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[00:00:25.58] 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 suffer the effects of Jerome Erasmus if you dragged me down with the idea that you missed this week’s show.

[00:01:55.47] spk_1:
10 easy ways to boost your fundraising on a budget, relationships, storytelling. Thanks impact consistency and more. Rosalind Taveras and Julia. Temper share tactics you can use right away to increase your fundraising impact without busting your fundraising budget. Rosalyn is CEO of a rope a consulting and Julia is from the National Immigrant Justice Center. This was recorded at the 2023 nonprofit technology conference hosted by N 10 and personalized fundraising at scale. Here’s the 11th. Easy way to improve your fundraising. First adopt a better definition of personalization beyond first name emails, then understand the many types of personalization available. The advice comes from Joe Frye and Peter Logistic, both with Town Hall Agency. This is also from the 23 and TC on Tony’s take two, got feedback. 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 10 easy ways to boost your fundraising on a budget.

[00:02:24.58] spk_0:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 NTC 2023 nonprofit technology conference. We are sponsored here at the conference by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. With me now are Rosalind Taveras who is CEO of a rope, a consulting and Julia Tepfer, who is senior marketing and digital engagement strategist at the National Immigration National Immigrant Justice Center, Rosalind Julia. Welcome to non profit

[00:02:37.12] spk_2:
radio.

[00:02:39.25] spk_3:
Alright,

[00:02:54.52] spk_0:
pleasure, pleasure. Your session. Uh is 10 easy ways to boost your fundraising on a budget and it’s already, it’s already in your past. You can relax, relax. All right. Um Leslie Rosalind, why don’t you get us started with just, you know, some like 30,000 ft overview of why this is an important topic.

[00:03:04.46] spk_2:
Well, I will and one thing that we really emphasized is there technically are no easy ways to boost your fundraising. But our strategies were how to make your fundraising easier and your processes, especially for small teams. How can you leverage different tools so that you can fundraise effectively? Even if you are resource

[00:03:53.83] spk_0:
strapped, there is no easy way. There is no panacea. Okay. Okay. Um Julia, you wanna, you have, I’m just looking at the the learning objectives or learning outcomes. I think they call the list of fundraising tactics. Start right away. You wanna, we have 10. We don’t necessarily, it’s not ping pong. We’re not gonna go Julia Rosalind. Julia Rosalind. But Julia, do you want to kick us out with some, some of the

[00:04:18.70] spk_3:
strategies? Yeah. Um I mean, one of the things that we talk a lot about um in the session is relationship building and how important it is to establish a strong relationship with your donors. Um and um some of that comes from talking directly to them, um comes from thanking them often um knowing what their needs are and why they are connected to your organization, why they’re passionate about what you do. Um And so a lot of the tips and tools that we talked about really stem mostly from, from some of the that initial relationship

[00:04:45.47] spk_0:
instead of transactional treating KTM communicating when we want something. Alright, so I’m gonna make, I’m gonna make you drill down. I want to, I want to hear the 10. So start us off with number one.

[00:04:51.33] spk_3:
Um Do you remember what exactly number

[00:04:54.35] spk_0:
one, I’m not going to know

[00:05:33.15] spk_3:
the number 11 that we talked about in the session was thinking your donors and doing it in, in creative and different ways. So um making ensure that you particularly thank them after the um the transaction receipt, you know, an auto response email is not a thank you. Um So making sure that you really build that relationship through thanking them. Um And using some really creative methods um to continue that conversation with them and thank them for their, for their donation. Ross had a had a great um tip of um writing letters to them and um doing it through a method called Punk Post which send

[00:05:42.91] spk_0:
letters and you have some of these creative, I don’t want you to just say we talked about creative ways. I want to hear what the creative ways are

[00:05:59.04] spk_2:
really interesting service that has cards and then they employ artists to give creative designs and handwritten notes within the cards. So especially if you’re not an artist and you or maybe you don’t love your penmanship, you can use punk Post to send these really beautiful cards and they’ll do the stamp, they’ll do everything for you. So you just pick the card type in your message and they’ll send it and you can do big groups of these for donors as well. So you

[00:06:24.92] spk_0:
post dot com. Is that easy? Okay? Okay. Alright. If you don’t like your own hand, but people do like handwritten notes, they love them, but if they can’t read them, then they’re not very valuable. So if your handwriting is that bad, but people do love, respond to handwritten notes. They really do another creative way. Rosalind creative way of saying thank

[00:06:51.13] spk_2:
you. And this also goes back to our second strategy which is segmenting your donors. So understanding who your donors are and why they got connected to you and then creating a thanking strategy from there. So you wouldn’t thank someone the same way for coming to your house for dinner as well as giving you a birthday present, right? Those are two different interactions. So your donors should also have two different types of thank you, depending on how they come in to your organization or maybe what they’re interested in. Okay.

[00:07:34.95] spk_0:
Okay. So thank you, segmenting. Um segmenting, I guess, you know, also by what their interests are, what they’ve given to. Okay. And technology helps with these things, right? Tags, attributes we can segment in your CRM, you can segment in your email, uh app. Okay. Okay. You wanted to keep going wrestling some more, some more of the 10. We’re gonna hit all 10. So we’re not letting, uh letting you hold out on non profit radio listeners. Okay. What else? What else do we have?

[00:07:53.88] spk_2:
Another great tip is to talk to your donors and this is one of my favorites. So that’s why I’m jumping to this one. A lot of us are nervous to speak to our donors. Don’t really. No. Should we call them? Yes. Call them, text them, email them, get to know your donors because they are excited about the cause that you’re working on and they want to get to know you and they’re excited if you want to get to know them as well as we were saying earlier. Fundraising is relational. So build a relationship, the same way that you would build a relationship with a friend or colleague.

[00:08:13.12] spk_0:
What are some things you could talk to folks about if you’re picking up the phone, talking, how

[00:08:18.14] spk_2:
they got involved, how they found out about your organization, things that they’re interested in, you could tell them about the programs that you’re working on and things that are coming up. And also it’s a great way to gauge what they’re interested in and maybe they’ll say in that conversation, oh, I didn’t realize you do this. I’d love to hear more about it. And then now you know which emails to send them because they’re most interested in this one particular program. Okay. Okay.

[00:08:52.30] spk_0:
Um And even, I think even if you’re calling and even just leaving a thoughtful message, even if they don’t call back, you still made a valuable, valuable contact. I think

[00:08:56.89] spk_2:
we also talked about you could potentially use volunteers to help out with this as well. Like you don’t have to be the only one calling all of these individuals, but just make sure that whoever is calling knows the verb that you want to use, knows how to talk about your programs, the way that you want them to,

[00:09:14.31] spk_0:
that can be a good exercise to for boards. I mean, it’s an easy, I’ve made lots of thank you. I do plan giving, fundraising. Nobody’s ever turned, turned down or been upset at a thank you call sometimes you have to reassure them. Actually, a lot of times I’m only calling to say thank you,

[00:09:32.67] spk_3:
thank

[00:10:02.91] spk_0:
you. Yeah. You know, because I work with plan giving donors to, to the non profits, but sometimes they make an outright gift to and since I might be the relationship manager, I’m calling to say thank you, I think, you know, but I just gave, you know, and I might say tony-martignetti from so and so charity I just gave, you know, or something like I’m calling to say thank you for that. Yeah. And then, then they let their guard down like instantly, but sometimes you do have to reassure folks, but for both, that’s a really easy call to make a thank you

[00:10:06.73] spk_2:
call. It makes everybody feel good, especially if you have a board that doesn’t exactly know how to fundraise or maybe they’ll say we’re uncertain. Start with

[00:10:27.57] spk_0:
the first one. They’ll see how easy they are and who wouldn’t love to hear from a board member of an agency that you just gave to volunteered for. All right. Um Julia, let’s go to you. What else?

[00:11:11.45] spk_3:
Yeah. So one I really like a lot is telling personal stories. So sharing um the victories of your clients, your staff, um really creating a personal connection between your donors and the cause that you um that your organization represents or the service, the services that you provide. Um We talked about um making sure that, you know, if you’re sharing a human’s story um to make sure that they have control over the way that story is told, um to make sure they have that they have consented to the way that you’re sharing that story. But it’s a really great way to really connect donors to the actual impact that, that they are having and tell

[00:11:24.40] spk_0:
the stories in what ways.

[00:12:21.13] spk_3:
Yeah. So um we shared a few examples actually um on, you know, you could do it through written stories, right on, on emails or in letters um but also on social media and through images and videos. Um Roz has um some great examples of um organizations that might not provide direct services to people. Um um but can still share pictures on social media platforms that still really tell a story of the work that their, that their organization does. Um In this particular case, it was um food in the back of a, of a minivan um from an organization that uh does food reclamation and delivers food to organizations that then distributed and it was still really sharing the story of the work um but didn’t necessarily involve people. So we really stress that like there are lots of different ways that you can share and tell stories. They don’t have to involve um people or animals. Um that it’s possible for all organizations to, to do that effectively. Rosalind

[00:12:42.23] spk_0:
sounds like it looks like you may want to amplify that some definitely.

[00:13:18.30] spk_2:
Well, and this woman also after the session came and asked a similar question, you know, she has an advocacy organization. So a lot of what she was working on is how can I tell a story when our stories numbers and, and one of the things that I spoke with her about was I’ve seen organizations in similar spaces tell the story about why the advocacy is so important. So you can connect your organization to. Okay, we’re working on this issue and pedestrian safety. So maybe we tell stories around why pedestrian safety is so important and how people have felt, walking on roads without sidewalks and you know, doing short videos and things like that. The other point that I like to emphasize is only use platforms that you’re comfortable with and that your donors use. You don’t have to be on a specific social media platform to share these stories if that’s not where your donor base lives and if they’re all, if emails really effective, then you can do a video and send it in an email,

[00:14:08.61] spk_0:
okay, meet them where they are not where you would like them to be. Uh okay. Alright. Um Anything more on anything more on that one on one personal stories? I mean, the point is everything, everything, all the work we do affects, impacts people somehow climate change, you could say, well, how do I reduce that to a story? Uh But that’s a, that’s a great example of a of an advocacy organization that personalizing, able to personalize anything more on that one before we know,

[00:14:13.74] spk_2:
I think we can. Yeah. Well, another good one is

[00:14:18.13] spk_0:
okay, Rosalind both. I like them both. Okay. Okay, I’ve been using now, I’m using both. Alright, thank you.

[00:15:02.29] spk_2:
Thank you. Another great one is to convey impact and so and convey impact in everything that you’re doing. Not just your emails but your social media campaigns. When a donor does give, how can you connect their gift to the impact of their dollar? Right? And that’s more than just saying. Thank you for your gift. You donated $5 to the education program. It’s rather this $5 allowed kids to come in and you know, gain access to new books uh so that they can now read after school, right? Um And a huge part of that is donors are excited about the cause. It’s not about your organization, it’s about your community and the work that you’re doing so center them in what you’re talking about so that they know that they’re part of the solution. Their donation affected change in an area they’re excited about that could

[00:15:17.25] spk_0:
even go back to personalizing the story. Enabled a student like tony to buy a book, attended school, whatever. Yeah,

[00:15:26.43] spk_2:
exactly. A lot of our tips work together.

[00:15:29.36] spk_0:
Okay. Very good. Yes, they don’t stand alone.

[00:16:16.64] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Donor box. It’s the fundraising engine of choice. For 50,000 organizations from 96 countries. They’ve got something new. Now, you can accept cashless donations anytime and anywhere with donor box live kiosk, turn your ipad or Android tablet into a kiosk to boost in person giving. And with their new additions to donor box events, you can sell tickets in 43 currencies and ask your buyers to cover fees, put these two together and you’re in person events will take off donor box helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Now back to 10 easy ways to boost your fundraising on a budget.

[00:16:23.23] spk_0:
Ross. Let’s stick with you. Give us another one.

[00:16:40.13] spk_2:
Another good one is to test your online donation experience. And so a lot of us, especially in the fundraising space, we know what an online form looks like. We’ve filled them all out, we know them really well and we don’t really have an outsider’s perspective into what it looks like to donate. So a really good and I think this one is actually pretty easy and simple. Ask somebody who isn’t in fundraising to try and make a donation and give you feedback and even give them a little rubric to say, you know, here’s some questions that we would like you to answer as you’re trying to give this donation and let us know how it looks and feels and if there are ways that we can improve the experience.

[00:17:06.84] spk_0:
Okay, easy. Yeah, and do it from the outside easy. Okay, Julia, you got something, it’s getting harder now because we’re down like number seven or so. So there are fewer and fewer left for you to choose

[00:17:31.96] spk_3:
from. Yeah. So testing your assumptions is an important one. Not assuming that, you know, what works well with, with people and with your supporters and donors, um making sure that you really use um hard data to look at what it is that, that works for you.

[00:17:39.97] spk_0:
Assumptions like what, what assumptions are people, organizations commonly making?

[00:18:08.56] spk_3:
Yeah. So I think um like the way that they interact, the way that they interact with um with your donation page, I think was something that we touched on. Um and A B testing different messages, um different ways that people respond to um to your messaging. Um but also not testing, trying to test too many things at, at one time but um doing some A B testing with, with messaging and subject lines and, and things like that.

[00:18:31.67] spk_2:
Yeah. So really to piggyback off that if you’re going to test um do A B testing on emails, change one thing per email, right? Change the subject line. Maybe you have a subject line with emoji and one without emojis and see which one gets opened more and same with your social media, right? Post on a Monday and then maybe next week post on a Tuesday and see if you’re getting different engagement. It doesn’t have to be fancy you don’t need to use all these analytics tools, just create a plan and say, okay, we’re going to test this thing now and we’re gonna test something else later.

[00:18:55.05] spk_0:
And uh is there a minimum size that you should have before your testing or minimum, let’s say number of emails for, for validity.

[00:19:05.02] spk_2:
Um There are plenty of content specialist that will probably tell you yes and give you a number. I think you could test with five people personally. You can always um understand your donors more and understand how they communicate. So I’m a big proponent of no matter your donor base, how big it is, how small it is. You can, you can test and get valuable information.

[00:19:28.15] spk_0:
Um Go ahead Julia, you were, you were taking off some, it’s getting harder now. Yeah,

[00:19:48.39] spk_3:
I think so. I think we can remember um timely calls to action is a really important one that is actually really pretty rich because there are a lot of different ways that you can use that effectively. But um a lot of it relates to urgency and making sure that you’re conveying urgency um with donations, whether that is um around a campaign deadline or an event um or a holiday or something really tying it back to urgency and making sure that people know that it’s very important that they give right now. And creating that sense really helps to, to um encourage people to donate.

[00:20:18.94] spk_2:
It really also helps with donor acquisition when you have a current event that is directly affecting your cause to then try and create uh campaign and language around that as well. Uh The classy why America gives report is really interesting. And according to their survey, um and their, their data collection, 60% of donors were likely to give when asked in, in relation to a current event.

[00:20:42.82] spk_0:
So using a news hook or something right? Related to your work? Okay. Okay. Did you all have stories or cases that you shared like examples of these in real life?

[00:22:12.31] spk_3:
Yeah, I mean, we, we showed some examples in particular of the way that we um show the or quantify and show the um the impact of that donations will have like on a donation page really equating the um the way that people’s donations, what they’ll actually fund and the impact that they’ll really have. So um we showed some examples of how um Rose mentioned this too but how um you know, for our organization, $35 provides translation services for a refugee or $100 provides a legal consultation for a family. So we showed some examples of how you can come to those numbers and conclusions and figure out how to um determine the value that donors will see of, of what their donation actually does. And, and that really is about starting with numbers and making sure that you can see what it is that um, what value as relates to your mission and services, what, what dollar value might equate to something.

[00:22:20.65] spk_0:
Exactly. Exactly.

[00:22:27.49] spk_2:
And also within your organization you’ve been able to do timely calls to act because you work in immigration and unfortunately immigration has been in the news quite a bit. Right. Do you see also that cycle of when a news cycle happens, you’re getting more engagement. Yeah.

[00:23:17.18] spk_3:
Yeah, for sure. And I think, um, the, you know, when not only using the sense of urgency, but when you ask people is also really important, yes, using things that are happening in our communities and in the news is something that we do quite a lot. Um because our organization does respond directly to some of those on some of those issues. So yeah, that’s something that’s really important. Um We also pretty effectively um can use light boxes and notification bars to really amplify messaging that we’re sending out. Um and making sure that people really see that it, you know, when there’s a particular campaign, not all the time, but in a rapid response situation, that can be a really effective strategy for not only donor acquisition but also donor retention.

[00:23:34.03] spk_0:
Okay, who’s up to naming the last one or two? I have not been counting, but we’re who’s up to naming another one or two that are remaining

[00:25:24.06] spk_2:
a consistent communication is definitely remaining. Um And again, when I was reading different surveys of donors, you can range anywhere from 53% to 75% of donors will not give again if they receive inconsistent and unclear communication. So it is this is incredibly important uh to get right. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. One of our best strategies is, you know, create a calendar for communicating with donors and it doesn’t have to be on, you know, fancy social media planning calendar. It can just be in your Google calendar, your outlook calendar and share it with everybody on your team that communicates with donors. Because this is also really important if someone in the program team communicates with all of your volunteers who are also probably a good number of number of donors and sends them a bunch of emails in a row and then you tack on and the last email is about a giving campaign, they’re going to have email fatigue, right? And so let’s make sure everyone in the organization who does talk to donors are on the same page about what our calendar is and that everybody is using key language that you want. Another really good strategy is to look at all of your platforms online and make sure that the language and the logos are all the same. You know, I can’t tell you how many organizations that I start working with. This is one of the first things I do and then maybe I’ll go to a Facebook page and it has the old logo and it has language that doesn’t correspond to their website at all. And the nonprofit says, oh, well, that was just someone in development and we lost the password and we’re not, you know, we’re not on Facebook. So we’re not going to change it. And I say you need to change it because it is a public part of your persona and because these social media platforms are all seo linked, they’re going donors are going to find it and you want to make sure you control the narrative.

[00:25:42.12] spk_0:
Okay. Excellent. Is there more any other strategies? Yeah.

[00:25:44.21] spk_2:
Well, we had a bonus tip if we’re

[00:25:46.24] spk_0:
at. So it was you got 11 for 10? Oh, cool. Alright. Give us a bonus.

[00:26:46.27] spk_2:
Yeah, so it wasn’t counted in the original 10 because it’s not as quote unquote easy to do, but it can be very effective and it’s creating a peer to peer fundraising campaign. Uh And one of the reasons it’s not necessarily easy is because it requires a tool, right? It’s not necessarily a lot of our tips and strategies you can implement without needing some sort of fancy technology. You can use the systems you already have. But peer to peer really relies on having a peer to peer fundraising tool that people can easily access, set up their own campaigns and get ready to go. It’s also the really important to arm the um to give the donors that are participating in this campaign a ton of marketing material and a ton of training on what it looks like to fundraise for your organization. Just as I was talking about consistently communicating, you want to make sure that your wonderful, well, meaning donors are using the same language that you would use when they’re going out to um talk about their organization with their friends and

[00:26:49.21] spk_0:
family, give them resources. We’re talking about brand, you know, consistency you were saying, so give them the logo and the colors,

[00:26:56.41] spk_3:
tool kits, messaging, messaging,

[00:27:00.01] spk_0:
consistent messaging.

[00:27:19.37] spk_3:
Yeah. And we’ve even done um you know, starting off really with a small core group of folks. Um we started it with our board. Um but even doing a webinar with them to make sure that they understand the process of setting up the peer to peer page and, and how they see in the system who donated to them and how they think them and how they keep track of all of that. Um So really one of the things that makes it a little bit more of a complicated tip um is that it does require quite a lot of effort, at least to get off the ground.

[00:27:39.29] spk_0:
Um As I said, you need a platform. Is there a platform that the two of you like to use? Is that one of them preferred over the others? You can shout it out. What’s the diff?

[00:28:18.25] spk_3:
Well, I think one of the things that we talked about that’s really great is um if you are just getting started to, to piggyback off of foundations or other um organizations in your community that are doing giving days, um they often will provide the infrastructure for you to use and you can test out the tool and you know, a peer to peer tool in the process that way. So you don’t necessarily have to have your own in order to participate in those ways um through a community giving day or something. So that’s, that’s a really great one.

[00:28:26.64] spk_2:
And I like to stay as platform agnostic as possible because it depends on your team and your donors as to which one makes the most sense. Do you have very tech savvy donors who are really excited to go in and make changes or do you have donors that want something that’s plug and play because they don’t really understand how to use these tools and they’re just excited to go out and fundraise for you. So, you know, there are amazing platforms out there, but I really always start with who is your team and who are your donors?

[00:28:58.84] spk_0:
Okay. I did

[00:29:28.60] spk_3:
remember, I did remember one about, about matching matching grants and um matching gifts. Um And so we talked about how, um you know, a lot of it’s not great to leave money on the table. Um We talked about employer, particularly employer matching gifts. But then also, um if you, you are, again, this is a little bit more complicated. But if you are equipped for uh kind of recruiting matching grants from donors or companies or foundations, that, that, that’s another thing that can, that can work really, really well. Um particularly in um a campaign situation where you can say, you know, all donations up to $20,000 will be matched dollar for dollar until midnight. Thanks to XYZ donor.

[00:29:58.95] spk_2:
And when we say leave money on the table according to um, double the donation, they researched this and 4 to $7 billion a year goes unclaimed in matching gifts. And that, that is money that is just left on the table by all of

[00:30:20.81] spk_0:
the company. Let your employer know that you donated their simple form. Exactly. And they’ll send the same or whatever they are match, match.

[00:30:23.06] spk_2:
And even I’ve seen reports that up to 40% of fortune 500 companies now have a volunteer match program as well. Which means if you have a volunteer base, maybe they haven’t donated. But they work for one of those bigger companies. You should also talk to those volunteers and see if they can talk to their company and if they’ll match some of the time that they’ve donated.

[00:30:43.51] spk_0:
Oh, so it’s the company providing another volunteer to piggyback on the employee that’s already volunteering for the organization. No,

[00:30:52.59] spk_2:
it’s the company writing a check equivalent to that person’s time.

[00:30:55.69] spk_0:
Oh, it’s giving cash equivalent to the

[00:30:58.24] spk_3:
volunteer time.

[00:31:10.84] spk_2:
Oh, and this has been a very effective strategy for one of my clients because they have a mentor program and all of their mentors are volunteers from large tech companies. And so they get often written checks from those employers saying, oh, I’m so happy my employee participated in your program. Here’s a check for their time.

[00:31:20.12] spk_0:
Damn. So 20 hours in a month or something, or 20 hours in a year, it was more like like somebody donated 20 hours in a year and the employer will pay the nonprofit, the value of that 20 hours. Okay. Excellent. I’ve never heard that. What is that called?

[00:31:36.85] spk_2:
Volunteer?

[00:31:42.17] spk_0:
Aptly named? Alright. Um okay. So anything else anything we probably, well, I don’t want to let you off the hook. We may have named all 11 but did we I think

[00:31:51.06] spk_2:
so confident. Well, like I said, they’re all super intertwined. So um we covered them all. I don’t know if we named

[00:32:05.19] spk_0:
one way or another. Okay. Alright. Alright, fair enough. All right. Um You, you’re one of your outcomes, tried and true fundraising tips from other nonprofit professionals do that that does come from the audience or, or, or I mean, you two are already a nonprofit. So is that redundant? I don’t know are the tips coming from you to or from the audience?

[00:32:24.46] spk_2:
And we had really good audience participation and they gave some of the tips that they use. So let’s bring them in.

[00:32:29.97] spk_0:
So share some,

[00:32:32.17] spk_2:
please. One organization mentioned that they have a threshold over $350. That’s when they start calling people. And that for them has also been incredibly effective. They just pick up the phone and they give donors a call um if they’ve reached that amount and that also helps them manage it a little bit because then they’re not necessarily calling everybody, but they know that that’s their threshold. My recommendation though is even under that 3 50. Take a sampling maybe and occasionally call them as well

[00:32:59.36] spk_0:
or like whatever you whatever you think you have the bandwidth for. If $50 is a big donation for you, then maybe that’s your threshold if you can manage it. Okay. Alright. You got another one came from the audience,

[00:33:48.57] spk_3:
another one that somebody shared was that they crowdsource stories from their participants and um collect them and share them out in monthly emails and they share a few stories in each email um in that the person’s words who submitted the story and it might include a photo, but it’s all coming pretty much directly from the participants themselves. And they mentioned that they put um a fundraising, a donate button, not even a hard ask, but just to donate button in the bottom of those males. And it generates quite a lot of donations just from this one email that shares these impact stories from, from folks who have participated in the services. Um and even with the soft ask, they get a great return on those.

[00:34:15.28] spk_2:
That also reminds me another tip. Um, and an audience member echoed this was around lapsed owners. So going back to segmenting your donors, if you can segment who has lapsed, then reaching out directly to them and talking to them and saying hi, we’ve missed you or, um, you know, here’s information about our programming. Again, targeting lapsed owner specifically has had great returns both for my clients as well as the woman that came and spoke

[00:34:30.72] spk_0:
and targeting them more digitally

[00:34:42.00] spk_2:
email, just having direct language to them that says like, thank you for your support. We miss you. Can you come back or here’s what we’ve been up to, especially if you have lab donors that have been away for five years, 10 years. You can use that as a great opportunity to say, this is everything that’s changed in the organization in that time and sometimes they just forgot, but they haven’t donated. And so reaching out to them and communicating with them in that way will help jog their memory and say, oh yeah, I love what you’re doing. Yes, I’ll donate again.

[00:35:08.71] spk_0:
And I didn’t realize that I had stopped and you found success even going back that far, going back 10 years, very successful. Interesting because that’s typically, I think folks will like do one or two, maybe three years lapse. You found success going back as far as 10 Okay.

[00:35:36.05] spk_2:
Okay. And again, it’s about targeting the communication, right? So you would target a 10 year lapse donor differently than a one year lapse donor. The one year lapse donor might have just credit, credit card expired or something changed. And that’s why they haven’t given, whereas the 10 year lapse donor is there, probably aware they’re not giving to your organization anymore. So use this as an opportunity to talk to them again about what may be their life has changed? What are their priorities again? Get to know them and say, hey, you know, we love your support. Is there something that we can do to get that back?

[00:36:02.00] spk_0:
Awesome. Any other area? The pros from tips from either one of you to professionals or that came from the audience trying to immerse listeners in the in the session experience.

[00:36:10.04] spk_3:
Okay. Those are the ones

[00:36:12.30] spk_0:
we’re not gonna okay. Put you on the spot. Um Rosalind, why don’t you leave us with inspirational thoughts around easier ways to boost your fundraising, the value of all these things we just talked about.

[00:36:36.33] spk_2:
Well and again, donors are excited about the work that you’re doing. So when we talk about tips to boost your fundraising, it’s about honestly just connecting with them and having them connect with your organization in fun, interesting and personalized ways.

[00:37:12.31] spk_0:
Rosen is a CEO A Ropa consulting and Julia Tepfer, Senior Marketing and digital Engagement strategist at National Immigrant Justice Center, Rosalind Roz Julia Thank you very much. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for sharing. Thank you for being with nonprofit radio coverage of 23 nt see where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks for being with us.

[00:37:20.87] spk_1:
It’s time for Tony’s take two.

[00:38:25.11] spk_0:
Thank you, Kate. Have you got feedback? You know, I’m always interested in your opinion of nonprofit radio. It might be an individual show or a guest or topics that resonate with you or some topic that you think was off topic, didn’t, didn’t really belong on the show. You know, it might be this week’s show, it might be next week’s next month, next year. Anytime I’m I’m interested in your opinion, I’m interested in your feedback. I welcome it. Positive, negative, good, bad. I can take it. It’ll be okay. I’ll be fine. I am genuinely interested in what you think about what you’re listening to week after week. And the best way to get feedback to me is either the contact page at tony-martignetti dot com or just email me tony at tony-martignetti dot com. Eight

[00:38:26.57] spk_1:
that is Tony’s take two. We’ve got Boo koo, but loads more time here is personalized fundraising at scale.

[00:39:06.50] spk_0:
Welcome to tony-martignetti, non profit radio coverage of 23 NTC. Our continuing coverage of the 2023 nonprofit technology conference at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me. Now is Joe Frye Account, group director for nonprofit and Cause at Town Hall Agency and Peter, Vice President of Innovation at Town Hall Agency, Joe Peter. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thanks

[00:39:14.64] spk_4:
for having us. Thanks

[00:39:15.42] spk_0:
tony and my welcome also to the, to the teams at Town Hall Agency. What Peter, what is Town Hall Agency about

[00:39:33.06] spk_5:
Town Hall agency is an agency that is focused on the non profit and higher education sectors and it’s a full service digital agency. We have been uh kind of evolved and grown out of our parent company, which is, which is Situation Group and Town Hall. We, we have really brought a lot of folks on board to grow that brand for us. Uh And Joe can speak a little bit more to that, but it is, it is an outgrowth of the work that we’ve been doing for a lot of our uh clients that care about creating passionate communities and really making sure that we’re making impact in the work that we’re doing.

[00:39:59.55] spk_0:
Your session. Topic together is personalized, fundraising at scale a how to discussion. So we’re gonna talk about the how to of personalized fundraising at scale. Joe, what what could nonprofits doing a little better? It sounds like with

[00:40:29.38] spk_4:
personalization. Yeah, it’s, it’s a great question. I mean, you know, I think when we look at the data already, about 60% of non profits are doing some sort of personalization, right? It’s the at scale that we’re really talking about. Um And it really, to me and to Peter, we were talking about this, it doesn’t necessarily start with the tech stack. It’s more of a mindset. Um And how do we break down the silos within nonprofits? Um So that we’re not personalizing one channel at a time, but we’re personalizing the whole ecosystem.

[00:40:46.94] spk_0:
And so you’re encouraging us to go beyond the hello, first name, email, personal and, and assuming that we were personalizing, we use people’s first names and

[00:41:12.30] spk_5:
emails. It’s not a bad place to start, but it’s really growing from that and kind of thinking about the subtle ways that you can do personalization across multiple different channels. So not just saying okay, one and done, we do it here, we’ve ticked that box. But how can we always be thinking about increasing that level of personal is a because we see that constituents respond to that. They actually, they have a tendency to give more when personalization is done, right?

[00:41:20.13] spk_0:
So Peter, how, how far can we go? And what’s, what’s a better definition of personalization?

[00:42:03.02] spk_5:
Well, I, I think there’s a lot, there’s a lot that’s coming out right now in, in thinking how this is going to impact every single part of our lives. I think we’re being personalized to, in ways that we do don’t even realize every single day. And, and one of the things that we talked about in our panel was how can we make sure that we’re always doing a feedback loop of the data that we have, we have first party data about the people were communicating to. And then that the second piece is really making sure that all of that data is consistent, cleaned up, de duplicated, not the most fun part of the job, but that really allows you to then take action what you know, and then always be listening when you’re continuing that conversation with your constituents, they’re giving you feedback on how they open their emails when they do that and the kinds of things, the things that they’re reading on your website. So always make sure there’s a feedback loop to not just rest on your laurels about what you think, you know, but how are you continuing to learn about those people as you evolve in that relationship with them?

[00:42:28.54] spk_0:
You mentioned that we’re always being personalized to, I mean, I’m thinking of any of the, any of the online retailers, you know, customers who looked at what you looked at, looked at these other things, people who bought what you bought these other things, people who bought what you bought, bought these other things with those. I mean, these things paired together, right? We know this is your preferred address, you know. So in those types of ways, is that what you mean? Yeah,

[00:42:48.46] spk_5:
the example that we used

[00:42:49.50] spk_0:
in this is one example, retail and online

[00:42:57.29] spk_5:
retail. Yeah, the example we used in our presentation was about kind of online streaming platforms. They’re all vying for our $8 a month right now. And the ones that are making sure that they know what we like and giving us those recommendations from their content library. Those are the ones that are going to have that competitive edge. So I think we see it a lot in the for profit world that, that personalization is kind of survival of the fittest. But then, you know, the challenge is how do we adapt that for nonprofits when we’re not putting those up against each other in a competitive way? But we’re hoping that we can just make sure that we have the best relationship with our constituents.

[00:43:26.43] spk_0:
I just got an email yesterday that HBO Max is becoming Max. That that’s an interesting branding. I would have thought HBO Max would be better uh keeping their name, front center, but

[00:43:39.27] spk_5:
there’s a lot of money to make that

[00:43:54.59] spk_0:
decision. Okay. Um So look for that big change. Uh So, so do we need some infrastructure, we need to be able to capture and preserve and then coalesce the data that you’re, you’re talking about? Either one of you need infrastructure back in before we can personalize that scale. I

[00:44:26.70] spk_4:
mean, I think one of the things that Peter and I spent a lot of time thinking about is what you do actually need, right? You need data, you need a tech stack, you need a website, you need an email platform, you need something like that. But really it’s organization, right? It’s, it’s a little bit of time. And in our panel, I talked about an example of the client a couple years ago where we spent two hours a month, tagging their data for four months and we had enough data to then personalize everything to them two hours in a month. Yeah, it wasn’t much time at all. Right. And we didn’t ask them for new technology we used what they were using. Uh And so I think there are ways to do it. It’s why we like to say that yes, it can be a tech stack, but really it’s a mindset.

[00:44:45.53] spk_5:
And I think unless you’ve built your own technology from the ground up, chances are there are features within the tech that you use today, you don’t know how to use or that you’re just not using to the extent because those platforms are always improving

[00:44:57.88] spk_0:
tags, attributes, segments, segments. What else are these things commonly called across different platforms? Anything else that

[00:45:31.73] spk_5:
mark that there’s a lot that falls on like marketing automation. Um You know, I think there are more and more platforms that can identify the best time to send, not just for your entire audience but based on you, you know, when do you tend to engage with those emails and then when I hit send for that, you know, maybe it’ll hold that email until it knows when tony is going to open it and it will deliver to you at the right time. So it’s just scale being able to exist. It does exist,

[00:45:34.73] spk_0:
just describe something that you’re dreaming of

[00:45:37.16] spk_5:
that exists. Otherwise I’m going to go off and trademarks but know that exist today. Absolutely.

[00:45:41.67] spk_4:
Existing tools kind of upstream and downstream, right? Like not just the really expensive tools but also the more achievable approachable tools. Okay.

[00:46:13.92] spk_0:
So folks may already have this these resources, you just have to exploit them. That’s right, because I’m thinking of, I use male chimp for my company, emails and uh blasts for the podcast. There are, there’s, there’s like send time optimization. Um I don’t know if it’s including optimizing for me, but it’s including optimizing for the folks I’m sending to and I’m not even thinking about segments, I could set the audience and then segment and then send time optimization for the different segments. I’m just doing it in one

[00:46:37.85] spk_4:
group. Alright. And right, that’s, that’s part of when we define personalization. That’s part of what we’re talking about, right? Like a lot of people think personalization, 1 to 1, ultimately, we’ll get there. But like let’s start in a smaller phase of personalization, one to a persona, one to a group of people. Let’s build our confidence there. And I think a lot of it is kind of, it sounds so big and intimidating and you know, we have all this data and we’re gonna get lost in that data. But when we break it down and we really try to crawl, walk, run a personalized approach. We can do it in ways that everybody gets on board. We can start to break down some of those silos and barriers inside of organizations, bring everybody to the table know clearly.

[00:47:00.10] spk_0:
And then it just become awareness because we’re reassuring folks that a lot what they need is already in place. It’s just exploiting it.

[00:47:22.34] spk_5:
And I think the subtlety of how you approach it and how you start that, that crawl phase. I think we’ve all gotten that email that was personalized to us, but maybe it had the wrong name or it had the first name tag instead of our actual name. And you may I equate that to, uh, if a romantic partner calls you by the wrong name, you might forgive that, but you’re never going to forget that moment. So, so how can we be thinking about personal, personalizing things in a subtle way where it’s just enhancing what we know about you? But we’re kind of mitigating that risk of maybe, you know, as all technology does from time to time, you know, makes a mistake. But, but that’s really where that second stage we were talking about before of making sure that your data is constantly sanitized up to date, clean and consistent. Are there

[00:47:47.25] spk_0:
other examples that we can, we can give folks a different types of personalization. Yeah.

[00:48:56.61] spk_4:
So I like, I think there are a couple of things we can do personalization wise. One is we can personalize to the content. So um right, hubspot came out a couple years ago now with the stat that they have dynamic CTS built into their platform. Uh And so essentially the CT A changes based on your data uh and they came out and said it converts 202% better than a static one. That’s a huge number. But what are we actually personalizing that too? Is it the story that it appears underneath? Right? So our ask is based on uh whatever the blog post topic is and like what was able to help that person and that impact story or we personally personalizing it to the fact that tony donated $100 last month. Now we want them to donate 100 and 20 because we want them to donate 20% more. So, what are we really personalizing too is a good, a good place to start. Um You know, one of the things that I’ve spent a lot of time with is working with organizations have gift catalogs and how to activate a gift catalog across a blog to then have a CT A that isn’t even dynamic. It’s static, but it’s written in the same way that the ask and the gift catalog is so that way everything ties together. So regardless of which channel somebody’s engaging with you with or what the ask is. Everybody’s on the same page about what that actual ask is going to be. And it feels more personal to the donor and the potential donor.

[00:49:09.98] spk_0:
Peter. Other examples. Yeah.

[00:49:32.43] spk_5:
Well, I think one of the things that Joe and I were having some conversations around, uh and I know he’s done some, some campaigns with this personalized video is something that’s becoming more and more attainable without, you know, breaking the bank. Really, there are a lot of services that you can work with to have different videos stitched together. They could include things like your donation history or, or just an appeal to you or, or really just includes segments, you know, as part of that B roll that of things that we know that are important to you. So when you’re thinking about a video campaign or an end of your appeal, you can actually start to use more and more to uh tools that, that every piece of that campaign have some level of personalization going

[00:49:50.42] spk_0:
on. Are there any video platforms that you can, you can shout out recommend as a potential resource

[00:49:56.18] spk_4:
we like item, you spell it. Idomoo

[00:50:01.90] spk_0:
idomoo

[00:50:05.18] spk_4:
dot com dot com. They do a great job really connecting in um to a database or uploaded Excel docs. Um

[00:50:14.18] spk_0:
So the video, so Peter, you’re saying like the B roll can change based on the data that’s in your CRM.

[00:50:30.45] spk_4:
Yeah, B roll the music, the ask everything, right? So everything is a data point. Um And it doesn’t really change your production process that much. They, their system has an after effects plug in that. A lot of producers and editors are already using after effects to produce videos. Um And so you define what the personalization is, what the element is and then you create all the different assets to that. Um But to your

[00:50:45.40] spk_0:
point, both of you, you could start with, maybe, maybe start with first name and maybe giving history or something like that or start simple. Don’t, don’t, you know, you’re not, you don’t have to be Martin Scorsese to produce your first one. But explore

[00:51:32.04] spk_4:
and I think like also, right, if you, if you even wanted to explore it at a higher level, um when somebody makes a donation, right, you, you know what they clicked on before they donate it typically, right? You’re gonna know if they came from an email article from a blog post from something. And so if you take that and you say, you know what, I’m gonna follow up with a personal thank you from somebody that benefited from a donation like this or from our president and CEO or from somebody on our team. Uh And I’m only gonna show them stories and content around the topic that they actually donated to. Um It’s a nice way to personalize in a very subtle way. So it’s not actually saying, thanks Tony for your donation of X, but it’s saying thank you for your support with a personal uh personalized aspect and then also showing them other stories, other impact that you have in that that segment

[00:51:48.01] spk_0:
related to what they gave to. Yeah, he’s a great example. Any other what other examples that we

[00:52:37.21] spk_5:
got on the media buying side? There’s a lot of conversations we’re having around dynamic creative. So this idea of dynamic creative that you when you’re building out your, let’s say it’s your display ad, you have a few different versions that you upload into a system. And then that system can based on targeting as media has always done. But it can also, you know, know where you are geographically and it can say, uh you know, here’s, here’s an opportunity for you in your area and it will show you something different because you’ve set up the rules to do that. It takes, it does take a change of workflow, the tools are getting cheaper, but it does require your team to maybe work in a way that they haven’t done in the past. And the non waterfall way of saying, okay, we’re going to put this ask out to the designer to get back the assets and then we’re not going to talk them again. Well, we may need to go back to that designer and say, you know what we need another variation that can achieve this thing that we’re trying to target. So can we get a few more from you? And it’s just really about making sure that, that the team is, is having that communication. It’s, and there’s a muscle within the organization to be able to adapt to that.

[00:52:58.92] spk_0:
And you were talking about media buying. What are some examples of your, your think? Um

[00:53:00.28] spk_5:
Well, just like the ads that we see,

[00:53:01.81] spk_0:
search, search, search,

[00:53:04.06] spk_5:
search ads

[00:53:28.70] spk_4:
and search ads. It’s, it’s built into Google Google ads from from the start, right? They have the dynamic ads and they optimize for you using AI but you can also optimize by location and, and some platforms allow you to kind of put together other assets. Um I mean, I also think about, you know, as just another example, thinking about communication channel preference and frequency. Um for some reason, I don’t know why my mom will not text me but she Facebook messages me. I can’t get her to text me, but her preferred channel is Facebook messenger. Um And so, you know, with donors, they all have a preferred channel um and a communication frequency that they want to hear from you. And it’s okay to ask for that. Uh

[00:53:47.61] spk_0:
Simple surveys. Yeah. How do you, how do you like us to be in touch with you?

[00:53:52.43] spk_5:
Yeah. And you mentioned Male Chimp a little while ago, tony is something that you use. The survey tools are built into that platform as well. So you can, you can deploy an email that links, you write to a survey on the same platform and then that survey will automatically update those tags on that constituent that you already have. So it’s, it’s, it’s both you can, the tools have never been better to integrate those different tools. But some of those tools are actually adding within themselves to give you even more.

[00:54:19.99] spk_0:
Any other examples you want to share? Did you do your session already or it’s coming up? Any other examples that came from maybe questions or that you shared? No, holding, holding out on non profit radio.

[00:55:10.27] spk_4:
No, we um you know, we talked a little bit about a little bit about chat, lots, a little bit about automation or across social platforms, right? Um I’ve used in the past multiple platforms, but I really like many chat as an example where you can actually set up triggers. So somebody that likes a post or somebody that comments on one of your post gets a message sent to them through whatsapp or any of the Facebook ecosystem messenger wise. Um And it’s just a nice way to kind of build that communication back and forth in that network uh in a not really creepy way, right? Like everybody wants to be engaged with or if they don’t, they tell you, they don’t want to. But it’s often a nice way to kind of automate some of that when we’re thinking about how we can do it. It’s,

[00:55:18.26] spk_0:
it’s interesting. Alright. So somebody liked or commented on a post. Yeah, I don’t know. Just a like and then they get something

[00:55:21.21] spk_4:
they could, I mean, you can set up whatever rules you want. Right. Maybe it’s three likes, four likes.

[00:55:26.33] spk_0:
Yeah, maybe a couple, a couple, a

[00:55:42.20] spk_4:
couple of engagements. And I think that’s where like, you know, I think a common theme, especially at this conference but that we often see is always be testing and it’s what really is that, you know, is it after five likes, somebody is likely to want to engage with you more and they’re looking for feedback from you. Um or is it after 10, like what really does that donor journey look like? And I know everybody is a little bit different. But, and

[00:56:25.31] spk_5:
I think Joe, you, you alluded to this in our panel, but when you’re engaging, when constituents are supporting a nonprofit, they see that relationship is very personal. If they’re going to give you their money, it’s usually because it’s something that they believe in, they support your cause. So, so we find a lot of times people are looking, you said it might seem a little creepy, but we, we find that people that are willing to give often want to engage in a dialogue. So it’s just about making sure that we’re engaging with them in the right way. They don’t just hear from us, you know, once a year when we need money, we’re making sure to, to put information in front of them that we, that we know is with them for them based on what they’ve said to us

[00:56:28.08] spk_0:
before. It was just that one example of the single, single lake, single thumbs up. And then I get a message on what’s

[00:56:47.03] spk_5:
happened. Well, yeah, and you know, we touched very briefly, uh you know, on A I what AI is going to be doing to the world of personalization. Uh I was at a talk recently from Amy Webb from the Future Today Institute and she said we used to search the internet and we’re getting to a point where the internet is now searching us. So just everybody buckle buckle your seatbelts in terms of what’s going to be happening in our worlds around uh the kinds of messaging that we’re hearing from all the new AI that’s coming online.

[00:57:03.11] spk_0:
What does she mean by that? The internet searching us? Well,

[00:57:16.74] spk_5:
that all the signals that we’re putting out into the world about our preferences, what we like that, that, you know, in the best case scenario, you have a dedicated team that’s looking at those making sense of them and, and figuring out a strategy that works to communicate. But when you just, you know, we’re getting to a point where a lot of tools are being unleashed that haven’t been tested before. So, you know, what was the micro response time from how someone moved their mouse from the bottom of the screen to the top. Does that have an indication of maybe a health issue that they’re dealing with? And you just, it doesn’t take long to go into some, some really black holes around this conversation.

[00:57:41.43] spk_0:
Trillions and trillions and quadrillions. We’re all,

[00:57:44.88] spk_5:
we’re all putting out data. Yeah.

[00:58:12.73] spk_4:
And I think that’s the thing, right? Like data, the amount of data can be scary, right? Like I have to analyze all this data um from a personal standpoint where Peter and I I kind of start is you don’t have to analyze everything. Let’s make a hypothesis, right? Like do people care more about where you do your work? Do they care more about the aspect of what you’re doing? Like what do they really care most about? And let’s try to just collect data around that and organize that data first and see if that’s actually what they care about and then move on from there. Yeah.

[00:58:14.74] spk_5:
And don’t be afraid to act. I think it’s possible in an overwhelming sea of information to become paralyzed. But, but you know that at the end of the day, the goal is to try something and see what impact that has. See if it moves the needle and make sure you’re paying attention to those performance indicators to make sure what you want to do is actually happening.

[00:58:32.04] spk_0:
So staying short of the micro seconds that it takes to move the mouse, how can we collect on our own? Some of this, some of this, some of the data that we can be then used for uh personalization at scale.

[01:01:07.08] spk_4:
Yeah. Um Well, to go back a little bit about the data piece, right? Like let’s let’s take a step back and think about why personalization really matters and like why it started in in the more commercial world first. Uh there’s a data point out there that says every second it takes me to, to think about where I’m at on a website and to act, take the next step, there’s a 10% drop off for every second. So 10% plus 10% plus 10% right? And so it’s easy to see how somebody can go from clicking on an ad, a search at Google Grants, add something like that to a website that takes a couple of seconds to load to where you went from, somebody who was going to give to you. So now there’s a 50% chance, right? Because you’re 567 seconds in by that time. Um And so personalization really started as a way to remove friction, uh which is what people often are looking for. And we know that people are really interacting with organizations across channels across platforms. Maybe it starts with uh friends um post on IG or linkedin sharing a success story and you click on that and you’re interested and you sign up for a newsletter and then you get a newsletter and you kind of read another blog post and you kind of build your relationship over multiple channels. Um But when we think about the data that you can collect, right? It’s what if you’re, you’re collecting like the last step. Um Google Analytics has a previous step metric. So everybody that goes to your donation page that converts, what was the previous step that they were on? What was the content? Um Let’s analyze that content. Let’s see what, what looks good about it? Is it 1000 word blog post? Is it a video that was embedded? Is it the ask itself was $50? And we know you actually only gave 25. Why did you only give 25? We can start to look at some of that data. Um And with an email, right, we can see what you’re clicking on open rates, uh platforms like mail chimp and hubspot and in constant contact, they all do that on an individual email record. Uh So you can actually start to see and when we do these uh and we start tagging me. So let’s start with email, right? And let’s figure out if we’re tagging around topics. What tags are people clicking on? Like are people only clicking on an article about X or are they only clicking on articles about why? And let’s start to segment those and build out more detailed personas just from an email engagement because they’ve given you their information, they’ve said they want to hear from you. They’re going to engage with you likely. Um, and it’s just an easy way for us to start there and then expand it out to multiple

[01:01:11.11] spk_0:
channels. Everything you just named is eminently doable if you’re using the most basic email, email service. Yeah, Peter

[01:02:33.78] spk_5:
to go back to, I think the idea of being a good steward of that data um treating it responsibly. Not only because legally you have to and more and more laws are coming out to say, you know, this is, this is how governments are protecting all of our data every single day. But also listening, listening to your constituents letting them know, we alluded to this earlier, letting them know why we want that information and how we intend to use it. We really just want to deepen our relationship with you. We want to make sure we’re landing your in your in box at the right time when we have something to say and when we think this is going to be important to our relationship and we’re listening to you, if you want to come to us and say, you know what? I need a break, I need to, you know, I want to change our relationship and being responsive to that. It’s not so that’s not just the technology and you know, all of the check boxes we’re all familiar with when you hit the unsubscribe button on an email and it takes you to that form and it’s like, why are you leaving? That’s kind of very cold. You have to do that. But also because privacy laws require outreach and you have to be listening to that you have to have in most states, a phone number and an email address where people can reach out to you and say, tell me what you know about me and in our organization, we listen and, and we look at every single one of those and we treat them with respect and we treat them as we would want to be treated if we were reaching out to somebody else who had our data.

[01:02:40.14] spk_4:
And again, that’s, that’s process, right? That’s not, that’s not necessarily technology, it’s, it’s a process internally and that’s part of the reason we say personalization is a mindset.

[01:03:04.77] spk_0:
Yeah. Um Peter, can we go further? So Joe identified um you know, like I was saying, data, that’s eminently collectible. You, you can start tomorrow, just turn on some analytics or, or just go back and look at data that’s already been collected. What will be the next step in terms of data that we could collect or methods that we could use to collect data for more personalization?

[01:03:50.19] spk_5:
Well, I think the way we think about it is may be reversed a little bit. We want to start with what, what is the outcome that we’re looking for? And how do we get there? Because I think it can be really tempting to just say, let’s plug another data source into the machine and see what happens. And I think that’s what you’re seeing a lot with a lot of the large language models that are pervading and coming out in the AI world right now. It’s, let’s just hook up everything that everybody said on reddit and see what happens. And I think as an organization, we don’t want to be, we don’t want to collect something that we don’t need to have to make the relationship better. It’s very tempting um to say like, oh, look, we can get 50 more data points. But if you don’t have a plan for that, then, then you’re just kind of bloating your systems and you’re, you’re risking having more than you need. Um So I think it’s, it’s, how do we, what is the end goal that we want? How do we want that constituent to feel at the end of this relationship? And then what do we need to get there? And, and let’s not over indulge.

[01:04:20.35] spk_0:
Yeah. Very good point. All right. Um What else? Um What else from your session that we haven’t talked about yet? We still have some time if, if there’s more we can talk about.

[01:04:27.75] spk_5:
Well, I think we, we were really encouraged by the, some of the conversations we had after the session. Questions.

[01:04:33.89] spk_0:
Yeah. What, what questions came or what Yeah, I think, well, he can come

[01:04:40.51] spk_5:
anytime you want the vice president. I’m just here to make Joe look good. That’s my job today. I don’t know.

[01:05:09.64] spk_0:
I see Deray vice president and group director, so Peter is the vice president. All right. Um, no, I’m not trying to create a tension within, within town. Yes. Right. Right. Um, what else came from? Yeah. Get Joe Rogan’s numbers. Right. I start going to fisticuffs. Um What else came from this audience feedback, whether questions or comments after privately, what stuck with

[01:06:25.03] spk_5:
you? I think one of the things that stuck with me was going back to what Joe was saying. It’s, it’s not just about the technology and making sure the gears are spinning, but oftentimes in organizations, it’s about the human work of getting teams that are all focusing on their own individual piece of it who are very proud of the work that they do to come together and have a conversation and understand what the bigger goal is. So there were, we all have egos. We, we all want to be told we’re doing a good job and if my part of the machine is working, I’m going to call it a day. Don’t bring me into a meeting to tell me how I have to change something because now some and so what I’m doing is working, but to really achieve something like personalization at scale, it does require getting people into a room together and almost having kind of like a professional therapy session and saying this is where we’re trying to go with our, imagine if we had a system that looked like this. Now, we’re not saying anybody in the room is preventing us from doing that, but we know that we’re only going to get there together by cooperating and finding a new way to break down those silos that exist today and, and how we do that needs to be respectful of everybody who wants to show up and it’s gonna be key to making that happen. Okay. Very good,

[01:06:26.01] spk_0:
very good perspective. Anything else that for anything struck you from the questions, anything else, audience related questions, comments

[01:07:58.00] spk_4:
that yeah, I mean, I think um I think there were really two things, one kind of piggybacking a little bit on that. We spent some time talking about making sure that when you’re collecting KPI S to see if personalization is a success, right? When you’re starting small, like what are you actually looking at? Um if you personalize the subject line of an email, the primary KPI shouldn’t be a donation, it should be an email open, right? And so when we start to have these leading indicators um that are kind of micro metrics that we’re looking at, we can start to get more people on board because we’re then sharing the same language with them, right? Uh We spend a lot of time talking about uh just how different people perceive different words, uh awareness, for instance, right? Like when we run an awareness campaign as an agency, we’re thinking it’s brand lift, right? The action is, does somebody remember your organization name and what you do? Um But oftentimes when organizations come to us and they say we want an awareness campaign, they actually mean they want somebody who doesn’t know them to take an action. Uh and it’s a, it’s a small difference but it does change one, the metrics that we’re tracking and to the type of, of media by that we do. Um And kind of how we message that. Uh And so I think it’s important, like all teams have slightly different language are slightly different connotation of a certain word. And so getting everybody, like Peter said in a therapy session at the beginning to kind of define everything that we’re gonna talk about. Everything that we’re gonna do is a really important key step. Um And it starts with a pis

[01:08:21.76] spk_5:
and, and just because you think something may seem obvious, don’t assume that everybody in that larger group when they get together is necessarily going to click on everything. And an example I often use is in the world of technology, a developer means one thing, someone who codes software in the world of nonprofits development is raising money. So just that assumption, if you’re going off on a tangent about something, and there are people in the room who maybe haven’t worked together before. Don’t assume that everybody is using the exact same dictionary

[01:08:27.75] spk_0:
work in development, right?

[01:08:29.90] spk_5:
Good website. No, no, no, not that kind.

[01:08:45.51] spk_0:
All right. Leave it there. Does that sound good? Alright, they are Joe Frye account, group account, group director for nonprofit and Cause Town Hall Agency and Peter president of Innovation at Town Hall Agency. Just to foment a little more dissension back at the

[01:08:50.47] spk_5:
agency. Thank you very much for

[01:08:53.45] spk_0:
sharing. Thanks. Thanks Peter. Thank you very much. And thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of the 2023 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks for being with me.

[01:09:21.77] spk_1:
Next week, we wrap up our 23 NTC coverage with communications and development teams working better together. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I

[01:09:24.73] spk_0:
beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com.

[01:09:43.62] spk_1:
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. I’m your announcer, Kate martignetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez, Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein.