Tag Archives: Sanky Communications

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

 

Melanie Schaffel: Acquiring Email Leads On Social

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

 

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

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

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

Nonprofit Radio for March 29, 2021: Cure Communications Gaffes & Talking Mental Health In Your Workplace

My Guests:

Julie Ziff Sint, Claire Thomas & Shafali Rao: Cure Communications Gaffes
Our 21NTC coverage begins by explaining what to do after you put the wrong gala date in an email, or send a letter to the wrong segment. Might an intentional mistake improve open your open rate? Our panel is Julie Ziff Sint, Claire Thomas and Shefali Rao, all from Sanky Communications.

 

 

 

Dan Berstein: Talking Mental Health In Your Workplace
Also from 21NTC, Dan Berstein helps you avoid a different gaffe: Saying the wrong things when faced with challenging behaviors or mental health disclosures. He’s got easy-to-follow strategies. Dan is founder of MH Mediate.

 

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[00:02:22.04] spk_1:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into zero Estonia if I had to mouth the words you missed this week’s show Cure Communications Gaffes. Our 21 NTC coverage begins by explaining what to do after you put the wrong gala date in your email or send a letter to the wrong segment. Might an intentional mistake improve your open rate? Our panel is Julie’s. If ST Claire Thomas and Shefali Row, all from Sancti Communications and talking Mental Health in your workplace, also from 21 NTC, Dan Burstein helps you avoid a different gaffe, saying the wrong things when faced with challenging behaviors or mental health disclosures, he’s got easy to follow strategies. Dan is founder of M H. Mediate on tony State, too. How are you doing? We’re sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o. Here is a cure. Communications gaffes. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 21 NTC That’s the 2021 nonprofit technology Conference. We’re sponsored at 21 NTC by turn to communications. Turn hyphen. Two dot c o. My guests at this session are Julie’s. If ST Claire Thomas and Shefali Row. They’re all with Sancti Communications. Julie is vice president of account and Strategic Services. Claire is copy director, and Shefali is senior copywriter. Welcome, Julie.

[00:02:22.57] spk_2:
Thanks for having us.

[00:02:23.81] spk_3:
Welcome to be here.

[00:02:32.24] spk_1:
So, uh, let’s see. So does everybody work for Julie? And then then And then Claire reports The Shefali is It doesn’t work like that. I’m sure it’s a very collegial place. Thank you. Community were totally lateral. Totally flat. Everybody gets the same pay. Everybody is exactly the same

[00:02:54.44] spk_2:
way. We’re really collaborative agency, but I work more on our strategic side of things. And Claire and Shefali are two of our genius copywriters who manage our clients messaging.

[00:03:37.34] spk_1:
Okay, I think it’s important to flush this out. So give folks a feel for swanky communications because they might be working with you someday. Your workshop topic is my bad to all. Good. How to repair a mistake in donor communications. So, like if you dropped an email with a mistake in it, or you sent out an email about the gala, and it has the wrong date or the wrong time. That’s that’s That’s a particularly egregious one. We would think we would catch that in copyrighting. So, um, Shefali, let’s start with you. How does these things happen? First of all, like suppose that example? Wrong time in the gala invitation. How could that How could that possibly happen when we have multiple eyes on projects on communications?

[00:04:14.34] spk_4:
Yeah, you would think that it wouldn’t, but sometimes it just misses all sets of five. I actually gave this example, even in the conference, but I used to be a journalist, and I used to be at the news desk copy editing and one day on the front page in a headline. The word public was missing an L. And that just went out the next day. And, um, the good news is that we have a system we have, like, strategies in place where we kind of make those mistakes work for us. Which is really what our workshop was about.

[00:04:18.19] spk_1:
Yeah. I mean, you could have some fun. I don’t know. Pubic might be tough. to have fun you can have fun

[00:04:22.29] spk_4:
with

[00:04:36.74] spk_1:
without getting carried away. I mean, I think making light of a mistake, a gaffe. I use that all the time. I mean, you’re suffering with a lackluster host, so don’t be surprised if this comes up three or four times in a half an hour. Um, like the banging? I don’t know. You know, I have you here that banging

[00:04:42.14] spk_3:
a

[00:05:03.04] spk_1:
little. Okay, it’s It’s a hammer. There’s guys working on my stairs. You might hear vacuuming because they’re very fastidious about cleaning up. You might hear some, uh, sawing drill drill. Uh, circular saw type work. Um, not that that’s a gaffe, but, you know, it’s background noise. We got to call it out. If I can’t hide it, I’m gonna flaunt it, so well. Shit. I gotta ask, What did the paper do with, uh, public to

[00:05:20.94] spk_4:
pubic? And then we printed into the collection the next day. That’s all you can really do. That’s not the fun way. I mean, it’s not a fun where it was pretty upset about it, but we have actually had fun with some of our mistakes in the bus. Right?

[00:05:24.44] spk_1:
Okay. Who wants to share a mistake that, uh, so

[00:05:27.40] spk_3:
one of them One of them was in the footer. You know of an email and, you know, these things go out all the time, and and everybody is real careful about the

[00:05:36.00] spk_4:
content of the email, and And

[00:05:46.34] spk_3:
was the subject line perfect? And you kind of forget to be as careful about the footer and in the footer to the donors. It said eight cents of every dollar goes to programs services.

[00:05:51.34] spk_1:
Okay. Yeah.

[00:05:52.64] spk_3:
Now, most people already wouldn’t even see

[00:05:55.27] spk_1:
that Most people are going to look at the footer,

[00:07:01.34] spk_3:
right? This and this is an animal shelter. So? So when when it was caught, we were like, Okay, so we’re So what we did was we said, Okay, let’s let’s send it up. But let’s stay in character for how the donors know us. And we we have with this with this, um, animal shelter. We have a really fun, friendly voice. And so we sent out a correction email, and we used it to educate donors on what the truth is. And what we said was forgive us if you are, forgive us for our mistake. Um and we try. We’re pause P a w positively horrified. We made this mistake because the truth is it’s 82 cents of your dollar that goes to programs services, and we’re really proud of that. And then we talked about how we care for donor services. But we kept the really used pictures of cute puppies and kittens and, you know, it was all friendly and fun, and it was a good chance to educate the donors on what the actual You know how the organization uses donor resources. And,

[00:07:25.04] spk_2:
of course, the silver lining on that example and everything else is that when you do have an effective apology like that, um, you can have extraordinary engagement with your donors. So for that example that Claire just shared, we had over 50% open rate and almost a 5% click through rate, which is more than three times as high on both metrics as as you might hope to see.

[00:07:39.04] spk_1:
Yeah, Julie, I was going to go to you. Uh, so it sounds like the first thing you should do when you discover one of these gaffes is don’t panic,

[00:07:40.84] spk_2:
never panic. Panicking definitely does not help

[00:07:43.58] spk_1:
you accomplish your compound, right, you’ll send the wrong thing. You won’t think it through. You’ll blow the one chance you have to really fix it well, so keep your head on.

[00:08:35.44] spk_2:
Panicking definitely doesn’t help in any environment, I will say before, you know before you get there. It’s definitely worthwhile to have a comprehensive QA process. Um, and quality assurance process. Make sure that you’re going through steps to try to avoid the mistakes in the first place. But then, yeah, once the mistake happens, because no matter how good your quality assurance process is, mistakes will happen. Um, so when something does happen to be able to, like you said, don’t panic, figure out what was the mistake? What was what type of mistake was it? Is there an opportunity there? There might be a silver lining. There might be an opportunity. And how can you? How can you apologize in the most effective way? Or turn the mistake into make some lemonade from that lemon and really find a good silver lining there?

[00:08:58.34] spk_1:
What if someone is screaming at you? Maybe it’s a board member who just got the email. Maybe it’s the CEO. Whoever someone senior to you is furious about the mistake. Yeah, about them. Yeah, not about Not about what you’re wearing that day. But yeah,

[00:09:03.86] spk_3:
I’m just because the other problem is when the donor picks up the phone and starts to screen with you, right?

[00:09:20.34] spk_1:
Okay. It could be a donor, but I was trying to manage in the office first, but that’s a good one. Clear. We’ll get to. We’ll do that later. The secondary. The secondary market. Yeah, the other constituents. But how about right in your office? Uh, you know, a CEO or board member? Well, we’ll consider board members insiders for purposes of our conversation. What do you do there? Furious.

[00:09:49.54] spk_3:
Yeah. Yeah. And the first thing to do is to say, this is this isn’t all bad. There’s There’s probably an opportunity here. And we had a whole section on opportunities. Every every one of the case studies that we presented and the our speed round where people were talking about all these are the mistakes they made, you know, we talk about Well, there’s an opportunity there, like shuffle. You had some great ideas about opportunities.

[00:10:22.94] spk_4:
Yeah, and I mean, the first question you asked that the step was How does this happen? You know what I mean? Like, how do these mistakes happen? And they happen because there are human people at the other end of that happens like we all make mistakes. And sometimes the donor wants nothing more than to know that a person is at the other end of these communications. And that’s your opportunity right there to say sorry. Build a connection to make, like, some sort of personal, heartfelt apology. Um, and then you have a lasting connection with the donor.

[00:10:51.04] spk_1:
Claire, let me continue with you where we’ve got a furious supervisor here. Doesn’t it help to just also say, I’m sorry? I mean, I know, I know. I know. I made a mistake without trying to deflect or, you know, just even if it’s not 100% your mistake. Like if two other people read the copy also, but but the CEO is in your office in the moment. Oh, yeah. You just say I know, I know. We messed it up or I’m sorry. You know, I mean, just right, well,

[00:10:56.17] spk_3:
and and it is, you’re you’re absolutely right. But then there’s the other. The other mistake that you just alluded to when it was completely out of your control. Julie, talk about what happened with the USPS this year.

[00:11:30.54] spk_2:
Oh, my goodness. And so this is, you know, there are definitely issues that are outside of our control, right? So, you know there was for people who use Blackboard Online Express there was one year that it stopped taking donations on giving Tuesday. There was the black pod data breach last spring and summer. Gmail started hard bouncing in the middle of December this past year. And then, of course, in direct mail, USPS had delays and we had some of our clients were sending out holiday fundraising appeals at the very beginning of December. But then the seeds weren’t even received until the beginning of January. So if you’re mailing that,

[00:11:54.84] spk_3:
you think Yeah, I mean, there’s There’s a pissed off CEO pissed off client pissed off everybody that people didn’t The donors didn’t get the asks.

[00:11:58.54] spk_1:
Yeah, it’s

[00:13:06.94] spk_2:
outside. It’s outside of your control. But there are ways to make that into an opportunity. We had one client. They had sent out a mailing that talked about a December 31st, matching gift deadline, but people didn’t receive the mailings. Um, it bombed. And so we have brainstormed with them. What can we do to figure out a way around this? And we ended up doing an email campaign in early January that effectively said, We understand there were delays with the post service. We know that you may not have received our appeal letter. We would like to tell you that even though it said that the matching gift deadline was on December 31st we talked to the matching gift donor, and we’ve been able to extend it. Please make your contribution now, and so you know it’s not going to necessarily completely counter active. You know that’s not our mistake, but it’s not going to completely counteract that problem. But you can still look for a silver lining. You can still try to connect with the donors, show them that you are a human, show them that you’re all partners together for the mission, um, and then bring them back on board for for the mission.

[00:13:26.44] spk_1:
Claire, you you seem to be the one who raises the good hypotheticals. Alright, let’s let’s go outside now. I suppose it is a donor on the phone, so it’s not. It’s not a supervisor, but now it’s a donor. You know, maybe it’s maybe they’re the ones who maybe they’re the challenge donors who December 31st, you know, in January 3rd, they got the they got the challenging male or whatever it is, you have an upset donor or a very upset volunteer. How do you manage that?

[00:15:20.44] spk_3:
Well, first of all, remember that the fact that someone has picked up the phone and called you you have a dedicated donor on the other end of the line. This is a person who cared enough, cared enough about the work that you’re doing and is invested enough in the mission to pick up the phone and complain. So you’ve got someone on the phone who really cares, and then you kind of follow some basic steps. Remember feelings before solutions? Let them vent. Let them say whatever it is that made them angry and listen to it and be sympathetic and listen for opportunities to connect and then solve the problem. Sometimes it’s that it’s that the donor says, Well, I only wanted to be mailed once a year, and this is the third appeal I’ve gotten this year, and so you know you have a chance to draw them into a conversation and get them talking about why they care about the organization’s work, why this mission matters to them. Once they start talking about why they care, they usually talk themselves into wanting to give. I’ve been in the situation where I’ve been the person talking to the donor that was angry and letting them talk and then finding a way to, like, say, Well, that’s a really good point and I think we can We can address that mistake and then upgrading the donor getting them. That’s actually how I started in fundraising. I was. I was asked to call donors who were angry, find out what the problem was and and then just these were people who had pledged money, and we’re going to pay it off. I raised all the money they had pledged just by listening to them just by solving little problems that they had really small. Um and then they ended up being very dedicated, the organization, because again it’s what you’ve always said is that human human, you know, these are people on both sides of the equation. Philanthropy is, of course, the most human of acts.

[00:15:40.74] spk_1:
You all know the service recovery paradox.

[00:15:44.84] spk_3:
No,

[00:15:46.44] spk_1:
really, I haven’t. We

[00:15:49.33] spk_3:
do that. Pardon me? My suspicion that we actually do that.

[00:16:07.54] spk_1:
Well, yeah, you’re you. You could very well be a part of it, but, um, it’s bona fide. There’s research. The service recovery paradox is that someone for whom a mistake occurs and and has that mistake satisfactorily corrected will be more connected to the brand. I think I’ve seen it more on the commercial side will be more connected to the brand than someone for whom a mistake never occurred.

[00:16:20.14] spk_3:
Yeah,

[00:16:21.62] spk_1:
actually, you’re describing Claire like your clarity talking about upgrading people who were upset.

[00:16:28.24] spk_2:
There are a lot of psyche communications. We were founded by sinking pursuant. Um, back in the late seventies. And there are a lot of myths around Spanky Pearlington. Um, and many of them are not verified.

[00:16:42.65] spk_1:
Uh, thank you, man or a woman or

[00:16:44.76] spk_3:
she is a woman.

[00:16:49.84] spk_2:
Um, I think he was a nickname for Selma. Um, apparently, maybe that’s the new thing that we can learn for today. Um,

[00:16:54.61] spk_1:
I think

[00:16:55.60] spk_3:
I

[00:17:24.44] spk_2:
know so So There are a lot of a lot of myths around her in the industry, but one, and I have no idea if this is true. But I have been told that she used to plant mistakes and direct mail letters because there was an increased increased responses or an increased response rate or an increased giving. If there was a mistake in the letter, people would actually right back, correct it and send in their check while they were at it.

[00:17:26.56] spk_1:
That’s brilliant.

[00:17:27.84] spk_3:
It’s brilliant,

[00:17:43.84] spk_1:
right? They love you enough to point out like Claire was saying, they love you enough to point out your mistake. But then they might feel bad about not including a check. So you’re you’re you’re helping them get over the hurdle of, uh, whether to reply, you’re giving them a giving them an even better reason to reply. And by the way, they feel bad. If they if they only complain so they’ll give you money too well.

[00:18:05.94] spk_3:
And we writers like to believe that once somebody has noticed some kind of little mistake, they start reading for other mistakes, and then they actually get hooked into the message. Those of us who spend all our time crafting those messages. It’s our chance to hook them.

[00:18:13.44] spk_1:
Shefali, do you do you deliberately? Have you ever deliberately honest Now have you any deliberate mistake in?

[00:18:18.61] spk_4:
I have to say I’m having this conversation. I’m already thinking of, like subject lines that maybe you have a mistake, but not super obvious. But it would get people to just open the email.

[00:18:30.64] spk_1:
Wait, wait, I want to flush this out. We’re getting good advice. This is the stuff I love. A nonprofit radio. Actionable, actionable advice. What way?

[00:18:53.54] spk_4:
What’s an example? For example, I’m just thinking, What if the subject line just had somebody else’s name and you click on it? Because you think OK, this person made a mistake? That’s not my name. And then you open it and says, Just getting Of course we know you’re tell me because you are one of our most dedicated supporters,

[00:19:06.84] spk_1:
Okay, but they think they’re being voyeuristic by opening it up. It’s made for somebody else. I definitely want to check that out more so than I would read my own. The problem with

[00:19:09.64] spk_2:
tony that that that will be great with the donors. It may not be so great with that CEO that comes into your office yelling.

[00:19:24.34] spk_1:
Well, I should get approval in advance and say, Look, I want to want to test it. I want to test it exactly like we’re going to send 1000 that are that are misnamed than 1000 that are correctly named And, uh, let’s see. Let’s see which one pulls better. Which one clicks through better. You want to

[00:19:34.69] spk_3:
share one more?

[00:19:36.33] spk_1:
I have these copywriter minds think it’s amazing. Anything else occur to you while we’re talking?

[00:19:42.54] spk_4:
No, that’s it. I mean, new campaign idea in two minutes. I’m pretty happy with

[00:20:13.64] spk_1:
that. Yeah, right. Okay, well, we’re 17 minutes in, so try to try to up your game a little bit. Were already. You’re only one idea in 17 minutes. We’ve got to do a little better than that. Um all right, what else should we talk about? The crisis communications management is this This is this is no, I mean, that’s a crisis, but we’re now we’re moving to organizational crisis. Where the where the local paper headline and it’s not good. Who? Julie, you got You got a first bit of advice for that.

[00:22:10.54] spk_2:
Um so I think we we go back to where you started with before, which is always start with. Don’t panic. Um, for many of the organizations that we that we work with, one of the first things that we do is we talk to them about what is the rapid response plan? Um, it applies to if there’s a hurricane that impacts your services or if there’s a political situation that impacts your services or if there’s something in terms of internal politics where there’s something that is going to impact your reputation and you have that that rapid response plan. And it’s a question of, you know, we’ve given whole other talks about this and that it’s a whole other topic of conversation, but it is. It is really important, right? If you have the plan going in that you can deal with whatever the issues are, so you say Okay, who are the decision makers at the organization? What is the chain of command? Who are the people who we need to gather at the organization to figure out whether or not we respond? If we respond, what channels do we respond in what is the messaging of that response, right? And so you know that that really does have to depend on what is the situation. And in some some issues you don’t some problems, whether it’s a mistake internally, a mistaken communication or a one of these kind of rapid response publicity, something some situations will not require a response, and others do. And so it’s a question of what is the message? Is it something where, you know, if you actually do something really offensive, who is the right person to say something? Is it the executive director? Is it the chair of the board? Um, so so is it somebody who is a trusted individual who is the right signer for it? What is the right message? You know, we do. We do often. I will say, use humor when we are crafting an apology. Claire Claire talked about that example of Please forgive us from an animal shelter. You’re not going to do that if it’s something really offensive, you

[00:22:22.60] spk_1:
don’t want to. Yeah,

[00:22:24.30] spk_4:
I

[00:22:30.54] spk_2:
mean, you never know, but you want to be very human. Talk about it. Ideally, you want to be real explain. Here’s the situation and and have a very real genuine apology. What?

[00:22:56.84] spk_1:
Okay, what if at the outset, you don’t You don’t have enough facts. I mean, can you Can you come out and say we can’t comment right now? You know, we’re still looking into whatever the situation is, and we don’t want to say anything inappropriate. So give us 24 hours or something like that. Well,

[00:23:34.54] spk_3:
and committing to transparency in that process, I think is going to go a long way to saying we’re still figuring this out. We want you to know we’re on it. Were These are the steps we’ve already taken. Here’s a step. There is the next step we’re taking, and we’re going to tell you what’s going on. You know, you’re going to hear about this. Um, and just just to reassure them anytime you’re you’re dealing with somebody you’re dealing with donor group, they’ve given you their money. This is this is an act of trust. You have to you have to work to keep that trust, um, to make sure it’s, you know, earned. So you don’t want to lose that,

[00:23:49.04] spk_2:
and transparency is important. But you’re also then messaging them and saying to them as a donor. You are. You are our partner in executing our mission. You are part of the organization. We owe you an explanation. And we need you to help us get through this. We need you to continue to support, um, you know, shelter, animals, homeless youth, whatever the population is that you are providing services to you, our our partner in supporting this mission. And we need you to stand with us.

[00:24:11.94] spk_4:
Yeah, and the more authentic and personal it is, it’s also it’s more of its transparency. But it’s also assurance that not just like it’s not just we have your best interest isn’t just that hot, but it’s also you’re in the know about what’s happening in the organization. Like Julie said, you’re a partner

[00:25:33.54] spk_1:
building on that trust that Claire was talking about. Yeah. Yeah, right. You have that trust in the bank you don’t wanna you don’t wanna exploit it, uh, and squander it, which, you know, conflicting messaging will do. I think too much delay. Depending on the situation, you know, too much delay. Then the story gets ahead of you, and I’m envisioning something really bad, you know, and then somebody else controls the narrative, and you’ve You’ve lost your opportunity. You know, those those things are bad. And that’s that’s a squandering of good faith, squandering of trust. All right, well, that’s that. That’s the trust to that Claire you talked about when we were talking about the gaffes. You know, people love you so much that they’re going to let you know that you made a mistake. Those are those are the most concerned, Like most invested people, the ones who don’t care, we’re gonna write off like, uh, another. Another problem with these people, you know, something like that. But the ones who really care, we’re gonna say, How could they let this happen? Do they know? You know? So, yeah, they’re invested their invested. All right. Um, what else are we talking about? We got a couple more minutes. We don’t have to wrap up whatever we covered yet.

[00:25:38.94] spk_3:
Well, one of the fun things we talked about not fun at all. It was how to apologize appropriately.

[00:25:45.24] spk_1:
Okay, well, you gave a good example of the animal shelter. Were,

[00:26:02.84] spk_3:
But if it’s offensive, what we’ve all noticed in, you know, in our media consumption in the last couple of years. Is all of these people, uh, providing apologies? You know, apologies.

[00:26:25.34] spk_1:
Backhanded apologies, if backhanded apology. If anyone was offended. Exactly, I didn’t intend it. And I regret that they’re offended. So it’s like it’s like their fault. It’s your fault for being offended, right? I regret that you’re offended, you know? All right, talking about her one. Horrible. Yeah,

[00:26:36.14] spk_3:
it’s horrible. And we actually said, Be sure if someone if someone said something offensive, be sure they say I offended. And I apologize.

[00:26:37.31] spk_1:
We should follow, you know, making human. There’s a human behind this apology. Not it wasn’t written by a

[00:26:43.58] spk_4:
robot. You know, it’s not like a template apology. Yeah, 100. An apology

[00:26:50.44] spk_1:
if anyone was offended. I’m sorry that they are regret that they are people who won’t even say step. Probably won’t even say sorry. I regret that. It’s unfortunate that you are

[00:27:01.19] spk_3:
all

[00:27:16.04] spk_1:
right. All right. What else you want to, um Let’s see. Anybody who wants to take us out with, uh, parting parting advice for the Let’s stick with the Gaff. I like that. That was the most animated part. The somebody take us out with good gaffe advice.

[00:27:19.24] spk_3:
Well, I’ll tell you one of the things we had fun coming up with Shefali and I, um, included. We gave a little bit of conference swag in some some checklists and things that people

[00:27:31.03] spk_1:
can take.

[00:28:21.14] spk_3:
And we also provided a little freebie five subject lines to try if you made a mistake. So this is how this is how to get somebody to open your email apology. And so we came up with we came up with. Well, this is awkward. Um, let’s see if we can get our apology right. You deserve our best. You didn’t get it. Can you forgive us? Name of donor and then my favorite. I think this is shit follies. Um, the email you were actually supposed to get name. Okay, So just kind of helping people out. We have. We have unfortunate reasons. Were knowing that all of those emails are successful. Um, so a

[00:28:35.84] spk_1:
lot of communications is gonna be a lot of mistakes. I mean, it’s going to happen. It’s humans. You don’t you don’t strive for them. Obviously you strive not to like Julie was saying, but but with QA. But it’s going to happen now. What about this? I don’t like I don’t like teasing nonprofit radio listeners, and then they don’t get anything. What about this checklist you mentioned? So

[00:29:03.24] spk_2:
those five subject lines along with a variety of other things, including some of the most common QA mistakes to watch for, um, at sinking dot com slash ntc 21 you can download a pdf that has whole bunch of good checklist for both avoiding mistakes. And then what to do if you made a mistake.

[00:29:07.44] spk_1:
Okay,

[00:29:13.54] spk_2:
so that was Thank you. Slash And so sink e ink dot com slash ntc 21.

[00:29:20.54] spk_1:
Got it and sank is s a N k y. Thank you dot com slash ntc 21. All

[00:29:24.33] spk_3:
right.

[00:29:43.34] spk_1:
Thank you. Think as opposed to what I said, which was Thank you. Thank you, Link. All right, Nobody talked. Now nobody talked. Thank e ink dot com slash ntc 21 You betcha. Thank you. All right. I don’t like cold, madam. Non profit your listeners. Alright, Good. So they can get the resource there. We’re gonna leave it there. Julie’s if sent Vice President of Accounts and Strategic Services. Claire Thomas, Copy Director Shefali Rao, senior copywriter all at Sancti Communications. Thank you very much. Wonderful.

[00:30:01.56] spk_3:
Thank you so much Fun.

[00:32:49.14] spk_1:
Real pleasure. I enjoyed it. And thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 21 NTC 2021 Nonprofit Technology Conference where we are sponsored by We should be sponsored by sank Communication with all these shout outs I’m giving, but we’re not. We’re sponsored by turn to communications sank e ink dot No, not spanking dot com Turn to communication. Turn hyphen two dot c o responsible. I turn to communications Turn hyphen two dot c o thanks to each of you. Thank you very much. It’s time for a break. Turn to communications relationships turn to has the relationships with media outlets, journalists, even bloggers podcasters like me they have the outlets to get you placed When there’s a reason for you to be in the news. There’s some news hook that they can grab and they can talk to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, CBS Market Watch, et cetera. They’ve got the existing relationships and they’ll leverage them to your advantage because you’re their client. You get in the media, turn to communications. Turn hyphen two dot c o It’s time for Tony. Take two. How are you? How are you doing? Have you had a vaccine? How’s your family doing? Your family been vaccinated? I’m interested. I’m interested in how listeners are doing. I sent this out asking folks who get the insider alert our weekly insider alert. And I got a bunch of responses back. People. People told me how they’re doing. Tell me what’s going on, How they’ve been what? What It’s like, uh, planning to go back to work, etcetera. So I turned it to listeners. That’s you. How are you doing? How’s your family? Let me know. You can use my email. Here it is. It’s not gonna be able to use it and give it to you tony at tony-martignetti dot com. Tony at tony-martignetti dot com Let me know how you are That is Tony’s Take two. We’ve got boo koo, but loads more time for nonprofit radio. Here is talking mental health in your workplace. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 21 NTC, The 2021 nonprofit Technology Conference. We’re sponsored at 21 NTC by turn to communications turn hyphen two dot c o. My guest now is Dan Burstein. He is founder at M H. Mediate. Dan. Welcome to our coverage of 21 NTC.

[00:32:59.94] spk_0:
Thank you very much for having me.

[00:33:15.94] spk_1:
Pleasure. Absolute pleasure. We’re talking about something that’s important. That’s not talked about enough. Your session is talking mental health in a virtual workplace. There’s there’s stigma around mental health. Is it? Is it Is it worse now in a

[00:35:38.34] spk_0:
virtual world? Um, I would say that, and I’ll just say, I’ll just say that, you know, my background is I’m a mediator and I do work to help people talk about mental health. But I also personally live openly with bipolar disorder. And I would say that stigma is a funny thing, because when we think about stigma, we think about well, do people have a negative attitude towards someone having a mental illness? And as time has gone on the general climate of negative attitudes to someone having a mental illness, I believe is shifted so people are more accepting of the idea that someone might have a mental health problem and we need to work with the fact that everybody in the workplace has mental health needs of some kind and people might need take a personal day or something. The interesting thing is, what kinds of ideas do people have about what do you do when you see that somebody may or may not have a mental health problem? And that’s where so much talk has happened during the pandemic, where, UM, people are saying, Well, what do we do? How do we pay attention to our co workers? How do we notice if there’s a mental health problem and help them? Their statistics out that about half of people have some kind of mental health symptoms now during the pandemic. And so there’s a lot of people have these good intentions that they want to find a way to support someone who has a mental health problem. But the way that they offer that support might actually be stigmatizing. And, um, one way of doing that is if you assume someone needs help. So if someone hears I have bipolar disorder, or even if someone notices, I’m having personal issues at work, if they approach me with the assumption that I need their help, that that’s paternalism and that’s one kind of stigma, another type of stigma and I’ll end it right there is, um, another type of stigma is, if you believe, for instance, Oh, well, Dan has bipolar disorder, but if he goes to the doctor and he takes his medicine, Dan will be fine. Where you that’s That’s an accepting idea. But that’s not how it works for everyone, because I have a choice about how to take care of my mental health. And plenty of people don’t get better even when they take medicine, because they have side effects or treatment resistance. And it’s a difficult journey for them. And so sometimes there’s an oversimplification of we have all the answers for someone’s mental health. Now you just need to come tell HR tell somebody, and we’ll be able to get you the help you need. Use the employee assistance plan. You’ll get your help, and we have it all figured out. And that creates a lot of stigma as well, because it puts that pressure on people to have their mental problems figured out or solved.

[00:35:59.64] spk_1:
Okay, so we want to. We want to be able to say the right things and avoid these Gaffs around dealing with folks who may need help and you said during the pandemic, What’s the statistic? Like as many as 50% of people have have some mental health needs. Intervention needs. Doing what

[00:36:56.43] spk_0:
I would say is 100% of people have mental health needs. So that means, you know, everybody has stressful days. They get to have worried, overwhelming, take care of ourselves like we’re all in a spectrum. In a normal year, one in five people will have a diagnosable mental health problem. So that’s what a normal year looks like. It’s about 20% of people will have a diagnosable problem now with the pandemic, it’s been. About half of people have been reporting mental health symptoms of some kind, and that’s for a number of reasons. That’s partly because of the social isolation, the fear of the illness, getting sick from the pandemic. Um, you know, losing your job. I mean, so many things are happening that are possible stressors that can trigger someone to have a mental health problem. So putting it all together, the data has shown that about half of people are having some kind of mental health symptoms that they’re reporting.

[00:37:09.23] spk_1:
Okay. All right. So yeah, 2.5 times as much as a as a as a normal year.

[00:37:10.53] spk_0:
All right? Exactly. So it’s more relevant now than ever. Accept that we all always have mental health stuff going on in some degrees. So I like to say it’s always relevant all the time for us to do.

[00:38:08.32] spk_1:
Yeah, fair point that. Everybody. You’re right. 100% of people have mental health needs. That could be as easy as I need. I need an hour away. Uh, I need I need quiet. I I gotta be with people. I’m too. I feel like I’m twice later, I got to get outdoors. I mean, those are all us, uh, responding to what we’re feeling in the moment and trying to take care of ourselves. Exactly. You’re right. Of course. 100. You’re right. Not that I thought you would be wrong, but yeah, you give voice to it. 100% of us have mental health needs. Absolutely. All right. Um right. So can we Can we flush these two things out? You know, assuming that people need help or that is assuming that the answers are simple. Is there Is there more like is there. Are there more ways we can help people avoid saying the wrong

[00:41:26.41] spk_0:
thing? Yeah, So what I usually do and what I taught in the workshop at the conference is, um, I try to focus on people remembering that when we’re in the workplace, we have to know what our role is. So are are you this person’s, um, you know, support system. Are you this person mental health treatment professional? Or are you there co worker or boss? If your co worker or boss you should start thinking what’s appropriate for me as a vantage point to engage in the topic of mental health and what what really is appropriate is talking about the behaviors in the workplace and how they affect the workplace. So you may see somebody who let’s say their absence a lot, and that’s not like them. And it’s not really appropriate work, even if it were like them. And so you’re thinking, Gee, from the way they look, they remind me of my friend from college who suffered from depression, and I might go over to them. And I might say, You know, Dan, uh, you’re absent a lot. I’d like to refer you to the employee Assistance Plan, which offers free counseling benefits. Or I’d like to suggest a way to help you with your mental health. I’m concerned that might be an issue that is wrong, because done now is you’ve added the backstory of your idea of what their mental health might be from your personal experiences instead of just focusing on what you’ve seen in the workplace, which is the absence is. So the better conversation is to sit down and say, Um, you know, Dan, I’ve noticed that you’ve been absent and I’d like to talk to you about how that affects the workplace and what we can do to manage that going forward and follow that conversation forward about the behavior. And then there’s ways that you can integrate mental health, you know into that conversation. And the typical way is to say, you know, whenever anybody is absent three times or whenever anybody misses this many deadlines or whenever anybody turns in lower quality work, we always let them know that there’s resources here to help them. And here’s a handout that includes all the resources we have that includes the employee assistance plan, etcetera. But what we’ve done here is we’ve taken the behavior indicator and we said, Okay, my role is really about the behavior I’d like to offer mental health support. You don’t have to. I’d like to offer mental health support. So what I do is I find a way to do it without singling anybody out. And I regularly promote these resources, um, and link it to clear behavior based criteria when I do it, as opposed to my hunch that I’ve seen something and I’m guessing, if you may are made out of a mental hunch about you, right, So that’s 11 way to look at it and that covers most situations. The the other thing that happens, Um, so that covers if you if you if you see you know performance problems at work or if you see inappropriate conduct, you can do the approach, I just said, But the other thing that can happen is someone can come and disclose to you, and they can disclose to you either just in passing like I did on this program and say, I have bipolar disorder and that’s it. Or they can disclose to you by saying, you know, I have bipolar disorder, I have depression and I’d like to change something here in the workplace. And at that point, most workplaces of a certain size have a responsibility legally to consider what’s called a reasonable accommodation for disability. And so there is a process for talking about that, and the American

[00:41:29.53] spk_1:
is that’s under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

[00:42:56.00] spk_0:
Yes, this is under the Americans with Disabilities Act, reasonable accommodation. Most Most organizations do not talk about this very well in the sense that they have a policy. If somebody asked for a reasonable accommodation, but they don’t educate the managers and the staff of when someone says something that could be a request for an accommodation. Um and so the example that I give is You know, a lot of people hear me say, I have bipolar disorder and they go, Whoa, that’s serious. Do you need help, Dan, Um, you know, But if I said, Oh, I’m feeling depressed right now and I need some time off I might not realize that that person is suffering from major depression and they’re actually asking for a disability accommodation. So it’s very dangerous to use your own judgment of whether or not a situation is serious enough to refer to H R or to refer to the disability accommodation on policy. And so what you really need to do is, um, when someone shares anything that includes two elements, which is possible health condition and that requests for a change in the workplace you should have, you should offer to process it like a disability accommodation. Um, and you should not, as a manager, informally offer the health, because even though you think you’re doing that person a favor, you’re making that person feel insecure that there’s not a real system to take care of them and instead that they’re relying on the goodwill of their manager. And that’s not a comfortable thing. In addition to the fact that if you’re letting the manager do these ad hoc favors, um, you’re opening up the possibility that there might be discrimination where whoever the manager notices, some people get, some people don’t etcetera, and and that becomes a problem. So that’s basically the whole gamut of interactions. You can have that work related mental health.

[00:43:21.80] spk_1:
So what is so what is the best way? By the way, I don’t know if you can hear There’s vacuuming because I have a contractor preparing my stairs, and

[00:43:22.84] spk_0:
I can’t hear the vacuuming, but I I feel for you.

[00:43:44.10] spk_1:
Okay. Thank you. I was feeling for you because I thought it might be distracting. Uh, well, if you hear vacuuming or pounding, it’s on my end. Okay? There’s no one trying to break into your home. What? So what is the appropriate thing to say? Then tell us, You know, like, if you can script it, what should What should the supervisors say when the person presents with these two? You know, these

[00:46:51.98] spk_0:
two criteria? I think they should just ask, you know. Oh, I I hear you’re saying that, um I hear you saying this and that. Would you? You know, would you like us to, um, Steve, there’s a way to adjust the workplace as part of an accommodation. This is what we say to anybody who presents with a possible health issue and, um, request for help. And most people will say No, I don’t I don’t want to do it as an accommodation. Um, and I’m saying this also with the caveat that you should go to your own HR department and find out how they want you to do this, but because they have their own practices and they have their own attorneys that have decided how to do it at your organization. But the key thing is, a lot of people at the organization don’t understand that regularly. People are saying things that could be a request for accommodation. And the fact that you would take it more seriously if I say I have bipolar disorder than depression is on its face. Discriminatory because you know you don’t realize it because you’re just thinking you’re being nice. You’re being supportive. Um, you know, But, um, but it’s just it’s just it’s better to have a uniform approach where anytime anybody shares any kind of health need while asking for for some kind of change at work, you refer someone, and if somebody just shares it like I said, I have bipolar disorder. Um, don’t assume they need help. So that’s the other piece. You need both elements before you offer the accommodation for all. Otherwise, there’s some lessons about generally how to talk about mental health. Um, and people can get resources that I promoted on the conference. I guess we could add a link to go with this podcast. But I could say that you are l, um, Dispute resolution and Mental Health Initiative is where you can get the free resources. So it’s D r M h initiative dot org. There’s a lot of resources there to help you figure out ways to talk about mental health and empowering ways. Um, one example is person first language. So you wouldn’t say Dan is bipolar because that’s defining me by my condition. You would say Dan has bipolar disorder, or Dan, um, you know, has a diagnosis of bipolar, you know, or whatever it may be, Um, the other thing is, you should really never make any assumptions. So when someone says something to you, the easiest thing to say is, Oh, what What do you want me to know from that? What do you want me to know from that? Instead of jumping in and saying, Oh, I have a friend who also has, um, you know, depression, right? Or I’m depression myself. I’m anxiety. You know, someone says to you, Hey, I’m mentioning, um that I have, uh, I’ll use me again as an example. Bipolar disorder, you can say. Oh, Dan, I hear you. You know what? What do you want me to know from that? And I said, Oh, you know what? I’m fine. I don’t need anything. I’m just open with everyone so that, you know, I just was saying it because it’s just what I do to feel more comfortable or it’s just part of what I do for my work. Um, but but But most people, when they hear something like that, they go into their hole on their whole inner wheel in their head. Um oh, what do I do to help this person?

[00:46:53.73] spk_1:
What I read about that. Yeah, I

[00:47:03.18] spk_0:
read about that. And it’s the actual advice to take care of. This is it’s actually quite simple. Don’t listen to yourself. Listen to the person who’s talking and make sure you hear what their ideas are and what their desires are. Um, to guide the conversations and there’s a lot more to it than that. You can get those resources again at D. R. M. H initiative dot org.

[00:47:19.48] spk_1:
Okay. Okay. Um, since we’re talking so much about bipolar, why don’t you acquaint folks with what it means to have a diagnosis of bipolar.

[00:49:52.37] spk_0:
Sure, well, but well, every mental health diagnosis because of the nature of what a mental health problem is, where it affects your thoughts and feelings and behaviors is unique to each individual. So I don’t want anyone to generalize from my story to other people. But I have bipolar disorder. It’s a mood disorder, which means I have trouble regulating my moods to some degree. And because it’s bipolar, there’s two different types of ends of the spectrum. On the one hand, there’s the low mood, which is depression. Um, what differentiates me from someone who has a diagnosis of depression is there’s also periods of high moods, which can be mania or hypomania. Traditionally, people think of that as you get very euphoric. Um, but you can also, which means very happy. But you can also have a very upsetting or dysphoric mania. And there’s a lot. There’s a lot of complexity, so I don’t want people to walk away thinking they know what it means that someone has bipolar for me. I was 19, um, in college, and I didn’t sleep for four straight days until I was then hospitalized and they checked my brain and, um, saw that I didn’t have drugs in my system. I didn’t have a brain abnormality physically on the scan and diagnosed me with bipolar disorder. Because if you have one of these big up episodes where you don’t sleep and you talk faster than I’m talking right now and you engage in erratic behaviors, um, that is definitive for a diagnosis of bipolar. Basically. So, um, if you just have depression, you don’t know if someone’s going to have depression or not, because you need to see that up episode to know that somebody has bipolar disorder. So for me, I was 19. I had that episode in college. I missed a semester of school, you know, got hospitalized and I’ll stop the story there. But it’s obviously a long story of life with a mental illness. Um, and it’s complicated, and it’s just one of many people’s different stories. Some people go to the hospital. Some people don’t. Some people take medications some people don’t, and that’s why what’s important is to let people tell their story and tell you what they want you to know. Instead of asking your own questions and pro and probing. Um, what? Your question was totally appropriate, Um, for this podcast. But in general, if you’re at work, you know, you keep your head down, and when someone brings it up to you, you listen to them and you ask them what they want to talk about. And you follow some of the other skills that you can learn to be empowering and talking about mental health.

[00:49:54.57] spk_1:
So a better way to ask. What would you like me to know

[00:49:57.77] spk_0:
about? What Would you like me to know and or just Yeah, or just I mean, you can say diagnosed. You can say anything, but yeah. I mean,

[00:50:05.84] spk_1:
what would you like me to know

[00:51:19.56] spk_0:
about what you’re saying, what you know or what are you? What are you trying to convey to me? You know, the idea is less about specifically what you say and more about showing the person a few things. So number one is I’m listening to you. I want to hear your ideas and your story. You’re you’re empowered in this conversation. So that’s one thing you’re trying to do. The other thing that I mentioned earlier, it’s really important is I’m not judging you and singling you out to treat you differently than other people. So those are the themes that you want to show with. Everything you’re trying to do is to say we we we check in on everybody who is absent, we check in and everybody who misses deadlines, you know, we have the same conversation. It’s better to give a written handout because with the written handout, um, people can see Oh, yeah, You didn’t just make this up just because you’re freaked out by me. You you give this out to everybody. So those are the key principles that are the most important. And if you say the wrong thing along the way, um, you know that’s not always pleasant for someone. But if they can see that you’re really trying to be fair and treat them like somebody else and if they can see that you’re really trying to listen to them, then you’re going to have a good outcome. And and that’s not just when there’s a mental health problem involved, that’s actually all communication. Um, you know, in all interactions, it’s good to do those

[00:51:22.44] spk_1:
things listening,

[00:51:23.50] spk_0:
listening, listening

[00:51:24.73] spk_1:
just as I just cut you off as you’re talking. But I’m saying, but I’m emphasizing, Yeah, listening appropriately. Careful

[00:52:24.25] spk_0:
listening. Um, and what happens with mental health is a lot of times people see mental health niche and they start panicking about what do I do? What do I do? And it’s like, actually, you should really just focus on treating everyone great all the time, and then you won’t have any problems. And and And that’s where I come in as a trainer or, um, you know, to help different organizations is, you know, basically what happens is they have They have some missteps and how they’re dealing with mental health. And so we address those. But it’s actually addressing the culture for everyone because as we started, um, this podcast 100% of people are having mental health needs 100% people, um, you know, might need to communicate about feeling sad or worried or overwhelmed or having a rough day and and and these skills will benefit in all those situations. Um, you know, as long as you get to that mindset of the empowerment and treating everybody the same, all

[00:52:50.55] spk_1:
right, that’s excellent. And I’d like to leave it there if you make you make your points very, very clear. Very succinct. I do want to leave folks with DRM H initiative dot org for Dispute resolution and Mental Health Initiative. DRM h initiative dot org For all the valuable resources you were talking about, Dan Dan Burstein, founder M. H. Mediate Dan, Thank you very much.

[00:52:51.89] spk_0:
Thank you for having me.

[00:53:56.85] spk_1:
Awesome. Valuable Thank you and thank you for being with tony-martignetti. Non profit radio coverage of 21 NTC were sponsored at the conference by turn to communications turn hyphen two dot c o Next week. More 21 NTC panels If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty, be with me next week for nonprofit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for May 24, 2019: Small Dollar Donor Power & Donor Retention

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My Guests:

Sara Kerrigan of ActBlue and Carrie Mann of Friends of the Earth

Sara Kerrigan & Carrie Mann: Small Dollar Donor Power
Small dollar donors are shifting the digital fundraising landscape. Our panel reveals basic principles of running a sustainable program online. They’re Sara Kerrigan from ActBlue and Carrie Mann with Friends of the Earth. (Recorded at 19NTC)





Laura Cole and Paul Habig of Sanky Communications

Laura Cole & Paul Habig: Donor Retention
Now that you’ve got new donors, learn how to keep them with you: Avoid retention pitfalls, leverage technology and track the right metrics. Our teachers are Laura Cole and Paul Habig, both from Sanky Communications. (Also recorded at 19NTC)





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Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.

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Hello and welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio Big non-profit ideas for the other 95% on your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with Skip Tosa Maya sis, if I got infected with the idea that you missed today’s show Small dollar donor power Small dollar donors are shifting the digital fund-raising landscape. Our panel reveals basic principles of running a sustainable program online. They’re Sara Carrigan from Act Blue and Carry man with Friends of the Earth that was recorded at 19 and TC. And don’t a retention now that you’ve got new donors, learn how to keep them with you. Avoid retention pitfalls, leverage technology and track the right metrics Our teachers, our Laura Cole and Paul Hey Big, both from Sang Ki communications that’s also recorded in 1990 si on Tony’s Take two. Be a good American. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising Data driven and technology enabled Tony dahna slash pursuing by Wagner CPS guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com and by text to give mobile donations made easy Text NPR to 444999 Here is small dollar donor power. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of 19 ntcdinosaur. What that is it’s a 19 2019 non-profit technology conference. You know that we’re in Portland, Oregon, at the convention center. All of our 19 ntcdinosaur views are brought to you by our partners at Act Blue Free fund-raising Tools to help non-profits make an impact with me. Now are Sarah Kerrigan seated next to me? Email Director Attack blew and carry man, Deputy Director of digital membership and advocacy at Friends of the Earth. Carry Sarah. Welcome. Thanks. Carrots are looked upon with Welcome. Welcome. Both of you. Welcome the non-profit radio. Okay. Your topic is the largest group of untapped charitable givers. Small dollar donors. Um, Sarah, what do you feel like? Non-profits don’t fully appreciate about small dollar donors. Why do we need this session? Yeah, well, I think it’s really important. I would actually say that non-profit They actually do really appreciate small dollar donors that I’ve that I’ve seen on. Really? The our goal of the presentation was just doing power non-profits to take the case to their boards or their directors and say like, Hey, this is actually like a really good use of fund-raising on. And it’s also a really good way to engage people move their mission forward. Sometimes it just takes somebody to really, like, dive deep into email on to dive deep into those fund-raising strategies for people to feel empowered to take that business case, you know, straight to their organizations. Okay, carrot. So I assume you’re working with ActBlue. Yes, we are. OK. Were you the person that Sarah just referring to? I went to your leadership and said, this is worth investing in. That was before my time. But it’s carried on. Yeah. OK, so so glad that your predecessor did that. All right, All right, So where’s the best place to start? Well, uh, if we’re if we don’t feel we are capturing all our potential in small dollar donors, where What’s the first thing that we need to have in place before we can be effective with the campaign? Yeah, that’s a really good question. Eso actually email is the driver of the vast driver of all contributions. So, really, all you need is an email program, andan email list and just a message, and you can easily write your own emails and send it out to your audience. Of course, you can use an act, Liu wink if you so choose, Um, but, yeah, it’s really, really easy to tap into small dollar donors. Really, all you need is an email address and names, and then you can go ahead and get started. Okay, you don’t have to screen for who the best the best prospects are. Well, now, I mean, there’s also there’s other different acquisition strategies that you can absolutely use. But if you’re just starting from ground zero like really, all you need is an email list, a new email address, and you can get started with your own fund-raising. Okay, Alright, Carrie, how how successful has been at Friends of the Earth? It’s been huge for our programas a hole. When I first started in front of the Earth, we had about 225 2 150,000 people on their email lists, and it was raising a pretty negligible portion of our budget. Now we have about one point 8,000,000 people on our list, and it’s raising over two and 1/2 $1,000,000 a year. All right, all right. That’s, uh, explosive. How do we define what does? Does the definition of small dollar donation Barry from organization, organization or you feel like it’s all pretty consistent, Like we’re talking like 15 $2025? Is that Is that what friends of the Earth that you define small dollar when you have these conversations? Yeah, I mean, really, we aren’t going to turn down $1,000 contribution if somebody wants to do that online. But for the most part, we’re seeing people giving and more of that $1,000 30 to $50 range online on DH. Just giving, sometimes more than once a year, three or four times a year. And yeah, that lower dollar level. Okay, All right. So, Sarah, I have I have small dollar on my T shirt. How does ActBlue define what’s on my T shirt? Yeah, sure. So a small dollar donorsearch buddy who makes a contribution of 250 or less? That’s pretty much the standard that we use, but basically the whole goal about engaging small dollar donors that that goes beyond raising money. I mean, these are people who are marching their protest ng they’re volunteering, and they’re really pushing. Non-profits causes forward and That’s really the message that we want to drive home, that it’s just like it’s not just about like fund-raising. It really is about building of movement, a powerful movement of people on DH. Usually that massive movement of people that we see are small dollar donors because they’re the most engaged. Okay, Okay, um, you’re in your session. You talk about some basics principles of running a sustainable small dollar program. So let’s start with uses were way. Stay with you. I should say, uh, what, you got to start with some basic principles. Yeah, sure, I’m the number one thing. Is this treating your supporters with respect? I mean, we live in a world right now where there’s just so much content, like were saturated with content, especially is Carrie and I are both email professionals. It’s just so important to really look at your email program and say, like, you know, we really should choose a tree. Donors with respect there’s a lot of email programs out there that kind of focus solely on fund-raising and bottom line in our in our position is we really need to build like a sustainable program again, where we just create content where people feel like you know, they want to be on the email list and they want to donate and they want to give and they want to get their time, money and energy towards the mission. How do we show that respect? Well, there’s lots of different ways Way don’t hold off on Don’t hold back on non-profit radio listeners. Yeah, How do we How do we show it took off a couple ways? Sure, eso being honest with people about why you’re asking him to give money is very important. I’ll use an example about recurring donations. Something that we have found really successful is when we just asked people like, Hey, like, can you give a monthly $3 donation to support our cause? A lot of people shy away from that because like, Oh, my gosh, I’m asking somebody to give 35 $10 a month. That seems like a pretty big ask, but really, just being honest and upfront about what you’re doing and why it’s important is super important. Also, being timely, being like relevant to the moment is super important, like people want to be engaged on. People really want Teo hear from your organization, right when the moment happens, thinking about like family separation of the border. They’re just so many people who wanted to be involved and so having a way to talk directly to supporters. Eyes really important. So I was a honest, timely And of course you need to add value, Tio. I mean your email program. It’s definitely a two way street, right? We’re not just sending mathos ostomel just of fund-raising really has to add value to the support of this border has to feel engaged into your mission on DH. That’s another great way that email like, serves that purpose. What is what is friends of the Earth do carry to show this respect that Sarah’s talking about? Yeah, So if you think about what motivates a small dollar donor to give, it’s not necessarily because they care about the specific organization. They’re really trying to advance their values through through there giving, and that’s the way they see themselves as being able to make change in the world. So as we’re fund-raising from our small dollar donors, we want to give them the credit for the work the organization can do. Those aren’t our victories. There actually are donors victories when we win a campaign, it’s because people gave us $5 out of their Social Security checks, and they deserve the credit for that. Like that’s not ours. So how do you share that specifically What? How does friends of the Earth share that? Sure that impact. Yeah. We always use a lot of you language in all of our messaging. So we never say Friends of the Earth And this we say you did this. We want to make sure the word you appears in almost every paragraph in an email whenever we possibly Can you say if you save this or you change the law? Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Okay. It’s time for a break. Pursuant. The art of first Impressions. How to combine strategy analytics and Creative two captive to captivate new donors and keep them coming back. That’s their e book on donor acquisition. It’s still up on the listener landing page. How do you make that smashing? First impression donor-centric keep them. This is how you keep them coming to you. It’s at Tony dahna. I’m a slash pursuant with a capital P make the capital P for pursuing this week. Now back to small dollar donor power. Like, how often do you communicate with you? Share the impact with somebody who’s let’s say, has gives three times a year is only at those three times, not it all way. Always want to be intertwining sametz impact messaging in every communication that we send for friends of the earth. That’s about an e mail a day for most people. So every single day, just reinforcing that narrative of like you can change laws, you can change policies you’re empowered to do. These things, whether you’re giving, are signing a petition or making a phone call to your decision maker. It’s all part of the same set of impact methods. So, like, it doesn’t really matter what way they’re engaging with us. We always want to be rewarding the impact that they’re having. Okay, so someone makes thes donations typically online. I’m assuming we’re talking about small dollar because they’re coming from e mails. All right, so they get an immediate getting immediate acknowledgement. Thank you. Absolutely. Okay. And then what would be the next? Uh, suppose it was a $25 gift. They get immediate. Thank you. When’s the next time would be the next day? You said. You said everyday. Is there any Is there any suspension of suspension of mailing for a couple days to give the person a break or they hear from you is like Day two. They’re going to get going, get some impact message. They could get something to hours later. Even if something happens out in the world and we need Teo, go to them and ask them to respond again. Like, for example, if somebody gives to help stop drilling in the Arctic. And then two hours later, Trump releases his next Arctic drilling plan. We’re not going to hold back that information from our supporters were going to share that with them, even if they just donated and ask them two hours earlier that gave $25 you’ll ask him to give again. We may not ask them to give again, but we would ask them to take action in some way, maybe to volunteer, get old solution way call legislator or something that Okay. Uh, all right. How about, uh, another? Well, honesty. You said honesty. I mean, they got don’t do flush out honestly do we mean? I think is pretty well understood. No, don’t lie to your supporters. Don’t like their potential. Supporters don’t like anyone. I think that’s just I don’t think that’s going further with that another we got lots of We got lots of time together. So still talking about basic principles of, ah, successful campaign, you want to stick with you, Go ahead. Yeah. So I think you touched on a little bit, Sarah, but with urgency and just making sure that when you’re asking people to give its relevant in that moment and you’re convincing them that by giving it will have an immediate impact. Still like, for example, if a bill is moving through the legislature right now like that’s why your contribution matters today, not tomorrow, not two weeks from now. And just constantly reinforcing that like this is the moment to engage. And if you want to have the maximum impact, now is the time. OK, Sarah. Another another principle. Yeah, sure. And she touched on and carry touched on this before. Teo, we really want to focus on building what I call horizontal relationships with our supporters. A lot of times non-profits and organizations across the board say, you know, we have this solution chip in if you want. Like we have this very big idea. We we’ve got it cover, but, you know, chip in to help us. But what we want to do is kind of take that messaging and move away from it. So it’s actually really saying to supporters like Hear that Here’s this issue. Let’s fight on it together. We cannot do it around about you helping us do it right, right, right. And it’s very, very easy on an email marketing to literally put help us in every single email. Ask. Well, Windows won’t eliminate the help us, and we actually really want to bring the supporter in. And I was telling folks during our presentation, There’s a study in the UK about horizontal relationships in sustainable giving, and people who are asked by their peers are actually twice as likely to give, which is really, really incredible on DH. That’s just something that we really want people to focus on for writing emails that sound like they’re coming from your parents. We like a vertical relationship. You probably want to stay away from that. You probably want to make sure that it’s really coming from like a respected here peer-to-peer peer-to-peer rancor. And that’s where that is from. Okay? Yeah. Okay. Um, why don’t we just keep taking off principles of success? I mean, I imagine that was a lot of your was a lot of yourself. Have you done your session yet? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. You’re on the downside then. Okay. I’m assuming a lot of your session was best practices. Basic principles. Yeah. Success in this thing? Yes. In this small dollar campaign. Give us another one. E. I mean, there’s there’s just so many. Another thing Teo is just having, like, a really, really clear email copy and just making it very simple for people to understand. Does that include short? Well, it depends. And email. We always say it defends. You should always, like test, but basically making sure that people the average like person spends 11.6 seconds reading your email, which is actually pretty long compared tto in the past. But it’s still 11.6 seconds. So just making sure that your email copy is super super clear. Your asks. They’re super clear. Your supporter is not left wondering what they khun D’oh! In that moment to drive the whole mission on the whole organization Forward. I mean, a lot of times I’ll see an e mail that has text, uh, wrapped around on action box in the in the upper right tech starts on the left. But if you want to cut right to the chase, there’s the language of the petition that we’re asking you to sign, Right? Just click there. You have to read the text explanation If you don’t want to. Yeah, yeah, and that’s accessible to everybody. Right? Like some readers like like to just immediately go on Like say, Okay, I know what I want to dio that. And then some people really like just like taking their time and background. Some people really feel down Notes of five foot note down the bottom, right, right. And being open to all levels of like readership is really important to we talked about in our training the power using inclusive language and making sure that your email copy is accessible, accessible to everyone, which is also I think that is very important in the state. How do you How do you ensure accessibility it was a couple of different ways to do that. Carrie actually mentioned a really good point with her email program, which I’ll let her talk more about. But usually people are 65 and over on email lists. So, Carrie, I’m going to kick it off to you to talk specifically about how you made it more accessible on your list. Yeah. So one of the things that we experimented with this font size. You know, a lot of people think that if you’re reading something on a mobile device, you want it to be clearly fitting the screen. But we actually found that for our older audiences, we needed 18 point fun on Mobile, which, if you think about what that looks like kind of computer, it’s huge on your phone. That’s like three lines can fit in the screen. But we tested it, and it just universally work better. Okay, Okay. How about what else do you test? What does the mother’s subject line, who signs we test took off? Well, name some names of other things besides everything. So, in one email, for example, if we’re sending a fund-raising message, we might test the subject line we might test the content. We might test the language on the donation page both in the headline of the donation page and on the body of the donation page. And we might test the ask amounts all in the same all at the same time. And so we really want to test every single piece of the experience all the time. Those of the results that were going to get back in a matter of minutes. We also might be doing some kind of long term testing. Like, for example, what happens if we segment based on highest previous gift? We might need to test that for six months to really understand the impact that’ll have. So while we’re doing all of this testing in the moment, we’re also have this backdrop of the long term testing that we’re running behind the scenes. Did you say you have one point 8,000,000 was 1.31 point. Okay, so you have the luxury of having a large, large numbers that you can test with. So I suppose a list supposed listens only 10,000. Can you still do? Abie testing with 10,000 persons list? Yeah. What? I’d like to tell people is don’t worry about getting sister’s school significance or being like a data purest. It’s fine. The goal, really for, like, email eyes just to improve your email content so that you can raise more money. That’s really all it takes. I mean, you, Khun segment off a 10,000 list into, like to, what? 2,000 list for subject lines and just see if there’s a bumper. Not really. Doesn’t have to be that complicated. And again, like our goal. For me, for AC Blue and for Carrie is like to make in this presentation is really It’s like, take, like the fear out of email and actually make it to listen right? Exactly. That’s what I should have said. The whole university invention non-profit treyz right there. There you go ahead. I cut you off. No, it’s okay. I know, but really it’s like take the fear out of e mail on DH to take the fear out of fund-raising. This is something that anyone could. D’oh! Yeah, Okay, Okay, That would be a good rap up play point, but we have another 10 minutes left. Ok? Because this is 1/2 hour segment Yeah, so I’m not letting you off the hook, so that would be good. Rap will come back to you later, okay? In about 10 minutes. So let’s keep talking about I don’t know testing. Is there anything more we can say about testing? Either of you carry Sara about anything more you want to add about testing? I think the big thing is look for the stuff that’s going to have the greatest impact. So you know, you might test two versions of your content, but if it’s only one line difference, then you’re probably going to see a really small change. As a result of that is opposed to completely rewriting the E mail, you’ll probably see a much bigger change. And it’s not really that much more investment of time to create the much more different version and the results that you get well, just be that much more valuable. So we really look for the places that we can make those radical improvements or something we’ll just radically fail. But then at least we know, you know, rather than constantly testing around the margins. Okay, Okay. Test for significance. What have you found about who signs an email. You have signers to your email? Yeah. Now, of course, this is unique. Understands unique Teo, Friends of the earth. Thes result. Your your results may vary, but what has friends of yours found for us? Who signs What? Successful? Yeah. So we test it in two places. One is the sender, and one is who actually has their name at the bottom of the text. We have found that it makes osili no difference whose name is at the bottom of the texts. But the sender could make a really huge difference for us. The organisation’s name is usually the winner. So coming from friends of the Earth beats coming from our president’s name. But the thing that actually wins the most is just like a totally random like climate alert or be action. Something that is about the issue rather than about the organization or an individual. And that’s as a sender. Yes. Oh, interesting. Okay. Okay. Um Okay, so we’ve exhausted testing. We feel like you said everything. It was there more. Anything more. You want to know about testing, testing principles? Yeah, I think it’s just important for all testing. It’s really like optimizing your content ofthe devising your ask amounts, and it’s just a continual thing. Having one test for email is probably a good place to start and again, Really, anybody could do this. Yeah, okay, okay, Let’s continue with our basic principles. That good. Keep going, Sarah. Cool. Another basic principle. Trying to think. I mean, there’s just there’s just so many We went through so many again trying to think, Let’s get carried. You got one. You got one in mind in your mind, I think, like relevance is super important. Like, what do your supporters actually care about? It’s probably not the same thing that your organization’s leadership or even your organization staff really care about. So try to think about it from your supporters perspective. Like, what is it that makes them get excited about in our example? Environmental protection like water, the things that are their core values And how do you speak to those things like it’s probably not the amendment to the budget bill that’s passing through the house tonight. You know, that’s probably not thinking about Okay, right? How do you find that out? How do you know what your supporters were interested in? So I think some of it comes from just listening to the different staff of the organization who interact with supporters. If you have people who work in the community like if your service organization than get their stories go out on a site, visit with them for us. We always talk to our donorsearch Mrs Staff, who answered the phone from donor-centric leave the major donor calls, but the it’s all dollar donors who might give through direct mail or other channels who actually called the office to give us feedback that Khun just give a really interesting perspective on how people are interacting with us and then even things like social media or people who hit Reply on your mass e mail. You know it’s not data driven, but it can kind of guide some of your thinking and get you out of the bubble. So these air folks who call probably to complain about something sometimes I’m guessing most of the time, most of time, right. But you’re able to turn that call around first by satisfying hearing the principles we talk, you know, validating their concern, apologizing, fixing it on. Then you can get information from them about what it is that motivates them around. Friends of the Earth work? Absolutely. Yeah. So staff is all trained to do that. It doesn’t just happen. Doesn’t just happen. Staff is intentionally trained, you know, Let’s get some information while we’ve got these people on the phone and they’re feeling good, um, you’re familiar with the service recovery paradox. I’m not? No. Okay, that’s that because we’re talking about people calling and complaining. Ah, a person will be a person will be mohr committed to a brand. If there’s been a problem and it got solved, then if there was never a problem because they got the opportunity to be heard they had the opportunity to interact with staff on the problem. Presumably get solved. So they’ll be they’ll be more committed than the person who never has a problem, right? I think that that’s why it’s paradox Interesting. Okay, um, more principles. Sarah passed last time. So no person are you, Carrie, You give another one. Since we’re with you, then we’ll come back. So I’m never going back. But she passed up returns. Think if you’re talking about small donor fund-raising, you always want to make sure that you’re giving people the right ascot the right time. So if someone’s capable of giving $30 don’t ask him for five. If someone’s capable of giving $5 don’t ask them for 250. You know, all of our son isms have data, or you, Khun do some analytics to find out what each individual donors has previous gift is or if they’ve never given before you contest into what makes the most sense. But you want to be talking to people and meet somewhere there at rather than trying to, like a massively over sell them in a way that isn’t accessible. Okay, Okay. Before I ask you for principal, I’m gonna ask you, Sarah, how does one become a email? Your director of director of email? Yeah. That’s not a That’s not a major. No, no, we don’t go to college for that. How do you do? You work your way into that? Yeah, sure. So I graduated college and I it worked as a field organizer for then Senate Senator Kay Hagan. So I really liked what state? The state of North Carolina. OK, Yeah. I’m sorry. I should know that I should I own two homes in North Carolina. Really? Pinehurst and Emerald Isle. Okay, but I’m not from there. Yeah, I didn’t know. Okay, Don’t. Yeah. Now it’s now it’s ber until us all right now the current. Yeah, we lost another current guys. Yeah, but I didn’t know. Okay? Yeah. Eso graduated field organizer. I love talking to people, but I didn’t think that knocking on doors was going to be my life’s calling And my life’s work. Eso ended up getting into digital fund-raising Just because I was just you could talk to people at a massive scale which is really empowering and very cool Uses both sides of your brains. You could be like creative. But of course, we’ve talked a lot about testing on this times. You kind of have a science to it. Also right. Eso I’ve spent like 4 to 5 years and political fund-raising, so I work for the DSCC. I work for Revolution Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Okay. Yeah. I worked for a revolution messaging a za consultant there, and I was formally the deputy email director at the Democratic National Committee, the DNC, where we had a multi $1,000,000 programme and I’m up at blue. So I’ve been very fortunate to have really great, like female mentors on work on female teams. And so I credit them a lot. Teo, you know where I’m at today on DH. There is a lot of space for women to be an email. There’s a lot of space for young people to be an email on DH. There’s a lot of space for people who haven’t really been involved in email. Toe start. I was with a panel yesterday, which was called I don’t have you know, I left him back in the hotel yesterday’s notes, but was called grit. Female was basically female technologists go that you’re nodding. I didn’t It’s okay, but it was great how to be a successful female in technology. That right? Very good, Carrie, how’d you work your way into being an email scientist? Yes. So I started answering. Our phone line for donorsearch vis is which is why I feel so strongly about your whole career’s friends of the earth. Yet so far on. And basically I discovered that I really wanted to have an impact on the issue that issues I cared about. But I didn’t really want to be dressing up in a suit and going in meeting with a lot of people on the hill. I really wanted to be, you know, out in the field, talking Teo really human beings. And email was just the right mix of those things where I could ask people for money to help further the mission. Or I could give people the tools to lobby their own. Elected officials are whatever the action mechanism was, it was all in my fingertips, and I never have to put on the suit, so that looks okay, doesn’t it? Okay, so we’re back to you practice. Best practice. Did you think of one since the last time? Yeah, I think so. Back to what Carrie was saying about multi-channel about talking to other people within the organization. I think that that is really, really important. Usually when I started a new organization, or like every three months, I’ll talk Teo, just different folks just to get some authenticity and authentic voice. I mean, people are craving authenticity and email, so that’s a really good way to do it. Another thing. That and another question that I got during the panel was direct mail and email. And how do those two things relate? And can they co exist? My personal opinion is yes, they absolutely can. You can use direct mail pieces and email vice versa. You, Khun, send email to to direct mail folks too for a multi touch, eh? So that’s another thing, too, that I think non-profits Khun really explore its really not one or the other. You can have both had someone on the panel yesterday who said that their donors loved getting. They thanked them for direct mail letters that say thank you for an email gift for non line gift. Yeah, yeah, it’s a really good way to keep your sustainers like, really happy. And that’s like your big donor based. Okay, how often would you thank sustainers as often as I can after every gift every month? Well, usually you could do in personal personalization so you can say, like, Hey, you’ve made, like, a $3 monthly donation and literally you just put Inem dash and say thank you. It’s it could be that simple, or it can be like so extreme that you write like a hand written thank you know and send it in the mail. So it just depends on what your capacity is. But just giving, you know, those donors a sense of like appreciation is super important you want. Do you want to touch them at every at every monthly donation, one way or the other? Yeah, well, I’m That’s my personal belief. I think people like they pretty much know that they’re doing a monthly donation and actually reminding people that they gave him a plea donation for us. Like I haven’t seen any dropoff whatsoever. I know a lot of people are like aholic. I’m nervous about reminding people that they have a monthly donation, but I think for us, it’s like part of a gang. Like the honesty authenticity on being up front with people in where they stand. I’ve heard it both ways. I’ve heard. Set it and forget it. Don’t remind them. But then you risk when the court expires or it gets compromised. They decide they have had enough, and I don’t really hear from them very often. But there’s two sides to that argument, right? Okay. What? Carrie, I’m gonna let you wrap it up. We got just like, 30 seconds or so left. Give us a motivation about small dollar donation campaigns. Yeah, I mean, I think for friends of the Earth, it’s really been a a game changer for us. You know, every dollar you raise online has the potential to be unrestricted. So it means that you can run the programs that you want to run as an organization without being required to do what a major donor wants you to do or what a foundation wants you to do. You could be much more flexible, and you’re empowering human beings in the real world to be a part of your cause and advanced the mission that you care about. And there’s just no better way to do that than building those relationships online. Where people, you know in the 21st century, that’s where they’re at. So we meet them where they’re also thank you. That was That was Cary Man. She’s deputy director of digital membership and advocacy at Friends of the Earth and also Sarah Kerrigan, email director. Attack Blue. Thank you Each very much. Thanks. Much pleasure. Thank you. And thank you for being with Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of 19 NTC all of our 19 1990 seon reviews are brought to you as from our partners at ActBlue free fund-raising tools that help non-profits Macon Impact. Thanks for being with us. We need to take a break. Wagner, CPS. They’re accountants, for God’s sake. Okay, you know you know what they do. Do you need one? Do you need help with your form? 9 90 is the time to change ordered firms. Perhaps they’ve got a deep rich practice for non-profits and they’re growing it. You could be a part of that. You know a partner. You know, one of the insiders Yet which tomb? He’s been on the show. Check him out. Give him, then give you a ring. Get started at wagner cpas dot com. Now time for Tony’s take two. My video is two ways to be a good American Abroad. I was in Paris for two weeks and while in Brussels, Belgium. Short hour and 1/2 train ride away. Ah, I witnessed some some bad behavior. Bad Americans abroad. There were two things that particular relating Teo language and currency and those air. But those are the two subjects. But how can you do them better than these ugly Americans that I witnessed in Brussels. That’s what the video is about. Now, I had said that earlier that my video was going to be a tour in L C C A launch control center from when I was in the Air Force. But I put this one up instead. The launch control center one is coming. I’m not cheating you out of the tour of the LCC, but right now check out two ways to be a good American abroad. You know where the video is? It’s at tony martignetti dot com. So now that you’ve got new donors, how do you keep them? Here is donor retention. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of 1990 si. You know what that is? It’s the 2019 non-profit Technology Conference. We’re in Portland, Oregon, at the Convention Center and this interview, Like all our 19 ntcdinosaur views brought to you by our partners at Act Blue Free fund-raising tools to help non-profits make an impact, I guess now are Laura Cole and Cole. Hey, Big Laura is director of account Services at Sancti Communications. Paul is president of Sank a communications Welcome. Welcome, Laura. Welcome poem Well, thank you. Thank you so much for having us. Pleasure. You’re seminar topic is finders keepers the art of donor of retention? I don’t know how many guests have been on non-profit radio telling us that the cost of retaining a donor is so much less than the cost of acquiring a new donor. More. Let’s start with you. What are what are non-profits Just not getting them. This is not just within the past six months. For years we’ve been talking about donorsearch tension problems. Retention rate is so low, I don’t know what the most current is, but it’s it’s it’s sad, Whatever it is, what are we not getting right? And you’re welcome to give the most recent stat if you I’m sure you know it. So I think it’s a great point and I think one of the reasons why we wanted to talk about it today and in our session. We really focused on it too. Is that this? This December was definitely a challenge for a lot of non-profits, and it was particularly a challenge for getting new donors in the door. And that means that retention becomes that much more important and to your point. Retention doesn’t happen. You really have to tow work and focus on your communications to make sure that you’re building that relationship because it’s donors are going to give. But you have to take that is the first step of the relationship and really work on cultivating them so that they’re going to become lifelong donors. Paul, Why we’ve been talking about this for so long. Why are non-profits not getting the message that Laura just redid? Rated for the 1,000,000 times? You know, I ended the session off with the audience and said to them, You’ve already done. You’ve really done your session this on the down side already on our way to end it all by saying, Don’t be impatient, Don’t dahna Retention takes time. It takes time to improve it. So we did a case study with the African Wildlife Foundation, and we’ve been working with them for like seven years, and we were able to get there Don’t retention right now. Currently in two thousand eight from 2,018 upto almost 70% prior. You’re donors to give again in the second year, and it took years of planning and communicating and it really is the foundation of what we discussed. And what we believe in is that you really need to build the foundation with technology, good technology from the start. And so this organisation, we went through a really important and arduous database and technology conversion for them almost three years ago, three years ago. I think he was closer to 55 years ago, and so we were able to actually put all the pieces that you need to make this a mohr automated process to really focus on things which allowed the organization and us and freed us up to be more creative with how he spoke to donors. The campaigns that we produced for the organization and really give them an engaging donor experience throughout the 12 month period that we benchmarked this morning. All right, so it’s a long term process you need to have. You need to have infrastructure in place before you can before you can hope to move the needle on potential. It is buy-in caps. Elated. This Yeah, I know. The idea is that one of the things we’ve mentioned at the end was you have to invest. Unfortunately, we’ll invest in the technology even before we even get into donorsearch tension versus new donorsearch attention. It is important because what happens is if you don’t have that infrastructure there. Misstep and interesting. It was the way originally were caught. We’re going to call the session howto lose a donor in 10 days kind of pop culture reference for a movie. But it really is true. Is that idea that in the first part of the relationship, if you have a misstep, you probably lose a donor for life if you, you know, code them differently if you personalize something and it’s the wrong information, if you don’t thank them in a timely manner. And there’s a lot of different things that go into that so really kind of making sure that infrastructure is up and running to make sure that you don’t have those early missteps so that you can create a lifelong donor-centric to get to some of the pitfalls you have in your your description talk about pitfalls that are causing dahna patrician. So why did you want Okay, well, naming the person incorrectly. Yeah, Personal personalization is one of our most powerful tools in marketing and fund-raising, but if you call Bob Barbara, you know, you kind of lose a donor for life for sure, making sure that you I already have in motion the idea that if someone comes on brand new, this is like a data problem that people do that you’re suppressing the people who are new versus old and actually figuring out who they are. So, for instance, I make a donation. A lot of signs, some systems is that you’ll go right into the next campaign stream. But I just made my first donation. So what we can certainly do with the technology for our clients is that will create an automated program that will actually capture that new donor-centric, possibly who hasn’t giving but maybe give their email address for the first time and put them on a separate track and making sure that at the same time they’re suppressed from any other campaigns. Generally, the can kapin would have some kind of fund-raising asked. So really kind of setting the stage of their relationship for the beginning and not forgetting that they just made a donation and really trying to the information that we provide in that Siri’s is meant to be engaging in the part where it actually educates them on the mission and deeper into the program versus you know, usually probably what we brought that original donor and is on some kind of urgency, you know, really quick and got emotional reaction. But at that point, then you have there you have their attention, and you have to use it wisely. Okay, and Laura suppress them For how long? So generally, what what will work with organizations to do is to build a really robust welcome Siri’s. And that usually is at least fortified emails that will go out over, say, 2 to 3 weeks. So making sure that they complete that cycle before they start to get the regular stream of communications. So they’re not kind of being dropped in in the middle of one campaign, or they’re not getting the welcome Siri’s and that campaign. But instead they’re really sort of sitting by themselves, getting this very targeted, very tailored Siri’s that’s going to introduce them to your mission to the organization, tell them what their their donation has done before you ask again. So it’s really making sure that those and and to go back to sort of the movie reference that we made its It is like a relationship, and if you make a mistake in the first date or the second date or the third date, you’re probably not going to turn into a long term relationship. But Teo ads that question about how long it does vary from organization to organization. What we discussed this morning would be the organization that we were case studying, which is the African Wildlife Foundation. They have a membership program. So the how long is a shorter period of time because of the membership program and a lower dollar average gift for them. Repetition in marketing fund-raising is key to their success. But some organizations we work with that might start off at a much higher average gift. That’s where you’d have to really kind of b’more conscientious on the frequency and how when that next asks, Come in. So that could be you know what with the organization with membership, you might be 2 to 3 week where you’re suppressing, but an organization that has a higher average gift donor-centric month or two before or really looking at they’re giving history, so it’s not a one size fits all. It really has to be customized to each organization and what their mission and what type of donors they do have. Oh, and and also targeted to the constituent. If you’re talking about a donor that’s giving a small gift, you’re you’re going to want to suppress him for a shorter period of time than someone that gave you $10,000. That person’s going to need a lot longer period of pure cultivation before you make that ask again. Okay, let’s let’s do some more pitfalls like these pitfalls to avoid attrition. Absolutely. Go ahead, I think. One of the big ones. And this is partly why digital retention tends to be lower than direct mail. Is not making sure that you’re updating donor email addresses, whether they tell you that they have a new email address. But even more proactively finding out what the what what? Maybe someone’s new email address is called in a way or email. Change of address process. Something like that where you’re you’re actively saying, let me make sure that I can keep emailing a donor because email addresses changed much more frequently than someone’s mailing address. People don’t generally move as much as they change their email address. Maybe they go to a new job. Maybe they switch from Yahoo Hotmail. So making sure that you can keep talking to them, because if you’re not going to talk to them, you can’t make that ask. You can’t cultivate and they’re not going to get there much less likely to give again if you kind of lose touch. I’m not even sure that non-profits know a lot of them know that there are services that will do it. The email change of address for you, Yeah way the Postal Service with, like, a a national change of address I have now on the way. I have, ah, have a little personal story, my dad’s name and my name or the same Anthony martignetti, but he uses A J. He’s Anthony Joseph. I have the same middle name, but I never used the J. There’s one indicator that we’re different. Also, his his current address is not my last address. I haven’t lived there since I was nine, eighteen 18 years old. I went to college. I moved. I moved from New York City to North Carolina. More than a dozen charities started emailing Anthony J. Martignetti to my North Carolina address Charities that my dad is a is an active donorsearch. For now, he’s a small level donor. Is he’s one of those guys who writes like 15 $2025 checks, and I mean literally he does dozens of these a month. He gives a lot at the end of the year, so they were. So they were aspiring to be proactive. But there were two flags that should have been raised that that I’m not the guy, that he’s not the guy who moved the middle initial and the last address. So that brings us to another pitfall. It’s one of the major pitfalls pitfalls. A lot of non-profits full into his data issues data. Bad data can really harm donorsearch tension. So in your case, these organizations are not actually there. There, there, there, there, looking up your information. It’s either it’s household or individual. And so you can. We’ve seen this happen for organizations where you’ll get a household match, and that’s what you’re what happened with name yes, but versus an individual, which is directly just you and that address. But it brings back the point, which I think we’ll go back to our topic on pit bulls data. It could be the right that for all non-profits not. And it’s the hardest part for an organization that really both invest the time and money and resource is. That’s usually people power to make sure that you have clean data for knowing when someone is active or made a gift recently, and then you ask them by actually ask him to renew when they just renewed a month ago. Or I mentioned the personalization piece or recognizing when someone is, ah, high dollar donor-centric. And that’s one of actually the things that you mentioned. Is it really important? Sustaining giving is one of the differential factors where online retention doesn’t actually start going up from offline retention if you’re really good at recruiting sustainers or monthly givers and then making an active effort. So part of the case study with you this morning was that we’ve been actively growing the sustainers file for this organization, and it right now they’re they’re about 25 plus percent that there digital giving is coming from sustainers e-giving, which each year helped their retention grow, and that’s why they’re close to 70% now on retention because of that. But when we treat sustainers, we always recognize that there are sustainers. So even though that you don’t want to stop communicating sustainers gonna wantto forget about the organization. But we segment and we recognize their contribution and we usually put them in a lot of the engagement campaigns and cultivation. The awesome part about sustainers is they’re so engaged with the organization what I always call the 13th gift. So that will be a monthly Don’t make 12. They’ll make that 13 because they’re so engaged. But you have to really treat them well and so generally will maybe get they’ll get a matching gift campaign, maybe year, and to say, Hey, we have this match going on. We know you’re a monthly supporter, but we just wanted to bring it to your attention. It’s all about the nuance messaging and really think about that. But it goes back to the data being clean and knowing who you’re speaking to, segmenting your audiences and really paying attention to that and bad data. Really, convict can really lead, Yeah, two mistakes like that. Now you know if if it wasn’t my dad I wouldn’t be. Wouldn’t wouldn’t have given them the second chance. I just tossed it or said, You know, take me off your list. Hence, how to lose a donor in 10 days Time for our last break Text to give. Get their five part email Many course to dispel the myths around mobile giving Donations do not have to go through the donors phone company. They don’t have to be small. There aren’t large startup costs. You don’t need to know a lot of technology. You can do this. You can do mobile giving. You get the five part email, many course and it’ll explain how to get started. Um, you get that by texting NPR to 444999 You’ve got butt loads. More time for donorsearch retention anymore. Pitfalls. I liked the men I like taking off these things, that organ ords maybe doing wrong. So so along the lines of what you brought up, I think one of the biggest pitfalls is not respecting when when donorsearch Hey, I don’t want to get mail or you have the wrong address. Please update it. Donors who bothered to reach out and tell you that are very loyal donors. If they’re proactively reaching out and saying, Please send, you know, to this new email or this new postal address or this is the wrong you know, middle initial or this is the wrong no last name. Anyone who reaches out with that cares a lot about the organization. And so it’s making sure that you’re respecting that and that there’s business rules and to Paul’s point, people in place to make those updates right, because the second time, the person when the first that’s right, second request. Then you’re done. This is your you’re hurting. So absolutely that dovetails into a point of really making sure the right hands talking to the left hand, where if you’re running a campaign that you have really good donorsearch vis reps who understand what’s going on with the fund-raising department and can actually feel those questions. So they got a matching gift request, for instance, knowing that when they answer the phone that they were talking about that a lot of time. Our donors donors will call for organization to say well, might give still be matched. I’m a little late, so having someone ready to know that. But at the same time, what we find the organizations have been most successful is when they have somebody on the phone who can really take a donor complaint and make them to a lifelong donors. And it’s just really preparing them and training them on DH, treating someone like a human being and understanding that even their $25 gift is just as important as the $1,000 gift when they when they take the energy to call the organization. And generally you can really kind of swing a donor to be really lifelong supporter as long as you have somebody on the lines and the phone. Many organizations forget about that, and you made a good point this morning, which I’ll let you make about even just the last week of the year. Well, it’s It’s remembering that some of the biggest giving days on the online side are not working days. It’s the end of the year. It’s Christmas, it’s New Year’s. It’s days when the office may be closed. But if no one’s answering the phones when you have donors trying to make a gift, you know if you get back to them in January. It’s too late, you know, a sort of mist that window. And so it’s thinking about customer service, especially on those key days when, even if you know, recognizing it’s a holiday. But it’s when people are giving and needing to be there for the donors. Do either of you know the There’s a paradox service like service repair paradox or something like that in customer service, where if you’ve made a mistake and corrected it as a as a company, you will. You will have a more loyal customer than if you hadn’t made the mistake in the first place. And that’s goes to what you were describing. Pull their end well and Laura, too, that that there’s someone there responsive that actually makes the change or correct the problem. They have to be empowered to correct the problem, and if they do, you’ll have a more loyal well, it feeds over in our in our circle. It does have a more loyal donor-centric to begin with, so we made a point this morning. Another don’t was when your when your service recovery, that’s what service recovery paradox. So we made a point talking about the fact that Okay, so you’re going to make mistakes sometimes. So just say, make sure your emails rendering correctly when someone views it makes sure when someone lands on a donation form, it’s working correctly. However, technology breaks down sometimes, regardless of how much you test how great you are at that. But what I talked to the audience about is as long as you’re both timely with your apology and also just things do happen. And, you know, one of the best examples would have been Steve Jobs. When the iPhone had the antenna issue, he pretty much changed the entire power paradigm for PR in the sense of how he handled that situation where they were. They were roasting Apple at that point, and he actually turned it around and it became the best selling high phone because the way he handled that, he took responsibility and they moved on. And I think the quote was, well, technology breaks down. Actually, all phones dropped calls, and it’s not just it’s not just the iPhone and that quickly the media shifted there, but the whole idea is being quick and nimble and being able to go back out So the non-profit has an issue with their donation form or something with their sight being quick and being able to be. You know, sometimes humor works in some ways and some organization, depending on your mission. But being direct on that and really kind of talking about it and getting out getting in front of it is so important. And again, then you know that that that experience level, we actually see that a lot of the times those correction emails do perform quite well, sometimes even better than the other emails in the Siri’s. When you go back and you’re just really human and honest about what happened and take responsibility exactly that za piece of what a piece of what you’re describing all right, and and to your point earlier about the small dollar donor to remember that for that donor, that’s that’s a big commitment they’ve made for you. It’s a it’s a small amount of money, but for them it’s a big commitment, and so treating them well regardless of the amount of money that they give. And that’s one thing that the digital space allows for is that high touch treatment allows for the personalization it allows for. The customization allows those donors to feel special regardless of how much they’ve given and in terms of numbers. Sometimes the small dollar donors that given year after year and say, Hey, I’ve moved, please update it. Those may be your best plan giving prospect so you can’t dismiss them even if they’re giving you a little amount, because for them, it’s a It’s a lot I do plan. Giving consulting now 1997 carrying on and the ultimate retention I’ve seen lots of seen lots of eyes algorithms, I guess, for you know, who makes a good plan giving prospect. I still think the best plan giving prospect is that person who’s given you 23 gifts in the past 25 years exactly on the most recent one was no more than, like, six months ago or something. Yeah, they are thinking about you every single every single year, and I don’t I really don’t care. Here’s $10 a year. In some cases, I think they’re testing you, but they’re probably testing you for 23 years. But but some of those initial small dollar gifts they may be testing you do I get a thank you is a timely yeah. Did they screw things up in the thank you, you know, etcetera. So I think there’s some of that. Some of the testing on the small dollar lord to your point about small dollar donations. But they are enormously good playing, giving prospects that kind of that kind of loyalty and longevity, even if even if small, small, double digit levels very good plan giving prospects here earlier point about because acquisition is so challenging. Some one plan gift from someone who made a gift for 20 years who can pay for an acquisition program for an entire organization meeting. You know, you you invest that money 20 years ago and then you’re banking on it later on where they’ve left this entire you know, there’s a part of their state to an organization, and so it’s important, actually tracked those folks right to find out what the origin of those folks who do come in because it’s generally as you just said, those low Doyle. The donor’s really do care about the organization. That’s why they stuck around for 23 years. It is important. Look, back-up e-giving history and try and ascertain from those patterns. Hoo hoo! Your other good prospects are. Yeah, and that’s one thing we spoke about at the session is, is the data side of it is is to really track retention and really leverage it. You have to have the data collection in place. You have to know who your donors are. You need ideas for them. So you contract. They’re giving year over year, but you also need to be able to identify where they came from in the first place. If you want to invest smart going forward, you have to know what your investments really yielded in the past. And so the cost of acquisition. What’s the source? The source, the source? And what did it cost exactly? And even if it was a long time ago, being able to know what that was is really valuable. That’s a great transition anymore, Waken say about technology. I mean, well, you both in it a lot. There’s no anymore more strategies around technology that he needs to be in place. So Paul touched on it, and I think it’s important is to recognize that your technology can can work for you or against you and recognizing where it it is working for you and maybe where it’s it’s presenting challenges and and maybe those air too much, and you’re really costing yourself on the retention side for not investing in technology. But it’s also recognizing that technology without the people to really leverage it isn’t going to get you very far that you need data people you need. You know, people who know how to use the technology and can really make it work for you. So I think it’s It’s technology, by itself is not powerful. It’s technology and people and subsided. And what you’re saying is you have to hire the expertise that you need. If it’s not a full time employee, you have to get a consultant freelancer. You can’t You can’t manage this and master it on your own on DH. That’s not your expertise anyway. You’re zan inefficient use of your own time or your organization’s time to try to master something that you don’t know you need to. You need to invest in the talent that you need because the organizations are good at their missions. You know, in many ways, right, it’s not really about marketing or technology or database management. I mean, it does. It does come to that. Sometimes you and I think also a point you made earlier that that I do think sometimes gets lost is that when when it comes to our attention, sometimes it’s it’s fancy technology and automation and behavioral driven content. And sometimes it’s the basics. It’s the acknowledgement. Did you send an acknowledgement? Did it talk about the impact that the gift had did it? You know, thank the donor an appropriate way. Was it sent out on time? So with all the bells and whistles that are out there in technology now, it’s important to not forget those fundamentals and to make sure that those air in place, regardless of whether you have a staff of 10 or one very well said you should be co presidents. Take note of that account services sounds sounds beneath her to mate. We’ve been working together for 10 years. It’s true. That’s good. Yeah, co President. Um, okay, let’s look metrics. You talk about metrics to measure churn and retention. Who wants to wants to kick off the metrics? We got like, four more minutes left together. So you want to start for so the biggest thing when it comes to metrics is, is having the data in place and knowing whether or not you even have the data to track it. And the key for retention is that you’re tracking donorsearch cohorts. So it’s not talking about the total number of gifts that’s talking about donors and specific groups of donor. So when you want to measure overall retention from one year to another, you need to know which donors gave in your one and which donors went onto given year, too. So so if you can actually identify that because you don’t have the ideas or you don’t have the data in biology infrastructure, just talking, you’re not going to get anywhere. And similarly, knowing someone who’s new versus who’s who’s renewed is quite important because going back to the point you made earlier about acquisition, the retention of a new donor right now hovers around 25%. And so really tension of a 1st 3rd 1st time, first time donors so well, so organized organization whose 75% of the people they broke time don’t Yeah, and so there is making sure you have the ability to track these things so that you actually then Khun, figure out you’re targeted strategies towards these groups, treating them separately in some ways and actually having creative and ideas and specific pieces that go to them so that you can retain those vote for people. We kind of haven’t touched upon it. But a lot of the strategies that we’ve been implementing with great success is trying tio convert a lot of those first time donors into sustainers, and that really has helped lift the program’s on the digital side and where digital retention for the overall programs have have been on the rise a little bit, and particularly with this organization that we case study today African Wildlife Foundation that was the sustainers program has been really one of the key to the success of really good online retention because we really quickly move folks from their first gift and have strategies to convert them to sustainers and then due to individual sustainers drives where it could be coupled with the match and really kind of back to really strong, evocative creative that goes back to for there in this mission is, you know, poaching of elephants and the crisis that’s going on there, but it works with other organizations to. And so the success of those programs and then having the data to make sure that you actually keep the retention of your sustainers is another really important factor because that there’s there’s low hanging fruit that that could be easily forgotten or missed by organizations on when credit cards expire and making sure that you really invest in that channel, you know, And it’s actually more channels that we’re discussing this morning. Not only sometimes email does not work to retain a sustainer, you actually need to use offline and send it direct mail piece or take it even further. And sometimes we’ll do telemarketing to see if we can get that boat that person back because their their lifetime value is greater than most other sources. Why do, uh, she would just have, like, 30 seconds? How come some How come sustainers stop sustaining? I think two reasons I think one is some sustainers don’t realize that they’ve became a sustainers so generally in the 1st 2 or three months on stage, it was a mistake, and that goes back to data making sure that when you when you confirm those sustainers that you actually tell them they’re sustainers. OK, there is like a threshold where they passed 13 and four, and then you got them. The other thing is credit cards. A little scripture expire expires. Or they or yeah, exactly. And they decide to have done it long enough because you kind of want sustainers toe almost go on autopilot and, you know, and then really, you still want to engage them, But you don’t need to constantly remind them that they’re making that gift. But you wanted still engage them on your mission. So those air to areas where I’d say that where you would lose sustainers. Okay, we’ve got to leave it there. That flu fantastic was awesome. All right? Yes, they’re both with. Thank you, Communications. Paul is the president, and Laura is soon to be co president, but currently director of account Services. This interview, like all the 1990 sea interviews brought to you by our partners at ActBlue Free fund-raising tools to help non-profits Macon impact. Thanks so much for being with non-profit radios. Coverage of 1990 si next week. Tech accessibility and culture of resilience. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony. Martignetti dot com were sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits, Data driven and technology enabled. Tony dahna slash pursuing capital P by Wagner CPS Guiding YOU beyond the numbers Regular cps dot com and by text to give mobile donations. Made Easy text. NPR to 444 999 are creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. Sam Liebowitz is the line producer. Shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. The With Me Next week for non-profit radio. 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