Michelle Boggs shares her thinking on creating community and expanding engagement across your donors and volunteers. How might a Chief Community Officer help? Also, what your nonprofit can do to improve fundraiser retention, which helps you build solid relationships and community. Michelle is with Classy, the nonprofit affiliate of GoFundMe.
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Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of trauma. Top nia if you took my breath away with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate who happens to be sitting next to me again one more week. Uh The family is still visiting this week. Tell us what is going on. Hey, Tony, we’ve got community and engagement. Michelle Boggs shares her thinking on creating community and expanding engagement across your donors and volunteers. How might a chief community Officer help also what your nonprofit can do to improve fundraiser retention, which helps you build solid relationships and community. Michelle is with Classy, the non profit affiliate of GoFundMe on Tony’s Take Two Tails from the gym. It’s a clean machine were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org and buy pork bun looking to grow your nonprofit. You need a.org domain name from pork bun, instant recognition, trust and visibility. Pork bun.com here is community and engagement. It’s a genuine pleasure to welcome Michelle Boggs. She is the executive nonprofit industry advisor of Classy, the nonprofit affiliate of GoFundMe. She helps nonprofits maximize fundraising efforts by analyzing industry data, examining market messaging and donor relationship building. She was a San Francisco Business Journal, 40 under 40 in 2020. Um That was four years ago. Uh You know, we don’t, we don’t like Laurel rests here. We’ll have to see what’s been happening in the past four years and that’s old news now, but we keep, it’s still valuable, but, you know, it’s what, what’s been going on lately. Michelle is on linkedin and the company is at classy.org Michelle Boggs. Welcome to nonprofit Radio, Tony. Thanks so much for having me. It’s an honor. I’ve been listening to your show for a long time and congrats on 700 episodes. It, I just feel honored to be here today. So thanks so much for having me. Thank you. Thank you very much. I hope you don’t mind a little tease in the beginning. Uh You know, it’s no 40 under 40 is a terrific milestone honor to receive. Of course, you know, I’m just messing with you about uh Laurel resting. I know you’re not, we know you’re not a Laurel. I totally get it as we will find out as we will find out. So I, I peaked at 40 that was it? Huh? Right. That’s like, that’s like when you get your lifetime achievement award. No, I’m not, I’m not ready to surrender yet. I, I don’t want the lifetime achievement award. My lifetime is not over. You know, I feel like I, I’ve never gotten a lifetime achievement award but I feel like if you get it, what are people saying? There’s not much more coming? You don’t have, you don’t have too many more years left, lifetime achievement. You’ve already wrapped everything up. Uh No, I’m not, we’re not ready for that. Uh I got, I got more stuff to do. Um So classy class, he’s got millions of users on the platform. What’s, what’s sort of the state of giving from the classy perspective? Yeah. And you know, as you alluded to Classy is part of GoFundMe. So GoFundMe acquired Classy about two years ago and just for general knowledge because I don’t think most um of your 95% of the smaller nonprofits may be aware of the power within the marriage of these two brands and what we’re really excited about. Um and how the future um and existing state of giving is really helping us develop products that will help people be more generous and help others. So classy and it’s self, Tony supports nonprofits. We have about 6000 nonprofits using our platform. And then on the gofundme side, those are individuals setting up gofundmes and raising money on behalf of other individuals, friends, families, colleagues, coworkers um combined between the two companies, we just surpassed $30 billion raised. And in any given time, we have about about 100 and 50 million active users. Um Interfacing with Classy or GoFundMe. Classy specifically, I came to work here because before joining a technology company, I was a front line fundraiser myself for my entire career, worked at smaller more regional nonprofits, worked at some of the big, you know, fortune 100 nonprofits and did all the things, wore all the hats. Um and it’s been a phenomenal career. But what I started to notice towards the end of my tenure and before I jumped over to Classy was just this, we were really missing the mark in engagement with donors. It just seemed like Groundhog’s Day every year around. Ok, how do we keep our existing donors? How do we increase their giving? How do we find new donors? And it just, you know, kept the numbers just kept going in the wrong direction. And it was really just thinking we’ve got to be doing something wrong here. I mean, people are changing and how they want to engage with brands, how they want to show up in generosity, how they want to support others, what philanthropy means to them. And so for me, it’s been super exciting to work at Classy and GoFundMe and sort of be, you know, at the forefront of defining what community engagement looks like how people give, what the future of giving and fundraising will look like. So some of the big things that I we think about and talk about all the time is just nonprofits are facing such constant change. I mean, look at the news on Friday about the stock markets, you know, imagine going into a donor meeting this week with one of your top donors knowing that might be on their minds. And so it’s just constantly staying abreast of what’s happening. Um increasing support or expectations when they engage with you online or in person, they have evolving expectations, especially depending on their age. You know, if they’re a gen Z, they may might expect to engage with your nonprofit completely different than some of the folks you’ve made your whole career engaging, Tony, you know, a planned giving prospect who’s towards the end of their life and is planning on making a substantial gift to a nonprofit. So th those engagement expectations are changing rapidly and it’s really difficult to keep up with them and then cutting through the noise, think about the ads and the information that’s fed to you every single day. So how do nonprofits cut through that noise land? Their message, acquire donors, keep that interest and engagement, turn it into dollars and then be able to go back and show that impact. So it’s just like a wild and crazy time and, and then you throw in an election year, the noi uh I was just gonna say the, the, your, your point about the noise is uh increased exponentially in the next three months uh election cycle. And one other thing I’ll, I’ll, I’ll talk about quickly is, you know, throughout my career, the majority of sort of how we went about our business was this idea of like relationship building and bringing communities together. So whether that was a gala or a huge run walk or a tour of a hospital, it was always about kind of bringing people together and, and, you know, building that community engagement. And then within the last five years because of digital, it’s allowed us to reach donors all over the world and scale in ways we never thought possible. But I think because of that, we’ve lost a bit of the connection. And so we talk a lot at GoFundMe and Classy and with some of our big partners, Tony, like giving Tuesday, the giving institute, some of these other um big organizations doing a lot of data and research around donor behaviors. We think that people aren’t any less generous, even though a lot of the reports are telling us declining is giving. We actually think they’re just giving in different ways and our engagement is not keeping up with their expectations if that makes sense. So we’re talking a lot about like the future of being able to married both where you’re delivering incredible giving experiences, but you’re also bringing people together and, you know, kind of building that brand loyalty and that deeper understanding of why I show up for this nonprofit every day or why this nonprofit is important to me or do I see value in my gift or my time? Um And so we’ve been talking a lot about like sort of this next iteration of combining the power and scale of technology, but never forgetting the fact that this is a relationship business and that’s our strongest currency is trust and engagement. And actually, and not wisely used those two things can be in conflict, the use of technology and the personalization and the the recognition of being a relationship business. If if you’re not doing those things, you’re not combining those things smartly. Uh you, they can be at odds. Yeah, just before joining with you, I was reading this interesting um report around this survey that was done around producing large scale campaigns as a nonprofit using A I technology and specifically around images that you use. And donors were very turned off by knowing that the images were more like A I generated rather than like super raw and authentic. So even something like that is a great example of like I’m in marketing. I might work at a small nonprofit, I think. Oh, this is great. I’m I’m churning campaigns. I’m able to scale and reproduce at a, at a fast clip and not even realizing, you know, the detriment that that’s having on the donor who’s receiving that information because it’s lacking that, you know, that personal human community relationship piece to it. Authenticity. Yeah. If you’re, if you’re, if you’re inauthentic in your, I don’t know if you’re inauthentic in your webinars. If you’re inauthentic in your one on one donor meetings or small, small events in people’s homes, I mean, people see through that, uh just like they’re gonna see through an inauthentic image. I’m not saying we can spot every A I generated image. Uh I mean, that’s not, that’s not possible. But uh I don’t know, I, I think that would be a symptom of a larger lack of authenticity. Like a willingness to use fake images, you know, to, to promote your work. I mean, you’re doing the work, show us, show us the, the show us the reality. Yeah, you shouldn’t have to generate from artificial intelligence. All right. Yeah, you’re right. That’s a perfect example of the business of relationship, fundraising and artificial intelligence being at odds is a perfect example. Thank you. Um What, let’s see. Uh There’s something that makes that I, I think of when we’re listening to your explanation of, you know, where you think things stand now and, and I’d like to get into a little more about the, the future. What you’re thinking about the future of fundraising is uh and relationships. But, you know, the, the fact that the uh percentage of our gross domestic product that is fundraising that is comprised of fundraising revenue or represented by fundraising revenue is, has been stuck for decades, decades. And like, so you see different estimates like 2 2.5% of GDP. I’m not even sure I’ve seen 3% but, you know, certainly we’re not approaching 5% or, you know what, you know what I mean? In decades, we’ve been talking about this. What do you see as the ways of overcoming that? I mean, I, I would like to see GD uh giving like double to five or 6% of, of GDP, you know, and we’re talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. What do you, what do you see as the obstacles you’ve been in the business for a long time? Yeah, it, you know, um to be vulnerable, I had never heard that statistic until I guess it was February. I attended Microsoft’s inaugural Global Leaders Summit around nonprofits in Bellevue, Washington. And this gentleman gave an amazing presentation around the fact that that number has been stagnant, like you said, and what would happen if we were able to double or triple triple it? Like, could we get rid of food insecurity, could we solve for homelessness, et cetera? It was a really powerful, but again, I had never heard that statistic because when you hear things like $480 billion you’re like, we’re doing great. That’s so much money. That’s amazing. Um When, in fact, you know, there’s so much more to be done. But, yeah, I, I think it’s, um, I think it’s so many things, a lot of it, in my mind when I would work with teams or coach teams is a lot of it is we tend to just set the wrong metrics as nonprofit leaders. You know, we set metrics that don’t always drive long term donor retention and long term outcomes. It’s all very short sighted, you know, where you have to have this many meetings and this many proposals and you have to raise a million dollars in year one. And if not, you’re a failure. And so it doesn’t feed this culture around. It’s OK if it takes me three years to work with Tony, but I have my eyes on, you know, him leaving us at a quest of $25 million. Um And so there’s like, not a lot of long term planning that goes into much of the goal setting and strategy so that I think is a big piece and we talk a lot about organizations around like how could it look different to motivate the behaviors that are going to give you some of those better indicators around donor retention, larger gifts. Um Things like that. I think a big piece of it is this idea of philanthropy in general of like it’s not for the regular person and my everyday gift isn’t going to make a difference. And I think crowdfunding a platform like gofundme, all the stuff I’m sure you’ve seen on tiktok and Instagram about just everyday people changing the lives of someone. You know, there was this amazing story of this um this Vietnam vet who was working in a grocery store and he was the shopping cart. Um like he had, you know, gathered the shopping carts and some, you know, 30 year old man saw him and just thought that doesn’t look right. He looks, you know, much too old to be doing that and it’s hot out here and like, gosh, you know, and so we approached him and found out that the man had to do it to like make his, you know, rent, et cetera, pay his expenses. And so they started a gofundme and, you know, before you knew it, I think they raised like a couple $100,000 and the guy will never have to work again. But it’s this power in like these small donations can make a difference and that’s changing. Thank goodness. But I think for years myself, like the bottom of the donor pyramid, we just handled with, you know, large scale direct mail or emails or newsletters. And there wasn’t a lot of promoting this idea that the everyday donor can make a difference. And so there’s a lot of power in that. And then of course, looking at the data of those donors and having access to make more data driven decisions to say, ok, we have 9000 active donors. We should really spend some more time with 700 of them because the data is telling us not only do they have propensity and wealth, but they’re super engaged with us and we should be asking them for more and we should be asking them more often. So I think there’s been a lack of insight into powerful data for nonprofits to run more like businesses and um do more with less. And then um I think the whole, you know, impact piece has been a struggle as well is like, am I really making a difference? I mean, I experienced this a lot at a big disease, health and human services organization I worked at is like we were doing huge things on a national scale, but it was hard to get local regional people to feel like their involvement was really making a difference. So across the board showing powerful impact and outcomes is a challenge. So I could probably go on and on. But I think some of those things are what stick out to me. And I’d love to hear, you know, what you’ve heard from some of your guests or your perspective, Tony on why that number continues to be what it is. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds, both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers, just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more now, back to community and engagement. Well, thank you. All right. Turn the, turn the tables on me. Um Usually I don’t, usually, I don’t like that. No, no. Um Yeah. Uh I think uh related to your, your, your first valuable thought on this uh uh about the relationship building and the taking the time. Uh I think another contributing factor is the employee turnover in, in development, in fundraising. We’re, we’re not retaining, are some of our best fundraisers, you know, isn’t something like every 18 months. I think a major gift officer moves or somewhere around there. It’s not what you’d want it to be. I, I’d like to, I’d like to be like six or seven years. So I know it’s nowhere near that whatever it is. You know, if it’s two a year and a half, two years, you know, uh that doesn’t, that doesn’t lend itself to building the kinds of relationships that you and I are talking about. You know, you use three years as an example off the top of your head, which I think is a great one. Yeah, sometimes gifts do take three years. Well, if, if, if the average is a year and a half and then the employee is gone, that’s two major gift officers or two giving directors. Well, now, now the gift is going to come to the third one. I mean, where’s the, so, you know, where, where’s the role? Not only, not only that, like the other thing that’s happening there with that, you know, revolving door is that any trust or progress that was made, you know, completely. In fact, it sets you back even more because the donors thinking, well, I got to know George or Martina and I liked them and now they’re gone. And so I wonder what’s going on over there or whatever it is, you know, but I think some of that turnover in my opinion ties back to the people do not stay where they don’t feel successful. And if we’re not setting them up for success, because we’re putting metrics and goals that are either unrealistic or do not allow for powerful, strong long term relationships to be built. And then you’re gonna leave, you’re going to go somewhere else where you’re going to feel successful. When I was a director of Planned Giving decades ago, I used to track and, and thankfully, the vice president who I worked for uh accepted this meaningful contacts, meaningful, it had nothing to do with dollars and that I had, I had dollar metrics also, or number of gift commitments more likely than in plan, giving more commitments than dollars. But meaningful contacts, you know, a meaningful contact could be, uh, a heartfelt email. It doesn’t have a meaningful contact is not necessarily a face to face meeting. Certainly that counts too. But, um, so, you know, I think meaningful contacts just in terms of, you know, I sent a birthday card, a meaningful contact. I sent, I sent a card on the anniversary of your very first gift to the university. Yeah. Imagine that nobody remembers the first year they gave. No, nobody at all. But you have it. It’s in your CRM. When was the first year the person? Oh, my gosh, they gave 15 years ago. We’re coming up on the, the day and the, the exact date of their 15th anniversary giving to us, even if they lapsed a couple of years, it’s still, you know, if they’re still reasonably current 15 years ago, it was your very first gift to us. People are bowled over by that. It, it’s in everybody’s CRM. So I love that meaningful contacts. Yeah. The anniversary of the first gift. That’s a, that’s, that’s a really valuable, easy touch point, easy. Every single donor, you, you have that information on every single person in your CRM database. Um, so, all right, you know, I wanted to add one other. I wanted to add another thing. Um, when you were speaking about the meaningful contacts is, and this might come up later. But I think also we’ve done a terrible job as an industry with connecting our supporters, our volunteers, our donors, our benefactors with one another. So the communication is typically like nonprofit to donor, maybe we’ll let you give us some feedback. But usually it’s only if you’re a big donor or a board member, otherwise we really don’t want to hear your ideas or, you know, whatever and I’m being facetious. But my point is the more that we can connect them with like minded individuals and people that care about the same things and they’re gonna have a stronger affinity and responsibility towards us. So like to bring that to life, the only really philanthropic thing that I do because I have four Children and I work a lot is I’m a mentor and I’ve done it for about, this is going to be my seventh school year. I mentor for an organization in Florida. And once a week I meet with my mentee and, you know, I had one through high school and then now I have one who’s going to be a junior. But anyhow, I’m very dedicated to this. We meet once a week. I get so much out of it. I love my relationship, blah, blah, blah. Um and I give also to them monthly, but I always think, you know, I would care so much more about this organization and there would be such a slim chance of me ever stopping to mentor if I had met other people that are doing this. Like, I’ve never been introduced to other mentors. They’ve never gotten us together. They’ve, you know, we’ve never had moments of saying, like, let’s throw a holiday party for the mentees. Like, hey, I have this mentee that I’m really struggling to connect with. Like, do you have advice? They’ve created no network amongst us. And I could easily if work changed or something with my kids, especially if it was a new mentee, Tony that I didn’t yet have that relationship. I could easily see myself being like, uh I just don’t have time for that anymore. But if I’m dedicated to this other group of people and I’ve made friends with them in relationships, I’m just gonna have a stronger likelihood of staying on and we also don’t do that. So like folks will come to a five K race maybe for a hospital around pediatric heart patients. They come to the race, they raise money. We say thanks. We ask you again next year to participate. We typically don’t ever introduce you to these other heart families or create these moments. So I think that’s a big piece of it as well that we’re just, we’ve really stunk at. That’s really interesting. I wonder if that organization that you mentor for keeps data on when the mentors leave. You know, if, if uh I guess it sounds like if someone graduates from high school and that’s the end of the relationship. How many people do they leave? How, how many, how many mentors end the relationship? The me, the mentoring when the, uh, when their mentees age out of the age out of the process, but you’d be more likely to stay, as you said, if you had a, if you had a relationships with the other mentors, but you might even feel like you’re letting others down. Exactly. That’s what it comes down to. It’s like, I don’t want to let anybody down and you’re not letting, right, and you’re not letting your mentee down because you saw them through the, through the full process until they graduated high school. So you, you haven’t disappointed your mentee that’s critical. I bet a lot. I bet very few people do that. But then what’s the, what? I don’t know, there’s a technical term but what’s the drop off after a mentee graduated? And this is even not a great example because I have ownership to the mentee. But think about more, you know, traditional nonprofits where I’m literally just giving a gift in hopes that it’ll do something around, let’s call it sex trafficking. But other than that, if my finances change or I move or there’s a change in my career, it’s so easy for me to just be like, uh, I don’t support them anymore because there isn’t any responsibility or ownership or to your point. I’m not letting anybody down. So, yeah, I think there’s a lot of opportunity there. You hit on something else. Uh You just briefly mentioned, I wanna pull a little thread on, uh, surveying. You know, you were saying we, we only send surveys to certain donor classes or, or, uh, and then another thing that I find disappointing is when, when some organizations do send surveys and they ask for information, then they don’t, they don’t honor it. They don’t, they don’t honor the communication preference. Uh They don’t honor the program preference. You might ask the person’s birthday, but then you don’t send birthday cards. You know, if they give you the birthday again, something buried in your crm. Uh if you asked for birthday and they gave it to you, you know, use the, use the, use the data that you asked for. So, you know, just generally, you know, don’t survey if you’re not gonna respect the, the preferences and the, and, and, and use the data in, in valuable ways. It’s so true. And, you know, that was one of the biggest drivers for me wanting to come to classy and go fund me is the fact that as a joint company, we sit on the most unique, powerful philanthropic data sets. You think about all the people on gofundme giving to people, all the people on classy giving to organizations and there’s so much that we can dig into that data and learn. But yes, I mean, it’s got to be mirrored to like your most beloved brands. You know, Starbucks asked me for my birthday because guess what? They’re going to send me a free coffee on my birthday and now I’m more and more engaged with Starbucks. I’m loyal to Starbucks. And so it’s not like nonprofits have a lot more data than they think. And they’re just not always using it or thinking about it in those meaningful ways. Like something like you said, you, you’ve mentioned it a couple of times now. The birthday thing is so easy. It’s like we remember it’s your birthday, Tony. We love you over here. It takes two seconds to, you know, shoot a iphone video with your team at your nonprofit. Hey, Tony, we love you. Happy birthday buddy. That takes two seconds when Tony gets that. You better believe he’s thinking like, man, I love them. You know, not only am I gonna give my gift, but when they asked me to have a coffee in a month, I’m gonna remember that and I’m gonna carve out time for that coffee or whatever it is. So, yeah. Could not agree more. It’s time for a break. Pork bun.com named the number one domain registrar by USA today for 2023 and 2024. Pork bun helps you share your organization’s mission with a.org domain name dot org. And the entire.org family of domains are at the heart of change makers and philanthropies worldwide. Join an international community of individuals and organizations sharing a common goal to make the world a better place. Your.org domain name gives your website credibility is easy to remember and helps bring better awareness to your goals. Every domain at Pork bun comes with free features like who is privacy ssl certificates, website and email hosting trials and more. You can manage everything about your domain from one place backed by five stars support 365 days a year. Get your.org domain name for a low price at Pork bun.com. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Let’s swing this mic over here. Thank you, Kate. Hope you’re enjoying your, uh, your beach weekend, your beach week, beach week vacation. I do. It’s very nice. Very hot, but it’s fun. You want, you want hot weather for the beach or at least not raining. But uh, yeah, hot is ok. We, we sit under umbrellas very, very unconscious this week. Uh More tales from the gym, but it’s a positive message. Positive. I am grateful to the folks in this little community fitness center that they are so scrupulous about wiping down the machines after they, we use them. Of course, you know, I, I wiped down. So we, everybody is so cautious. Uh There’s, there are three different places where you can get pa uh towels, you know, pa paper towels, three different paper towel dispensers in this gym that’s probably only about 2000 square feet, maybe 2500. And there are multiple bottles of disinfectant and Purell. So there’s plenty of availability and people are good about it. It’s, and these things are not just hanging out there and nobody’s using them. Everybody is so scrupulous and I think that’s very thoughtful uh of all the folks using the community gym. And then there was one time when somebody did not wipe down the machine, but there was a very pleasant interaction. Uh One of the seniors, uh not one of the loud ones who I’ve talked about like the boat guy with the, the boat, uh the the engine uh refurbishing uh tutorial and, and there was the guy, I think it was the same one with the uh the Blue Angels narration. Uh And then there was the woman, of course, with the uh the incident, the assault. And uh it wasn’t, it wasn’t somebody who I know uh though not, not one of our cast of characters, maybe I should, I should have signed these folks names maybe or try to learn their names but not ask them. I don’t wanna ask what’s your name? Because then I’m in uh I’m in for a 45 minute, you know, conversation every time I go. But these are nice people. Uh So they um so one time somebody didn’t, may have been a visitor because this is a beach town. We get a lot of uh uh visitors. So people renting for a week or even maybe a month so you can get a day pass to the gym, you can get a weekly pass. I don’t know if we have monthly but I know there’s day and week. So, uh, may have been a visitor, you know, uh, and someone went over and said, you know, uh, you really should wipe down the machine. You know, we, we just, all, we do that for each other. And I thought, well, that’s a very, that’s a very thoughtful way of explaining. I mean, who’s gonna disagree with that? You know, you’d have to be like a psychopath or something to say. I don’t, I don’t give a shit about the rest of you, you know. So uh it was very well explained, you know, we do this for each other. So my uh my thanks to my uh gym, fitness center comrades for keeping the equipment clean. We’re all very good. We’re all doing it for each other. I think that’s very admirable. And that is Tony’s take two Kate. It’s good that you found something positive about your gym. No, a clean gym is a good gym. It’s about time. Something positive from this nasty New Yorker transplanted to North Carolina. Well, we’ve got Buku but loads more time, here’s the rest of community and engagement with Michelle Boggs. You, you mentioned, uh you know, getting through the noise and we talked about uh how noisy it is in these uh until election and then even probably after the election. I mean, then there’s gonna be noise about what, what’s coming, the new administration, how, what, what ideas do you have about sort of breaking through and, and getting heard even the, even next year when the election is over and we have a new administration, you know, just even, just generally. Yeah. So I, I hate to give tips that aren’t as useful, but like back up to January, February, we started having really strategic conversations with our nonprofit partners around like how are you preparing specific to an election year? So thinking about things like avoiding key dates of, you know, things that might be happening politically that you wouldn’t want to compete with thinking about an increase in ad spend costs starting probably summer to fall. So can you, you know, bulk up your ad spend at the beginning of the year to save money thinking about um you know, depending on which candidate becomes president, you know, sometimes people may rage, give or, you know, get passionate about something. So just preparing proactively. So we’ve had a lot of conversations around that um and getting in front of your donors face to face and just having, you know, a transparent conversation about, do you anticipate your giving changing in any way, you know, that sort of thing? So some of that stuff has been happening and you have to think proactively and strategically about it. But I think when you just think about cutting through the noise, it goes back to like that personalization, it’s communicating with me in the way that I want to be communicated with, of course, is going to obviously increase your ch your chances of conversion or reaching them in that moment or activating generosity. So if you know certain donors do really well with text, do you have those tools and capabilities to do that? If you know some of your donors really do prefer a quarterly sort of impact report that they can read more at length things that are happening. So I think a lot of it is like that segmentation and personalization of your donors. So not a one size fits all message. And then when it actually is time to give, what is that experience like? So before coming to class, I worked in a children’s hospital, I was president of the foundation. I’m like two months into the job. I get my first email from the foundation asking me to donate to something. And I’m like, oh, you know, I work here now, I really want to lead by example, I’m gonna make a gift. So I scroll down, I click on the donate button and the experience was terrible. I’m on my phone and I’m like filling out all these fields and you know, it’s not mobile optimized. I can barely see what’s happening. I get down, I get down to the moment of the gift and they only took credit cards and I’m like yelling to one of my kids, like, can you go get me my, you know, purse that was, was nowhere near me. And I was like being lazy. And I remember messaging our marketing person, like we don’t have like mobile wallet or like, you know, any of because I’m thinking I was determined to see that gift through, but if I’m an everyday person I’m giving up anyway. So, you know, that that experience has to be quick, modern intuitive. Um So that’s a big thing obviously. And then, you know, there has to be, there has to be ways of, you know, flexibility. So are you making it an option for me to become a recurring donor? I mean, think about the subscription economy, Tony, think about probably all the things you subscribe to that you probably don’t even keep track of. It’s like, what’s another eight bucks a month? Are you making that an option for your donors where they can maybe give smaller amounts, but over the course of a year and they’re giving monthly? Um So I think it goes back to just control what you can control. And some of this, we can control as nonprofits, we can use our data better, we can create more personalized experiences, we can create um giving experiences that are on par with checking out at Amazon, you know, those things we have control over. So that’s at least one way to try to cut through the noise or some ways to try to cut through the noise. You all think about a uh a chief community officer. Uh What, what’s your thinking there? Because I, I think it’s very related to what you, what you were just saying. What, what, what, what are you advocating for uh in a, in a, in a chief community officer? Yeah. Um And thank you for asking the classy every year does a uh nonprofit conference for the social sector. It’s called the Collaborative. And this past year we did it in Chicago and we had over 700 attendees and our um president of Classy and um Chief operating Officer of GoFundMe Soraya Alexander. Her whole keynote opening speech was about this concept and it was so well received, but it’s this sort of disruptive idea of a lot of what I just talked about is like, you have a chief development officer, you have a Chief Revenue Officer and it’s like, don’t get so obsessed with that, get obsessed with bringing people together. And so as a chief Community officer, you’re thinking about how can I find those rabid believers, those people who show up, who open my emails, who come to my events, who donate, who volunteer, who give, you know, in kind donations. And how do I start to think thoughtfully and strategically about putting those people in contact with one another? And so, um you know, as an example, maybe instead of doing an annual report at the end of the year, you bring together that group of 100 of your best supporters and you do a presentation or you do an interactive workshop or to your point, you know, we’re always looking for information, bring, bring a focus group together of people that are like minded that care about your organization to talk through some of those questions that you’re dying to know the answers to that you might otherwise send out in a survey or whatever it is. But it’s being really intentional around doing what you’re already doing. But adding on another layer of bringing people together and giving more power back to those believers and supporters to do it for each other. So, a good example, I love to share this story is um this organization called Moz. They’re a huge proponent in men’s health. I mean, you know, started in Australia and they do this really well. So they’ve got these like people and I’m drawing a blank on what they are. They have like a really fun name for them, but it’s this group and they’re all introduced to one another and there’s promotions around, you know what Tom’s doing to promote and raise money and what Carl’s doing. And so they’re constantly connecting and sharing stories and sharing impact and they feel like they’re part of this family and this commute. So now they’re not just responsible to November, they’re responsible to these mo bros. That’s what they’re called. Um So again, like thinking about as a chief community officer, where are those gaps in me bringing these supporters together? And it doesn’t always have to be a huge lift because I think sometimes event people, their mind goes to, oh, I don’t want to add another event. We don’t have the money to do that, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I think it’s just putting the power back on your supporters around. Like we would love to bring you guys together in a meaningful way. Would you host something? Would you plan something and so enabling and empowering them to do it in ways that are most meaningful to them. So let’s say that this organization I talked about in Florida came to me and said, you know, Michelle, we’re having a hard time retaining our mentors year over year, especially after graduation. Do you have any ideas of how you could help and roll up your sleeves? You better believe I’d be like, that’s really cool. Let me think about that. You know, let me give me a list, sir. Let me start an email. You know, we’ll meet up for coffee and we’ll talk about it. So I just think, I just think again, we we the more that we can think about people don’t quit their friends, they quit nonprofit. So how can you be that you want to build community? Like by the way, thank you, retention. That’s the that’s the technical term of art, technical term of art that I couldn’t think of retention, keeping, keeping people, yeah, retaining. Um Yeah, you wanna, you wanna build community, I mean, you want to build a community of mentors centered around this organization so that, you know, like we said earlier, you’re not letting down your community if you leave, but you’re not, you’re not your community down by leaving. You’re not because you’re not gonna do it, you’re gonna stay as long as it’s, as long as it’s at all feasible, you’re gonna find a way to keep giving to your community through the mentor relationships. And as you alluded to it sounds like you had a really, you know, super cool forward thinking leader when you were doing planned giving, who, you know, was who honored these meaningful interactions and didn’t just always hold you to the numbers. So, you know, as leaders, I think there is an opportunity for us to honor some of that community building and rewarding that and recognizing that because of the long term play around retention around, you know, help having your donors acquire donors for you on your behalf. You know, they’re gonna people give to people, you know, that’s why social media fundraising is so powerful and successful. Because if I send out emails or a Facebook, people are going to give to me. So again, we don’t really leverage our supporters to help us with that peer to peer fundraising either because oftentimes we don’t always set metrics to that November is, is that not the one where men shave their heads in the month of November? Isn’t that the one that they’re the ones that grow the mustaches? I think the other one is Baldwin’s Ohs. Baldwin, right. Baldwin. Of course, they shave their. Ok. Thank you, November. They grow facial hair. I knew it was something to do with hair. Ok. Just really quickly on November because I think this is another tip for listeners or like the evolution of the future of giving is we also can’t be too prescriptive and constrained around how you support our organization. So November has really evolved in this. So they don’t say to everybody, the only way to support us is to grow a stash, you know, they’re going to alienate people, they say support us in whatever way is most meaningful to you. And so they’ve really, they’re kind of risky. They’re kind of um bold in some of their marketing. And, you know, some of these more old school nonprofits might be like, oh my gosh, I would never do that. But again, you have to let go of some of that control as a marketer to meet younger donors where they are. And so I always tell this really quick story about November, but they had a college kid whose grandmother or mother, um, sewed the costume of like a male anatomy part and he like ran around on the college campus, raising money around men’s like prostate health or testicular health or something. And I think some organizations would be like, absolutely not, you know, if I’m too afraid of our brand, I’m too afraid of the backlash. They didn’t and they let him do it and he raised all this money and now all these other fraternities on different campuses are doing things. So I think, you know, I think back to my career, if community supporters said we want to do a third party fundraiser for you, we want to do a small fundraiser, we want the proceeds to go to you. We would give them a tool kit. I mean, that’s not that inspiring. It’s like this is how you do it, you know, make sure it’s approved by legal, make sure you don’t screw with our logo, you know, that’s not very inspiring. So again, I think there’s a balance in obviously brand integrity and keeping that safe. But there also needs to be creative, creativity and flexibility and meeting people where they are because they might come up with some really amazing ideas of how they want to support you. And if you encourage that and support that they’re going to come back. So there’s a piece of that too that I think um is a huge opportunity for us as a sector. An example of giving those tools and empowering people is uh the wildly successful giving Tuesday. It’s totally, it’s totally decentralized. You know, you do giving Tuesday the way you want to if you want to, you know, obviously still mandate, but, you know, just use our use, use some basic branding and they, of course, you know, they’ve expanded and there’s wild, wild amounts of support and ideas and they do have a community for sharing ideas like what, you know, this is our first giving Tuesday, what should we do or? Um so, you know, that’s, it’s just an example of empowering folks to go out and, and fundraise in, in their way. And I think so many orgs myself included is like you do the Giving Tuesday, that’s such a great acquisition tool. We got 45 new donors to giving Tuesday. What are you doing with those donors? You know, is there a plan in place once they come on board on that? I think it’s December 2nd this year. You know, I would challenge listeners to be thinking now about, ok, how do I get to know these new donors because I know they’re going to come and how do I start to build that meaningful relationship with them so that it’s not just every giving Tuesday, I’m trying to replace those donors because that’s what will happen. I, I just wanna make something explicit for listeners. You know, we talked about a, a chief community officer. Uh our listeners are in small and mid size nonprofits so they may not have the luxury of appointing someone, a Chief Community officer. But all these things that you and I are talking about are still eminently doable. You know, maybe in pieces by someone who is, you know, maybe it’s the vice president or maybe it’s the Director of Development or, you know, maybe it becomes a, a partial responsibility. You know, it’s, it doesn’t have to be that you have a new full time hire with, with all that, with all that expense that’s called the Chief Community Officer. These ideas are eminently employable, even without someone being appointed to that title 100%. Yeah, I’m so glad you said that. It’s like the idea here is like, this is everybody’s job and everybody’s responsibility. You know, it should be a, a plus one on everybody’s title. And so just even changing the way you engage with your teams, if you do a team meeting or, you know, you do a regular cadence of engagement, adding this as part of the conversation. Ok. You know, for the next three months, these are our plans, let’s add on and see how we can make them even more impactful and how we can start to think about thoughtfully putting people together and it becomes like a group exercise where everybody’s weighing in and everybody’s being able to um influence this. So, yeah, I, I definitely, you don’t need to hire a Chief Community Officer. It’s really, everyone’s sort of just shifting the way they think about this whole idea and concept and we move the needle when we pay attention to things. I mean, you know, I, I see that in my own business and my own work, I see that in organizations when you start to report on something and measure it and maybe, you know, just like small measures, you know, but when you start to report on it regularly and measure it now you’re, now you’re putting institutional momentum behind it, things are gonna move and it, it, it may be a small movement in the first six months or even the first year. But you’ve taken steps toward building a community of where you already had the people in place that all your constituents are with you, all your people, let’s call them people, not constituents, all the people you in different different categories. But now you’ve, you know, now you’ve broken down silos and put folks together and you’ve built community where it didn’t exist among your, among your, your populations. There you go. There’s a, there’s like a worthy six month goal or even a 12 month goal. I think also it’s a great exercise to get like partners, stakeholders, boards involved. I mean, it’d be an awesome board exercise to just present this whole concept of like we’ve not done a good job of bringing people together of allowing constituents to speak to constituents, allowing donors to meet other donors. Like people want to feel like they’re a part of something bigger. We’ve always just done this one way. Communication board. Let’s talk about this. You know, how would we think about doing this differently? I mean, that I think could be a great exercise. Now, your boards more engaged and they’re not always just, you know, not that people do this, but I, my fear with my, a lot of the boards that I worked with is like, it was a report out during a board meeting and then we usually, you know, got on them about their giving and even as a board member, it wasn’t super inspiring or there wasn’t a lot of work happening in between board meetings. So even getting them as like your tests, early adopters um could be a great place to start regardless of your resources or size of your team. I mean, use those individuals to start to build out this concept, Michelle, let’s flip to the future a little bit. Uh What, what do you, what do you see coming even maybe just in aspirational terms and what would you like to see? But you know, what does classy see coming in the next, you know, like 3 to 5 years? Yeah, I mean, classy is super focused on, I would say three kind of big buckets. The first is like best in class giving experiences. So what we’ve sort of talked about over the last 45 minutes is that when there’s that moment of generosity. Is it a wonderful experience on par? Like I said, with your normal um e commerce experiences? And does it feel like they know me as a donor? Um That’s gonna be huge. I think that’s how we’re gonna drive engagement. That’s how we’re gonna start to tap in two pockets of people that we don’t even know exist at the moment because we’ve been going at it with really this one size fits all. So incredible donor experiences. The second bucket is really that data and intelligence piece. Again, we’re sitting on this amazing data set now, what do we do with this knowledge? So, you know, a great example is like giving behaviors for people using Androids versus people using apple, you know, giving behaviors when people are asked on certain days of the week, like there’s so much crazy stuff. It’s, it’s why I always tell the story. It’s why Amazon bought RBA. Amazon already had their own vacuum. They bought RBA because they wanted the data of people using RBA, they could get data on their homes and their behaviors. And so it’s the same idea, right is how do we unlock this data into delivering, you know, the best products for not only our individuals helping others on gofundme, but also our nonprofits using classy. So we’re really, really excited about what we’re going to be able to do with this data. And then the third is this idea, can I just stop you Amazon having data on the, the, the floor plan of my home. I never thought I don’t have a Roomba but, but, but I mean, they can figure out the schematic. I mean, he said, ok, this person has a counter or this person has an island in their kitchen. Uh, they have so many uh bar stools around the, around the, around the, the uh countertop. Uh So here’s their TV console. Uh We don’t, we don’t see a TV console. So it must be wall mounted because this is clearly clearly a living room, but there’s no entertainment console. So they have a wall mounted TV. You know, I mean, it’s, that’s incredible. I never thought of the value of, I mean, it’s uh like a lot of things in data. It’s, it’s scary but they, they could, they have millions of schematics of people. So we, we to bring that to life, fasi launched um intelligent ask amounts. So we’re empowering our nonprofits to actually put the right ask in front of the right donor at the right time. Instead of, again, no matter who you are. If you log on to my nonprofits website, it’s gonna say $20.50 dollars, $100 it’s going to give you different amounts based on your data, your giving background, your wealth, your zip code. Um And so again, like we tell the story of the, there was a gentleman who had given like a pretty large, you know, online gift to an organization. I think it was like $1000 at the end of the year, which is substantial to me, you know, for a person to give online. And then the next year received a campaign with those smaller amounts. And of course, that person thinking, oh, is that what other people are giving? And so, you know, sort of not meeting them where they are. So the intelligent ask the data, all that is going to be um so exciting. And again, one of the reasons I love being here and working here is is being at the forefront of some of this. And then that last third bucket is that community stuff. I mean, the future of peer to peer, the future of events, the future of how we build communities is um you know, something we’re thinking about and talking about every day because there is going to be there. We’re going to need to shift engagement to change that gross domestic volume number that you talked about has not moved and to think about this next wave of philanthropists, this younger people. So some big shifts have to happen. And so those I would say are the three kind of exciting things for the future for us. Do you have anything on the, on the personal side, uh nonprofit related that uh that you aspire to or that you wanna see? Yeah, that’s a great question. I would like to see this is just like kind of random. But a big part of my role at Classy is um sort of getting our name and our brand out there. So being this like ambassador, so I attend all the conferences. So my travels crazy, but I’m at all the big conferences and I think there’s like this, it goes back to like personalization. I I think some of the content that we deliver at these conferences is like very stale and regurgitated. And so I would like to see some sort of incubation innovation, something where leaders within certain nonprofits can come together and just have the freedom of experimentation and what if and what would it take? And I don’t know what that looks like, but unless I feel supported and free to do that and surrounded by peers who are having these really groundbreaking innovative ideas, I just don’t think there’s a lot of access to that um as a nonprofit leader who’s trying to do so much. And so I find myself sort of being attracted to these organizations or these leaders who are kind of bucking some of the old ways and trying new things and feeling the freedom and failing. But just knowing, you know, we can’t keep doing it the way we’ve always done it. So a community, like you’d like to see a, that’s an awesome idea that like a community of CEO S because it’s lonely, you know, it’s lonely at the top even, I think you have it so much on the for profit side, but on the nonprofit side it just doesn’t seem to exist at least what I’ve seen. Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off, Tony. No, no, no. Uh, it’s, it’s hard at the top so to have a community of like minded, like, like similarly placed CEO S and directors safe space to share. You know, nobody’s got an ax to grind about the other team or, you know, hard bad feelings or animosity or something. It’s nobody, nobody’s got a dog in the, but I’m not good with sports. I don’t know, nobody’s got a ball in the game or a ball on the, a ball on the field, whatever they so uh yeah. No, you’re right. Uh It, it’s related to a lot of what we’re talking about, but it, so it sounds to me like you’re envisioning AAA community of CEO S Safe Space and even just at a conference, you know, maybe, maybe it’s just like a, a two hour drop in or something. But it’s only for the, it’s only for the CEO S and executive directors. Yep. I mean, they’re people too, you know, they deserve safe space. Executive directors are people too. Alright. Is there anything you’d like to share that? I haven’t asked you about, we didn’t talk about. Yeah, I, I’m, I’m super active on linkedin and I love to meet new people. I’d love to hear any feedback from this conversation or challenges to my ideas or, you know, different perspectives or ways of thinking about some of the stuff I’ve talked about. And so we just love, if listeners found me on linkedin, would love to meet you and talk to you. And um I don’t have a lot of superpowers, but I think one of mine is really just connecting with people. I love to do it. It, it fills me up. So I would love to meet anybody that’s listening that wants to talk more. OK. Well, I promise you that uh I’m gonna send you a linkedin, a linkedin connection invitation. All right. So don’t turn it down. I mean, you’re gonna, you know, I already, I already sent you one. So. Oh, you did. Oh OK. All right. Thank you. All right. All right. You beat me. OK? No. And just one more thing, you know, thank you for doing this. I’m sure it’s a heavy lift and a labor of love and the content you’re putting out is amazing. And congrats on 700 episodes and just really appreciative of what you do. Thank you for your gratitude. Thank you very much. It is a labor of love. I do. Yeah, it is. So, thank you very much Michelle Boggs, executive nonprofit industry advisor at Classy. Michelle wants you to connect with her on linkedin and be in touch. You’ll find her there. Boggs Boggs. You have no excuse now. Not to connect with Michelle and you’ll find the company at classy.org. Thank you again, Michelle. Thanks Tony. Next week, a different take on donor retention. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org and buy pork bun looking to grow your nonprofit. You need a.org domain name from pork bun, instant recognition, trust and visibility pork bun.com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation study. You’re with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.
Peter Shankman is a 5x best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book “Zombie Loyalists” focuses on customer service; creating rabid fans who do your social media, marketing and PR for you. Peter’s book isn’t new, but his strategies and tactics are timeless. This originally aired 12/19/14.
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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of brom hydros if I had to walk through the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate to introduce this week’s show. Hey, Tony now I’m on it. It’s zombie loyalists. Peter Shankman is a five time best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book, Zombie Loyalists focuses on customer service creating rabid fans who dear social media marketing and pr for you. Peter’s book isn’t new, but his strategies and tactics are timeless. This originally aired December 19th 2014 on Tony’s Take Two. How’s your endowment were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org here is zombie loyalists. Peter Shankman is a well known and often quoted social media marketing and public relations strategist. His latest book is zombie loyalists. He wants you to create rabid fans who do your social media marketing and pr for you. He’s got super ideas and very valuable stories. I’m very glad Peter Shankman is with me in the studio. He’s the founder of Harrow, help a reporter out connecting journalists with sources in under two years from starting it in his apartment, Harrow was sending out 1500 media queries a week to more than 200,000 sources worldwide. It was acquired by Vocus in 2010. He’s the founder and CEO of the geek factory, a boutique social media marketing and pr strategy firm in New York City. Peter is on nasa’s civilian advisory council. You’ll find him at shankman.com and he’s at Peter Shankman on Twitter. His latest book is Zombie Loyalists using great service to create rabid fans. I’m very glad his book brings him to nonprofit radio and the studio. Welcome Peter. Good to be here, honey. Thanks. Pleasure you um live on the uh on the west side of Manhattan. I do. And you, there’s a, there’s a pretty well known five star steakhouse. Uh I’ll get Wolfgang’s not far from you, but you pass it to go to a different steakhouse. Morton’s correct. Why is that? I am a zombie loyalist to Morton’s. What does that mean? I uh love the service, the attention to detail, the quality, the, the sort of where everyone knows my name mentality. When I walk into that Mortons or any Mortons around the world, they have a tremendous uh custom relationship management system uh when I call one number uh in New York or anywhere in the world, it, it, they know who I am by my cell phone and uh I’m treated with uh just, you know, phenomenal uh uh happiness to, to hear from me and, and my wishes are granted as it were. I, we have a happy hour uh holiday party coming up at Morton’s next couple of days. And uh you know, as always, I forgot to call and make a reservation and, you know, I called yesterday and said, hey, I need a, uh, any chance I get a reservation for seven people, um, you know, Thursday night at, uh, 7 p.m. which is, you know, the, the week of the holiday party. And, uh, they looked and they said, oh, well, and then I guess their computer system kicked in, of course, Mr Shankman. Not a problem at all. We’ll get that for you right away. You know, we’ll have, we’ll have a great booth for you. Um, you know, and we’ll, we’ll, uh, tell us the names of the people attending, you know, you know, you know, they’re gonna have specialized menus for them and with their names on them. So they really, they have a really high level of service that, uh, that they provide. Not just to me that’s the beauty of it. I mean, you know, it’s one thing, yeah, it’s one thing if they just provide it to me, but they they do that for everyone. And, um, that is huge because, you know, being able to call when a normal person makes a reservation and, and not that I’m special, I’m actually rather abnormal. But, um, when a normal person makes a reservation and says, uh, you know, Morton says, ok, great. Are you celebrating anything? Oh, yeah, it’s my wife’s birthday. They always ask anyone who calls. I said, oh, you know what, it’s my wife’s birthday. Great. What’s her name? Her name is Megan or whatever. And you go in and they um and you sit down on the, on the, on the uh menu, it says Happy Birthday, Megan and then Megan, whoever she happens to be will spend the next 45 minutes, you know, taking 50 selfies with her menu and, and, and that’ll go online and then when her friends, you know, want that same experience, they’re gonna go Morton’s. You say uh in, in the book you get the customers you want by being beyond awesome to the customers you have. And that’s why I want to start with that Morton story which is in the middle of the book, but they do it for everybody and then they have the VIP S as well. And there’s the terrific story of you tweeting. Go tell that story. That’s a good story. It’s a good story. I love stories. I, I was flying home from a day trip to Florida and was exhausted and starving and, um, day trip mean you’re flying down, I flew down at 6 a.m. at a lunch meeting, flew back the same day. You know, one of those, one of those days. And, uh, I jokingly said the tweet, hey Mortons, why don’t you meet me at Newark Airport when I land with a poer house in two hours? Ha ha ha, ha, ha. Um, you know, I said it the same way you’d say, hey, winter, please stop snowing things like that. And I landed, uh, find my driver and sit next to my driver is a, uh, is a, a waiter in a tuxedo with a Morton’s bag. Uh, they saw my Tweet, they, they put it together, they managed to bring me a, uh, a, uh, steak and, and, you know, as great of a story as it is. That’s, that’s, it’s a great stunt and it’s a great story and it wasn’t a stage and it was completely amazing. But, you know, that’s not what they’re about. They’re not about delivering steaks to airports. They’re about making a great meal for you and treating you like royalty when you come in. And, you know, I, I, if they just did that, if they just delivered the steak at the airport, but their quality and service sucked. You know, it wouldn’t be a story. He said, oh, you know, look what they did for Peter, but I, you know, my steaks cold, you know, so what it really comes down to is the fact they do treat everyone like kings and that’s, that’s really, really important because what winds up happening is you have a great experience at Morton’s and then you tell the world, you know. Oh, yeah, great dinner last night. That was amazing. I would totally eat there again. And as we move to this new world where, you know, review sites are going away and I don’t, I don’t need to go to Yelp to read reviews from people. I don’t know, you know, if they’re shills or whatever the case may be, I don’t know, or tripadvisor, same thing. I want people in my network who I trust and, and people in their network who they trust and then by default I trust. So that’s gonna be, that’s already happening automatically. You know, when I, when I land in L A and I type in steakhouse, uh, you know, not me. I know, I know where the steakhouse are in L A but if someone types into Google Maps or Facebook steakhouse in Los Angeles, you know, they’ll see all the steakhouses on a Google map. But if any of their friends have been to any of them, they’ll see those first. And if they had a good experience, only if the sentiment was positive, will they see those first? And that’s pretty amazing because if you think about that, the simple act of tweeting out a photo. Oh, my God. Thanks so much, Mortons love this. That’s positive sentiment. The network knows that. And so if you’re looking for a steakhouse, you know, and your friend six months ago had that experience. Oh my God, amazing steak. This is a great place there. The sentiment is gonna be there and, and, and the network will know that the network will show you that steakhouse because you trust your friend. And this is where we start to cultivate zombie loyalists through this, through this awesome customer service of the customers. You, you have, uh say more about zombies. I mean, you have so many companies out there who are trying to get the next greatest customer. You know, you see all the ads, um, you know, the, the, the, the, the Facebook post, you know, we’re at 990 followers, our 10, our 1/1000 follower gets a free gift. Well, that’s kind of saying screw you to the original 990 followers who you had, who were there since the beginning? We don’t care about you. We want that 1000. You know, that’s not cool. Um, the, the, the companies who see their numbers rise and who see their fans increase and their, their, um, um, revenues go up are the ones who are nice to the customers. They have, hey, you know, customer 852 it was really nice of you to join us a couple of months ago. How, you know how are you, we, we noticed that you posted on something about a, uh, you know, your car broke down. Well, you know, we’re not in the car business but, you know, you’re, you’re two blocks from our, our closest, uh, outlet or whatever and, you know, once you, if you, if you need to come in, have a free cup of coffee, we’ll use the phone, whatever. You know, those little things that you can do that, that, that really focus on the customers you have and make the customers, you have the ones who are the zombies who tell other customers how great you are. And this all applies to nonprofits certainly as well. I mean, the, the, but even more so, I mean, if you, you know, nonprofits are constantly worried about how to, how to make the most value out of their dollar and how to keep the dollar stretching further and further. And, uh, you know, you have this massive audience who, who has come to you, who’s a nonprofit and who said to you, you know, we wanna help here, we are volunteering our help and just simply treating them with the thanks that they deserve. Not just a simple, hey, thanks for joining car, but actually reaching out asking what they want, asking how they like to get their information, things like that will greatly increase, um, your donations as well as, um, making them go out and tell everyone how awesome you are. And letting them do your pr for you. And that’s what a zombie loyalist does. And, and this is for, this could be, donors could be volunteers to the organization who aren’t able to give a lot. But giving time is enormous. And if, you know, if they have such a great time doing it, they’ll bring friends as, as zombies. Do you know, zombies have one purpose in life. Real zombies have one purpose in life that’s to feed. It doesn’t matter how the Mets are doing. It doesn’t matter, you know, because a chance that they lost anyway. But it doesn’t matter how, uh how anyone’s doing, you know, or what’s going on in the world economy. It doesn’t matter what matters with a zombie. Where are they gonna get their next meal? Because they feed and they have to infect more people otherwise they will die. Zombie loyalists are the same thing. All they have to do is make sure that their custom, they, they tell the world and we all have that friend who does it. You know, that one friend who eats, eats nothing but the Olive Garden because, oh my God, it’s greatest breadsticks everywhere. You know, and they will drag your ass to the Olive Garden every single time they get that chance. That’s a zombie loyalist. And you want them to do that for your nonprofit. And there’s, there’s a big advantage to being a smaller, a smaller organization. You could be so much more high touch and we’re gonna talk about all that. We got the full hour with Peter Shankman. We gotta go away for a couple of minutes. Stay with us. It’s time for a break. 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 member required. Thus, your donation data is automatically synced with your donor box account. No manual data entry or errors make giving a breeze and focus on what matters your costs. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations in 2024 visit donor box.org to learn more. Now back to zombie loyalists, Peter, it doesn’t take much to uh stand out in the customer service world does it, it really doesn’t, you know, and the reason for that is because we expect to be treated like crap. You know, if you think that III I love this example. Whenever I give speeches, I ask, I ask everyone in the audience, I’m like, who here has had a great flight recently? At least one person will raise their hand. I’m like, ok, what made it great? And without fail, their answer said, well, we took off on time and, and I had the seat I was assigned and we landed on time and like, so you paid for a service, they delivered that service and you’re over the freaking moon about it. Like, that’s the state that we’ve become. You know, that’s how bad customer service has been that you are just beyond thrilled that they did exactly what they said they were gonna do with nothing more, less than 20 minutes in the post office line. And I’m ecstatic. Exactly. You know, it’s, it’s so, we really are at a point where we only have to be one level above crap. I, I’m not even asking my clients to be good. Just one level of crap. You know, if everyone else is crap and you’re one level above that, you’re gonna win. It’s my favorite, one of my favorite jokes. Um, the, uh, the two guys are out in the woods, hunting out in the woods and the, or just jogging out in the woods. The first one sees a, a bear and they see this bear and the bear is raised up and he’s about to strike. And the first one, you know, reaches down and tightens up his, his laces on his running shoes. And the second one says, dude, don’t be, don’t be, don’t be an idiot. You can’t run a bear. And he says, I don’t need to, I just need to outrun you. You know, I love that joke because it’s, it’s so true. That’s the concept. You know, all you have to do is be just a little bit better than everyone else and, and you’ll win the whole ball game. Now, we have to set some things up internally in order to have the, the structure in place to create these, the zombie loyalists. Yeah. I mean, you have a, you have a company where the majority of people in your company are afraid to do anything outside the norm. You know, I mean, look at, look at a cell phone company, you know, they, you call them because you have a problem right AT&T or T Mobile, you call them, you have a problem. They are actually the customer service people that handle your call are actually judged and rewarded based on how quickly they can get you off the phone. You know, not on whether or not they fix your problem, but how fast they can get you off the phone, which means how many more calls they get. I remember I worked, uh, when I worked in America online, we all had to do a day of customer service every month just to see what it was like, which I thought was a brilliant idea. But, you know, again, it’s this, it’s, it was a system called V I where you’d sign on and as soon as you signed on, if you weren’t in a call, you know, that was tacked against you. And if you were in a call and, and it went over a certain amount of time, that was tacked against you. So the decks were stacked not in the favor of the customer. There are some companies out there who allow their customer service employees to simply be smarter about what they do and do whatever it is they need to do to fix the problem. Um You know, my favorite story about this is Verizon Wireless. I, I went overseas, I was in Dubai and I landed in Dubai and I turned on my phone, I had gotten global roaming on my phone which, you know, 20 bucks for every 100 megabytes. Ok. So I land and I turn on my phone and it says, um, uh, like before I’m even off the plane, I get a text that you’ve used $200 in roaming charges. I’m like, what the hell, you know, $300 by the time I get off the plane, I’m like, something’s up here. So I call Verizon and a nice guy answered the phone and, oh, yes, I mean, you know, the first thing is it was, yes. So you do have global roaming but it, it doesn’t work in Dubai. So I’m like, ok, well, that’s not really global, that’s more hemispherical roaming I think is, is the issue. And um, so he, uh I said, well, look, I’m gonna be here for a week. I said, you know what? You have my credit card on file bill me like, I don’t know. Can you bill me like 1000 bucks and just let me have the phone for like the week and you know, that, you know, or 500 bucks, I won’t go over two gigs. Well, just do something for me. Sorry, sir. I’m not authorized to do that. Um, you can, I’m like, so what do I have? He’s like, well, you can pay, uh, $20.48 a megabyte. I’m like, I’m sorry, seriously, which equates essentially to, I would be charged $20.48 seconds, $20.48 for every, I think at the time for every four seconds of the video, Gangnam style if I decided to watch it on my phone, like this is pretty ridiculous. So I simply hung up, hung up on Verizon. I went down the street to the Dubai, the mall of the Emirates, which is the largest mall in the world. Has a freaking ski slope in it. And I’m not joking. It has a ski slope in this mall and uh went to one of like the 86 different electronic stores in this mall. Uh bought an international unlocked version of the same exact cellphone. I have went next door to the local uh SIM card store, bought a SIM card that gave me 20 gigabytes of data and 1000 minutes of talk for $40. I then put that in my phone because it’s an Android phone. I simply typed in my user name. And password for Google and everything imported. And Verizon did not get a penny on that trip. Um, how easy would have been for Verizon to say, ok, you know what, we’ll cut your break. Uh, they’d still make a lot of money off me and I would tell the world how great Verizon was to work with and how wonderful they, how helpful they were. Instead, they guaranteed that I will never, that they will never make a penny for me on any international trip. And I take what, 15 of them a year because now my cell phone, um my international cell phone that I bought, all I do is pop out the SIM card and I land wherever I am put in a new SIM card. So, and you’re speaking and writing and telling bad stories and every time I tell the story about Verizon, I make it a little worse. Apparently, Verizon uh tests out the durability of their phone by throwing them at kittens. I read this on the internet. It must be true, but, you know, not necessarily, but you know, the concept that, that all they had to do, all they had to do was empower Mark customer service and it wasn’t Mark’s fault. Mark was a really nice guy, but he was not allowed to do that. He would have gotten fired if he tried to do a deal like that for me. And so it’s this concept, you know, and the funny thing is, is it comes down to, if you really wanna go, go down the road in terms of a public company like Verizon of, of, of where the issue is, you could even trace it to fiduciary responsibility because the fiduciary responsibility of any company CEO all the way down to the employee is to make money for the shareholders. Ok. That’s what fiti responsibility means by not allowing me by not allowing mark the customer service agent to, to help me and, and take a different tack. He’s actually losing money too many CEO S think about the next quarter. Oh, we have to make our numbers next quarter. I’m fired. Companies in other countries tend to think about the next quarter century and they make a much bigger difference because they think, ok, what can we do now that will have impact in the next 5, 1015 years, you know, and really implement the revenue that we have and, and augment and companies in America. Don’t, don’t tend to think about that and that’s a big problem. Um, I, I buy a product line, uh, that has a lot of natural and recycled materials in the seventh generation. And their, um, their tagline is that in, in, in our every decision, we must consider the impact on the next seven generations. It comes from an American Indian. It’s a great, it’s a great line. I mean, just think about how much money Verizon would have made for me in the past three years. Just, just in my overseas, you’d be telling a story about like them, about Morton’s like the one about MS, you know, look, a lot of people listen to me and they went for a time when you googled roaming charges. When you Google Verizon roaming charges. My story about how I saved all this money came up first because I did the math. And if I had not called Mark and bought my own cell phone and done this, I would have come home to a $31,000 cell phone bill and you know, damn well, Verizon wouldn’t know anything about that. They’d be like, oh, too bad, sorry about the fine print. And plus the, the employee who sold you the international plan. I’m sure you told her where you going, I’m going to Canada and I’m going to Dubai. I’m assuming she didn’t know where Dubai was. She probably thought it was near Canada. But uh long story short, I couldn’t use it. All right. So employees have to be empowered. There has to be, we have to be but changing AAA thinking too. I mean, the customer has to come first. The donor of the volunteer donor, the teer you get at the end of the day. Where’s your money coming from? I don’t care if you’re a nonprofit or fortune 100. Where’s your money coming from? You know, and if you, we see it happening over and over again. We see it. Right. You’re seeing it right now. Play out every single day with the company, Uber. Um, and Uber, it’s so funny because Uber makes, uh, you know, they’re valued at $40 billion right now. But that doesn’t mean anything, that doesn’t mean anything if people are running away in droves which people are, there’s a whole delete your Uber app movement. Oh God. Yeah, people are leaving. Uh Well, it’s several. Number one that Uber is run by a bunch of guys who honor the bro code. The company was actually started by a guy who on business in business insider said he started the company to get laid. Um His goal was to always have a black car when he was leaving a restaurant uh to impress the girl he was with. That’s he came out and said that and you see that culture run rampant throughout Uber um from their God mode where they can see they actually created. There was a uh uh I don’t know where I read this. It might have been Business Insider as well. There was a, they created a hookup page that showed or, or, or, or a walk of shame page that showed where uh women were leaving certain apartments like on weekends and going or leaving certain place on weekends, going back to their home. Um It was obvious that they, you know, met some guy and they did that and then, of course, just their, their whole surge pricing mentality, which is, you know, two days ago there was a, uh, a couple of days ago there was a, uh, the terrorist, uh, I think it was a terrorist attack in Sydney, uh, at that, at that bakery and Sydney, uh, Uber in Sydney instituted surge pricing for people trying to get out of harm’s way. You know? And, and they, they later refunded it. Oh, it was a computer glitch. I’m like, you know, I’m sorry, you, you have a stop button and you can, when you see something happening like that, there has to be someone in the office who can say, you know what? Not cool. We’re gonna take care of that and then hit the stop button and it was, yeah, bad, tons and tons and tons of bad publicity. And, you know, I was having an argument with someone on my Facebook page at facebook.com/peter Shankman because they said, oh, you know, um, so what they don’t, they don’t turn on surge pricing. They don’t have enough cabs there and, you know, people can’t get home. I said I’m pretty sure that the only company I’m sure that no one had cab companies there. I’m sure that there wasn’t anyone who had enough cars there, private cabs, Ubers, whatever yet. The only stories I read about companies screwing up during that event were Uber, not Joe’s Sydney cab company. You know, I didn’t see him screwing it up because he didn’t turn on surge pricing. You gotta, you gotta respect your customer. You have to, as we’re uh training for that, then not only uh trying to change that mindset, well, in, in trying to change that mindset rewards for, for customer, for employees that, that do take go do go the extra mile. Well, first of all, if you give the employees the ability to do it to go the extra mile and understand they won’t get fired. You’re not gonna get in trouble. I I always tell, tell every one of my employees, you’re never gonna get in trouble for spending a little extra money to try and keep a customer happy. You’ll get fired for not doing it. You know, you get fired for not for seeing an opportunity to fix someone and not taking it, not doing everything that you know, Ritz Carlton is famous for that. Ritz Carlton hires people not because whether they could fold the bed sheet but for how well they understand people because in Ritz Carlton’s mind, it’s much more important to be a people person and be able to be empathetic and that is such a key word. Empathy is just so so sorely lacking. You know how many you’ve called customer service? Yeah. You know, I have to, I have to change my flight. My, my, my aunt just died. I really need to get home. Ok, great. That’s $300. I just wanna go an hour earlier, you know, you show up at the airport, your bag is overweight by half a pound. That’s $75. I just, I can, you can, you just cut me some slack. Nope, you know, so empathy and giving the cust, giving the employee the ability to understand that the customer that sometimes you can make exceptions and it is ok to make changes and, and this is where a smaller organization has huge advantage and it’s easier to change. That’s what kills me. You know, I go to these, I, I try to frequent small businesses when I can, I go to some of these small businesses and they won’t, they, they act like large businesses, you know, in the respect that, that they don’t have a, like, they wanna be respected almost. They don’t have like a six, a 6000 page code that they have to adhere to. They can simply, uh, do something on the fly and yet for whatever reason they won’t do it. And, and it’s the most frustrating thing is like, guys, you, you’re acting like a big, you’re acting like mega Laar here, you know, and you’re not Mega Lamar and you’re just Joe’s House of stationery, whatever it is and, you know, not being able to help me, you’re pretty much killing yourself because you don’t have 85 billion customers that have come through the door after me, you know. But I have a pretty big network and for a small business to get killed socially as social becomes more and more what, how we communicate. You know, it’s just craziness. It’s, you know, we’re, we’re pretty much in a world, I think where something almost hasn’t happened to you. Unless, unless you share it. I joked that, uh, you know, if I can’t take a selfie was I really there. Um, but it’s true, you know, we, we do live in a world where, you know, I, I remember God 10 years ago, maybe not even, not even 10 years ago. I was one of the first people to have a phone in my camera, you know, and it was like a new phone. That’s what I said, yeah, camera in my phone, right? And it was like a uh I think it was like a 0.8 megapixel. You know, it looked like I was taking a picture with a potato but it was, um it was this, I remember it was 2002 and I was in Chase Bank and there was a woman arguing with the teller and I pulled out my video, you know, it was, I mean, it was the crappiest video you’ve ever seen. But I pulled it out and I said, you know, II I started recording and the, the woman behind the woman behind the counter was going, the woman behind the counter was talking to the customer saying you do not speak to me that way. You get out of this bank right now. And the customer was saying I just wanted my balance and you and the manager comes over and I get this whole thing on my little crappy three G uh Motorola phone phone. And I, I remember I posted online and gawker picks it up and II I gave him, I, I emailed it, you know, I, my, the headline I put on my blog was, you know, Chase where the right relationship is at. Go after yourself, you know, and it was, and it just got tons of play and then gawker picked it up. It went everywhere, totally viral. So it’s one of those things you’re just like, you know, this is in 2002. It’s 12 years later. How the hell can you assume that nothing is being that you’re not being recorded? You know, I, I, I remember blowing, I, I sneezed a couple of weeks ago and, and, uh, uh not to get too graphic here, but it was, I, I needed a tissue big time after I was done sneezing. And I remember going through my pockets looking for desperately looking for tissue and like looking around making sure I wasn’t on camera somewhere that someone didn’t grab that and it was give me the next viral sensation, you know, I mean, I wait, God, I went to high school with eight blocks from here, right? If the amount of cameras that are in Lincoln Center today. Were there in 1989 1990. I’d be having this conversation entirely. I’d be having this conversation behind bulletproof for myself. And you’d be, yeah. So, you know, you’d be, you’d be talking to me, you’d have to get special clearance to visit me. Probably be at the, the Super Max in Colorado or something. So, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s one of those things that you’re just like my kid who’s, who’s almost two years old now is gonna grow up with absolutely no expectation of privacy the same way that we grew up with an expectation of privacy. And I’m thankful for that because she will make a lot less stupid moves. You know, I mean, God, the things that I thought, you know, in, in, in, in high school, I thought the stupidest thing in the world. Thank God. There wasn’t a way for me to broadcast that to the world in real time. Jeez. Thank God creating these uh zombie loyalists. And you know, we’ve got to change some, we’ve got to change culture and thinking and reward systems. Let’s go back to the, the cost of all this. Why is this a better investment than trying to just focus on new donors? I, I love, I love this analogy and I’ll give you a fun analogy. Let’s, I’m in a bar and there’s a very cute girl across the, across the bar and she catches my eye catch her, I go up to her and I go, you know, you don’t know me. I am amazing in bed. You should finish your drink right now. Come home. Let’s get it on. I’m, I’m gonna impress I’m that good chances are she’s gonna throw a drink in my face. Go back talking to her friends. I’ve done a lot of research on this. That’s probably something I was gonna do now. Let’s assume, let’s assume an alternate world. I’m sitting there on my phone, I’m just playing like, you know, some, you know, words with friends or something like that. And, uh, she’s over there talking to her friends and one of her friends look up said, holy crap. That’s Peter. I think that’s Peter Shankman. I’ve heard him speak. I, he’s in this fantasy world. I’m single too today. He, I think he’s single and he’s having this amazing guy. I, I know he has a cat. You have a cat. You should totally go talk to him at the very least. I’m getting this girl’s number. That’s pr ok. And what do we trust more? Me with my, you know, fancy suit collar going over there in my seventies, leisure suit. Hi. I’m amazing. Or the girl saying, hey, we’ve been friends since third grade. I’m recommending that guy. You should trust me on this. You know, obviously that, that’s where, uh, good customer service comes into play and that’s where corporate culture comes into play because if I have a great experience with you and at your company, I’m gonna tell my friend when they’re looking and I will stake my personal reputation on it and there’s nothing stronger than that. And these are the people who want to breed as Zz Willis that’s stronger than advertising, stronger than marketing. And they’re gonna share, people wanna share that. Think about the, the internet runs on two things. It runs on drama, drama, and bragging or bragging and drama. And if you, if you need uh any proof of that, you know, go and look at all the hashtags with crap that’s happened, you know, bad customer service, bad whatever. But then look at all the good hashtags you know it when our flights delayed for three hours and we lose our seat. Oh my God, I hate this airline, you know, worst airline ever but when we get upgraded, right? Hashtag first class bitches or whatever it is, you know, something stupid like that and the whole because we love to share. It’s, it’s only a great experience if we could tell the world and it’s only a bad experience if we can make everyone else miserable about it as well. Its time for Tonys take two. Thank you, Kate. How’s your endowment endowment? That savings account that your nonprofit has that you only spend the interest of each year and maybe sometimes you don’t even spend that much from year to year planned giving. Can help you either launch your endowment if you don’t have one or grow your endowment if it needs to be bigger. And I don’t know many nonprofits that think uh we have enough, our endowment is big enough. We don’t need any more and giving accelerator. I will help you in the accelerator to launch planned giving so that you can start your endowment or grow your endowment throughout the three months of the course, We go March to May done by Memorial Day. So there’s no impinging on your summer plans. We’ll spend an hour a week together on Zoom over those 12 weeks and I will guide you step by step. Had a launch Planned Giving at your nonprofit. I set those weekly meetings up as meetings in Zoom. So there’s lots of cross talk between the members. People are helping each other. There’s a lot of peer support. Uh Aside from the teaching that I’m doing uh each week, if thats of interest to you, please check out Planned Giving accelerator.com promoting the course in uh the rest of this month. And then it starts in early March. That is Tony’s take two Kate. It sounds like a very valuable course. We hope people join. Yes, we do. You’re right about that. We’ve got Buku but loads more time. Let’s go back to zombie loyalists with Peter Shankman. Peter. You have a uh golden rule of social media that a good number of customers like to share and people are gonna keep doing it. People will always share. Um, again, it goes back to the concept that if you create great stuff, people wanna share it because people like to be associated with good things. If you create bad stuff and by stuff, I can mean, I mean, anything from like a bad experience to bad content, people not only won’t share that, but we go out of their way to tell people how terrible you are. Um, you know, how many times have you seen companies fail horribly, uh, you know, after major disasters when companies are tweeting, um, you know, completely unrelated things. Uh, uh, after, after a random school shooting. Uh, no, it was after the, uh, the, the shooting at the, the theater in Aurora, Colorado at the Dark Knight. Um, the Nr A tweets, hey, shooters, what’s your plans for this weekend? You know, and I’m just sitting there going really, you know, but, and of course, the thing was, the thing was retweeted millions of times, you know, with a sort of shame on the NR A. So we, we’re a society like I said earlier that loves to share when, when great things happen to us, but loves to tell the world when we’re miserable because we’re only truly miserable when we make everyone else miserable around us. Um, it’s funny you mentioned, uh, um, the Generosity series, uh, the, one of my favorite stories which goes to sort of a uh a bigger picture of culture and um somehow when you’re just doing your job because that’s what you’re, you’re supposed to do your job. But you don’t realize there are ways to get around that. I, I listen to your podcast among others uh when I’m running through Central Park. Um and more like if you know, my body type, more like lumbering through Central Park. But I, I get there, I’m an iron man. I have, I have that and um so I go through Central Park and it’s super early in the morning because I usually have meetings and I don’t run fast. Um I run like, I really don’t run fast but, but as I’m running, but let’s give you the credit. You have done a bunch of iron man. I do, I do it. You know, my mother tells me that I just have very poor judgment in terms of what sports I should do. But um on the flip side, I’m also a skydiver, which is with my weight is awesome. I fall better than anyone. Um But uh so I’m running through Central Park last year. It was February, uh February 13 and 14. It was of this year. And um it was probably around 445 in the morning because I had a uh I had an 8 a.m. meeting and I had to do 10 miles. So 445 in the morning, I’m running at around 90 79th 80th street on the east side in the park. And a cop pulls me over and he says, what are you doing? And I look at him, you know, I’m wearing black spandex. I have a hat. It’s five degrees and I’m like, what, what playing checkers? You know what, you know, I’m like, I’m running and he, he’s like, ok, can you stop running? I’m like, ok, he’s like the park’s closed. I’m like, no, it’s not like I’m in it. Look around, there are other people. No park doesn’t open until 6 a.m. I’m like, he’s like, uh, do you have any idea on you? I’m like, no, I’m running. He goes, what’s your name? I’m like, seriously. He said, I’m writing you a summons. I’m like, you’re writing me a summons for exercising for I for ex, I just wanna clarify this. You’re writing music and sure enough, the guy wrote me a summons for exercising in Central Park before it opened. The, the charge was breaking the violating curfew. You know, I’m like, I get the concept of the curfew. It’s to keep people out after 2 a.m. It’s not to prevent them from going in early to exercise, to be healthy. I’m like, I’m not carrying, you know, a six pack. I’m not drinking a big gulp. I’m not smoking. I’m, I’m, you know, I’m, I’m doing something healthy and you’re writing me a summons for it. Um, and I said, you know, I’m gonna have a field day with this. I said iii I kinda have some followers. This is gonna be a lot of fun. I’m not, you know, I know you’re just doing your job, sir, even though you have the discretion not to. But ok, so I go back home, I take a picture of my ticket. I email it to a friend of mine of the New York Post, you know, front page, New York Post next day. No, running from this ticket, you know, front page, of course, that’s great. New York Times covered it. Uh Runners world covered it. I mean, I went everywhere, gawker covered it, you know, and, and my whole thing was, it’s just like, dude, you have discretion. Look at me, you know, I’m not, I’m not even going super fast for God’s sake. I’m just, I’m just trying to exercise here, you know, and of course I went to court and I, I beat it. But how much money did it cost the city for me to go to court? Fight this thing. You know, every employee you have to give your employees the power of discretion, the power of empathy to make their own decisions. If you go by the book, bad things will happen. And again, small shops so much easier to do flat line flat organizations. I, I work with a nonprofit um animal rescue, no profit. Um A friend of mine was a skydiver and uh shout him out. What’s the, I can’t, there’s a reason I can. But, but there’s a friend of mine was a skydiver and she was killed in a base jump several years ago. And her husband asked to donate in her memory to this nonprofit. So I sent him a check. And about three months later I get a coffee table book in the mail. And I was living by myself at the time I didn’t own a coffee table. It was, you know, more money to spend on my flat screen. And um I uh I remember I call, I, I look at this coffee table, I throw, I throw it in the corner, I look at it over the next couple of days. It pisses me off about how much, how much of my donation did it cost to print mail and produce this book to me. And so I, I called them up. Well, sir, we believe most of our donors are older and probably prefer to get a print version as opposed to like digital, you know, where they’d throw it away and like, you don’t throw digital away, but ok. Um I’m like, so, so you’ve asked your, you’ve done surveys and you’ve asked all, no, we just assume that most of them are older. I’m like, ok, so I opened my mouth wound up joining their board and I spent the next year interviewing uh customers interviewing every current and past donor about how they like to get their information and shock of shock, 94% said online. And so over the following year, we launched Facebook page, Twitter page, uh um uh Flickr account, uh youtube everything PS The following year for that donations went up 37% in one year. In that economy. It was right around 0809 donations went up 37% in one year and they saved over $500,000 in printing, mailing and reproduction. Imagine going to your boss, hey, boss, revenue is up 37% and we saved a half million dollars. Your boss is gonna buy you a really good beer. You know, all they had to do was listen to their audience be relevant to the audience you have and they will tell you what they want. We have tons of tools for segmentation. You gotta listen to what segment you wanna, people wanna be in. You know, someone, someone asked me the other day. So what, what’s the best? I, I knew nothing about their company. What’s the best uh social media I left for me to be on, should I be on Twitter or should I be on Facebook? I said, I’ll answer that question if you can answer this, this question, I’m gonna ask you is my favorite type of cheese Gouda or the number six. And they say, I don’t understand. That’s not a real question. I’m like, neither is yours. Like I can’t tell you where the best place to be your audience? Can I said, go ask your audience, believe me, they will tell you there’s a gas station in the Midwest. Come and go. Um, I, I just love the name Kum and go, come and go and you can read more about the, their tagline is always something extra. I mean, come on the jokes, just write them for god’s sake. But, um, and they don’t take themselves too seriously. I love that and knowing the name of the company gas station. And, um, you know, I, I like, I remember they were in Iowa and I went up to visit a friend in Iowa and I was like, you gotta get a photo of me in front of the come and go sign, you know, and, um, the beauty of this is that some of their employees actually look at their customers when they’re on their phones in the stores and go, oh, you know, what do you use Twitter more? Or Facebook? And they say, oh, I use that and they record that information and they know it. God customers will give you so much info if you just ask them because then they feel invested, they feel invested in your company. They feel like they, that you took the time to listen to their nonprofit request or their, their, their questions and they feel like they’re, I did it for Harrow every month. We’d have a one question. Harrow survey, you know, Harrow one question survey. And it was, we get like 1000 people respond and I’d spend the entire weekend emailing everyone who responded and thanking them personally, took my entire weekend. But it was great because what would wind up happening is that, you know, if we took their advice and launched it on Monday with the new thing? They go, oh my God. How did this for me? They took my advice. Well, yeah, it was your advice to 800 other people’s advice. But we took it and they’d be like, oh my God, it’s a good thing. And, and it just, it just made them so much more loyal and they’d tell hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people we’d get, I mean, there were days my God, there were days I remember I was in temple one morning, the garment center synagogue and my phone, I feel my phone getting really hot in my pocket, which is not normal and I was starting to hurt and I look at it, I, it’s, it’s almost on fire. It had frozen because we were mentioned in Seth Godin’s morning blog. And at that time I was getting uh emails every time we get a new subscriber and the phone is actually frozen and was locked and, and was like overheating. I take out the battery and like reset the entire phone because we just got so many new, like 14,000 subscribers in like three hours. It’s obscene, it’s obscene. You say, excuse me, you say uh that customer service is the new advertising. Marketing. N pr It really is. Well, again, you know, if we’re moving into that world where, so imagine a lava lamp. And I love that. I can use this analogy. Imagine a lava lamp. A lava lamp has water, oil and a heat source, right? The heat source heats the oil, the oil flows through the water. It makes pretty colors. I’ve heard it looks really good when you’re high. Now, I’ve heard. Now, imagine if, oh, crystals. Imagine if you’re, uh, everyone you meet in your network. Ok. Is a drop of oil? The water is your network and the water is your world. Everyone you meet in your network. Uh, from, from the guy you’re sitting doing the radio interview with, to the guy who serves you ice cream with local deli to the guy who does your dry cleaning to your girlfriend, to your wife. To not at the same time to your kid’s second grade teacher, to your second grade teacher years ago. Everyone you meet is in your network. You know, right now when Facebook first started, I would see the same weight from a kid. I went to junior high school with, he, his post would have the same weight as like my current girlfriend. Which is ridiculous. I don’t need to know about everything. My friend from junior high school is doing. I haven’t talked to the kid in 15 years. Facebook’s gotten a lot smarter as has Google. Now, I see the people I communicate with the most. Ok. And if I, if I reach out and communicate with new people, they start rising in my feet in my stream. If I don’t they fall, it’s just like a lava lamp. Every person you connect with is a drop of oil. That heat source at the bottom that’s rising, raising or lowering. Those drops of oil is relevance. So if you imagine the heat source is relevance and the more I interact with someone, the more the higher they go in my network and the more I see of them, the more trust level there is when I’m at a bar and I meet someone or at a restaurant or conference, I meet someone. I don’t need to um connect them. I don’t need to go on Facebook and friend request them. You know how awkward friend requesting is when you stop and think that last time my friend requested someone in the real world was second grade. Will you be my friend? My daughter’s doing that now she goes, you know, she goes, it’s like the cat. Will you be my friend? I’m like, honey, the cat doesn’t wanna be your friend. But you know, it’s this awkward thing who the hell friend requests someone anymore. If I’m, if I’m hanging out with you at a bar and we connect again and we talk and we go out to dinner and we’re having a good time. We’re friends. I don’t need to first request that you, you know, so that’s going away. Friending following liking and fanning is all going away. What will interact is the actual connection. So, if I meet with you and I have a good time with you and we talk again if I use your business. If I go to your nonprofit, if I donate, if I volunteer, whatever the network knows that the more I do that, the more I interact with you, the more you have the right to market to me and the more you will be at the top of my stream and the more I will see information about you, the less I will have to uh uh search for you. But if you do something stupid or we’re no longer friends see you, you’re gonna fade. I don’t have to unfriend you. You just disappear. Unfriending is also awkward. I dated a woman. We broke up, but it was nine months after we broke up, either of us wanted to unfriend the other one because it was just awkward. So I, I woke up in front of me anyway. But you know, the concept of not having to, to do that of just, you know, OK, I haven’t talked to you in a while. I don’t see your posts anymore. It’s the real world. That’s how it should be, and if you’re not feeding zombie loyalists, they can start to defect. So I, I want to spend a little time on if you’re not talking to them, giving them what they want, talking about their information, helping them out, they will gladly go somewhere else to someone who is, you know, if I have a great experience with the restaurant, uh, every week for three years and then all of a sudden over time, I’m noticing less and less that restaurant’s doing less and less to uh take care of me, you know, and maybe management’s changed and I don’t feel that uh you know, I’m ripe for being infected by another company. I’m ripe for someone else to come and say, you know, Peter. Uh cause if I tweet something like, wow, I can’t believe I have to wait 40 minutes for a table. It didn’t used to be like that. If I, if someone else is a smart restaurant, they’re following me and they’re gonna be great. You know what, Peter? There’s no way, no way over here. Why don’t you come two blocks north and we’ll give you a free drink, you know. Oh, you know, and that right there, that’s the first sign of infection and I might become infected by, by another company, become a zombie loyalist for them. And so let’s, let’s take, you have a lot of good examples. Let’s take a one on one situation. How can we start to cure that. The simple act of realizing following your customer’s understanding when they’re not happy and fixing the situation before it escalates. Um you know, you can contain a small outbreak, a small outbreak, small viral outbreak. You can contain that by getting the right people finding out what the problem is, getting them into one room, fixing their problem, healing them. You have a good uh united story right back when it was Continental, I was uh a frequent flyer and booked a trip to Paris and uh I was very angry because they charged me like $400 in, in booking fees or something like that. I don’t remember what it was. And, uh, I called the CEO, I just, just for the hell of it. I’m like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I wrote, I wrote an email, this was before social and I wrote an email to the CEO and I’m like, this is ridiculous. I’m a frequent da da da da and like 30 minutes later my phone rings like, hello Peter Jman, please hold for Larry Kellner CEO of cotton lines. I’m like, oh crap. You know, and the guy gets on the phone, he’s like Peter, how you doing, Mr Jman? How are you doing? Sorry, listen, these fees, they’re new. Um, we sent them a note, I’m guessing you didn’t see it. We’re gonna waive them for you. But, uh, if you have any more problems, you know, feel free to call me and I hang up the phone for the next 40 minutes just sort of staring at it like, holy crap. Larry Kellner, the CEO of United Airlines just called me and, uh, talk to me and I mean, it was like, it was like God coming down and say you now have the power to levitate your cat. It was just ridiculous. And, um, so, you know, I have been faithful to Continental and now United ever since and, and they continue to treat me with respect and, and do great things and they’re, they’re improving. They, they were getting a lot of crap over the past several years and they really are starting to improve. It’s nice to see and not only, of course, your own loyalty but you’re a loyal guy. You’re a zombie loyalist for them. And how many times how, how much it’s unquantifiable. It’s un, I, I dragged so many friends to United. I’ve, I’ve made so many friends. Uh, I mean, my father, you know, uh, he only flies United now, which means he only drag, he drags my mom only on United. I only dragged my wife on United. There’s a lot of, a lot of work that way. Yeah, we gotta go away for a couple of minutes when we come back. Of course, Peter and I are gonna keep talking about his book comes out in January, zombie loyalists. You have some examples of zombie loyalist leaving en masse like Dominoes, Netflix. They’re both, they’re both in the book. So, so one leaving, if you don’t, if you’re not starting to cure one leaving and then that’s the thing, you know, the beat will be the internet with the hashtags and everything like that, you know, it doesn’t take a long time um for those things to sort of blow up in your face. And, uh, you know, at the end of the day, everyone say, oh, you know, Twitter’s responsible for, for us losing money. No, they’re not. You’re responsible for you losing money. You know, and, and if your product isn’t great and you, your actions don’t speak well of who you are, then there’s no reason your customers should stay with you, you know, and it was, oh, social media is really hurting us because no, you’re hurting yourself. The only difference is that social media makes it easier for the world to know about. They’re just telling the story. Dominos and Netflix are, are good examples because they, they bounced back. They took responsibility and they both owned the Dominoes came out and said, you know what? You’re right. Our pizza, we do have a problem. We’re gonna fix this and they spent millions fixing it. And sure enough, they’re back with a vengeance. Now, I’m, I may or may not even have ordered them every once in a while. And I live in New York City. That’s, that’s a, that’s a sacrilege. But, um, you know, I have the app on my phone for when I’m over, you know, traveling somewhere. I’ll be in shea, whatever. And, and you know, what are you gonna get at 1130 at night when your flight’s delayed and you land? It’s Domino. Um, which reminds me I should probably go exercise on the flip side, you know, something like Netflix. They, uh, they also were screwing up, you know, they were losing, they tried to switch between the two. They came up with a new name and it was like gross in public. And so, and again, you’re watching the same thing happen with Uber right now. So it’ll be really interesting to see if they were able to repair themselves. Listening is important. Both, both those, both, those two examples, they listen to their customers. I think there’s a problem with listening because everyone’s been saying, listen, listen, listen for months and years and years and years now. But, you know, no one ever says that you have to do more than just listen. You have to listen, actually follow up. It’s one thing to listen. You know, I, I use the example of my wife, I could sit there and listen to her for hours, you know, but if I don’t actually say anything back, she’s gonna smack me, you know, and go to the other room. And so you really have to, it’s a two way street, you know, listening is great, but you gotta respond and uh look, I’ll take it a step further. I was like, oh, Twitter’s so great because someone was complaining on Twitter and we went online and we, we saw the complaint and then we fix their problem and yeah, how about if the problem didn’t exist in the first place? You know, because the great thing about Twitter is that, yeah, people complain on Twitter. The bad thing about it is they’re complaining about on you’re on Twitter. So it’s like, what if the problem didn’t exist in the first place? What if, what if you empowered your front desk clerk to fix the problem so that I didn’t have to tweet. Uh Hertz is my favorite story of all this. Uh I used to rent from Hertz religiously. Um And then I went to uh Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport this past April and I gave it, I was giving a speech and I, I go and I, my name is supposed to be on the board, you know, so I can go right to my car and it wasn’t, it was ok. That happens. I got upstairs, I wait 40 minutes on the VIP line. Um After 40 minutes they finally say, you know, there’s a uh only one guy here, a lot of people might have a better chance if we go up to the regular line. Like, ok, you probably could have told us that a little earlier, go up to the regular line. Spend 45 minutes waiting in the regular line. It’s now been. Are you tweeting while this is happening? Well, I had, I was actually not only tweeting, I had enough time to create a meme that should give you some idea of how long I was online with my cell phone. I was enough time to have a meme. I get it to the counter. Hi, can I help you? Yeah. Um I, I was downstairs at the VIP desk and they told me that oh your VIP reservation you have to go downstairs like yeah. Ok, let’s let’s put a pin in that. Um they just sent me up here like uh right. They have to help you. Well, it’s not really, they, you guys are the same company. I mean I could see the reservation on the screen. You, you, you, you can help me. Sorry sir, I can’t help. You have to go to the VIP next. I’m like you just next to me. Ok. So if you know anything about Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, um all of the rental car company, they’re all in the same place. So I walked 50 feet. It’s a bus takes you to the big to the big pavilion where they’re all next to each. I walked 50 ft from the cesspool of filth and depravity that was hurt to the, the wonderful Zen Garden of tranquility. That was Avis. And in four minutes I had a nicer cheaper, more or a nicer less expensive car given to me, a woman named Phyllis who was 66 and moved to Phoenix from Detroit with her husband for his asthma. I knew this because she told me, um, she smiled at me. She brought her manager out and said, ah, it’s another refugee from, uh, Hertz. And I said, so this happens a lot. They’re like, yeah, I’m like, wow, you’d think they’d have done something about that. And so on the way out in Avis. Um I, I thank them, I walk past hers. I shoot them this, you know, sort of look at the look of the beast. I get my Avis car and I drive to my hotel. Once I get to my hotel, I write a wonderful blog post about my experience called Peter and Hertz and the terrible, horrible, no good, really bad customer experience. Once you have a kid, you find up rewriting titles about your blog posts that have to do with kids books. Um I do not like Hertz Sam. I am and things like that. And um I included in this blog post, the five things I’d rather do than ever. Uh ran from Herz again, I think number three was um was uh ride a razor blade bus through a lemon juice waterfall um with just, you know, and, and so, but, but of course, the next day Hertz reaches out to me. Oh Mr Jman, this is the head of North American customer service. That’s all you’re about. I’m like, they’re like, you know, we’d love to let Nick know like you, you’re not gonna fix the problem. Number one because I’m gonna Nas Car. I’m never going back to Hertz. Number two. There were five people yesterday, five people I interacted with all of whom had the chance to save me and keep me as a customer for life. A, a customer who had been so happy and I would have loved you. Five people blew it. So don’t waste your time trying to convert me back. You’re not going to what you wanna do is spend some of that energy, retraining your staff to have empathy and to give them the ability and the empowerment to fix my problem when it happens because five people it it takes every single employee to keep your company running, it takes one to kill it. Yeah. PS Avis reached out um to thank me personally and uh I am now just this ridiculously huge loyal fan of Avis and always will be you have a pretty touching story about uh when you worked in a yogurt shop, you were really young. Um We have a couple of minutes tell that, tell that good story. That was on the east side, which again is another reason why I live on the west side. Nothing good ever happens in Manhattan’s East side. So I was uh I was working and I can’t believe it’s yogurt, uh, which was a store that I think back in the eighties IC by. No, no. TCBY was the country’s best yoga. IC biy was a poor, I can’t believe it’s yo, I can’t believe it’s not yoga. I can’t believe it. Yogurt. It was a poor attempt to capitalize on. That was TCB. And I’m working at this store and, um, I go in every day and make the yogurt to clean the floors. I do. You know, it’s a typical high school job and, uh, it was during the summer and thousands of people walking by, I think it was like Second Avenue or something. And there were these brass poles that hung from, you know, it was the, the, the, there was an awning, right? That’s a, that there and there were the brass poles that held the awning up and they were dirty as hell. Right. I’m sure they’d never been polished ever. And I found some, I found some brass polish in the back like, oh, they buried in the back. And one afternoon I went outside and IP started polishing the poles. My logic was if the poles were shiny and people saw them, maybe they come into the store, maybe they’d wanna, you know, buy more nice clean place. And the manager came out. What the hell are you doing? I said, I told him what I thought, I don’t pay you to think, get inside. You know, I’m like, there’s no customers in there. I’m like, ok, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll make sure the yogurt’s still pumping it full blast. And I quit, I just quit that job. Like, I mean, I, I couldn’t even begin to understand why someone would invest, I mean, to own a franchise for 50 grand, to at least to buy that franchise. Why wouldn’t he invest in the two seconds? It took little elbow grease to make the poll clean That might bring in more customers. What the hell? You know, but you’re not paid to think. You’re not paid to think. My favorite line. Yeah. Um, I, I just, I, I encourage if any kids are listening to this teenagers. If you, if your boss says that to you quit, quit, I will hire, you just quit. It’s, it’s, it’s probably the worst thing in the world that you could possibly do because you have customers who you have customers who every day can be helped by people who are paid to think. And that’s the ones you wanna hire. We gotta wrap up. Tell me what you love about the work you do. I get paid to talk. I mean, my God, this is the same stuff. I used to get in trouble for in high school, but on a bigger picture, what I really love about it is being able to open someone’s eyes and have them come back to me. Um, I run a series of masterminds called Shank Minds Business. Masterminds. It’s shank minds.com. They’re day long seminars all around the country. And, uh I had someone come to me and say, you know, I took your advice about XYZ and I, I started listening a little more and I just got, uh, the largest, um, retainer client I’ve ever had in my life by a factor of four. And she goes, and I just can’t even thank you and I send me like a gorgeous bottle of tequila. She’s like, I can’t even thank you enough. Oh my God. Being able to help people, you know, at the end of the day, we’re, we’re, I, I have yet to find another planet suitable for life. I’m looking so we’re all in this together. And if that’s the case, you know, why wouldn’t we want to help people just a little bit more? You know, there really isn’t a need to be as douche as we are as a society. We could probably all be a little nicer to each other and you’d be surprised how that will help. The book is Zombie Loyalists. It’s published by Palgrave macmillan comes out in January. You’ll find Peter at shankman.com and on Twitter at Peter Shankman, Peter. Thank you so much. Pleasure is Amanda. Oh, thank you. Next week. That’s an open question. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking the supporter 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 Martti. 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.
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And 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 am glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of emphasis if you inflamed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate. What’s going on this week? Hey, Tony, we’ve got two convos from 2020 donor surveys. You’ll make the most of the donors you have by discovering their potential through surveying Crystal. Mahan and Christian Robillard talk principles, best practices and goal setting. Crystal is with stars air ambulance and Christian is at beyond the bake sale. Then people powered movements. This team helps you build more effective and inclusive movements by encouraging you to think about communications, power and privilege. There’s Selena Stewart from League of women voters, us and Gloria Pan with moms Rising. These both aired on August 7th 2020 on Tony’s Take two Happy Thanksgiving. Unbelievable were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. This giving season donor box, the fast flexible and friendly fundraising platform for nonprofits. Donor box.org here is donor surveys. Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 20 NTC 2020 nonprofit technology conference in 10 made the excruciating decision to cancel the nonprofit technology conference. But we are continuing virtually, you’ll get just as much value. Uh We don’t have to all be close to pick the brains of uh the expert speakers from uh from N 10. My guests now are Crystal Mahan and Christian Robillard Crystal is manager of annual giving at Stars Air Ambulance and Christian is founder and chief podcaster at Beyond the Bake Sale. Crystal Christian. Welcome. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thanks, Tony. Thanks, Tony, great to be here. Uh It’s a pleasure to have both of you. Um You are both in uh in Canada uh Crystal. You are in uh Alberta and Christian. Remind me where you are. I’m in uh beautiful sunny Ottawa, Ontario, Ottawa, Ottawa, the capital, the nation’s capital. Not to be, not to be disputed with Toronto who uh likes to think they’re the capital. I know well, and many Americans think it’s either Montreal or Toronto. Yes. But uh Ottawa capital. All right. I’m glad to know that you’re both well and safe. Um And, and glad to have you both with us. Thanks. Um We’re talking about donor surveys. Your, your NTC topic is uh donor surveys, your untapped data, gold mine. Uh Crystal. Why are surveys? A data gold mine? Well, we had the fortune of launching a survey. We’ve never done one prior to 2016. And when we did it, we were amazed at what we found. So we learned a lot about our donors in terms of their communication preferences. We made money like easily made net on that. And on top of that, we actually ended up learning a lot about time giving prospects and turns out that there were a lot of donors that we had no idea, had named us in their will or were interested in naming us in their will. So there was a lot of revenue like hidden revenue that we were finally getting access to. So that’s sort of where that line is moving here. What’s what it’s referring to? Interesting. I’m, I’m looking forward to drilling into that more because I do plan to giving fundraising as a consultant. Uh And I’m sometimes asked by clients about doing surveys. Um So I’m interested in what you’re doing as well. Um And, and you’re getting uh gifts, you said you’ve made money back from them. So people do send you gifts of cash along with their surveys. Yes, like this year we did uh early because last year 2019, our Stars Ally survey made $300,000 and then that all all the new people that we found for plan giving, like we’re looking at billions of dollars coming into the door in the future for stars. So it’s yeah, to not do a survey just seems like a huge opportunity at this point. Yeah, my good. Did you say billions with a B no millions with an millions? OK. The audio is not perfect. So it almost sounded billions. So I wanted to be sure because I’m sure listeners have the same question. OK. Millions, millions are still very, very good. Um Christian, anything you want to add to about why these are uh such a gold mine for nonprofits? I mean, besides the fact that you’re using data, obviously to reinforce certain decisions and to highlight certain wealth elements, I would say in terms of your sponsorship potential, I know that a lot of organizations are looking more so into the corporate sponsorship, corporate engagement side of things. And I think with your, your donor surveys, you can really reveal a lot around where people are working their levels in terms of uh positions within a certain company or organization. And that can lead you down some interesting paths from a corporate sponsorship perspective. OK. OK. Um Your um your description of the, the, the workshop said that uh you make the most of the donors you already have and it sounds like you, you both obviously are, are are going there, is there anything you wanna add about sussing out the, the, the the value that’s in your uh that, that you don’t know you have among your current donors? Well, from our perspective, like it’s given us an opportunity to get to know our donors better in terms of what, what are they actually interested in learning about in our organization or why are they choosing to give? And it allows us to tailor our messages and just be a lot more personal with them and act like we really know them as opposed to them just being a number in our database. So it really give us an opportunity to really cultivate that relationship and just continue bringing them on board and continuing that relationship with them. Yeah. OK. Um Is, is most of your uh content in the, in the workshop around the best practices for, for surveys? Is that what we’re gonna be exploring? Mostly Christian, feel free to jump in. I would say that we were working a lot at best or best practices then also case studies. So people would have some tangible examples of how to actually launch one but to consider and what they would actually need to do once they go back to their nonprofit actually. Ok. All right. Well, let’s, um, let’s start with like, where, where do you get started? W who, who, who are the best people to send surveys to or, or what types of information are, are you finding or most uh re responded to or what types of questions are most responded to? How can you help us sort of frame uh uh an outline of what we, where to get started? Well, Christian and I talked a lot about building the proper scope of your survey. So, figuring out like, why exactly are you doing the survey? What are you trying to find out? And once you kind of, I guess tailor down exactly what you’re trying to learn or what you’re trying to achieve that can sort of help you figure out who you need to actually reach out to and what demographic or audience you need to build that sort for. Ok. So like starting with your goals, what’s the, what’s the, what’s the purpose of the darn thing? Yes. OK. OK. Um Christian, you wanna, you wanna jump in around, you know, starting to get this process started? Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think uh as crystal and I were kind of building this piece out whether you’re talking about uh more of a philanthropic focus for your survey or whether you’re talking about more of a corporate kind of sponsorship, focus of it. You ultimately want to ask yourself a number of different questions before you can get going things around. What you ultimately want to know about your donor base or about this particular audience population that you’re ultimately looking for. More information on. Why are you doing this in the first place? Is, is this more responsive, isn’t it more of a proactive type survey to uh explore new avenues? What do you ultimately need to know? I think that’s an important element to focus on is not asking everything but asking the right. Things who do you need to ask? So who is the actual population that you’re targeting at the end of the day? Uh What would you do with the information? So don’t just collect information for, for information sake, not that, that’s not important, but what’s the actual actionable pieces for that? And how are you going to protect that information? I think with the today’s sensitivities around, around data privacy, it’s really important for, for charities and nonprofits to steward that data as they would, any type of gift that they ultimately get. Yeah, in terms of the data stewardship that, that might constrain what you ask as well because now you have um uh conceivably a higher level of security that you need to maintain. Absolutely Tony and even just in terms of sensitivities of, of phrasing certain questions, I think it’s important for you to think about how you phrase certain things and how intimate you’re ultimately getting. And if you do get that intimate, like you said, how do you protect that data? But also what’s the purpose for collecting that particular piece of data aside from, well, it might be a nice to have someday instead of this actually contributes towards our, our bottom line. Now you’re doing uh surveys around corporate sponsorship. Uh Right. That’s, that’s the example you mentioned. So you’re, you’re getting to know where people work so that you might use that information for potential sponsorships. Yeah, I mean, when you look at sponsorship. Ultimately, it’s, it’s very much a business transaction. If you look at how Forbes just uh defines sponsorship, it’s very much the cash and in kind fee paid to a property, a property being, whether it’s a charitable run or some type of adventure or conference in this case, um in return for access to the exploitable commercial potential associated with that property. So you think of any other type of exploitable commercial potential, which is the most buzzwordy definition you possibly could. If you think of any type of advertising medium, whether it’s TV, radio print, you wanna know ultimately who’s in your audience. And one of the best and most effective ways to do that is to conduct some type of survey to really tease out who are some of your very specific or niche audiences in Canada, we say niche. So it’s a bit of a cringe for uh for us up here in the north. But uh having a survey to really tease out who are, who’s in your audience and some of the more behavioral psychographic uh demographic features of that audience are particularly important to, to have to really make a compelling case to, to corporations looking to use sponsorship with your organization. OK. Um What format are you using? Christian Crystal? I’m gonna ask you the same thing shortly. What, how are these offered to people? Yeah. So we, so in the experience that I’ve had, we usually use a survey monkey survey of some kind that allows for a lot of cross tab analysis to be able to say that people who are in between the ages of 18 and 29 have this particular set of income. They have these particular purchase patterns, they care about your cause to nth degree they um are engaged with your cause or with your property and whether it’s through social media or through certain print advertisements or whatever that might be. And we usually collect around 30 plus data points on all of those uh on all of those elements ranging from, again, the behavioral to the demographic, to psychographic to some very pointed specific questions around the relationship between your cause and the affinity um for a certain corporation based on that uh based on not caring for that cause. Yeah. Uh So you said collecting around 30 data points? Does that, does that mean a survey would have that many questions? Absolutely. Oh OK. Now I’ve heard from guests in the past may have even been NTC guests, not this year, but the, you know, the optimal number of questions for a survey is like five or six or so and people bail out uh beyond that point. Yeah. And, and usually before I had actually sent out a survey of that magnitude, I would agree with you, Tony and I would agree with most, I think the, the important differentiators one is that you frame it as it’s very much for improving the relationships and the ability for the, the cause properties, whether that’s your, run your gala, whatever that might be to raise money. And usually the audience that you’re sending that to is very receptive to that. I think you want to frame it also, as you’re only collecting the most important of information. And uh you’re also looking at uh again, like you’re incentivizing it in some way, shape or form. So usually when you tailor it with some type of incentive, be it a $50 gift card opportunity to win something like that, usually people are a lot more are a lot more receptive. And in the time that we’ve done surveys, whether it’s in my, my past days consulting in the space or now doing a lot of work with charities and nonprofits, we’ve sent it to tens of thousands of respondents and you get a pretty, a pretty strong response rate and a really nominal if negligible amount of an unsubscribed rate. So people are not unsubscribing from getting those questions. And in fact, they’re answering a lot of them and an important element as well as making them optional. So not forcing people to have to fill out certain pieces but giving them the freedom to answer whichever questions they feel compelled to. But when you’re doing it for the cause people are pretty, are pretty compelled to respond to those types of questions. Crystal, how about you? What what format are your, your uh surveys offered in? We do both offline and online. So our donor base tends to be a little bit older. So for us, the physical mailing is absolutely mandatory because, because a lot of our donors respond that way. Um But we do also produce an online version for, I guess other parts of our donor base that are in a di different demographic or just based on that person’s preference, just giving them that opportunity. Um But what we did find is that in terms of our offline responses, we had a lower response rate in terms of responses to the survey. But exponentially more donations coming through offline as opposed to online. And then for online responses of the online survey, we had a lot more responses to the online survey but far fewer donations. So we found that there was an inverse relationship there. And I thought that was very interesting. It’s time for a break. Are you looking to maximize your fundraising efforts and impact this giving season? Donor Box. Online donation platform is designed to help you reach your fundraising goals from customizable donation forms to far-reaching easy share, crowd funding and peer to peer options. Plus seamless in person giving with donor box like kiosk. Donor box makes giving simple and fast for your donors and move the needle on your mission. Visit Donor box.org and let donor box help you help others. Now, back to donor surveys. Do you uh subscribe to the same uh opinion about the, the length that there can be up to 30 questions in a, in a survey. As Christian was saying, we personally haven’t practiced that. We usually keep ours between five and 10 questions and sometimes we even tailor it. If we know that somebody is interested in a particular program, we might take out a certain question put in something else related specifically to them. So there is some variability in the surveys, but generally we keep them quite short. But I do agree with Christian for sure in terms of really framing the purpose of the survey. And each of the questions around this is the whole purpose of this is to build our relationship with them and to better serve them and to get to know them better. And I think that really makes a huge difference and then we also do the incentivizing approach as well. So I think that also inspires people to uh I was just gonna ask about incentivizing, OK. Something similar like a, a drawing for a gift card, something like that. Yeah, we get a Stars Prize pack because we wanted to do something that would be specific. They couldn’t get something that they could elsewhere. So, yeah, we, we have started merchandise. So that’s one of our OK. Um I’m gonna thank Christian for not having a good uh a good video uh appearance because this video I’ve done 10 of these today and they’re all gonna be, all the videos are gonna be preserved except this one because Christian um has a very extreme background. It’s really just like a silhouette, a head with headphones is really about all I can see. But um I’m grateful because my background just fell. I have a little Tony, I have a Tony Martignetti if you watch all of these videos, which are gonna be available. Uh There’s a Tony Martignetti nonprofit Radio, um sort of easel, you know, um CEO core, you know, sign and uh it was behind me. Uh It was, and it just fell while uh Crystal was talking. So thank you. Uh Christian. I was just so surprised that you could ask 30 questions on a survey and get some type of uh degree of response. So it, it, it shook my house that I’m 30 data points. What madness is this? I’m so aghast at it. Yes. And then also the fact that the two of you disagree. Um All right. So, but I’m shouting, calling myself out as uh having a, a flimsy background but it lasted through, it lasted through like seven hours of this. I love it. I also say that we don’t necessarily disagree, but I think different surveys serve their different purposes. So I agree with Crystal that in, in that particular case, you only need to send one that has 5 to 10 questions. Whereas in this case, you’re probably sending it to, in, in a sponsorship case, you’re probably sending it to a larger population of people and you only need a certain amount of people to fill it out. So, um, Crystal, I had asked you and you probably answered, but I got distracted by my collapsing background. Uh What, what kinds of incentives do you offer? Uh, we offer Stars price pack. So it’s Stars merchandise. So we wanted to offer something a little bit different other than like a gift card that they could get through any other. Yeah, so that’s all right. Um a different angle for us. Yeah. Personalized to Stars. Ok. Got you. Ok. Um Now was yours specifically uh uh a planned giving survey or did you just have a couple of planned giving questions? And that’s where you discovered this data, gold mine of future gifts and all the wills that you found out that you’re in. It was not, it was not specific to plan giving. So it was more just a general survey. And then we did have a question about plan giving and then we were stunned by the response that we saw in subsequent years. We kept asking that and right now we’re sort of in the middle of doing a whole plan giving strategy and trying to really build that out now that we know that there is this whole core of people that are interested in this and that our donors are open to it. So it’s really opened up a lot of opportunities for us as an organization of all. Yeah. Interesting. Ok. All right. So, you, you learned from the first time this is, you’re in a lot more states than you had any idea. Yeah. Um, le let’s, let’s talk about some more, uh, good practices for surveys. Uh, Crystal. Is there something you can, one or two things you wanna recommend and then we’ll come to go back to Christian. Yeah. One of my major things is that if you’re gonna ask a question, you have to know what you’re gonna do with that data after the fact, like a pet people sign is where people just ask a question to ask a question for whatever reason, but then they don’t action anything out of it. Like to me, it’s very important that if our donors are going to spend the time to actually read through your survey and take the time to respond or mail it in or submit it online that we actually to do something with that information. So whether that’s tailoring future messaging or changing their communication preferences or whatever it is that they’re asking us to do or telling us, I think that’s so important is that you have to have a follow up plan in terms of once these responses come back in, what are we gonna do with them? Who is gonna take action? How are we gonna resource this? How are we going to use this information, I think of um date of birth as, as a good example of that, like if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna develop a plan to um congratulate someone for their birth on their birthday each year, then that can be a valuable data point. Um But if you just, you know, if you’re just asking because you, you know, you don’t have a purpose, you’re just interested in what their age is for some vague reason, then, then there’s no, there’s no value in asking. And if, if it’s just a follow up, if it’s just to know their, you know, when you want to send a card, maybe you don’t need the year, maybe you just need the day in the month. Um But if there’s value to your database for knowing their age and then you would ask the year. Exactly. So it helps you filter down there. What do we need to know? And why are we asking these question? What is the purpose, Kristen? You have a uh uh best practice you want to share. Yeah, I would say consider the not just the population size that you’re not just the population that you’re serving, but also the, the representative makeup. So if you know that your database is predominantly on more of the, the senior side of things, but you’re getting a disproportionate amount of, of more uh individuals who are on the younger side of things in terms of respondents that’s something important that you have to take into account. So the make up of the actual population is um is more important than I would argue than the amount of responses. You can get a crazy amount of responses. But if it doesn’t represent the population that you’re serving and that who make up your donors, it’s, it’s not gonna be valuable data to you. I remember one time we had uh an instance for an organization wanted to uh want to do a survey for sponsorship purposes and in other cases, it’s been for more donor specific like, oh, we’ll just put a note on Facebook or Twitter or something like that. It’s not necessarily your population, it’s not necessarily the group that you’re looking that you’re actively engaged with. Um in a fundraising perspective, you get information to the otherwise and then obviously reflect on that and use that. But um be really clear about the, the breakdown that you need to have in order to make the, the information actually representative of the rest of your database. Um What, what kinds of response rates like? What’s, what’s a decent response rate to a, to a, to a survey? I uh I think it depends what type of server you’re sending. I will, I’ll let Crystal speak to this more, but I’d say if it’s philanthropic, it can vary on the sponsorship side of things you’re looking for. Um a response rate that coincides with a 95% confidence interval with a 5% margin of error. That’s good market data to calculate that. There’s a bunch of big cal complicated formulas that we probably have all repressed from our time. In uh in statistics in uh in university, there’s a, a company called Surveymonkey that actually has a calculator for it. So if you go to the Surveymonkey website, you can actually um just plug in a what the sample size or what the actual size of the, the database you’re sending it to and you can plug in what confidence integral that you want and then what margin of error that you’d like and it’ll pump out a number of a minimum that you need to have. I would say that’s a good starting point. But again, as I talked about before, make sure you have the representative breakup breakdown of uh of who’s actually within your audience reflected in the survey results. And don’t have it disproportionately skewed towards a particular demographic that might be just more inclined to uh to respond to surveys. OK? OK. Um Crystal, anything you wanna add about uh the, the, the confidence it’s, it’s different. But, but yeah, but yeah, that I I withdraw that, that doesn’t make sense for you because you’re doing individual philanthropic surveys. So each response you get is valuable. You find out that someone is interested in plan giving already, has you in their will. That one response has, has great value yes, the purpose of our survey is a little bit different. So we don’t worry so much about that, but I completely agree that the Christian in terms of actually needing to calculate that and being mindful of who you are actually reaching out to with this survey to make sure that the representative of the, that you’re trying to question your survey. What what, what kind of response rate do you shoot for though Crystal? Cause still, you know, these, these things take time and you’re doing some of them are offline. So there’s postage and printing, et cetera. What kind of response rate do you consider good for, for an effort like that in terms of a financial response rate? So what I would clarify that for us, our response to the survey doesn’t necessarily mean a gift and a gift to the survey doesn’t necessarily mean that they responded to the survey. So in terms of number of gifts, we usually aim for between six and 10%. Um But in terms of actual response to the survey, we’ve seen as low as 2% but then as high as 7% depending on the year of the channel. Um So either way, like we have, we’re quite lucky, we have quite a large database. So any of these hands could be 50,000 people or more. So even 2% it is a pretty decent sample and gives us a lot of work to do and a lot of information to build off of? Ok. Ok. Um, for your online surveys, Crystal, are you using surveymonkey also? Did you say I’ve used a couple? We used Surveymonkey last year. Um, it is very user friendly. What I would caution people on is to always read the fine print about whatever price package they’re signed up for because like we discussed for our surveys a lot, a big focus is the financial return on it. So we needed to pick a price plan that involve being able to redirect right from the survey monkey page to our donation form. So you have to be really mindful of things like that. So in some of the basic packages, they don’t allow you to redirect to the donation form and that if you can’t do that, that will really negatively impact your financial return of the number of donations you’re going to see in? Ok. Is there another online tool that you like? Also I used a platform called Response, I believe they’re based out of Sweden or somewhere in Europe. And they were very good to be honest. So and there are some limitations as well with them in terms of what the different packages offer. But right now we’re using Surveymonkey and that’s what we’re sending out our like, for example, like even surveys, we’re sending out the survey Monkey or any of our ST based ones. So that’s what we’re using actively. OK. How about you Christian. Is there another one besides Survey Monkey that, uh, you could recommend? I, I think it just depends on what you’re, you’re looking for Tony. So, if you’re looking for a lot of, let’s say more Q answers, I’d say even a Google form would, would be more than, would be more than acceptable. It really just depends on what functionality you want to get out of. I use Surveymonkey pretty religiously just because it’s like Crystal said, it’s very user friendly. It has the functionality that I need and it’s real and it’s relatively um reasonable in terms of, in terms of price point for what you get. Um It’s also going to depend and it’s up to you to do due diligence on what types of functionality you need. Do you need to integrate with your database versus other software? Do you need certain functionality? Do you actually know how to use a lot of those things? Is there going to be support? And again, like what, what are they going to do with your data? Like do they have access to your data, whether it’s metadata or otherwise? Are there other rules or jurisdictions you have to consider with that, that data privacy? So I use Survey Monkey. But lots of considerations to make. Ok. Ok. Thank you. And um so Christian, why don’t you uh why don’t you lead us out with some uh take us out with uh some I guess motivation, closing thoughts what would you like to end with? Absolutely. I would say from a sponsor perspective, whether you’re a large organization or small organization, the, the riches are in the niches. So to do good sponsorship, it requires good data and it requires those 30 plus data points. But whether you’re a big group or a small group, you can compete at the, the same scale, especially um with the amount of money that’s being spent on cost sponsorship over $2 billion worldwide, which is no small amount of money that’s that you can get access to whether you’re $100,000 a year org or a million dollars plus requires good data. So make sure you’re collecting good data. Make sure you’re clear on uh what you want to use your information for and uh yeah, just be, be diligent in uh in making sure that the, that the data is actually protected. Ok. Um I was, I was, I was gonna let Christian end but since the two of you have such divergent purposes, which is fabulous for, uh it’s great for a discussion, uh, divergent purposes around your surveys. Crystal, why don’t you take us out uh on the, on the philanthropic, the individual donor side? Yeah, absolutely. So, like we were discussing, don’t be afraid to fundraise. Like, just because it’s a survey doesn’t mean that you can’t make money off of it. Your people are supporting you enough that they’re willing to fill out a survey and respond to you, they may be willing to donate as well. And then on top of that, like I said, you, you have to know why you’re asking these questions and what you’re gonna do with that information after. It’s really important in terms of respecting your donors time and the fact that they’re giving you this information, you need to be able to use it and sort properly and safely. And then lastly, I just say, please, please, please test your survey before you actually send it out, send it out to other departments or other people that are not in the midst of building the survey so that you can find out that you phrase things appropriately. You’re actually learning what you want to or the functionality is appropriate. I think that’s just so important because you only have one chance of sending it out. So just make sure that it works appropriately. Ok. Thank you very much. That’s Crystal Mahan Manager of Annual Giving at Stars Air Ambulance. And with her is Christian Robillard founder and chief podcaster at Beyond the Bake Sale Crystals in Alberta. And uh I’m sorry, Crystal, did I just say crystal? Yeah, I know crystal. Say crystal. Crystal. Crystal. Crystal. I know is in Alberta. We don’t make it easy on you, Tony and I, I got through 25 minutes so well. And then it’s a lackluster host. I’m sorry. It’s uh this is who you’re stuck with the Christians in the capital city of Ottawa. Thank you so much, Christian Crystal. Thank you very much. Thanks Tony. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. Happy Thanksgiving. A week late. Can you believe that your lackluster host forgot that last week’s show should have included Happy Thanksgiving. We were doing the show the week before and it never occurred to me and I would say parenthetically it did not occur to our associate producer either. That’s the end of that parenthetical. I’ve always wanted to have an intern so I could have somebody to blame. You’ve heard me say it. Give me an intern, I need somebody to blame but just leave it right there. I have to wish you happy Thanksgiving a week late. I hope you enjoyed past tense. Hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving last week. That’s the best I can do on Tony’s take two. There’s a nice little, uh, whimsical little rhyme. That is Tony’s take two, Kate. Well, um, thank you for putting it on me. But, uh we all know that it was your mistake and it’s ok. We forgive you. Um Tony for forgetting Thanksgiving. Yeah. All right. I’m not sure that, uh, you’re quite gonna get away with that. It wasn’t on you. I, I put it in parentheses in parent. Oh, I, I need an intern so I can blame them on everything. Yeah. Well, you’re not an intern. You’re the associate producer. I put you in parenthesis. I put the I put the blame statement in parentheses. I thought that would be good. Alright, let’s go. Well, we’ve got Buku but loads more time here is people powered movements. My guests now are Selina Stewart and Gloria Pan Selena is senior director of advocacy and litigation at League of Women Voters us. And Gloria is Vice president for member engagement at Moms Rising, Selena Gloria. Welcome. Hello, I’m glad we were able to put this together virtually. It’s good to see both of you. Um And I’m glad to know that you’re each well and safe and in uh either DC or just outside DC. Selina, you’re in DC and Gloria. Where are you outside Washington, Gloria? I am actually near Dulles Airport. So, you know, some people commute from here but because um mom’s rising is a virtual organization. I don’t. And so when people ask me for lunch, I’m always like, ok, it takes a little bit more planning. I have to bend my mind about it. I have to get my body into D CDC. OK. Um Your uh your NTC topic is a revolution is coming top tactics to build people powered movements. Um Selena, would you get us started with this? What, what was the need for the session? Well, I think um I think one of the things is right now it’s all about people power. You know, there’s everything is so politicized right now and I think that there is often a conversation about how people are involved in what, what government actually represents or what the government is representing. So I think that that’s really, really important. Um We also saw like in 2018 more voter turnout mo more voters turning out to vote and things like that. So I think that that also is as part of that people conversation, like what is compelling people to participate even more or at a greater extent than their democracy. But all of these things kind of work together to figure out, not only do we have people engaged now, but what is important? What does community as more people become engaged? Um How does, how does our definition of our community and communities in general change as more people are included and participate in all of those things? So I think that we’re at a very um interesting and crucial moment in time and so people powered and, and people involve movement. It’s, it’s, I think it’s always happened but it’s just a, a coin phrase. I think that’s especially prevalent right now. OK. Um Gloria E even though participation is, is uh is very high, we’re also largely polarized. So how do we overcome the opposite ends of the spectrum to try to bri bring people together and, and, and organize? Are you talking about everyone or are you talking about voters? Uh I’m, well, I’m talking about the country. Uh I don’t know, I don’t know whether I don’t know whether people are voting. Um But I’m talking about our political polarization. I don’t know if they’re necessarily voting. Uh I, they actually talk about voting so I probably threw it off a little bit, Gloria, they act like I’m asking for clarification only because like some of the most talented and I think unifying um politicians in recent memory, for example, Barack Obama did not succeed in unifying all of us, right? So there are some segments of our um citizenry that will just not do it, we will not be able to come together with them. But I think that for um people who really do want the best for our country and who are open minded enough to um want to hear from other people who have different um you know, slightly different ways of looking at the world. It is possible to do it. And um that goes back to what Selena was saying about people powered movements. Um I think that one of the reasons why that’s become more and more of a catchphrase is that um you know, we are in an era of information overload, we are in an era of polarization and um not believing everything that we’re seeing on the internet and in the news. And so being able to actually really connect with people on the ground in person over the phone, but directly and not going through the filter of social media or news movements is, it’s increasingly important and that will be um one of the main channels for us to unify as many people as possible. So, we’re, we’re, we’re talking about uh creating these both online and offline, right? Um Or uh people powered pe people centered movements. Um How Gloria, how do we want nonprofits to think about uh or what do we need to think about in terms of doing this, organizing uh creating these, these movements. Um First of all, it’s about um inclusivity. OK. So um at least from where we sit, um mom’s rising and me speaking on behalf of mom’s rising right now, um We want to make sure that whatever we do and if its the most people and harms no one at all, if possible. Um So that’s one part of it, how we speak, how we communicate to make sure that what we’re speaking and how we communicate does not reinforce that stereotypes that creates divisions. OK. That’s one way. Um Another way, not way, but another thing to consider are also the tools that we’re using. Um Are we using, you know, people are on, on different kinds of communication tools, some people um only do Facebook, other people only do um email. Um And there are also like text messaging. There are all of these new com communication schools tools coming on and being on top of the different tools is super important because we need to meet people where they are um those are just a couple of thoughts. Ok. Um So we, so Selena, so we’re talking about diversity equity inclusion. Um Let, let’s drill down into a little of the like, what do we, what do we need to do around our communications? That is more equitable and non harming. So I think that’s an important question and that’s definitely something that has been centered um in the league’s work over the last I would say five years, but more intentionally over the last two, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, whose work the league? I’m sorry, I always refer to the league, women voters, women, voters, us. OK. The leagues were at the league. Sorry, folks. The that the full title is just too long for me to keep saying. So I just referred to it as I got you now. All right. So de I is, is very, very important. Um for us, you know, our organization has historically been older white women. We’ve al always had members of color, but I don’t know that they were always at the forefront. So for us, our work is really centered in two questions and in everything that we’re doing, who’s at the table and who should be at the table, who’s missing. So I think starting all of our conversation and the efforts that we’re doing with those two questions allows us to center our work in diversity, equity inclusion and also use our power as um people who have had access to legislators, stakeholders, etcetera. How do we use our power in a, in a way that allows access and inclusivity for more people. So I think that that is really important and something that D I diversity equity inclusion work is hard. Let me just say it’s not easy, you know, it, it gets very uncomfortable. A lot of times when you’re talking about privileged patriarchy and all of the, we have to talk about as it relates to D I. But it’s so important to get comfortable and being uncomfortable and having these conversations is the only way I think that we can start to build a bridge towards unifying. Um because at the end of the day, we may be politically, but at the end of the day, we all share many of the very same values which is historically united this country. Like right now, we’re in the midst of the Coronavirus. The Coronavirus doesn’t care whether you’re a Republican Democrat, black, white female male. It does, it doesn’t matter. Um At the end of the day, we all have to make sure that we’re doing what we can to be safe as individuals, but also our actions greatly impact the people around us. So it’s more of a, it’s more of a community mindset that’s required in order to tap this down. So I know that that’s like a little offset offshoot from what we’re talking about. But I think it all plays together in some way, shape or form? Ok. Um Gloria, how about, how about uh for mom’s rising? I mean, how do you ensure that your communications are equitable and, and non harmful? Um Well, mom’s rising um has very intentionally built an organization that tries to bring different voices to the table. We are intersectional and we are multi issue. And so from our staff, um we’re very diverse in many, many different ways And from the way that we um choose which issues to work on, we also take into consideration um which communities are being impacted. Um And um how we communicate about those and then the way that we um campaign is that our, our campaigns are always overlap. And so there are different people within the organization as well as the partner, policy partners from different issue areas. They help us um vet our issues and in the way that we communicate with them to make sure that, you know, there are um we’re not communicating in a way that, that, that um excludes communities reinforces that stereotypes. Um and raises red flags makes, make, make people feel bad in ways that we don’t understand because of where we individuals as campaigners know. So everything we do is very thoroughly vetted through many different filters. OK. So vetting. Yeah. So please, yeah, Selena, I totally agree with um what Gloria said and I think that’s really important because the league is also multi issue and and kind of has that you have to compete when you have multiple issues, you sometimes have to think a little differently about how you present yourself on each issue in order to not negatively impact the whole set of what you’re trying to accomplish. And so for us in the communication space, um expressly is thinking about whether it’s appropriate, who’s the appropriate messenger when we’re communicating. So, is it appropriate for the league to be a leader in this space or do we need to take a step back and be a supporter? Um So I think that’s one of the things that’s very important for us, communication wise is we’re figuring out what is, what space are we gonna take up in the communication space and how we’re going to communicate this issue? And then the other piece is who’s talking, who is the person that we’re putting in front to actually speak about a particular issue? And is, is that the right person? And are they speaking from the, the lens that’s most appropriate for that particular issue that’s gonna be impacted most as a result of what you’re saying you’re doing? So I think that’s very important. What Gloria lifted up. How do you manage the, the conflicting issues? If, if you know, I, I guess it, I guess there are issues where you have a large constituency on one side of one issue, but something else may seem contrary to that to that large constituency, a different issue that you’re taking a stand on is that, is, that is my understanding, right? When you say, you know, potential issue conflict. Um Yeah, well, when you have a hun 500,000 members and supporters and you’re in every congressional district, everybody’s not gonna agree on, on how to approach an issue. But I think what grounds the league is our mission, our mission is to empower voters and defend democracy, empower people to defend democracy. So I think as long as you stay rooted in what your mission values um statement is, then you can find some reconciliation across, you know, the most seemingly divergent issues. OK. Climate climate change, I think would probably be a good example. I was, I was gonna add, OK, that um just to step back a little bit, the one thing that I am super, super proud of um is that um at least for progressives, I think that we’re actually pretty consistent and about our agreement on issues, we may have um different levels of intensity in what we agree with. But I think that there are very few conflicts. We may not agree on how to get somewhere, but we all agree on where we want to go. OK. So in that way, I, I rather feel at least from um mom’s rising standpoint, we rarely get, I can’t even think of a single instance where we have conflicts because we are not agreeing with each other or with policy partners on the most important thing where we’re heading. Uh So I think that’s a difference because our, the league is, is not um left or right leaning. We’re kind of, we have members who are both conservative and liberal have some of that conflict more in that. But I think you’re absolutely right. Do we all want the same things and a, a healthier, more vibrant democracy? Absolutely. So you have to find some common ground in that space, but we definitely have members who are, who want to handle things one way versus the other. We have to find common ground. Yeah, that, that’s the challenge I was trying to get at. Yeah. OK. It helps. At least it helps me to think of an example like climate change, you know, some, there are some people who don’t even believe that it’s, it’s human impacted and there are others who think we’re decades behind and in, in our inaction to, to uh reverse the effects of human induced climate change. So, um yeah. Uh it’s uh that’s, that’s quite a challenge really, Selena. Um OK. Well, where else, where else should we go with these people? Powered movement ideas? You, you, you, you two spend a lot more time studying this than I do. Uh So what, what else should we be talking about? That? We haven’t yet. I would actually love to hear from Selena how the league is dealing with um doing your work remotely. I know you guys are already virtual. This is like no, no sweat for you guys, right? Well, you know, I mean, we, we do have, you know, our plans range from virtual all the way down to the grassroots, right? And I think um especially for organizations like your Selena, we share the um the, the, the common goal this year of, of voter engagement. I am very sorry. What’s real life like I do it like if I open the door family, my kids might come in. I’m gonna let her out. I’m very sorry. All right. So, you know, um in terms of remote working, but yeah, but how it relates to this topic of people power. Yeah. So I think that’s really, really important and we’re definitely, so it’s, it’s one thing to convert to um teleworking, right? That’s one thing. But when your work is so much advocacy um and especially the leaders on the ground who are doing voter registration, which requires you to be on the ground talking to people, you know, that has shifted our work. So, one of the examples that we have is we have our People Powered Fair Maps campaign, which is basically um trying to get redistricting reform for across the country in a positive way that we don’t have another situation like we had in North Carolina where you’re from Tony and also in Maryland. So we wanna, we wanna make sure that you know, people are represented appropriately, but a lot of the states that we’re working in, they have signature collection campaigns going on right now. So how do you do signature collection when you can’t actually be within three or 6 ft of people? So now many of our um leagues are converting to digital signatures and going through their legislator to make those adjustments so that they can still collect signatures and meet that need, et cetera. Our lab, we have a lobby corps which is 21 volunteers that goes to the hill every month. Obviously, with the hill being uh also teleworking, it created what we thought might be a barrier. But now our lobbies are doing virtual coffee meetings on Zoom just like this and having those conversations with uh legislators, legislative staff and all of those things. So I think that the Coronavirus has forced us to do our work in a different way, but it’s also been great to innovate and be creative and do the work that people love just in a different way. So we, it’s not perfect. I don’t even wanna make you think that this is perfect because it’s definitely not. But I think that uh there’s a lot of positive energy about doing our work and finding ways to do our work in different ways which OK, thinking creatively, you know, II I for our, for our listeners and I don’t, I don’t want to focus just on moms rising and league of women voters us. Uh I want them to recognize how, what we’re talking about can be applied by them. Are they, are they what they need to go back to their CEO S or whatever vice presidents, whoever and what, what kind of like discussion items they need to be putting forward that the organization is not now thinking about uh in terms of, you know, again, people power say a revolution is coming. Um You know, how, how, how can our listeners help create it? I think just becoming involved, like when you’re talking about people powered anything, it’s really about base building. And for me, the goals of base base building are always to, to grow a base of volunteers who have a shared value of some sort. And you’re coming together in order to, to make some progressive movement on that. It’s also about leadership development, um communities and constituency who turn out who are players in, in this issue or what have you and then putting issues to the forefront. So I think that wherever you, what do you value, what’s important to you? Um It could be as simple as, hey, there’s a pothole in my street that hasn’t been fixed in the last year. Can we come together as a community and really talk with our local election officials about making sure our streets are in a position that’s not gonna wreck our cars or um have someone get endangered in some way. So I think it comes down to as on an individual level, what is important to you, what do you value and finding and connecting with those people who also value something similar? And what do you want to change? What is it that you’re trying to change or that would make your life better and who are the people who can support you in getting that done? OK. And that’s consistent with what you said on an organizational level too. Uh the same, you know, what, what are the core values? That’s what, that’s what drives all the work. Uh And, and brings people together just finding that commonality around whether it’s the pothole in the street on the individual level or whatever, whatever you, whatever your part. Yeah, Gloria, what, what, what’s your advice for how people can contribute to this revolution? Um I think that right now um we’re all sitting in our homes and we’re rethinking the way that we do our work and even as individuals, um we’re rethinking the way that we are doing our activism. I think that a very important message right now for activists personally and for organizations that organize activists and try to recruit and build the base is that now is not the time to step away now. More important than ever. It is important to stay on top of the issues, to sign those petitions, to speak up and to share your stories because I will give you a very, very specific example. Right now, Congress is um negotiating, arguing over all of these different critical needs in the Coronavirus relief bills. Right? Well, mom’s rising has been on the forefront of um trying to influence those negotiations and the most powerful weapon we have are your stories, people’s stories. Um What’s gonna happen to your childcare center that has to close down what’s gonna happen to uh domestic workers who suddenly don’t have a paycheck um paid family leave. This is something this is a uh a signature models rising issue. We’ve been working on that forever ever since our founding. It’s one of our signature issues. But now um because of the stories that we have gathered and we are hearing from our members about the need for paid leave and the fact that if we had had paid leave all this time, that the burden of Coronavirus would have been much lighter. This is something that we are powerfully bringing to the negotiating table and we are actually seeing we’re going on paid leave. So all organizations and all individuals, whatever issues that you’re working on do not step away continue to share your stories because those stories have to be brought to the negotiating table for policy. And that’s the only way we’re going to get the policy that we need. Ok, we’re gonna leave it there. That’s uh that’s quite inspirational. Thank you. That’s uh that’s Gloria Pan Vice President of member engagement engagement at mom’s rising and also Selena Stewart, senior director of advocacy and litigation at the League of Women voters, us. So, Gloria Selina, thank you very much. Thanks for chatting. Thank you, Tony. Next week, the Thanksgiving Show. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. This giving season donor box, the fast flexible and friendly fundraising platform for nonprofits donor box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m the associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. You’re with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.
Brenna Holmes & Alyssa Ackerman: Engagement And Stewardship For Increased Giving
As our #23NTC coverage continues, Brenna Holmes and Alyssa Ackerman deliver systems and ideas that treat your donors right. They help you understand the value of multichannel touches that move the needle on donor retention and value. They’re from Mission Wired.
Joanne Jan: Data Maturity
Also from #23NTC, how data strategy and practices impact your ability to meet your mission. Plus a free resource to gauge your data maturity. Joanne Jan is from data.org.
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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. View Full Transcript
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[00:01:43.26] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of dextrose inclination if I saw that you missed this week’s show engagement and stewardship for increased giving. As our 23 NTC coverage continues, Brenna Homes and Alyssa Ackerman deliver systems and ideas that treat your donors right? They help you understand the value of multi channel touches that move the needle on donor retention and value. They’re both from mission wired and data maturity. Also from 23 NTC. How data strategy and practices impact your ability to meet your mission? Plus a free resource to gauge your data maturity. Joanne Jan is from data dot org. Antonis take to it is what it is is what I made it. No, no, we’re done with that. We’re sponsored by Donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Here is engagement and stewardship for increased giving.
[00:01:49.59] spk_1:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage. Of 23 N T C 2023 nonprofit technology conference
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where we are sponsored by Heller
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consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. It’s my pleasure to welcome back Brenna Homes and to welcome Alyssa Ackerman to nonprofit radio. Brenna is principal and senior vice president of Mission Wired and Alyssa is senior account director also at Mission Wired Brenna. Welcome back.
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Welcome.
[00:02:48.80] spk_1:
Thank you very much. Your topic this year, engagement and stewardship tactics that drive increased giving, writing the fundraising track. I’m sure part of fundraising track. Correct, Brennan, why don’t you kick us off? Just kind of give us a 30,000 ft view of wide. You believe that we need this session 23
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N D C. Um I mean, fundraising is harder and harder nowadays, right? It’s a very competitive market. There’s a lot of organizations out there vying for donor dollars. Um And while new generations of donors are coming up, the way they respond and the way they give is different from previous generations and then no matter who you are, nobody wants to be treated like an A T M. So building an engagement and stewardship opportunities is we found the best way to you get a donor from a one time giver to a lifetime brand, evangelist,
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evangelism, the evangelist for
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keeping them engaged, right? All the way through
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time. Have you done your session
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yesterday
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about how that went and what questions arose from that? Let’s see, I mean, I have your three learning objectives that were stated in the official document for your, for your session. Where would you like to start the topic? Where, where did you begin
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the session? Yeah, I think that it’s important to give an overview of why engagement is important as well as how it fits into the overall fundraising strategy. So yeah, I think a lot of organizations often time struggle with the balance and for us to be able to share the value of engagement.
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I want you to talk about it like you
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talked about it. So there is a strong value behind engagement and stewardship tactics. So you’re really building that relationship with your donor and potential donor. And by doing that, you’re building a case for support and they’re able to make their own decisions to give and quicker. So when you’re asking them to make that gift after an engagement, there’s little decision to be made because you’ve already helped prime and pave that path for them to make the easy choice to give, talking
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about giving, not just first time but
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any time. And we want to always try to lessen the time between the 1st and 2nd gift, get people to be giving at different levels. Um And so it’s not just about that first time donor and moving them down the marketing funnel, but also retaining those donors and moving them in their donor journey. Okay.
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So why don’t we stick with you kick us off with the first, we’re going to do engagement before we’re going to get the stewardship of the first engagement strategy.
[00:06:02.78] spk_3:
Yeah. So um engagement is really important in the beginning of a donor, potential donors journey. So thinking about um different ways to welcome an onboard. So someone who might have signed up for email, let’s get them into a automated welcome series. That’s explaining what the organization does, how they can make an impact, stay connected. And then when they get out of that series, get that first Baskin. So they’ve already taken the action of becoming a subscriber, but let’s get them to take that next step quickly, but also set expectations of how we’re going to be communicating, why we’re communicating. So really that onboarding is important to set the stage for how they are going to be included in the organization.
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How long does this welcome series last?
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So typically, um welcome series last could last 10 to 3 weeks having multiple touch points. It’s important, it’s important that when they are in a welcome series though, that you’re being mindful of other communication that’s going out. And so oftentimes, my recommendation is to suppress from other correspondents going out. So it’s very clear, concise and they’re on this track, they’ve been primed, they understand the organization and the communication stream and then get them into your normal cadence of communication. Um And it’s really about your organization. So you should test there’s not one prescribed timeline for a welcome series. And so based on your content and your audience, it might be shorter or longer, but it’s really important to test that
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out. You suggested that a part of that is informing them how you’re going to be communicating. Is that, is that really asking how do you want to be communicated or, or saying you’ll hear from us every three days for the next three weeks? I understand it would be, I understand this is not a template that everybody applies. You’re in the next 48 hours, there will be no communications after that. So, but how do you say to what degree are you informing them? How you’ll be communicating?
[00:08:44.86] spk_3:
Yeah. Again, I think it’s dependent upon your organization. I am a big believer in, in uh asking that question of what are you interested in? How do you want to hear from us? But sometimes if your system isn’t set up to actually do that or set those um standards of if you only want a newsletter, but we don’t have our system set up to only send you a news. Let’s not ask that. But we can be general to say you’ll be hearing from us and you’ll get newsletters, important updates. If you’ve given your cell phone number, you’ll be getting SMS messages from us. So you can be vague. But the big thing is you need to follow through on that. So if you’re asking how they want to be communicated to
[00:08:51.31] spk_1:
tell you. Okay. All right. How about you? What else about engagement before we get to stewardship? Yeah,
[00:09:39.62] spk_2:
definitely. So, I mean, engagement can mean many things to many people, right? And it really is in the digital space which is a lot of what we were talking about, um getting them to engage with content. So take an action, click something that is measurable in some way. Um Alyssa talked about onboarding, but we can take that even further throughout, you know, quizzes and surveys, getting their own preferences, even, you know, obviously action alerts for advocacy organizations, getting people to take action in a, in a more impactful way um and giving them feedback on what that impact is, is really critical. So depending on the organization, it’s a beautiful consultant answer, right? It depends, um you’re asking them to volunteer, asking them that they’re interested in these other opportunities to further bond them with the organization because whether it is engagement or stewardship or, you know, thinking of them as synonyms. It is about how they engage to stay bonded to the organization or become bonded in the first place.
[00:10:06.31] spk_1:
And there’s value in all these individual steps.
[00:10:07.38] spk_2:
There is definitely and some organizations can actually put a monetary value to them, right? Like they need this number of many signatures for this petition to take this to Congress or, you know, that sort of thing and some of it is a little bit more. Just feel good to calculate how folks are responding to the brand, whether it’s recognition and sentiment kind of things,
[00:11:13.73] spk_1:
any other strategies or tactics around engagement even beyond. So we, we’ve talked about the welcome series right? So now we’ve gone beyond the welcome series. Anything more. I mean, I guess we’re leading toward Alyssa. You had suggested a first gift or maybe, maybe, maybe the welcome series came after the after the first gift. So now we’re looking for a second gift. But the welcome series just to be clear, I mean, it could have come after some other action, right? A signature on a petition. I don’t know if you’re sophisticated enough, maybe a comment on a on a comment on a social post if you’ve got that kind of connection. But okay, so it doesn’t have
[00:11:14.76] spk_3:
to be so it could be, you know, an email subscriber, a new donor
[00:11:21.20] spk_1:
list,
[00:11:34.18] spk_3:
a new sustainer perhaps. Um or if you have like mid level giving or major giving, if someone’s made a mid level gift, they should have a unique onboarding experience as well. Um But beyond welcome series, as Brennan mentioned, having surveys and petitions to really bond and then that’s really focused in digital. But there are many opportunities in direct mail that can complement these as well.
[00:12:32.45] spk_2:
Surveys and petitions are a mainstay in direct mail, right? So those engage devices again, that’s the term that’s used in direct response for eras and eras is to get people to feel their impact beyond writing the check or making the gift. Um And you should be doing that. One of the things we focused on in the session was doing that on a recurring basis. So working, having the fundraising team either build them themselves as part of a comprehensive communications calendar or work collaboratively with a marketing communications team that may be already producing this type of more educational or quote unquote programmatic content so that it’s not just month 13 fundraising appeals and nothing else, we really want to make sure that the donor or prospective donor is having the opportunity to learn and engage with the organization in various ways. Okay.
[00:12:52.84] spk_1:
Okay. So anything else on engagement before we moved to? No, don’t hold out on non profit radio. I mean, what else did you share in your session?
[00:13:09.85] spk_2:
I feel like we touched on a lot of it. I mean, Alyssa talked about tactical opportunities to with whether it’s S M S or even like auto calls, voice recordings, things like that. Um And engagement and stewardship. Can
[00:13:13.80] spk_1:
people still people still react positively to
[00:14:19.92] spk_2:
the auto call? They do. I mean, we forget that our smartphones are actually phones oftentimes, right? Not just supercomputers in our pocket and getting a recorded message that is a human, sometimes even a volunteer or another donor from an organization that is thanking somebody, for instance, for their gift or giving them an opportunity to come to an event um or just saying, go online and check out this latest case that we just wrote this expose on again, depending on the organization is a really fantastic way to break through the clutter of somebody’s inbox, somebody’s direct mail, you know, actual mailbox. Um and technology now allows us to go straight to voicemail. So you don’t even necessary. Yes, ringlets, voicemail. Um and you don’t even have to, you know, have somebody answer the phone and it makes it feels very authentic for a recipient to just see. Oh, I have a missed call. Listen to the voicemail. It’s not a robo call, write personal
[00:14:35.80] spk_3:
messages. You don’t have to listen to the voicemail. You can see it written out in your transcript. And so, you know, that even is great. I like that is, you can see it there. It’s all written out, it’s emphasized. And if I want to listen to it, I can and I hear that real voice. But if I’m on the move and I don’t want to listen, it’s all written. How
[00:14:47.87] spk_1:
do we access ringlets voicemail as you’re calling the number. How do you do it? So,
[00:15:05.07] spk_2:
yeah, there’s third party partners um that work that offer these services um much like a telemarketing firm, but instead of the live callers, you are accessing a dashboard where your staff or volunteers can log in record a voice message. Um sometimes you can even record it just right on your iphone or whatever and then email the file over to the vendor um and then upload a list of phone numbers and the auto dialer spins amount. The vendor knows
[00:15:50.25] spk_1:
how to not make the phone ring. Exactly. Damn. Alright. Ringlets, voicemail. Okay. Very interesting. Okay. But again, I like the emphasis that these are personal calls. It’s not a, it’s not a, it’s not a robocall, it’s personal, you know, Brenna Alyssa, thanks so much. You sign that last petition a couple weeks ago and maybe the person says, um, and, and, and we’re so grateful.
[00:15:54.77] spk_2:
It is if you don’t have the time to do an old fashioned. Thank a Thon, right? This is a way that you can still give that personal touch and a very cost effective way.
[00:16:09.01] spk_1:
Um Okay, engagement. Have we exhausted?
[00:16:12.28] spk_2:
I mean, I guess that’s kind of stewardship to, right? So saying thank you. So kind of going back and forth.
[00:16:30.58] spk_1:
That’s true because we did say thank you. Right. Okay. Um But yeah, we want to keep folks engaged in your point early on. We don’t want to treat them like a T M. All right. All right. Um Anything else? So let’s move more formally to stewardship. Okay. What are your recommendations so we can increase, giving anybody?
[00:16:58.90] spk_3:
Yeah, I think that, um, one you need to make sure you have an auto responder set up for any action to say thank you. It’s very simple and it goes a long way and you need to be specific about what you’re saying. Thank you for. And so is it thank you for taking action. Is it? Thank you for making a gift. These things are important to take that kind of mass communication. And again, bring it to more of a personalized level and so digitally can have those auto responders for direct mail. I don’t think the written note is dead. It still makes an impact.
[00:17:27.55] spk_1:
It’s handwritten huge. I can’t emphasize enough uh fan of handwritten notes. They’re short, it’s not an 8.5 by 11 inch page that you feel you have to full, you have to fill their and nobody does them and they’re personalized and it’s somebody’s somebody’s hand handwriting. There
[00:18:02.83] spk_2:
are few organizations doing them but they stand out that hardly anybody, literally nobody. So that’s what we want. We want folks to kind of, it feels like going back to basics, but it really is just thinking about how would you as a donor, how would you want to be treated? How would you want to be recognized by an organization? Um And then thinking about what are the little things that you can do before?
[00:18:32.17] spk_1:
I want to emphasize the handwritten note. And then if you’re writing the folks, I’d say roughly maybe 60 65 over, don’t be surprised if you get a handwritten note back. Thanking you for your hand for thanking the time I’ve gotten scores of these giving everybody. I work with all the donors pretty much 55 over thanking you for taking the time to send a handwritten note. Thanking you for that. Thanks for your thank you. And they’re doing it another handwritten note back, especially folks in their seventies and eighties and nineties. Some of the donors I work with, that’s what they grew up with handwriting and postage note. So, absolutely. I mean, and also your mail is not junk mail to the folks that are giving to you, you know, an acquisition campaign that’s different. But we’re not talking about that for your, for your donors. Your mail is not your U S mail is not junk
[00:19:38.95] spk_2:
mail. Yes, people are touched and the generational giving studies that are coming out now too is saying it’s not just our elders in the United States that are feeling that way. Millennials respond to direct mail as well. They may not have checkbooks in the house. So you have to give them other ways to respond. Um But it stands out, we don’t get a lot of mail. Um And you know, it’s so having something, we talked a lot yesterday about the having a Q R code that is now ubiquitous, right? Silver lining of the global pandemic. But everybody knows how to use them. Do you remember Q
[00:19:46.98] spk_1:
R codes? They, I don’t know, eight or 10 years ago you’d see them on like a bus. And I thought, oh, these are brilliant and they didn’t take off them. What do we know what happened? 10 years? And if my timing is off,
[00:20:05.88] spk_2:
it was even older than that, actually, I remember them coming out really? In 2003. How come they didn’t take off then? Because each phone it wasn’t native in the operating system. And so if you recall, you had to download a specific app per code. So every company that was pushing these products or trying to get you to use their QR code platform to separate proprietary app reader that then had to be downloaded. So that’s a bridge too far for most of us.
[00:20:32.98] spk_1:
So every code could be a different, a different provider. I there was competition among them
[00:20:36.95] spk_2:
so we have to have the technology catch up. And thankfully now any operating system on any phone, has it native within the camera app. So you’re not asking the user to navigate their
[00:20:51.30] spk_1:
way proprietary app for our, for the company that provided our code. Alright. Yeah, I know it’s now native but I didn’t know why I thank you for explaining why they, why they died so many years ago. I thought this is a brilliant, okay, cool. Thank you for feeling that I’ve always had. Yeah. Now they’re right now they’re ubiquitous.
[00:21:53.24] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Stop the drop with donor box. It’s the online donation platform used by 40,000 nonprofits in the U S, 50,000 worldwide. It’s no wonder it’s four times faster, checkout easier payment processing, no setup fees, no monthly fees, no contract. How many of your potential donors drop off before they finish making the donation on your website? You can stop the drop donor box, helping you help others donor box dot org. Now back to engagement and stewardship for increased giving.
[00:21:58.73] spk_1:
Okay, millennials. Gen Z, no checkbooks in the house most likely, but give him a code, the
[00:22:49.47] spk_2:
donation page and like integrating that whether it’s donation page or you know, connecting from against stewardship pieces, newsletters. Um Calendar, people still really love having excuse me, um A wall calendar with beautiful photos to hang up year round and having Q R code there with various calls to actions to learn more about the very programs. You know that Q R code can of course take you to the website and specific pages designed, but it can also take you directly to youtube where you can watch videos. It can take you to a lot of other native apps on your phone that supporters already have and use and engage with on their own that then further your impact story.
[00:22:50.45] spk_1:
People react well to calendars December calendar for the next
[00:23:00.75] spk_2:
year, 100%. I mean, sometimes they’re even more than 12 months, right? So you’re sending them out uh summertime planning for the next year. Yeah,
[00:23:06.16] spk_3:
and all sizes.
[00:23:08.25] spk_1:
So like refrigerator magnets, calendars
[00:23:14.91] spk_2:
are magnetized nowadays. So that makes it harder.
[00:23:26.07] spk_1:
Stainless steel ones. I don’t even know. I don’t have a, I have a stainless steel stove, dishwasher but, but I never had magnets anyway. So I wouldn’t because I think that looks like clutter, clutter in my kitchen. Stainless steel magnetized.
[00:23:35.14] spk_2:
Obviously, I don’t know all of them, but on mine at home it’s just the sides that are magnetized. Interesting.
[00:23:41.49] spk_1:
Alright. Alright. So maybe maybe not the refrigerator anymore but people do like like
[00:23:46.06] spk_2:
wall calendar
[00:23:51.39] spk_3:
even with people moving, working from home and not necessarily working in an office where you’re hanging it up. Still want it interesting.
[00:23:56.54] spk_1:
Okay, cool. All right. So some of the some of the old school stuff is not dead. We’re talking about male, we’re talking about phone calls, we’re talking about handwritten notes,
[00:24:05.58] spk_3:
calendars. You can’t assume you can’t assume that these things aren’t going to work. And so you really need to know what your constituents right now. We go
[00:24:16.72] spk_1:
back to testing trying try a 12 month calendar, maybe there’s a is there a code on every month or something? And then we know right. We know how many of those, which months and how often we know we send 5000 calendars and if we get 1200 hits on a cure, is that, is that
[00:24:36.63] spk_2:
good? Well,
[00:24:42.85] spk_1:
alright, 5000 calendars times 12 month, 60,000 codes, but we only get 1200 I don’t know, but it depends what they lead to. It
[00:24:54.01] spk_2:
does tell you a lot about what your supporters are interested in. Um So if September,
[00:25:00.51] spk_1:
September, what the hell did we, what did we link to in September that everybody loved to volunteer opportunity was something related to the month of September month.
[00:25:11.39] spk_2:
It’s what was happening the world. Yeah, media. Yeah. All the things. So, and I mean, that’s what we have to think about from an engagement and stewardship and lifetime retention standpoint is it’s not just necessarily the bottom line L T V per donor, but it is how these supporters are engaging with the brand, the organization more broadly so that they stay engaged for the long term. Otherwise you don’t have planned giving prospects,
[00:25:56.91] spk_1:
right? My friend is so smooth. Didn’t even, I didn’t have, I didn’t have to give, I didn’t have to have to lay that out. All right. Thank you very much. Um These are awesome uh ideas you can implement for your program. So we’ve talked about a ton of ideas. Anything else that old school, new school stewardship,
[00:26:17.55] spk_3:
I think to part of engagement and stewardship is information sharing. So if something is happening in your organization, making sure that that’s shared and that can be seen as stewardship also because they’re in the know and they feel important and connected. And so thinking about content your organization already has or is planning to disseminate in other ways package it up as stewardship or engagement. So everything doesn’t have to be brand new just for this.
[00:26:35.76] spk_1:
What makes me think of is if you have insider communications, maybe it’s from donors at a certain level. Can you expand that circle? And you’re not diluting the content? You’re not, you’re not diminishing what you’re $10,000 donors get. If you start giving it to your $2500 donors, your $10,000 donors are still getting it. It’s not like a zero sum, right? So
[00:26:58.81] spk_3:
can you
[00:27:02.04] spk_1:
expand the circle so that so that more folks are considered insiders? It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt the existing insiders to bring more folks in. Repurpose the content, expand the content. I always think about that around and giving donors insider communications or events for your major donors. Why not invite your giving
[00:27:22.90] spk_2:
folks as well? I mean, we think about that similarly with sustain Ear’s. Um can I
[00:27:28.31] spk_1:
until they drop off? Yeah,
[00:29:10.69] spk_2:
I think, I hope we’re well past the like set it and forget it, don’t wake the bear mentality and you know, some things like the proposed Microsoft regulations from last year to will kind of shocked the industry in to having to be better stewards of these really important donors. Um and on the Microsoft. Sure. So I mean, we got a little bit of a reprieve. So, but it’s basically surrounding data privacy rules and allowing the donor themselves or from Microsoft’s point of view, the consumer to, to have a right to adjust their own information, have a right to change um what they want to change without having to jump through a lot of hoops. So Microsoft was not Microsoft, I keep saying Microsoft Mastercard, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. That’s not good. Radio, Mastercard, the credit card processing is was going is requiring for for profit e commerce, things like that, that there’s a lot more of the automation and receding that happens for subscription services, right? It’s kind of the Netflix vacation of our lives where we all have so many different monthly subscription services um that we sometimes forget which ones were actually actively subscribed to, but our cards are being charged regularly out and consumer debt is skyrocketing. Mastercard was trying to also extend that out to subscription giving for nonprofits. So sustainer programs. I did sign up for a second sustaining gift to one organization because I had forgotten which one
[00:29:33.92] spk_3:
it didn’t make organizations think about what our process is that
[00:29:39.48] spk_2:
it was a really long time getting there. But
[00:29:43.67] spk_1:
because an explanation, that’s something I never called it Microsoft in the beginning, I would have known exactly what you’re referring to. I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I didn’t know that. That’s
[00:30:18.81] spk_2:
okay. So, uh the T N P A which is a wonderful nonprofit advocacy focused organization, the nonprofit nonprofit alliance. Yes, that’s all it is. Um fought and lobbied on behalf of the industry to have nonprofits be forgiven for these rules or not, not have to be held to the same standards that commercial companies like Netflix and others are because sustained charitable giving is different. People are signing up for it like you said, for a reason and they don’t forget about it quite as often as
[00:30:37.12] spk_1:
they would.
[00:30:40.10] spk_2:
Like I said, I am, I am an example. The
[00:30:44.89] spk_3:
whole selling point is you don’t have to think about it. You’re giving to an organization you care about and don’t worry about it. We got it.
[00:33:08.53] spk_2:
There is some benefit to the efficiency, certainly, but I think we do have to move past that. Um And, and not be scared to empower our sustain ear’s um with some D I Y functionality online if they want to change the amount or the date that their gift is processed. A lot of systems nowadays are allowing for it, but the nonprofits still have to go in and activate those modules and customize that ui that user interface so that donors understand where to go, what to do and also where the humans are when they need extra help to do whatever. So we got a reprieve temporarily or potentially temporarily. But I think what hopefully what this does and how we’ve been working with our clients is a little bit of a wake up call that it shouldn’t be seen as a reprimand. It should be seen as a stewardship opportunity because you’re sustain ear’s are generally 100 plus dollar annual donors. And if they gave that gift at a one time gift level, you’d be treating them differently. They would be part of a pipeline strategy. Um And, and so we need to not only, like I said, empower them to take some ownership over their own giving, but integrate them into, you know, the rest of the communication and stewardship programs that you already have in place for donors of, of that value and higher potential value. We were just looking at an organization’s um stats just recently that a one time donor online acquired donor, which most sustainer zar is online acquired um had an average 24 month LTV of $86 which is pretty good. 24 months, 24 months, $86 sustain urz 2 87 right? So huge difference um that you theoretically don’t have to do much for, right? Um But if they’re, if they’re falling off, um and not, not being stewarded up that pipeline of giving, it’s still a drop in the bucket compared to the potential that may
[00:33:13.25] spk_1:
hold just going back to the mastercard rules. Was it just wasn’t that charities have to start informing the monthly sustain that there’s a dashboard or something that they can go to.
[00:34:09.47] spk_2:
So, not necessarily, you have to make it available. There was a few different, was a four or five different bullet lists that you had to do or bullet items to do. One was having easy accessible like links and all your emails to a place where they could cancel or change their, their gift and or be in contact with within a very short period of time, which was subjective with a human who could then help them through that. Another was uh email notification before the gift was charged on a monthly basis, which actually felt quite was probably the most arduous thing that Mastercard was asking for because most systems are set up to set the auto responder after the charge, not pre charge. So there would have to be some configuration and new content developed to have that year
[00:34:38.20] spk_1:
after one said, thank you, you will be charged in another 30 days that had to be within a certain time of the charge might have been like 24 or 48 hours. But yeah, thank you very much. And you will be charged in another 29 days, right? I
[00:34:40.37] spk_2:
like that. All
[00:34:49.99] spk_1:
right. All right. Um Okay. But yeah, I just wanted to get that little little detail about what the requirement was. Your bigger point was that there’s value in these folks see this as a stewardship opportunity, not a, not a reprimand.
[00:35:19.89] spk_2:
Exactly. And I mean, I think a lot of stuff you’re hearing at the conference to around data privacy. Um and donor choice is going to kind of follow suit here where we, we have to build systems that empower the donors to take ownership over their own giving trajectory. Um And sometimes it is our corporate partners and regulations that nudge us and sometimes we can stand up and do it ourselves
[00:35:23.81] spk_1:
and don’t be afraid to talk to your sustaining donors. Never. Don’t. Let’s not, hopefully, you know, we’re not only over the set it and forget it, but we’re also over the, if I talk to them, they might, they might change their mind,
[00:35:38.42] spk_2:
scarcity
[00:35:39.17] spk_1:
mindset, they’re gonna take that gift away if I remind them that they’re doing it every month. No, no, no. So see, there’s an opportunity
[00:35:45.54] spk_3:
afraid
[00:35:46.11] spk_1:
of, you’re afraid to talk to
[00:35:49.79] spk_3:
these folks if you’re engaging in store them, if they do make the decision that they can’t continue being a recurring donor, hopefully, they still will make that one time gift or they’ll sign up for advocacy or volunteer or planned giving is that they’re still fully engaged with your mission and organization. So you’re not losing them completely. They’re just shifting how they can support.
[00:36:35.11] spk_2:
Situational changes, certainly will affect that, right? And especially some sustainer Czar only giving three or $5 a month. Um and things like inflation and a tightening economy might affect if they can temporary, you know, if they need to temporarily pause that sustaining gift, um If the system allows them to do that themselves, amazing, if not making sure they, you know, who to contact. So that how they can do it and keeping that open line of communication so that they know they can also come back is really important to, again, building that brand affinity and bonding them to the organization so that they say good things about you out in the world.
[00:37:13.18] spk_1:
Oh, this is awesome. Um Great ideas coming, I’ll be very interested in if that Mastercard rule takes effect in the sort of the data, the outcomes, you know, do we see, do we see a lot of sustain ear’s dropping off? My optimistic self thinks that we won’t see that happen. A lot that a lot of people are going to abandon it just because their remote, that they could, but I’ll be interested in the data, but maybe the rule will never. So where does it stand now? With the Master card? It’s not, it doesn’t apply to non profits now and we don’t know if or when it will
[00:37:26.70] spk_2:
change their mind. And they
[00:37:29.09] spk_1:
didn’t say like December 31st is it
[00:37:31.21] spk_2:
is a temporary but no deadline waiver?
[00:37:36.26] spk_1:
Okay, perfect. Okay. Um I’m looking at your learning objectives that were stated in the official and 10 document for this session. Um Ideas with dozens. If you have, I think listeners, you have to go back and replay this. We play this episode to capture all the ideas we talked about. Um understand the value of multi channel touches that increase retention and value what we’ve talked about multi, we’ve talked about all kinds of channels. Uh What else can we talk about that you talked
[00:39:59.74] spk_2:
about yesterday. So we touched on it with the welcome series, right? In the automation. One of the things that I said yesterday and I firmly believe is that we should be leveraging automation more than we do in the digital space. Uh There is so much still like manual labor happening in email, launches SMS, launches advertising and things like that building audiences that is unnecessary. If we take a step back and take a little bit of time to kind of assess the lay of the land first and build out campaign goals, priorities and tactics and strategies. You can pretty much pre schedule almost everything online. Uh So you don’t need to be manually sending out three emails a week or, you know, whatever it is your systems, your technology can really do so much work for you. Um And it’s hard for some folks to put their trust in the machines. Um Yeah, to let go and not review every single audience Celtic and every single, you know, test life, want to see a live seed for every single email, you know, those kind of things. Um But there’s so much more opportunity to do that and you can build trigger based behavior based triggered actions, um emails, engagements, things like that, that keep stewarding people on their own timeline. So you don’t have to pull a list of your, you know, almost lapsing donors manually every time if it’s based on the data that lives in the CRM. Um, and you can build these chronic non responder, trigger based behavior based re engagement series. That’s all about when I last engaged. And it’s different from when Alyssa last engaged. Uh, and it is a little set it and forget it though. Of course, you want to check in periodically to make sure nothing’s gone sideways and the content is still relevant and doesn’t feel dated. Um But that would free up fundraisers, marketers, whoever at the nonprofit to think bigger, think newer, think how we can do something differently or what are the things that we wanted to do for so long. But we never feel like we had the bandwidth at the time if we truly allow ourselves to fully leverage the software that we are investing in regularly, um We’ll have so much more time.
[00:40:27.85] spk_1:
Okay. Leverage automation.
[00:41:43.14] spk_3:
Yes, I think another thing yesterday and often times this is a big question of how can I come back to my organization and have them see the value, you know, they’re looking for the up front giving and want fundraising at the forefront to ask donate now, give now. And so with engagement, you can have after actions, but that’s behind the engagement, that’s not at the forefront. So really being able to share with people, the value is important to go back to their organization and say, you know, there needs to be a balance. You need to look at your communication calendar, where is there the give and take that you can have and sharing that while you might not get the gift today. When you make to ask, there’s a stronger case to give their. And so really looking at your unique file and what they actually respond to because there’s some organizations where you can send a fundraising appeal and you get tons of gifts right off the bat and then there’s somewhere you need to sell it a little more and have those touch points before you can make the ask. And so it’s def for everyone, but it’s important to evaluate that before just saying no, we can only give fundraising emails and direct mail appeals.
[00:41:54.24] spk_1:
All right, I’m gonna let you, that was semi inspirational, but it was very tactical too. So I’m gonna let you leave us with an inspirational message about engagement and stewardship and how that leads to increased giving.
[00:42:08.48] spk_3:
Oh, that wasn’t inspirational enough. Okay. Um
[00:42:15.35] spk_1:
Okay,
[00:42:35.52] spk_3:
this is pressure. I think that you, you just have to take that leap of faith with engagement and stewardship and no one is going to say you thanked me too many times. You sent me too much information. Um You shouldn’t be afraid to provide what your organization does and share your mission. That’s what we’re here to do. And so, um, yeah, engage steward and you’ll see, you’ll see the value come back
[00:42:50.32] spk_2:
around, convey that impact and they’ll, they’ll keep giving. Thank you very
[00:42:59.93] spk_1:
much, Brent Holmes, principal and senior Vice President at Mission Wired and Alissa Ackerman, senior account director at Mission Wired. Thanks very much for sharing, energetic and brilliant. Thank you. Thank you very much and thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 N T. See where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks so much for being with us.
[00:44:38.14] spk_0:
It’s time for tony steak too. Hi there. Who can you share non profit radio with? I would be grateful if you could identify one or two folks that would benefit from the smart guests that I’m picking the brains of each week for all our listeners in small and midsize nonprofits. Maybe it’s someone you work with, someone you used to work with. Maybe it’s a board member. Who do you know that you could share non profit radio with? Let them know it’s your favorite abdominal podcast. So I would be grateful if you could share non profit radio. Love to have more folks learning from all our smart savvy guests. That’s what the show is all about. Passing on expertise and wisdom. Thanks very much. Thanks for thinking about that. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got Boo Koo, but loads more time here is data maturity.
[00:44:47.31] spk_1:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C. It’s day two at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver
[00:44:57.48] spk_0:
where we are sponsored
[00:44:59.15] spk_1:
by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. With me now is Joanne Jan. She is project manager of strategic
[00:45:11.35] spk_0:
partnerships at data dot org.
[00:45:14.61] spk_1:
Welcome to nonprofit radio, Joanne. Thank you,
[00:45:16.56] spk_4:
tony. Happy to be here.
[00:45:17.58] spk_1:
It’s a pleasure to have you.
[00:45:18.51] spk_0:
Thank you. And your
[00:45:28.69] spk_1:
session topic is, is data maturity, the key to meeting your mission. It’s question mark. All right, give us the 30,000 ft view of why this is important.
[00:47:14.45] spk_4:
Absolutely. So when data dot org is thinking about data maturity, we think about it in um three different ways, a specific framework we call the three PS purpose practice in people. And what we have designed based on this framework is a data maturity assessment, which is a way to understand where you think your organization is in terms of its data maturity. And we hope that you use the assessment as a communication tool to understand with other colleagues, perhaps your leadership, perhaps born members to think about what do you want to do next in terms of improving the way you use data more effectively? And um how do you use it better to meet your mission? What is data maturity? Yeah. And so there are a lot of different terms out there that um can encompass data maturity. But the way we think about it is again, in the three piece So when we think about purpose, we think about why are you collecting data? What are you intending it to do? Are you intending it to help you inform future decisions? Are you helping it? Are you intending to collect it to help you inform past um past programming or are you informing it or collecting it to inform um uh what you think could be right now, informing decision making right now in terms of the second P which is practice, this is what, how are you going to actually use the data? How are you gonna use it to achieve what you’re looking for? Um So this is thinking about data analysis, data visualization, um the way you’re using and working with that data. And then the third piece we think is probably one of the most important ones is the people. So thinking about who is actually doing this data collection, the analysis, the visualization, who at the leadership level is promoting and prioritizing data. And then there are the culture. So what is your culture around data as a team? Are you constantly collecting and analyzing data together using it to inform decisions um that type of uh culture?
[00:47:38.72] spk_1:
Okay. And the question is, is this the key to meeting, meeting your mission? So ah how does how does data maturity contribute to mission accomplishment?
[00:48:24.27] spk_4:
Yeah. So I think the way we think about it is it’s a way to be more effective, be more efficient and be more impactful in the way that you are carrying out your programmatic objectives. So um when we think about our data maturity journey, you can be at a different part of the journey depending on where your organization is. And perhaps if you’re earlier on in the journey, data collection might not be of primary focus. But as you’re moving along, as you’re developing more um understanding and knowledge and that talent and data, you might want to use it a little more and drive your specific decision making or practices in that way. Um And so the reason it’s a question that said students really thinking about where your organization is and thinking about what can I do now to um maximize the use of data that I as an organization and probably already collecting. So what am I doing now with the, with the data that I have on hand and thinking about in the future? Do I want to shift my practice is in any way, shift my people in any way or my purpose to make it a little more efficient, a little more effective? Um a little more impactful.
[00:48:53.98] spk_1:
Um You have some tools and resources. You mentioned the data, you mentioned data assessment. Yes. Is that, is that at data
[00:49:17.04] spk_4:
dot org? It is um data dot org is an organization that is a platform for partnerships to build the field of data, for social impact and we do it in the three CS. So the first one is the three CS, easy to remember.
[00:49:18.65] spk_1:
Three.
[00:49:40.85] spk_4:
No, I think that’s it. So the three C’s Cases Capacities, comments Cases, you’re really thinking about lifting up practitioners, nonprofits, social impact organizations that are already doing great work with data or data science. And we post those stories, we share their stories on our digital platform. The second one is Cases Capacity. So thinking about how do
[00:49:47.52] spk_1:
you do,
[00:50:44.61] spk_4:
you can only go from the capacity. So thinking about um how do you increase the capacities of individual practitioners and also organizations? And we do this in a few different ways. One of them being perhaps if an organization needs some technical assistance, we can match, make them with um different consultants or other organizations that do this type of work. Uh Thinking about upscaling organizations. So helping them become more um literate in data or developing a new skill. Um And then our third seat is commons, which is where the data maturity assessment falls in and comments is thinking about different digital public goods that you can offer for free for anyone to access. Um that is open source. Uh And that it um can help you improve your practice in some way. So we have an initiative called reverse at data dot org, which is what’s the name of
[00:50:45.62] spk_1:
the initiative divers?
[00:51:24.29] spk_4:
Okay. So that initiative was thinking about creating open source tools for epidemiology. And so if you have coders if you have public health professionals, everyone’s coming together from different roles and aspects and creating tools that would be helpful for um other people. So maybe a local government in a different country might want to look at these open source tools and helps them predict uh the way a pandemic might spread, predict a number of hospital beds you might need based on um different elements of their, of what has already happened. So putting things together and creating those tools and different packages that you can take and apply to different scenarios and context. So there is just one
[00:51:33.22] spk_1:
example of,
[00:51:34.32] spk_4:
of a comment of
[00:51:35.31] spk_1:
a of a commons,
[00:51:47.41] spk_4:
but the one I focus on is the data maturity assessment. And in addition to that, it’s connected to what we call the resource library. So there are a lot of different resources on our library that can help you figure out what you want to do next. So the way our assessment works is it gives you an overall score and a score for the three PS as well as subcategories. And with that, you get resources matched up to how you’re responding. And so say you’re scoring really high
[00:52:10.29] spk_1:
before we go to that, before we go to the outcome of the assessment, where where do folks find the assessment at data dot org?
[00:52:11.38] spk_4:
So data dot org slash DM A
[00:52:28.08] spk_1:
data management assessment assessment, maturity assessment, data dot org slash D M A. OK. Very well named, easily named. So then the outcome is we get, we get resources allied with our outcomes around the three PS.
[00:52:55.04] spk_4:
Yeah. So if you’re scoring a little lower and strategy, which is subcategory in purpose, you might want to check out our, our strategy guide, which is a step by step process that you, you might want to take your team through and think about okay, what is the data were already collecting? What do we want the data to help us inform in terms of decisions or in terms of team makeup or whatever? And then thinking about okay, what’s our over arching strategy and how do we communicate that with our team? So we’re all moving in the same direction. What do we need
[00:53:03.40] spk_1:
to know entering the assessment? Like is this something I can do in 15 minutes? Yes. So do I can I ceo do it or do I need my I T vendor with me or what?
[00:53:57.65] spk_4:
That’s a great question. And so the assessment you can do in about 10 to 12 minutes, it does not matter what role you’re in. Anyone in your organization can take it an important caveat. Is this is your perspective on your organization’s use of data. So this is not gonna be the objective assessment of how your organization is using data. It’s your perspective on it. And the way we encourage users to use the tool is to use it as a communication tool. So say I take it and then tony, you take it, but our scores are different. That’s okay. The whole point of it is to help you understand and have a conversation about why did you score maybe five in this category? But I scored eight, is it because of the role I’m in? Is it because we interpreted the question perhaps a little differently? And then once we’re aligned, then we can think about okay, we’re aligned on where each subcategory falls. And it seems like we both understand that maybe security is something we want to work more closely on because we agree that that is something that we don’t have the proper protocols and practices in place or that’s something we want to improve. So let’s work together on that and think about how do we improve that a little more?
[00:54:31.10] spk_1:
Um without our listeners having the advantage of having taken their uh data maturity assessment, how can we help folks? I mean, are there maybe there are some of the resources or tools that are commonly needed and helpful? How can how can we help listeners with their data maturity before they take their assessment because they’re just listening
[00:55:20.56] spk_4:
now? Yes. Well, so if you’re interested in exploring the resource library, we have a lot of different tools on it. But what I would recommend and what we recommend for those who are just starting their day to maturity journey is to think about strategy. So, data dot org has a specific guide for strategy in the resource library and you can think about, okay, where is my organization now? And how do I enact and write up a strategy with my team in order to use data more effectively, to better understand how data is coming in and what you could uh think about in the long term and future, what you want to do with the data.
[00:55:23.52] spk_1:
Okay. Okay. What else was in your session that we haven’t talked about
[00:55:36.09] spk_4:
yet? So unfortunately, my co presenter couldn’t be here. But another part of our session was thinking about um you’re using data but how you’re using it in equitable ways. So equitable, cultivating Ecuador practices for data for social impact. Um and the organization that was part of this presentation was the Data for Social Impact Initiative at the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in ST Louis,
[00:55:58.24] spk_1:
took four layers to get there.
[00:56:26.87] spk_4:
All right, I have to make sure I take a lot of pauses during that. And so what they’ve done is they created a course module. So it’s free and open to anyone to use and it’s thinking about data for social impact. So if you as an individual or thinking, you know, I want to learn a little bit more about data, I want to learn, you know, perhaps in my role, how you can use it better, just some foundational knowledge, this free and open courses, something you can access um at the Data for Social Impact Initiative at the Social Policy Institute website.
[00:56:44.36] spk_1:
Okay. Okay. Um How about questions that came from your, from your session? Uh What kind of questions did you get or anything that’s stuck with you? Maybe a provocative question around
[00:58:42.39] spk_4:
data. Yeah, I think um a question, one of the first questions we got was thinking about the word assessment and how that lands with people. So R D M A is called the data maturity assessment. And thinking about maybe assessment is not the right um word because it does have a certain connotation that you’re being evaluated. And the real purpose of the D M A is to help you set a um an understanding of what you think your organization is. So it’s not necessarily a value to it evaluative, it’s more of a um a snapshot of where you are. And so a suggestion was perhaps benchmarking is a little more um is a little more friendly or a little more descriptive of what it actually is. Um So that was really interesting question and useful feedback. Um I’m trying to think of others. I think an interesting piece about the data maturity assessment is that we um are global organizations. So we encourage wherever you are in the in the world to take it. And we’ve had um a lot of different countries represented in our dataset, which is over 1000 submissions at this point. So it helps us understand the field of data for social impact a little better. Um It’s a relatively emerging field. We’re still learning about it and the fact that we can have a larger pool data sets, we can better understand perhaps where there needs to be more support in the fields, um where there needs to be more funding in the field. Um Something that data dot org releases every year is, is a report on thought leadership. And our first report was work first wanted and thinking about what is the current talent landscape of this sector right now? And how do we train more purpose driven data professionals uh and bring some people over from the private sector, encourage new talent to get into data for social impact because we believe that data is going to be a huge um indicator whether or not your organization is going to be successful. What’s,
[00:58:47.62] spk_1:
what’s I guess I I really have kind of a neophyte question. So, but you’ve been your your data professional scientist and I’ve been studying this for about 16 minutes. So,
[00:58:58.10] spk_4:
well, I’m not a data scientist. I am. Yeah. Well,
[00:59:16.15] spk_1:
your title, your title is Project Manager, Strategic Partnerships. I’m sorry, you sound like a data scientist but you’re not. No, I’m not. Okay. Um Well, you have been working with this for a long time. Um What’s the value of knowing where we are in our data journey as an organization? Why, why, why is this important?
[01:00:54.28] spk_4:
Yeah. So I think, well, we hear a lot from organizations is everyone is collecting and consuming data regardless of whether or not you have a strategy in place. And so when you want to make a decision, perhaps you’re having a challenge at your organization and you think maybe buying software technology is going to solve everything. Um What we often hear is that making that big financial investment didn’t actually solve everything. It created more problems. And our hypothesis is that because there was no strategy in the first place, there was no overarching reason why um the decision to make an investment in some technology or software would help you achieve your overarching goals, which was, which is usually in some sort of programmatic objectives, your outcomes that you want your organization to achieve. And so it’s understanding what data are we collecting, what is our infrastructure, what tools do we already used and how do we make them all work in the same direction? How do we make it all work? So we’re going towards and working towards our programmatic objectives and something that we’re learning more and more is that data can help you be more efficient. It can help you understand the different trends in perhaps the different constituents you’re serving or the trends in um whatever your mission, maybe it can help you get more information and oftentimes you have this information, but it’s thinking about how do you um look at it. How do you analyze it in a way that can drive maybe financial decisions you’re making, maybe cultural decisions, you’re making leadership decisions. Um and this is just one data point. So thinking about the different types of data you’re collecting uh and helping you make as informed a decision as possible.
[01:01:21.88] spk_1:
Okay. Alright. So helping with strategic direction, obviously meeting mission um strategic
[01:01:24.96] spk_4:
planning. Yeah, talent decisions. If you want to hire who you want to hire, what skill sets you need, etcetera. Okay.
[01:01:32.28] spk_1:
How do we leave it there? All right. All right. So a big part of this is encouraging folks to do the data management assessment.
[01:01:41.57] spk_4:
Majority, maturity,
[01:02:01.46] spk_1:
maturity, dammit, I’m sorry, data maturity assessment, which you will find at data dot org slash D M A. She is Joanne Jan project manager of strategic partnerships at data dot org. Joanne, thank you very much and thanks for carrying the, the uh the other part of the other part of your session to for your co presenter who couldn’t be here. Thank you for representing that as well. And thank you for being with non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C 2023 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits
[01:03:07.70] spk_0:
next week, multigenerational technology teaching and goals aligned with technology. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows. Social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide 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.
Patty Breech: Create Your Email Welcome Journey You don’t want to welcome new donors with only a single email, or worse, digital silence. Seize this unique opportunity to draw folks into your story, validate their decision to support you and turn them into loyal ambassadors. Patty Breech from The Purpose Collective helps you out. (This is part of our coverage of the 2022 Nonprofit Technology Conference, hosted by NTEN.)
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[00:02:15.14] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Hey, this is show number 5 91. Only nine weeks to go for our 6/100 show. A decent host would have told you last week when it was showed number 5 90 it was 10 weeks to go, mm hmm Oh I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of blepharoplasty area If you inflamed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show, create your email welcome journey. You don’t want to welcome new donors with only a single email or worse digital silence, seize this unique opportunity to draw folks into your story, validate their decision to support you and turn them into loyal ambassadors patty breach from the purpose collective helps you out. This is part of our coverage of the 2022 nonprofit technology conference hosted by N 10. I’m tony steak too. Please share Redox sponsored by turn to communications. Pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o And by 4th dimension technologies I thi 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 here is create your email welcome journey. Welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio coverage of 22 NTC. The 2022 nonprofit technology conference. My guest at this stage is patty breach founder and Ceo of the purpose collective patty Welcome to nonprofit radio
[00:02:21.94] spk_1:
thank you so glad to be here.
[00:02:39.14] spk_0:
I’m glad you are my pleasure to have you. Your topic is very interesting to me and I think it will be to our to our listeners as well. Don’t follow donations with silence, create an email welcome journey. All right. Uh, so there’s the problem is clear there’s too much silence after. Are we talking necessarily about our first donation or is this any this is any donation should not be treated with silence, I guess. Right.
[00:03:19.34] spk_1:
Um yeah, I would say any donation especially, um not you don’t want to follow the first one with silence and I would extend this also to other actions. You know, if someone sign up to volunteer with the organization, if they join your email list, if they sign a petition, whatever whatever actions you are asking people to take with your organization. Um, if they do those actions and then you don’t say anything at all. Um that’s a really big missed opportunity.
[00:03:26.84] spk_0:
Okay, right. They’ve done they’ve they’ve followed your call to action and you thank them with nothing with some
[00:03:34.03] spk_1:
Alright, uh
[00:03:35.66] spk_0:
and your and your your seminar description implores us twice to do this right now.
[00:03:43.94] spk_1:
Right
[00:03:53.84] spk_0:
now, exclamation mark. So, Alright, what? Let’s first define an email Welcome journey. And then we’ll get into the details of how you set this up. What what, what are we talking about first?
[00:04:09.84] spk_1:
Yeah, absolutely. So email Welcome journeys are a series of emails that are sent directly after someone takes an action with you and they’re usually triggered automatically. Um They have a lot of other names. Sometimes they’re called like a nurture series or a drip campaign. I prefer to call them email welcome journeys.
[00:04:19.07] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. What was the last one drip campaign? Is that,
[00:04:22.08] spk_1:
Yeah, a drip campaign can be a little bit different, but sometimes it’s it’s we’re talking about the same
[00:04:36.64] spk_0:
thing. And so then you said a series. So this is not just a thank you. Thank you for whatever signing the petition, making the gift volunteering. It’s more than just a thank you email.
[00:05:02.74] spk_1:
Yeah, exactly. It’s a series. So um research research shows that that window of time following someone’s action with you is the time when they’re most receptive to hearing from you. Um and I say that window of time, it’s it’s really like up to a month after, as close to immediately as possible and and going out to about a month later. Um That’s sort of like a magic window of opportunity
[00:05:05.75] spk_0:
that long though. I’m surprised that it’s that long.
[00:05:08.44] spk_1:
Yeah, I don’t
[00:05:10.51] spk_0:
want to take that. I’m not suggesting we take that long
[00:05:12.70] spk_1:
wait
[00:05:24.04] spk_0:
Till 29 days to thank your thank your new volunteer, but but they’re they’re still gonna be open to open to you to your messaging for that long.
[00:05:43.64] spk_1:
Yeah. And I would I would really emphasize that that as close to immediately as possible. So you know, if you can send one email right away then another one maybe three days later. Another one a week later. You can go up to a month if you have that much to say. But maybe you don’t. Maybe your email series is just two or 3 messages sent in the first couple of weeks.
[00:05:48.74] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. But you have that opportunity. It lasts. Does it start to decay over time? I would, I would think.
[00:05:53.59] spk_1:
But yeah.
[00:05:55.37] spk_0:
Alright.
[00:05:57.54] spk_1:
So yeah, we wanna we wanna strike while the iron is hot, so to speak.
[00:06:15.34] spk_0:
So um Since we’re talking about automated, presumably we’re gonna do this automated 2022. Do you have any resources that you can suggest to kick us off? Whether pay or free? That that folks could could look at.
[00:06:19.64] spk_1:
Yeah. I mean most of the major email programs out there are going to offer some sort of automated series
[00:06:28.60] spk_0:
has
[00:06:46.04] spk_1:
Constant content. Has one. Yeah. Campaign monitor has one um male or light. So I would just um make sure that you’re using an email program that offers that functionality. And if it doesn’t maybe consider switching to one that does.
[00:06:58.84] spk_0:
Yeah, if it doesn’t you, it sounds like you’re using one that was uh that was created in like 1997 and it hasn’t really evolved in the past 25 years. Male or light. I never heard of Mailer Light. I love the play on Miller lite. That’s fascinating.
[00:07:03.24] spk_1:
That’s a
[00:07:11.44] spk_0:
Mailer Light. That is fun. Alright. Um okay, so what should we be thinking about? We’re going to create our journey. What, what do we, what do we conceptualize before we start composing?
[00:07:33.84] spk_1:
Yeah, so I love to um think about like a real world situation, like, like a restaurant. So if you were to end up going to a new restaurant for the first time, um chances are, there’s some work that went into that decision on your behalf. Like, I don’t know when the last time is that you went to a new restaurant, but can you think of a reason why you would be venturing out to try a new place?
[00:07:53.74] spk_0:
Yeah, it’s newly opened or um, it’s uh, it’s a cuisine. I don’t get too often. I live in a small town, I live in a small beach town in North Carolina. So when, when an Italian restaurant opened a couple of towns away, which for us, a couple of towns was like a 10 minute drive. Um, you know, I jumped on it. So I went to uh, Italiano, the uh, the Italian swan. Uh yeah, so those are a couple, a couple of reasons.
[00:08:14.24] spk_1:
Yeah, totally. So you probably heard about it through word of mouth, Maybe you saw some advertisements?
[00:08:21.25] spk_0:
Yes,
[00:09:38.74] spk_1:
yeah, you might have been thinking about it for a while. Um, but the point is, you know, some, something went into your decision to go there, you put some effort into it and you were excited to be there And so there’s a couple of ways that could go once you get to this restaurant. All right. Like the first scenario would be, you know, you walk into this new italian place and staff greets you with a smile. They’re very happy that you’re there. They offer to take your coat. They want to know if you want to sit inside or outside if you’ve been there before. Um, just really generally make you feel very welcome and that has the effect, I’m sure of making you feel like you made a good decision. Like you, you’re very validated. Like I knew I should have come here. This was great. Um, and a second scenario might be like the alternative that could be that you walk in and you’re kind of ignored. Like the staff seems really busy, You can hardly get their attention and the effect of that is the opposite. Right? Like you might begin to question like should I be here? Are they closed for a private event tonight? Should have made a reservation. Like did I walk in the wrong door, You’re just thinking like, you know, maybe I’m not welcome here. And so when we all of us as human beings, we all want our decisions to be validated right? We all want to, we all want to feel like I did a really good thing. I’m so happy about doing that. I’ll probably do it again.
[00:09:47.99] spk_0:
Absolutely confirmation bias. Everything I do is correct.
[00:10:25.54] spk_1:
Yes. Right. Um, so when as a nonprofit, when someone donates to you and you just send them an automatic receipt and that’s it. They don’t hear anything else from you. You’re kind of being like that restaurant in the second scenario where someone has walked in with enthusiasm, ready to interact with you and you’re just like, I don’t have time for you. I’m sorry. So welcome journeys are meant to be more like that first scenario where we’re saying we’re so glad you’re here. Thank you so much for choosing us. You made a really good decision. You should make that decision again in the future. And um, it really helps to turn people into lifelong supporters of your cause.
[00:10:42.14] spk_0:
Okay. Get them early, helps us retain. Of course we know donor retention now now and focus specifically on donors don’t have retention is very poor. Yeah. First time. First time donor. First time donor retention. Very bad,
[00:10:46.97] spk_1:
totally. It’s, it’s around 40 to 45% for the average nonprofit. So
[00:10:51.24] spk_0:
that was even higher. I thought it was like 70 70 something percent,
[00:11:03.34] spk_1:
Uh, retention meaning 60% are not going to give again. Is the data that I have. Oh,
[00:11:04.37] spk_0:
40% retention. Okay. Yes. I’m thinking of the loss of, right. Alright. So
[00:11:09.63] spk_1:
data
[00:11:17.64] spk_0:
scientists that I data scientist that I am. Yes, I realize. Alright. So, so it’s somewhere. All right. So the loss, the attrition is Somewhere between 60 and 70. Something
[00:11:19.87] spk_1:
more than half of the people who donate your organization.
[00:11:27.24] spk_0:
That’s abysmal amazon amazon would would cringe at that. Yeah.
[00:11:41.14] spk_1:
Yeah. And the thing is you probably put a lot of work into getting those donors. You know, like you’re out there marketing your um maybe paying for social media ads. You’re doing really good work and just trying to raise awareness. And so once you’ve gotten them through your door, you should be doing everything in your power to keep them because it’s expensive and it’s time consuming to go out and find other donors might as well treat the donors you have like like V. I. P. S.
[00:12:10.64] spk_0:
Absolutely. All right. So, what do we what do we again? So what do we start to think about before we start writing? Like what how do you want us to organize our series? Our journey.
[00:12:13.64] spk_1:
Yeah. So I will just drop one more statistic in to say that these welcome journeys. They see really good open rates. Um, I don’t know if you’re familiar with average email open rates, but they’re
[00:12:25.94] spk_0:
we’ll go ahead and acquaint. Acquaint me. Acquaint us
[00:13:09.24] spk_1:
Average is around 20%. And open rate is it’s it’s it’s a you know, it’s a statistic. That’s not the most reliable thing in the world. But on average, most email newsletters you send are going to see about 20-25% open rate? Maybe two or 3% click rate. And on a welcome journey, email. Those numbers are going to be double or triple. I’ve seen this happen with so many organizations. So they’re getting open rates of 50%. They’re seeing click rates that are 5, 10, 15%, which is huge. And it just goes to show that people want to get these messages and they want to hear from you, and they, they work, they work really
[00:13:12.54] spk_0:
well. Get us going, what, what, what, what, what do you want to think about?
[00:13:54.24] spk_1:
Okay. So today, if we were to build a donor journey, so we’re welcoming someone who’s made a donation. Um, I suggest that you write anywhere from 3-5 email messages and as we said, starting immediately and going up to four weeks later. Um, and the key here is to always provide something of value to your supporters. Um, because this is about them, this is not about you. So this is not your opportunity to say, we’re so great as an organization and we’re really wonderful. And look at all the ways that were wonderful. This is the opportunity to say to the donor, you’re so great. Look at all of the impact that has been made possible thanks to you and your support.
[00:15:26.94] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications, content, content creation, content management, content exposure, turn to, they can help you create content right. Right. For whatever audience it you have to write for. Is that your board, is it your donors. Is it all your supporters for the annual report? Is it just segment, is it your employees? You got to write something internal has to be done just right. Take it off your shoulders. The content management, Where do you want all this content to live? They can help you organize it, curate it and the exposure. If it’s for public audiences, then you’re going to want it out to the public that maybe blogs, that maybe newspapers, whether its op ed or its articles that may be conferences, maybe it’s podcasts, content. Do you need help with content? Turn to communications turn hyphen two dot c o now back to create your email welcome journey. So how do we make sure we’re, you know, we’re, we’re varying the message with with the same purpose, You know, 3-5 times over over a month.
[00:16:18.14] spk_1:
Yes. So my suggested structure for this. Um, I like to start with, um, a plaintext gratitude message sent as close to immediately as possible. Um, sometimes because of the way your database might sink with your email program overnight, you can’t do immediately. It might have to be like within 24 hours, which is fine. But I think a plaintext gratitude message ideally from the founder of your organization, the executive director, someone who whose name would be recognizable. Um, just basically saying, Hey, I saw your donation come in, it means a lot to us. I really appreciate you, you’re wonderful, you’ve just made all of this possible. Thank you, thank you. Thank you. We’re so grateful for you. Um something
[00:16:20.74] spk_0:
like before we go ahead. I wanna, I wanna extract everything from this very first message because this is to me this is the most important one. So go ahead. You continue. I’ll remember my question. Go ahead.
[00:17:03.84] spk_1:
Um I was just gonna say that. I think that plain text messages are really powerful in this day and age because all of us get a lot of corporate looking emails a lot of the time that are really polished. They’ve got a lot of photos and colored buttons and things in them. And plaintext feels personal. So there’s there’s no images in it, there’s no special formatting. It’s just, it really feels like a real human being sat down and typed that message out to you. And so that’s what we’re going for on. This first one is a really personal touch point.
[00:17:21.04] spk_0:
Okay. You anticipated my exact question which is gonna be why? Why plaintext over formatting? Okay. Uh do we continue? Are we continuing that in our in our series or uh text or you still would like to introduce some formatting after the first message?
[00:17:25.48] spk_1:
Yeah, formatting after the first message is is my recommendation for for the way to go.
[00:17:43.44] spk_0:
But the first. But so the first one looks like it that the Ceo really did or maybe a board member or something. You know, if, if, I guess if not a recognizable name at least a prominent name like board board chair or something like that. You know, it looks like they actually typed it out.
[00:17:50.64] spk_1:
Exactly, yes. That’s what we’re going for.
[00:17:51.80] spk_0:
It came right from their right from their email app to to you. Okay.
[00:18:23.24] spk_1:
Yes. And along those lines to make it feel personal. We also want to make sure that you’re writing in whatever tone feels right for for that person for your organization. Like are you a young fun, upbeat organization where you’re going to use language that’s like, you know, you rock, you crushed it great job or is it going to be a little bit more um, heartfelt and, and serious where you know, this work is really hard. Your support means a lot. Like thank you. Just try to find a tone that feels genuine to who you are as an organization.
[00:18:51.24] spk_0:
Okay, consistent, right? You wanna have a consistent tone across? All right. All right. Alright. So that’s your, that’s your first one and it should go out as soon as possible, but you’re saying uh, 24 hours might be necessary. Yeah. It seems to me that first one really should be in the 1st 24 hours. No.
[00:19:02.94] spk_1:
Yes, exactly, exactly. In the 1st 24 hours. If you can do it within an hour or two of the donation even better. That’s that’s when someone’s, it’s still on their mind um and so it’s a really great time to get that gratitude message in.
[00:19:11.14] spk_0:
Okay, Okay, message number two,
[00:19:59.84] spk_1:
Message # two is going to be a story of impact and I recommend sending this one about three days later. So when I say story of impact, I mean tell a really great story about something someone’s life who has been changed as a result of your organization um and animals life that’s been changed um and environmental space that has been approved, whatever it is that you are doing um tell a great story that that shows like you know a clear before and after here is the problem now, thanks to you and your support, we were able to provide this solution. Um Thank you for making this possible. You’re wonderful. I just wanted to make sure you know the impact that you’re having in the world.
[00:20:07.74] spk_0:
How do you feel about video for these? For the 2nd 1 is a short video or what?
[00:20:17.84] spk_1:
Yeah, video is tricky and email simply because you can you can’t really get an email to play a video from within the email
[00:20:22.37] spk_0:
itself.
[00:20:46.44] spk_1:
So you would be relying on someone to click on it to watch it in another window. And since email, click rates tend to be pretty low, I mean even even for a really good welcome journey, 15% click rate would be extremely hot. So 15% of people would see the video. Um, it doesn’t hurt to add it. I would just make sure that if they don’t click on the video, the body of the email contains the same message that they would get from watching the video.
[00:21:04.54] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. Your, your message should stand alone without the video. Quick rates are so low. Okay. Okay. Um, but you said, you know, we get visuals, photos,
[00:21:07.62] spk_1:
Yes. You’re
[00:21:08.44] spk_0:
welcome. Welcome here.
[00:21:44.34] spk_1:
Absolutely. Yeah, photos can be really powerful when you’re telling stories. So I would, if it’s possible to have a first person narrative for this email, I would really recommend that. So like if there’s a community member that you’ve worked with, who could tell his or her own story in their own words. Um, that kind of narrative is really powerful to us as human beings. It’s, it’s a lot easier for us to wrap our mind around the story of one person than it is to wrap our mind around a huge problem that spans many communities, but I know not all nonprofits work with people. So that’s not always possible.
[00:22:01.34] spk_0:
Okay. Alright. But alright, it could be a heartfelt story from a volunteer who saw something or facilitated something. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Did you have more?
[00:22:59.64] spk_1:
I was gonna say again, we want to use that you focused language as much as possible. Thanks to you. This is possible. We really appreciate your support. We’ve been able to do this together with you. Um So really making sure the donor sees themselves in the story, sees their role In what you’re doing. Um and the other thing I would add is I really recommend sending all these messages at a a 6th grade reading level. So um I think sometimes in nonprofits especially we tend to use a lot of big fancy words or jargon that only makes sense to us who are you know in the industry that we’re in where we feel the need to like treat it like a you know a grant proposal where we’re talking about infrastructure improvements and etcetera. I would just keep it really simple. Keep your language super simple. Um No need for big words. Um Just right right from the heart.
[00:24:24.14] spk_0:
Exactly right that’s exactly what I was thinking of gratitude, sincere sincerity from the heart. All right 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. You pick what you need and leave the rest behind. It’s like your I. T. Buffet you’re going down the line with your tray I. T. Assessment. Oh yes definitely definitely want to have the I. T. Assessment this time. Multifactor authentication. Yes I’ve been looking forward to that. Bring it on put it on the tray. Other security. Um uh Not not not tonight not tonight cost analysis. Yes you can’t go through without cost analysis help desk. I gotta have if I’m going through the buffet line gotta have help desk and there’s more to choose from on the buffet so whatever you choose based on your situation based on your budget. The I. T. Buffet I. T. Infra in a box. All right. Fourth dimension technologies tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. Um You said three days after for the second message. Is that three days after the person took their action or three days from the first message?
[00:24:33.14] spk_1:
three days from the action.
[00:24:34.74] spk_0:
So
[00:24:38.64] spk_1:
ideally that wouldn’t be too far off from the first message either. That first message.
[00:24:48.64] spk_0:
Okay Okay but in the worst case it could have been four days. So I just I want listeners to have as much as as much detail as possible. All right.
[00:24:52.14] spk_1:
Yes I appreciate that.
[00:25:06.74] spk_0:
Yes I’m picking your brain. You know you’ve got you’ve got the wisdom so you’re here to share it. Right? I hope otherwise we’re done. Otherwise we’re done So you know you are here for that. Okay. I know I know. Um All right. Anything else on message number two?
[00:25:11.24] spk_1:
No that’s
[00:25:15.44] spk_0:
okay and then again this is all automated. Right. It’s all set up. The first message goes as soon as you can. The second message goes three days after the action. This is all set up in a in a workflow in your your your email app.
[00:25:50.44] spk_1:
Yeah and this is this is not designed to create more work for your staff. You want to set it up once and forget it. So you want these messages to be as evergreen as possible. So you don’t have to go in and update them all the time. Um ideally you’d only want to update it maybe once a year. Um and just know that it’s it’s doing its thing. It’s chugging along in the background. It’s bringing supporters closer to you closer to your cause um all without you having to to really do anything.
[00:25:57.94] spk_0:
Are you looking at? I presume you are but I’ll ask looking at reply rates to see if people respond to these emails.
[00:26:12.74] spk_1:
Um yeah, I mean it depends on the email, some of them that first plaintext message does tend to see a lot of replies. Um So yeah that’s that’s a really good thing to track every
[00:26:16.06] spk_0:
because that’s the one it looks, it looks so personal.
[00:26:18.88] spk_1:
You
[00:26:19.78] spk_0:
want to make sure and you want to make sure it’s set up to go back to a person.
[00:26:23.05] spk_1:
Don’t
[00:26:23.93] spk_0:
send don’t send it from do not reply address.
[00:26:42.74] spk_1:
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think you should ever send any message from do not reply address. You always want your supporters to be able to talk to you. Um But yeah, a quick note on that plain text one if you’re let’s say it’s coming from your executive Director and your executive director is a person who gets way too many emails and can’t respond to all of them. I would just make sure that you have some sort of system set up so that someone can help him or her deal with that influx of messages so that everyone’s getting a response to their response. And it feels like a real conversation.
[00:27:00.74] spk_0:
Right. Right. Right. That’s easy to set up. You can set it up with a rule based on the subject because you’re you’re controlling the subject when they reply those those emails get, you know, forwarded or they go to a mailbox and somebody else can answer or something like that. Alright. Yeah. Yeah. Don’t don’t send a person looking email and then the person replies to it and then you don’t reply back blew the all for the purpose of the first email.
[00:27:26.58] spk_1:
Alright.
[00:27:27.77] spk_0:
Alright. So we’re through our first two.
[00:27:31.94] spk_1:
Are
[00:27:32.18] spk_0:
We on to our 3rd message now?
[00:28:03.04] spk_1:
Yes. This message is # three. So this is gonna come about um a week after the donation. Um And this one we recommend doing some sort of request for your donor to take in action with you. And it’s really important that we are not asking them to donate. Again that’s not what we’re doing. We’re inviting them to do something else. Like maybe attend an event if you have events that you put on. Maybe you want to you want them to share a post on social media for you or you want them to sign a petition or maybe fill out a survey. So you can learn more about them. Something where you’re saying, hey, will you please engage with us? We want to get to know you better. We want to be better friends with you. We want you to be in our inner circle with us. Here is an opportunity for you to do that.
[00:28:37.34] spk_0:
Okay, interesting. So just this third message, it’s not too soon to ask for something more, but not a donation. I don’t know, it’s not it’s not a donation, but it’s take some other step with us. Do something.
[00:28:41.14] spk_1:
Yeah, exactly. It’s it’s a way
[00:28:43.02] spk_0:
to build
[00:28:56.94] spk_1:
on the engagement that, that you already have. Um I don’t think it’s too soon. But again, every audience is different. So you might set this up and you might see that you’re not getting a lot of um, engagement on this email and then it’s not a good fit for your audience. So try something different then in that case,
[00:29:02.66] spk_0:
what kind of what kind of action rate should we be looking for?
[00:29:32.84] spk_1:
So, you, you would want to look at your open rates and your click rates, especially click rates for this email and you’d want to compare them to the other emails in this series. And so if you see that they’re right about if all the emails in this series are seeing a 50% open rate. This one is two and maybe a little bit higher click rate because you’re actually asking them to click on something As opposed to the plain text email, there’s probably nothing for them to click on in that one. Um, that’s where you want to be. About the same open rates a little bit higher click rates. If you’re seeing a lower open rate, a lower click rate than maybe try putting different content into this email and see if it performs better.
[00:29:45.94] spk_0:
Okay. But
[00:30:01.04] spk_1:
the idea is someone who donated to you is pretty fired up about you. And so they’re probably a really good candidate for your event. They might really be interested in attending that. Or if you are looking for volunteers, you know, your donors might be a really, really good target audience to say, hey, do you know, we have these volunteer opportunities. Would love to meet you in person. We’d love for you to get more involved. If that’s something that interests you. Here’s the like,
[00:30:19.34] spk_0:
survey is an interesting idea to, you know, what, what, what motivates you about our work? How do you like to be communicated with? You prefer email, you want to share. You know, do you want to get our text chains if if we have that, you know, etcetera. Right.
[00:30:56.14] spk_1:
Yeah, totally. And all of us, it’s kind of human nature. We love to talk about ourselves and a survey can be an opportunity to do that. You know, like tell us about you what, what draws you to our work. Um, if if you can ask a more specific question like if you’re an animal rescue organization, you could say like do you have a pet at home, who are they, what’s their name? You know, just just really making it seem like like we care about you, we see you and we want to know you better,
[00:30:57.94] spk_0:
you’re a dog person or a cat
[00:30:59.22] spk_1:
person
[00:31:00.94] spk_0:
uh, that then then you just know what to send them and what not to send and what kind of pictures to send and what not to send.
[00:31:13.74] spk_1:
Yes yeah, that feels nice on the donor’s end to be like, oh they care they want to know about my cat
[00:32:32.54] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two who can you share non profit radio with? It’s the reduction I asked you this last week this week I beseech you who can you share non profit radio with find folks is it board members, is it your friends who work at other nonprofits, your colleagues and your existing in your nonprofit doesn’t sound so x tilted your existing nonprofit the place where you work is there other people in the place where you work, who can you share? non profit radio with, I would be grateful, I’d like to have more folks benefiting learning from nonprofit radio you are, why not let others don’t be selfish, don’t be selfish share non profit radio thank you Whoever you can share with, I’d be grateful. Send them a link, connect us on linkedin, send them to tony-martignetti dot com, share a show. Thank you. Thanks very much. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for create your email. Welcome journey with patty breach. Alright, so we’ve got these three messages within a week, right? The third one you said, I believe within within a week of the action?
[00:32:39.54] spk_1:
Yes,
[00:32:40.65] spk_0:
That’s right, Okay. Yes, three messages in a week, even though we have 30 days you wanted, you want it all in a week.
[00:33:23.04] spk_1:
Yeah. And again, this is, this is something to try out with your audience so maybe you space them out a little bit more, Maybe it’s Plaintext immediately. You wait three or 4 days before you tell the story of impact And then you wait six or 7 days before you requests them to take an action with you. It all depends on your audience I think um it’s better to send them a little bit sooner to the donation date. Um just because you don’t want someone, you don’t want the trail to go cold, so to speak and for someone to get an email three weeks later and be a little confused like why are you asking me for this and for them to not even remember that they made a donation with you?
[00:33:33.14] spk_0:
Okay, Okay, Um now earlier on you had said 3-5, what would you, what would you do if you were gonna? So so the three is that you gotta do at least three?
[00:33:38.84] spk_1:
That’s my recommendation yep
[00:33:40.84] spk_0:
at least wait. What would you do if you were gonna if you wanted to carry it on to four or five what what what would those what might those look like?
[00:35:01.24] spk_1:
Yeah so email number four would be another story telling you know and this would be two weeks after the donation. So one full week between the email before prior to this. Um And this is pretty similar to the other storytelling email that we sent. Like if you can tell the first person narrative great we still want to stir up people’s emotions make them feel like they played a really important work role in your work. Um They’re changing the world you know we still want to keep that you focused language in there. Um And there’s a couple of reasons why we recommend having another story of impact email. Um For one we as human beings are our brains are just wired to interpret the world through stories. We love stories. Um So hearing a story is really impactful for us and also stories are really good at stirring up emotions and emotions are such an important part of what you do. Um They drive all of our decisions as humans and so if you can make people feel more emotions more positive emotions about their donation about your work. Um It’s gonna it’s gonna really help you in the long run. Okay.
[00:35:02.94] spk_0:
Anything else about the optional number 4?
[00:35:20.14] spk_1:
Okay. Um I would just say if you are setting up a journey with only three emails, um This one could you could swap this one for email number three if you want. So you could have one gratitude message and to storytelling emails and be done with it. If you feel like you don’t have a survey set up or you don’t have events to invite people to or that just feels too confusing to think about right now.
[00:35:33.24] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. Well, another another step could be a petition if you’re if you’re doing advocacy work, right? Sign a petition message number three,
[00:35:37.50] spk_1:
definitely. Yeah.
[00:35:41.34] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. All right. Um and what about number five if we if we’re gonna go all the way.
[00:35:45.94] spk_1:
Yeah. So
[00:35:46.50] spk_0:
email the
[00:36:29.93] spk_1:
Email No five. This is when we’re gonna make a request that they become a monthly donor and ideally this is going to come um right around the one month mark from their donation. So about um, a couple of weeks after the previous message. And the key with this message is that you want to start it off by saying by acknowledging their previous donation. So you want to start off by saying, we know who you are. We’re still thinking about that donation that you made a month ago. We’re still really grateful for you. Um In fact, we were thinking you might be a good fit for a monthly recurring program because we know how much you love our costs, whatever that might be
[00:36:32.15] spk_0:
excellent. Okay,
[00:36:45.03] spk_1:
so you’re not making the mistake of, you know, we want anyone to feel like we’re asking for money when they just give us money and like it’s like, are you even keeping track of what I’m doing
[00:36:45.88] spk_0:
for you? So
[00:36:56.13] spk_1:
you want to start off the first sentence of that email if you can, you know, last month you made a generous decision. We’re still thinking about how great you are. Here’s an invitation to join our monthly program.
[00:37:04.63] spk_0:
What kind of conversion rate would we aspire to? Right.
[00:37:16.73] spk_1:
Um, this, in my experience, the conversion rate on these, this particular email is going to be, um, on the lower side, but pretty steady. So I would say maybe 5% of your donors are going to choose to become monthly donors, which is great. Monthly donors have so much value to an organization as you
[00:37:29.23] spk_0:
know. Okay. So 5% is very good
[00:37:32.13] spk_1:
in my opinion? Yeah.
[00:37:47.43] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. All right. Uh, should we, should we bother if we wanted to go if we want to go more? Are we, are we then doing too much? If we go like six or 7 messages In 30 days, is that too much? I
[00:38:26.82] spk_1:
think that’s probably too much again. Every audience is different. Um, I think this, This is a good five emails is a good number. That feels like um you haven’t really worn out your welcome with them. You’ve capitalized on their enthusiasm and sort of kept them kept them going, kept drawing them further into what you’re doing. Um and at this point I would say now you can put them just into your regular email newsletter schedule. Um That is another thing that I would recommend is while someone is in a journey, I recommend making sure they’re not getting any other email communications from you. They’re just getting the journey.
[00:38:34.92] spk_0:
Mm Okay. You don’t want to uh they want to contaminate
[00:38:36.62] spk_1:
right? Or overload.
[00:38:38.95] spk_0:
You’re welcome journey or overload them. Okay.
[00:38:40.84] spk_1:
Yeah. Or accidentally send them a solicitation email when they just donated to you three days before you don’t want to do that.
[00:38:48.22] spk_0:
Yes. Yes. Is it a mistake if we’re only gonna do three?
[00:38:51.82] spk_1:
Is
[00:38:52.12] spk_0:
It a mistake to ask for monthly giving in message # 3? Is that too soon?
[00:39:10.62] spk_1:
That feels a little soon to me? I would say if you want to ask for a monthly giving, um Maybe do it as a 30 mil but give it a little bit more time Between the second and the 30 miles.
[00:39:24.62] spk_0:
Oh, you maybe could. Okay, and you can test these things to, well, you have to, you have to have a decent number of people to to test um Alright, so that’s a possibility. You could ask for the monthly giving in the third email, but wait longer.
[00:39:29.72] spk_1:
All right. But
[00:39:31.10] spk_0:
why take the lazy way? Why not just do
[00:39:32.72] spk_1:
five?
[00:39:37.82] spk_0:
Do the do the the the the the preferred breach method would be
[00:39:39.61] spk_1:
the
[00:39:40.98] spk_0:
Full series of five. Right?
[00:40:07.01] spk_1:
Yes, absolutely. That’s what I recommend. I also want to say um you want to make sure that you’re the way that you’re segmenting people into this journey is really important. Um You don’t want to ask a monthly donor to become a monthly donor. So you want to make sure that you can filter out any monthly donors from receiving that specific, you know? Yeah, I in a perfect world, I think every nonprofit organization would have many journeys set up. So you have a journey for a new one time donor of turning one time donor, a monthly donor things that are just very specific to what what that action was that that person took with
[00:40:23.85] spk_0:
you um
[00:40:27.31] spk_1:
and have have segmentation that matches those parameters.
[00:40:45.61] spk_0:
Okay. If you’re journeying with a new monthly donor, What might the 5th message solicit for? Could it be for uh an outright One time gift? Or is that a mistake or what might that 5th 1 look like a solicitation wise?
[00:41:19.41] spk_1:
Yeah, good question. So, um the monthly donor journeys that we set up our shorter, they’re usually only about three messages and there’s no ask as any any part of those three because um this person is giving at the level that we want them to give them. There’s there’s really not much else that we want them to do if we did want them to make another one time donation. We probably want to save that for a special occasion like holiday giving season or if you have a capital campaign coming up. Um So we really just want to have that journey be focused on gratitude.
[00:41:37.21] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. Alright. Anything else? Uh well, what were the questions like in your in your session? Do you remember some of the the I don’t know the most valuable questions?
[00:42:17.30] spk_1:
Um Yeah, so I had a lot of questions about um you know, how how do you get buy in from your your team to do this? You know how like that there was one organization that said um Okay, they wanted to have every email in the welcome journey should be asking for a donation because it was sort of like their policy that every email hasn’t asked um which is not something not not a strategy that I agree with. Um But yeah, getting I mean, it can be a lot to set set these
[00:42:21.51] spk_0:
breach that’s a breach of the breach
[00:42:25.80] spk_1:
methodology. All right, Okay.
[00:42:34.50] spk_0:
So what so what do you say to that person? How do you get this? How do you get your leadership to uh consent to deviating from the policy?
[00:43:09.10] spk_1:
Yeah, I mean, I would I would want to share the marketing rule of seven which I think you’ve probably heard of before that. It takes 77 different marketing touchpoints before a conversion happens. So um I think it’s really important that your donors are hearing from you in ways that do not involve you asking them for money. So you have all those touch points um sort of building up and and helping you out so that when you do make an escalator down the road, they’re ready for it because you’ve had all these non ask touch points leading up to it.
[00:43:19.90] spk_0:
Okay.
[00:43:23.20] spk_1:
We don’t want to produce donor fatigue or they just think I only ever hear from these people and they want money from me.
[00:43:27.14] spk_0:
Yeah. Alright. But clearly that organization does not adhere to the to the seven
[00:43:33.00] spk_1:
to
[00:43:45.90] spk_0:
The seven touchpoints principle. They’re well they’re doing seven touchpoints but every one of them is a solicitation. They perverted perverted all seven touchpoints principle. Alright, Alright. What would you like to leave us with around email journeys,
[00:44:30.59] spk_1:
describe um I guess oh my gosh, there’s so much I could say on this. I guess I would want to say that we love setting these up. We love helping organizations with them. So if anyone has more questions about how to do this or how to do it specifically with with their system, their database, their email program. Um We’d love to talk it through um on our website we have um some free resources around email. Welcome journeys. Can also sign up for an hour with us. Free office hours that we have every week, it’s not a sales consultation and advice for an hour. Um, we’d love to see more nonprofits doing this so however we can help make that happen. Um, let us know I want to be a part of it.
[00:44:38.79] spk_0:
Okay. I asked for inspiration. I get a sales pitch. Okay. I understand. Now where is the, where’s the purpose collective
[00:44:48.09] spk_1:
website? Um, it’s the dash purpose dash collective dot com.
[00:44:56.09] spk_0:
Okay. Sorry,
[00:44:56.64] spk_1:
sorry, go ahead.
[00:44:59.59] spk_0:
I was just gonna repeat it for folks. The dash purpose dash collective dot com.
[00:45:02.59] spk_1:
Yes.
[00:45:03.69] spk_0:
Okay.
[00:45:04.79] spk_1:
And for inspiration
[00:45:09.81] spk_0:
embarrassed. You know, go ahead. Yes.
[00:45:16.09] spk_1:
What I will say is that not a lot of organizations are doing this,
[00:45:19.43] spk_0:
um,
[00:45:30.19] spk_1:
nonprofits and for profits alike, but it’s so effective. And so if you can set this up for your organization, even if it’s just three emails, um, it’s, it’s really gonna make you stand apart from the rest
[00:45:53.09] spk_0:
like so many other things like, like handwritten notes and personalized short videos, things like that that nobody else is doing them. These great ideas are out there. You can stand out, but you got to do them in order to, to just to stand out. All right, excellent patty breach. Thank you very much.
[00:45:56.29] spk_1:
Thank you. This
[00:47:15.88] spk_0:
is founder and Ceo the purpose collective and thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of the 2022 nonprofit technology conference Next week. More from 22. NTCC If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you, that’s two. Beseeches one show, find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o And by 4th dimension technologies I thi infra in a box, the affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant or D Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein, thank you for that. Affirmation scotty be with me next week for nonprofit radio Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95 go out and be great mm hmm.