Farra Trompeter & Ishmam Rahman: Brand Your Giving Programs
Farra Trompeter returns, with Ishmam Rahman, to share their advice around applying brand strategies to your monthly, mid-level and Planned Giving programs. You’ll build connections between your programs and improve outcomes. Farra is with Big Duck and Ishmam is from International Rescue Committee. (This continues our coverage of the 2026 Nonprofit Technology Conference.)
Jen Newmeyer: Donor Retention
If you want to retain your donors, engage them, and be strategic about it. You may face some roadblocks at your nonprofit, and you’ll want to be familiar with the Fundraising DISC Model. You also need to know the metrics that’ll tell you how you’re doing. Jen Newmeyer has you covered. She’s at PBS. (This is also from 26NTC.)
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Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host, and I’m the pod father of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the embarrassment of hydropois if you made me sweat with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate, with what’s on the menu. Hey, Tony, I hope our listeners are hungry for. Brand you’re giving programs. Farah Trumpeter returns with Ishmam Rahman to share their advice around applying brand strategies to your monthly, mid-level, and planned giving programs. You’ll build connections between your programs and improve outcomes. Farah is with Big Duck and Ishmaam is from International Rescue Committee. This continues our coverage of the 2026 nonprofit Technology conference. Then, Donor retention. If you want to retain your donors, engage them and be strategic about it. You may face some roadblocks at your nonprofit, and you’ll want to be familiar with the fundraising DC model. You also need to know the metrics that’ll tell you how you’re doing. Jen Nemeyer has you covered. She’s at PBS. This is also from 26 NTC. On Tony’s take too. Number 5 in the top 60. Here is brand you’re giving programs. Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 26 NTC, the 2026 nonprofit Technology Conference. All these smart folks are convened in Detroit. And our coverage continues with Farah Trumpeter, who is co-director and worker owner at Big Duck, and also Ishmam Rahman, who is director of audience and donor strategy at International Rescue Committee. Farah, Ishmam, welcome to nonprofit Radio. Thanks for having us, Tony. Yeah, thanks for having us. Pleasure. Your topic is branding your giving programs to attract, retain, and upgrade donors. Farah, could you give us a kind of high level view of the of the topic before we dive in? Sure, so lots of organizations have individual giving programs for monthly giving, for mid-level giving, for legacy or plan giving, for major giving. And um many of them may not even brand those programs they may just be how they segment their donors in the database, but some organizations you see it particularly with monthly giving and legacy do have a name like the XYZ Society or whatever the name of the group is. Uh, what we did in partnership with the International Rescue Committee was look at all their different giving programs. Pros and determine if there could be an overall sub-brand for being part of of one of these donors to the International rescue Committee as well as having names of the individual programs, names and messaging and visuals that had a connection to each other to build a community among the donors and deepen their connection to the mission as well as to look for opportunities. For them to not only stay in these programs but potentially upgrade into others and in particular with the IRC we focus part at on their uh sustainer program, their mid-level, and their legacy program, which I know you’re a big fan of plan giving and legacy giving a little bit, you know a little bit about that a little bit, um, alright, fantastic, thank you. That’s a uh an ideal overview, um. It’s, it’s, it’s interesting because, yeah, there are lots of branded programs, but you’re sort of taking a comprehensive view and you’re also thinking of subgroups within. So Ishmael, what, what, what did. I guess I would say, what did individual giving branding look like at IRC before you started working with the worker owners at Big Duck, the, the Marxist socialists at Big Duck. Big fan of the Marxist Socialists at Big Duck, by the way, um, but yeah, I think IRC was structured in a very similar way to other organizations where, um, many organizations have giving programs but usually they’re not connected to one another because they’re started at different points in time and so. Just like that IRC had um rescue Partners that was the sustainer program and then Partners for Freedom that was the planned giving program, and then the Compass Collective that was the mid-level program so you can just hear that the three of them don’t really have a huge through line. They sound like completely three different programs, um. And so because 3 of the programs didn’t have a lot of brand awareness, uh, the leads of the programs came together and we had a discussion that this was actually a unique opportunity for us to rebrand all of them and create an ecosystem which would be. Moving it in a different direction than most other organizations were doing and so we partnered with Big Duck then to do that some other organizations were doing that, so we also took that as a as an example, um, and brought that over to the IRC. OK, yeah, I’ve never, uh, uh, uh, personally never. Yeah, I haven’t had this topic. Um, I’ve never thought of coordinating, you know, uh, yeah, coordinating the branding across all the individual, all the individual giving programs, um, so how do we get started? Like, does this make sense, Farah, for Like any organization or I mean you need to have, you need to have individual donors first of all right so if you’re purely you know revenue fee for services or purely government funded OK that doesn’t make sense, but you need to have individual giving or individual donors um and then where do you, you know, where do you. Take it from there. That’s pretty high level. Yeah, I mean, I think you need to have groups of supporters. We’re also working with an organization right now not only looking at some of their giving programs, but, uh, we’re seeing a trend also in organizations where they’re making many networks or groups of advisers, professional advisers who work with them, particularly around D giving. Um, as well as other ways that professional advisers are bringing supporters to organizations, so a few different nonprofits now have small groups or networks for those as well. So I think the idea of bringing a group of people together, creating an identity for it that makes sense for the people who belong to that, but also thinking about how do we create an identity that still ladders back and connects to the organizational identity because you wanna create something that kind of people realize they’re part of the XYZ, you know. Society or group, but they don’t realize even what that’s for it should always still be connected to that primary organizational brand so you have to have donors. The question is, are there enough of them? Have you done some research to see does belonging to something connecting to something, does it make sense? And then do we need it to be its own brand or should we just still use the primary brand of the organization? So that was one of the questions we went through. Um, after Ishma brought this project and was sort of raising the question, so the first phase was just even just asking and considering the options, and then we went through the actual development of the names and the messages and the logos of it all. OK, and then I, I guess I’m sort of jumping to the end, but I’m anxious to hear Ishmael, what did, what did the branding look like after the project? Yes, so we decided that actually. The groups of donors, we often look at them in a very siloed way, but all of these donors actually are moving across each other, right? A lot of mid-level donors become plan giving donors, a lot of sustainers become plan giving donors. Your ideal donor is somebody who’s a mid-level sustainer who’s also a plan giving donors, so you want the donors to be aware of all the giving programs and what kind of perks or benefits they can get that helps them get closer to the mission or your organization and so we decided we need to have one umbrella name we called it Rescue Collective because we wanted um this idea of community and the collective impact of a larger community. Through because what a lot of our donors were saying was that you know I don’t feel like my donation’s making a difference it’s just a drop in the bucket, right? What IRC does is we work with refugees and displaced people worldwide and every year the number of displaced people keeps growing and so our donors often feel like, well, what are we actually doing? And so we were trying to also kind of answer that question by making them feel like part of a bigger collective and then under that sub-brand we made. Sub subbrands if you will, um, we called the mid-level donors leaders, uh, we called the sustainers partners and we called legacy donors change makers and so you can be a re rescue collective leader rescue collective partner, rescue collective change maker. OK, a lot of this is messaging, right? And, and not, not only as it gets created, but you know, going forward, I mean, yeah, it’s gotta be explained. So what does it mean to be a member of the rescue collective. So nobody’s nobody’s just a member of the rescue collective. You’re either a leader, a change maker, or a partner, right? Well, you could be more than one, and you are still a member of the collective, so you’re a member of the rescue collective, but you are then also a rescue partner, a rescue leader, rescue change maker subgroups exactly, and I mean it’s hard for us to, to fully explain it, but there is also a logo for rescue Collective that connects to the International Rescue Committee logo and then there’s color designation for the three programs we named. OK, OK, um, alright, so, and, and this is, this is also supposed to help with fluidity across, right? I mean, the whole idea of individual giving is to upgrade folks from low level sustainer to maybe mid-level sustainer to major giving because you didn’t say, you said intermediate giving is what you call it at IRC like you have sustainer uh, well, sustainers uh can be um converted. Into mid-level sustainers um and then mid-level donors can be converted into plan giving donors but once they get to major gifts there is no like group or name for major gifts because that sits on a different team. I think part of it is also internal as well as external like yes it is external messaging for donors, but also it helps our staff and our teams have these containers to help create conversion and upgrade journeys. How does it do that? How does this help? So donor conversion, yeah, so an example is we are now upgrading more mid-level donors than ever from the bridge program, and the bridge program is a new program that we started that are for donors that are giving anywhere between 500 to 999. Mid-level starts at 1000, and so for bridge we can now give them invitations to the rescue collective leaders and if they. Say no to the rescue collective leaders, then we can give them a secondary ask being like, well, can you become a sustainer rescue rescue collective partners? So I think it’s really about being able to give like a very specific value proposition instead of an arbitrary number of, hey, give $1000. What does that really mean? Whereas with rescue collective leaders and rescue collective partners, there’s a specific mission attached to being part of that community, um, by giving at this level you’re enabling X, Y, and Z. OK, um, it, it’s interesting, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of hard to. Listen to and and process because you all have been working on this for what, like a year or something I don’t know we worked together. It was 2023 to 2024, so this now has been out and about for two years, almost two years, and I want to make a pitch. I think it’s rescue.org/collective. It is, uh, you can go and actually see what all this looks like and sounds like and the benefits for being part of the rescue collective globally as well as for each individual program, OK, and, and. That’s a good shout out because folks may want to see the visual identity uh that Big Duck is renowned for. Thank you. And also support lots of social worker owners there. They’re all worker owners. It’s a, it’s an owned it’s a collective, right? Yes, but it’s not just about being, it’s not, it’s about trying to create a space where we are sharing power, we’re sharing decision making. We are still operating in a capitalist society, uh, but we’re trying to do it where we’re leading with our values. I, I think it actually dovetails really nicely into the mission of Rescue Collective because I think part of Rescue Collective is making donors feel like we’re interdependent with one another. We can only change the world because we’re interdependent, not because one group is saving the other, and so I think that’s why also the collaboration and partnership with Big Duck made a lot of sense. OK, OK, good segue there we go. Um, I was so. I, I was, I was saying that it’s, it’s hard to process as hearing it for the first time, uh, but I think there’s value in that because it just kind of emphasizes the, as you said, Imaam, the internal as well as the external that I brought up and Farrah talked about the internal and external messaging there’s this kind of a culture. I mean it’s, it’s culture a culture change. We restructured our teams honestly because of the way we’ve structured our audiences. Our team looks completely different than it did 3 years ago, partly because we did launch Rescue Collective and now we have these containers and we have very clear lines on which staff member is in charge of which journeys across channels. OK, um, maybe you could say a little more about that. What, how, how that, how the teams collaborate, how they share donors, presumably, I mean, obviously they are shared. Yeah, say some more about that collaboration pre-rescue Collective, the mass markets team was, um, structured in a very channel led way where teams were on the email team, uh, uh, staff members were on the email team, SMS team, direct mail team. It wasn’t really divided up into audience teams, but once we started. Having this conversation about Rescue Collective, we realized that if we are asking donors to go on this donor led journey externally, we also need to be donor led internally in our structure and so then we completely shifted from channel led to audience led where now we have a mid-level team, a sustainer team, um, a bridge team, a core standard donor team, a plan giving team and now each of these teams work together, um. Um, on their shared goals rather than having these siloed channel targets, um, which don’t actually work towards shared audience goals, and how do they actually share? Do they, they have prospect meetings? I don’t know, weekly, biweekly, um, some of the, yeah, so it’s a direct response program, um, we have around 250,000 mass markets donors, um, and so all the audience leads live. Under my team and we meet on a weekly basis on everything starting from strategy tactics, meal plans, data polls and so we’re constantly having the conversation about cross pollination between our teams. We’re always having a conversation on not only how do you retain but how are we converting between each teams and how are we upgrading and all of the targets and goals are now set around that it’s not just about keeping your donors in your own territory and seeing how well they do. And I just wanna chime in and say, you know, someone who’s been doing fundraising for 30 years, what I love about that switch is again we’re orienting around the group of people who we are interdependently working with to advance our mission as opposed to, um, years ago I had a client that we that I was working with us before I was at Big Duck at another agency where if we were raising money I know it’s hard to imagine I’ve been at Big Duck, it’s almost 19 years I know, um. But that uh with that organization if we raised money online, the direct mail program was getting really upset and like you can’t send an email to our donors because we’re gonna be sending out an appeal in 3 weeks and I’m like the donor doesn’t care whose bottom line they’re giving to they wanna give to the mission and they want to feel connected. So how do we actually communicate with them? And again, most programs now are omni-channel and they’re not just no we don’t there you go, OK, just kidding I think programs. to transition, but I think there’s a disconnect between the infrastructure that’s there and what’s possible in that current infrastructure and the infrastructure we need to move to, and I think that was like the struggle that we went through on our team, and it took us 3 years honestly to make that transition, but I, I, I’ve talked to multiple people today being like how did you do this? And it’s, it’s a really hard shift because it’s a cultural shift. You talk to your finance team, your budgeting, you can budget in a completely different way because you budget by audience, not by channel. How about the naysayers to this uh culture change? I know they exist and I wanna just give Ishmaam is very good at internal change management. I don’t, I don’t know about if I’m very good. Well, at least you took on the fight. There you go. You worked on it. All right, so how do you, uh, how do you overcome the, the naysayers? It’s not gonna work. It’s gonna be confusing. So I think that the way we made it work was we started doing an omni-channel audience led approach with mid-level first and that was easier because mid-level audiences oftentimes have a higher ROI so the risk appetite is higher even for finance and so we went through this audience led change we saw that it increased retention rate by a lot. We saw revenue per donor jump upgrades into major gifts jump and so when we saw. That, um, we took all those numbers and then presented to finance and leadership being like can we now expand this to sustainers? We expanded it to sustainers in year two, did the same thing, it worked really well and then we expanded it to standard, then we expanded it to bridge, and then we expanded it to plan giving marketing so it was definitely a shift, uh, a phased shift, but that was part of getting that buy-in basically. So you can’t do it all at once it’s gonna take patience, but I think that’s the way we got around it. I think another thing is seeing that other organizations were doing it. And so sometimes one way to get around that naysaying is being like look our donors we know also give to A, B, and C and look at how A, B, and C are communicating and we need to keep up with that or we need to be part of that because that’s how now people are experiencing the world and if we don’t meet them where they are, they’re gonna stop paying attention to us absolutely and and we took a look at, you know, MSF’s program because they were kind of going that way before. For us Orbis International, I came from the ACLU and we were doing this at the ACLU before I came to the IRC, so I kind of brought that institutional knowledge. uh, Planned Parenthood is also doing it and so I think bringing in that peer organization information also helped build, um, credibility. Interesting. OK, so were you, were you the genesis of this work at IRC having come from ACLU? I, I think so, partly yes, and then I brought on the team members that, you know, also really helped you know, be catalysts for this work as well. Yeah, yeah, what else, what else should we know about, uh, well, maybe, maybe I can be a little more definitive than that. Um, you talked about uh conducting research is that, was that preliminary research or I’m just going by your session description. Yeah, there were, there were two parts of it. One, we always like to start every project with research and really understanding why we should do something before just jumping right into it and making sure we’re clear on the direction we should follow. So in this case, Ishmaam can speak in a moment about all the research they had already done over the past few years that we were able to read, learn from, build on. And then we also did some interviews with some of these peer organizations to learn about their program, what worked, what didn’t work, what we should, we should know going into it, any advice they had. We, um, met with some of the different programs to understand a little bit more about their donors. We were going to do a donor survey, a new. Donor survey, but we paused it because at the time we were doing this work was right around when the war in Gaza started in uh 2023 so we wound up not doing a new survey. It wasn’t the right time because IRC needed their donors to focus on some other things, but they had done other donor research that we were able to bring in and Ishmaam can talk about that. Yeah, something that we also started doing even, you know, even before bringing on Big Duck is surveying our donors, which is why we realized we needed these giving programs to create these containers to actually move donors from one program to another. We did a lot of online surveying and actually I’ll shout out, uh, Sea Change Strategies who we’re continuing to work with. They’re an agency that really focuses on qualitative and quantitative research with donors. Um, we survey our donors. Every single month, um, from the rescue collective and that’s actually part of one of the perks if you’re part of it it’s basically saying hey we really care about your feedback because you’re part of this community tell us how um effective our messaging is tell us what you understand about our work what do you wanna hear more about what questions do you have and so we had already started doing that on a quarterly basis before bringing Big Duck on and all of those results we gave to Big Duck which then Big Duck synthesized and now we’re doing it on a monthly basis. Did Big duck use AI to synthesize that that body of research? We use human intelligence, not artificial HI. We went HI kept it high. They went low. I feel like this was also before the big boom. It was, I mean, I mean, yeah. Even then though we’re we’re not, I mean we’re we’re using our brains, uh, humans are reading things and and interpreting them and bringing them to conversation. Yeah, cool, um, any, uh, Ishmaam, did you experience any donor confusion like to a call center like I don’t understand whether I’m a change maker or a pacer or a leader. I know Pacer is not one of them. I just partner leader change maker that on purpose. No, uh, was there any external. Confusion there was a little bit but not actually as much because I think that was part of our roll out plan we made sure it was super robust, really multi-channel, really comprehensive that it not only went out to people that are already in those communities, it also went out to prospective donors which are the standard donors that are not yet sustainer or mid-level, um, or legacy giving um we talked to our supporter care teams and you know we gave them a run through of this project so we made sure that they felt confident about. Answering questions for any telemarketing campaigns we made sure all of our callers knew how to talk about it um more often than not actually we received more inquiries on like how can I become a leader and that actually led to conversations of how can I volunteer so that was really interesting and actually that we didn’t really foresee and so we didn’t have that many um FEQs set up for volunteer questions and so that was a gap that we addressed yeah. I’ll give you the parting words, Ishmaam because Farah opened, so you know, why, why, what’s the value here? Overall, you know, with, uh, uh, empower us, encourage us to uh consider this. Why, why? So. First year retention, multi-year retention, and overall retention rate for all three groups have grown significantly since we launched this, and you know, now we’re in year 3 and we’re continuing to see that growth. I think what we see is especially first year retention rates are really impacted by this brand launch because donors, once they come into the program and once they come into the IRC. Immediately feel like they’re part of something bigger and we know the value of one year year exactly, especially because we’re an emergency, yeah, we’re an emergency response organization. Our first year retention rate for mid-level donors is 54% at the end of fiscal 25. Um, it was, I believe I might get the number wrong, but I think it was like maybe 50% or 48%. It was already at a solid place, but the fact that we saw such. A big increase, um, I think, I think was kind of amazing just because with all of the emergencies that’s been happening over the last few years we’re getting more and more new donors influx of donors that also don’t really know that we do comprehensive work for refugees and displaced people um a lot of people think that we just do crisis response and so I think that was a really um great outcome um and lastly I guess I’ll close out by saying that. Doing this gives you an opportunity to really maximize lifetime value from every single one of your donors because now our donors know that they can make more of an impact by being a sustainer, they can make more of an impact by giving more than $1000. They can make more of an impact by putting us in their will and by doing that they can learn more about us because we’ll keep engaging them more and talking to them more and so. Retention rate is up, revenue per donor is up. A gift is up and so not only is this like a container for your staff and to have more seamless communications plans, but it’s also making a tangible difference in your fundraising KPIs. I said I would give you the last word, but I have to, uh, I’m reneging on that. So I, so to a newcomer, uh, to this for a newcomer to the subject. Why could you not have achieved, why do you feel you would not have achieved those outcomes with just Proper messaging, uh, donor, you know, typical donor outreach moves management. What, what, what is it about this that you think makes your outcomes better than would have been? I think it’s about communicating that donors have collective impact. They feel even better about their donation when they know it makes a collective impact because this is a huge. Community of people that’s also giving at that level and so I think they feel like they’re making more of a difference. I think we see a lot of hopeless hopelessness from donors, um, and we survey donors every single month and this is one of the biggest things we hear from them is that we feel really hopeless because of the state of the world, but I know that giving through the IRC and giving with all these people that also care, I’m making some kind of difference and by putting it into this container. You don’t have to explain that in so many words. It’s just being explained by like two words rescue collective rescue, yeah, OK, OK. Not being a naysayer but a newcomer. All right. No, totally understand, and I think, I think, um, we asked ourselves that question as well and I think part of that, um, part of that was, you know, let’s see what what happens let’s see what the KPIs look like after the first year and if we don’t see an increase then. We, we shouldn’t put so many resources into it and for some reason, not for some reason, I mean, clearly the, the community aspect did really resonate because that’s lifting, um, all boats and you did it incrementally as you explained, yeah, and I would just say a good branding is about using communications to build relationships that ultimately inspire action and so if you bring good branding principles to fundraising generally you see positive results. Alright, how about we leave it there? Is that alright, Ishmaam? I gave Farragut the last word after all. No, I think that’s perfect. I agree with that 100%. That’s Farah Trump Peter, co-director and worker owner at Big Duck, and Ishmaam Rahman, director of audience and donor strategy at IRC, the International Rescue Committee. Farah Ishmam, thank you. Thanks very much. Thanks so much. It was a pleasure. Thanks for having us. All right, and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 26 NTC, the 2026 nonprofit Technology conference. It’s time for Tony’s take 2. Thank you, Kate. We are 5 in the top 60 fundraising podcasts. According to Million podcasts, it’s a podcast listening platform. You might listen to us there. So that’s outstanding. Number 5, I thought I would give a shout out to the, uh, the top 4. The ones that, uh, maybe you should be listening to before you listen to nonprofit radio. No, that couldn’t be. No. It’s just, you know, this is just the way that things sort out. I mean, what’s really the difference between number 1 and number 5? It’s, it’s so small. We could just as easily, it’s probably in the margin of error. I don’t know what the margin of error is, but I’ll bet it’s within the margin of error, so it’s, we could be #1, we could be, it happens to be number 5 this time, you know, next time. I wouldn’t be at all surprised we’re number one. So, uh, you know, it’s all. They’re all neck and neck, let’s say. But I’ll, I’ll give a shout out, uh, to the, the top 4. Number 1 is the p.m. podcast that is hosted by Jay Frost. I’ve been a guest of his on the p.m. podcast a couple of times. Number 1, that’s number 1, Jay Frost. Number 2 is, uh, nonprofit Nuggets with Jennifer Yarborough. I have not been on that one. That’s probably why it’s #2. Uh, maybe I can help her jump up if she wants to have me as a guest. Uh, but that’s number 2, nonprofit nuggets. Number 3, the nonprofit show. This is a daily. I admire their commitment. They have rotating hosts. They have 5 or 6 different hosts that rotate. Uh, I’ve been a guest on that one. Hard to see why that’s number 3 then. Hm. That should be, uh, that should have been number 1 too. Uh, like I said, all within the margin of error. We could be number 1. We, we, we probably are, but it just, it’s embarrassing for a million podcasts to list us as number 1. but that’s number 3, the nonprofit show. Number 4, nonprofit news feed podcast, hosted by George Weiner. Uh, I’ve been on their podcast. I’ve been on the, uh, I’ve been on 3 of the 43 of the top 4. George is a good friend. I know him very well. Not only LinkedIn, but we’ve seen each other many times in person too. That’s number 4, nonprofit news feed. And you know, these are, I, I, I make light of it, you know, look, we’re number 5. I’m grateful to be number 5. I’m, I’m grateful to be in the top 60. There’s, there’s probably 600 of them, right? Fundraising podcasts. There’s a lot, there’s a lot. So, you know, it’s, it’s a bit of a vanity metric, but We’re grateful. I’m grateful that we’re, uh, we’re recognized. And so what that really means is, thank you, our listeners, because if we didn’t have any listeners, we wouldn’t even be on a list. We would just, we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t even, we would just be floating in space. We wouldn’t even belong to any list. How tragic that would be. So. Thank you. Thank you for listening. It’s been almost 16 years, only a couple of months away from 16 years and 800 episodes. Thank you. For getting us, uh, In the top 60, grateful to be at number 5. And thank you a million podcasts. Thank you, Kate. Kate. There’s a double Kate there. Um, there’s always room for improvement, you know. Oh, harsh, harsh. What kind of, what are you an associate producer for some other podcast? Are you, uh, trying to, uh, sabotage nonprofit radio? No, of course not, no. Mm, it doesn’t sound like 100% loyalty to me. We’ve got boou but loads more time. Here is donor retention. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 26 NTC, the 2026 nonprofit Technology conference. We’re kicking off day two at the conference with Jen Nemeyer. Jen is senior director of digital fundraising strategy at PBS. Jen, welcome to Nonprofit Radio. Well, thank you for having me, Tony. It’s my pleasure to be here. Uh, a genuine pleasure. We arranged this on the fly over breakfast because we had a cancellation and now you’re in the spot. Your session topic is donor retention by design. A strategic engagement lab for digital teams. Just give us a like 30,000 ft overview of the topic and then we’ll have time to go in deeper. Yeah, sure, so the topic really focuses on engagement for retention. So as part of the, you know, donor cultivation journey, it’s important to, yeah, you know, not only engage. Donors for acquisitions and prospects of bringing new people in, particularly in digital, but also as a stewardship, um, tactic and and all of those efforts really, um, you know, uh, inform and support, uh, long term donor retention and loyalty so that’s what we’re gonna be talking about and I’m gonna be helping the attendees put together a program. How they can, you know, really put together a plan for um engagement that um supports retention. All right, thank you very much you’re welcome, um, so let’s dive in a little deeper into uh the the relationship between engagement and uh retention. Sure, what, what are your, what’s your thinking around uh engagement strategies, uh, digital? Yeah, sure, so I think that a lot of times these types of activities are really overlooked or they’re, you know, um, living in the marketing department, for example, you have your marketing, you know, teams that are really active on social and doing a lot of really great work engaging audiences, but there’s no thought. To conversion and there’s no thought to stewardship like these people that they’re talking to are not not not only prospects but they’re also donors and so it’s just really important to have a very you know collaborative um approach to um engagement and um and so that is uh all of those efforts just really support. You know, as I had said before, long term, um, retention and loyalty and so it’s not just about the social media, it is actually putting together a very intentional plan so engagement strategies throughout the year touch points with donors, um, really, um, incorporating intentional acquisition and and prospects and focusing on. Um, conversion in digital, that’s really, you know, the, uh, part of the engagement strategies that are often overlooked just because nonprofits are busy, they’re focused on their campaigns, it’s one, you know, revenue campaign after another, and so, um, but by the same token we know how important retention is for sure. All right, so now I, I know in your session you’re gonna be having folks, uh, develop a plan, a calendar we’re not gonna be able to do that. But we can talk through what goes into this plan. So you’re, you’re, you said, you know, this is a, this is collaborative. It’s not just the digital team that’s involved in the engagement of our digital donors. All right, who do we need to bring in? What are we asking these folks to do to improve engagement so that we improve retention? Yeah, sure. So I mean you not only need your fundraisers and you need your marketing department, but. You also need your communications team um if there is a team that works on events, uh, that is helpful to have you know as perhaps part of a campaign, uh, you know, a virtual event, uh, you know, virtual, you know, live streaming, uh, activity as a part of an engagement campaign, um, sometimes, especially in public media, a production team would be helping you with video, uh. On Air spots, broadcast spots, radio spots, um, and then, you know, you also, uh, in some cases there could be some corporate, um, support that’s a part of some of the engagement teams so it’s really very much of an integrated approach, especially for, you know, a really, um, robust, uh, engagement effort where everyone is kind of coming together and pulling in. Um, their expertise and their contacts and the channels that they work on and just really developing an intentional strategy. OK, now if we don’t have the benefit of, uh, in-house audio production teams, we may not be a PBS member station. We might be involved in animal welfare or domestic violence protection. Um, you mentioned uh live streaming events as something, so what like bring folks. Behind the scenes, what, what might we, what might we live stream for our, our our digital donors? So, uh, I’ll give you an example of a, um, campaign, an engagement campaign that I put together when I was at, uh, WHYY in Philadelphia. So we, um, I went to law school. Oh, is that right? HYY and so I, uh, I told you over our impromptu breakfast, uh, I grew up with WNET 13 and WNYC radio radio public radio, um, and then law school. I went to, uh. Temple Temple, so WHYY, yes, yes, yeah, I remember HYY. I loved my time in Philly. I was there for about 2 years, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it really is, yes, yes, yes, so, uh, this campaign that we put together, um, now it, it is very specific for public media, but the, um, the, the strategies and the tactics can actually be, um, replicated. For an animal welfare, you know, type of organization or any type of organization, it’s just a matter of being creative in the approach that you have. So the theme that we had at the WHYY, uh, campaign was around, uh, Jane Austen. So we had, uh, acquired, uh, Pride and Prejudice for, um, uh, passport for, um, you know, digital. It was, uh, on, uh, online, somebody on demand. And um so we really created a um sort of a 5 week uh campaign where we had uh a special email newsletter we used one of our talent uh uh members who you know does reviews of. Of movies and and he was the voice of this newsletter and every week it went, uh, he gave some behind the scenes, you know, details about the show, um, in his, you know, voice so that was the email series that we had then we also had, um. We also had uh a Spotify playlist for music that everyone had contributed to. We had trivia, uh, and a personality quiz about uh Jane Austen. We had a giveaway to acquire, uh, new, uh, folks and, um, we also, uh, utilized, um, an event, so we did a partnership with the Jane Austen Museum. Museum in England to do this was during COVID so we did a virtual tour and she just did this lovely, you know, uh, behind the scenes tour of Jane Austen’s house so everything was focused around this um theme and we really incorporated, you know, um, events and, uh, no I’m sorry you asked about live streaming that was a different campaign. The now that I’m remembering, uh, the, yeah, the, so we did a separate one called the Great Fall Feast right before year end that was the same sort of idea. So there was, um, an email series that had recipes we had, um, trivia, uh, questions, and, uh, you know, we had a giveaway with cookbooks and, and it was centered around programs that focused on food. So what we did is every week we had a different uh theme, a different food theme, and we went to a local Philly restaurant and we did a live streaming uh live taste test, had people, you know, tune in for that. So it was just a, just all of these different ways to bring in different audiences. So those are sort of two examples that give, um, you know, a little idea of how these kinds of things are structured. So these are, these are, you know, really focused campaign initiatives that might span, as in these two examples, a couple of weeks, but there are a lot of other activities that you can incorporate into. Um, you know, one of your, you know, fundraising campaigns. So if you’re, you know, doing year-end, you know, um, focusing on, you know, some sort of, uh, I love trivia giveaways, but also downloads trivia, you mentioned trivia quizzes twice, I think, yeah, yeah, down so in traditional marketing, you know, everyone uses lead gen, so lead generators where they’re. Offering a guide or a download or something like that for an email address well you can do the same with um an engagement campaign so for the great Fall feast we had a recipe guide they could download for Jane Austen we had a book list that they that people could download so it’s a way to just add a different, you know, element of engagement to your overall, um, you know, uh, strategy and bring in new prospects so then you do advertising around, you know. This, um, you know, piece that you have that people can download, but there’s so many creative ideas. I was talking to one, organization who had like a 50th anniversary, and I was like you should do like a historical book that, you know, on the culture in your community and have it as, you know, a downloadable piece to incorporate into all of your events that you’re doing around your anniversary as an extra acquisition piece. It also acts as a stewardship piece so you have your major, you know, send it to your major donors. It’s another touch point. So, so just being really creative in the way that you’re pulling together these ideas to just be very focused, uh, time-bound, um, thematic, uh, branded, and that really is sort of the secret to these putting together engagement strategies. You have something in your your session description called the uh the fundraising disc model DISC model. What is, what is that? I, I’m not, never heard of it. Uh yeah, because I created it. Oh, it’s proprietary to you. Are you willing to share it? I hope you’re willing to share it. Sure, yes, so, uh, disc, you gotta get it out more. I know. Well, it’s in my book, um, and you know I’m talking about it today. Thank you. What’s the title of your book? Digital Fundraising Transformation The Insider’s Guide to Revolutionize your strategy. And raise more so it yes, that’s right, um, so the, uh, DC model is digital integration for strategic collaboration and, um, it pulls together three different, um, traditional models in fundraising, uh, that, um, really do not reflect the digital aspect of, uh, you know, acquisition and prospecting. Um, and so I think that that’s why it’s so confusing, you know, I’ve been, I’ve been doing digital fundraising strategy for almost two decades now, and still I, I get asked, you know, you know, what does this look like? Who does it? Like what are we supposed to do? Like people do email and they do social, but there’s no real strategy that’s pulled together and um. And I think that uh you know as I was going through, you know, the, you know, all of the materials for my CFRE you know, um, these models just really don’t reflect that, you know, it’s focused on the cultivation of existing donors it’s not really focused on pulling in, um, you know, new, you know, acquisition and, and prospects so the, uh. The um fundraising disc model takes the um constituent circles Rosso’s constituent circles, uh, which, um, you know, focuses on, you know, the stakeholders at the very center and then, you know, and then as you go out of the concentric circles, the commitment, you know, is a little less from, you know, it’s very similar to other models where commitment is a little less um. Um, you’re, you know, sort of going to the last circle of the concentric circles where it’s called the organization’s universe, just this very sort of broad description, but that, that piece of the circle is so important from a digital fundraising, um, and, um, uh, uh, strategy to really be intentional about how you’re pulling. In those prospects and focused on the conversion that I kind of alluded to earlier when your marketing team is doing all of their wonderful efforts focused on the conversion to bring them toward the center so that’s a concentric circle that is um sort of lives in the um you know uh middle of sort of the center of the model overlaid uh on the concentric circles are the growth funnel. And so the growth funnel is really great for digital fundraising because the 1st 3 levels are intro introduction, uh, acquisition, and cultivation before you get to the conversion of donations. So that’s overlaid and again really demonstrates all of the very intentional strategies that go toward bringing in these, uh, new digital audiences. Then the growth funnel, um, I’m sorry, the giving pyramid, uh, focuses again it starts at the very first level as your one time donor, so there’s not even a level for acquisition so I added a level for acquisition, overlaid this on the model so that it demonstrates, uh, this really cohesive strategy for bringing in and you know, uh, all of these new audiences and then. To very intentionally convert them and bring them closer to the center of the disc model so it’s shaped, uh, you know, a little bit round with, with the, um, growth funnel and the giving pyramid overlaid on it so that’s the fundraising disc model. OK, yes, I, I wish I could see a visual because it sounds like a circle and a and a triangle and and another triangle that’s right yes yes yes I can visualize. Uh, your session is this afternoon. You’re, you’re gonna be talking about, uh, oh no, this morning, later this morning, um, you’re gonna be talking about some common roadblocks that we might see as we’re trying to Take this integrated approach and bring in other stakeholders. What, what are some of those obstacles? How do we overcome them? Maybe there are naysayers in the organization. Like, let’s, uh, let’s flush this out. Yeah, sure. So, um, one of the very common barriers is really, um, the silos that organizations have. So the marketing department often, uh, you know, doesn’t really understand what fundraising does. Or they sort of feel icky about it, you know, like we don’t want to ask people for money that just seems, you know, you know, uh, sort of, you know, not unseemly, it’s beneath us. Yes, yes, we’d rather, we’d rather do uh display ads in the, in the local in the local bus shelters, right? And then your fundraising department who works so hard and really, um, you know, strengthening relationships and cultivating relationships, which really is the core of fundraising. Um, they can’t understand why marketing is not thinking in this way of, you know, stewarding, and these, uh, you know, these audiences in a, in a very intentional long term way. So there’s a lot of, you know, communication, uh, barriers that come between the marketing and the fundraising department. So, um, in my book, uh, we, we actually won’t be talking about. This specifically at the uh session but um in my book I do talk about how to break down some of those barriers and have those conversations. Really the DC model um it was created to demonstrate how everything is supposed to work together for a success. So um how how do we bring along some of these. Uh, objectionist, I don’t have a lot of tolerance for naysayers. Oh, we’ve done it this way for so long. You don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t know what the, you know, how about turn that on its head. Suppose it’s wildly successful instead of wildly failing like you predict. So no, but, so how do we bring some of these folks along? Share a couple of tactics. I think the. Thing is um communication like sitting down and talking about what the goals are in marketing, what the goals are in fundraising and how there could be some first steps of kind of collaborating even in some small way with, you know, can we add some digital ads for our year-end campaign so taking, um, you know, some baby steps and just. Demonstrating how a couple of uh you know collaborations for different campaigns would work even on the marketing side, you know, if there is like a big marketing theme, you know, at PBS there’s, you know, viewers like me campaign that the marketing team has and you know, so is there a way that we can take all of those wonderful strategies and um. Introduce some conversion elements like how are we measuring what are the call to actions that we have for that? Can we create some sort of, you know, like I had said before, some trivia or download where we have some email capture so that that can lead into a cultivation strategy for emails or, you know, and then on the email side of things. Can we share some of these lists so that when we do have a year-end campaign we’re actually talking to the um talking to these audiences about how important it is to support the organization. So it starts a little bit with baby steps. Yeah, incrementalism can be very valuable folks along. Another of my favorite words is a pilot. Can we do a pilot? People like, people don’t mind pilots. They don’t like pilots, a little pilot light. There’s a little, a little flame in the stove, just that little burning flame 24 hours. It’s always on. I just think of a pilot light, but yeah, can we do a pilot? That sounds, it sounds very, I don’t know, it sounds experiment gingerly, a pilot. Let’s just see what sounds like fun. That’s right. That’s right. So, uh, a pilot, talking about a pilot is another, um, you know, really great way to explore the conversations of how collaboration can happen and then I think the third is really just some demonstrated success and so that’s why I. You know, do a lot of presentations. That’s why I’m here today to talk about like, yes, these things are successful because I have done them at my organizations. I have been in resistant organizations, um, where I’ve had to have some pretty candid conversations about like this is what I’m doing here and and if you don’t want me to do these things. Things like, you know, from an organizational standpoint, you know, like let’s have that conversation because I can go elsewhere and you know, take my, take my little bag of tricks on the road, uh, but, um, you know, um, it really, it really just starts with um some conversation, some testing, and, um, sometimes some research also when I was at WHYY. Um, lovely group of folks that I worked with. I just, you know, they’re just really passionate about what they do, very interested in doing experimentation and AB testing and those kinds of things, but when it came down to actually changing things on the donation form, it was like, well, we love experimentation, but you can’t change the donation form. So you know I, I took about, uh, it probably was about a 6 to 8 month process where I did research on each, you know, we had, we had meetings about the donor I just wanted to folks, well, um, so there were some fields that, uh, were, um, from my perspective unnecessary as it turned out they were. And so, but in their minds like no it’s so important that we know if the donor wants to support TV or radio it’s so important that we know, you know, um, their, uh, you know, middle name and their street number 2 and that they have the option to leave comments because we read those comments on air and all of these just little small elements that really slow down the donation process and actually these things you can collect on the back end. and actually utilize them as touch points after they become a donor, we’re so interested in your opinion. We’d love to read it on air and what second address might you have because we don’t want to lose touch with you. Yeah, right. It could be stewardship and cultivation for talking about, you know, engaging instead of front loading it all like don’t like you feel like they’ll never come back. Kind of a negative, you know, kind of a, a, a scarcity mindset. Well we’ll never see them again. They’ll never come back and answer questions, so we better get it all now. So like two page donation form. Exactly. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to give to it this is I have a separate presentation on, you know, user journeys and streamlining donation forms, and I love to use the example, and I understand it’s very hard for universities and folks who work in academia from a fundraising standpoint, but, um, it’s so important that the that you know. If you ever go to a university to make a donation, you know, most likely it’s about 5 pages. They want you to log in first. They want you to choose the school that you give to. They want to, um, you know, have you create an account. They want, you know, the, so, um, so I like to use that example, not, not to shame anyone. I understand that every, you know, it’s very difficult because you do have so many different, uh, possibilities for support with. In, um, within a university, but sometimes, you know, it’s not a very good user experience burdens and yeah and yeah thinking of these as stewardship, stewardship and cultivation points after that first gift. Let’s just get the first gift in Amazon does not ask what else might you like to look at when they, they, they’ll just throw it to you later. It doesn’t all have to be done in the, in the first instance, alright, alright, um. I know I want to be respectful of your time because we did this on the fly. We still have about another 10 minutes or so. Um, let’s talk some about, uh, metrics, important metrics that we determine whether our engagement is actually retaining folks. Mhm. So, um, very similar to the marketing metrics, uh, that you have, uh, when you’re looking at your impressions and your. click throughs, um, the most important metrics that you’re looking for for engagement are not only conversion, of course that’s really the main goal, but also looking at performance of, um, your existing donors. So for example, the trivia that I did for, uh, the Ardently Austin campaign was what it was called, um. We looked not only at the um number of new prospects that we had that that that gives a really great indication of the um. Uh, the potential for cultivating them and you know if you have your, uh, you know, conversion, um, uh, metrics and your lifetime value metrics, then you can estimate how much, even if it’s just 30 or 40 people, the impact that they’ll have over the course of several years so that’s, that’s always good and that’s of course prospecting, um, metrics. But then also looking at the number of donors uh or in our in the case of WHYY the member existing members who participated because that means that they’re engaged this is a touch point that they that they have and those kinds of interactions that you have really pay off downstream now it is a little difficult for organizations to really um track that there’s, you know. Some, some technical, um, limitations that a lot of organizations have, but there are experiments that show that, um, for example, doing a series of emails before a year-end campaign between two audiences, those that group of folks who received those cultivation pieces before a year-end campaign were like 197% more likely to make a donation during the year-end campaign and. Um, you know, and then looking into the retention of these donors, so you’re taking these groups and you’re just really looking at their performance over a long period of time and so, um, that is really how you get to the core of how, you know, you can justify some of these efforts because leadership a lot of times even when we were doing, you know, live stream or live streaming taste test. You know, lunches for this campaign that we had the great fall feast that we did before year end, your leadership might say, what, what are you doing taking the intern out for lunch and why are you, you know, like what is the purpose of this? How does this really fit into a fundraising strategy that seems more like a marketing thing so it’s telling the story also from a metrics standpoint, uh, that will really help sort of, um, garner the support within your organization. especially from leadership to continue um those efforts so really looking at retention long term uh lifetime uh donor value, the um performance of the prospects, the performance of your donors, uh, those donors who are receiving these, um, communication points, uh, you know how often they’re giving afterward, um, are they making multiple gifts a year, um, what is their re. So it’s really drilling down into these groups and tracking them over time. OK, cool. I love ardently Austin. I love, I’m a, I’m a big fan of alliteration. Was that your idea ardently Austin that came from the marketing department. I happen to love alliteration. OK. Did you by any chance ever work in Pittsburgh KQED? I did not. No that’s my undergrad. OK, I thought maybe we were tracking my you were tracking my. my my favorite stations, but no, OK. But I do know the folks from KQED that was Mr. Rogers. It was that was all uh with some uh like, well, we still have we still have a few minutes left being respectful of your time. Uh what haven’t we covered that you’re gonna talk about in your session that you think listeners should know. Well, one of the things, you know, uh, a lot of times this the kind of embarking on these, um, you know, in this area can be overwhelming. So when I’m working with folks as we’ll be going through this session today is, you know, there are lots. Of ideas of things that you can incorporate into an engagement campaign and so what I’ll be uh working with with the attendees is just choose one, just choose one or two things incorporate that into your next incremental right exactly exactly so. So I do present sort of a very robust sort of calendar if you’re going to have, you know, in addition to your, um, you know, your existing activities that you already have like we’re gonna be mapping out what those are. So what do you, what’s your direct mail schedule? What’s your year-end. Pain schedule? Do you have events? Do you have your galas? Putting them out on a calendar and just looking for some gaps of maybe, you know, maybe we can insert, you know, um, a a little mini, you know, engagement campaign, a plot a pile. That’s right. Um, and, uh, you know, from all of the ideas just, uh, pick one or two that you think that you could implement, sort of making this incremental list, things that you like, oh yes, I think we could do that like, yes, we could, you know, do, you know, a giveaway. One station that I have in, um, Montana, they have a a member giveaway every month where you know they have. A lot of, a lot of, you know, CDs, t-shirts, tote bags, those kinds of things they put it together in a little package and they just do a giveaway in their member newsletters. They have a monthly newsletter that goes to their donors and, and, uh, and their donors can enter to win this, you know, little giveaway. It’s very small little thing. It’s just a small little package. But um it’s boosting those click through rates it’s boosting that engagement it’s, you know, operating as a stewardship tool people are posting that they love the t-shirt and tote bag that they got so if it’s just that one little thing, can we just do one of those in the in the summer? Can we just do one of those maybe, you know, in January when we’re really focusing on our stewardship, um, efforts, so. Um, just, uh, thinking of more the incremental strategy because there is a lot that you can do that you can put together really amazing robust, you know, um, calendars and, uh, touch points throughout the year, automations, new member, you know, uh, new, new donor automated series, a new subscriber automated series, um, your impact reports, like lots of things that you can do, but just pick one. So that’s what we’re gonna, you know, there’s a little booklet that I’ll have for everyone, uh, where they can, you know, make their, you know, little check marks of things that they think that maybe they could just do, uh, when they get back to their office, but then to think bigger like what if we really did have the support of the marketing team, if we really did have, you know, some production, um, you know, um, resources, you know, it, you know, maybe. Next summer, could we put together, you know, a 3 week, you know, uh, more robust engagement initiative. So, uh, we’re gonna be documenting that in the, in the little book and hopefully that is something that they can tangible they can take with them, um, to think about as they’re putting together their campaign plans for the year. And also great ideas for nonprofit radio listeners. These are all very small small but. Meaningful and they’re the beginning of the, the beginning of the journey. Great ideas. Thank you, Jen, Jen Nemeyer, senior director of digital fundraising strategy at PBS. We did this, uh, like you said, on the fly. I, I saw Jen at breakfast. I walked over, can I share a table with you? And then it turned out, uh, we had invited her to come and, and, uh, sit for a conversation, but the timing didn’t work out. But I had just this morning I had a cancellation at 9:00 a.m. and so Jen was willing to slide in and here we are and your session is at 10:15. You have plenty of time to get to your room. Yes, all right, Jen, thank you very much. It’s a pleasure. Thank you. Appreciate it and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 26 NTC, the 2026 nonprofit Technology conference. Next week, apps, tools and tactics, and internal newsletters your staff will open. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you, find it at Tony Martignetti.com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.
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