first season and we use this software to clean up our episode with, with Jason. Yeah, that’s incredible because I do some of that work uh in my own post production. But I’m, I’m using audacity. But like you said, Jason, I’m looking at the wave forms. Uh Anyway, it’s, it’s eminently doable. You just have to make sure you have the right spot and you play it a few times to make sure you have exactly what you want to take out. Uh but it’s not nearly as swift as text editing and, and, and you can’t add unless you go, you know, go record again and then the, the ambient noise is never gonna sound the same as it did on the day you recorded even sitting here at my same studio office, the, the ambient sound is different. Uh Wow, I, I’ll add one more thing in terms of how this works. And so you, Jason is right in terms of being able to edit the transcript. And so let’s just say, using that example, if I thought Jason gave a long, would it answer or maybe Jason said something? And he’s like, oh, well, actually, I don’t want to share that with my employer, can you take this out? Right. We can go in and edit the transcript that way. Uh, and then for the fillers, you can set it so that you don’t have to go in and manually remove the fillers. You can just tell it which fillers you want to remove and it does, it automatically, um, for you. And depending on which uh, subscription level you have, you can fill in, you can do not just fillers, but maybe there are specific keywords that are significant to you and your audience or to how you wanna edit that you want to remove. You can train the software to remove those specific things automatically. Oh, that’s very robust. That’s remarkable. I think uh descript. OK. Cool Miko. What’s next? All right. So I wanna talk about collaboration tools and training tools. So I do a lot of training for organizations, a lot of things I do virtually. And Google Jam Board is a digital um white board that I used. Um And I still use. But unfortunately, um Google is winding down that particular offering. They’re getting rid of it as of this fall. And so I, I wanna talk about a few alternatives for folks that either have been using Google Jam Board um and are looking for alternative white board tools or maybe you haven’t been using white boards and you just want to get, you know, you wanna come to the party, you wanna be a part of the all the fun. So I wanna give you three really quickly. Um The first is Fig Jam. So this is a white board tool by the company fig A uh F I MA is uh in the space think of think of Adobe. For example, uh a lot of designers use their UX tools and, and web developers use their UX tools to design products and design websites. But they have the separate product, Fig Jam, which is specifically for uh white boarding. And one of the ways that I use white boarding tools is if I have people doing exercise where maybe we brainstorming together, you know, we can the same way that you’re in the room in person and you get people stickies and people stick them on the wall or they sort them into different buckets, you can do the same thing, but you can do this essentially virtually. Um And so Fig Jam is one of those tools you have mirror uh which is another tool that’s in this bucket. And I know that the the Intend team actually uses this a lot. I know that when Jason and I served on the board at Intend, um that was a tool that we used a couple of times as part of our collaboration and you know, strategic planning process um to be able to do that virtually. And then the final tool going back to Zoom for a moment um is zoom has a white board feature. So for folks that weren’t aware of that and you’re, you’re not using it. Zoom has a whiteboard feature um and tied to the Zoom also has an annotation feature where you can annotate things on the screen. Um Both as the presenter, you can also have I I in my presentations, I sometimes have questions on the screen or like a scale and I’ll have uh participants use the annotation tool to indicate where they are on a scale. People can write on the screen or in this case, you know, if you want to use the Zoom whiteboard feature, you could do it that way as well. But those are three alternatives to Google Jam boards. Uh So fig jam mirror and Zoom White board and they all allow uh all the participants to contribute to the white board. Yes. And so they, they, they, they, they, they all allow that feature uh with the caveat that um they have the all three have the basic white board functionality, but they also serve, they have some distinct reasons why you might want to use one over the other. So just picking on mirror for an example um from my perspective, mirror has a very steep learning curve. And so as a trainer, I probably would not use mirror in a training where um folks haven’t been together before, they haven’t used a tool before. But if you’re using it over the long term and you’re able to train people on some basic things. So use your team over time. Then mirror is a, is a great tool for that. Um Fig Jam and Zoom white board are a bit more intuitive. And so depending on your audience, you wanna take those things into consideration if you’re using the Zoom whiteboard, which I’ve, I’ve never, I’ve never used. Um Are you just collaborating with your, your, your mouse? Is that how you, is that how you contribute to the whiteboard, your mouse, your stylus or if um I believe there are just like with Google Jam Board, you know, the, the way that Google Jam Board works is, you know, you, you can drag and drop text boxes and type in the boxes. Um And so that, that’s one option as well. Jason, I’m not sure if you have if you have familiarity with this or have other thoughts about the use. Yeah. Iii I believe uh yeah, you folks would drag their mouse and they can type in and uh it has a lot of parallel features to uh to jam board and, and, and neural although lighter for sure on that front. OK. Cool. Right. It’s your turn Jason. Yeah. So the, the next one that comes to mind is uh Minimus launcher. So it’s minimis. And what it is is that it’s an alternative launch screen for your phone. Now it’s uh launched initially in Android. And uh I believe the the iphone version is now out as well. And what it is is that it helps you get control over uh addictive apps. So if folks are finding that, you know, they are um in a loop or cycle of, you know, constantly checking their phone or things, you know, this is one of those apps that can help uh uh make a dent in trying to break that cycle a little bit. And so what it does is that it actually limits and changes uh your initial kind of phone screen uh and gives you a primary access to, you know, the apps that you need for, for work or basic functions. But if you do want to access uh something, you know, like social media um that it will prompt you and ask you, you know, are, are you sure that you would like to do this and you click, you know, yes. And then it will actually prompt you again, like, you know, you’re absolutely sure. And then, you know, you go to another screen and then they’ll say, OK, now give a rationale as to why, you know, you would like to, you know, check your, your social media. So it puts, you know, additional barriers up. Uh and then when you do move through it, it’ll allocate you 15 minutes uh to, you know, time box it so that you’re not necessarily stuck in that loop of, you know, looking down the screen and then you know, looking back up and like, oh my gosh, you know, an hour has passed. Uh so, uh really um uh a tool that can help regulate, you know, some of the uh the, the instincts that, you know, may be triggered around, you know, some of the uh those addictive algorithms that keep on feeding content that, that may keep us hooked to a phone and social media. This is like a uh a mother looking over your shoulder or you know, your own, your own conscience being, being uh awakened. Are you, are you absolutely sure. And then, and then you get a time limit even when you’re absolutely positively 100% sure. You, then there’s still a time limit. Absolutely. That Minimus Minimus launcher. Yes. OK. Cool. These are, these are really fascinating. Um I mean, so there are tools that can help us. We just, you know, we need to be conscious uh Miko, this is right in your right uh right. Aligned with your practice. We just need to be conscious about our uh or intentional and conscious about our desire to be, be uh be more productive, be less distracted. I mean, you know, you, you’re the mindful. Absolutely. I think the underlying thing here, both personally and professionally is uh being clear about what your overall intention is and what is the outcome that you’re driving for. So, being clear about those things is gonna number one help you determine which tools are the best tools for you to use right now. And as I mentioned before, sometimes the latest high tech tool isn’t the best tool. There’s the, there’s the, you know, the the mid tech and low tech also option exactly. Going to the phone. Exactly. So those are options as well. The other consideration is to consider that not only is it intention and clarity about outcome important for the reasons I just stated, but also because you have to remember that particularly for for profit entities, a lot of companies don’t necessarily always have your best interest in mind. What I mean by that is that they have to generate um time on screen. Um They have to sell ads and so their incentive is slightly different. Yes, maybe they want to provide a useful product, but they want you to use that product in a certain way or for a certain amount of time so that they can increase the share of the revenue or profit that they’re making. And so when you are aware of that, um it it becomes easier for you to identify the ways in which you might want to um recapture your time and recapture your attention using something like what um Jason just shared in terms of the Minimus stauncher. It’s time for a break. Donor box open up new cashless in person donation opportunities with donor box live kiosk. The smart way to accept cashless donations anywhere, anytime picture this a cash free on site giving solution that effortlessly collects donations from credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets. No team and member required. Plus your donation data is automatically synced with your donor box account. No manual data entry or errors make giving a bre and focus on what matters your cause. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations. Visit donor box.org to learn more. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. In the gym. I like to go to the gym and do my work. I work out on the ellipse elliptical and then I go on the floor. I do a bunch of planks. I have to get some upper body work in. I’m not, I haven’t done that yet. I like to, I like to just get the work done, you know, take my time not rushing, but I like to get through the work. And it’s my uh kind of, you know, it’s my time. Theres a guy I know more about this guy’s life. I’ve learned over the past many months that his wife had a stent when they were on vacation in Florida. Uh And the surgeon said it’s a good thing, you’re not in the Caribbean because the medical care wouldn’t be as good. And you, you, she’d end up with an infection. She had to have a stent. She was have a suffering shortness of breath in Florida. It was, I know where it was, it was Miami. They were in Miami. It’s a good thing. They weren’t in the Caribbean. The surgeon says the guy’s boat, he’s having motor problems with his boat. Now, his boat is leaking oil and he’s got a, you know, this guy with the boat and the, and the, the, the, the wife needs a stent. The boat needs, uh, uh, a repair to the, to the oil line. Um, he went to an air show last week. Uh Cherry Point is a local uh the, well, not that low but it’s within a half an hour or something. It’s a Marine Corps Air station. He went to the Cherry Point Air show. I had over Memorial Day. The, the Blue Angels were there. I heard all about the show, like the guy was narrating the show but he, but he’s not even talking to me. He’s talking to somebody else. But, you know, it’s a community gym. It’s not that big. It’s certainly adequate, but it’s not huge. It’s not a 10,000 square foot gym. So, you know, you overhear people. So I, I hear him, you know, I like I got the narration to the Blue Angels Air show, you know, personalized uh to for us in the gym. So this chatty guy. But are you the chatty guy? Oh, don’t be the chatty person, the guy or gal don’t be the chatty person, you know, I don’t know. I’m not watching who he’s talking to. So, I don’t know if they’re suffering or they’re, they’re maybe just, um, you know, being polite, uh, you know, condescending a little bit but he gets his, he gets his oratory out. I mean, he’s, uh, sh, don’t be the chatty person in the gym to do your work just, you know, it’s nice to say hi. That’s different. But, you know, you don’t need to narrate the air show for everybody who didn’t get to go over Memorial Day weekend and the, and the motor with the, the oil line with the testing and you use a soapy water to, to spray it on the line to find the leak. And I know more about motor boat mechanics now than, uh, uh, than I’ve known in my entire life. I’ve learned in the past couple of weeks. I got, I got a short course in, in, uh, outboard motor maintenance and mechanics and, and troubleshooting chatty guy. Don’t be the chatty person in the gym. Just do your work. Just do your work. That’s Tony’s take two. It’s exhausting. It’s just recounting. It’s exhausting. Eight. You meet some of the funniest people in your gym first with the birthday guy and now with the motor guy. Yeah, Tim. Tim was sad with the birthday. This is a different guy. This is not Tim. Yeah, I don’t know the characters. Well, we’ve got Vuk but loves more time. Let’s return to Future Proof. Your nonprofit with apps. Tools and tactics with Jason Shin and Mikko Whitlock, Mio. I’m gonna ask you about one that, uh you have uh in your email signature. And we, we talked about this, uh I remember either last year or the year before, uh, but it, and I clicked on it as we’ve been, uh, you know, scheduling together, uh inbox when ready. So I’m, I’m, I’m imposing one on you. I know this is not on your list because we, we talked about it a couple of years ago or last year, but please reacquaint us with uh Inbox when ready. Ok. So Inbox prim ready is one of my all time favorite tools. And so I use Gmail. So for folks that are gmail users, this is a free plug in that you can um essentially install into Gmail and this only works on the, the desktop. So I wanna make, make sure people understand that if you’re dogging it from a computer or, or a web browser on a computer. But the idea is that um your inbox is if you’re able to hide your inbox after a certain amount of time or you are able to set it by default. So when you log in your main inbox is hidden, so that you aren’t sucked into the rabbit hole of sort of going down the hole responding to emails when your intention might be something completely different. As an example, maybe I was looking for the, the zoom link for today’s meeting and as opposed to logging in and seeing like, oh, I have, you know, 50 new emails. What if I don’t see any emails and I can just go to the search bar and, and type in Tony, uh you know, zoom link and I get directed directly to that email. I’m more likely to follow through on that and not be, be distracted. Um One of the other interesting things too is that we know from behavior change, being able to see metrics that actually show us, for example, in this case, how long we’ve been engaged in a certain behavior or how long we’ve actually been in our inbox for a day? Sometimes that awareness like, oh my God, I spent, you know, six hours like with my inbox open, that would be quite alarming, I imagine for a lot of people, right? And so those this particular tool allows you to see how much time you’re actually spending in your inbox in Gmail on a web browser. And that can sometimes be a tool that can be a catalyst um to help you shift um behavior if your desire is to actually spend less time um in your inbox. Now, the the the beautiful thing since this tool has come out, both Gmail and uh Microsoft outlook, which are the two, I think I would say most of those are the biggest sort of email providers in terms of the organizational space. Um they have introduced new tools including, you know, the ability to be able to snooze your inbox, you know, to be able to temporarily pause, you know, emails coming in for a certain period of time. And there’s a host of other ways in which you can um you know, manage your time in your inbox. Um that are something that you can use to supplement or to actually replace Inbox when ready. But I’ve been using Inbox when ready for so long. And it’s, it works for me that it is one of my, my go tos the idea of pausing your inbox. I mean, so it seems so simple and, but I never thought of it until you said it. I mean, the there’s just this simple functionality like maybe I just don’t wanna, you know. Uh Yeah, I, I just don’t need to see the incoming messages. Um There’s another simple thing that I, I think it was you guys who shared it with me years ago, which I did, which is just turn off the notifications. The little, well, I use apple mail. So for me, it’s a little, it’s a little red dot red circle that has a number of unread messages in it, just turn that off, just turn that feature off. Just let the email sit there in the in the dock for me. It’s a tool bar for others and you don’t have to be prompted uh that you’ve got 15 unread messages. It’s, it, it’s anxiety producing. Yes. And so one of the things that folks don’t re realize so, and I think um this happens in both the Android and the Apple device ecosystem where when you’re downloading a device or downloading an app, sometimes we’re still in a hurry that we don’t read the pop ups that let us know what’s happening. And so we just click. Yes. Agree. Yes, agree. Yes, agree. Because we want to get to the app. And what happens is generally what’s happening is what you’re saying. Yes to and agreeing to is in addition to sharing all your good data, you’re saying yes to um all the notification, right? Not a badge, the alerts, the badges and so on and so forth, right? And so the particular feature that you’re talking about are the badge notifications. Uh where for it could be for email, it could be for Facebook or Instagram. It shows you not only the app, but it shows you a little red dot on the apple device, for example, oh, you have, you know, 2000 unread Facebook messages or you have, you know, three new likes on, on Instagram and for many people, that’s a source of background stress every time you pick up your phone. And so I recommend for folks that unless there is a compelling reason, like uh like you’re some kind of first responder and you’re doing important work where you have to be, you have to know the minute someone is sending you one of those things because if you don’t, someone’s gonna die for most people. That’s not the case. Right. So, um, turn that off. Turn that shit off. Absolutely. And don’t be, you’re absolutely right. When you download a new app, they ask all those questions. Also. Location, share your location. Why do you have to share your location? Yeah. Right. Google Maps needs my location. That really, that’s about it. My bank does not need my location. I can deposit the check without it knowing what my uh well, you know what my IP address is or what or my, my my coordinates are. Um Yeah, don’t. Right. Mindful, mindful. You’re the mindful techie. That’s right. It’s, you’re aptly named as well. There’s a lot of aptly named things here. Um Yeah. Right. They, when you get the app, you’re anxious to get to the thing, take a breath and read. You know, you don’t, you don’t need all the notifications and alerts. OK. Let’s stick with you since I imposed one on you. Uh I took your, I, I took your uh your, your, your chance. So you had one teed up. Go ahead. All right. So I, I’m gonna share one I think is a favorite for both me and, and Jason so much so that I think we probably share this in virtually every presentation because it’s just such a phenomenal school. So it’s called Toby and it is a browser tab organization uh plug in. Uh That is, I think pretty much cross browser at this point. I know that you can get it in Chrome and Firefox and probably a couple of the other browsers. But the idea here is um you know, we routinely have meetings where, you know, you have to open a gazillion tabs that are relevant to that particular meeting. And for many people, you may be doing that manually. So you have a meeting with Tony and you’re like, OK, I gotta pull up the podcast together. I gotta pull up this, gotta pull up this. And so you’re, you’re, you’re trying to scurry around as the meeting is starting to open up all these different tabs. What uh Toby allows you to do is to essentially create collections of tabs and you just press one button. Um and you, you, it opens all those tabs automatically, right? And one of the interesting things with Toby in comparison to the built in bookmarks and, and mini browsers is that then you can share the collections with your team. So if, if you’re working on it, let’s say, you know, Tony, you have a, a humongous podcast staff and you have a central by set of tabs that you all have opened during your, your planning meetings. You could or someone else on your team could create a Toby collection, share that with everyone and then everyone has the same access to the same collection and it sort of standardized and people didn’t have the ability to create their own collections or customize uh on their own. And so it’s one of those things that it’s one of those going back to what Jason was saying about 1% better, you know, that ability to be able to save those few moments and to save that uh mental stress that we go through at the start of a meeting um adds up tremendously over time. This is another good, yeah, good point you made before to accumulated accumulated like background stress, even the the anxiety of seeing the badge with the 2000 Facebook uh messages unread or something, you know, just uh I didn’t get to, oh I’m so far behind and then, and then it becomes pointless to do it. But the number keeps increasing but you’re so far behind, you may as well let it go, but it’s causing more anxiety, more agita. All right. All right, Toby. So, so that falls under like uh um browser, browser tab management, browser management. OK. Toby Jason. Yeah. So the another tool that want to chat about is uh this may be something that is available for folks that they may not necessarily be using, but they just want to draw it to folks awareness. So, um for those that may already have an 03 65 subscription, you know, through their organization is that uh being copilot um has a commercial data protection uh uh flipped on. And so what that means is that, you know, when, when folks are using, you know, some A I tools that, you know, there, there may be a concern that it is the data is being used to train the model or that, you know, you don’t necessarily know that it’s going to end up, you know, being uh you know, pop up somewhere else, you know, down the road is that uh the, the commercial data protection feature, uh actually uh assures you that it won’t be used for the training of the model and it’ll be contained uh when, when you’re using it. And so, uh if you are using it, you just have to be logged in to your 03 65 account at bing.com/chat and then there’ll be a little green um shield on the top right hand corner that says protected. And so, you know, you’re, you’re able to use that and uh resting assured that, you know, the data that you’re, you’re putting in there isn’t being used to train a language model uh for the folks who are using um the generative A I function. So, uh so what it is is that, you know, it’s uh you know, the similar to things like, you know, GP T or uh you know, Google’s Gemini in that for this particular instance, uh that uh it’s uh the, the little green uh icon in the in the top. Right, assures you that, uh, uh, it, uh, stays contained to your organization. Ok. So it’s like firewalled off from, from, uh, the, the generative A I learning. Mhm. Yeah. And, and as a general tip for, for folks as well as for the other, uh, uh, you know, tools that they may be using around generative A I is, you know, to make sure that you’re checking the settings and the fine print uh that, you know, if you are using, you know, one of the free uh options as well, that there may be uh settings in there to uh turn off the um use the data for training data models uh uh for folks that may uh like to uh be a little bit more secure uh with uh their privacy and what they may be um putting out there. There’s also a concern uh when folks give one of these uh tools, their own data to learn, like, you know, I want you to write a letter to a donor in, in my tone and you, so you upload, you upload to the using in your prompts some of your own letters. And I want it in my tone with, you know, you, you need to be very aware of what you’re, what you’re providing for the learning act because I don’t know that it’s only, it’s keeping, it’s keeping your data only to this conversation, this, this uh this purpose that we’re we’re going back and forth about and whether it uses, it uses that your data that would otherwise be proprietary to you because it’s, it’s your letters, uh for some larger purpose. Absolutely. And that’s something to be aware of when, uh flipping on some of the features in some of these programs where, you know, they, you may be prompted you to flip on an A I feature or, or something, but, you know, in the fine print uh or even not so fine print, you know, it may say something along the line of like, you know, uh this will submit your data to a third party, uh you know, just giving you a heads up, but there’s a lot of additional subtext there where it’s like, OK, well, after it’s submitted to the third party, you know, what happens like is this going to be used to train, you know, the language model, you know, is, you know, this going to pop up, you know, somewhere potentially in the future or is, you know, or is it going to stay contained uh and not used to train the model? So, uh you know, those, those are questions that are worth asking, you know, as um you know, more and more A I features, you know, pop up along the way as well. What what third parties, third party is in the world, I think the broader point that I would make here too. And this is with social media. This is with um anything you post on a website. Um we technology has evolved to a point where essentially there’s a forever memory, right? Even if you take stuff down, it’s still there, still findable. It’s somewhere. Right? And so I always, particularly with younger folks, you know, say, don’t share anything, don’t text anything, don’t post anything on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat and tiktok that you would be embarrassed to see on the news, right? If you’re embarrassed to see it on the news, then don’t post it. Don’t, don’t share it very wise, sage, sage advice from the mindful techie. Uh Let’s do uh let’s do one, each 11 more each Miko. All right. So uh we know that the amount of information the V information has continued to increase and it’s virtually impossible for us from a human perspective to keep up with all of that. And so in this case, one of the ways that A I can be very powerful is by actually helping us to summarize, you know, voluminous um documents, videos and so on. And so one of the tools that we shared during our session is uh a plug in for chrome that’s called youtube summary with chat GP T and cloud. So chat GP T and Cloud are both um two different types of um A I tools. And one of the interesting things about this youtube summary with chat GP T and cloud tool is that it allows you to summarize youtube videos, web articles, and PDF documents. And so I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to watch your two hour training on fill in the blank topic. Maybe I just want, you know, just give me the cliff notes, give me the, the, the bullet points and let me dive deeper on the points that are most relevant to my particular question or my particular curiosity at that moment, this particular tool you just plug in a URL and it gives you a summary um to help you to really focus your time and maybe you decide or determine that, hey baby, this video doesn’t have what I need or maybe it does. I want to look at the last third of this and actually dive a little bit deeper. Um but it can be a powerful tool to save you um lots of time um with particularly with lengthy videos or lengthy documents, say the name of the, the tools again. So this is a long one. So it’s called youtube Summary. It’s all one. Yeah, I’m just reading the title that they gave us. So youtube Summary with Chat GP T and Cloud. OK. Yes. Thank you, Jason. Yeah. The, the, the last one I’ll share is uh it’s more of a mental model and a tool and uh you know, to, to really think about things on a two by two grid. And so the the, the model is called the, it’s also known as the Eisenhower matrix. And so when thinking about, you know, the various tasks that one has to do, and, you know, we, we shared a whole bunch of tools that help, you know, automate and speed up things. But it’s also to look at the tasks themselves and really take a look at, you know, what’s, what’s urgent and what’s important. And so on the two by two grid on one access, um you know, you would have an important and not important and on the on the other access, you would have urgent and not urgent. And ideally, you know, you um you’re spending your time on the not urgent and important things because you know, that’s where you can make, you know, a lot of your long term impact and you know, the things that pop up that are urgent and important, you know, those uh is uh you know, important for you and your organization and when you make short term impact and when you think about, you know, things that are not urgent and not important, you kind of have to ask, you know, well, why are we doing them? And so we want to make sure that these tools aren’t automating things necessarily that, you know, if it’s not urgent and not important, you know, automating but not, not urgent and not important is, you know, spending more time and resources to do things that aren’t important and urgent then you know, those things just need to be eliminated. So those can be thinking of the like the the email inbox is a very good example of non urgent, not important. Most of it obviously there are exceptions but most of email is non urgent and non and non important. Mhm. Yeah. So things like starting to, you know, junk mail, you know, checking through, you know, a lot of, you know, social media, you know, they can be, you know, distractions and time wasters and, and then uh you know, and then the other quadrant being the urgent and not important uh part where, you know, that’s where a lot of the tools can help, you know, automate or help, you know, kind of you’re delegating it out to, you know, the, the tool to help accelerate, you know, some of that and, and so, you know, I think this is a really great conceptual framework to as folks are looking at, you know, their tasks and matching it up to the tools that they’re, they’re using as well. And I know that, you know, Miko speak to, speaks to this, you know, really knowledgeably in his trainings and um around uh how, you know, it can be used effectively and uh I’ll throw it over to Miko as well. Uh uh If there’s any additional things to add on this front. Yeah. So Jason, I, I think you’re spot on, I think that the key here. So in the context of the tech tools that we’re talking about, um we shouldn’t just be using the tools just for the sake of using them. Like you want to be clear about the purpose and at least in terms of the organizational context, and I think it’s critically important as you think about urgent versus important. Also thinking about, you know, what are the resources that we have? What’s the capacity that we have? You know, when I was communicating director, one of the the the the the common pieces of wisdom from some folks when social media was emerging is that oh, you gotta be on all the platforms. Well, that was impossible. We didn’t have the staff of the resources nor did it make sense because our audience wasn’t on all the platforms. So asking yourself the question, what resources do I have? What time and capacity do we have? And you know, what goal are we trying to achieve and what’s good enough for now versus what we can build toward for later or perhaps what we can eliminate all together because it’s simply not relevant, even though everyone else is doing it or the conventional wisdom says we should be doing this or be on this particular uh platform. Um And I think we can apply that to A I right now, right? So um I am of the mind that it’s not an all or nothing, right? Not every organization needs to be using every single type of A I tool out there. Um It’s simply inappropriate in some cases and some cases that actually can be counter productive. So you wanna be clear about what outcome you’re trying to get to. Um And how the tool can support you and help you. Not how the tool can sort of replace you being a critical thinker and that’s, that’s actively involved in the process. Yeah, loss of creativity is, is my biggest concern about artificial intelligence. Use that, that we’re, we, we could see some of the most creative things that we do. Uh And listeners have heard me talk about this with uh we had an A I A couple of A I panels. Um The one, the first one was with um Arua Bruce and George Weiner and Beth Cantor and Alison. Fine. And we kinda uh I aired my uh my concerns there in, in more detail just about giving away the most creative things that we do. And over time us becoming less creative, less creative thinkers, less thoughtful thinkers or less critical thinkers. Um All right. So why don’t we leave it there? And, and Jason, I’m just going to reiterate it’s the Eisenhower Matrix, which I’ve followed for years and I try to think that way, but I don’t, I don’t do it routinely but that, that’s uh that two by two that you were describing is uh the Eisenhower Matrix and you said it, I’m just reiterating it for folks. So that, because it is a, it’s a very, it’s a very sensible way of, of planning. And Miko to your point earlier, uh, you know, it’s, it, it, it’s been around for generations. Old tools can still be valuable. Absolutely. And I, I would offer to your audience, Tony if I’ve reworked this, um, for the mission driven context. And I’ve, and I’ve annotated it. Um, and I’ve, I’ve given sort of a road map of how you work through this in a practical way. So if folks are interested in that, they can email me or, you know, we can give you a link to put in the show notes or however, it makes sense. But folks want access to that annotated version. Ok. The annotated version of the Eisenhower Matrix. Ok. All right. That’s Miko Marquette Whitlock. He’s a mindful techie. You’ll find him on linkedin and his practice is at mindful techie.com. Jason Sim Chief Digital Officer at the Canadian Center for nonprofit digital resilience. He’s also on linkedin and the center is at CCNDR dot C A. Jason Miko. Thank you. Thanks very much. Real pleasure each year. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Next week, we’ll take a hiatus from 24 NTC with Gen Z career challenge. If you missed any part of this weeks show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. You’re gonna be interested in the Gen Z you, you’re Gen Z. That’s me, Gen Z career challenge. We’ll see if it holds true for you were sponsored by virtuous. Virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your support, generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. This show, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for April 29, 2024: Acquiring Email Leads On Social & Matching Gifts 101, 201, 301

 

Melanie Schaffel: Acquiring Email Leads On Social

This 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference conversation helps you ensure your email acquisition efforts are targeting those interested in your work. You can incentivize your social audiences so they’ll willingly share their emails and you can measure the success of your acquisition campaigns. Melanie Schaffel from Parkinson’s Foundation helps you get started.

 

Julie Ziff Sint, Alison Hermance & Mark Doty: Matching Gifts 101, 201, 301

Julie Ziff Sint, Alison Hermance and Mark Doty, also from 24NTC, explain the different types and styles of matching gifts and challenge grants. How do you ethically message and how do you establish your own matching gifts asks? What if you don’t have a matching gift to take advantage of? And more. Julie is with Sanky Communications. Alison is from WildCare. And Mark is at San Francisco SPCA.

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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 get slapped with a diagnosis of primary sclerosing cholangitis. If you inflamed and scarred me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with the highlights. Hey, Tony, this week we have acquiring email leads on social. This 2024 nonprofit technology conference conversation helps you ensure your email acquisition efforts are targeting those interested in your work. You can incentivize your social audiences so they’ll willingly share their emails and you can measure the success of your acquisition campaigns. Melanie Saffle from Parkinson’s Foundation helps you get started then matching gifts. 101, 201 and 301. Julie Zant Alison, Hermance and Mark doty. Also from 24 N DC. Explain the different types and styles of matching gifts and challenge grants. How do you ethically message and how do you establish your own matching gifts? Asks what if you don’t have a matching gift to take advantage of and more Julie is with SI Communications. Alison is from Wild Care and Mark is at San Francisco S PC A on Tony’s take two travel convos were sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous. Gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools you need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving. Virtuous.org here is acquiring email leads on social. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference in Portland, Oregon where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Before we start the conversation, I wanna let you know that you may hear sounds of a uh a AAA tear down around us. There’s uh 24 NTC. The, the archive is uh being taken down booth by booth around us. But nonprofit radio perseveres, this is irrelevant to us. Uh We have our own power. I have a generator outside uh uh and 50 gallons of diesel fuel. So we’re, we’re prepared to continue regardless of what happens around the nonprofit radio uh booth. And for our, this is our final conversation of 2024 and it is with Melanie Saffle. She is senior manager of digital advertising at the Parkinson’s Foundation. Welcome to nonprofit Radio Melanie. Thank you, Tony. Thanks so much for having me. It’s my pleasure. Thank you for rounding out our, our many conversations. I won’t say save the best for last. That’s a lot of pressure, but it’s a little no No, no, don’t do that to yourself. It is breaking down, but it’s irrelevant. And uh I’ve been looking forward to this because I think, I think these conversions are important. So we’re talking about acquiring email leads on social. We’re trying to uh convert our folks, right? Take a next step. You’re active with us on social. You might like us on social. Have a finger, grab a hand, we’d like a little more come over. We’ve got more things to offer on email for sure. So um a lot of the discussion we had was about all the social email website, all of our digital channels working in tandem. Um So we know that there’s a lot of people on social that have proven interest in us already. So if they don’t know already that we have an email series that they can join, we want to let them know how to easily get into it. Uh Let’s let’s start with identifying who the best prospects are for uh for this upgraded engagement opportunity. Let’s call it the uh the uh the upgraded, yeah, the Eoge og we always know that upgraded opportunity. Um who who should we be focusing on uh in our in our social channels? So an efficient way that we found to focus on the people that are proving interest is to use that first party data that for us meta provides these ads will be right through meta, right on the platform and we can upload our lists, we can create lists from different engagements that people are taking on Facebook, whether they’re watching our video or D ming us sliding into our D MS, right, ending up in our inbox and using that first party data. Just because in this more and more cookie less world that the whole wide internet is joining in on that. The first party data is key here. So we want to focus in on that and a lot of the session also focused on creating look alikes of those. So people that act similarly to the people that have proven interest to help broaden the reach a little bit wider, creating look alikes. That sounds like something phony. What does this scamming and fishing and ransomware? What is this? It is my favorite way to sound really impressive to my colleagues when I tell them that this is an option at all. So meta can create a whole new list based off the way that people act online, they act at least similarly online. And so whether the places they’re visiting, uh the actions they’re taking online based off their emails, based off the list of emails that we provide uh meta can generate a lookalike list. So just people that are acting similarly to the ones we already know like us and hopefully they like us too. OK. So these are folks that you don’t know and meta is finding them bringing them well, they’re not bringing them to you, but they’re identifying them for you. They’re not currently engaged with Parkinson’s, but they act like a lot of people who are, is that the algorithm is working in our favor that way? I see. Well, I’m glad it has some value for somebody somewhere that’s mildly reassuring. Infinitely reassuring. But I’m glad it’s helping you. Um All right. So then what might you do? How do you then reach out to those folks? So we’re targeting. That’s right. So the whole discussion did focus on the lead generation ads that we create right in meta. The idea behind it is that people are scrolling in their news feed when we want them to do an action. A lot of times we don’t, they don’t want to be taken away from their scroll. They don’t want another app to pop up or a browser to pop up. So by keeping them right in the platform, there’s a form that pops up from the ad that they can fill out real quick um in exchange for a resource that uh we hook them in with already and just give us a quick piece of information. A lot of it. Also, if the user has already approved autofill and whatnot on, on Facebook, then it kind of just pops in and generates there already. So it’s a really fast track to the finish line for the user and they just give us their name, email, we get out of there. They get their resource. Everyone, everyone wins. What’s your resource hook? So we’ve tested, this was like uh over six months, we ran about six ads only for about a week each and we tested different resources each time. A lot of times we focus on things that we know our audience wants and likes uh based off of seo social learning. Um You know, whether it’s a highly trafficked page or a resource that’s already, that usually performs well and highly engaged with organically on social things that we know people want. We can um kind of hang that like a little carrot on the stick, right? I don’t know if that’s the same carrot for the user, right? Carrot on a stick, carrot on a stick, but the carrot on a stick works too. Ok? Ok. Um So in our case, um maybe exercise content performs super well. Um I’m at the Parkinson’s Foundation and exercise is really important for people with Parkinson’s disease. So they’re always looking for what kind of exercise should I be doing or how often? And so if we have a PDF fact sheet, something like that, we let them know like if you just give us this little piece of information, we’ve got a PDF on the other side for you. OK. And you’re asking very low threshold, like first name and email, first, last name and email, hand, first, last email. So very low boundaries. I always object and I never fill in the phone. You know. What, what state are you in? I even object to state. I mean, I’ve been asked state. I don’t know if I’ve seen zip code, but I would find that equally annoying. Look, you’ve just given me a little PDF or a link to a video or something or a white paper for God’s sake. You know, I’m not, it’s not a marriage proposal. That’s right. I think we’ve done lead generation ads and where we have asked for state, if it’s like a volunteer opportunity, we just want to be able to sort them through to the right person. But for this, we just want you on the email list and I think there’s an opportunity here for people. Uh we, we can get them in a different welcoming series, right? All the people that joined us through the lead generation ads, maybe we start setting them up in a welcoming series where we get to know them and can ask more intimate questions. Like, do you want to join our local chapter or, you know, when were you diagnosed or different things that might help us get them into the right um journey, right? Uh Depending on how specific we might have those options. But, but yeah, there’s opportunity later to get to know them a lot better and we’re just starting off just by collecting their email and we can work with that from there. Don’t ask for everything at the outset. It, it’s a journey. There’s a chance of getting the band in from there and we just want to maximize the, you know, the, the efficiency here. Something to the finish line. You said, sprint to the finish line and then we’ll take our time. We can get to know you. There’s plenty of time. Um What did you call it? That, that meta will give you the, the, the people who act like the people you identify a look alike just called lookalikes ads. Yeah, when you upload a list or you create a list that’ll ask you, do you want to create a look like? And this is something that even if so one of the ways too that we try to what we’re after are new emails. We want new people into the database. We’ve also found that people that we’ve already had in the database that found these ads, they’re finding like new value from this. So it’s also OK if new people are seeing this ad, but the focus here is trying to grow the email list, grow our email size. So the focus is with that. But in order to kind of exclude the people that we already have, we upload our email list and we exclude that. But when we upload it, Facebook says, do you want to generate a look alike list of this? So while we’re excluding the ones we already had, we can include the look alike. So it’s a nice and you trust Facebook when you upload these email addresses and that it’s not a perfect science. Let’s put it that way because hey, maybe you logged in with your Facebook with an email from 2010 and maybe you don’t use that one anymore. So maybe you’re on a different one and that’s why it’s not a perfect science with this strategy. About 50% are new um in total to our database. So like I said, it’s not what we’re after is, you know, repeating customers, but we are re-establish value in a different way. So it kind of works out well. There’s that, there’s that too, but I was asking about trusting Facebook with the emails, but you’re giving them, you trust them with that. You don’t have a choice, I’m sure. Well, do they say something like, you know, well, this is a subject to our privacy policy which you can go read at 79 pages. And ultimately, you know, ads in general digital ads in this world we live in is like they get a super bad rep a lot of times and rightfully so, right, wrongfully using different pieces of information. But as a nonprofit, we’re just trying to accelerate our missions good. So we’re, you know, targeting certain people, but they need our resources and so we want more people to have them. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtuous, believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers. Responsive fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that responds to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtues gives you the nonprofit CRM, fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact virtuous.org. Now back to acquiring email leads on social with Melanie Schaffel. Is there another way to do this? Get these conversions from social besides targeted ads? This is the easiest way to do the in platform form solution, right? You can do an organic post that sends them to your website where it might be parkinson.org/subscribe or something, right? Where they can put their email in on our website. We have different forms like that here. You can hear the booths coming down around us literally uh as the carts go out, I hope there aren’t bodies in these carts. I can’t tell they, they have opaque of law and order. Those don’t look like that. Oh, you’re an expert, you’re an expert. Those are, those are clean. I was talking to a law enforcement expert. Forensics. She’s also a digital forensics expert. Uh, she can, she can find your, uh, your date of birth. Not through this. A no, but she’s seen a lot of law and order. So expert. Ok. Those cars are clean. Um, there may be forklifts coming around too so soon. So we may hear backup buzzers. You know, this is a, it’s a menagerie here, but nonprofit radio perseveres. Ok. Um, so I was asking about other methods besides digital ads. Yeah, of course, there’s the organic way to get people. It’s really efficient just to get them right in the platform. I think, you know, there’s other social platforms that have similar opportunities to do these foreign lead generation ads, but a majority of our audience is on Facebook. So we’re just grabbing them where they are and what, what um what age cohort is the largest proportion for you. We find a lot of our audience are Children of the people with Parkinson’s. So the Parkinson’s patients, there are, there is a large audience of people with Parkinson’s too, but let’s call it like, you know, 5060 year old, older adult Children of people that are living with the disease later in life. Yeah, we have a lot of caregiver care partner resources as well for sure. Uh Just so folks know, you know, what age group we’re talking about, you’re talking mostly people, 50 plus we have opportunities for, you know, a lot of people are on Instagram too. And we’re also trying to engage grandparents of people, grandchildren of those living with Parkinson’s. There’s a lot of really fun fundraising opportunities that we provide for them as well, but the information going right to the source. A lot of time. Yeah, right in that Facebook opportunity. Um So just drawing from your, your your description, um we’ve talked about how to, how to do this, how about measuring ro I metrics? What do we look for? So, one of my favorite parts of the lead generation ad is that it hits on all these different points on the marketing funnel, right? We’ve got awareness. So at the very least these ads are going to reach people that may have never heard about our brand and the ads that we’re creating the creative part of it. We’ve got our blue, we’ve got our logo. So at the very least we’re going to have a brand awareness moment. Then one step down, we’re informing, we’re informing that we have this resource and we’re also informing that we’re in the business of sharing resources. So we might get some new followers along the way on top of the reach and the brand and the impressions. And um so one and two checked off, then we’re also like converting people to move away from just being interested to uh loyal um advocates for us as well by joining our email list. So they’re, they’re working their way down the funnel, maybe the first time it doesn’t hit them and they convert, but it’s a series and maybe the second resource we’re offering is more appealing to them. So we might get them on the next try. So it’s an interesting ad because we’re also, we’re doing impressions, brand awareness, reach kind of arbitrary, but it still counts for something. We’ve got website traffic. We’re going to get people when they click on the resource to um get this, they’re clicking through to the website itself. And then we’re also opening up our email leads at the same time. So it’s hidden a lot of pieces at once. What was interesting for this presentation? It went back into each constituent profile and kind of looked at what their journey was since they were served the ad and we saw enough donations come through after they were served this ad to justify the whole spend of our series. So positive row as on top of it all, we love it. What a turn on ads not return on a ro I thank you. Otherwise you’d be putting drug in jail return on ads. Yeah, we have, well, it’s related to your, your law enforcement background. I hope not. Nobody listens to the show. It doesn’t matter. No, that’s not true. That’s not true. Um OK. Roa, we turn on ads be, thank you. But we do have Jargon Jail on nonprofit radio, but you skirted it very quickly by defining your jargon. Um What else can we talk about? We still have a few minutes left. What else did you share with your audience that you should share with nonprofit radio listeners? I also shared how, you know, maybe you don’t have the budget right now to invest in an ad strategy. Maybe you and your boss haven’t had that conversation yet. One, the examples in the strategy that we talked about, maybe this is a good opportunity to ask the powers that be the purse that maybe this is a good opportunity for you to uh trial, maybe get a little small investment. You never know what the results can turn into. Maybe they’ll be super impressed and they give you more of a budget and it kind of opens up your ad advertising program from there. But even if you’re not there just yet, there’s a lot of steps you can take for when you are there, like growing your audience now um and doing a lot of social listening and seeing what is working in your other channels, like your email, what are people clicking through? What do people want? You can create more of that content on your website so that when you are ready to launch these ads, you have like the perfect piece of content that will push people over the ads. You can have something ready for them to offer up anything else we can do in preparation to getting the budget for the ads, I think going back real quick to growing the audience and just kind of doing a lot of organic work. It’s just going to help you with that first party data when we’re doing all the targeting and everything. So putting in that work up front is only going to benefit you more down the line. Are you ok? If we leave it there? I’m great with that. We haven’t, we haven’t given short shrift to nonprofit listeners. It felt good. I don’t know. I, I want them to get the full, this is a 30 minute, this is a 30 minute session or it was a short 30 minute session. Just a little me up there. And uh yeah, a lot of positive feedback. It’s been a good week. It will continue as folks hear you here. She’s Melanie Saffle, senior manager of digital advertising at Parkinson’s Foundation, Melanie. Thank you very much. Thank you so much as, as 24 NTC comes down around us. I thank you for being, she’s giving a queen’s wave to the forklift truck that’s uh going by. I thank you for being with our coverage of 20 the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we have been sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks so much. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you Kate while I was away for the two weeks, uh doing lots of donor meetings uh that I talked about last week I had the chance to talk to two guys, uh, one in the airport and one on a plane. Vaughn and Jorge and they’re both very different. Uh, Vaughn is uh mid seventies, maybe even, uh, maybe even 80 but still working. Uh, he’s from Kentucky and he owns 13 Papa John’s franchises and very interesting talking to this guy. Uh, you know, deep in the baby boomer ages, uh about how work has changed. Uh He, he cites that labor is his biggest problem. You’re keeping 13, Papa John’s franchises staffed uh people who with, you know, in the face of people who just don’t show up for work. They, they don’t just, they don’t even, you know, people don’t call and say they don’t want to work there anymore. They just don’t show up often often and I’ve heard that from lots of other folks too. Uh But so just, you know, very interesting talking to Vaughn about how work and, and attitudes toward work have changed uh that he’s experienced, you know, as a 7580 year old. Uh and hiring lots of folks in their twenties or even teens, so teens, twenties. Um and, and, and thirties is, is mo mostly where his workforce comes from, but it’s actually mostly teens and uh and twenties and then Jorge uh talk to him on a plane. So he is about, I’d say he’s about 32 or so. Uh And he has an interesting career he, you know, he works in finance for one of the big tech companies full time. Uh It has a finance MB A but then he also develops real estate projects. Uh And he, he’s on his second one, which is a 32 unit residential building with two or three commercial units on the ground floor. So, you know, talk about the way career has changed. I mean, here’s a guy who wants to be doing something different and he’s gonna make you making that transition on his own happen by reengineering himself as a real estate developer and, and all the financing that goes into that, getting loans, getting investors, you know, permits and hiring the, the contractor. Um So, you know, uh Jorge was kind of exemplifying what bond was telling me about, you know, the way he has seen work and career change. Uh So very interesting conversation. So I would, uh you know, I guess I’m always curious about people. I mean, if they don’t want to talk, you know, I’m not the annoying guy who keeps talking to them, you know, even after they put their air pods in, you know, I’m still talking to them. I, I don’t do that. I asked them to take their airpods out. No, I just, I just leave them alone, leave them alone. But uh you know, but I’m naturally curious about people. So if they’re willing to talk, um I, I uh these two guys were quite interesting. Vaughan and Jorge and how work has changed, career has changed. And that is Tony’s take too date. I think the coolest part of public transportation is meeting a bunch of different strangers. And like, that’s what I miss about taking the Amtrak train just back and forth from home to, to the city. You used to talk to a lot of folks on Amtrak. I remember one girl, this was my first time on the train alone. I couldn’t find a spot and she was getting off the next spot and she told me to come sit down with her and then we started talking about college and all this stuff and she was actually designing um public playgrounds for different schools. Um And like, we just got to know each other in that like 15 minutes that we had together and like I really connected with her, it was so it was a good experience. That’s it. Yeah, connections. You’re right. You’re right. Well, we’ve got Buku but loads more time here is matching gifts. 101201 and 301. Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC. It’s the 2024 nonprofit technology conference. We are all at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon. Julie Alison Mark. Welcome. Thank you so much for having us. It’s my pleasure. Julie Zin is Vice President account and strategic Services at Sankey Communications. Alison Herman is at, is Director of Communications and Marketing at Wild Care. And Mark doty is Director of Annual Giving at San Francisco S PC A. And we are talking about matching gifts. Your, your session is matching gifts. 101201 and 301. So we’re gonna run the spectrum, not the phd level, I guess that’s, that’ll be next year. We’re still undergrad here. This is undergrad and you took your senior year off. Indeed. We’re not doing the 401. Ok. Um Combined it all into one hour. Ok. Well, we’re gonna, we’re gonna condense it down even a little more, a little more. Um Mark, I’m gonna start down there with you. Ok. Um What? Well, just generally just like sort of tee us up. What, what could we be doing a little smarter better? Uh generally with matching gifts with matching gifts? Uh two things, there’s a lot of different kinds of matching gifts. So there’s a perception out there that if you’re doing a matching gift, you need large amounts of money, you need to double triple, quadruple it. There’s actually a number of different kinds of matching gifts you can do and they have different uses. So you don’t necessarily need a lot of money. You can do what we call a contingent match. For example, where if we’re gonna get into the details. Ok. So in general, I would say, um, consider doing a match, even if you don’t have large amounts of money. Um Make sure you plan it out and make sure you work with your organization, like your major gift officers and maybe communications department to make sure it’s well publicized and that you can actually get the dollars for a match. Ok, thank you. Um Alison, I I’m taking from your session uh description uh and Mark started to allude to these different types and styles of matching gifts. Can you? Uh Now, since he mentioned, contingency, is this, is this an OK place to talk about. Contingency. Am I the person to talk about that? I mean, I’ll be the person to talk about that specifically. But no, it is, it’s, it’s uh the thing about matching gifts that I think people really, we want people to take from our session is that they are incredibly effective and they are incredibly, it something that people get very excited about both your donors and your team members. So introducing the concept of a matching gift to your donors is something that’s going to inspire their giving and also inspire your team to reach new heights and do better things with your fundraising for your organization. OK. OK. So let’s start to get into some detail then Julie, but uh I’ll try you. That Mark mentioned contingency. Are we, why don’t you acquaint us with different types? Yeah, no problem. So most people think about the standard of all gifts up to $100,000 will be doubled, right? And that, that’s kind of your standard double match or you could say tripled and that’s your standard triple match. When you get into some of the other, other types of matches, you can say things like if we get 50 new sustainers, 50 new month donors will get an additional $10,000. That’s a contingency match where we have to reach this threshold and then we’re going to get this lump sum of money. It can be a much easier ask, especially when you’re asking for a certain number of donors. You don’t have to give dollars. You just have to be one person. Um You can also get into different types of matches where if you have the money already in hand, you can say this major donor is ma has made this donation, will you step up and match their gift? Um You can even have a campaign where you ask your donors to create a matching gift fund to then inspire their peers. So there’s a variety of different types of tactics and ways that you can use, talk about and create matching gift campaigns. Are we considering corporate matching gifts here too or is that something? Is that something different? We are. It’s in our 101201301. So corporate matches are a little bit different. We’re not really going to be talking about corporate matches as much. Although corporate matching gifts are certainly very valuable it’s more of a individual um individual technique that, that is often valuable on the back end. So someone makes the gifting and you say, do you work for a, for a corporation for an entity that’s matching your gift? So we’re talking here about individual donors doing different types of matches or collectively. OK. Go ahead. I was gonna say at my organization Wild, what do you do at my organization in Wild Care? There is some confusion between the two ideas of matching and so you have corporate matching, which is I work for a company and I make a donation and then I request for my corporation, my company to match that gift. So that’s what we consider corporate matching. You can also have a corporation that gives your organization a gift to be matched. So we’re talking about that idea of money that’s being donated, that will be an incentive for individual donors to match. And so sort of two different things with sort of the same name. So a source of confusion for us as well. Thank you. I mean, you all have been thinking about this for a long time. I’m a neophyte. Um Mark, how about you at uh at San Francisco S PC A? What, what do you, what are you doing there around uh matching gifts around matching gifts? We plan those into our annual planning process. So we will actually sit down and say, oh, we’re gonna do a big campaign around the holidays. We’re going to be do a big campaign around the end of our fiscal year. We’re going to need a match for those s so we will actually um go out to our major gift officers plan out our timing, say we’re going to need, we’re going to need you to secure some matches for us by this date. And then we actually integrate that into actually producing campaigns which we then promote with the hope that the match is going to inspire more people to give and when they give to give more and indeed it does. Ok, they do work. I mean, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. This is a, this is an upbeat, don’t do matching gifts. There’s no question here and we were actually just talking about how you never test this because you would never want to give half of your audience something that didn’t include the matching gift. They are that successful that you don’t eat. We test that we know how well they work, our consultants on the team on the panel. You agree with that. Absolutely. We have done a lot of testing around things like match length, for example. So there are a lot of giving. Exactly. So for example, giving Tuesday a lot of organizations have a match. If you don’t have a match on giving Tuesday, you’re going to need to think about something really exciting to cut through the match clutter and the match language that other organizations are putting out. But there are now a lot of organizations that have started promoting their giving Tuesday matches before Thanksgiving, we have tested things like that. And when you’re, when you’re looking at, at elements like that, that giving Tuesday preview match before Thanksgiving, it doesn’t actually work. You’re not going to get a substantial lift on it. So there are definitely times and ways that you want to use your match and promote it to have the most efficacy. But overall, all of the data, both data around the industry and data from our clients where we’ve done a matching gift campaign versus not a matching gift campaign or have multiple clients where we can see who has matches and who doesn’t. Um, every, every data point shows that having a matching gift of some sort is always going to be, be beneficial for your campaign. Ok. Ok. Um Alison, what type of different asks do you have? Can you acquaint us with? You started to allude, you know, you made the difference between corporate and individual on the individual side. What are some of the sample asks? Well, we’re very lucky at wild care. We take care of injured and orphaned wild animals. So I have uh absolutely adorable animals like baby opossums or baby raccoons or baby squirrels or an animal that’s going to be really compelling. But one of the matches that we frequently do is our summer match and the summer match is to help raise funds for our wildlife babies to help them to grow up healthy and be released back to the wild. And so that gift is that matching campaign is really, really effective because you can show the benefit of the match for the actual individual animals that are, that are being raised and being uh being treated at our wildlife hospital. So, uh that is a really, that is a really fun one. Another one that we do is uh Julie talked about not making a preview for your giving Tuesday match, but we do have started doing every year a matching gift fund which is asking individual donors to contribute to the match before the giving Tuesday. Actual matching gift goes into effect. So it’s building that matching gift fund and same thing uh you know, doing it for the animals giving the, the care that the animals need and raising that money to be an inspiration for other donors on giving Tuesday. It’s alright. Now Julie, let me go back to you. How is that different than what you said? Doesn’t do well pre pre giving Tuesday, we’re only 10 minutes in. It took a while, but finally a decent question. We’re only seven minutes in. So I give myself a break. These are all excellent questions. Thank you. Oh, no. So how, what’s the distinction here? So that is not, you’re not previewing a match. You’re actually asking people to make a gift to build a match fund. Um which it sounds, it sounds a little bit nuanced. But when you say in early November, we have a donor who’s giving $20,000 to create a giving Tuesday match. But we know we’re going to raise a lot more than that. On giving Tuesday, we need your help to match more money. Will you help us increase the matching gift? And then, and then what care does? And it’s, it’s an incredibly successful campaign is their broader donor base will actually contribute to the matching gift fund. We have several clients that do a similar type of campaign with their mid-level donors where donors who are giving $1000 plus at $1000 plus level will contribute to that matching gift fund. That particular audience type is typically not always less focused on making a gift for a matching gift campaign, but they can be really, um but but they can really help contribute to building a match campaign. So then let’s say at wild care, they would say, ok, now we have a matching gift fund of $42,700. Then on giving Tuesday, they go back out and they say we have a matching gift of $42,700. Will you make your gift for this matching gift campaign? Ok. And then what, what do people have to do to, to qualify for their gift to for you to get the 42,700. I’m missing something. Well, it’s kind of, you don’t necessarily have to have it be a challenge or a contingency. It can simply be that we have this money. We want you to help us match it. It’s not that you help us match what we’ve already help us match what we’ve already earned. And it’s, those are sort of two different types of matches. You can have challenge match, which is essentially if you don’t do this, we have to offer to give the money back. And that’s one type. And you hear that a lot on the N pr fundraising. Exactly. But it is, it seems to be exactly as effective to say we have this. Will you match it? Will you bring us this funding? Yeah. And I think that’s a common misconception about matching gifts. You ok, go ahead, Julie often times what we often times what happens is when you have a matching gift campaign or a matching gift effort, you’re not really relying on the gifts to bring in the match. You actually want to have a matching gift such that you will absolutely hit it and your matching gift donor has already committed to it. So if your matching gift donor says I’m going to make $100,000 gift, you say I’m going to create a matching gift campaign with the specifications and the timing and the length and the channels where I think I’m going to raise 100 and $30,000. So I’m absolutely overreaching that 100,000 and I’m absolutely going to have that money in hand so that you’re raising money on the match doesn’t actually, um, is, is not actually necessary for the gift for the matching gift to come in. And I think that’s one of the biggest misconceptions is for the general public is, it really is a fundraising tactic. It’s, it’s a strategy that, that we all do and that we all know in the industry. But when you look at folks who are outside of the industry, they don’t necessarily realize that this is a tactic that isn’t actually meaningful that when if you give your $100 gift to an organization that says your gift will be tripled. It doesn’t actually mean that they’re going to be getting an additional $200 because of your $100 gift. It means that they have this money in hand um or pledged or committed and that, that you’re, they’re using that to inspire that giving mark. Can you share with us? Uh Some specific asks that you do around matching gifts at San Francisco S PC A. Yeah, actually, most recently, we basically did what’s called Gamification of a match gam game playing radiation, radiating the animals or Gamification, Gamification. And this is where we try to turn, uh we introduce a lot of many goals and ask donors to help us achieve those goals like you might find in a lot of apps or uh or anything else. But um what we did was for giving Tuesday sat down and said, ok, we need to raise this much money that actually corresponds to uh the amount we spend for in a full year on our mobile vaccine clinics where monthly we go out and vaccinate about 4 to 500 animals in the space of a few hours. So uh we actually sat down and messaged to donors, hey, we need to fund 12 months worth of this mobile vaccine clinics. Will you help us do it? We’ve got matching funds and every dollar you you donate will be matched as well and then kept them updated over the course of giving Tuesday to say, hey, we’ve matched, we’ve achieved four months. Can you help us get to five? We’re at six months by the 11 o’clock, we’re saying we’re at 11 months. Can you help us get over to that? 12 months? And just introduced a lot of little goals to ask donors to help us match, um match their gifts and get to that goal. I love the, I love the time. You know, the the time challenge we’re at 11 months, help us get to 12 for God’s sake. Don’t leave us hanging with 11/12. You often do find that that deadline is what’s so critical. You can, you can message as much as you want, but three weeks out from a deadline. You’re never going to have quite the same sense of urgency as saying our deadline for this match is tonight at midnight. And I honestly, I have no idea why people are sitting at home on December 31st at 11 p.m. making their donations. But there are so many people who decide that that is their moment, don’t we all wait for the last minute for things? I mean, pretty routinely. I mean, I know I do, you know, I have a two week, I have two weeks and then I’m doing it the night before. I don’t know. I just, I think that’s our nature. I wanna, I wanna get to something that comes directly from what you just said, Julie is what if gifts come late? What kind of policies do we have? Do we, do we bend the rule or what, what’s best? It’s a terrific question. Um We actually, recently you have a lot of these, you’re with this, Tony, we had this conversation recently with one of our clients. They are based, um, they’re based in New York. Um They have an international presence and an international donor base, both across the US and internationally and they had a matching gift deadline at and we had countdown clocks. We had all sorts of things saying get your gift in before midnight on the matching gift deadline. And one of the staff members said, is it midnight Eastern? Is it midnight pacific? What about our donors who were in Dubai. Um And so fun question. Um So a lot of the tactics that we can implement technologically actually allow us to let that, that, that deadline, that exact 11:59 p.m. uh be catered towards the recipient’s home schedule. And so countdown clocks on emails, search engine, marketing ads on light boxes. We can, we can actually direct all of those to the recipients um time zone At the same time, most organizations are going to have some fluidity around it. And so if a donor calls you up at 3 a.m. God forbid, you’re answering the phones at 3 a.m. But if you get that message at 3 a.m. from the donor that says I just got in my gift, will it be, will it count? You just say yes, just say yes. You don’t want to say no to the donor. Exactly. We are flexible and you also can set those policies based on your own needs within your organization and be fluid about them within your own parameters. So it’s, there’s not some hard and fast like overall arching rule about matching gifts. It’s a, it’s within your own organization that you can determine that. One of the things you can do is actually plan a strategy around people not making it in, in time. One of the reasons we know matches work is if you look at hour to hour donations, the minute that match ends, you see donations drop off like a cliff. So people really are giving up to the last minute. But one thing you can do is um follow up and say, hey, we’re gonna do a small mini match for those people that missed it and that can be a very effective tactic. So in giving Tuesday, we’ve actually sent out a smaller match the next day and said we have a little extra money. If you missed it, please give again very effective for our large end of calendar year uh uh a month long match. Uh We’ll actually plan in January to send out direct mail and email that says in case you missed it by the end of the year, here’s a small smaller follow up match just for those guys that didn’t give. So people don’t feel bombarded again. Very effective tactic works very well. So it’s very humane and gracious too if you missed it, you know, if you still have more opportunities to give us money, right? You do. Yeah, even if you’re worse than procrastinating like you the deadline, you didn’t just wait till the end of the deadline, you blew it. There’s still a chance for you. There are still puppies and kittens and babies, squirrels and baby opossums that need help, that need you one of your uh session uh objectives, how to apply matching gift tactics across each channel. We haven’t talked about specific channels. Mark, let’s let’s keep with you. What do you do across channels. This is an important part of keeping your organization looped in on what you’re doing with the match. And we will actually sit down and have people from marketing communications. We’ll have people from development. Um We’ll have the major gift officers and we’ll all talk about, we’re gonna be having this match. What can everyone do in their channels to support this match and support this effort? And we’ll have a group conversation about what we’ll be talking about what the messaging will be and get everyone on the same page and then everyone is sort of in charge of uh going off and executing in whatever it is they’re due. Whether that’s the website, we will get it on the website. Uh If we’re on social, we will get it in social. Um We will put it in our DM and email appeals as well. If we have newsletters going out, it will go in the newsletters. Our MGO will again be talking to people about what the match is about and will they support it? So we just get everyone on the same page and that way everyone in the organization that’s in charge of some kind of communication um can, can communicate that out and whatever, whatever they’re working on. We uh we have Jargon Jail on uh Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Now you didn’t, no, you didn’t really transgress. I mean, you, you mentioned MG OS and D MS but, but I think people understand major gift officers are, those are, those are basic. I’m just alerting everyone that we do have jargon jail here. And I’d hate to see anybody, uh, imprisoned not wrongfully, it would be rightfully imprisoned. But, but you don’t get a jury. It’s just me. But no, you are fine because DM, everybody knows direct mail. Um, I, I do one thing. That’s, that’s interesting about a multichannel. Yeah, that’s interesting about the campaigns is you do have different timing for the different channels. And so you obviously have your direct mail pieces that go, you know, significantly in advance and there’s a much longer tail, a much longer time for those to have been effective. And then you would have the model that goes up on your website, which usually corresponds with the time that your direct mail is hitting mailboxes in case people open the letter and then go to your website and then, oh, sorry. Yes, I’m doing jargon. That’s the pop up thing that shows up on your website when you open up a website and something pops up in front of you. That, that’s what’s called a model and there’s a link on that that would go to a donation page. So we don’t call them pop ups anymore or light, what do we call them? Moss I learn that pop up a pop up. Technically speaking, a pop up is different technology. A light box and a model are interchangeable Um And the, the technical term, this I consider one of my key roles in my company being translating between our developers and everybody who doesn’t speak, developers speak, which I don’t. But a modal is the technical way that a lightbox is coded. And so a motel and a Lightbox are the same thing. You can say. Either one pop up is a little bit of a different story and that gets blocked by pop up blockers and all of that sort of thing. So you’re fine. I’m fine too. None of us are in jail. My language is not ancient anyway, but I love this because I just learned something new as well. So Lightbox modal being the two things that pop up. Exactly. So you would have that correspond with the time that your direct mail piece hits people’s mailboxes. And then you would also have a, an email campaign and a social campaign that usually start and run on a faster schedule. You would want that to be closer to the deadline and be able to send those messages out. So you’re getting, you know, people often participate with your organization’s communications on many levels and having that same messaging the same images, the same compelling ask that goes with the match coming both in your mailbox also on the website, also on your social feeds and also on your email is a very, very compelling and effective way to raise donations and having that match with the timeline, just makes people jump in with both feet and donate and donate more. It’s wonderful. You had asked about what happens when people make their gift after a deadline as well. Direct mail has an extremely long tail. And so it’s very common that people will, I mean, people will hold on to direct mail and then send a check. Two years later, I don’t understand that. I’ve seen that I do plan on giving fundraising. I’ve seen two years. I’ll send me information on including you in my will. It’s wild. But so what we do when we’re promoting a matching gift is direct mail. We actually won’t promote the deadline. So you just don’t lift the deadline. You can put in very fine print at the bottom. Nobody’s going to read it anyway. It’s fine. Um Whereas when you’re looking at the digital channels, you’re gonna have your countdown clocks and you’re really pushing the deadline and increasing your frequency as you approach that deadline and people don’t get tired of this. Shocking. No, no, especially as you’re increasing the frequency as Julie said, when you get closer to the deadline. No, it seems to just inspire them and you will have people that give again when they see the countdown clock when they actually the same challenge. Yeah. Yeah, we see that as well. Ok. All outstanding. We, we’re busting potential uh misconceptions. Um Well, we still have some time left. What else? Uh do you plan to talk about in your session that we haven’t or a little more detail that you want? I think one of the things that I think is really interesting is what happens when you don’t have a match and that is something that it’s valuable to have to have matching gifts. You don’t want to have a matching gift for every single campaign, but most organizations in an ideal world, you have a few matching gift campaigns over the course of a year. But on these key days, like giving Tuesday or 1231 most organizations, most of your competitors who are, who are hitting people’s inboxes have a matching gift campaign and there are always a few organizations that don’t. And so I think that that is an important thing to think about is what happens when you don’t. Um So for some of those campaigns, we often will fundraise around tangibles. We work with an organization habitat for horses. Um, out in Texas that um this past year on giving Tuesday, we were raising money for a new rescue trailer last year. On giving Tuesday, we raised money for a batwing mower. I didn’t even know what a batwing mower was, but it is really valuable. So don’t leave us all hanging a bowing mower. It’s a mower that has those off board things so it can mow a very wide path path. It’s a wide mower. But when you’re a horse rescue, when you’re a horse rescue, you need a lot of mowing capacity. Um And so, so we could run this campaign that really gave people a tangible and a goal even though we didn’t have a matching gift or um we work with Glaad, which works on LGBT Q issues. And this past giving Tuesday, they didn’t have a matching gift campaign and we had a really terrific campaign. Our creative team did a bang up job on it. But the whole I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say it, the whole theme of the campaign was it’s time to give an f and we’ve had people say fuck, OK, great. So the campaign was, it’s time to give a fuck. And we replaced the you and fuck with the heart from the Giving Tuesday logo. And it worked really well. And so if you have an organization where you can, where you don’t have a matching gift campaign, but you don’t have a matching gift available, but you have a tangible or a goal or um leadership allows you to curse across all of your, your direct marketing channel. There are different ways that you can break through, break through the clutter. This is swearing for a good cause I wanted to say actually, on that note, the opposite problem is I know a lot of organizations swearing enough, not swearing enough. 100%. No one of the opposite problem would be something that my organization certainly deals with, in that I wouldn’t want to necessarily fundraise every time for the bat wing mower, which I’ve never needed in my life. But because once you put a specific thing into your fundraising, that means that fundraising becomes restricted unless you’re very careful with the language. But one of the things that I love and my organization loves so much about matching gifts is the match gives you that specificity. It gives you that goal without having to restrict the gifts that are coming in in any way. It, it has that same psychology of oh yeah, I wanna give $20 for the batwing mower. That sounds amazing. But instead of having to say it’s for the X ray machine or it’s for specifically opossum formula or whatever you are saying, it’s for this monetary goal and this time goal and it has that same psychological benefit of. This is something I want to contribute to. This is something I want to be part of. And this is a goal I want this organization to reach. And that’s, I think the one of the main reasons that match is so matching gifts are so powerful. And I think uh so we know that there is hope in case you don’t have a matching gift, there is, there is the tangibles as Julie described. And I think um one take away from this and it’s important to keep in mind is to just stay creative with your matches. I have seen so many conversations where it’s like, well, we’d like to do a match but we don’t have sufficient funds to double or triple or quadruple what people are giving. There’s a whole lot of different ways, uh, to work with matches. Uh, we had a small match come in and it was just $10,000 and it was like, well, what can we do with that? Uh So we did a challenge grant and actually brought in 100 new sustainers uh just by sort of shifting it and saying, let’s just do a number of instead of dollars, we can absolutely use that money and we did and it was very successful. So stay creative, think of creative ways to to to get the message out and what you can do matches around and for a lot of listeners, $10,000 may not be such a small match at all that may be impressive for them. Um Alright, I I kind of wanna let Mark uh kind of bookend it us. We opened with Mark, we closed with Mark. Is there anything else anything else anybody? Ok. We’re gonna wrap it up then. Terrific. Good luck on your session. It’s gonna be a fun session. It will. And this is a little preparation for you. They are Julie Zin at Sanki Communications, Alison Herman at Wild Care and Mark doty at San Francisco S PC A. Thank you for being with Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Coverage of 24 NTC where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. They are booth mates and thanks so much for being with us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you next week. Prompt Engineering and getting the most from your current tech. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech, you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer and marketing tools you need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Pinetti. The show, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for April 8, 2024: Email Deliverability & Email Welcome Journeys

 

Jamie McClelland, Natalie Brenner & Alice AguilarEmail Deliverability

In our age of rampant spam and artificial intelligence, you need to know how to give your emails the best chance of getting delivered. What are DMARC, DKIM and SPF, and how do they help with deliverability? This 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference panel is Jamie McClelland, Natalie Brenner and Alice Aguilar, all from Progressive Technology Project.

 

Patty Breech & Elizabeth Sellers:  Email Welcome Journeys\

What happens after your emails are delivered and folks want to support your cause? How do you bring them into your family so they’re engaged and stay with you. Also from 24NTC, this panel is Patty Breech at The Purpose Collective and Elizabeth Sellers with Humanity & Inclusion.

 

 

 

 

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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.
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Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be stricken with Eisenmenger syndrome if you broke my heart because you missed this week’s show. Our associate producer, Kate is sick and lost her voice. Of course, I wish her a speedy recovery to good health. But then a question comes to mind. Do we need an associate producer? Let’s see how it goes this week, email deliverability in our age of rampant spam and artificial intelligence. You need to know how to give your emails the best chance of getting delivered. What are D mark D Kim and SPF? And how do they help with deliverability? This 2024 nonprofit technology conference panel is Jamie mcclelland, Natalie Brenner and Alice Aguilar, all from progressive technology project and email. Welcome journeys. What happens after your emails are delivered and folks want to support your cause? How do you bring them into your family? So they’re engaged and stay with you. Also from 24 NTC. This panel is Patty Breach at the purpose collective and Elizabeth Sellers with Humanity and Inclusion. I’m Tony take too. I love the wise. We’re sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous. Gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org. This is getting exhausting here is email deliverability. Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC. It’s the 2024 nonprofit technology conference. Of course, we’re in Portland, Oregon. You know that you’ve heard this already. Our continuing coverage is sponsored by Heller consulting here at 24 NTC. Heller does technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me now is Jamie mcclelland Technology Systems Director at Progressive Technology Project, also Natalie Brenner, Director of Resource mobilization at Progressive Technology Project, and Alice Aguilar, the leader, the executive director at Progressive Technology Project. Jamie Natalie Alice. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having us, Tony. Thank you all. Uh Your session topic is email deliverability in the era of spam and artificial intelligence. Um Alice, let’s start with you. What could you just kick us off? We have plenty of time together but general strokes. What, what could we be doing better? What are we ignoring? Why do we need this session on email ability? This session is really, really important for nonprofits and, and grassroots organizing groups, you know, um in PTPS 25 years, we know that email has been really critical to organizations and, and organizing. Um It’s a critical communication vehicle, um, to get the word out quickly to groups so that they can, and their community so that they can take action. Right. There’s no stamps. Right. It’s pretty instant. As long as somebody on the other side is watching. Right. And, and you know, the thing about email, it’s also the place where we control our own messages. Uh, we control our own lists, you know. So it’s, it’s democracy at work. we control the timing, the timing of it, right? Um So there’s nobody there, you know, like, you know, to like to look at our content. At least that’s how it has been, you know, email is Federated. You know, anybody could be an email service provider and send out your email. But now here’s the thing that we’re seeing, right? There’s this concentration of ownership around technology and you’re seeing this in email. So when organizations are sending out email, about half are going to gmail Yahoo or Outlook Microsoft, right? So, um if you think about that, it’s like now with this most recent changes, if you had seen there’s changes in, in uh Google and Yahoo had changed the rules about what emails are gonna be sent. So there’s a concentration and the rules are changing by the, the companies that control 50% of and so they’re controlling the deliverability, correct, you know, and, and like email is supposed to be different than platforms like Facebook or, you know, X you know where they’re monitoring your contact and the algorithms. Email is your, that’s your words, your story being told. And so, you know, it’s, it’s really critical for our groups to get their messages out. Right. And so now because of these rules and these changes and, and eventually they could just totally, they’re gonna make all sorts of decisions about what email is gonna go. Um We have to, we as organizations have to jump some hoops and take responsibility now to make sure that our emails are delivered and it’s really hard for folks to keep up with this. And that’s why our session is, you know, PTP is gonna help uh groups figure out how do we at least get our messages through these corporate gatekeepers, right? To be able to get that out. So that’s the, that’s the purpose of the session, Natalie. Um Who uh can you expose us to some of these rules or, or one of the rules that’s changed? We have plenty of time together, but Alice mentioned all these rules changing. What, what, what the hell is going on? Thanks, Tony. I knew you were going to ask me the technical question. Are you the person? I’m the accidental techie of the. However. Yeah, absolutely. Does that mean Jamie is the technician is I should say he surely is. Yeah, absolutely. So as Alice was saying, you know, email is kind of kind of the dinosaur of the technology world at the moment, but it’s also so critical still like Alice was saying, even after our 25 years, we’re seeing groups still relying and counting on it. And now they have all these acronyms to work through D Mark D Kim SPF. And what in the hell do those mean? Most of the groups we work with don’t know, I don’t know what the hell they mean. And so our session is going to expose that for folks and tell them how to work through all that Mark Net non profit radio. We have jargon jail. You just transgressed terribly like you are in it to bail you out. Obviously. D Mark D Kim and I am in jargon jail and I totally accept that will get you out. Pf to me is some protection factor because I live on and I probably even said the wrong jargon. We don’t even know, but I live on a beach in North Carolina. So to me, that’s my 50 at least help us just before we get into the technical details. Just what are these rules about, right? The, the main goal of the rules is to stop fraud. Um You’ve probably received an email that was sent from Tony Martignetti and it wasn’t you? Yeah. Yes, I have. It’s another guy out there and there are other folks I think I might have just called you Mark. By the way, it’s Jamie because we have another, it’s not D Jamie. It’s D mark is the acronym and Jamie is the, that’s where it came from. Thank you. That’s very gracious of you to bail me out. It was my fault. It’s mine. I made the right Jamie. So the main idea is fraud because Google and Yahoo, in this case, at least they’re trying to impose new limits for a noble cause which is they want to stop people from being able to send messages that claim to be from your domain name, but they aren’t. And your domain name is the part after the at sign in your email address. And you don’t want, I don’t want to get a message from Alice at progressive tech.org that says, hey, Jamie, your payroll didn’t go through click here in order to make sure it’s proper, that’s what we’re trying to stop. Have there been problems with Mark’s payroll payroll? No, I get it from Natalie asking me to like, hey, I forgot the login for our bank account. I need to get these checks. Can you please just click here and just give me you hover over the email address and it’s like that’s not Alex dot ru when you hover over. So they’re doing it for a noble cause they’re doing it for a noble cause. And you might, you know, 10 years ago you got these also, but they were full of typos and they were so obviously not from Natalie or not from Alice, but now with artificial intelligence. It’s possible for anyone you don’t even like, you can be anywhere with any kind of language skills and you can have a perfectly written email that’s very convincing. And, and they’ve also cut down on the, uh, the estates, you know, a $45 million estate greetings of the day, you know, from one of the African countries, you cannot, they are smarter, they are smarter and they’re closer to the real thing, close to the real thing. And so, you know, if you hover over and it says.ru it’s easy. But what if you hover over? And it says Alice at Progressive tech.org which it can you just to make clear.ru is a domain, a Russia, it’s a country level domain name. It’s owned by Russia and it could be anything. Tony dot Ma Ma is Morocco, it’s country of America. So every year I think I pay 75 or 100 and $75 or something to the, to the to the my domain provider. Of course, but they’re paying the country of Morocco for my dot Ma U so.ru is Russia, which means it’s very likely spam. I’m sorry, Jamie. That’s great. So the deep dark secret is that from the beginning of the internet, you could send an email that was from progressive tech.org and you still can send an email, you can put whatever from address you want in the email protocol. It allows it, you can put whatever you want in the from address and it really will be whatever domain name you want it to be. So these new rules and regulations are intended to stop that. And there’s two main rules that are used to test and the test, one of them is called SPF for Sender policy framework, policy framework. And that one says I can, I love the energy between the three of you, Natalie and Alice are giggling while, while Jamie is talking, I love the energy we’ve been working. Plus there’s this guy Mark who’s presence is hovering over us. We’re channeling Mark even though he’s 3000 miles away. Are you, are you based in New York or a Texas, Texas? Paul Minnesota. I’m in New York is somewhere. We’ve worked together for over a decade and he’s only five 100 miles but his presence is felt we’re channeling. So SPF again, SPF is center policy framework and this allows us as progressive tech.org to publish to the internet to say if you get an email that claims to be from progressive tech.org, it has to be sent from one of these 10 servers. And if it wasn’t sent from one of these 10 servers, you should consider it fraudulent because there’s only 10 servers that legitimately send our email. Those are the email servers of our internet service provider. So that center policy framework, if Google or Yahoo or proton mail or may 1st mail, whatever, that’s an email that claims to be from progressive tech.org. That email provider can look up our SPF record check to see if it was sent from the right server and if it wasn’t sent from the right server, it fails the SPF test. D mark. Let me do D mark last DKIM. Let’s work on Kim. There’s no, no job description. Your name must be Kim. We’ll accept middle name, first name preferred. We’ll keep an open mind. Kim is a signature. It’s a digital signature. When we tell us what the acronym stands for, can I on the domain key identified? Male? Yes, there’s math involved. There’s math involved. There’s some very cool math involved. So he said cool math what I was saying? I thought it was redundant. So dkim, when a message is sent by us, we insert a digital signature into the header part of the email, the header is usually hidden from most people. So you can’t see it, but a digital signature is sent with the email message. So when the receiving server gets the message, the receiving server sees the signature and then it has to look up your DKIM record to see if it’s a valid signature and if it is a valid signature, then you pass the DKIM test. So two tests every does every email have to pass all three of these tests that we’re talking? Right? So that’s where Mark comes in. This is the rule. Oh jeez, don’t ask me what that one stands for the D mark is when you make those two tests and then the receiving service says, well, what do I do if it fails? And a dar policy can be, none says, don’t do anything. It’s OK. You can be fraudulent and two is reject and three is quarantine, which are in practice mostly the same. So in other words, you can set your SPF and your DKIM so that the receiving server can tell whether it’s valid. And then you can say this is what you should do if it fails either one of those two. So if the rule is you only have to pass one, so you can fail SPF. But if you pass DKIM, you pass, you can fail DKIM. But if you pass the SPF and the reason is because there’s actual legitimate reasons why you might fail one or the other, it’s still valid and you could fail one or the other. So you just need one. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtuous believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers responsive. Fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that respond to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM, fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact virtuous.org. Now, back to email deliverability. This really is getting exhausting now. All right. So we’re acquainted with what the rules are rules, these are new rules. So this is, this is, I mean, if you consider relative to the internet, this is ancient history. These rules have been around for over 10 years, but the way rules become adopted is very slow. So what Yahoo and Gmail have done is they’re trying to speed adoption of these rules by saying we’re going to reject your email if you don’t have these three things in place. And it’s kind of interesting because D Mark is supposed to say no, you’re supposed to accept it if the policy is none, but Gmail is breaking that protocol and say no, we’re going to reject it. If you don’t, if you don’t have one of SPF or Din, we’re going to reject it regardless of D Mark. If you send more than 5000 messages a day, we’re really going to make sure you have at least one of these two and you have to have ad mark policy, even if the D MARK policy says none, you still have to have that D Mark policy if you’re a bulk sender and we’re gonna stop you. We’re gonna, we’re gonna break away from the technology part of it. I wanna talk. No, no, we’re not abandoning. I mean, it’s important, but we’re gonna move to leadership Alice. What, what is a nonprofit leader’s role in ensuring email deliverability? Well, you’re the executive director. What, what do you feel you take on in, in, you know, in your role obviously as your role as executive director, what do you think is your responsibility around email deliverability? Our responsibilities are responsible to our help our groups because that’s what we do. We support community organizing groups, that’s our niche. Um really think about like, you know, because we care about their work and we care that they get the communications out. It’s our responsibility as our team to understand these rules to be on top of this stuff, which is really hard. I mean, we’re a team of three plus mark out there. Don’t forget I can’t, you know, and so we have to like sift through and keep up with these rules because our groups don’t have time for that. We work with small to medium sized organizations that don’t have a tech arm. They don’t have a techie, they have accidental techies like Natalie, um which we make Natalie do a lot of things, right? They make me do a lot of, you know, so, so that’s our responsibility to move. We were there to really help groups navigate this world and also help them understand the role of technology in their organizing work and the impacts um that technology has in society and for social change. And this email stuff is critical because there’s so much dependence, we call it dependence on the master’s tools. You know, Audrey Lord, uh the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. You know. So for us, it’s like having we, we throw in a lot of political education around the role of technology. Email is like the one that everybody understands, but they don’t realize that as organizations that their emails are not getting sent. And they’re wondering like, why can’t we move our folks just because they’re not receiving an email. And so our responsibility is to help them get that word out. And so we deconstruct this stuff, figure it out. Jamie memorizes these acronyms and we hold trainings, we actually hold trainings, we help them navigate, help them get things set up. That’s our, that’s our role. My role is to work to move our team to make sure that this is we’re doing the best we can. We work with almost 100 and 50 organizations, nonprofit, uh grassroots organizations. It’s, it’s our job to make sure that we’re on it and in a timely way and we keep up with it and also translate, right? We got to translate this stuff for the groups that don’t have a technologist. They don’t have the benefit of a Jamie, right. And also the, the understanding is not, it’s, it’s again, understanding that role because we sort of like use whatever is easy. But to do this stuff is actually takes a little bit of, you have to dig in a little bit and that’s our job to help dig in and we’re gonna get to what to do very, very, very shortly. But this is why this is perfect for our listeners because most of our listeners small and mid-sized nonprofits, they don’t have the benefit of a full time or even maybe even an outsource technologist, like you’ve got Jamie. Alright, Natalie, how do you, how do you fit into this? So, um I have been with progressive technology project for 11 years and I started in an administrative role um and in a small organization that doesn’t take a whole lot of time. Um And so I started to learn how to do technical support and started working on the programming aspect of things. Um started training alongside my colleagues. Um We provide several trainings a year online and we’re going to do our first in person since COVID this year, probably this fall. Um And so I do a little bit of everything and it’s wonderful. Can you so can you help us start to get into the topic of how to design your own emails so that they, so that they meet, meet the criteria? Don’t suffer the uh the consequences of, of D mark. I got these acronyms down. Now, you got to do one of the two SPF or D Kim and D Mark will evaluate, will instruct the internet. Well, the email provider, what to do if, if one of those two tests is not passed, I’m, you’re like your name. I didn’t say hirable. You don’t want me as an employee. I’d be a terrible employee. You wouldn’t want me as an employee. But yeah, there’s a lot of things you can do to help before you get to the acronyms. There’s a lot of things that you can do on the front end to help your emails get delivered. And that has to do with setting up your template, not including weird characters or you know, animated GS like the word free can sometimes be, don’t use the word invoice or free in your subject line in your subject line. Don’t send an email to 20,000 people and include an attachment, things like that. And so we do train on things like that as well. And then on the technical end of things, you’ve got all the acronyms to work through and there’s lots of ways that you can get help addressing those if you don’t have a technologist at your organization or if you’re not with a social justice partner, like progressive technology project, um where we provide uh really awesome support to help you through that. So I want to go into a little more detail about the structure of emails, the planning of emails. So that uh Jamie, you want, I mean, I don’t know, Natalie, should we stay with you? I, I’m just, I’m still concerned about the subject line. Leave out free, leave out invoice free at if you’re sending to thousands of people that don’t do attachment. What else just about? Yeah. So, you know, there’s a lot going around these days from different consulting firms or organizations talking about how to craft a subject line that will gain attention. And that’s really important. But you also have to just be careful about the buzzwords that you’re using to avoid the pitfalls. And it’s not that hard if you’re talking about a subject line. Do you guys have anything to add? I think everything Natalie said is straight on some of it. It is common sense. You receive lots of spam messages and you don’t want your email to sound like that and look like that. And some of it can be obvious the no free act. Now there’s a lot of exclamation points, things like that sometimes get picked up. But I think that’s important. It’s becoming less important as these new rules and regulations are happening because it’s getting bigger, the data’s getting much bigger. And I feel like the big providers are really getting a little bit better at differentiating between the spam and the non spam. So I think that really important is following these rules and getting your domain names properly set up. Um, the only other things I would add are just, there might be personal preferences. Like a lot of people have the subject line newsletter number three, number 12. And it’s like, no, it’s the same thing I find too. I think most personally and this is very, like, there’s a matter of taste. I’m not a big fan of the newsletter that has 12 different stories in it because I see a subject line and I decide whether I’m going to open that message based on what’s in the subject line. You can’t put 12 things in a subject line. Yeah, but then whatever is not in the subject line is buried and it’s difficult. I’m a bigger fan of sending out more frequent emails with um that are shorter that like you, you see in the subject line, what it is and then you’re going to open it and you’re going to read it as opposed to a long newsletter. Now, do things like frequency. Does that impact your deliverability? Frequency? So too many, too much. No. In fact, it’s the opposite quantity and volume help you because a lot of these are percentile rankings where the providers are going to say, oh, wow, we received 1000 messages that were successfully sent and not complained about and you got two complaints. That’s a, you know, very tiny percentage. If you send 10 messages and you get two complaints, it’s, you know, it’s like a complaint can sink you more. So they’re tracking, there are, aren’t, aren’t the providers also able to track what people do with your message, whether they, whether they, whether they, whether they put it, whether they market junk, do, are they able to track that you’re doing in your inbox? They’re 100% able to track it. And it’s a black box as to what the algorithm is as to what they’re doing. And this is one of the, when you’re talking about, I think what leadership as a nonprofit sector, a lot of that has to do with paying attention to the power we’re giving these corporations. You’re familiar as a media person in the nineties, we were really fighting hard against the concentration of media ownership. It was a huge threat and it’s still a massive, massive threat. The same thing is happening with email, there’s a concentration in owner within the internet in general and with email in particular with Google Yahoo and Outlook. And we think, you know, Google is free and it’s not, it is like it comes with a price cash. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Surrender, privacy, surrender. Yes. What did you say? Free as kittens? Ac RM kind of thing. Free. Yes, exactly. So, but that’s where this black box comes in is that we’re giving the power to a very small number of corporations to decide based on our actions and based on who knows what, whether the message should arrive in the inbox. Now, these new regulations, I think they are in the public interest. I’m very glad that Google and Yahoo have decided that they’re going to cut down on fraudulent email. I applaud that, I think that’s good, but they’re doing it for their own reasons. And that means next time they might have other changes that they want. And I’m not at all comfortable with us as a sector saying sure, we’ll give three corporations the ability to dictate what messages land in the inbox, especially during these really crazy political times, it’s un predictable what could happen. And I prefer for us as a movement for us as a nonprofit sector to diversify. I really encourage people to look at other providers. Don’t just go to Outlook or Google because your a technologist says, oh, this is a simple thing that everyone’s doing. It’s really important to diversify to go to other providers. And I just want to say like, you know, we can make a choice, we make a choice to voluntarily give up our, you know, work, go to gmail because it’s oh, it’s so easy and, and it does all these things, but we can make changes now, right? I mean, I think that’s what PTP, what we stand for is we believe in people controlled technology for social change because then we can control, right, our data, our messages, how we wanna get things delivered. And so and, and also design it the way we need it right? To design it, the way organizations and organizing, really need to do the work and in our language, right? So this is where we can make choices. But it’s, um, it’s usually most folks get directed, right? Because of whether it’s consulting or sometimes it’s foundations. I hate to say it. But, you know, because you’ll get free money if you just like, everybody get on 365 Microsoft. right? It’s like without thinking and it’s like, but meanwhile, here they are doing work, you know, and that’s anti corporate work or something, you know, and so be conscious about your choices, especially how it may, may uh coincide with your own cause you were going to say something. I am in total agreement with all of that. And I just wanted to go back to a little bit about email deliverability on the recipient’s end. A shout out to all email recipients out there. I know the spam button looks very inviting for every single email that you don’t want to see in your inbox. However, if it’s not real spam, if it’s from an organization where you went to their gala maybe and you decide you don’t want their email, try to click unsubscribe because when you click spam, you know that goes in to mark against that organization and maybe that’s not what you intended. The user actions that do get collected aggregated. I was gonna ask you too, Natalie about Alright. So as a recipient, be thoughtful. Not real spam and we get it. You don’t want our stuff. That’s totally cool. You get to make that choice but just like unsubscribe instead of a spam. What about cleaning up your list? I mean, isn’t there in, in having a smaller list that’s not gonna mark your spam that’s more engaged with your emails and having a bigger list and, and lower quality receipt actions. That’s such a good point. And uh with power base, the database for community organizers through our support, we do a ton of work with um the groups we work with on duping, making sure you have valid and correct email addresses, you know, having a sign up sheet at your gala or your event is great. Um However, if those people are clicking unsubscribe, make sure they’re actually getting unsubscribed in your database. Um You can even go so far as to if you want to keep them in your database, remove their email address, just you brought up such a good point. Make sure you’re not sending it’s, you know, quality over quantity. Definitely you don’t need to send to the world, you know, do some searches in your database for who is the most engaged and send them a particular email segmenting your list can be very helpful for that. Yeah. Did you have more to add? No, I was just saying it’s like, it’s sort of interesting because the idea of unsubscribing, people should know that they’re only unsubscribing from that one list. And organizations are great at like, creating multiple lists for multiple different things and just like, I have 1625 30 different communications lists and like, people are wondering why am I getting all these emails? Because, well, you only subscribe from the one list, you know, so what that email list was on and sometimes you may not know what list you’re on so organizations can do that too. I mean, if you think it’s good to have 25 communication lists, maybe you should pair it down to 10, maybe like limit. I have another technical question. Mark Jamie. I want to ask you to myself. Don’t be so harsh if I was a DJ DJ. Got it. Alright. Um You mentioned setting your domain name up properly. What did you mean by that, please? So with Dkim Dar and SPF these all are referred to stop laughing at the, stop laughing at the acronyms are bona fide. He got you out of jargon jail. Some gratitude. I would, I would charge you interest on the bail payment. I just made quite an acronym. Yeah. Jeez. So how do you do? How do you put up with this? This is a virtual organization. I was glad you’re not all based on the laugh at your technology. So your domain name, she’s I know she’s going to apologize for that. I know she feels bad already. I can say she’s blushing. I’m putting, I’m putting her on the spot. Does she feel she feel bad? I do. I sorry, deeply sorry, apology accepted. I know they really care about setting up your domain name. So if you own your own domain name, then you have a company that’s called the Registrar, which is where you pay an annual fee. Usually about $20 a year for the right to have this domain name. Domain 10 one is a big one. Hover name.com, gandhi.net registrar.com. There’s a number of different ones. The company you’re paying for your annual registration exactly. Now, that often is different than the company you’re paying to host your domain name. Now, these are really subtle and nuanced differences but they are important differences. The company that you pay to host your domain name is usually the same company you pay to host your website or your email or something like that that’s usually packaged together. Now, the company that’s hosting your domain name is where you can set what your domain name records point to. So that’s what you say DNR S domain name records. Yeah. Well, DNR, I don’t know if I haven’t heard that accurate. That makes me think of testing Department of Natural Resources. We can name them. All right. Look, I have the board here. I can shut your mic down. Not supposed to make fun of the host that consolidation of power. You’re damn right. This is not progressive technology project. Nonprofit Radio. This is Tony Martignetti, Nonprofit Radio. You’re damn right. The middle aged white guy is taking over explicitly. At least I do it explicitly. I acknowledge the power so I’ll shut you down. All right. So no domain name record if we spell it, DNR do. So that’s what you’d say. This domain name points to this IP address. If you want to send an email to this domain name, it should go to this mail server. Those are the historic ways that domain names have been used and they’re being added to and order to support the SPF, DKIM and D Mark records. So SPF is a kind of a domain name record called the text record. And DKIM is also used as the text record. So you say for progressive tech.org, show me the text record and it will say SPF policy is this or you say, OK, and you look it up just the same way you’d say for this domain name. That’s the IP address. How do we make sure we’re set up correctly? You know, I would love technical help with this. I would love to explain to you how to do that. That would take a diagram in 45 minutes. It’s painful. I’m embarrassed as a technologist, how complicated it is to do this. The best I can say is first ask your consultant, staff or volunteer if you’re lucky enough to have one, if you’re not then ask your web host and if your web host can’t do it and you have a database, maybe you have power base or maybe you have um sales force or maybe you have networks nation or any of the other corporate places. Ask them because they’re the place you’re sending your bulk email, they have a responsibility to help you and they should be able to help you solve this problem. That’s valuable. Natalie, I’m going to choose you to bookend us. So the Accidental Techie, which a lot of a lot of people find themselves in that position. Uh You know, just take us out with uh with final thoughts. Yeah. Um Well, we really appreciate this opportunity this time. It’s been a while since we’ve done a radio show and progressive technology project is growing. Um We’re a social justice nonprofit organization that believes in transparent and democratic technology. Um like Jamie said to get help with this stuff, your database provider should be helping you, your technology providers should be helping you with this, so seek their support. Um And then, yeah, we’d love to hear from anyone out there who’s interested in learning more progressive. Tech.org is our website. Ok. Thank you. And just to set the record straight, it’s a podcast. It’s, it’s called Tony Martin TI Nonprofit Radio, but we’re, we’re a podcast, weekly, weekly podcast. Alright. So they are Jamie mcclelland, uh at Progressive Technology Project, Natalie Brenner with progressive technology project. And Alice Aguilar, the leader, the executive director, progressive technology project, Jamie Natalie Ellis. Thank you very much Tony and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC, the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are graciously sponsored by Heller consulting our booth partners, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. It’s time for Tony take two. I’m at the National Association of Y MC A Development Officers Conference, the National Association of all the Y MC A s in uh Mexico, Canada and the US. We’re in Denver, Colorado and I have to admire the w for just all their camaraderie, you know, their support for each other. Um I saw it today at uh two round table conversations that I hosted the desire to help each other. Um These were all small and mid size wise and the sharing of ideas, you know, the, just the, the getting along the collegiality. Uh It’s really delightful to see. Uh There are about 1800 people at this uh North American Y MC, a conference and I’m delivering uh a session on planned giving, not surprising, planned giving 101. I haven’t done that session yet, but from everything I’ve seen the two days I’ve been here, the WS really do support each other throughout North America and it’s uh it’s, it’s inspiring, it’s really, it’s, it’s uplifting to, to see everyone just desiring to help each other so much. Uh sharing ideas, you know, and just laughing and understanding. Yes, understanding, empathizing, even if there isn’t a solution or a suggestion, but, you know, just the empathy. So my, my hats off to the Y MC A s of North America. It’s a real pleasure and a privilege to be at their conference. And that is Tony’s take two ordinarily I would say Kate, but she’s not with us. Uh uh III I think she’ll be back. Uh I think we’ve got Buku but loads more time here is email. Welcome journeys. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are in Portland, Oregon at the Convention Center and where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me. Now are Patty Breach and Elizabeth Sellers. Patty is founder and CEO of the purpose collective. Elizabeth is us, Director of Communications and Development at Humanity and Inclusion. Patty Elizabeth. Welcome. Thanks for having us. Good to be here. Pleasure, Patty for you. Welcome back. I think this is your third spot on nonprofit radio at NTC. You’re a perennial. It’s great to be back. I’m glad, glad. Thank you and Elizabeth. Welcome. Welcome. First time we’re talking about the secret to loyal donors. Email, welcome journeys. Um Elizabeth, why don’t you start us off with how important because we’ve heard from Patty on this subject in the past. Uh I believe it was two years ago, but it, that was two years ago. Uh start us off motivation. Why is the email? Welcome journey so important? Sure. So we’re all nonprofits. We all rely on donors to do our work and have impact. So we’re welcoming donors into our organizations every day. Um But so often we’re not nurturing them in a way to share the impact they’re having and share other opportunities for them to get involved. So welcome journeys, really provide an opportunity for us to introduce people to the organization, to our work and to ways that they can take part in our work with us. Um And of course, whenever you’re able to automate a welcome journey, it helps small teams like ours at Humanity and inclusion to welcome those donors out as much capacity or or resource of a manual welcome series. So for us, the initial need for a welcome journey that kind of pushed us over the edge was two years ago when the Ukraine conflict started, we work in situations of conflict and disaster mostly with people with disabilities. And we saw an influx of thousands of new donors who really didn’t know much about our work. And we’ve caught ourselves with the problem of how do we tell them who we are, why we’re managing this emergency situation. And the answer to that was the email welcome journey. And we’ve now added more of those to our repertoire to bring new donors into our space. And and Patty, we can do this with, with uh automation, but also, as Elizabeth said, also nurturing we can, we can automate and nurture together. Yeah, absolutely. Um I think the primary goal of any welcome journey is gratitude. Um We want to thank the supporter for whatever their most recent action was, whether it was a gift or joining an email list or signing a petition. We really want to validate that decision and say um you know, we really appreciate you and we’re so glad you’re here. Um Patty, I gotta ask you a question from previous years. Are, are you the person who told me that you, you, you go on dates and they google your name and they find your nonprofit radio appearances was that you, it wasn’t you? I thought it was, you know, well somebody did tell me I thought it was you. Uh no, you’re not, you’re not seeing that. Ok? No, you would remember all. I’m just sorry I I remembered the wrong person but uh it is happening. I I can’t say that there are any uh marriages have spawned from nonprofit radio appearances. Not yet, but I’ve only been at it 14 years. So I’m still working to get to reach that marriage threshold. Somebody did tell me that their dates were, were mentioning their appearances. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. So it could happen in your future, you know, I don’t know if you’re dating or not but let’s talk about uh is this, I mean, there’s a series, you have a, you have a kind of a, this is a series of like four or five emails properly timed. Ok. Now, let me ask, uh Elizabeth, are you working with the purpose collective in your email? Welcome journeys. We presume we’re here, we’re here together. Ok. Um So Patty, you’re the expert here. Uh How do we, how do we get our plan started? We got to think about the timing, the messaging, right? Like isn’t the first one supposed to be within, within 24 hours, 20 four hours? Ok. Describe what that first message should look like. Yeah, so that one is just a simple. Thank you. Um We usually recommend that it comes from someone recognizable within the organization. So like the executive director or anyone who has name recognition with your supporters. Um and the email can be really simple. It can even be plain text. And the goal is just to say I saw your donation come in and I wanted to tell you how much we appreciate your gift. Ok. So really simple. It doesn’t have to be formatted. Like plain text is great. It’s like like the digital equivalent of a quick handwrit note. I saw this come and it moved me and I want to thank you. Of course, you’ll hear from us, you know, you’ll get something more formal maybe or something. Yeah, that’s a great way to describe it. OK? Ok. And that within 24 hours, I mean, with automation, I mean, should we do this within 15 minutes or 30 seconds? Yeah, it depends on the system you’re using. Sometimes there’s like an overnight sink that it happens between like your, your database, your donation platform and your email program. I’m also thinking timing wise, if you want it to look authentic, if it comes within 15 seconds, it’s unlikely that your CEO could have, would have typed that and now you’re giving away the authenticity of it, the authenticity. Yeah, so that’s, that’s actually why wait until the next day, we usually wait at least a couple of hours if it’s a more automatic sync. But if you have an overnight sync that can, that can work in your favor because it looks like the executive director saw your donation come in first thing the next morning and wanted to send you a note. Ok. Alright, Elizabeth, what kind of responses have you seen? You? You’re getting emails back. Like people believe that the executive director really did take the time. Yeah, we do sometimes get emails back. Um just thanking us for the work that we’re doing asking if there are other ways that they can get involved. Um So yeah, we do see some people who reach out on those um on those emails and, and the best thing about those emails is they’re when someone is super warm to your organization. So our open rates are are much, much higher. So we’re automatically seeing more engagement from those folks. After that first email. Are you adhering to the patty breach purpose collective best practice of doing it within 24 hours that first? So yeah, so our donors, they actually do get an immediate thank you receipt if they’re donating online. Um So they get that immediately and then that first email from our executive director lands within 24 hours. And what’s what’s the next step in the in the journey? The next step is story of impact. Um So for us to her validation, for nonverbal validation, story of impact, gratitude and validation happening with our glances at each other. So yeah, have you done your session yet or no? It’s coming up. Oh, good. Let’s have some fun prep. Ok. Alright. So next uh story of validation. No, no validation is of impact is what you get from your consultant of impact. What does this one look like? What’s the timing, story of impact? Um We’re letting the donor know the difference that they’re making with the gift that they’ve sent. Um So for us, we typically will feature someone who’s directly impacted by our services. So our most, I guess most used donor welcome journey features the story of a little boy who was injured by a landmine and actually lost his leg to that explosion and went through our rehabilitation services and was fitted with a brand new artificial leg. So he’s, there’s a photo of him happily running through the streets and just the story of his recovery and, and the life that he’s living now thanks to our donors and I’ll let Patty answer the exact timing of that timing. Well, what is the format? What does it look like it? Now, this is, this woman has pictures and or maybe video or something. This is not the not akin to the first one, right? This is not plain text. We want people to actually be able to visualize the impact that they’re having. So um your typical kind of designed email with, with photos with text, maybe bolding certain um certain pieces that you want to stand out. Um That’s what it’s gonna look like. And what’s our timing? Timing is 2 to 3 days after the first email, we have data behind these uh these timing the flow. I mean, like if it comes too soon or if it, if it’s a week, it it it diminishes the uh the engagement with it. Yeah, exactly. We found that if you wait too long to send these emails, um people kind of forget about the donation that they just gave you and the email feels like it’s coming out of the blue and they’re like, why are you, what is this? So we definitely have clients who are nervous about. They’re like you want to send two emails within the first week that feels like a lot. Um How do you reassure them? We reassure them with the data behind it so we can show them that the open rates, the click rates are really high, usually double or triple their usual email newsletters. So that shows that people want to get these messages and they’re happy to receive it. And we really are striking while the iron is hot and we’re not annoying people with too many messages. And Elizabeth, you haven’t seen push back that, you know why? Two messages after I made my first gift or something. I mean, it seems it’s, it doesn’t seem likely. I mean, II I just made you a gift. I mean, I actually appreciate the attention and knowing now from the second one, what, what my gift is doing but, and just validate, you’re not, you’re not seeing no push back on that. People are opening them, people are engaging with them. I think the important thing on that second email is that we’re not making any sort of ask. We’re just providing them information on the impact they’re having no follow up. You know, if you want to do more for you, it’s too soon. Let’s talk 2 to 3 days much, too soon. Patty, what’s uh what’s our third? How many, how many are there in the The Journey Series? How many emails? Yeah, for a donor welcome series, we recommend five. Ok. Um and we’re about to do number three. And what are the other types of series you folks might have um you could have one for new subscribers. So whenever anyone joins your list, you could send them a welcome series. Um You could also get more specific about your donor welcome series. Like you could have one series for people who give a one time gift and a different series for people who sign up to give monthly. And then depending on your organization, um like Elizabeth’s organization has petitions that people can sign. And so we have journeys tied to those. So if you add your name to a certain cause we can send you a personalized series of emails about that, that cause. Um but yeah, if you also, if you’re recruiting volunteers, that’s a great time to send a welcome series. If someone signs up to volunteer or maybe after they do their first volunteer experience, they spent their first half a day or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Alright. So bring us back to number three, the third one in our journey. What’s our? So the first one was 2 to 3 days after the first email, which was within 24 hours. When should this third email be timed? This is one week after email number two and this is an invitation to become more involved. And so the key here is that this is also not a donation ask, but we’re asking them to take some sort of action with the organization. Um That could be anything from, you know, will you, will you become a volunteer with us? Will you follow us on social media? Um In the case of humanity inclusion, it’s, will you take a survey because we want to get to know you better? Um And the goal is basically saying like, we appreciate you so much. We want, we want to invite you into our inner circle. We want to get to know you. We wanna, we wanna have more interaction with you, Elizabeth. What does that survey look like in this third email? Sure. So we really wanna get to know our donors, so who they are, what motivates them um and what it is about our work that matters most to them, which then of course, helps us tailor our communications to them in the future to really make sure that we’re nurturing them and nurturing their interest moving forward. It takes like two minutes. It’s three questions um very, very easy to complete. So at this point, you’re not asking how, how do you like to hear from us or how often or anything like that? You’re saying it’s only three questions we’re not asking much on um on preferences of that nature, but really just what, what areas of our work they want to know more and and why so you can segment your future communications. OK? Anything else on email? Number three? Either of you that it is important for us to know we wanna do this journey correctly. Now, we don’t wanna, we don’t wanna uh we don’t want to uh walk off the path to follow the path correctly. All right. So we’re OK. Don’t message number three. Yeah. The only other thing I would add is that you can test this out for your organization, you can try a survey and if you’re not getting a lot of responses, you can try something else. OK. How about number four, kick us off with that one. Number four is another story of impact. So we as human beings interpret the world through story, we love stories. So I don’t think that there’s such a thing as too much storytelling. Um And this is just another opportunity to say um Here’s how you’re changing the world, here’s the impact that you’re having and again, that gratitude message, we really appreciate that you’re helping with this work. And again, no, no, no. And what’s the timing for number 41 week after the previous email? Ok. So we’re about two weeks after the right? Aren’t we about two weeks and 2.5 weeks or so after the action that began the journey another week? OK, Elizabeth, what are you doing? And number four? Sure. So number four clients. So we actually, we do have a story of impact, but it’s a little bit interesting because this email actually comes from one of our staff members on the ground in Columbia who works as a Dinor. So, clearing weapons contamination from communities and she’s actually clearing contamination from community, the community that she grew up in where she actually herself as a child stepped on a land mine that fortunately did not explode. Um And she opted to become a de miner and later went back and cleared that same area where she had had that interaction as a, as a kid. So, yeah, so it’s a really, it’s a really nice like behind the scenes stories getting to know both the impact of our work. But it’s another opportunity for us to showcase the boots on the ground that we have as an international organization. And that um you know, the staff that we’re working with are local and are working to improve their communities and they’re doing that. Thanks to our donors, anything you wanna add about? Uh your email number four feedback. Are you still? Uh So it’s through the journey, we’re doing five messages. Are you getting feedback? Uh like through you said when you get the first one from the executive director, you do get some messages there. Do you find much response to 23 and four? Yeah. So sometimes we, yeah, sometimes we get responses. Sometimes we don’t, I think the important thing on these journeys is to recognize that it’s really about keeping your audience warm and informed and familiar with who you are. Um So that whenever it it it’s right for them to take the next action, they know what they can do and why it’s important that they do it. Um So we do sometimes hear back from people. Um But for us, I think the most important thing is just knowing that people are reading those emails and they’re seeing about our work and the impact that they’re having. Um, so that we know that they’re gonna continue to engage with us and that goes to Patty’s point that some folks will forget that they even made the gift of you said, if Patty, if the second email comes too late, folks will wonder why you’re writing to me. You know, they don’t even remember. So you’re trying to keep them warm and engaged as you’re saying, Elizabeth. OK. And how about your, your fifth email, Elizabeth? What is that the the fifth email is the ask? So we’re looking for validation in that one. Yes, we’re asking. So um in that fifth email, um we are typically asking and encouraging those one time donors to now take another step forward and become a monthly donor and join our monthly giving community. Um What if they, what if they were monthly donors to begin with, if they are monthly donors to begin with? So we do have a separate, we have a separate journey for monthly donors. And so in that one, we’re asking them to upgrade their monthly gift so they can give extra and that’s actually a really good point. There’s a filter before this email. So in case anyone signed up to give monthly in the meantime, um they’ll be excluded from this message. The last thing we want to do is ask someone to give monthly who is already giving monthly. It makes it seem like we’re not paying attention a little bit, just a little. Ok. Ok. And what’s the timing patty for this fifth male? We want ideally be a month after the gift. So it should be about two weeks after email number, right? Ok. And so, and you feel comfortable Elizabeth that asking for do more within a month after about a month, right? Yeah, I think, I think that can initially be scary to folks. How is this, you know, are we going to offend anyone? And if we’ve offended anyone, they haven’t told us that we’ve offended them. Um So you got that right? No, we haven’t gotten that feedback. And in fact, we’ve seen people who have either made a second one time gift or people who have decided to start um that monthly gift or maybe they don’t take an action immediately after that email, but two months from now when we continue nurturing them and showing the impact that they’re having, maybe they make that gift, you know, two or three or six months down the road. Um But yeah, we haven’t had any, any negative feedback. I think the important thing is that, you know, donors choose their philanthropy and they choose when to give and how to give and where to give. And so for us, you know, I think Patty and I were talking about this earlier, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. And so, you know, we’re just asking, we don’t expect anyone to do anything that they can or don’t want to do, but we’re giving them that opportunity to make another gift and broaden their impact. If that’s, you know, if that’s on the table for them. And at this point, they’ve learned how important that gift can be and the, the life changing um actions that it can, can fund Elizabeth if it, if it was a petition, that was the first action that began the embarkation on the journey. But I love this journey. So I’m sticking with this journey metaphor. You have the path and it’s a cruise, maybe it’s a cruise ship or um if, if so, if they were uh they signed, they signed a petition, then I assume your ask in email five is for a gift. And how do you decide how much to ask for? Um We actually don’t, we don’t include amounts. Um So, you know, that’s something really up to the donor. We actually um I will give a plug to fundraise up, which is our donation platform and we actually use their machine learning um which A I is, I’m sure gonna be a focus of some of your other interviews. Um but we use their machine learning and they actually will suggest gift amounts. That makes sense to the person who is, you know, coming to our site and opening that donation form. Um But yeah, if they, if they sign a petition that last ask is just to make any gift, whatever the amount um to fund our work. Ok. Ok. Patty gift number, email number five. You haven’t said anything about this one yet? What do you want to add? Um Yeah, I would just add that. I really recommend acknowledging the donor’s previous gift um explicitly in this email. So saying like we remember that you donated to us a month ago, we’re still thinking about how great you are over here. Um We’re still really grateful for that and we wanted to invite you to become a part of this monthly giving program because we think it would be a good fit for you because we know that you’re passionate about this cause it’s because you gave us a donation a month ago that we’re now asking you to do this. So again, we want, we want to make it seem like we’re paying attention. We remember you, we see you um and we’re not just blindly sending out donation requests. I appreciate that. It’s because of your first action that we’re we’re asking this. Alright, we still have some time together. Is there more that you’re gonna share with NTC attendees? That you have not yet shared with nonprofit radio listeners. I mean, I don’t, I don’t appreciate you holding back on uh on our listeners. Is there, is there more that uh we haven’t talked about yet? Um Yeah, I mean, one thing that we’re going to mention in our presentation is that if creating a five part welcome series, feels daunting to you, you can always start smaller, you could start with 123 emails in the series. And as time allows, you could add more emails to them or not like the petition series at Humanity Inclusion. It’s a three part series and that’s it just three emails. Um So we believe having something is better than having nothing even if the something isn’t like the full recommended journey link. But you can set these up as automations in probably any decent email provider, right? I would think contact mailchimp sales force. All the big ones have automated series features. And Elizabeth, is that just a capacity issue for now? I thought you said, I thought you have four and five on the donor Impact Journey. We do have on the on the donor welcome journey. We have five, the subscriber series. We have five, our petitions, we only have the three. So we have two petitions that we ask people to sign. So um so on that one, the j it’s a thank you for adding your name. And then the second one is again that story of impact. And then the third one is that one time ask. Um So I think it depends on to the action that someone is taking. What makes the most sense and what kind of that final ask how it compares to the one before. So if someone’s already given you money, I think nurturing them a little bit more before you ask them for more money is important where if someone is, has taken an action like adding their name to a petition, then for me, it feels a little bit more comfortable to more quickly ask them to, to make a gift. So they get the shorter journey. The three messages makes intuitive sense and you’re seeing good results. Yeah. Another thing I want to mention is that we really recommend segmenting anybody who’s on a journey, segmenting them out of your general newsletter list until they finish the journey. So, ok, your regular list. So like we don’t want someone to get email number two in this journey and then six hours later get your monthly newsletter that might feel like email overload for someone. And um we also feel like it’s the point of this is to nurture someone to the point where now they’re ready after the five emails, now they’re ready to be added to the general list. But for that first month, let’s really make sure we’re just talking to them about their donation and their donation only. Ok. Yeah, it seems disruptive to the, to the, to the whole cause of the whole purpose of the journey to, to have other communications in there. There might, there might be an asking that you might be asking that a newsletter, right? I mean, there probably is and now it seems incongruous like what? But I, I thought you were. Yeah, II I thought I just gave especially if it comes too close to the gift to the initial gift that started the journey, I could see. All right. That makes sense. It’s confusion. It’s disruptive. Ok. Ok. Ok. This is exclusive for the first month. They are exclusive communications. Ok. Is there anything else I I would just say for nonprofits, especially smaller teams, it can feel daunting to set these up at the start, but it’s really worth the time and investment to do that because you, you are now having these personal tailored touches to every donor that’s coming through or every subscriber that’s coming through and there’s a little bit of work on the front end. But really these journeys, once they’re, once they’re set, you can kind of set and forget, you know, maybe do a refresh every 6 to 12 months to make sure that the is still relevant to make sure that, you know, maybe you have a new story of impact that’s more recent that you wanna change out. Um But once you get these going, um they make your job as a fundraiser as a communicator as a marketer, a lot easier um to, to meet these donors where they are. That’s a perfect place to end. Thank you. That’s Elizabeth Sellers, us, Director of Communications and Development at Humanity and Inclusion. And with her is Patty Breach founder and CEO of the purpose collective, Patty Elizabeth. Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Next week, the generational divide. That’s not a joke. You’ll see, you’ll see it’s coming. It’s next week. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org. I think this went pretty well. Uh It’s, it is exhausting. Uh um And I’m a little tired of hearing my voice. Uh But you know, I’m the 1st 600 40 shows were all me and I didn’t get tired of hearing myself for those 13 years. So we’ll see, we’ll see the, the jury is out still about uh whether we need an associate producer on nonprofit radio. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. The show’s associate producer for now is Kate Martignetti. Our social media is by Susan Chavez Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that information, Scotty. You with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for November 28, 2022: Thought Leadership & Content Strategy

 

Peter Panepento & Antionette KerrThought Leadership
Peter Panapento and Antionette Kerr co-authored the book, “Modern Media Relations for Nonprofits.” They share their insights on how to build relationships with journalists so you get heard as the thought leader you are. Plus, other media strategies, like crisis communications. This was part of our coverage of the 2020 Nonprofit Technology Conference.

 

 

 

 

Valerie Johnson & Katie GreenContent Strategy
Now that you’re an established thought leader, you need to produce multichannel content that’s relevant. Also engaging, actionable, user friendly and SEO friendly. Also from 20NTC, Valerie Johnson from Pathways to Housing PA and Katie Green with The Trevor Project show you how.

 

 

 

 

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[00:02:38.49] 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. I hope you enjoyed your thanksgiving. I hope you enjoyed the company of family friends, time for yourself as well. Lots of lots of good thanksgiving holiday wishes, I hope you enjoyed very much and I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of epidermal Asus below psA if you gave me the blistering news that you missed this week’s show. Thought leadership, Peter Pan a pinto and Antoinette car co authored the book modern media relations for nonprofits. They share their insights on how to build relationships with journalists so you get heard as the thought leader you are plus other media strategies like crisis communications. This was part of our coverage of the 2020 non profit technology conference and content strategy. Now that you’re an established thought leader, you need to produce multi channel content that’s relevant, also engaging actionable user friendly and S. E. O friendly. Also from 20 N. T. C. Valerie johnson from pathways to housing P A. And Katie Green with the Trevor project. Show you how Antonis take two. I’m still wishing you well. We are sponsored by Turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O here is thought leadership with me now are Peter pan a pinto and Antoinette car. Peter is philanthropic practice leader at turn two communications, Antoinette is part of the leadership team of women advance and ceo of bold and bright media. They are the co authors of the book Modern media relations for nonprofits. Peter Antoinette welcome. Yes. I’m glad we could work this out among the three of us. Thank you. And uh, it’s good to know that you reach well and safe in your respective locations. Okay.

[00:02:39.44] spk_1:
Thank you. Yes.

[00:02:51.33] spk_0:
Okay. I, yes, I see. No one within six ft of you. That’s good. Even though you are home, we’re talking about thought leadership and media. Let’s, uh, let’s start with you Internet. We can, we can use our leverage thought leadership and use the media to, uh, to influence those who are engaged with us, our constituents and even influence policy.

[00:04:02.66] spk_2:
So the media needs experts and non profits are on the ground there doing the work and they are the perfect folks to be experts in this conversation um, in particular and emergency Peter non talks about earlier about crisis communications and in a lot of situations the media scrambling looking for experts. If you have established yourself as a thought leader, which is what you should aspire to do. I know that turn to does the work in helping people to kind of establish themselves with the thought leader in this conversation. But right now we need people with good information and who can provide great stories for example and nonprofits can do that and they can do that work. And that’s why the thought leadership conversations important. Most nonprofits don’t see themselves needing to do that. It’s not the first thing we think about, we think about fundraising, right? Um, but not necessarily media friend raising. And so now is the time that you want to have those relationships and be considered as a thought leader.

[00:04:18.59] spk_0:
Because when there’s news that relates to your mission, um, your call is more likely to be taken, your email is more likely be answered. If there’s that pre existing relationship you mentioned. But if if everybody in the sector is calling all the, all the media blindly, then it’s just sort of a crapshoot whether they answer you or not or

[00:05:38.32] spk_2:
if you think about the media needing like, you know, going to a crisis example, like the media needing a source or an expert And they don’t want to quote the same person that’s, you know, something that I’ve learned from my media background and training. I’ve been working as a journalist since 1995. And you know, one thing that my editors say, you know, don’t quote the same person, don’t quote the same organization. So in a crisis people will call big box non profit sometimes. Um, and they’ll just see them as being the experts for a conversation. And that’s why establishing yourself as a thought leader is so important. So someone can say, you know, I’m a unique voice about this. We have an example in our book modern media relations where um, someone who an organization that worked with Children and families involved in domestic violence became very important in the conversation when a professional athlete in in Georgia was convicted of family violence and all of a sudden that person was called upon to be on radio shows and talk shows and they became a thought leader. But they done the work to position themselves as an expert. And so I know Peter you, I know you have some examples as well, but we just kind of dived in there and and didn’t talk about the whole broad concept about leadership.

[00:06:04.05] spk_0:
Well, all right, well, um peter, I was gonna ask you, how do we start to build these relationships? Um you wanna do you want to back up what thought leadership is?

[00:08:02.93] spk_1:
Sure, I’ll start with thought leadership defined and that and that’s really um the process of establishing one’s expertise in a in a specific area and and and doing it in a way where they are recognized beyond their own organization, in their own kind of immediate networks, as a, as an expert as a thought leader. Somebody who is driving the conversation and really really helping people better understand a key issue or a topic. So for a nonprofit or a foundation, a thought leader might be your ceo um who or executive director, somebody who um is at the front lines uh and and kind of is in a in a position where they um not only have expertise but they have some authority and being able to talk with some gravitas about a topic, um but um in order to kind of establish your credentials there um and get recognized, you have to do some legwork beyond just having that expertise. You have to be um you have to be comfortable talking about that topic. You have to um you have to spend some time kind of building the relationships and the and the and the the larger credibility that you are, somebody who has something interesting to say and the expertise to back it up. Um and the more you do that, and you can do that not just through the media, but through your own channels and through speaking at conferences and and all kinds of other things. Um the more you do that, the more you kind of become uh somebody who is recognized and is called upon to weigh in on important topics or or when news events call for it or in a situation like what, where we are now with with the covid 19 response, Somebody who can kind of come in and bring a voice of reason and perspective to what’s going on around us.

[00:08:31.98] spk_0:
So you have to lay the groundwork there, there has to be some fundamentals and you have to have your gravitas and you you need to appear bona fide and be bona fide not just appear, you have to be bona fide on the topic that you’re that you’re an expert in the mission of, of your, your nonprofit. How do you then start to when you have that groundwork? How do you then start to build relationships when there isn’t really a need for you to be talking about the subject?

[00:09:39.59] spk_1:
Sure, there are a lot of ways to do that one is that you, um, you start to build some personal relationships with media who are covering these topics. And you can do that either through, you know, somebody on your communications team that helps you, or you can kind of do it yourself, but you can, you can start to show up in, in their coverage of stories by, um, by um, positioning yourself and, and building relationships with individual reporters. Maybe even when they don’t need you by having an informational coffee or call so that they can get to know you and know what you stand for. Um, you can do it by your through your own writing and, and public speaking and making those things available and accessible to the media. Um, and you can, you can do it through your own channels to a lot of nonprofits have blogs, they have, uh, they have their own podcasts. They have different ways where they’re positioning their internal experts externally so that they’re kind of talking about and establishing their credentials around around a subject. And

[00:09:41.01] spk_0:
that’s your, that’s your owned media, right. That’s your own media versus earned media?

[00:10:12.00] spk_1:
Yes. Yes. And, and the value of that, is that the more you’re, you’re kind of demonstrating through your own media channels, your expertise, you’re not only building um some greater relationships and and credibility with your donors and the folks who are already kind of in your network, but you start to show up when people are doing searches or when people are on social media and seeing stories and articles that are passed around, if they may see something you’ve written or talked about, shared in another network, and it it sparks a light for them that you’re somebody worth going back to when they need, um when they need some, you know, somebody like you to weigh in on something.

[00:10:52.96] spk_0:
Okay, peter, I know you and Antoinette are both former journalists. Uh, so I’m gonna jump over to Antoinette for what Antoinette, what what what do these outreach, I guess, calls and emails to journalists to try to build the relationship. Uh what what do they what do they look like? What would you suggest people are saying to, to try to get the attention um to build the relationship, not, not when I’m looking to be quoted because there’s a breaking news, but to build the relationship.

[00:12:33.00] spk_2:
So, full disclosure. I’m a current journalist. Um so, yes, so I I still work for publications right now. Um and so people contact me on twitter and social media, which is a new thing. We talk about press releases. I’m a big fan of press releases, um yes, just full disclosure about that. But I still like for people to pitch me on social media, direct messages through twitter. If I’m using my company profile, it’s safe for nonprofits to contact me and say, hey, I have a story. I noticed that you’re interested in this concept, it’s always great when people know what I’m interested in. Like when they’re like, I noticed that you publish a lot of stories like right now I’m working on a story, a series of stories about missing and murdered indigenous women. And so when people see, oh, I notice you’re publishing stories about this and they pitch me on a direct message or um through facebook messenger even and say, hey, would you consider this the story and here’s the angle. Um or have you thought about, you know, I’ve had other people reach out and say I noticed you’re publishing these types of stories about, you know, missing and murdered indigenous women. Have you considered other stories about violence against women and it’s always a really great connection for me. So I think just kind of knowing what the journalist is interested in is really important, kind of, understanding their angle. Sorry, y’all, um understanding their angle and just flowing from there and saying, you know, here’s how we fit into this conversation is always a wonderful

[00:12:46.00] spk_0:
um so outreach by any of the social channels is fine too, you talk about twitter and direct message facebook, those are all

[00:12:56.47] spk_2:
yes and people tagging me like I feel like if a journalist is using their profile in a way that is professional then you’re safe to contact them and them in that way.

[00:13:11.60] spk_0:
Okay. Yeah, yeah peter anything you want to add to? Yeah, I think

[00:14:13.09] spk_1:
that I think is dead on about making sure though that when you do that, you are, you are, you’re you’re not coming with something that’s off the reporters beat or off of um what’s what, what you know, is um what they cover uh or the type of story they cover within that beat. Um you could spend a lot of effort reaching out to every journalist you see on twitter about your specific cause, but if they don’t cover your cause um you know, it doesn’t relate to what they what they do, then they’re probably either going to ignore you or or start to block you because you’re, you’re, you’re kind of almost spamming them. So um it’s it’s important to be targeted with who you reach out to as well and and make sure that you understand that journalists and their work before you before you do your outreach and come at them with a pitch that they don’t necessarily want. So yes, I think it’s really important to to do a bit of that homework up front um and respect that journalist time and if you do that and if you come at them with something that is actually on, on their beat and is of interest to them. Um, then I think you have a much greater chance of getting their attention and getting them to want to follow up with you and and help further, um, the relationship beyond that initial pitch

[00:14:32.47] spk_0:
and

[00:15:31.85] spk_2:
Tony, can I share a pet peeve like to Pet peeves actually is, um, if I write about a non profit and they don’t share the story on their own social, it’s just, it’s heartbreaking for me. Um, a lot of times I have to fight for these stories to appear and I have to fight with an editor to say, this is why this is newsworthy. This needs to be here. And then the nonprofit really doesn’t share the story. And I think, well, you know, I don’t write for my own, you know, just for it not to be shared. Um, and then the other thing is I love when nonprofits support stories that aren’t related to their particular story. So I’ll start noticing like one thing, um, Kentucky non profit Network, for example, before they ever shared or were involved in anything that I was involved in, they started sharing things or liking things that I would publish as a reporter and I didn’t know anything about them, but I thought that was interesting. So that when they pitch something, then you’re more likely to notice it as a, as a reporter, you’re more likely to notice because you feel like they’re really genuinely interested in the conversation, even if it doesn’t apply to them, you’re still interested

[00:15:51.29] spk_0:
Internet. Where are you writing now?

[00:15:58.07] spk_2:
I am writing, working on a piece for Guardian. I am for the Guardian. I am writing for Women Advance, which we have our own network. And then I write for Halifax Media group publications. So I’m on the regional circuit, doing all the fun things.

[00:16:13.38] spk_0:
Halifax is nova Scotia.

[00:16:22.99] spk_2:
No, Halifax is a media group in the United States. They own a series of their own regional newspapers across the country. So

[00:16:28.59] spk_0:
let’s talk a little about crisis management. You wanna, can you get us started with how you might approach crisis communications Antoinette.

[00:16:38.11] spk_2:
I thought that was Peter’s question. I’m just kidding.

[00:16:40.29] spk_0:
No,

[00:16:41.31] spk_2:
I’m just kidding. Um, crisis communications, I think actually Peter is a really great person to talk about this. My crisis communications conversation really has shifted with what we’re going through. So I don’t want to make it so unique to our current situation. Um, so I’ll let Peter start and then Peter, I can back you up on it if that’s

[00:18:50.46] spk_1:
okay. Yeah. So, um, with crisis communications, it’s really important to not wait until the actual you’re actually in a crisis to put your plan together. It’s really important to, to have a protocol that you’ve set up when you’re not in the middle of a crisis of possible to really kind of put together uh some protocols for not only what you’re going to say, but who’s going to say it and how you’re going to communicate during that situation. So um what does that protocol look like one? Is that you um upfront, you designate who your spokesperson or spokespeople are going to be ahead of time um and you spend some time ahead of that coaching them up in terms of what some of the key messages for your organization are, regardless of what the crisis might be. Some things that you would broadly want to try to reinforce and kind of a mood and a tone that you’re gonna want to take with what you’re talking about. Um do that 1st 2nd, is that you would really want to have a system in place for how you activate that for how you activate your crisis plan and your crisis communications. So that essentially means that you want to um you want to make sure that you know, kind of who who needs to sign off on what you’re going to talk about, who you’re gonna be involving in your decisions on whether you need to put out a statement um who how you’re going to communicate in what different channels, the more you can make those decisions ahead of time and have your structure in place, the better equipped you are to actually respond during a crisis situation and be able to get a quick and accurate and positive message out um in in in a situation and often crises are not their crisis because they’re not expected, but you can be planning ahead so that you you are able to react quickly and authoritatively during that situation. Um

[00:19:07.87] spk_0:
you’re you’re compounding the crisis if you’re not prepared.

[00:19:12.53] spk_1:
Absolutely,

[00:19:13.33] spk_0:
You’re scrambling to figure out who’s in charge, who has to approve messages, where should messages go? All, all which are peripheral to the to the substance of the problem.

[00:20:12.02] spk_1:
Absolutely. And in today’s world, where crisis can really mushroom not only in the media, but on social media, the longer you’re allowing time to pass before you’re getting out there with with your statement and your response to it, the worst the worst the situation gets for you. So you really need to position yourselves uh to be able to respond quickly to respond clearly and to respond accurately. Um and and it’s important to note that, you know, that planning ahead of time is really critical, but what you say in the situation is also critical to um you do want to make sure that you communicate truthfully. That doesn’t necessarily mean that um uh you uh u um reveal

[00:20:14.17] spk_0:
everything,

[00:20:14.72] spk_1:
reveal everything

[00:20:15.67] spk_0:
exactly

[00:20:18.45] spk_1:
do uh that you do reveal is accurate. It’s not gonna come back to bite you later. It’s not going to mislead people

[00:20:31.86] spk_0:
talking about complicating the complicating the crisis if you’re lying or misleading, it comes back. I mean, people investigate things get found out.

[00:20:36.17] spk_1:
Absolutely. And I, and I, and I was

[00:20:38.82] spk_0:
technically expanded your problem.

[00:21:42.71] spk_1:
Absolutely. And and you’d be surprised how, how many times when I was a journalist that people, if they had just come clean and and kind of got the truth out there right away, they may have taken a short term hit, but their lives would have got on fine after that. But the more you try to obfuscate or or lie about the situation, or or try to to spin it in a way where you’re, you’re kind of hiding the truth that the worse your situation is going to get. So be be in a position to be as transparent and clear and accurate as possible. Um, with that first statement, uh, knowing that in some cases you might have to say, you know, we don’t know. Um, but we’ll follow up when we do know, because sometimes a crisis situation is one in which speaking of, of when we’re in now, we don’t know all of the, all of the different twists and turns the covid 19 situation is going to take. Um, so, but but rather than trying to speculate, um or or or in some cases, as we’ve seen, some, some public figures do try to spin this one way or another, rather than just saying, here’s the situation here are concerns, Here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know. Um, it compounds the situation and in some cases it can be dangerous to

[00:22:01.82] spk_0:
people internet, You wanna, you wanna back up a little bit? I

[00:22:38.74] spk_2:
Did. So the, I think the statement, um, I love how people are putting forward these COVID-19 statements and I think we need to have more statements like that. I mean these statements are demanding and people feel like that. But I’m like we could do more of that. We could have statements as nonprofits on issues on public issues, public concerns, things that are um, emerging and urgent for people. I think about in the eastern part of north Carolina because tony I know you’re in, in my home state. I am

[00:22:40.58] spk_0:
in eastern north Carolina.

[00:23:26.54] spk_2:
Happy to have you here. And when we have um, hurricanes, when we have issues like that, if non profits would put out statements like they have with Covid 19 if they felt like they needed to say here’s where we are, here’s what we do here. Here’s, here’s what we have to offer before during after and just update them. You know, I feel like this crisis has brought forward a level of communication and and help people to see the necessary level of communication that we need to have. But we don’t have that all the time is non profits and people are looking for that. So I feel like in the eastern part of north Carolina where we had, um, you know, 100 year, hurricanes within three months of each other that we didn’t think would happen. You know what if people, what if people make covid statements like that? I mean, what if people and so I’m just gonna start calling the covid statements peter that I don’t have a better term for. But what if we felt like we needed to make these types of statements when there’s an emergency,

[00:23:51.92] spk_0:
um, Antoinette, I’m gonna ask you to wrap up with something that you said, which is contrary to a lot of what I hear. Uh, you said that you’re a big fan of press releases.

[00:24:02.00] spk_2:
Could

[00:24:03.26] spk_0:
you take us out with your rationale for why? You’re a big fan of them. I’ve heard that they’re pretty much obsolete

[00:24:10.20] spk_2:
from a journalist. I

[00:24:12.51] spk_0:
don’t know from a commentator. I

[00:24:14.37] spk_2:
don’t want to write that.

[00:24:17.47] spk_0:
I

[00:24:27.93] spk_2:
believe that. I believe that. Um, so yes, because I’ve been reading press releases for a long time and I feel like the who, what, when, where and how gets me past that part of it, then I can ask you all the interesting questions. So if you can give me that in a way that I can cut and paste and I will not butcher someone’s name, like tony

[00:24:43.54] spk_0:
It

[00:24:55.22] spk_2:
might be, it might be a challenge. So I can, we can get all of that out of the way. But a good press release gets me excited as a journalist. It brings me into the conversation and if you aren’t excited about your press release. I can probably tell on the other end. So I had a good press release. All

[00:25:15.51] spk_0:
right, thank you. We’re gonna leave it there. That’s contrary advice. Which which I love hearing. All right. That’s uh that’s Antoinette car part of the leadership team of women advance and ceo of bold and bright media and also Peter Pan a pinto, philanthropic practice leader at turn two communications and they are co authors of the book modern media relations for nonprofits, Antoinette Peter, thank you very much for sharing. Thanks so much. Thanks for

[00:25:28.62] spk_1:
having us. tony

[00:27:19.59] spk_0:
pleasure. Stay safe. And thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 N. T. C. It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. Well, as you heard lots of ideas about the relationships, the relationships that will help you be the thought leader that you want to be. That you ought to be relationships leading to thought leadership. Turn to communications. They’ll help you do it. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. It’s time for Tony’s take two. I am still thinking about you and wishing you well. I hope you had recovery time over Thanksgiving. If you’re in giving Tuesday, I hope you’ll be happy with your results or you are happy depending when you listened. If you are, if you did congratulations, celebrate what you achieved. Take that victory lap you deserve it. If you’re not so happy, keep your head up, you know that you did the best that you could, don’t let it drag you down. You have other successes that are gonna be coming and you’ll be celebrating those. So don’t let a disappointment drag you down going forward. You have all my good wishes for your year end fundraising this week and continuing That is Tony’s take two here is content strategy, which by the way, we have boo koo, but loads of time left for Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 N T C. That’s the 2020 nonprofit technology conference. My guests now are Katie Green and Valerie johnson, Katie is Digital Giving Manager for the Trevor Project. And Valerie johnson is director of institutional advancement at pathways to housing P A Katie and Valerie welcome.

[00:27:44.11] spk_3:
It’s

[00:28:07.84] spk_0:
a pleasure. Good to good to talk to both of you and glad to know that you’re each safe and and well in in Brooklyn and uh, suburban philadelphia. Glad you’re with us. Your NtC workshop was content strategy for donor engagement From tactics to testing, let’s start with you, Katie, what what do you feel was the need for the session. What are nonprofits not getting doing so well, they could be doing a lot better.

[00:28:57.87] spk_3:
Yeah. So we have this session this morning at the same time as we originally had planned, which is great. We were able to give it virtually. And I think what a lot of donor content strategy is missing is simply structure. I think a lot of people don’t know where to start and they’re intimidated by it and we Valerie and I provide it’s some real life examples on how you can achieve a donor content strategy that does get you closer to your revenue goals. However, the tone of the presentation changed a little bit given how the world has come to be our new reality. So we did talk a little bit about the crisis and what it means for fundraising and what it means for content strategy under a tight timeline, knowing that things are changing at a really rapid pace. So really just structure and storytelling are the things that we talked about in this morning’s presentation, which will be available for viewing later, we’re gonna have a recording available for those who weren’t able to make it. But yeah, that’s what we focus on.

[00:29:27.47] spk_0:
Let’s start with part of the a good strategy is using personas, user personas. Can you kick us off with that Valerie? How do you, how do you start to identify what persona looks like and what’s their value?

[00:29:54.36] spk_4:
Absolutely. So, a persona is really like a profile or a character sketch of someone that you need to connect with um and understanding their motivations and goals. So it’s a way of segmenting your audience. And rather than sending all of your messaging out into the ether, trying to tailor that messaging to a specific demographic or a specific group of people. So for pathways to housing P. A. We’re actually still developing what our personas look like. We have an idea of what it looks like, but we want to dig some more into the research and analytic side of things to see who exactly is supporting us right now and what um ties they have in common to help us build those profiles. I think Katie might be a little bit further ahead of us in developing this persona. So I’m gonna toss it over to her.

[00:31:18.60] spk_3:
Yeah. So uh user personas are something I’ve been doing throughout my career. I worked in an agency before I came to the Trevor project. So I was able to get a lot of industry knowledge on how we create user personas and user journeys. But what we did, when we started looking at our end of year campaign for last year at the Trevor project, we made sure we carved out some time to conduct a little bit of an audit of what our donors were looking like, Where were they coming from? What could we track? What could we track? We found out we had a lot more questions than we did answers. So in order to get user personas, something that’s really important is tracking and understanding where people are coming from and where their first and last last clicks are. So because of our ability to use google analytics and source code tracking protocol. We did get a lot of tracking during end of year that will improve what our users like going into future campaigns. But now we’re gonna be able to better tell what is actually inspiring people to give. What is the moment where they’re actually clicking that donate button. What is the first thing they’re seeing that starting their relationship with the trouble project? So that’s what we’ve been doing.

[00:31:45.74] spk_0:
What are the pieces of a persona? How granular do you get? What is it where they live to what they read or what what you give us some like depth of this thing.

[00:33:34.60] spk_3:
Absolutely. So the main important piece of a persona is to know what their needs are. So you can have a persona that’s as general as this is a donor. They need to know how to give that’s a persona. But what you’d like to do is get a little bit deeper in being able to tell what the values of that persona are. What’s what’s the name? What’s the age? What’s the key characteristics? What are the opportunities really? You know, I like to create fake names and really go into it. You stock imagery so that you can try to connect with who this person might be? You’re really giving a face to a name and a value to a person and you want to look at what donors are looking like. So for example, for the Trevor project, we have a lot of one time, first time donors and we have a lot of people who come in, they give their first gift and I’m trying to find where they’re dropping off. Right. What is causing that? So I maybe create a persona that is a one time user that’s not really convinced they want to give again a one time donor. Um, they may be young. They may be, um, like within our demographic, which is under 25 of the youth that we serve with our crisis services and suicide prevention services. Um, so you can get as granular as making and they, and an age and the demographic and the location and what devices they’re using. I think that’s a big one. Is this person usually on their mobile? Are they usually on desktop? What channels do they typically like to look at twitter? You can get as granular email. Are they just looking at your website? So you know, it should get as detailed as you can, but I would encourage people to get really creative with it. If the more details you’re able to get is just a, just a more clear picture of a donor that you’re looking to target. Just make sure it’s someone you actually want to target and not someone you’re gonna be, uh, that wouldn’t actually be coming to you? Like maybe Bill Gates isn’t going to be coming to, uh, a nonprofit website to donate. Um, but you can look at what those specific donors might look like that are more realistic for your campaign.

[00:33:56.12] spk_0:
Okay. Right. You’re, you’re basically on what’s realistic, not what your aspiration is.

[00:34:22.36] spk_3:
Yeah. To a degree, I mean, I think you can be aspirational aspirational in some facets of what you’re doing. I think it has to be somewhat grounded in in, you know, a realistic approach. We do get asked. I get aspirational myself when I’m creating donor personas. When you know, I am looking for major gifts, I am looking for people who are willing to process of 15,000 dollar credit card charge. And there are people out there that that do that. So when I do my donor personas, they may not be the number one target of my campaign, but I do want to consider what those people are interested in as well so that I can personalize content for them to the best of my ability.

[00:34:53.03] spk_4:
Yeah. The other thing to keep in mind is diversifying your donor base. So in looking at who’s giving two pathways to housing right now, they’re mostly middle aged, college educated white women who prefer facebook and giving on a desktop, um, which is fine. And that’s definitely one category of people that you would want to be supporting you. But philadelphia is an incredibly diverse city. So if those are the only people that were getting to with our messaging, then we really need to think about diversifying our strategies to build new donor profiles for people who don’t all look the

[00:35:36.72] spk_0:
same? Okay. And then once you have a bunch of personas and profile? I mean, it sounds like you could have 10 or 12 really different ones, different, um yeah, different characteristics of people, different types of people that come to you. And, and like you said, Katie, even people who leave, you know, you want to capture them back. So, so once you have these Valerie, then you’re trying to communicate to them. But how do you how do you turn your communications into targets to to these personas?

[00:35:46.68] spk_4:
So you really want to think about building content specifically for that persona? So you might be doing a campaign um that you want to hit a couple of different

[00:35:56.37] spk_3:
personas

[00:36:07.97] spk_4:
with, but you’re gonna tailor that campaign specifically to each persona and deliver the message to a specific segment of that campaign. So if you’re gonna do a mail campaign, um, you want to think about how you’re putting together that letter and what you’re writing into the letter and how you’re addressing the donors for each of the different segments for each of the different personas that you’ve put together to really help craft a message and to inspire them specifically to donate.

[00:36:32.48] spk_0:
Okay, right, like Katie, like you were saying, you know, yeah, you know what’s important to them. Um, but that stuff is, this is very uh amorphous to try to, you know, it’s not just what do they give and how much do they give? And what time of year do they give, You know, what’s important to them? What do they value? This? Is this is difficult stuff to suss out.

[00:37:10.42] spk_4:
Yeah. One thing our co presenter said this morning, Marcus was that donors are smart and they’re savvy and with the advent of the internet and all of the various channels that you can communicate with people now, they know what they want and they know what they want to hear from you. And if they’re not hearing from you what they want, they’re gonna go find someone else who’s going to provide that information and communicate to them the way they want to be communicated with. So fundraising and marketing for nonprofits right now looks very different than it did maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago, um, and, and donors know what they want now.

[00:37:24.54] spk_0:
Okay, so it’s worth, you’re trying to suss out all this amorphous information as as best you can. Okay. Um, Katie, is there anything more you want to say about personas before we move on to being multi channel?

[00:37:36.13] spk_3:
Let’s go on to multi channel.

[00:37:40.11] spk_0:
Alright, Alright. Anything I don’t want to leave anything important.

[00:37:44.66] spk_3:
Okay. I think we’ve covered the main point.

[00:37:47.19] spk_0:
Okay. What’s, what’s, what’s important about? Well, I think we all know why to be multi channel, but how to coordinate those messages? What what’s your, what’s your thinking there?

[00:39:21.81] spk_3:
Yeah, I can jump in here. So I think what people often don’t do is they don’t coordinate messages cross channel at the right time. That’s what I’ve been seeing a lot with just by industry research. I mean, I’m always looking at what everybody is doing in the space because I want to be part of the best. Uh but they say being what I’ve heard at multiple conferences is that there’s a rule of seven. Right. So as a non donor, let’s say, I’m scrolling through facebook, I need to see an ask seven times before I’m actually likely to give. So if you’re seeing that ask seven times on facebook, that means it’s seven posts. That’s kind of a lot. And that’s gonna have to be spaced out through a certain amount of days, weeks, months even. So if you’re just increasing all the channels that you’re presenting that message on. So let’s say I’m seeing it on facebook, I’m seeing it in my email. I’m seeing it on my instagram. I’m getting a paid ad for it because I liked it on facebook. That’s gonna shorten the window of which I see seven points of that call to action. So I’m gonna be more likely to give if I’m seeing it in a wider spectrum on the digital space than I am in just one channel. So making sure that you’re saying similar things, but that are custom to what the channel is providing, Like social media has like paid ads have a certain amount of characters you can use. So, um, making sure it’s optimized for what channel you’re using, but still with the common thread is really important for increasing your conversion rate.

[00:40:05.59] spk_0:
Okay, now it’s a little clear to me why I see so many ads for the uh, pickpocket proof slacks. I see them across all kinds of different channels. I’m not, I’m hardly on facebook anymore. But um, I, I see them when I go to websites and I’m reading articles and because one time, I don’t know, I, I swear it was like three years ago I was browsing through these like CIA approved slacks with 14 pockets and it’s all supposed to be pickpocket proof for something and you know, they $200 slacks or whatever, they’re, you know, but

[00:40:08.62] spk_3:
I’ve

[00:40:09.74] spk_0:
seen ever since. Yeah. And I don’t know. I’m not even sure that if I bought them, the ads would stop, maybe

[00:40:16.43] spk_4:
it’s

[00:40:17.57] spk_0:
sophisticated enough. No, it’s not right. That would be right. Because now your brother needs to pay or whatever. All right,

[00:40:23.00] spk_3:
Valerie,

[00:40:24.15] spk_0:
anything you wanna, you wanna explain about multi channel and how, how important it is to reinforce and be consistent.

[00:41:16.62] spk_4:
I think the biggest thing for me is if you’re starting from scratch and you’re really trying to develop content and put it in the right places. Um, you really want to be thinking about who your audience is on those channels. So for, linkedin, the messaging that you’re putting out is gonna look a lot different than what you’re putting out on facebook. Most people use facebook recreationally and they use linkedin for professional relationships. So the type of information that someone is seeking on linkedin or more likely to respond to on linkedin is a lot different than what they’re more likely to look for or respond to on facebook. Um so for us, we make sure all of our job listings go up on linkedin and all of our industry specific information that goes up on linkedin, um just to kind of show our expertise in the area. But when we’re posting to facebook, we’re talking more directly to people that we know are supporters of us and want to do tangible things to support us. So the messaging is different, even though the information is really the same.

[00:41:31.44] spk_0:
Okay, okay, again, you’re consistent but consistent, but but different. Maybe different format even. Um Okay.

[00:41:39.99] spk_4:
Yeah.

[00:41:52.00] spk_0:
Um I mean, there’s there’s other format, you know, content papers, white papers. Um Again, depending for the right, you know, for the right channel research, um, do either of you use um, media, uh, working in working through thought leadership in developing thought leadership in media media relationships either of

[00:42:30.91] spk_4:
you. Yeah, so there’s a local media outlet here in philadelphia called generosity and they are focused on nonprofits and social enterprises and people who are making positive impact in philadelphia. So they’re super open to having folks guest post um, or write op EDS for them. So we’ve utilized that outlet a couple of times. Um, actually just last week, um, our ceo over wrote an article about the opportunity for kindness in the era of coronavirus. So it’s something that she actually wrote to communicate to our staff members and let them know what our stance on, you know, moving forward was going to be. And we thought it was something that would be beneficial, not just to our staff but to be at large. So we passed it along to them. They posted it as an op ed and that gave us um, a little bit more bang for our buck for things that we had already

[00:42:58.94] spk_0:
written. Um, Katie, are you doing much with earned media?

[00:43:03.08] spk_3:
I am not the Trevor project is, but Katie Green is not doing that. Okay, handled that.

[00:43:10.85] spk_0:
Okay. Um, let’s talk about some, some analytics. I mean, how do we know whether we’re being successful? Uh, and where we need to, where we need to tweak or pivot Katie, can you, can you get us started?

[00:44:29.28] spk_3:
Absolutely. So analytics is very hard for a lot of nonprofits because it’s such a scientific based skill set. And you know, that’s something that when I first came onto the Trevor project, is that the first thing I implemented was our source coding protocol. It’s so important to know where people are coming from that you can actually optimize, but we a B tested and continue to A B test absolutely everything. We do it through our website, we do it through email, we do it through our paid social and to see how things work. I think really we just test absolutely everything things you think you know you don’t and that’s what I keep learning through testing is what you think works today, won’t work tomorrow and we retest everything. A time of day test for example isn’t gonna for ascend for email, isn’t gonna be the same after daylight savings. It’s not gonna be the same as the seasons change and particularly not the same now that everybody is stuck at home. So you know they’re testing and optimizing really what you know is working. It just requires retesting re optimizing and testing literally.

[00:44:35.20] spk_0:
Could you, could you give some more examples besides time of day, what are examples of things you test?

[00:45:24.47] spk_3:
Oh absolutely. So on our website we tested, we have a little um call out box with questions on our donate form. We tested the placement of that. Is it better to have it right up next to the form underneath directly on top. So the first thing people see um we test there, we test what photos we use a lot does a photo of somebody looking sad versus somebody looking more celebratory and happy. Um we test a lot of pride imagery because we serve LGBTQ youth. We wanna see if Pride imagery actually helps get our word out there. Um We test our colors a lot because our our brand color is orange which is can be very cautionary but we see you thing oh it’s your brand color. Of course everybody’s gonna always respond to it. But that’s not really the case. Like sometimes things like our blues and purples and greens when it comes to see ta buttons. Um Gosh, I mean I can tell you every test we’ve ever run. Thunder tests um using graphics versus photos on the website. Uh you know the size, the width, the height of our light boxes, the width of our donation forms the amount of buttons we have. It just the list goes on and

[00:45:51.24] spk_0:
on.

[00:45:53.35] spk_3:
I

[00:46:13.51] spk_0:
heard one that just made me think of just one small example of what riffing off what you just said was testing the text inside a button instead of just donate or like uh review or something. You know, be more be more explicit about what the what the action is you’re asking for instead of just a single word. A little little more descriptive. Yeah

[00:46:32.93] spk_3:
testing C. T. A. Is is something that we do a lot just to give people some ideas. I think one that can be really helpful when it comes to fundraising is seeing how your donors react to the word give and the word support and the word donate. So so it’s all the same thing. We’re asking you to support our mission to give to us and to donate. But those three words have very different feelings when you’re reading them on your screen. So that’s one of the biggest tests we ran. Um, but yeah, I wouldn’t recommend always testing the C. T. A. When you have a new one especially,

[00:47:09.95] spk_0:
was it, was it act blue that or or change dot org? I think maybe it’s change dot org started calling it chip in. Could you chip in? Okay. Okay. Um, um, so Valerie, can you talk us through some metrics? You’re the director of institutional advancement? What what numbers do you look for to decide how you’re doing?

[00:48:23.15] spk_4:
Uh, we look at a lot of things. So we’re looking at the click through rates on our emails and on our post actually reading to the bottom and clicking the links that we’re providing. Um, we’re looking at how many people are interacting with things that were posting on social media and whether they are enjoying it or not based on how many people are interacting with it. Um, we do a lot of surveys to do, so, talking to our donors directly and asking them what kinds of things they want to see what kinds of things they don’t want to see. Um, I know Katie is doing a lot more with metrics than we are. So, um, this is my friendly reminder to smaller nonprofits where there’s just one person trying to do all of this. you don’t have to recreate the wheel. Um, so you can look at an organization like the Trevor project that does have the staff who can look at all of these things and do all of these testing and all of the metrics and see what’s working best and they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So you can look at what they’re doing and then borrow it. Um, so for an organization like me that has a smaller staff, um, we’re doing a little bit on our own, but we’re also looking a lot at what other nonprofits are doing and assuming that they’re taking the time to test things and we’re kind of, you know, copying what they’re doing because it’s obviously successful for them.

[00:48:36.00] spk_0:
How do you learn from them? Do you just create a build a relationship and then ask what, what kind of metrics do you look at

[00:48:54.20] spk_4:
sometimes? And sometimes it’s as simple as going to the Trevor project, websites donate page and seeing where they place things and what they name their buttons and what giving levels they’re putting up there. Um, because you know, you’re never gonna be exactly the same as another organization. So you definitely want to take a look at who you’re using as an example and use someone who’s doing similar work or in a similar location to you. But at the end of the day, there’s only so much you can learn through testing and after that you’re just gonna have to dive in and do something. So if you don’t have time for the testing, you can do a quick search of what everybody in your industry is doing and kind of take it from there instead,

[00:49:20.34] spk_0:
Katie, uh, since everybody’s stealing from the Trevor project, what, uh, what I assume you knew Valerie was doing this.

[00:49:28.27] spk_3:
I didn’t, but it’s, it’s such a compliment.

[00:49:31.09] spk_0:
It’s

[00:49:32.63] spk_4:
because you do a great job. That’s why we’re looking at

[00:49:35.06] spk_3:
you. Oh gosh,

[00:49:36.48] spk_0:
what do you want to add about metrics?

[00:49:59.95] spk_3:
Um, I think I just wanna reiterate Valerie’s point that there are so many nonprofits where one person is doing this. Um I’m the only person on the digital giving team. I’m the first person they’ve ever hired to do Digital giving. Um I’m still a team member of one, but you know, I do have the support of a very large marketing team that helps me with creating all of the tests that we do and anyone can tweet me email me whatever if like any nonprofit ever wants to connect. I’m always an open resource. But uh, metrics are increasingly uh important, just critical to donors, content strategy. So

[00:50:21.55] spk_0:
since you’re offering yourself as a resource, do you want to share your email and or your twitter, you don’t have to give your email if you don’t want to.

[00:50:28.72] spk_3:
Yeah, maybe twitter is probably the best way to reach me because I’m trying, I’m trying to learn how to tweet more as a digital person. I feel like I need to, that it’s at Katie Sue Green like one word, so it’s K A T I E S U E G R E N K T. Still green green, just like the color. Okay,

[00:50:51.53] spk_0:
Okay, thank you. Um it’s a Valerie, you wanna uh wanna wrap us up some some parting thoughts about uh content strategy.

[00:51:18.42] spk_4:
Sure. Um since I am kind of representing the smaller organization here, I just want to remind everybody that you’re doing everything that you can and it’s everything that you’re doing is important. So don’t try to do everything at once, really pick one thing to focus on and get to a point where you’re doing that well and comfortably before you try to add more um listening to a podcast like this or going to a presentation, like the one that we did this morning is overwhelming in the number of things that you could be doing and it makes you feel like you’re not doing enough, but you are. And just tackling those small hills one at a time is much much easier than trying to climb the mountain.

[00:52:42.29] spk_0:
That’s very gracious, very gracious advice. Thank you. Thanks very much. Um that was Valerie johnson, that is Valerie johnson director of institutional advancement at pathways to housing P A. And with her is Katie Green Digital Giving Manager for Trevor Project. Thank you very much for sharing each of you. Thanks so much And thank you for being with Tony-Martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 NTCC in two weeks. Trafton Heckman with his book, Take Heart Take Action next week, I’m working on it. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by Turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows, 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 B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for May 23, 2022: Many Ways To Test Your Digital Fundraising

 

Jeremy Haselwood: Many Ways To Test Your Digital Fundraising
As our #22NTC coverage continues, Jeremy Haselwood walks you through 30 variables you can test throughout your digital fundraising, including your homepage, donation pages, Facebook ads, and more. He’s from Fundraisers Unite.

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[00:00:11.54] spk_0:
mm hmm. Hello

[00:00:12.80] spk_1:
and welcome to tony-martignetti non

[00:00:26.24] spk_0:
Profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad

[00:00:28.04] spk_1:
you’re with me. I’d

[00:00:28.35] spk_0:
suffer the effects of

[00:00:29.56] spk_1:
osteoporosis if

[00:00:35.44] spk_0:
I had to raise my eyebrows to the idea that you missed this week’s show many ways to test your

[00:00:38.94] spk_1:
digital fundraising As our 22 NTC coverage continues,

[00:00:41.82] spk_0:
jeremy hazelwood walks you through lots of

[00:00:44.59] spk_1:
variables you can

[00:00:45.66] spk_0:
test throughout your

[00:00:47.00] spk_1:
digital fundraising,

[00:00:48.43] spk_0:
including your

[00:00:49.12] spk_1:
homepage donation pages, facebook ads and more.

[00:00:54.24] spk_0:
He’s from

[00:00:55.15] spk_1:
fundraisers

[00:00:56.13] spk_0:
unite

[00:00:59.54] spk_1:
On Tony’s take two doubling

[00:00:59.99] spk_0:
down on please share

[00:01:03.84] spk_1:
redux. We’re

[00:01:03.95] spk_0:
sponsored by turn to

[00:01:04.97] spk_1:
communications pr

[00:01:06.57] spk_0:
and content for

[00:01:07.35] spk_1:
nonprofits. Your

[00:01:14.04] spk_0:
story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C o. And by 4th dimension technologies

[00:01:16.94] spk_1:
I

[00:01:17.12] spk_0:
thi infra in a box

[00:01:19.24] spk_1:
the affordable tech solution for

[00:01:21.08] spk_0:
nonprofits.

[00:01:22.54] spk_1:
tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just

[00:01:25.67] spk_0:
like three D.

[00:01:26.67] spk_1:
But they go one dimension deeper.

[00:01:29.64] spk_0:
Here

[00:01:29.88] spk_1:
is many ways to

[00:01:31.61] spk_0:
test your digital

[00:01:32.66] spk_1:
fundraising.

[00:01:35.14] spk_0:
Hello and

[00:01:36.00] spk_1:
welcome to

[00:02:11.54] spk_0:
Tony-Martignetti non profit radio coverage of 22 NTC 2022 nonprofit technology conference hosted by N 10. Those very smart folks who help you use technology as you are doing your mission as you are doing your social change work everyday. They’re helping you leverage technology. My guest now is jeremy hazelwood. He is digital fundraiser, author, trainer and marketer at fundraisers United Jeremy Welcome to nonprofit radio Hey, Tony, thank you for having me here. I’m so excited to be here and talk digital fundraising. Absolutely. That’s what we’re here to do. I’m glad you’re excited Thank you. Alright. I’m glad to see you get excited about digital fundraising man. It’s my passion. So it’s like I wake up and I’m, I’m excited every day because I get to help companies raise money and do more good in the world. So

[00:02:31.26] spk_1:
it took a while to figure

[00:03:16.54] spk_0:
out what it is that gets me up. But that’s, that’s definitely it. This is it. All right. And your session is aptly named 30 ways to test your digital fundraising. You would like to see nonprofits develop a testing plan testing regimen. Yeah, yeah. I think it’s something that’s very underutilized just in my experience working with nonprofit, especially from a digital side. Um, my background is like I worked for agencies that marketing and fundraising agencies that serve nonprofits heavy and direct mail. And my role with them was to really bring digital and make it, um, just a better channel for their clients to raise funds. I noticed they do a lot in testing when it comes to direct mail, but when it came to digital,

[00:03:17.90] spk_1:
it was kind of

[00:04:06.44] spk_0:
bland and one message and I’m like, there’s still so much that we can learn from digital, we can learn it so much more quickly than we can with direct mail. Okay. Um, is there a way that you’ve organized these, these 30 ways. I don’t know if we’ll be able to tick through all 30. Yeah, depending on how much you have to say about them, but we might, you know, we’ll see well organized by like channel um, facebook goal etcetera. Yeah, it’s actually funny. Like the original concept for this session, um, that I pitched to NtC was like 100 ways to test and it was gonna be a 60 minute session. Actually. No, no, that’s not. I have a, I have 100 ways to test within fundraisers unite. But for N TC, I was gonna do like 60 ways to test 60 and 60 minutes and then They’re like, well we only have the 30 minute sessions available. I’m like, let’s do 30 in 30 minutes. Um, 40, There you go. See the math works itself out. But, but for the sake

[00:04:21.13] spk_1:
of like organizing to

[00:04:22.15] spk_0:
your point. Um,

[00:04:23.16] spk_1:
I did, I focused

[00:04:24.42] spk_0:
on some specific areas. So I looked really

[00:04:27.44] spk_1:
at email, um

[00:04:27.92] spk_0:
social media,

[00:04:29.46] spk_1:
um, search

[00:04:30.33] spk_0:
engine marketing and

[00:04:32.66] spk_1:
let’s see

[00:04:44.64] spk_0:
um, donation page and social media. Really your facebook ads, not like all social, but so email, facebook ads. Search engine marketing, your donation page and your homepage. So these are

[00:04:45.20] spk_1:
The five areas that I

[00:04:46.29] spk_0:
focused on for the session

[00:04:47.78] spk_1:
for NtC.

[00:04:50.34] spk_0:
Okay, let’s start with the homepage and the donation pages because odds are

[00:04:53.91] spk_1:
everybody’s got one of those

[00:04:59.14] spk_0:
both of those and I do see some pretty weak donation pages, uh,

[00:05:02.69] spk_1:
lacking

[00:05:04.20] spk_0:
technology,

[00:05:05.26] spk_1:
lacking visual appeal.

[00:05:07.84] spk_0:
Um, so, but let’s, let’s start with, let’s start with the home page and you know, we’ll go beyond those two, but let’s make sure we cover the homepage and then donation pages. So what’s your advice around the homepage?

[00:05:18.01] spk_1:
Yeah,

[00:05:19.05] spk_0:
so with the homepage, I mean

[00:05:20.52] spk_1:
naturally it’s like

[00:05:35.54] spk_0:
you want your donation page, there’s so many boxes at the homepage, has to check when people come to your website, they need to know who you are, why you do what you do, who you do it for um in a way for people to connect with you. And some of

[00:05:36.31] spk_1:
the things that I talked about it and what people

[00:05:38.45] spk_0:
don’t realize too is like there’s things

[00:05:40.21] spk_1:
that you should test on your

[00:05:41.28] spk_0:
homepage. Um and there’s tools that you can use to test.

[00:05:44.03] spk_1:
Also, I didn’t get into the

[00:05:45.10] spk_0:
tools within the session,

[00:05:46.79] spk_1:
but you can use

[00:05:47.52] spk_0:
like um optimized

[00:05:49.00] spk_1:
lee or um

[00:05:50.57] spk_0:
omni convert. These are

[00:05:52.21] spk_1:
tools and

[00:05:53.29] spk_0:
actually google optimized you

[00:05:54.67] spk_1:
can use. These are tools that I

[00:05:56.44] spk_0:
we don’t have time to

[00:05:57.17] spk_1:
go into those, but what they

[00:05:58.41] spk_0:
essentially do is help

[00:05:59.38] spk_1:
you kind of a b test

[00:06:00.49] spk_0:
different elements on your homepage, for example, resources. Those

[00:06:04.69] spk_1:
3. 1 more time I’d like to

[00:06:05.80] spk_0:
share.

[00:06:06.47] spk_1:
Sure, sure. Optimized

[00:06:08.90] spk_0:
lee.

[00:06:09.84] spk_1:
Omni convert

[00:06:11.48] spk_0:
and google

[00:06:12.96] spk_1:
optimized and google

[00:06:14.11] spk_0:
optimize is free, but there are certain limitations, but

[00:06:17.26] spk_1:
basically these are

[00:06:18.14] spk_0:
like conversion rate

[00:06:19.29] spk_1:
optimization tools for your website or even

[00:06:23.94] spk_0:
for your donation page and to summarize

[00:06:25.59] spk_1:
what what these tools

[00:06:26.94] spk_0:
do is let’s say you’re one time that your homepage

[00:06:30.69] spk_1:
loads, You’ll

[00:06:31.42] spk_0:
get image a, as your homepage better and the next

[00:06:35.30] spk_1:
time your web page loads,

[00:06:36.63] spk_0:
it’ll be image

[00:06:37.37] spk_1:
B of the homepage banner.

[00:06:40.04] spk_0:
So it’s kind of randomized

[00:06:40.92] spk_1:
if you will, just

[00:06:41.68] spk_0:
to simplify. So

[00:06:42.74] spk_1:
when people see your

[00:06:43.45] spk_0:
website, they’ll get a version

[00:06:44.72] spk_1:
A and version be of your website.

[00:06:46.94] spk_0:
So you can test

[00:06:47.76] spk_1:
different things on your

[00:06:48.64] spk_0:
website, like an image

[00:06:50.23] spk_1:
or a call to action or a headline or

[00:06:52.27] spk_0:
something like that. Um, that’s generally what that does. Um, that’s again, I didn’t get into any of that because it does get to be a little more technical. Um, really what my point of my session was and really the point today is like,

[00:07:05.74] spk_1:
here’s what you

[00:07:06.65] spk_0:
can test and then we can also get into

[00:07:08.72] spk_1:
why it’s important to test,

[00:07:09.85] spk_0:
which a lot of it’s kind of common sense knowledge, but that’s not always common practice though. Um, but when it comes to your home page, one of

[00:07:17.79] spk_1:
the things that, that I

[00:07:18.71] spk_0:
always recommend is like testing like your hero image, which is like that first image that’s at the top of your home page. Um, some nonprofits might have a video running up there instead of an image, but testing that using, like, especially if you’re

[00:07:32.64] spk_1:
doing a campaign,

[00:07:34.34] spk_0:
um, if you’re running a

[00:07:35.81] spk_1:
campaign like right now, I don’t know

[00:07:37.81] spk_0:
when people will hear this, but let’s say it’s

[00:07:39.80] spk_1:
a springtime

[00:07:40.85] spk_0:
campaign, your email is springtime campaign oriented. You’re, let’s say you’re running

[00:07:45.74] spk_1:
facebook ads. It’s springtime campaign

[00:07:47.75] spk_0:
oriented. Um,

[00:07:48.97] spk_1:
so like let’s

[00:07:50.25] spk_0:
have like your

[00:07:51.43] spk_1:
hero image on your

[00:07:53.04] spk_0:
page be that

[00:07:53.77] spk_1:
same campaign

[00:07:54.94] spk_0:
as opposed to like

[00:07:56.06] spk_1:
here’s what we do or

[00:07:57.45] spk_0:
here’s how you can volunteer,

[00:07:59.14] spk_1:
like make that image

[00:08:00.58] spk_0:
coincide with the rest of your campaign elements.

[00:08:03.94] spk_1:
Right? Make

[00:08:04.47] spk_0:
it timely make it integrate

[00:08:05.61] spk_1:
with your campaigns,

[00:08:06.69] spk_0:
test that with the campaign versus not testing it if

[00:08:09.68] spk_1:
you don’t have the tools

[00:08:11.03] spk_0:
and watch

[00:08:11.82] spk_1:
how your donations

[00:08:12.82] spk_0:
will increase because that message is right there in

[00:08:15.19] spk_1:
the front for people to see.

[00:08:16.62] spk_0:
Um, so

[00:08:17.83] spk_1:
you know, that that’s one thing that you

[00:08:21.84] spk_0:
can test is your hero image using a campaign image as opposed to like a

[00:08:22.83] spk_1:
general branded image or

[00:08:28.24] spk_0:
some other kind of call to action image. Um, so I’ll pause there, see if you have questions or if you wanted me to

[00:08:30.72] spk_1:
kind of roll into the next

[00:08:31.91] spk_0:
one, you know, go to the

[00:08:32.85] spk_1:
go to the next homepage

[00:08:34.13] spk_0:
idea.

[00:08:34.72] spk_1:
Okay. Yeah. Next one would be like your

[00:08:37.09] spk_0:
donation

[00:08:37.87] spk_1:
button text. Um,

[00:08:40.04] spk_0:
pretty much every

[00:08:40.80] spk_1:
nonprofit. I haven’t

[00:08:42.02] spk_0:
Seen one and I don’t

[00:08:43.18] spk_1:
know how long

[00:08:44.37] spk_0:
that does not include that donate button

[00:08:46.28] spk_1:
up in the upper, usually

[00:08:47.38] spk_0:
right hand corner.

[00:08:48.42] spk_1:
Uh, and most of

[00:08:49.52] spk_0:
them will say donate and I think

[00:08:51.45] spk_1:
that’s fine. I don’t think

[00:08:52.42] spk_0:
there’s anything wrong with donate, but what if instead of donate it said give now

[00:08:58.04] spk_1:
or make

[00:08:58.64] spk_0:
a difference

[00:08:59.42] spk_1:
or feed a

[00:09:00.32] spk_0:
family, you know, whatever

[00:09:01.72] spk_1:
that call to action,

[00:09:02.71] spk_0:
maybe fund

[00:09:04.24] spk_1:
a research study.

[00:09:06.24] spk_0:
Um, so

[00:09:07.12] spk_1:
we’re very accustomed to just saying donate now because it’s

[00:09:09.60] spk_0:
very direct, but it’s also

[00:09:10.99] spk_1:
very transactional.

[00:09:12.48] spk_0:
Um, but again,

[00:09:13.54] spk_1:
I’m not saying that it’s,

[00:09:14.48] spk_0:
it’s not going to

[00:09:15.59] spk_1:
work for your organization, but if we

[00:09:16.97] spk_0:
don’t test, we don’t know

[00:09:18.19] spk_1:
right.

[00:09:18.86] spk_0:
Um, and I think there’s certain

[00:09:20.52] spk_1:
kind of boilerplate

[00:09:21.54] spk_0:
templates that is non profit as an

[00:09:23.94] spk_1:
industry we go

[00:09:24.86] spk_0:
with because we know that in general this

[00:09:27.09] spk_1:
is what’s supposed to work. And I don’t

[00:09:29.71] spk_0:
remember you

[00:09:30.76] spk_1:
remember years ago act Blue

[00:09:32.36] spk_0:
did well with Chip in.

[00:09:34.44] spk_1:
Yeah,

[00:09:36.06] spk_0:
something like

[00:09:36.69] spk_1:
that. But I’m sure they, I mean

[00:09:57.94] spk_0:
they have lots and lots of records that they’re mailing too. So I’m sure they tested and, and chip in. You saw the blue button and said and for them it was like chip in, you know? Yeah. Well, but, and even to that point it’s like chip in and that could be like vernacular. That’s that organization and their audiences like they associate with that non profit you know, So what’s the vernacular, the language

[00:10:00.72] spk_1:
that you’re a nonprofit would

[00:10:01.69] spk_0:
use, you know, maybe it is chip in, you know, maybe it’s feed a family, you know, whatever that is, but test that out. Um, if you don’t have, if you have zero data, your new nonprofit or you’ve never tested before, then you probably have data on what donate now is doing for you. Like let’s switch it for a month and try to keep everything constant If we, if we have too many factors going, we’re not going to know what works, you know, so you always want to change

[00:10:24.81] spk_1:
One thing at one time.

[00:10:26.14] spk_0:
Um, and if all

[00:10:26.91] spk_1:
things are the same and we

[00:10:28.01] spk_0:
only changed the text on that donated button, then it’s a pretty safe bet that the donate button was the reason that, you know, the,

[00:10:35.49] spk_1:
that we got and you can

[00:10:38.54] spk_0:
also test it with. I’m trying to think of some of the other

[00:10:39.85] spk_1:
tools. Um, well even the tools

[00:10:42.64] spk_0:
that I mentioned, they can test conversion rates and things like that.

[00:10:45.52] spk_1:
But because

[00:10:46.50] spk_0:
I know one pieces, like we talked about testing, but then there’s like,

[00:10:48.91] spk_1:
how do you measure the testing? Um,

[00:10:50.85] spk_0:
and one is if you’re, you’re not using any

[00:10:53.25] spk_1:
tools, it’s just kind of how did we do last month

[00:10:57.44] spk_0:
versus how we do this month? Um, did we change anything

[00:10:58.99] spk_1:
else? No, Then we can probably attribute it to this and that’s kind of the

[00:11:02.54] spk_0:
roundabout. Like

[00:11:03.49] spk_1:
we can probably attribute it to this.

[00:11:05.50] spk_0:
Um, if

[00:11:06.52] spk_1:
smaller, medium

[00:11:07.67] spk_0:
sized nonprofits

[00:11:08.40] spk_1:
may not have the budget

[00:11:09.68] spk_0:
to actually put the analytics and technology behind

[00:11:12.16] spk_1:
knowing for sure

[00:11:13.50] spk_0:
what

[00:11:14.30] spk_1:
the difference maker was. But if you’re

[00:11:16.18] spk_0:
looking for some data points like that’s certainly something that can help is

[00:11:20.11] spk_1:
swapping it out and keeping

[00:11:21.35] spk_0:
everything else the same.

[00:12:07.14] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications, Content creation and content management, What projects do you have that they can take off your plate, lift these weights from your shoulders? Content creation Is there some writing project some series that you need to do or that you’ve been thinking about doing you’d like to do for internal audiences. External board donor’s community. What writing projects can they take off your plate and then the content management and also the distribution. Getting you the

[00:12:07.84] spk_0:
placements and

[00:12:49.14] spk_1:
as well as managing that content for you on your site, whether that’s blog, wherever you may, print or digital. Right, Alright. So how can they help you with content creation, content management and then also the distribution, getting the, getting your good word, you as an opinion leader, thought leader in your community. Getting that out. Turn to communications, your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. Now back to many ways to test your digital fundraising.

[00:12:54.74] spk_0:
You made the point a

[00:12:56.05] spk_1:
couple of times, keeping everything

[00:12:57.26] spk_0:
else the same. I

[00:12:58.88] spk_1:
guess if you if you change a few things

[00:13:01.05] spk_0:
or a bunch of things

[00:13:02.54] spk_1:
and your outcomes improved,

[00:13:07.04] spk_0:
I guess

[00:13:07.82] spk_1:
by outcomes, you know,

[00:13:08.65] spk_0:
we’re keeping it simple. So we’re saying

[00:13:10.00] spk_1:
donations improved.

[00:13:11.67] spk_0:
Then

[00:13:12.47] spk_1:
then then

[00:13:13.21] spk_0:
then that’s terrific.

[00:13:14.25] spk_1:
But if donations declined

[00:13:16.35] spk_0:
and you don’t know what it is that you changed that caused them to

[00:13:19.14] spk_1:
decline. So then you have to go back to where you were in the beginning

[00:13:22.43] spk_0:
and then

[00:13:23.39] spk_1:
iterative lee changed

[00:13:26.44] spk_0:
one thing at a time and

[00:13:26.59] spk_1:
figure out what what what

[00:13:29.24] spk_0:
is, what is, what

[00:13:29.49] spk_1:
is it that’s depressing

[00:13:30.73] spk_0:
your,

[00:13:31.56] spk_1:
your outcomes and change that one little thing

[00:13:33.92] spk_0:
and then and then test and see

[00:13:35.54] spk_1:
if you, you get higher

[00:13:36.53] spk_0:
than your baseline.

[00:13:38.54] spk_1:
Yeah, exactly. Because the

[00:13:43.75] spk_0:
tests that I’m talking about in the test

[00:13:45.31] spk_1:
will go through. It’s like

[00:13:46.44] spk_0:
these are tests that you do one at a time. I’m not like

[00:13:48.64] spk_1:
here’s 50 things

[00:13:49.62] spk_0:
you can test and let’s do them all at once.

[00:13:51.65] spk_1:
Because if you think about if you

[00:13:53.03] spk_0:
change that button, if you

[00:13:54.08] spk_1:
change it to say give

[00:13:55.37] spk_0:
now instead of donate now and

[00:13:57.07] spk_1:
it goes to your landing page. But you’ve

[00:13:58.64] spk_0:
also changed an image

[00:14:00.23] spk_1:
or headline or something on the

[00:14:02.54] spk_0:
landing page, then we don’t know if

[00:14:03.10] spk_1:
you’ve got more donations

[00:14:04.08] spk_0:
because you change something on your landing page or if

[00:14:06.55] spk_1:
you change something on that button that got them to the landing page. So

[00:14:10.47] spk_0:
you know the, the need

[00:14:11.79] spk_1:
to put together kind of a testing

[00:14:13.17] spk_0:
roadmap um,

[00:14:14.35] spk_1:
would be something that you would want to do for your organization and be like here

[00:14:17.76] spk_0:
and it takes time

[00:14:18.74] spk_1:
because you can only test

[00:14:19.78] spk_0:
one thing at a time. So it’s like

[00:14:20.87] spk_1:
here’s what we’re going to test

[00:14:22.07] spk_0:
in this calendar year and then whether it’s

[00:14:24.97] spk_1:
bi weekly, weekly,

[00:14:26.41] spk_0:
monthly, whatever it is, you know, having that plan laid out the

[00:14:29.73] spk_1:
to learn

[00:14:30.52] spk_0:
because the whole point of testing is like we want to learn,

[00:14:32.75] spk_1:
we want to raise more

[00:14:33.59] spk_0:
money for

[00:14:34.88] spk_1:
less cost

[00:14:35.65] spk_0:
of, of a transaction to obtain that donation and we

[00:14:39.13] spk_1:
want to learn more creative

[00:14:40.54] spk_0:
works. How many hits do we need?

[00:14:42.93] spk_1:
What’s a, what’s a

[00:14:44.24] spk_0:
sample size that

[00:14:45.20] spk_1:
we can rely on

[00:14:47.04] spk_0:
uh,

[00:14:47.69] spk_1:
to draw conclusions from?

[00:14:49.84] spk_0:
Yeah, that’s actually a really good question.

[00:14:52.72] spk_1:
Um, and I

[00:14:53.53] spk_0:
don’t, I don’t have like an answer

[00:14:55.01] spk_1:
that other than the

[00:14:55.97] spk_0:
generic. It depends.

[00:14:57.49] spk_1:
You know, I think

[00:14:58.69] spk_0:
if you’re a smaller nonprofit

[00:15:00.45] spk_1:
that doesn’t

[00:15:01.89] spk_0:
get a lot of traffic to your homepage in this case, then I mean

[00:15:06.04] spk_1:
where it could take

[00:15:07.08] spk_0:
you months to get enough traffic, you know, which is

[00:15:09.83] spk_1:
kind of like the sad thing about

[00:15:11.44] spk_0:
a nonprofit that doesn’t get a

[00:15:12.55] spk_1:
lot of traffic is when will,

[00:15:14.09] spk_0:
you know, we’ve, we have enough data to learn something. You

[00:15:17.83] spk_1:
know, I think it’s quicker to

[00:15:19.08] spk_0:
learn like with like

[00:15:20.11] spk_1:
advertising where you can actually have a budget and it will

[00:15:22.88] spk_0:
kind of force impressions

[00:15:24.16] spk_1:
to your website.

[00:15:25.25] spk_0:
Um, in that case, like

[00:15:26.78] spk_1:
I usually like to have,

[00:15:28.54] spk_0:
I mean at least a few 1000 clicks. Uh, so

[00:15:31.45] spk_1:
we kind of have enough data to make

[00:15:33.33] spk_0:
a decision.

[00:15:34.27] spk_1:
Uh, with the

[00:15:35.33] spk_0:
website, I mean going by that, I mean there’s, there’s some small

[00:15:39.98] spk_1:
nonprofits that may not get a

[00:15:41.99] spk_0:
1000 visits to their website in

[00:15:44.71] spk_1:
half a year or a whole year.

[00:15:46.38] spk_0:
You know? Um,

[00:15:47.58] spk_1:
in which case maybe

[00:15:48.65] spk_0:
you want to test something else

[00:15:49.82] spk_1:
1st? Maybe when you’re

[00:15:50.78] spk_0:
prioritizing exactly exactly. It’s

[00:15:56.07] spk_1:
like, where? Which

[00:15:57.17] spk_0:
I think, And I

[00:15:57.93] spk_1:
didn’t really think about this

[00:15:58.96] spk_0:
when I put it together. But

[00:16:00.14] spk_1:
that’s actually a really good question. Because when you look at all the things

[00:16:03.04] spk_0:
that you can test with your

[00:16:04.08] spk_1:
nonprofit, it’s like, what makes the

[00:16:05.89] spk_0:
most sense to test? Like where do

[00:16:07.48] spk_1:
we have the most data? Where are we getting the most

[00:16:09.60] spk_0:
traction? Maybe it’s a social

[00:16:10.80] spk_1:
media post. Maybe we have a good

[00:16:12.25] spk_0:
audience on social media.

[00:16:13.75] spk_1:
So, let’s test

[00:16:14.95] spk_0:
some of our posts

[00:16:15.76] spk_1:
there because

[00:16:16.98] spk_0:
we know we have a bigger sample

[00:16:18.41] spk_1:
size that we can work

[00:16:20.84] spk_0:
with. Okay. All right.

[00:16:21.40] spk_1:
Well, so your host

[00:16:23.74] spk_0:
is uh, chosen to start

[00:16:24.62] spk_1:
with the homepage

[00:16:25.72] spk_0:
because it’s ubiquitous. Everybody has one.

[00:16:27.98] spk_1:
But with the

[00:16:29.06] spk_0:
caveat that it may not be the right place for you to start your testing.

[00:16:32.63] spk_1:
If you have if

[00:16:33.92] spk_0:
you don’t have a lot of traffic to your homepage. Alright,

[00:16:36.02] spk_1:
let’s stick with the homepage. You got another, you

[00:16:40.24] spk_0:
got another one or two ideas. The homepage, and then we’ll move on. Yeah. Some other

[00:16:41.27] spk_1:
Ideas for the homepage. one

[00:16:44.54] spk_0:
would be, um,

[00:16:45.28] spk_1:
the, like the light box.

[00:16:46.53] spk_0:
So when you come to a website and

[00:16:48.89] spk_1:
people call

[00:16:50.06] spk_0:
them light boxes, they call them pop ups,

[00:16:52.17] spk_1:
Interstitial,

[00:16:53.66] spk_0:
you know, there’s different names for them. Kind of the common name. Yeah. That’s

[00:16:57.06] spk_1:
the more technical. Yeah. Which I never used

[00:17:02.89] spk_0:
Exactly. 100%, 100%. Because you say that like the, you know.

[00:17:13.34] spk_1:
Exactly, Yeah. The bigger words

[00:17:16.14] spk_0:
aren’t always better.

[00:17:17.14] spk_1:
And when I

[00:17:17.97] spk_0:
talked to my, my tech and

[00:17:19.67] spk_1:
my developer friends and they’re

[00:17:22.54] spk_0:
telling me what it is, I’m like,

[00:17:22.94] spk_1:
okay, how can I take what they

[00:17:24.31] spk_0:
said and translate it

[00:17:25.39] spk_1:
just to everyday common

[00:17:26.58] spk_0:
terms. And sometimes I’m like, I

[00:17:27.98] spk_1:
have no idea what you’re talking

[00:17:29.24] spk_0:
about,

[00:17:30.62] spk_1:
but we have drug in

[00:17:31.55] spk_0:
jail on nonprofit radio

[00:17:33.93] spk_1:
I don’t know if I have no idea what you’re

[00:17:35.25] spk_0:
talking about. You know, I’ll stop

[00:17:37.31] spk_1:
you. So if you had

[00:17:38.28] spk_0:
introduced it with

[00:17:39.57] spk_1:
traditional

[00:17:40.10] spk_0:
transitional, you know,

[00:17:41.59] spk_1:
yeah, whatever.

[00:17:45.54] spk_0:
But like, yeah, you see,

[00:17:46.23] spk_1:
I didn’t introduce,

[00:17:47.54] spk_0:
Yeah. Because you

[00:17:48.25] spk_1:
got to know who the audience is, right?

[00:17:50.11] spk_0:
So if this was

[00:17:51.11] spk_1:
like for a tech blog or

[00:17:52.33] spk_0:
something, I’m like the interstitial.

[00:17:53.97] spk_1:
But no, we’re talking about just non profit let’s start with the base like, you know, um,

[00:17:58.57] spk_0:
let’s just

[00:17:59.56] spk_1:
the basics here. So yeah,

[00:18:00.58] spk_0:
pop up a

[00:18:01.67] spk_1:
lightbox testing

[00:18:03.24] spk_0:
that. And I say tested and, and

[00:18:04.53] spk_1:
a lot of these things I’m saying test,

[00:18:06.28] spk_0:
but in my

[00:18:07.98] spk_1:
own way I’m saying

[00:18:14.64] spk_0:
do this, I’m not saying tested because like light boxes are so effective. Like pretty much no matter how you’re using if using them for email acquisition,

[00:18:17.96] spk_1:
if you’re using them to

[00:18:19.08] spk_0:
promote a campaign

[00:18:20.07] spk_1:
to increase your donations.

[00:18:21.53] spk_0:
Um, what I find

[00:18:23.35] spk_1:
though is a lot of

[00:18:24.32] spk_0:
nonprofits

[00:18:25.23] spk_1:
and I say that a lot, a lot

[00:18:26.49] spk_0:
of non profits, but

[00:18:27.40] spk_1:
it is true,

[00:18:28.61] spk_0:
um, that they’re

[00:18:32.54] spk_1:
like, well I don’t like pop ups, so I don’t want to use them, you know, But it’s not really about what you like because your

[00:18:35.06] spk_0:
donors and your website visitors

[00:18:36.84] spk_1:
probably don’t

[00:18:37.64] spk_0:
like a lot of pop ups

[00:18:38.63] spk_1:
either. But the data

[00:18:40.42] spk_0:
doesn’t lie. Like

[00:18:41.60] spk_1:
these things do work.

[00:18:42.84] spk_0:
And the reason they work is

[00:18:44.17] spk_1:
there’s nothing else that you

[00:18:45.26] spk_0:
can do on the homepage when that

[00:18:47.44] spk_1:
pop up comes on the screen other

[00:18:49.05] spk_0:
than click it and turn

[00:18:50.20] spk_1:
it off or do the

[00:18:51.90] spk_0:
action that it says there’s

[00:18:53.06] spk_1:
two choices. If someone goes straight to your

[00:18:56.24] spk_0:
website, they’ve

[00:18:56.39] spk_1:
got probably 20 different choices, click on your,

[00:18:58.92] spk_0:
contact us, click

[00:19:00.10] spk_1:
on an image,

[00:19:01.16] spk_0:
submit an email, click on any of your menu items. Like there’s so many different choices

[00:19:06.21] spk_1:
that you can make. But that pop up is like A or B. Do I

[00:19:09.66] spk_0:
close this and look at the website or do I hit the donate button or do I put my email in and submit it and now I’m a subscriber. So

[00:19:17.04] spk_1:
they’re extremely

[00:19:17.69] spk_0:
effective. Yeah, 100%. So

[00:19:22.73] spk_1:
yeah, so they

[00:19:24.13] spk_0:
work. But I’m saying tested because the thing is like, I’ve never seen it not work. So maybe your nonprofit is different and maybe you can test it with running with the campaign and if you didn’t raise any more money, which if that happens, like

[00:19:37.14] spk_1:
I’d love for those people to reach out

[00:19:39.44] spk_0:
to me because I want to

[00:19:39.94] spk_1:
know who those organizations are

[00:19:41.40] spk_0:
because it’s like,

[00:19:42.34] spk_1:
well I’ve never heard of that but

[00:19:44.12] spk_0:
here’s maybe some other

[00:21:16.84] spk_1:
things that you can strike. It’s time for a break. Fourth dimension technologies. Their I. T. Solution is I. T. Infra. In a box. It’s budget friendly. It’s holistic. It’s the buffet of I. T. Solutions because you pick what you need and you leave the rest you needn’t hire them for all the services that they can do. They’ve got this I. T. Infra in a box for you to choose from like overall I. T. Assessment whether you want to implement multifactor authentication which a lot of people are saying is a very good idea. We’ve had guests saying exactly that um there might be other security for your site for your devices those mobile devices that are in people’s homes. Now cost analysis help desk. Do you need help that way with tech with like tech support and there’s more in the I. T. In for in a box you choose what’s right for your current I. T. Status. What’s right for your budget? Yeah leave the rest behind fourth dimension technologies tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D. Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. Now back to many ways to test your digital fundraising with jeremy hazelwood. There are variables within the pop

[00:21:18.78] spk_0:
up that you can test how

[00:21:20.68] spk_1:
long a delay

[00:21:21.65] spk_0:
how long is someone on your homepage before it before

[00:21:23.93] spk_1:
it pops up?

[00:21:25.14] spk_0:
Of course what’s the text that’s in it again.

[00:21:28.40] spk_1:
What’s the button that’s

[00:21:29.43] spk_0:
in it. You have to have a button labeled that’s in it,

[00:21:32.14] spk_1:
Right.

[00:21:34.14] spk_0:
Yeah. What’s the offer?

[00:21:35.26] spk_1:
You know? So it could be

[00:21:36.35] spk_0:
$10 equals this or

[00:21:37.95] spk_1:
$50 equals that.

[00:21:39.17] spk_0:
So yeah, there’s

[00:21:40.14] spk_1:
probably a whole other

[00:21:41.73] spk_0:
15 different tests

[00:21:43.11] spk_1:
that you can run just within that. But let’s

[00:21:45.17] spk_0:
start at the basics. Okay. Give us one more for the homepage.

[00:21:49.74] spk_1:
Yeah. One more for the home page. And this is

[00:21:51.37] spk_0:
really simple. But um what

[00:21:53.54] spk_1:
about a donate button at the bottom of your

[00:21:55.59] spk_0:
page? Um And the reason that I say

[00:21:58.00] spk_1:
that is when people scroll

[00:21:59.98] spk_0:
pasture

[00:22:00.81] spk_1:
donate button, if your

[00:22:01.73] spk_0:
menu isn’t like what they call a

[00:22:03.09] spk_1:
sticky menu meaning when you scroll that top menu stays there

[00:22:06.11] spk_0:
and the donate button is

[00:22:07.05] spk_1:
always there or your

[00:22:07.94] spk_0:
menu is always there.

[00:22:09.29] spk_1:
Um If you don’t have that

[00:22:11.04] spk_0:
then you’re

[00:22:11.69] spk_1:
scrolling and that donate has come off

[00:22:13.45] spk_0:
of of the homepage off the

[00:22:15.66] spk_1:
top. So as you scroll down, you’re reading about who we are, what we do, why we do

[00:22:19.51] spk_0:
it. Um It’s just kind of a

[00:22:20.99] spk_1:
natural, here’s the next step,

[00:22:22.65] spk_0:
you know, donate.

[00:22:23.86] spk_1:
Um So it’s

[00:22:24.93] spk_0:
just right in the user flow. The user doesn’t

[00:22:26.55] spk_1:
have to scroll back up

[00:22:27.70] spk_0:
and find the donate or click the donate or

[00:22:30.68] spk_1:
even if they didn’t

[00:22:31.74] spk_0:
like if they kind of psychological or mentally

[00:22:34.20] spk_1:
blocked out that donate button when they came to your

[00:22:36.37] spk_0:
page? Is there

[00:22:37.43] spk_1:
scrolling through? Its in

[00:22:38.43] spk_0:
the natural progression

[00:22:39.60] spk_1:
of how they’re reading your

[00:22:40.44] spk_0:
page and that donate button is right there at the bottom. So

[00:22:43.67] spk_1:
um test that

[00:22:44.70] spk_0:
out, see if it’s something that you’re able to get more donations throughout the month. Um

[00:22:49.62] spk_1:
I don’t this is

[00:22:50.90] spk_0:
not something where you’re gonna earn like a ridiculous amount of conversions or donations

[00:22:55.94] spk_1:
From but even if you have like five

[00:23:08.34] spk_0:
more donations a month because you put a button at the bottom of your page, like wouldn’t that be worth the the 10 minutes it takes to put the button on your site And I think it would be, let’s go to the donation page. Okay cool. So donation and let’s say I’m looking at my my list over here. Okay, so donation

[00:23:17.47] spk_1:
page, one of the things that’s

[00:23:19.00] spk_0:
important to um

[00:23:20.42] spk_1:
a number of donors

[00:23:21.90] spk_0:
is is my donation secure and I don’t think it’s as much of a concern now as it

[00:23:27.06] spk_1:
was maybe even five

[00:23:31.14] spk_0:
years ago but there’s still people that are leery too uh do transactions online.

[00:23:33.12] spk_1:
Um We’re with

[00:23:33.97] spk_0:
the nonprofit. It’s like well I don’t know this nonprofit is going to take care of my data and hopefully your nonprofit is like your donation page should be the H. T. T. P. S. Meaning that it’s a secure page

[00:23:46.12] spk_1:
anyways

[00:23:46.87] spk_0:
but just putting some kind of

[00:23:48.83] spk_1:
Burbage

[00:23:50.34] spk_0:
or a visual indication that it is safe transaction

[00:23:55.19] spk_1:
on your website. So it could be

[00:23:56.44] spk_0:
something as simple as saying your transaction is secure like ssl security or putting like an image of a lock saying your transaction is secured. So doing that versus not having any language in there at all about a secure

[00:24:10.37] spk_1:
transaction.

[00:24:32.24] spk_0:
You can make a difference in someone going ahead and clicking that submit button on the donate because they could get as far as just putting all their information in. But they’re still kind of on the fence like, you know, if they’re nervous about giving online or giving because they don’t see any language that says their donation is secure because I’ve even experienced this to my house like myself personally, there’s some websites

[00:24:33.24] spk_1:
I’m not as

[00:24:36.94] spk_0:
familiar with and if I don’t see that language, then I

[00:24:37.58] spk_1:
may not actually

[00:24:38.55] spk_0:
include. I may not actually purchase whatever it is I’m purchasing and I’m not even talking about nonprofits. I’m talking about more like online retail. Um, so it gives the donor confidence in what they’re doing. So that’s something that you can test having that language on there versus just excluding it. Um, and seeing if

[00:24:55.04] spk_1:
that makes a difference in

[00:24:58.14] spk_0:
your conversion rates and you know, folks might say well, but people could look at the address bar and they can see if it’s https and, and lots of browsers have a lock when it is a secure site. I don’t know if all browsers, I use Safari

[00:25:12.79] spk_1:
predominantly. So

[00:25:13.69] spk_0:
I don’t know if all browsers do that, but, but

[00:25:15.73] spk_1:
even if they do,

[00:25:20.64] spk_0:
you know, think of older folks who are not so savvy they don’t know to look for https.

[00:25:22.05] spk_1:
So

[00:26:02.44] spk_0:
if you don’t, you know, what does it cost to put a sentence in with a little lock picture, it says, you know, it’s, it’s secured, encrypted on both ends, right? With 2 56 bit ssl technology or something, you know, something legitimate. I’m not saying make it up, but yeah, I remember you’re not doing it right. You know, I’m not, Yeah. Now this is the fraud how to test the fraud component of your donation. You don’t have to test for fraud. You don’t have to test fraud. Just don’t do that, don’t do it, you know? But if you’re, if yes, put put something in that’s reassuring to folks, especially older folks who may not know to look at the address bar. Right. Yeah. Alright. Alright. What else, what else for the donation pages? Um, one thing that I’ve seen more

[00:26:12.93] spk_1:
recently in the past

[00:26:39.54] spk_0:
Maybe 2-3 years and I want to say that there might even be specific, um, Tech companies that process donations for nonprofits and I can’t tell you who they are because I’m not sure which one’s doing and which ones don’t. Um, but highlighting like a certain gift that might say most popular gifts. So if you have like a $25 gift and $50 or 200 whatever that, you know procession of gift handles is There might be one

[00:26:40.24] spk_1:
that’s highlighted.

[00:26:41.34] spk_0:
Um, and it says most popular, but what it does and it’s

[00:26:44.91] spk_1:
usually not the lowest

[00:27:23.64] spk_0:
One because I might go to a site like I’m gonna give them $25, but then when I get there it has this $50 and it’s highlighted and it says most popular and so now there’s this social pressure to be like, well that’s the most popular. Like I don’t want to give less than what it is. So I guess I’m gonna give $50 instead of $25. Um So again, it’s, it’s, that’s kind of like a marketing trick if you will, but it does work. Um and you know, whether it’s the most popular or not, I mean again, that’s when you get into the ethics behind it, like, you know, um, you don’t necessarily have to say most popular, you could say, you know more

[00:27:24.31] spk_1:
impact or the

[00:27:25.12] spk_0:
most impact or something like that. There’s ways that you can word it, but

[00:27:28.99] spk_1:
the whole point is you’re

[00:27:29.88] spk_0:
drawing attention to a specific gift amount. Um that’s

[00:27:33.07] spk_1:
probably more reasonable. It’s not like you’re high

[00:27:35.46] spk_0:
like 500

[00:27:36.29] spk_1:
dollar gift, but it’s not

[00:27:37.37] spk_0:
Like you’re 10 20

[00:27:38.36] spk_1:
$5 gift either.

[00:27:39.60] spk_0:
Um, So

[00:27:42.24] spk_1:
what I found is that when you, when you do

[00:27:42.78] spk_0:
use some kind of language and highlight one particular giving level that it does result

[00:27:47.32] spk_1:
in higher conversions.

[00:27:48.53] spk_0:
Um, and again, this is my ash

[00:27:50.42] spk_1:
tricks with everything

[00:27:51.94] spk_0:
we’re calling it a test because this is what I’ve seen

[00:27:54.67] spk_1:
with nonprofits that I’ve worked

[00:27:55.86] spk_0:
with and research that I’ve done. But you have to test

[00:27:58.85] spk_1:
and see if this is the case

[00:27:59.82] spk_0:
for your non profit as well.

[00:28:01.44] spk_1:
That’s a good one. Like

[00:28:03.24] spk_0:
that average gift most

[00:28:04.85] spk_1:
popular gift. Most

[00:28:06.16] spk_0:
impactful.

[00:28:07.03] spk_1:
Alright. What else you got? Yeah.

[00:28:09.13] spk_0:
And the

[00:28:09.67] spk_1:
other one I have is kind of in the

[00:28:10.72] spk_0:
same vein as this and

[00:28:11.87] spk_1:
it’s really like your

[00:28:12.65] spk_0:
donation handles and your impact. Um

[00:28:15.59] spk_1:
So if you’re like an

[00:28:17.94] spk_0:
example of if

[00:28:18.09] spk_1:
you’re a nonprofit that does a few different things

[00:28:19.91] spk_0:
like for example, maybe like a rescue

[00:28:21.55] spk_1:
mission, like they do

[00:28:22.56] spk_0:
housing, they do food, they may do

[00:28:25.11] spk_1:
adult rehab

[00:28:26.98] spk_0:
kinds of programs. Um, so you can like test and

[00:28:30.76] spk_1:
there’s a lot to test in

[00:28:31.84] spk_0:
just these three different areas. You can test dollar amounts

[00:28:34.85] spk_1:
for these. So if you want to just look at housing,

[00:28:37.62] spk_0:
You can say, you know, $30 equals X. nights

[00:28:40.49] spk_1:
Of shelter, $60

[00:28:42.25] spk_0:
equals X nights. 100 equals

[00:28:43.71] spk_1:
X nights. You could

[00:28:44.83] spk_0:
test these against each other

[00:28:49.04] spk_1:
and have all of the gift channels at like $50, but $50 will help do

[00:28:50.12] spk_0:
X nights of shelter.

[00:28:51.43] spk_1:
$50 will help

[00:28:52.59] spk_0:
by X amount of

[00:28:53.40] spk_1:
Meals or $50 to

[00:28:55.04] spk_0:
send X amount

[00:28:56.02] spk_1:
of adults through rehab.

[00:28:57.55] spk_0:
And that way you learn about

[00:28:58.73] spk_1:
what your donors are more interested in. Um,

[00:29:01.69] spk_0:
so there’s ways that you can learn

[00:29:06.84] spk_1:
About that either way with, with that example, you’ll still get $50. But we, we test because we also want

[00:29:09.64] spk_0:
to learn more

[00:29:09.93] spk_1:
about our donors and more about what

[00:29:11.28] spk_0:
works. So if people

[00:29:12.24] spk_1:
respond better to a food offer versus the housing offer,

[00:29:15.62] spk_0:
then that might help us

[00:29:16.68] spk_1:
create a campaign,

[00:29:18.04] spk_0:
you know,

[00:29:18.98] spk_1:
in the calendar year at

[00:29:19.96] spk_0:
some point. That’s more around

[00:29:21.24] spk_1:
food. Um, and taking what

[00:29:23.00] spk_0:
we learned from this test.

[00:29:24.45] spk_1:
Um, so that’s one

[00:29:38.84] spk_0:
thing an NtC guest, uh, and he said they tested whether Children who are sick or Children who are hospitalized is has a greater impact. And

[00:29:41.68] spk_1:
intuitively you would think it would be the Children who

[00:29:43.54] spk_0:
are hospitalized

[00:29:44.63] spk_1:
because they’re the sickest of the among

[00:29:46.42] spk_0:
the sick. But

[00:29:47.56] spk_1:
turned out not to be

[00:29:48.19] spk_0:
true. They were getting more click throughs and more donations when

[00:29:51.52] spk_1:
they highlighted Children who

[00:29:52.66] spk_0:
were sick

[00:29:53.87] spk_1:
versus

[00:29:54.50] spk_0:
hospitalized.

[00:29:55.64] spk_1:
Intuition is

[00:29:57.83] spk_0:
not always correct. That’s why

[00:29:59.01] spk_1:
we test. Another

[00:30:00.05] spk_0:
reason, you know, like you said earlier, it doesn’t matter what

[00:30:03.25] spk_1:
you, the ceo

[00:30:04.88] spk_0:
or you, the chief fundraiser prefer. It matters what

[00:30:07.81] spk_1:
your donors

[00:30:09.08] spk_0:
and potential donors prefer.

[00:30:10.70] spk_1:
So you know, you

[00:30:12.54] spk_0:
have to ignore your intuition.

[00:30:13.90] spk_1:
You have to ignore your own

[00:30:15.94] spk_0:
preferences and do what Jeremy is saying and

[00:31:41.74] spk_1:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. I’m doubling down on the redox who can you share non profit radio with, please think about colleagues, friends, folks who work for nonprofits serve on boards of nonprofits. Maybe they’re even avid volunteers, it’s a possibility these folks will learn from nonprofit radio the same as you are, share the share the knowledge, share the good, non profit radio vibe, share the pleasure, share, what else is there? Um, double the enjoyment? No, well you could double, you can triple the enjoyment. So please think about who you can share. non profit radio with, connect them with me, you can connect them with one of my social posts. Uh, connect them to tony-martignetti dot com share this show this episode however you can do it. I’d be grateful. Who can you share? non profit radio with thank you. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for many ways to test your digital fundraising. I do like most of my work is with

[00:31:43.39] spk_0:
non province, but I do some, I have some clients that are in the commercial

[00:31:46.87] spk_1:
world and they were

[00:31:47.79] spk_0:
running a

[00:31:48.56] spk_1:
facebook ad recently and they provided me with copy and I was looking at it and I was like, oh, this is terrible, this is not. And

[00:31:55.12] spk_0:
usually if I see something that is

[00:31:57.28] spk_1:
like, I don’t think it’s going to work like I’ll say, hey, what if we say this instead of that? And even with

[00:32:03.14] spk_0:
that? I’m like, what if

[00:32:03.40] spk_1:
we change, it’s like, well we want to try to run this first and just see, I’m like, all right and I thought it was

[00:32:07.87] spk_0:
going to Bomb and it actually

[00:32:08.95] spk_1:
did really good

[00:32:09.83] spk_0:
despite what

[00:32:11.20] spk_1:
I thought was going to work. Um, so that’s why it’s like I’m saying

[00:32:15.12] spk_0:
these things and in

[00:32:16.10] spk_1:
general, like you’ll see in the majority of cases, what we’re talking about, there will be a positive impact. Um, but these are not guaranteed. I’m not saying like, here are all the things that you should do if you want

[00:32:25.16] spk_0:
your nonprofit to succeed,

[00:32:26.47] spk_1:
what you need to do to succeed is

[00:32:28.27] spk_0:
to test and then

[00:32:29.34] spk_1:
find out what works. But those things like, let’s give

[00:32:31.73] spk_0:
some ideas. Like

[00:32:32.67] spk_1:
we just don’t be stagnant. If we have the same website, the same emails,

[00:32:36.21] spk_0:
the same everything

[00:32:37.20] spk_1:
Over a 12-month period. We have learned nothing about what we need to do to better serve our

[00:32:41.12] spk_0:
donors and and

[00:32:42.38] spk_1:
really better

[00:32:46.74] spk_0:
enable the services that we have because if we’re not learning how we

[00:32:47.14] spk_1:
can better serve our donors and how we can

[00:32:49.14] spk_0:
generate more money for nonprofit

[00:32:51.01] spk_1:
and still take care of our

[00:32:51.97] spk_0:
donors, then we’re doing a disservice down

[00:32:53.89] spk_1:
the road for the people

[00:33:09.54] spk_0:
or animals or whatever environment, whatever our nonprofit is serving. We’re doing that in other realms. We’re making sure we have programs that are appealing to donors, making sure we have events that are appealing to donors. We make sure we have fundraisers who are appealing to donors, right. Your staff is turning your donors off. That’s bad. You’re gonna, you’re gonna remove the people from the fundraising role. So, you know, in

[00:33:20.67] spk_1:
your digital and your digital

[00:33:21.73] spk_0:
marketing and fundraising as well.

[00:33:23.17] spk_1:
You want to appeal

[00:33:24.48] spk_0:
to your donors and your potential donors, you’re doing it in other places.

[00:33:28.24] spk_1:
We’re here to. Alright, let’s continue with the

[00:33:32.34] spk_0:
donation page ideas. Okay.

[00:33:32.95] spk_1:
Um, other donation page ideas.

[00:33:34.93] spk_0:
And this is gonna

[00:33:36.45] spk_1:
be my bad recommendation of tests, but I’m gonna throw it out there anyway, because I think it’s probably not going to

[00:33:42.17] spk_0:
work, but I’m

[00:33:43.09] spk_1:
curious to see if it will still work. Um, and that is testing an image versus a video on your donation page. Um, and for the very savvy fundraisers

[00:33:53.24] spk_0:
that are

[00:33:53.53] spk_1:
watching or listening to

[00:33:54.50] spk_0:
this, they were probably

[00:33:55.61] spk_1:
going to discredit me all over the

[00:33:56.97] spk_0:
place and say that Jeremy doesn’t

[00:33:59.20] spk_1:
know what he’s talking about. Um,

[00:34:00.93] spk_0:
but several

[00:34:09.54] spk_1:
years ago when you had a video on your, your donation page and I think maybe it’s because maybe a more a newer medium, you could tell the story of, you know, why we need the gift and be this heartwarming story and you’d actually see the gifts go up. Um, what

[00:34:16.83] spk_0:
I’ve seen over time

[00:34:17.69] spk_1:
now is that

[00:34:18.83] spk_0:
the images

[00:34:19.78] spk_1:
seem to be more effective

[00:34:20.87] spk_0:
than a video. And the reason that we’re

[00:34:23.35] spk_1:
suspecting that happened

[00:34:24.44] spk_0:
just because

[00:34:27.54] spk_1:
when people hit your donation page, You’re now giving them a video to watch, which maybe 30 seconds to minutes. I don’t know however long it is. But you’re now asking them to watch this video and command the attention

[00:34:36.94] spk_0:
and then

[00:34:37.63] spk_1:
fill out a form after that. So you’re kind of asking the donors to do too

[00:34:41.99] spk_0:
many things when they get

[00:34:43.05] spk_1:
your donation page, it is a distraction because they can’t do a donation

[00:34:46.61] spk_0:
page. Most

[00:34:47.78] spk_1:
likely they’re ready to make a

[00:34:48.69] spk_0:
donation. Yes,

[00:34:50.11] spk_1:
exactly. Don’t distract them from that purpose.

[00:34:53.23] spk_0:
Right? Because now there’s another action

[00:34:54.94] spk_1:
you’re giving them watch the

[00:34:56.19] spk_0:
right watch the video,

[00:34:57.63] spk_1:
but you’re saying

[00:35:00.04] spk_0:
test it, Why?

[00:35:00.74] spk_1:
Why? Why do you believe

[00:35:02.16] spk_0:
that so that people don’t think this jeremy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Yeah. Well the reason that I’m kind of

[00:35:07.24] spk_1:
slick throwing this in here is for the

[00:35:08.89] spk_0:
people who have the

[00:35:09.81] spk_1:
video still on their page.

[00:35:11.55] spk_0:
So if that’s

[00:35:12.79] spk_1:
you like test it

[00:35:14.13] spk_0:
with an image on there instead

[00:35:15.59] spk_1:
of the video

[00:35:16.41] spk_0:
and see if

[00:35:17.50] spk_1:
your donations will go

[00:35:18.58] spk_0:
up a little bit. But I’m bringing this in here to recommend it as

[00:35:22.06] spk_1:
a test really to draw

[00:35:23.12] spk_0:
attention to it because there are still some

[00:35:25.36] spk_1:
organizations that

[00:35:26.68] spk_0:
are testing

[00:35:27.64] spk_1:
or not testing, but that have a video on their donation page. And I think if I don’t

[00:35:32.51] spk_0:
address it, then I’m not really bringing attention to that,

[00:35:35.69] spk_1:
that this is an issue. And,

[00:35:37.81] spk_0:
but what,

[00:35:38.78] spk_1:
what I’d also be curious is the people do that do have the nonprofits

[00:35:42.03] spk_0:
that do have a video on their

[00:35:43.10] spk_1:
page. Um,

[00:35:44.64] spk_0:
is that

[00:35:45.18] spk_1:
still working for them and how will, you know if it’s still working if you don’t test that against an image

[00:35:49.48] spk_0:
and if they tested against an

[00:35:50.61] spk_1:
image and the video is still really generating a higher conversion rate

[00:35:55.59] spk_0:
then then I’m

[00:35:56.45] spk_1:
wrong and I’m okay with that. Um I can only go by the data that I see and the research that I’ve done to

[00:36:02.90] spk_0:
say that

[00:36:04.00] spk_1:
was the best practice.

[00:36:05.27] spk_0:
But now not so

[00:36:06.10] spk_1:
much. But if you’re still stuck in that best practice,

[00:36:08.77] spk_0:
it might be time

[00:36:09.71] spk_1:
to test out of that.

[00:36:13.23] spk_0:
If you have neither are you better? Starting

[00:36:14.46] spk_1:
with an image and testing that

[00:36:16.43] spk_0:
and then trying

[00:36:17.96] spk_1:
a video and testing that

[00:36:19.42] spk_0:
in place of the image. Mm hmm.

[00:36:21.39] spk_1:
No. Yeah.

[00:36:22.44] spk_0:
And that that’s

[00:36:23.31] spk_1:
actually an interesting question to if you have neither.

[00:36:25.72] spk_0:
I would test the

[00:36:27.08] spk_1:
neither versus an

[00:36:28.51] spk_0:
image. Well, you’ve got that you have your baseline.

[00:36:31.43] spk_1:
You know what neither

[00:36:32.88] spk_0:
has been doing for

[00:36:33.67] spk_1:
you over however months

[00:36:35.58] spk_0:
years. Okay.

[00:36:36.73] spk_1:
So

[00:36:37.27] spk_0:
now you want to do

[00:36:38.31] spk_1:
an adequate

[00:36:39.29] spk_0:
test with enough

[00:36:40.00] spk_1:
clicks

[00:36:41.17] spk_0:
to testing your advice. It

[00:36:44.04] spk_1:
sounds like your advice would be testing

[00:36:45.16] spk_0:
image first

[00:36:46.62] spk_1:
because typically

[00:36:49.23] spk_0:
images pulled better videos,

[00:36:50.62] spk_1:
correct, correct.

[00:36:51.87] spk_0:
Because I’m not asking

[00:36:52.95] spk_1:
you to look at an image. I’m asking you to watch a video, but the image is just there to,

[00:36:58.16] spk_0:
it should have the same

[00:36:59.36] spk_1:
look and feel and

[00:37:00.12] spk_0:
reinforce the sentiment

[00:37:01.72] spk_1:
of what

[00:37:02.24] spk_0:
that donation pages. So

[00:37:04.04] spk_1:
going back to like a rescue mission like it’s going to be an image of

[00:37:08.11] spk_0:
probably someone

[00:37:09.03] spk_1:
receiving services, whether they’re um receiving housing or food or something like that because it

[00:37:14.13] spk_0:
reinforces

[00:37:15.25] spk_1:
what you’re giving to help out

[00:37:17.47] spk_0:
or giving to

[00:37:19.43] spk_1:
eradicate. Mhm.

[00:37:20.63] spk_0:
You

[00:37:20.75] spk_1:
got one more for the donation page. Um Let’s see. I know I was looking at

[00:37:28.62] spk_0:
this is I mean it’s in the same vein

[00:37:30.89] spk_1:
because a lot of these are like really nit picky. But even like testing the hero image

[00:37:34.74] spk_0:
for example,

[00:37:35.73] spk_1:
because we talked about testing

[00:37:36.85] spk_0:
an image versus the

[00:37:37.69] spk_1:
video. If you’re already doing an image, I wouldn’t

[00:37:40.51] spk_0:
test that against video. If you’re

[00:37:42.06] spk_1:
doing a video, I’d test that against the image. But if you have an image, I would test that

[00:37:46.46] spk_0:
against another

[00:37:47.78] spk_1:
image. Um using this rescue mission scenario. If you

[00:37:52.00] spk_0:
test a feeding

[00:38:04.12] spk_1:
offer. So maybe it’s a a man that is homeless and he’s receiving food. Maybe the next image that you test is maybe uh this gentleman um in the

[00:38:04.42] spk_0:
housing he’s sitting on his bed

[00:38:06.00] spk_1:
and so you actually see that what you’re giving is

[00:38:09.17] spk_0:
subconsciously tied

[00:38:10.13] spk_1:
to providing the shelter

[00:38:11.26] spk_0:
versus providing the

[00:38:12.30] spk_1:
food like someone in a cafeteria

[00:38:14.80] spk_0:
that’s eating a meal.

[00:38:24.02] spk_1:
Um So testing different images. If you’re testing like um cancer research or something like that, maybe it’s your showing a cancer patient, which I believe would be more effective than showing the actual research facility. Um But I’m sure that there’s cancer research nonprofits that are showing the

[00:38:32.55] spk_0:
facility on the donation

[00:38:33.81] spk_1:
page and not the

[00:38:34.97] spk_0:
end recipient

[00:38:36.16] spk_1:
who’s the beneficiary

[00:38:37.59] spk_0:
of that research.

[00:38:38.97] spk_1:
Um, so

[00:38:40.11] spk_0:
bringing attention to that

[00:38:41.52] spk_1:
is like, let’s test these images

[00:38:43.20] spk_0:
and see which

[00:38:44.50] spk_1:
one would increase the conversion rates for our

[00:38:47.22] spk_0:
heart donation

[00:38:48.92] spk_1:
page. Okay.

[00:38:50.02] spk_0:
I mean, I

[00:38:50.28] spk_1:
want to flush out something that you

[00:38:51.36] spk_0:
just said sort of in passing. I want to make sure we’re giving people the right advice. You

[00:38:56.45] spk_1:
said, If you have an

[00:38:57.29] spk_0:
image, don’t

[00:38:58.76] spk_1:
test that against the

[00:38:59.53] spk_0:
video, but if you have a video test that

[00:39:04.42] spk_1:
against an image, I would,

[00:39:05.09] spk_0:
that’s what I would say. Yes.

[00:39:07.09] spk_1:
I

[00:39:09.52] spk_0:
say that. Um,

[00:39:10.61] spk_1:
I think also

[00:39:11.46] spk_0:
non province. If they

[00:39:12.57] spk_1:
got the idea to say, oh, we’ve never tested a video. Like

[00:39:16.01] spk_0:
I know he doesn’t recommend it, but let’s

[00:39:17.93] spk_1:
just see if it works then have at it. I wouldn’t recommend it. Um,

[00:39:23.42] spk_0:
so yeah, you

[00:39:24.27] spk_1:
are correct. If you

[00:39:25.28] spk_0:
have an image

[00:39:26.30] spk_1:
tested against the

[00:39:26.96] spk_0:
video, uh, sorry.

[00:39:28.48] spk_1:
If you have a video tested against an image

[00:39:30.64] spk_0:
image. Yeah.

[00:39:31.69] spk_1:
Let’s test it against another image.

[00:39:44.92] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. Let’s move on to email. That’s, that seems ubiquitous. Everybody uses email most likely. Right. Right. Reading my notes. You’re reading

[00:39:51.94] spk_1:
my

[00:39:52.05] spk_0:
notes. Everything you said

[00:40:02.28] spk_1:
is great. And there’s

[00:40:03.56] spk_0:
basics of these,

[00:40:04.52] spk_1:
you know, time of day, day of week. Um,

[00:40:06.64] spk_0:
taking a step back though. Taking a step

[00:40:09.08] spk_1:
back. Um,

[00:40:10.13] spk_0:
when you test email, it’s more important

[00:40:13.35] spk_1:
in my opinion,

[00:40:14.16] spk_0:
like to test, like

[00:40:15.23] spk_1:
what they call, like

[00:40:16.12] spk_0:
the envelope, what’s on

[00:40:17.19] spk_1:
the outside before you actually

[00:40:18.52] spk_0:
test anything within the email. Um, so people have to open it before they can see your email. So to me, the most

[00:40:26.07] spk_1:
important thing is like, what can

[00:40:30.11] spk_0:
we test before people click into that email to get them to open the email? And those would be things like time

[00:40:34.17] spk_1:
of day and day of week. You know, that, that’s,

[00:40:36.20] spk_0:
that’s a twofer

[00:40:37.10] spk_1:
right there. There’s a time of day,

[00:40:54.71] spk_0:
there’s a day of week. So testing different times of day with the exact same emails, same subject line, same pre header, same everything. We’re just testing the time of day. Is that the text you see like some people call it teaser text, text you see in your, in your inbox before you’ve opened the message, correct? Yes.

[00:41:00.36] spk_1:
So you have like your

[00:41:01.55] spk_0:
subject line

[00:41:02.68] spk_1:
and then below that, like if you’re looking on your

[00:41:04.56] spk_0:
phone or even on your desktop Yeah, you’ll see a little bit of text under it

[00:41:07.70] spk_1:
and and that’s called your pre

[00:41:12.01] spk_0:
header. Yes. Um, so you know, I

[00:41:12.53] spk_1:
would look at testing that the

[00:41:13.72] spk_0:
basics time of day to day a week.

[00:41:15.71] spk_1:
You mentioned

[00:41:16.67] spk_0:
one like the sender

[00:41:17.75] spk_1:
name.

[00:41:18.81] spk_0:
So if you’re sending it and it’s like your organization’s name is the center,

[00:41:23.19] spk_1:
which is probably how

[00:41:24.31] spk_0:
most nonprofits send it and there’s nothing

[00:41:26.25] spk_1:
wrong with that. Um,

[00:41:27.51] spk_0:
what if we tested it using a person’s name. Like maybe it’s

[00:41:30.74] spk_1:
the executive

[00:41:31.91] spk_0:
director or ceo of a

[00:41:33.48] spk_1:
nonprofit. Um,

[00:41:34.98] spk_0:
the only thing that I would kind of

[00:41:36.03] spk_1:
caution with that

[00:41:37.31] spk_0:
is

[00:41:38.02] spk_1:
if you tested that

[00:41:40.31] spk_0:
one time, you’ll likely

[00:41:41.25] spk_1:
see a bump because people

[00:41:42.50] spk_0:
aren’t used to seeing it

[00:41:43.52] spk_1:
from that person. And

[00:41:44.63] spk_0:
if they don’t know that person’s

[00:41:45.90] spk_1:
name or even if they do, they’re like, oh, who is this? And

[00:41:48.00] spk_0:
they’ll click on it just because they’re not sure who it’s from.

[00:41:50.57] spk_1:
So I think if

[00:41:51.81] spk_0:
you only tested once you’re probably going to say, oh, it came that we changed the sender name so we’re gonna

[00:41:57.89] spk_1:
always go with the sender

[00:41:59.51] spk_0:
name and that, that may prove

[00:42:00.40] spk_1:
effective for the short

[00:42:01.40] spk_0:
term. You can probably send a

[00:42:02.41] spk_1:
few of them that way and

[00:42:04.13] spk_0:
it’ll be effective, but kind of baselining it over time.

[00:42:07.16] spk_1:
Like I, I don’t know which one will be

[00:42:08.63] spk_0:
more effective for you. I mean,

[00:42:10.18] spk_1:
and I honestly don’t have seen mixed

[00:42:11.95] spk_0:
results on that. Um,

[00:42:13.35] spk_1:
so that is something

[00:42:14.22] spk_0:
that you run multiple tests on over time.

[00:42:16.94] spk_1:
Not just like a one time we’ve made our

[00:42:27.20] spk_0:
decision Ceo or executive director after the person’s name. Yeah. I’m like putting their, not just their name but their title on right. Comma Ceo or comma executive director. That might, you know, that that seems worth testing to me. Yeah, might open, it might get a higher open rate was writing. Okay. Yeah, exactly.

[00:42:42.68] spk_1:
And that would,

[00:42:44.80] spk_0:
um, like that’s almost like a second

[00:42:46.21] spk_1:
level senator name

[00:42:47.26] spk_0:
because just starting out sender

[00:42:48.46] spk_1:
name. Um,

[00:42:49.61] spk_0:
I mean if you’re even the nonprofit’s

[00:42:51.90] spk_1:
name, if you have

[00:42:52.58] spk_0:
the in front of your nonprofit,

[00:42:54.01] spk_1:
like the

[00:42:54.43] spk_0:
Salvation Army, you

[00:42:55.98] spk_1:
know, you can’t test it against the

[00:42:57.04] spk_0:
Salvation Army, you know,

[00:42:58.64] spk_1:
but that would be a further

[00:42:59.95] spk_0:
test. That’s deeper into the center

[00:43:01.27] spk_1:
name. But yeah, the actual

[00:43:02.79] spk_0:
name of the executive director could

[00:43:04.51] spk_1:
be one test versus the

[00:43:06.32] spk_0:
person’s name. Comma

[00:43:08.05] spk_1:
Ceo or

[00:43:08.66] spk_0:
executive director. That

[00:43:11.10] spk_1:
that could be interesting as well. Trying to participate in the

[00:43:12.73] spk_0:
activity here in the conversation.

[00:43:14.33] spk_1:
Trying to hold

[00:43:15.99] spk_0:
up, hold, trying to hold up my side of the conversation. Oh yeah,

[00:43:18.71] spk_1:
no, you’re doing a great job. Yeah.

[00:43:23.25] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:43:25.70] spk_1:
one thing that I think is, um, a good feature of the test is like if you

[00:43:27.67] spk_0:
are, if your

[00:43:28.49] spk_1:
email includes a

[00:43:30.50] spk_0:
video in it

[00:43:31.60] spk_1:
or a blog

[00:43:32.47] spk_0:
post. I mean you

[00:43:33.47] spk_1:
can’t have a video in

[00:43:34.48] spk_0:
an email, but it’s about maybe a video on your website. Um, and there’s a thumbnail

[00:43:38.58] spk_1:
of the video on your email or a blog post.

[00:43:41.05] spk_0:
Then I would

[00:43:41.68] spk_1:
include, um, like the word video, like in all caps and then like a sub colon or not slowed colon,

[00:43:48.12] spk_0:
like semi colon. And then whatever

[00:43:51.10] spk_1:
the video is, colon.

[00:43:51.57] spk_0:
Yeah. I’m all over the place

[00:43:53.10] spk_1:
with my

[00:43:53.50] spk_0:
grandma, right? That’s what you want to call it. You

[00:43:56.09] spk_1:
know what I’m saying? Yeah.

[00:43:57.38] spk_0:
You’re smarter than me. So you

[00:43:58.58] spk_1:
don’t, you understand that? Yeah. It

[00:44:00.52] spk_0:
took me two tries for video

[00:44:04.22] spk_1:
in all caps, I

[00:44:04.92] spk_0:
see that a lot. Yeah, yeah

[00:44:08.27] spk_1:
or blog

[00:44:09.05] spk_0:
because if you don’t have

[00:44:10.27] spk_1:
video and you just have like a subject line that’s maybe about the video or watch this or something like that. Like

[00:44:16.17] spk_0:
that’s one thing and it may

[00:44:17.36] spk_1:
work for you.

[00:44:18.39] spk_0:
But I think when you have

[00:44:19.33] spk_1:
like whatever that piece of

[00:44:20.44] spk_0:
content is and

[00:44:21.52] spk_1:
call it out and call attention to it now, it’s like, oh, there’s a video in here. Um and I see that first and foremost, I’m not reading like a title, I’m not reading a subject line

[00:44:30.50] spk_0:
per se.

[00:44:31.39] spk_1:
Um I know that when I open this, I’m going to see a video. I know when

[00:44:35.03] spk_0:
I open this, it’s going

[00:44:39.49] spk_1:
to be their blog post and and with this nonprofit like I like their blogs, you know, or I’m interested to see

[00:44:41.92] spk_0:
what they’re talking

[00:44:42.77] spk_1:
about and and so I

[00:44:43.96] spk_0:
know it sets my

[00:44:45.11] spk_1:
expectation

[00:44:46.16] spk_0:
as an email

[00:44:46.91] spk_1:
subscriber of what that

[00:44:48.12] spk_0:
content is.

[00:44:49.10] spk_1:
Um So I go in

[00:44:50.17] spk_0:
there and I’ll open it

[00:44:51.91] spk_1:
up. So I think that’s one thing too that

[00:44:54.39] spk_0:
um could help to sit

[00:44:56.04] spk_1:
down and see if it works for you. Give

[00:44:57.53] spk_0:
Us one more email.

[00:44:59.09] spk_1:
one more would be that pre header that we we we defined

[00:45:02.59] spk_0:
a couple of minutes

[00:45:03.53] spk_1:
ago is testing the language with the pre

[00:45:05.90] spk_0:
header and with this

[00:45:07.10] spk_1:
uh the day and time would be the same. The subject line would be the same, but the pre

[00:45:11.72] spk_0:
header would be

[00:45:14.89] spk_1:
something different and it could be

[00:45:15.49] spk_0:
a call to action.

[00:45:16.54] spk_1:
Um I do recommend that whatever you have in your pre header um and I don’t know the exact

[00:45:21.38] spk_0:
character count

[00:45:22.33] spk_1:
off the top of my head but just make sure that

[00:45:24.60] spk_0:
people can read the

[00:45:25.55] spk_1:
whole pre header um

[00:45:26.93] spk_0:
from whatever

[00:45:28.63] spk_1:
device they’re looking at it on. Um Some, some people may say well

[00:45:34.19] spk_0:
if you don’t include

[00:45:35.09] spk_1:
all of it then it adds

[00:45:35.93] spk_0:
this Mystique and people

[00:45:37.13] spk_1:
will want to open it up to see what it says and

[00:45:39.70] spk_0:
I think there’s some

[00:45:40.72] spk_1:
value to that. Um And I think maybe you can test that as well, but I think in general um that pre editor people should be able to read all of that.

[00:45:48.25] spk_0:
But testing what

[00:45:49.22] spk_1:
that is, whether it’s a call to action or um

[00:45:52.09] spk_0:
if it’s a

[00:45:53.49] spk_1:
video for example, maybe you have the person’s name that’s

[00:45:56.96] spk_0:
in the video. You

[00:45:57.96] spk_1:
know, bob’s testimony about blah blah blah versus

[00:46:01.21] spk_0:
here’s an easter

[00:46:02.30] spk_1:
message from blah blah

[00:46:04.02] spk_0:
blah.

[00:46:08.18] spk_1:
Okay, how about the,

[00:46:10.58] spk_0:
well it’s either search engine marketing or facebook

[00:46:12.94] spk_1:
ads.

[00:46:14.38] spk_0:
I’m pretty down on facebook,

[00:46:15.73] spk_1:
but I guess people are still doing

[00:46:16.86] spk_0:
a lot of facebook ads so we’ll ignore the

[00:46:20.63] spk_1:
the the hosts. Uh

[00:46:22.49] spk_0:
Predilection against

[00:46:24.21] spk_1:
facebook and

[00:46:27.78] spk_0:
let’s talk about facebook ads. Yeah

[00:46:28.17] spk_1:
facebook ads let me pull up

[00:46:30.57] spk_0:
my list here

[00:46:31.51] spk_1:
because I had a lot to say about that

[00:46:33.91] spk_0:
and actually like

[00:46:34.64] spk_1:
facebook ads is like one of those things where there’s

[00:46:38.88] spk_0:
I mean I

[00:46:39.37] spk_1:
could probably do 50 tests with

[00:46:41.00] spk_0:
facebook ads. There’s so many different

[00:46:42.31] spk_1:
things that you can test. Um,

[00:46:44.18] spk_0:
but for the sake

[00:46:45.53] spk_1:
of like maybe time and and quality

[00:46:47.60] spk_0:
of continent, what we

[00:46:48.73] spk_1:
talked about here. One thing that I do want to

[00:46:51.06] spk_0:
put out their first and

[00:46:52.11] spk_1:
foremost is

[00:46:53.25] spk_0:
testing

[00:46:54.58] spk_1:
um, link short ners within the ad copy. Um, so let’s take a step back and talk about kind of the anatomy of a facebook ad. Um and what I’m gonna talk about is more like the news

[00:47:05.77] spk_0:
feed ads. So if

[00:47:06.99] spk_1:
you’re on a desktop or on your

[00:47:09.07] spk_0:
smartphone and

[00:47:10.58] spk_1:
you’re just scrolling

[00:47:11.17] spk_0:
and you’re seeing what your friends

[00:47:12.24] spk_1:
post and then there will be an ad, they’re just kind of in your newsfeed. So newsfeed

[00:47:15.98] spk_0:
add the

[00:47:16.78] spk_1:
anatomy of it is you have like um text, which will be like your description and then you have the image below that and then you have a headline below that with a button that you can make me a

[00:47:26.77] spk_0:
donate button.

[00:47:30.88] spk_1:
Um, so one of the things that I would have nonprofits

[00:47:31.94] spk_0:
tests first and

[00:47:32.71] spk_1:
foremost is with the net description, which is that first

[00:47:35.56] spk_0:
block of content

[00:47:36.66] spk_1:
above the image where you’re writing that includes your ad copy

[00:47:41.08] spk_0:
is

[00:47:41.48] spk_1:
that you include a call to action with a

[00:47:44.26] spk_0:
link shorter at the

[00:47:45.43] spk_1:
end of your copy. Um for example, um,

[00:47:49.61] spk_0:
March is such

[00:47:50.84] spk_1:
and such awareness month here at

[00:47:52.44] spk_0:
X. Nonprofit.

[00:47:53.53] spk_1:
You know, we really believe X.

[00:47:54.75] spk_0:
Y. And Z. You

[00:47:55.88] spk_1:
can make a difference today. Um uh

[00:47:58.88] spk_0:
by donating

[00:48:02.37] spk_1:
$50. I don’t know, it’s very general um text or what

[00:48:03.57] spk_0:
I’m saying. Uh

[00:48:04.62] spk_1:
and then under that you have like make your gift here and then you have like a link shortening which

[00:48:09.67] spk_0:
would be like Bentley, B. I.

[00:48:10.90] spk_1:
T. Dot L. Y. You know, you can take a U. R. L. From your donation page, go to Bentley and it

[00:48:17.14] spk_0:
will compress it

[00:48:18.61] spk_1:
into less characters for your U. R.

[00:48:21.21] spk_0:
L. But

[00:48:22.48] spk_1:
include that within your um the description copy of your facebook ad. Um and the reason that I recommend that is

[00:48:29.75] spk_0:
Number one I’ve seen at work,

[00:48:31.10] spk_1:
you get a higher conversion rate but just thinking about the flow of a facebook ad. Like you’re reading the

[00:48:36.50] spk_0:
copy and

[00:48:43.57] spk_1:
let’s talk about the flow. If you don’t include this piece, you’re reading the copy and then you see the image or video and then you see a call to action

[00:48:46.10] spk_0:
and then over to the right

[00:48:47.14] spk_1:
of that call to action is a

[00:48:48.09] spk_0:
button. So

[00:48:49.27] spk_1:
what we’re doing with this

[00:48:50.07] spk_0:
essentially is bringing

[00:48:51.13] spk_1:
that call to action

[00:48:52.77] spk_0:
up

[00:48:53.11] spk_1:
quicker. Um, and eliminating

[00:48:55.39] spk_0:
some distractions to

[00:48:56.35] spk_1:
a degree. So I’m reading

[00:48:57.52] spk_0:
this wonderful

[00:48:58.51] spk_1:
ad copy that was written by this nonprofit

[00:49:00.75] spk_0:
and then they’re telling me

[00:49:01.75] spk_1:
what that next step is right here and there

[00:49:03.94] spk_0:
as opposed to

[00:49:04.77] spk_1:
like okay I have to watch this video or taking this

[00:49:07.40] spk_0:
image and I have to read this headline

[00:49:09.28] spk_1:
and then I have to click on this button

[00:49:11.67] spk_0:
so you’re you’re

[00:49:11.93] spk_1:
making that decision making process happen quicker. Um because

[00:49:16.12] spk_0:
by the time I read your

[00:49:16.91] spk_1:
copy I made tune out your image and the call to action in the button and I’m scrolling to the

[00:49:20.97] spk_0:
next piece of content

[00:49:22.51] spk_1:
so it just

[00:49:23.15] spk_0:
inserts that call to

[00:49:24.07] spk_1:
action a little bit earlier.

[00:49:25.28] spk_0:
So I would say

[00:49:30.47] spk_1:
test that out, see if that works. How about um what else? Facebook.

[00:49:32.00] spk_0:
Okay yep. So what else um

[00:49:33.84] spk_1:
I would test image overlays. So what I mean by that is like a

[00:49:38.77] spk_0:
text overlay.

[00:49:39.68] spk_1:
Um It used to be where with facebook you can only have a certain

[00:49:42.72] spk_0:
percent of

[00:49:43.74] spk_1:
your image and a image

[00:49:45.97] spk_0:
at be covered

[00:49:46.65] spk_1:
with text, but now you can put text all

[00:49:48.98] spk_0:
over it if you want to.

[00:49:50.24] spk_1:
So what I would recommend is like

[00:49:52.03] spk_0:
testing the image by

[00:49:53.48] spk_1:
itself. So let’s

[00:49:54.59] spk_0:
say it’s uh animal

[00:49:56.40] spk_1:
shelter and it’s just this picture

[00:49:58.22] spk_0:
of any animal, it could

[00:50:00.10] spk_1:
be a happy animal sat

[00:50:01.31] spk_0:
animal or whatever,

[00:50:02.48] spk_1:
but then you have a b version of the add

[00:50:04.84] spk_0:
and everything else is the same except the

[00:50:06.63] spk_1:
image. But

[00:50:10.86] spk_0:
over the image you actually have some text overlay that’s saying you know

[00:50:11.46] spk_1:
$50

[00:50:12.58] spk_0:
Or $10 a month

[00:50:13.93] spk_1:
can help save X.

[00:50:15.31] spk_0:
Animals X. Amount of animals. Um But

[00:50:18.54] spk_1:
seeing if that makes a difference.

[00:50:19.81] spk_0:
And honestly I’ve seen where in some cases it has, in some cases it has, you know, so that this is certainly one of those

[00:50:26.79] spk_1:
things where I’m like, I’ve

[00:50:27.82] spk_0:
usually see this happen, but I’ve seen mixed results with this. So I think non probably have to see what works for them.

[00:50:33.86] spk_1:
Okay,

[00:50:42.16] spk_0:
leave us with one more facebook made. You make your top one of what’s left. Yeah. What’s left is testing your audiences. So

[00:50:46.11] spk_1:
not even what the people

[00:50:47.35] spk_0:
see, but behind the scenes and facebook, whenever you’re

[00:50:50.21] spk_1:
building the ads,

[00:51:09.16] spk_0:
your audiences are so important. And I would test against your audiences and even within that I would break them into a few different audiences and won, I would take my email file of my donors and I would upload them into facebook and target them with ads separately from everybody else. Um, and then I would also target by

[00:51:11.58] spk_1:
age, I would have everything

[00:51:16.96] spk_0:
be the same except I would target different age groups because some

[00:51:17.28] spk_1:
nonprofits say,

[00:51:18.37] spk_0:
hey, we want to

[00:51:19.29] spk_1:
target ages 18

[00:51:20.53] spk_0:
and up because everybody, if they have money we want them to give. But that’s not always being

[00:51:25.01] spk_1:
a good steward of your ad

[00:51:36.56] spk_0:
budgets. So tests like 50 year old plus and then test maybe 35 to 49 see which one of those ad groups has a higher conversion rate because a lot of times when I talk to non profits, they

[00:51:38.51] spk_1:
have no idea

[00:51:39.71] spk_0:
what the age group is of people that donate to them on facebook. So I’m like we can find this out if we test

[00:51:45.35] spk_1:
enough, we’ll know that this

[00:51:46.51] spk_0:
is the age group that has a higher propensity to donate. Um So those are ways that you

[00:51:50.33] spk_1:
can test the audiences on the back

[00:52:00.45] spk_0:
end of it, you mentioned earlier that you have 100 ways to test. Is that something you said? I think you said it was on your website. Um it is, it’s you have to be a member of fundraisers unite

[00:52:04.38] spk_1:
to have

[00:52:05.07] spk_0:
access to that. Yeah, but it is

[00:52:07.37] spk_1:
available but

[00:52:07.99] spk_0:
yeah, just throw it dot com after that. So fundraisers unite dot com. Um and this is an online community uh subscription program for digital fundraisers. So there’s a lot of templates and trainings

[00:52:20.57] spk_1:
and tip sheets and

[00:52:21.77] spk_0:
resources that they

[00:52:22.87] spk_1:
offer to my

[00:52:24.75] spk_0:
audience. Thank you very much, jeremy hazelwood

[00:52:59.75] spk_1:
digital fundraiser. Next week we’ll take a break from 22. NTC with Don Gatewood on mentoring. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored

[00:53:00.33] spk_0:
by turn to

[00:53:00.90] spk_1:
communications pr and content for

[00:53:03.30] spk_0:
nonprofits. Your story

[00:53:58.25] spk_1:
is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. And by 4th dimension Technologies IT Infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. 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 Steiner. Yes, thank you for that. Affirmation, scotty Be with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great. Mm hmm.