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Steve MacLaughlin: What Does The Data Divulge?
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Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti non-profit Radio Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of pseudo graphia. If you wrote to me that you missed today’s show, what does the data divulge predictors for planned GIF ts the state of online giving and what to expect for twenty nineteen fund-raising. Steve MacLachlan from Blackbaud shares the data on these topics and explains what it means on Tony’s take to Act Blue and nineteen NTC. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled Tony dahna slash pursuant by Wagner. CPS Guiding you Beyond the numbers regular cps dot com by Tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash Tony Tell us and by text to give mobile donations made. Easy text. NPR two four for four nine nine nine Real Pleasure to Welcome Back Steve McLachlan to Non-profit Radio He’s the vice president of Data and Analytics at Blackbaud and best selling author of Data Driven Non-profits. He spent twenty plus years with a broad range of companies, government institutions and non-profits. He’s been featured as a fund-raising non-profit sector and data expert in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe. Blah, blah, blah The Chronicle. Philanthropy. Yes, yes! Blob blob. I’ve been I’ve been in some of these. I’ve been I was in The Chronicle. I was in The New York Times. I wasn’t I wasn’t in The Washington Post. I have not been in the Times. I’ve not been in the Boston Globe non-profit times. Yes, I was there. Stanford Social innovation with you. Yes, yes. Bloomberg Now I’ve been there on He’s appeared on National Public Radio. And of course, now it’s time for you, Stephen Hawking, to update your bio to say that you’ve appeared on Non-profit Radio. He’s at S MacLachlan, and the company is at blackbaud dot com. Welcome back, Steve MacLachlan. Thanks for having me back, Tony. Pleasure. Oh, you’re loud and clear. You use. I’m going to give a little shout out. You’re still loud and clear. I’m going to give a shout out to the mike that you and I both use. The yeti blew us B. Yes. Way both, like, the same high quality podcasting equipment. Absolutely. That And I I first heard that there were other people who, like I was on their shows and they sounded so clear. It happened twice. I was interviewed by other people, and I asked them both what they were using. And they said the yeti blew us B And, you know, one of them sent me a link to Amazon. And for a hundred bucks, it’s a very good mike. So there you go. Absolutely. Uh, And you’ve had yours. I think you told me you had yours a couple of years. A few years. Love it. Yeah. Shake it with me wherever I do. This kind of thing. You travel, you travel with it. I have travelled with it. Okay? It’s not travel friend. That’s kind of big. And yeah. Okay. Interesting. I never thought about doing that, but that’s how much you love it. So there you go. Shout out for Yeti Blue. Um, all right. So, uh, let’s see. Steam O’Clock in what’s been on your mind lately? You, uh, you here’s here’s what happened? You you tweeted something about a mysterious plan to gift, and you said it shouldn’t have been so mysterious. That was that was because of the because of the story on Alan Nayman in December eighteen. Or was there some other impetus to that tweet? I think it was probably that one. I think it was around there where you train with an eye. Reinardy. Yeah, I responded. Yeah, yeah, that was for years. You know, I every time these surprise gift stories come up, I always have the same reaction. Which is what? It really a surprise. I shouldn’t have tried. Should it have been you? And in this case, I think, yeah, you’re referring to the Alan Ayman story that was in, you know, all over the media towards end of year. And I was on the twitter, tweeting and sort of a pine that again. But this is a great story. A very generous individual. These are great organizations who are benefiting from this in a series of bequests. But should it have been a surprise? And even to a certain extent, does treating these gifts like surprises, undermined fundraisers and put them in a difficult position? Interesting. Alright, let CZ fill in a little bit. So he was a social worker in Washington state. His is final annual salary was something like sixty three thousand dollars a year. But he had earned a lot of money in banking and inherited a lot of money. Millions. But he had like a thirty year career in social work. He had left banking long before he died. Died young sixty to sixty three. Something like that. Live three sixty three live very frugally. They one of the one of the articles, said that he wore shoes that were held together with duct tape warrant drove a gel A peak are, uh, shopped in thrift shops. You get the idea. And then when he died, he had eleven million dollars to distribute and he gave it to, I don’t know, five charities or so something like that gave it all away. Never had children, never married. And you felt that those enormous planned gif ts shouldn’t have been a surprise. Ah, no, I wasn’t. I wasn’t sure I agreed with you, but let’s see why now we’re going now, now we’re off the twitter. We get a chance to get her off. The Twitter were talking and realize. Andi, you nailed the overarching story, and this is typically the overarching story and a lot of these. The stories you see in the news right? Frugal, individual, relatively low annual income, but makes a significant gift, and it surprises people. But I started to dig into the details because the details matter. And as you noted, you know, he was He worked it er in the state of Washington, Department of Social and Health Services for a number of years, and you win come around sixty three k. He You know, it was noted to be a very frugal individual, but there’s a some other details that come up to, for example, yes, go ahead. I left off the GIF ts. Yeah, yeah, well, he had inherited, you know, several million dollars previously from his parents when they were two seams. Um, and then if you start to look through the types of organizations that he made gifts, too, it makes sense. There’s a lot of affinity there, right? At least nine to ten organizations that he made terrible gifts to do. Almost all of them are related. Thio children’s charities or charities help benefit either low income families or children. Children with disabilities. His brother was disabled, so that was another thing that influenced his giving. You put those those things together and the picture starts to emerge. That’s a little bit a little bit clear. I think the other thing that’s worth noting is, um, for at least two of the organizations that he made a significant bequest to he made previously made a pretty large donation. So one organization in Washington pediatric Interim Care Center, he had made a ten thousand dollars online gift to that organization prior to a two and a half million dollars a request. And another organization, Tree House, which is a foster care group. We know from his background that he was involved in Mr Care programs. He made a five thousand dollars one time get to the organization before a nine hundred thousand dollar bequest. So again, not exactly out of thin air. Not a complete surprise. And a lot of the things that noted here, in terms of the income range and other things, actually do match up to what we see and other types of plan giving. Okay, we got We got to take our first break. Steve, Hold that. Of course, we’ll get right back. Teo. Mr. Nayman story Pursuant their newest free E book, The Art of First Impressions. It’s donor acquisition. To attract new donors, you make a smashing first impression. How do you do that? The book has the six guiding principles of ineffective acquisition strategy, including how to identify your your unique value. It’s got creative tips as well. You’ll find it at Tony dahna slash pursuant. You need that capital P for, please. All right, now, let’s go back to what is the day to divulge Steve, all right, And and one of those GIF TS was so large that the organs to the ten thousand dollar gift online was so large that the organization called to make sure that he had putting the right number of zeroes, that he didn’t intend at one hundred or thousand dollar gift. And he confirmed for them before they process the transactions, whatever that that it was indeed, a ten thousand dollar gift. So so that gift was a huge outlier for them, as were the other gifts that he made. But all right, so so now to those organizations, though. So were you saying that those organizations that got those huge gifts out of the blue and they came just a couple of months before he died. Were you saying that those organizations should have known? No. You couldn’t be saying that that there was a large that there would be a bequest for them, but or or just that. They should have paid more attention to him and possibly found out about his other intent engines. I think it’s the ladder, right? Obviously, if you have a gift of that amount and and a typical fund-raising programs, I think you would make certain assumptions about the type of stewardship and cultivation that would result from a gift of that level, even if it was an outlier. Or maybe especially because it’s an outlier and a a typical, Um, I think the other part two is, and you know this because you’ve got a lot of history and background plan giving that there’s a lot of myths about plan giving. You know the reality is a significant amount of plan. Gifts du come from individuals with lower income. You know, I think one of the study’s it’s reported, is the median annual income for the Quest. Commitment is only sixty thousand dollars a year. That totally falls in the rains we’re talking about here. I think there’s, you know, there’s the other myth that young people don’t make the quest. Uh, it’s on ly older donors will again data shows that that’s not true. If we look at it, donors who make decisions about their bequests commitment between the ages of forty and fifty four, there’s sixty percent of your best prospects. Maria, if you wait until people are sixty and seventy and older, um, that’s actually a much smaller pool of your best prospects. Your best prospects for plan giving and, in particular bequest krauz. Um, that’s where ninety percent of playing gifts come from, not from terrible gift annuities or crux and crack right overwhelm our request. Overwhelming because there are people who are forty to fifty four on. I think people may just not realise that that’s what the data shows. Okay, that’s interesting. My my concern about soliciting the bequests at younger ages on DH Interesting. And a lot of times I started fifty five. So we’re gonna have an interesting, robust conversation here. My concern about younger folks and I’ve even seen marketing or, um, articles. That’s a hard word from articles Yes, I’ve read read so infrequently that the word articles is difficult for me. I’ve read that, you know, there are There are some companies that are recommending promoting plan gives to people in their thirties even. But let’s stick with what you said forty to fifty four. My concern is that, you know, and and and we know that the last will is done like two, two and a half to three years before death, on average, on average. That’s what my concern is that that organization that puts you that you put in there will or that you that it gets put in the will at forty or forty five or fifty isn’t going to last until until death at in the eighties and nineties. And of course, longevity is getting getting hyre because life, circumstances change and the organizations that were important important enough to put in the will. And I’m I’m sure we agree that that’s a big step when you put an organization alongside your your husband, your wife, your children. That’s a huge step to put in organization in your will. But but even the organizations that are love that much in the forties and early fifties. I’m questioning whether those organizations are still going to be loved enough when that last will on average, gets done two years, but two and a half to three years before death. When the people are in their eighties and nineties, what do you think? So let’s let’s pretend that’s true. Boo. Then who’s the burden on? And I would say in that scenario the burden that is on the non-profit organization to continue Tio Stuart and move along that relationship so that you when that commitment you made of that decision you made when you were in your forties in your fifties when you’re in your seventies or eighties? Obviously, yes, people, people change their minds. People change decisions about there planning, but all of those decisions are influenced by something. And is it possible that in your forties and fifties you’d plan tto leave a portion of your estate to charity A And later on, you decide to charity B? Sure, I would say that’s just the same. Is it what you would see happen in principle or major E-giving or even other e-giving? Certainly, we know that donors change their minds about where they give and and how they give. Um plan giving isn’t isn’t immune to that. It doesn’t suspend those laws. Sure. Fund-raising and dahna behavior we already know. Yeah. All right. Well, um, stewardship. That’s a that’s a long time to Steward. Um All right. You make you make a good point. It is, right. I mean, I think we all recognize that zoho talk about a plan gift. A plan gift is usually a major gift. It’s just deferred, right. The difference is about the timing. You know? Am I making that gift today? Because I have liquidity, and I can make that significant gift today. Or is it differed because I want to make this gift, But But, you know, uh, until I passed away or something happens, I’m not able to make that gift, you know, timing different. So we’re, you know, we’re disagreeing about We’re just agreeing about roughly fifteen years because you you said forty to fifty four is the sweet spot, right? Did you have When where your best prospects are? Best way our people start subject. These types of initial decisions, you say forty, forty to fifty for that. That right? Forty to fifty for about six? Yeah. About sixty percent of all your best prospects are in that age range. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Because then it goes down from there. All right, All right. Because I typically start marketing around age fifty five for charities that have age a lot a lot. Don’t. Um yeah. All right. That’s all right. So we’re talking about fifteen years, Mohr, you know, ten, fifteen years Mohr of stewardship. Um, all right. I’ll I’ll take it in to take it under advisement. I I still am concerned that the lives are going to change in the and and the importance of the charities. You know, other things are gonna happen in life that are going toe elevate other charities. Now, you would say, Well, they might get at it, but that doesn’t mean that the initial one’s going to be subtracted. Granted. Okay, No, uh, take it under advisement. You’re Yeah. Okay. Okay. So the lesson for for these Washington say charities that had these windfalls was had they started the Mr name. And after he made his lifetime gif ts that we’re way off the charts for the for these charities, the one even questioning the amount it was so large online they might have learned about his intentions by Will is that is that Is that where you’re you’re going with that? I think so. I think also, it’s there’s a cautionary tale here that if we believe that these significant types of gifts are just going to appear out of nowhere that, in fact, there’s nothing as a fundraiser or is an executive director Seo over Non-profit Aiken dio. I’m almost it’s almost down to pure lock on, and I would reject that. It’s pure luck, I agree. But it is. You can start to plan for this. You can identify people with a higher likelihood. Ah, hyre inclination to make these types of gifts. And in fact, I think, you know, we’ve talked about this on Twitter and other places. Playing giving is a huge untapped opportunity. Yeah, and so so don’t think of it is magical or luck. Think of it as a huge untapped opportunity that you can build into your PA programs and be successful. But you gotta put the time and effort into it as well. Absolutely agree. Reject that notion of its just a windfall. They just happen magically. You can look at data you can look. Att Yeah, your data data you have on giving history and identify your best plan giving prospects irrespective of age. They they might even end up being in their forties, and you don’t know it because you don’t have A, um you’ll have a gin, your file on DH? Yeah, absolutely ages Only one part of it. I think when we look ATT plan giving likelihood things in the data that make that bubble up the top are certainly, you know, things like wealth and assets, but things like church attendance, loyalty to a cause. Another thing that we found in the past with predictive modeling is if those individuals are more civically involved, they they donate to a political campaign so they donate to things in their state local area. Another big factor is lack of living children. And that certainly played out Alan Damon’s case. He had no, wasn’t married, had no children. We see that all the time and plan giving, and it could be, you know, those children are older or they had no children. Those are all factors. It certainly isn’t just all down to age, and that’s a great point. And and for smaller organizations, because our our audience is small and midsize. However you define that I don’t. I never put any definitions or boundaries around that. A lot of what you’re getting at is going to be findable by meeting people and talking to them in terms of civic engagement. Ah, marital status, children, ages of children if they have them. So they volunteered your organization, factors like that. You, Khun, quickly get Teo. Well, that one. You’ll have that when you’ll know I’m I’m suggesting that a lot of what you were describing you wouldn’t be a smaller midsize shop, wouldn’t be able to find unless they were meeting unless they were talking to people. Or is that an out of date? Am I by a dinosaur? And that’s anachronistic opinion. I mean, I think that world is changing, and I think, you know, in the next couple of years, let’s just say for the next decade I think that’s going to change a lot, or, in fact, needs to change a lot way. Topic comes up all the time. We talk about organizations in their use of data. There’s a tendency to think of a smaller How does this data benefit of smaller organization and and a lot of cases, you know, if your ah if you’re a two million dollar or one million dollar non-profit organization, if you miss out on a big opportunity, there’s a significant impact there. If you raised sixty million dollars a year and you miss out on one or two opportunities, it has less impact so that the data actually becomes, you know, very valuable for mid size, smaller organizations to so, But I wantto get to some of the data points that you mentioned, Um, that that I was suggesting you you’d only learn if you talk to somebody. Like like, civic engagement, number of children not volunteering because you would know. You know, your volunteers are on DH. You rattled off a couple of others? I don’t remember, But it was occurring to me that you’d only find those out through conversations. But are you saying that databases are evolving? That would help us find this out without having to meet somebody? Yeah. I mean, a lot of these, a lot of these data elements or even models you would do our things that that non-profit organization’s been doing for, you know, probably twenty years. It’s just becoming Mohr wide spread and common as the cost of doing that continues to get lower and the value that people are realizing from it. Okay, okay. And, you know, you could also Yeah, the true enough. I mean, you can yeah, mining, no mining the social networks. They’re there cos that will do that for you. For your file. Blackbaud is probably one of them. I mean, you can do. Do you have that capability? Yes. Certainly. One of the things that we do with our customers as we have the ability to upend these types of data elements to a file. But actually, what’s more common is organizations ask us tow, screen their donors and identify people who have a major gift likelihood or a plain gift likelihood or an annual gift likelihood because you’re you also start to quickly drift into. I want to understand all the donors or potential supporters I have, and some are a better fit for different types. Of programs and others. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Uh, the Well, that’s the data accessibility that a lot a lot of people fear, but it exists on DH. If it’s there and you can use it for the benefit of your fund-raising, you might as well. All right. Um, absolutely. You want to talk about a little about digital? What? What? What’s on your mind about digital online? Fund-raising I have a lot on my mind about digital way. Just have an hour. Yeah. Sorry. I think the big thing is I recently wrote something about the fact that online giving it’s been around for twenty years. Now, that’s a long time. And yet a lot of the current perception or continued perception the sector is online. Is this new thing? No, it’s not. I mean, it’s a twenty year old. It’s moved out of the house. It’s grown up, uh, you know, and I think that’s going to call call into question. How long do we persist? Thinking about online is a totally separate animal from the rest of Fund-raising. When the reality is, it’s just a channel, right? It’s like direct mail. It’s like phone. It’s like street canvassing. It’s like events. It’s you know, it’s like, you know, we used to have basic cable and then we got all the advanced, you know, channels on cable. That’s what digital has brought us. But there’s still a lot of thinking about it. It’s a separate thing. We should think about it separately. I think now that we’re twenty years into this, we probably need Teo evolve our thinking and think about, you know, if we thought the last twenty years brought a lot of change. The next twenty is going to bring a really transformative change in a lot of ways. So the the online giving is still under ten percent. You’re the charitable giving reports puts it at eight and a half percent is that I have the eight and a half percent but growing heimans madox people. It’s growing. That study has been steadily growing. Yeah, that shocks people. But it’s interesting. The U. S. Department of Commerce publishes the percentage of all retail sales that happened on the Internet, and that’s only nine point eight percent. So again, I don’t know. Everyone may think you buy everything from Amazon and you buy everything online. The reality is less than ten percent of retail is online and less than ten percent of Fund-raising is online and they’re actually tracking pretty close. That just tells us consumer donorsearch Hey, viewer had a lot of cross over. OK, absolutely true about the retail I would, I would have guessed, I don’t know, forty or something less than ten. Just under ten. Nine point eight percent of all retail sales in the point eight percent are online. Dang Alright, alright. I knew I was going to learn from This is a part of this too. And it brings up another interesting question. Which is how how you fund-raising is not the same as what you fund-raising so to me. The how you fund-raising what channels to use your running a direct mail program. Do you do events? Do you send email? But then there is what gets fund-raising taste. And there’s a crossover, right? So are you Are you raising money through a monthly giving program? Are you being an annual giving program? Do you have mid level giving Major e-giving plan giving on? And these things really blurred the lines right? You know we’re talking about the the exact example previously that individual made to online gifts, you know, in excess of several thousand dollars. That’s very common these days. So to me, that’s less about the fact that they made the gift online and has more to do with Where do they fit into your fund-raising program? Because in a lot of cases online, it is. It’s just convenient. Right is less friction. There’s less steps, but it doesn’t. And this is another point. I think that’s come up on social media in a lot of debates is, well, is. There’s also a tendency to think, um, we need to put all of our money into digital and stop putting money into the traditional Let’s just call it analog stuff, and I love digital. But that’s crazy. Like that’s a bad idea. I think what we find is you need to have a mix. You gotta virality You’ve got to be a multi challenge. It’s gotta be, Yeah, yeah, that’s on. That’s consistent with what so many guests have said about communications. You have to be multi-channel. Your fund-raising needs to be as well. What are the right? So what are the larger sources of If if online is just only eight and a half percent where The biggest too. So what’s the biggest two sources of of channel? Yeah, of individual Give? Yes. Channels. Yeah. I mean, it’s going to be, you know, direct mail. Still direct phone. Yeah. Face-to-face canvassing and then digital and within digital, you’re going tohave email. You’re going have online ads. You’re going tohave social media. I mean, there’s probably, you know, a two dozen channels that we could look at you and, you know, digital. Just one of them. Sure, sure, alright, but but so direct mail is still the number one. The greatest source of individual giving is still from direct mail. No, I would say you really looked at the numbers. You would find that it is the face-to-face, not canvassing face-to-face, but face-to-face, I’m gonna go sit Tony in your living room this afternoon, and we’re going to discuss that three million dollars gift, okay? Because the reality is, um if you look at a ball, all of fund-raising eighty two percent of all the revenue comes from twenty percent of donors and those air come from significant gifts. So if he really got down to ah, what channel or what type of interaction raises the most money, it’s going to Major, give fund-raising and those air face-to-face conversations. Okay? We’re not having a conversation about just what raises the most money. I think what we want to understand is what is the mix of channels, right? Oh, yeah. Wait, no. You gotta that first gift might because you saw an advertisement on NPR. Or you got something in the mail or you saw something on social media, and you develop that relationship over time, and it takes a lot of channels to get there, for sure. Absolutely. Yeah, I just, uh it seemed like a natural question. What is the largest. Steve. We’ve got to take a take a take another break. Okay, where you see Piela. They have an archive Webinar for you. Their accounting update. What has changed this year that Wagner knows categorically and you need to know just a skosh. New requirements for financial statements. For instance, that’s what the webinars about what’s new this year. You goto wagner cps dot com Click Resource is then Webinars. Now it’s time for Tony’s. Take two is next week. Act Blue and Non-profit Radio at the Non-profit Technology Conference in Portland, Oregon. ActBlue is our premiere sponsor at nineteen and TC. I hope you will come by booths five o eight and five ten where we are together in. In. If there is no five o nine in between us, that’s on five nines on the other side of the aisle. So we’re in a large booth together. Non-profit radio in ActBlue. Just just look for the booth with the bright studio lights, because I’m gonna be shooting video a cz. Well, as I’m capturing interviews for the coming months on the show, Act Blue is they’re talking about the power of small dollar donations. While I’m capturing interviews for now. I just said right this crap while I’m capturing you. Yeah. No shit. I just said that I need an intern. I am soliciting ob soliciting resumes for interns. So I have somebody to blame for this. Poor copy. Eso submit your resume Tonia tonia martignetti dot com And the next time there’s a mistaken my copy. You know that I will blame you so send your resume quickly. Alright, in the meantime? Um actblue Yes. You know them for their wildly popular on DH successful political grassroots fund-raising platform raised over three billion dollars. You can go to AC Blue and you can see the sea the counter. But now they want you to check out their platform and small dollar donation value for your organ. It’s no longer just for grassroots and political. So you do that a tony dot m a slash ActBlue. Come to the booth. Sabelo. Ah, the interview schedule. It’s completely booked. I’ve got thirty seven interviews in the two and a half days of NTC. Unbelievable. Non-profit radio, wildly popular. Last year. We had about eight or so empty slots this year. Not a single empty slot. I mean, we’re, you know, we’re taking bathroom breaks and lunch breaks, but thirty seven interviews come by. Come by. Say hello, Teo. Me and ActBlue. All right. That is Tony’s. Take two. Now, let’s get back to Steve McLaughlin. And what does the data divulge? You probably got a little more. Yes. You were just admonishing me for asking the question. About what? What What is the highest? What is the largest source of individual gifts? And I understand we’re not. We’re not. We’re not categorizing. One, two, three, four. The point is, you do need to be multi-channel, um, and and not not not focus on any anyone area. All right, so you got a little more you want to say in digital, I’m sure or on this on this subject, I mean, I think you’re spot on, you know, it’s got to be the multi-channel. I think the other thing that we’re learning is non-profits air starting to understand that it’s also the sequencing and those channels. I think if we look back ten or fifteen years from now, I think this is an area where artificial intelligence machine learning can really help. In some ways, which is understanding. What is the sequence of messaging? Is it? There’s a direct mail piece, followed by an email followed by an SMS message, followed by this followed by that followed by something that hasn’t been invented yet. That is the right sequence that drives donors to give or renew our whatever happens to be. And certainly I think another part worth noting is his mobile is part of this digital landscape. For a number of years, we’ve looked at the percentage of online donations that happen on a mobile device. Yes, in twenty eighteen, it was twenty four percent, right? So we’re done debating if mobile is a really important thing because it’s almost a quarter of all the online donations are happening on a mobile device, and that was only, like, nine percent a few years ago. So it’s that continues to grow. I think if you look put down the time Horizon Mobile has the potential to be one of the most transformative, um, elements of e-giving experience. Um, you know, there’s seven billion people on Planet Earth, and five billion of them have a mobile phone. There’s only like two and a half billion PCs. So mobile has a lot of potential. And you’ll see over time, e-giving will move the mobile. Um, a lot of these other type of non-profit interaction things will move to a mobile device. And I think a lot of ways that will help us get over our online versus offline hang up because a mobile devices, all those things in one, right? We don’t think about Oh, I’m online on my phone. No, You know, we just don’t think of it that way. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. So your point one, the points you made were past the debate whether you need to make sure that every page that you’re giving our all of that is mobile optimized that videos that your your videos you maybe sharing play, play properly on on, ah, a phone or a phone or a tablet. But you’re talking specifically about phones, so we’re we’re past all that you need to be one hundred percent mobile optimized, and so let’s so let’s talk some about sametz giving. What do we do? We know that specifically in terms of Is that the you don’t know? I’m asking a six different questions at one time. You’re stuck with me as a host. I’m sorry. There is. There is no other hosts non-profit radio, it’s me or dead air. So you’re stuck with me. Okay. The report says mobile donations, twenty four percent. Is that all SMS or no, That’s people going to a website and filling out an online form Ah, form on their phone. What is what’s in that? Twenty percent. Twenty four percent. We’re looking at donation to happen on a mobile device. We’re not looking at SMS SMS is interesting. Um, you know, there was a point in time several years ago where we saw SMS was going to be the new big thing and that turned out to not happen. I think it was the right medium, but the wrong method. So you know, two thousand ten was probably the big moment for text to give in the US there was the Haiti earthquake. There were tens of millions of dollars raised through SMS text to give. There was a lot of hype. Everyone said it’s all going to be text to give Ah and you fast forward to today And essentially that’s not what happened. What happened? Wass, Um we we were right about the medium that people would want to do something on a mobile device. But we were wrong about the method. Text to give was not going to be the method that people prefer to use for a lot of reasons. But really, what’s become sort of the most effective approaches when you optimize your website, your donation forms your email messages, your digital experience for mobile. Um people will give through that and and a significant portion, um, text to give. I don’t think it’s really, um, sort of panned out the way people thought. Now that’s not to say that SMS is a communication and an engagement tool hasn’t been successful. I think there’s a lot of examples of SMS being a good way to engage supporters, volunteers, activists. Um it’s just text to give, at least for the U. S. Um, I think it’s had its day and you’ll see the most of that just shifted people doing on a mobile device. Okay, interesting way. Have a sponsor text to give that well, not be happy to hear you’re and I’m sure they have a different take on this although they do mobile engagement also on DH there is that there is a lot I think is is do something. Are they the premier example of mobile text text, engagement? Do something dot or do something? There’s a lot there. Crisis text line right after them. The Lublin in the folks that crisis tech find right amazing stories of what? Sms from an engagement perspective and a programmatic perspective, they have some amazing work. They’ve done their, um, part of it. Just as would text to give one of the challenges. Is it’s? It’s a regulated industry. You got to deal with the telcos. Ah, the amount you Khun give is limited. Ah, all the rules around it are highly constrained. So would I rather get a one time, ten dollars text gift or what? I rather send them to my website? That’s optimized, and I get a twenty five dollars per month recurring gift or a thousand dollar gift. Um, you know, just some different things happening in that space, for sure. Okay, we got to take another break. Tell us. Can use more money needed to revenue sources. Stephen, I talkingabout multi-channel You get a long stream of passive revenue. This is passive revenue. When companies that you refer process their credit card transactions through, tell us, watch the video, then send these potential companies to watch the video. Could be trusty, local, local company that’s been supporting you. If they take credit cards, their their their prospects for this and you will get fifty percent of the fee of each transaction. That’s the long revenue stream. The video is that Tony dahna slash Tony Tello’s. Now let’s go back to Steve McLachlan. Um, all right, so you know, we’ve got another twenty minutes or so. Roughly. Um, let’s talk a little about what you see. What your what your thoughts are around overall giving it’s up up a percent. A half in twenty. Eighteen. Um, And let’s talk about what you what you think is coming for twenty. Nineteen. That’s a wide open heart. Open topic. Yeah, well, first, I think we should note that despite the reports of the demise of Fund-raising Oh, yes, Yes. The reports were greatly exaggerated, right? You know, you You seen this over the past eighteen months? Eighteen months as much as anybody, right? Oh, the fund-raising. Is going to go down the tubes. The bottom is gonna fall out. Mass hysteria. Turns out in twenty eighteen. That didn’t happen. Way looked at about thirty two billion and fund-raising revenue across a wide range of organizations. And what we found with E-giving was up about one and a half percent on a year over year basis. And we actually took a step back and looked at a three year trend because a lot of stuff has happened in the past three years. And if you look at the three year trend, so twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen and you look at the same exact organizations and how they performed overall giving is up nine percent. Um, so I think that’s A positive one of things also tells us is that twenty seventeen was a much better year in terms of giving than what we may be thought a year ago, um and twenty eighteen was probably a return to more normal levels. Um, but I think most organizations would take nine percent over three years. And from a girl’s perspective now, help me understand this, Um, what’s the difference between the one and a half percent growth in overall and the and the nine percent? Sure. So, one half percent growth if we take the exact same non-profit organizations in twenty seventeen and we see how they performed in twenty, eighteen through one and a half percent here apples, apples, comparison. Um, but when you look at it over three years, you actually see it. It’s a nine percent growth rate. I think if anything that tells us, you know, twenty seventeen probably had a spike in giving caused by a multitude of factors the economy, uh, politics, lots of stuff. And maybe that got overlooked in a lot of the hysteria about what may or may not happen in giving in twenty eighteen. But overall, you know, growth is good. And certainly as we head into twenty nineteen. Um, we’re looking for some good news there, too. Okay. All right. See, So over three years, the growth was was nine percent. Um, so you’re you mentioned your charitable giving report Looks at about thirty two billion dollars in giving. Yeah, but total total individual giving is like, four hundred billion. So how total giving is about four hundred ten billion Total individual giving is what is it? Seventy percent of that. Okay, right. It’s a three quarter. It’s It’s usually three quarters of so, So so about three hundred billion. Um, so s So how do you answer the question? You’re looking at roughly ten percent of individual giving. Ifyou’re looking at thirty two billion and it’s three hundred billion total, How do you How do you respond if that za small percentage of total individual giving? So how do we know it’s representative of the whole? Well, you know, all data is only representative of itself not to get a topical right. Says that’s very esoteric. We’re looking at David and two billion dollars. That’s what happened for these organizations, I think one of the challenges. Um, no, one has all the data for the four hundred something billion dollars. Um, so if you’re looking to find the absolute number and all the data that doesn’t exist in one place, certainly what we tried to do with e-giving report on some of our researches, let’s try and have a very large, significant sample size. I’m not aware of anyone sample sizes larger and try and provide some insight and analysis there. That’s a interesting way I’ve touched on this from time to time through the years. Um, it’s related to the fact that we have to wait until June of each year when the giving us a report comes out to find out what the what the charitable giving was for the previous year. It just seems to me that in twenty nineteen, we shouldn’t have to wait six months on. I’m not, I guess. Well, I am implicitly imputing giving us a You know, there used to be the atlas of giving and Rob Mitchell was on the show a number of times. They had an algorithm that that they said was nineteen, ninety nine or ninety eight or ninety nine percent predictive. When you look back based on all kinds of econometric variables that they said they could predict. And then they change it every month. They could look, he didn’t call them predictions that could forecast he didn’t like the word predictions. It could forecast the future with these with these econometric variables, but that the, uh, the the atlas of giving no longer exists that it didn’t didn’t prevail. I don’t know. It’s just we don’t have a good measure. No one does have all the data. Why? Why do we have to wait six months? Made this twenty nineteen and we were just with all the with all the technology we have access to data. Why do we have to wait six months to know what happened in the previous year? You’re that your data scientist? Help me understand. Why is this so hard? Why can’t someone? Why can’t someone tackle this so that within a couple of weeks we know what happened in the previous year? Boy, do I want to get into this one way? Got about ten minutes left, so go ahead. Uh, well, I think a couple of things. One, Certainly. You know, my perspective is that what giving USA produces and what they’ve done for fifty plus years is is really valuable to the sector because it’s a lot of deep research in tow into the data and what’s happening and trends. But like anything, any benchmark, any report, I think we’ve got a really focus on How does it help? You know, what’s the point of it is that we wantto count how many billions were raised. I don’t think it’s necessarily that that makes for interesting headlines, but I think really, it’s about how do we make? How do we make that information actionable and in so many ways? I think what I continue to see is it’s really valuable for an organization, whether you’re one million dollars a year budget, human services organization or a fifty million dollar healthcare charity. You want this information, these insights because you want to be able to compare your performance to what else is happening in the sector, but probably more importantly, you want to be able to compare your performance to similar pierre organization, right? That’s how am I doing compared to others. And, you know, what is it that some of those organizations might be doing differently? That’s driving growth? Or am I outperforming them? And that’s useful to know? Yeah, I agree with all that, of course, that there is value. But why do we have to wait six months? That’s a long time. Six months is a long time to know what’s actionable from the previous year. Were you? Do you Do you remember the atlas of giving you? Are you familiar with what that was? I’m familiar with it. Yeah. Okay. Um, what did you think of Atlas of giving you can You’re free to disagree, Rob Mitchell Will doesn’t. Nobody listens to this show, so don’t worry about it. I’m starting to think that they had built some sort of black box. Proprietary forecast, right models, right? What was happening with e-giving? Um, that changed, uh, with a lot of frequency. Well, they don’t know. They updated the therefore decided it wasn’t That wasn’t a valuable, useful thing to have. Maybe. Yeah. I don’t know if it was the market or the marketing. You know, I was a small, a small company. Um, I have a background in economics, and I I, uh I mean, I wasn’t privy to their to their algorithm, but okay, s so I I used to lean toward that, basically, but it didn’t. It didn’t succeed. For whatever reason again, I think a lot of that is there was a small business and they were up against e-giving Yusa, which does have Ah, long history, like you said, fifty years. Okay, I don’t I’m not cutting off the topic. Steve Matlock, and we’ll go right back to it. You could respond to exactly right back to what I just said, but I got to take care of our sponsors. Last break is the last break. Text to give can use more, uh, more money, more engagement. You need a new revenue source. This is another way we’re talking multi-channel mobile giving. I know we just talked about it with Steve, but, uh, text to give is more than just mobile giving. It’s also mobile engagement. Um, but with their emphasising, is there five part email? Many course tto learn more about what they’re doing. It’s five e mails and the weight to get into the email. Many course is you text NPR to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine. Now, we’ve got several more minutes for what does the day to divulge? Um, okay, Um all right. Anything? What do you want to say? Anything. Response to what I was just saying you know again? I mean, I think any of these reports, anything analysis stuff we should always go back to. How can an non-profit apply it to what they’re doing? I think in the case of giving you say, they’re tryingto bring together a lot of data. Some of it is economic data, you know is, you know, when you’re tryingto forecast or predict what happened, it’s partially based on there’s IRS data. There’s economic data. There’s a number of factors there. I would say, You know, we sort of on the blackbaud side, we differed e-giving Yusa to say how much was given and toe which type of organizations was given, too, because that is a complex undertaking of which durney you know, that’s not our not our focus. We’re sort of Mohr interested in trying to understand things that a at a different level on more about what the trends are than the actual dollars. But then giving us a doesn’t even give us a forecast. I mean, they they say some generalities like the political environment and climate change, and so societal factors and the metoo movement, you know, will impact e-giving. But but they don’t, They don’t They don’t have any numbers along with their forecast. Uh, I mean, they don’t have any. Numerical forecast is what I mean. It sounds like you’ve got some topics and potential guests for your next show. Them. Well, you could be one of them, but yeah, but But nobody’s got the Why does it take? Why does it take six months? This’s twenty nineteen, for God’s sake. I just don’t understand why it takes six months to get the previous. All right, It seems to me we should be able to have it in, like, two weeks. Your data scientist, To prove me wrong, I I would defer to them. Uh, probably blackbaud should do it. You should take it on. You could do it in six weeks. You could beat them all right, Until I just I uninformed opinion, but I think it’s I think it’s doable. Maybe uninformed, but it’s still valid. It’s complete contradiction. All right, um all right. What do you What do you want to say about about About the future. I’ll get off the, uh, donor advised funds. Okay? And we talk about that once We got a couple, you just have a couple minutes left. Sure. What about them? They’re growing well. You know. They’re growing, I think. The Chronicle Plan B is noted that five of the top ten charities in the US or now don’t advise funds. You’re seeing a lot of growth there. I know there’s been a lot of talk about tax law changes, but it’s worth noting none of that tax law changes impacts dahna advice funds. So, you know, I think you’re going to continue to see them grow. I think you’re going to see the thresholds on those donorsearch vice fund start to move down. You know, it’s not going to be that I have to make a five or a ten thousand dollar gift to start one. You’re going to see those things lower. Um, I think it’s going to be part of a bigger part of giving, which is is different, right? You know, it’s not going to be, you know, certainly we track giving two foundations, but we don’t look at that in terms of the growth of giving, because it’s a bit of an intermediary in some cases. But I think you’re going to see dahna advice. One’s continued to grow uh, continue to be a bigger share of ware. Charitable giving goes on, and nonprofit organizations are gonna have to get better it both engaging with donors and educating them about, Hey, hey, it’s okay if you choose to use a donor advised fund, but but here’s how you can use that to help continue to give their organization and do things. And I think that’s that’s sort of the new reality. Like we talked about Mobile, the new normal dahna advice funds are here. They’re not going anywhere. They will only continue to get bigger. And that’s a part that fundraisers and and non-profit leaders need to pay attention to. That’s a great topic. I hosted a panel on the foundations at the foundation center, and we aired it here. Dahna advice. Funds are you know they’re a source of frustration for not for charities, starting with the fact that sometimes they don’t know who the gift is from the Schwab or the or the Fidelity. You know, I won’t tell them Yeah. I mean, I think it’s certainly create some frustration on the part of non-profits, but I think it’s not going away. Yeah. So how does he adapt to it? Um, you know, there’s probably a whole set of best practices that certain organizations have learned to embrace that, um, you know, that type of approach and again from a tax law perspective or some other other types of things, uh, they don’t really impact recover What donorsearch vice funds or doing? It’ll also be interesting to see what donorsearch vice funds due to, um, private foundations. What does it mean for local community foundations? Who who in some cases, do run their own donor advised funds as well? That’s a whole interesting ecosystem. Well, yeah, I mean, you could Well, I think of dahna advice funds, as the modest income persons foundation mean, I got it, you know, And and I I hear your point. The thresholds will will come down. You believe that? Sounds very very likely. So let’s say, you know, But for a thousand five thousand dollars, I can have a private foundation through a donor advice. I’m going to put the money in, and I and my kids, if I had kids could decide where, where, where, where and when to make those. And I don’t have the five percent spend requirement that private foundations have. All right. I guess I didn’t mean Teo. I’ll give you the last word. You’re the guest, but we do have to wrap up. So So give up. Give us a thirty second rap thirty second rap again. I think there’s a lot of positive trends in terms of e-giving what we’re seeing with digital, but ultimately it still comes back to How are we engaging with donors? How we steward that starting them. Um, how are we showing the impact that they have, Like all those, uh, basic bread and butter blocking and tackling. Insert your analogy here. Those are replaced by technology or anything else. You still have to do those things and the organizations that do those things well, the ones that will continue to grow and do more amazing work in the world. Steve McLachlan, He’s vice president of Data and Analytics at Blackbaud. You should follow the guy’s. Very smart. Very smart. Uh, at S McLachlan. It’s m a C Lachlan. Okay, at S McLaughlin on the companies that blackbaud dot com. Steve, thank you so much. Thanks for coming back. Great. Thanks, Tony. Real pleasure. Next week it is Jason Lewis and the War for Fund-raising talent. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, Find it on tony martignetti dot com. Responsive by pursuant online tools. Here’s where the music cue the music. Chris Care is responsive by pursuing. Oh, no, that’s my mistake. Now you don’t okay, turn the music down. That was Tony martignetti mistakes. You’re stuck with this host up there, but I’m the only one. Chris is doing the show perfectly, and I just screwed him up. 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