Unknown Speaker 0:03 All right. Welcome, everyone. Good afternoon or good late morning, depending on where you are. I want to welcome you to time, talent and treasure, how open books turns donors into volunteers. Unknown Speaker 0:20 I'm with Alison Gerber here, from open books, this is going to be a little bit different. Hello, hello. Unknown Speaker 0:29 Well, this is going to be a little bit different than our usual Unknown Speaker 0:35 presentation in that this is a little bit more Unknown Speaker 0:40 interviewee conversational, there's not much of a deck. So I'm going to go through a little bit of the deck itself. First and foremost, this is being recorded. This will be added to the special resources section for this presentation. You go to neon one.com, under our resources, and you'll be able to find this this will get uploaded later today. There is some resources that we've curated, specific to volunteers. Unknown Speaker 1:11 Allison's National Volunteer Week, right? Yeah, this week is National Volunteer Week. There we go. So this is one of the reasons that we're focusing in on volunteers is because a lot of people are thinking about it right now. So we've put together a few items to help people think about that, as well as the interactions between donors and volunteers. Unknown Speaker 1:33 Work. This is very interactive, folks. In all honesty, we're going to be listened to appear. Unknown Speaker 1:40 And and so you know, if you want to ask Alison a question on her thoughts on how she's handled something, or you want to talk about, and write out what you've experienced, while working with volunteers, and donors during the pandemic, or or what your vision is moving forward. For that, let's do it. Like, let's let's, let's relax, let's have a nice conversation today. This is a discussion, this is not a lecture, Unknown Speaker 2:08 I'm going to actually take some of these items that that her and I and ourselves are going to talk about, and I'm going to show how to do this in our CRM, we have a really nifty new e communications upgrade that we've done. And so I created an email audience, you know, we can talk about the different ways that you can communicate with these cipher segments. There's some really important new data that came out from tap network and TechSoup about, you know, 41% of nonprofits don't segment at all. And I think that donors volunteers, and then that interplay, actually really deserve their own segments, in my opinion. We'll see if Allison agrees later on. Unknown Speaker 2:50 But I imagined she would. Unknown Speaker 2:54 So yeah, this is going to be pretty relaxed today, folks. But it's going to be very, very powerful, in my opinion. Unknown Speaker 3:02 You know, not every single presentation needs to be a formal lecture. But we do like setting the stage for things. Margaret Wheatley, Unknown Speaker 3:12 an author, there is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about, which I thought was a very nice quote, relating to when donors decide, you know what, I want to become a volunteer, because I love the mission that much, or vice versa, or vice versa. Unknown Speaker 3:30 But Allison actually helped me rethink this entire premise of today's conversation, because that's what, that's what we're all about. So our learning objectives are to have a conversation to learn about the interplay of when you're talking to a donor versus a volunteer. At the end of the day, they're all people, right? So what are the ways that we actually talk with those segments? And how do they inter intersect with each other? Unknown Speaker 3:57 You know, we're really, really thrilled to have one of our favorite clients on the call open books based out of Chicago. So we want to learn a little bit about their organization and what they do. And and then we're going to have a discussion with Allison. Allison, is you she's appear. She's doing the work. And so we're going to talk with her. And then I'm going to take a tiny bit at the end to apply this practically into our CRM communication suite to say, Okay, great, how do I get this data? How do I actually do something with this? This is very nice. Tim, you talked to Allison about some really impactful things. I got to do my work, though. How do I do that? I'm gonna have some ideas. But throughout this, let's have some questions. I'm paying attention. I have it on my other monitor here. So tell us a little bit about you. And then I do as part of this want to know about this picture, by the way? Unknown Speaker 4:52 For sure, for sure. So I'm Allison. I work at open books. I'm from Chicago and originally started Unknown Speaker 5:00 About my career as an AmeriCorps member, so I have always had a bit of a passion for volunteer engagement, and now get to to the other side of that and actually recruit people into the cause and support them as they volunteer. So that's how I joined open books, three, four years ago, and now have a bit of a hybrid role. So it's we Tim and I were joking around before this talking about sort of funny, my job is both fundraising and overseeing volunteers. So it's kind of a nice, nice time to get to talk about it in my particular role, Unknown Speaker 5:30 and then added up ads that I do love Ultimate Frisbee. So if you have questions about that, happy to answer them, I suppose. Unknown Speaker 5:38 Me owl, me out. Yellow is alley are the open books mascot. Unknown Speaker 5:44 It comes out to events, and it's often found in garden centers all throughout the nation, I would assume. Unknown Speaker 5:51 I actually I think I do have that owl. So. Unknown Speaker 5:55 Yeah. Unknown Speaker 5:56 Awesome. Awesome. So So again, you know, kind of what we're going to be diving into today. Thank you, Alison, for that. And we'll definitely dive into everything. Folks, I probably should add what you won't learn today, maybe the details of ultimate frisbee, but perhaps a little bit about Ultimate Frisbee. So this is really good for people who are like Alison, in particular, that they're balancing, maybe volunteer, and fundraising management, which I actually I did at my Chicago based job. At the arts of life and art studio for adults with developmental disabilities. It's two jobs before neon, I was doing the same thing. In fact, if anybody's ever talked to Samantha nylund, Sam nilan, on the the neon CRM team, in sales, she was my intern. I like she was an AmeriCorps person. And I like, like, work with her. And we had a great relationship 10 years ago, plus and and now she works for neon. And so so it's really, really interesting, how, like, awesome volunteer people are, I'm gonna say, it's hard. It's a lot of thankless work, in my opinion in some ways. But it can be really, really inspiring, especially when you're you're talking with people who also financially support the mission. So what we're going to learn, we're going to transition into a discussion after this on a little bit about, we want to hear who open books is, in terms of their mission, it's always important to kind of either say, hey, that's very much like me, or that's not like me, but you know, I think there's things that I want to learn about volunteers, so. So if you identify if the organization great. In fact, for our crowd today, let's hear who you are, and where you're from, Unknown Speaker 7:42 you know, kind of making sure that we test that q&a, let's kind of type out a little bit of of, you know, I want to hear about your mission. And maybe the ways that you're working with volunteers would be great. I'll pay attention to that as we move forward. We want to hear from Allison, the challenges that they faced as, as they pivoted during COVID-19. And, and let's practically apply our conversation into product. That's my plan, I'm going to listen to you I'm going to listen to Allison and say, Okay, this is how I would do this in the CRM. Unknown Speaker 8:14 We're really not this isn't a volunteer or donor management training. We're going to be having a conversation. So and again, please, you know, use the q&a, to just kind of type out who you are and how you work with volunteers today. Would love to hear that. Unknown Speaker 8:30 But yeah, let's you know what, let's, let's have some discussion. Let's have some discussion. We're going to turn off this. We're also joined by Angelina from Aspen, strong mental health advocacy nonprofit, as well. And I'll continue to watch that. So you know, Allison, Unknown Speaker 8:50 kind of want to want to dive in once you tell us a little bit the work that you do. You mentioned that you're doing. You kind of started with volunteers, you then started taking on fundraising, talk about that journey, as well as a little bit about open books itself. Unknown Speaker 9:06 Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, first open books is a literacy nonprofit. As Tim mentioned, based in Chicago. We provide reading and writing programs as well as app and book access for students throughout the city. We also operate to use bookstores, the funds of which go to to our programs and operations. So that funding as well as philanthropy make up the big pie that is our funding. And volunteers plug in to all of that. So we have store volunteers who help with shelving books, we have coaches that work directly with kids. We have people staffing events is sort of all over the place. So it's a lot of folks. It's really cool, big team. Normally we have about 1000 a year that come through. Unknown Speaker 9:47 been very different this year, which we'll get to but it's very, very neat. So that's how I entered right I came in and was overseeing that big pool of people. And then I started pivoting more towards sponsors. Unknown Speaker 10:00 Once I became the liaison to our associate board, so that sort of happened a couple of years ago, ventured into event planning and working with them, who are both fundraisers and volunteers, and then that sort of set the stage for liking both of those things. skill sets are very similar, right? It's just talking to people relationship building, sharing the mission. So it's really similar work, but for very different groups of people. So yeah. Unknown Speaker 10:27 So, Unknown Speaker 10:28 you know, in terms of, of the reason that we're even talking today, one of the things that when we knew it was going to be, you know, National Volunteer Week, Unknown Speaker 10:39 we want to focus in on volunteers during April, Unknown Speaker 10:44 I went back to our team, and I said, Let's find Unknown Speaker 10:48 some of the best people who were using both our volunteer features and our donations, and not just that they're using them both. Well, let's show me the people that yet you actually track the volunteers. And then those volunteers actually happen to be donors. And this is why it's important to talk to your clients, folks, because my thesis was that, Unknown Speaker 11:12 yeah, you got the volunteer first. And then you turn that person into a donor that you actually got them excited. And then, and open books was like, one of the top, we're talking like, like a lot, a lot of people who were doing donations and volunteers together. And then I had one conversation with Alison, she completely threw that thesis, at least mine out the window, because she's like, well, maybe, but actually, it's more the fact that I'm promoting my volunteer programs to my donors. So talk about that, talk about your volunteer programs, like in general, like maybe talk about it before times, let's maybe start there. Then when I say before, times, you know, February 2020. Unknown Speaker 11:57 And and then we can get into the shift that happened, but talk about things before the pandemic, how did you structure your volunteer program? And then maybe, maybe we can kind of unpack the fundraising piece, but I want to hear explicitly about the volunteer program. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so before times, we hosted info sessions in our spaces, and promoted our opportunities that way. So folks would come to those, learn about all these different things that we had, right. So we have the bookstore, working in our field trips, programs, lots of ways to tap into things. And they would hear about all of that. And then they would apply for one of the things that they're interested in, go through a training depending on what program they were in, and then show up and have their first shift or whatever entails for that particular project. So that was sort of the standard protocol, each one was a little bit different, right training for shelving and organizing donated books is quite different than working one on one with a second grader in a school tutoring program. So it's quite different depending. But the standard process was, you know, you find us some way you sign up to come learn more, you apply. And then you you join us and fit wherever you're interested in. And we're where the need is. Unknown Speaker 13:13 Yeah. So and and what was kind of like, what was that first day process? Like? Because we always hear about kind of the, the importance of making a first good first impression. So somebody shows up, they've applied, they're excited, they got they got kind of assigned to something. I know, it depends on the position itself, but maybe what are things from a mission standpoint, maybe not the actual project, but the mission standpoint, that everybody would learn about? becoming a volunteer? Yeah, so they hear I mean, they hear the whole mission, they hear our core values they need, they have a staff lead, so that person is the specialist or expert on our team in whatever their project is. And that person, they're all sort of saying the same thing. So my role was making sure all of those people had the same first five minutes to make sure they knew why they were there. And it's an interesting point, because I think, specifically for mission connection and building relationships with why their health is important. It's very easy, right? For a volunteer who sees a kid every day to understand how they're making a difference. But sometimes the people that helped more on the operation side, it's more important that we verbalize the mission more and the impact so that they really understand how their work specifically connects to the overall success of the organization. So talk about the ways that you actually communicate, you know, in general, no matter what COVID pri, COVID, whatever. Like, if you were going to have your kind of tick, you know, box that you're taking of how you're communicating with people, how often are volunteers hearing from you? How are they hearing from you, actually? Yeah, so for me, all of our volunteers would hear from me at least once every two weeks. So our shifts that are Unknown Speaker 15:00 Shift schedule is set up, they can sign up for their own shifts. So they hear updates through that system. And then they also hear emails from me saying new shifts are off. For the other programs they hear even more regularly. So they'll hear weekly from their program lead, they might hear from me every month with how it's going. Unknown Speaker 15:18 So hard to answer. It varies, but definitely at least once or twice a month, if not more, every year. And is there stuff on the website that they can also check out? Like, are you communicating? You know, with video, in some ways? I know there's a newsletter because I got one, by the way. Yeah. So tell me about the channels a little bit more in terms of the media. Yeah, so we have the newsletter, we just re established our newsletter last month, and unplug our volunteer opportunities there. So that goes to all of our supporters. And that's sort of where our connection to the donors come in, as well. We have our website, our shift management system, we use a system called time counts, and they we can post you know, what the project is how it connects to the mission, and then the volunteers can actually log in and see all of their hours, they can see who else is on the team. And that can help them really understand the value of all that they're contributing. Unknown Speaker 16:13 So that's certainly one thing, personal communication, I made some really, they were a little awkward at first, but they got less awkward over time, at the beginning of pandemic, I made some training videos for our store volunteers. And that was another way that we pivoted was I couldn't do the in person trainings. So yeah. And folks, if you're, if you're watching, just joining us, you know, we're going to have a nice conversation with Allison for kind of the ways that she's managing her volunteers and her donors. If you have any questions on what she's gone through, or any comments, please use the q&a. And we'll use that to inform the kind of little show and tell that I do at the very end on how to apply this into your your CRM. Unknown Speaker 16:58 So So let's talk a little bit about, you know, before we get into the pandemic pivot, per se, the data was pretty clear that that even though you're using a different shift management system, you're also logging volunteers in the CRM. And those people who had volunteers, our hours in the CRM were were donating. So it turns out that that you were reaching out to donors to inform them about volunteer activities, talk about that process, like, like, like, was that an intentional strategy? Was that just happenstance? You know, let's start from there on like, why do you think that happened? Basically? Unknown Speaker 17:38 Yeah, I would say it's intentional. I'll start there. I think, you know, myself, as well, as our executive director, we're sort of the development folks on our team, we really saw these people, it's more than just they make a gift, right, you always want to understand what they're interested in, and how else they might want to learn about your organization. So one of the most immediate things we did was simply on the donation receipt, we customize the neon system email and said, thank you so much for your gift. Here's other ways you can plug in contact Allison, about ways to volunteer if you have an idea, or you want to learn more. And that's the point of transaction right there just out of the gate. Exactly. And that's automatic, right. So it's very little work to make sure everybody's informed you can do this, if you would like. So that's one very immediate thing. You brought up the newsletter. That's another one. I mean, we brought the newsletter back last month, and I posted one ask for our warehouse need. I think like 40 people responded the next, like within a day saying I'd love to help. I didn't know you needed help in this way. Like, what can I do? And that's it? I mean, that's a part of it. Right? A lot of people will only volunteer if you ask them. So I think making sure you intentionally ask your donors and don't assume that they might not want to because they make gifts financially. Unknown Speaker 18:53 making notes making notes because I'm changing up my my presentation later on to talk about system emails, actually, because they're so like, they're so powerful, they're so powerful. Unknown Speaker 19:04 If that's that's definitely a really good tip, by the way, on a practical sense, and it's it's kind of like mapping out the journey that people might have with you, I think is is important to be like At what point are they interacting with, with your mission? Now, Unknown Speaker 19:22 if you're gonna do a breakdown, you might not have the, you know, the numbers off the top of your head. But where is the source of most your volunteers? Is it potentially from your donor pool? Is it through just interested individuals who are finding you? Is it through corporate partnerships? Where are you finding your volunteers? Unknown Speaker 19:41 I would say the majority probably find us through our retail locations. A lot of people know us through being a customer. And while that's not a donor, that is somebody who's supporting financially and then learns about the volunteer opportunities, so it might not fit for all organizations, but our opportunities are also posted in the store and by Unknown Speaker 20:00 Volunteers are in the store. So they customers see all the time. Oh, there's volunteers here. Maybe I could volunteer. So that's probably a big source of them. Unknown Speaker 20:09 Yeah, but certainly plenty from the donor pool. Yeah. And what about corporate corporate volunteers? Do you do anything? Because I know actually Chicago has, in particular, because I lived there for for 10 years, folks before I moved to upstate New York. But but sometimes corporations like to offer up volunteers either, you know, in a formalized program, do you see a lot of corporate volunteers coming in? Yeah, so in the pre times, we probably had 400 to 500 corporate volunteers every year. So they would come in groups 10, to 15. And then we also a lot of corporate partners would run book drives for us. So those are the two big things that our corporate partners would do. One of the hits we took with pandemic was losing some of our group volunteering. But that was a big a big thing in the free times. So let's let's start to shift organically into the I guess it's not, we're not in post times. Sorry. But the times that we're in, talk about, you know, going back to about a year ago, Unknown Speaker 21:12 walk me through the thought process of of, you know, you're doing things as normal, you have your big plans for 2020. When did you know something needed to change? And then what did you folks start to do to kind of shift your volunteer engagement strategy? Unknown Speaker 21:28 Yeah, so a year ago, I mean, I would say, I think like most people, that first week of March, in 2020, we were like, Alright, something's gonna happen. Most of our partners on programming are in our public school system. So are we we're really just reacting to what our what the school system Unknown Speaker 21:45 put out. And that helps us, you know, I was hearing from them and then turning around and making announcements to our volunteer pool. So pretty immediately, mid March, we had shut down for a whole month, all programming all store operations, right, we really had to figure out what was the safest way to reopen. Um, and then mid April, late April, we opened some virtual programming, and then our stores were able to open just to staff and select volunteers, but we couldn't open to the public. So we had to adjust and fine, you know, we could only have two people at a time in the space, everybody had to be masked, we had to build a lot of safety structures in the store to make sure everybody has distanced. We split our pool into two. So not all the immune systems were around the other immune. I mean, it was a lot of conversations about limiting risk. So we could bring at least some folks back into our bookstores to support that. So that was the main thing we brought back in May and had that up until now we're actually just this week on we're calling them bubbles, right? Two different bubbles. So we're finally on bubbling our volunteer pool and letting them letting them all interact, but still having limited, you know, people everywhere, and masks and everything like that. So the big hit was programming, we couldn't have as many volunteers working directly with kids. So that was the big hit, I would say. And, you know, kind of in the coming months, where do you think you see things going from from a ramp standpoint? Yeah, I mean, we're already moving into opening programming. So we just started a virtual program that has 10, volunteers placed working directly, virtually with second graders, we have some outdoor events that have been going on with our community partners in the North lawndale community here. So that's like three or four people going out into the parks and tabling for us and supporting us. So we're getting there. We're slowly, slowly welcoming back. And I think our public school system announced will be in person in the fall. That's sort of their plan. So if that goes forward, we'll we'll follow suit. But we'll we'll keep an eye on the school's plans and do what they find helpful. And what have you seen, because you're talking about a lot of different engagement points, you're talking about virtuals? Talk about the technology side of things here a little bit. Unknown Speaker 24:00 What, what Unknown Speaker 24:02 things did you need in order to make all these pieces happen? Unknown Speaker 24:09 Great question. Um, a lot of I mean, our online ship system, I've said this multiple times, that's very late, because the volunteers already had that there was a lot of emails from me made some videos for folks. Unknown Speaker 24:22 We haven't quite talked about, you know, the broader emails we sent to our full pool and how that updated people. But we did have touch points where we had to tee up big emails, and here are the updates. Here's what we need to do here and just making sure everybody is aware. So it was a lot of focusing on who knows everything who needs to know more, and how can we fill in gaps for people throughout the year? Unknown Speaker 24:46 So and I imagine your CRM also played a role. I have not mentioned our CRM, it was very, very helpful. No, of course it was. I mean, getting into the other way of things right volunteers into donor Unknown Speaker 25:00 Right, like we had to cut a lot of our programming, and the fact that we host our volunteers in neon as well as our donors, we can pull those those separate groups and provide different messaging for different groups. So, you know, volunteers couldn't be actively serving this year. And so we segmented you mentioned segmentation earlier, you know, you can pull that specific group and say, normally, you can support it this way, as you know, you can't this year, this is a different way you can support us, and not necessarily say cash is king. But if people have the means making sure that you do ask your volunteers to support financially, and make sure they're getting a separate email because they do provide a different different support for your organization. Well, and and, and one of the things that on a marketing side, and they were talking about, you know, you said cash is king, but one of the phrases that my team pointed out to me is content could be king, in terms of the ways that you're talking to people, but distribution is the kingmaker. And it's the ways that you communicate with people, as well. Did you do anything else to communicate with folks where you use? Like, how about how did social media play, for instance, into interacting with people on this? I would say I mean, we certainly posted on social media, lots of our general public, I think, specifically for volunteers and donors, we didn't totally use social media as a as a specific strategy for them. We found most of those folks read our emails, Unknown Speaker 26:24 on their desktop and prefer that kind of communication. I did have a lot of phone calls, I would say I texted and called and asked people's preferences. So especially in the early times, was asking, you know, would you prefer to be texted if something happens, or we have to cancel? And so it was on the phone? Do you have like a text line that people can use to interact about, about this type of stuff for? Um, we probably should, because it was so quick. It was my cell phone. Okay. Which, which, you should we should probably transition that out. But, and and hey, we're working on the text communications piece, by the way, like? Unknown Speaker 27:04 Well, it's, it's you have to have these different types of communications things what, what we found on our end is, is it was really important to help organizations, especially ones that were very events reliant, be able to shift into receiving donations not having to do refunds, things like that. Unknown Speaker 27:23 And to continue on their their digital fundraising, or at least their their offline processing of gifts. But you know, when more and more communications are becoming extremely important for how we can stay connected, I actually think it's going to be the big, the big thing in 2022, is a complete overhaul in how our donors and our volunteers actually properly communicate with us. Because I think that we've seen an acceleration of not digital, per se, obviously, we've seen an acceleration in digital. But I think everybody keeps using that drumbeat of digital, digital, digital, digital, and like, there's a lot of things to be said about. Like, for instance, I got a really nice letter from a nonprofit today that then also encouraged online giving, but like, Yeah, actually, that's a that's a question for you. Do you do anything? in print? to communicate with people? Yeah, so we do are in the in store items, and that those have to be posters I imagined. So yeah, those are posters, we have physical sign in sheets for volunteering, if people want to hear more, I mean, if you really make sure you're covering all people, and I think the digital divide was a big deal this year, right, like, not everybody had the same access to internet and things like that. So finding other ways to make sure people could touch base with us. Unknown Speaker 28:51 But more I mean, even when we send appeals, there's always a group of donors, we know want a piece of paper. And so we mark them in neon, we make sure we pull them as a separate group, and we don't send them an email, we send them a paper letter, and we don't send it to everybody. Because that's not the best use of you know, we don't want to print that much stuff. And it's expensive. But we have like a tried and trued people who really love paper. And so we make we make the call to do that and email everybody else. Unknown Speaker 29:20 And and from an animal like from a paper standpoint, you know, is there much of a difference in the messaging? Or are you kind of generally hitting the same drum beats of opportunities and things like that? Do you find that like, certain types of people are responding to different types of communications more? Is it from a volunteer standpoint? Let's just say like the warehouse people, somehow, like, paper more than then email? I don't know. And it could be like, No, I haven't seen really anything there. Yeah, I mean, I don't know that we specifically for like the method through which they like to be communicated, but certainly, we can send a different email. Unknown Speaker 30:00 To the warehouse volunteers and emphasize like how operations actually connects to the mission of the organization. So that's back to that segmentation, sending different versions of letters of the same essence, but really get to the root of why that group of people care about you and your organization. And so, you know, volunteers in your programs might want to hear me, they know the impact in a very specific way. So you just want to make sure you're considering your volunteers in separate groups when you're sending out messaging, because they would prefer to hear something a little more personalized is my experience. And what's the what's kind of the off the cuff breakdown demographically of your volunteer base? Mate, let's start with age. Are they kind of older? Is it mixed like younger folks? Because you said a bunch of them, you're finding them through the store itself? So that actually then leads into the conversation of like, who's coming to the store? You know, as well, so So talk a bit little bit about that? Because I imagine, folks, even if you're not working in literacy, you're having similar conversations about kind of demographics and people who are you're appealing to? Yeah, I mean, age wise, I think volunteering across the board has, it definitely skews to those people who have access to a bit of leisure time. So you do have quite a few folks who are retired, and you have a lot of college students who have a little bit more time in their day, but in volunteering, but for our opportunities that fall outside of the standard nine to five, you get a lot more in like the 35 to 50 range, like that actually is a large portion of our weekend crew, they that sort of that middle age range. Unknown Speaker 31:44 So Unknown Speaker 31:46 go ahead, sorry, No, I was just gonna say as far as you know, where they come from, we have those two retail locations, and then programs in different parts of the city. So I would say the volunteer pools that show up at those locations, reflect the neighborhoods that they're serving, and right. So like we do a lot of on the ground recruitment. Again, in the pre times when we had programs out in different neighborhoods, I would go and host in person sessions at like a coffee shop or at a community center for this specific project that was going on in that neighborhood. And so as you can imagine, folks that live in that area would come out. And then we would place them with students who live in that area. So that was always our goal. Sometimes we would pull people from other parts of the city. But usually we ended up with like, folks in the neighborhood would come to the things available, they were easy to get to. Do you find it from the donor base itself? Are the older donors, the younger donors, or just kind of a mix being the ones who actually convert into volunteers. Unknown Speaker 32:45 I would say a mix. I wish I knew a little bit more, I guess about how they fall. But I think it is a mix. Yeah. And that's, that's tough. I mean, people aren't necessarily sharing that information. And yeah, you know, I mean, yes, you can try to collect birthdate on a form or something like that. But Unknown Speaker 33:05 actually, let's even talk about the intake of the data itself. What types of data are important for you to collect during a volunteer? intake? Yeah, so we collect their general interests, so both our programs and what they actually like, why they care about the organization we take in their neighborhood, like by zip code, mailing address, email, phone name, of course, we don't ask age yet, but we're adding a few more not mandatory demographic questions to see where they're coming from and how they heard about us. Unknown Speaker 33:37 So that's sort of the main stuff. That's, that's been important. One cool thing about Neon is actually you can make like custom sections. So our volunteers, we have some custom categories, you know, what are they interested in? What are they currently involved in? And that way, we can run reports on those custom sections, and say, This is the group of people who like the idea of creative writing, they may not volunteer in it, right? They might not have that project in there. But they might resist it in the future. So then we can run a report and say, We need people in Word, or in this creative writing program. Can you help and that pulls a whole group of people from your database to ask, Unknown Speaker 34:14 well, let's let's actually apply a little bit of this practically. Unknown Speaker 34:20 You know, Allison, maybe we can convert our time because, you know, we don't need to spend a whole hour folks like, I think that this has been really informative, but how about I take some of the things that Allison, you've talked about, in terms of segmentations customization and system emails, that's that's one in particular that I think that is really underutilized in the system. And and I want to walk us through how do you actually do this type of stuff, especially in the new email builder, I want to start there for segmentation. So have you tried the new email builder yet? I have played around in it. We have our spring appeal coming up in the next two weeks, so that'll be the first big Unknown Speaker 35:00 thing we send through that through that new builder. Awesome. Well, you should be seeing my screen, I believe, at this point. Awesome. So I've actually organized the system up here a little bit what you can do, if you don't know that that into the fundraising, the volunteer, and the email section. Now, we also do have an integration with a platform called volunteer up, or volunteer local, rather, I do 1000 want to hear about the timesheet, one, we can talk offline about that one, because maybe there's something there too. That's my job, folks, is to figure that type of stuff out. So so the new email builder if you're going to build an audience, for instance, Unknown Speaker 35:38 it's pretty easy now. And so you can. This is like, why I hate demo systems, by the way, because it's like, what is this? Unknown Speaker 35:49 I like explicitly renamed a bad, like, bad thing to a nice thing earlier today, because I didn't want that anyway. So Unknown Speaker 36:00 volunteer donors, or volunteers, donor donors or volunteers, you can make an email audience. And what's nice is that you can either add it through an import, so Okay, let's take Allison the the, the sheet that you you have physically, Unknown Speaker 36:16 you might be able to just put that into an Excel spreadsheet, and then pop that into here, right, like, that's maybe a bit of data entry that you can do. Or you can just maybe either go down here and add the recipient, right from here, that's another thing. So that's how you can might be able to get some of that into the system from a physical format into a electronic format. paper to paper to electronics, always a pain in the butt. That's the reality. But yeah, it's something it everybody has a tear, like, my handwriting is awful. You know, like, like, folks, if you could see this, like, look at look at how bad that is. Unknown Speaker 36:58 That's awful. That's bad handwriting. So so then the other thing that's important is that you can do, you can add different audiences, you can import those things, you can also add a report on the fly. So you can either build it from the traditional email audience that you might have seen before, or any report in the system itself. And we're going to be adding in the fact that you've built a report previously, like maybe you're doing some sort of donor analysis, and you're like, actually like that, to maybe be a segment. And before you, like literally would have to rebuild it from scratch, but we're actually going to add it where it's like, I just want to grab it from the report section. So that's coming very soon. Unknown Speaker 37:41 But even right now, you can just go right in, and you can start to segment. And so the key items that that I actually think are very powerful about this are the fact that you can create it from the all accounts report. Unknown Speaker 37:54 The all accounts report is like literally everything in the system. So Unknown Speaker 38:00 you were talking about some custom segments, right? So maybe like, you know, maybe you wanted to put like a count volunteer application, like roles or skills, right? Like, it could be a custom field, and it can be equal. And then like, you know, you can have a drop down, you can have it as a textfield that somebody fills out. Like that's a very powerful thing. But even even with our system, we actually even allow different data points, like windfall data. I don't know if you've checked out windfall yet, Allison, but like, Unknown Speaker 38:33 yeah, yeah. So you can build segmentations off of prospects, screening prospects, and well screening data, you can do it off of the volunteer items. Unknown Speaker 38:47 So you can build it from a lot of different things. And even as you add your own account, custom fields and other types of items, or different communication items, like even material package, this is an under underutilized one. In my opinion, Allison, which is the material tracking is the physical items that that people may actually track in the system. So if you wanted to say I sent that newsletter, or I sent that, that postcard, and I want to segment in the email audience off of the fact that I sent that physical piece to those people, you can target them now. Very easily. Cool. Unknown Speaker 39:25 I think it's cool. I know what it is. Yeah, we do some external materials tracking as well. But this I mean, it's not all of it. So this is cool, because we do send like little gifts or something like that to be able to follow up with that particular group is really cool. So So building the audience is pretty nice. From there, then you shift into the campaign design. And this is just getting we actually just released folks, if you haven't checked it out, go to neon one calm, and we have a new newsletter builder ebook. And it's it talks a bit about the Unknown Speaker 40:00 We actually pulled examples from the new builder explicitly when we say we did. And so what we did, though, when we were writing it, and our wonderful our wonderful team pulled from, from amazing data from the industry, our partner ecosystem in terms of best practices, and so we zeroed in and said, Okay, what can make a really, really good newsletter, and, and for me, volunteers deserve their own newsletter, like donors of a certain type, like monthly donors deserve their own newsletter, but it could be like a lot of work in order to do that. So the fact that you can quickly copy things, you know, create a base template here and just copy it. Like, you can have something where we even have this example right here, where this is pretty good. Like this is just like an easy to design newsletter now. And you can personalize it, it's easy to add this like before, it would honestly be a pain in the butt to create something like this. And now it's just, you know, super easy. And then you got the big button builder. So Alison, you got to use the button builder. So let's actually even get into the button builder in terms of like how you can even use this for volunteer opportunity. Unknown Speaker 41:17 So notice that it's like everything that I just showed you is very easy from sections like look at this, this is like, boom, boom, boom, easy to update. Unknown Speaker 41:27 tokens, buttons, so even down to this button here. It's like, maybe I want to like insert the button. And all it is is like the drop down. So any of the surveys in the system, all the events, all the different campaigns. So or, or let's say you have an external system, like what you're using for like maybe the shift management and stuff like that, just pop it in. Yeah. Oh, good. Unknown Speaker 41:57 URL done. Unknown Speaker 41:59 Easy. Unknown Speaker 42:02 Rounded, but I like rounded buttons. I'm a fan of that. It's too harsh. The box is too hard for me. I won't say much. And this isn't enough, right? Yeah, that's not enough. For me. From a design standpoint, I like my kind of rounded edges. So. So this is this is just a nice, nice way that you can start to build this now. And then also, the social media items, I think are really nice that you can very easily add different social media types. I'm actually partial, I think, maybe because you work in a store you should create, do you have a volunteers only Spotify list? We don't. But that is a very good idea. We have a playlist in the store, but we should share it with the have the volunteers add to it. And then it's the volunteers. Only one and then you add that in. And then you could say this is the volunteer list curated. That's awesome. I like that. Hey, there you go. Alright. So the other thing that you mentioned, because we talked about customization of fields, you talked about segmentation, I think we've we've covered that pretty deeply. So you know, and again, folks, this is this is just us having a conversation. You know, if you do have any questions, I'm paying attention to that too. But if the only thing you you leave from today is that you get to have your volunteers curate a Spotify list. Fine. I'm I'm down with that. Unknown Speaker 43:27 System emails, you mentioned that one, and this is going to get a design upgrade, but I still think they're pretty powerful, you know, as they are compared to other things that I've used. And, and it's pretty easy from a donation appreciation standpoint, to just get in there and say, you know, what, like, I want to build a version of this. And during the, Unknown Speaker 43:49 the actual design process, you know, maybe we view this one, you know, just put down here, like in the footer. Unknown Speaker 43:56 Like, volunteer, here's how you do it. Yeah, it's that simple. Unknown Speaker 44:02 And you can add other things, too, you can say, you know, support us in these other ways. Like if you have an organization that has an event coming up or other it's a really good, like, put it out there for everybody to see. And it's not in your face, like that's the thing. Unknown Speaker 44:17 And and and actually, I'm trying to find it. So so my mother in law, moved over to neon. Unknown Speaker 44:25 And she used the system, letters bytom. She actually created this, this is from neon right here. Unknown Speaker 44:35 And then she added another item to encourage people to donate online. Unknown Speaker 44:42 Because they never had that before for her organization. They didn't even accept online donations because it's a food pantry and a lot of older folks and she's like, give me some language to make it like that. It's safe for people to do that. Yeah, that makes sense. Cool. Well, that's that's the person Unknown Speaker 45:00 Primary stuff that I wanted to go through again, this was not a formal thing, folks, this was a kind of, you know, chill interview. Like I promised you Allison. I'm gonna say though opposite a chill, Craig pawson. Unknown Speaker 45:18 That's a legit session. That is a very legitimate session. So next next week, we got Greg, Greg's one of our favorites here at neon one. Unknown Speaker 45:29 He's coming back for the PPP loan. Unknown Speaker 45:33 for nonprofits session, this is a monster one, we're giving him an extra. But this is like how we're going to end early today, Greg scan an extra 15 minutes. Because like, we've we've always run out, people have always had so many questions. This is going to be info action packed. So register for this if you go to neon one.com. And definitely sign up for that. We also have some some great Unknown Speaker 46:01 resources. If you download the deck, which we do have available for today, you can definitely grab these with a simple click. But if you go to neon, one comm under the resources section, the volunteer retention strategies blog that I wrote, is is up there. Unknown Speaker 46:20 The homes for our troops case study, they're fantastic organization that uses our peer to peer Unknown Speaker 46:26 tool called neon fundraise, does live streaming and, you know, hybrid events and all this cool stuff. But they draw a lot of their peer to peer fundraisers from their volunteer base. Unknown Speaker 46:41 Big, big, big, big, big opportunity there. If you want to, if you know, you turn a donor into a volunteer and then turn that donor volunteer into a peer to peer fundraiser, and then that person is going to become a legacy donor. That's that's that's the flow, folks. That's your acquisition and upgrade flow. And then that newsletter book that we created really, really awesome stuff in there. Unknown Speaker 47:06 So that's, that's our session. I don't know if anybody has any questions for Allison. Unknown Speaker 47:12 today. Unknown Speaker 47:14 pretty light session. Action, Pat. Unknown Speaker 47:19 I enjoyed myself. Yeah. Any questions for Alison, anybody, you know, have any thoughts that they want to share? before we turn it off for today? Unknown Speaker 47:29 My shortest webinar, turning the pandemic. Unknown Speaker 47:33 I think we're all ready to be outside. It's a nice day here in Chicago. So I kind of I kind of that's why I want to be like, you know, we hit the half an hour mark. I'll do my song and dance. And then let's let people get outside. folks get outside. Go take a break. It's Earth Day. So go. It's Earth Day. We're going to end we're just going to cut it it's Earth Day. Go go hug a tree, folks. I planted some trees earlier. So yeah, apple trees in the backyard. Unknown Speaker 48:02 How up up? Nope. We got a question. How much does your program cost? Unknown Speaker 48:09 assuming that's for us? Unknown Speaker 48:14 Yeah, it's, you know, Deborah, yes. Okay, Deborah, we're gonna have somebody reach out. But But I mean, Allison, this isn't breaking the bank for you, right? Unknown Speaker 48:24 No, I mean, I think it's hard. You have to sort of understand how much you get back by being able to customize and send these different things. So there's a lot, a lot of return to investing in a software like neon. Yeah, that the kind of the value proposition of us explicitly is that we centralize a lot of things that you typically have to outsource into another third party platform, yet. You compare us to other platforms in the market, and we're basically, you know, in line with them. So if you're looking at somebody like, you know, a Bloomerang, or a donor perfect or something like that, then you know, pretty much well on line, if you're looking at something like a little green light, we're a little bit more, you get a lot more and then razor's edge is razor's edge. So like that's, you know, which I use. So Deborah, we could definitely have somebody reached out and personalize that answer for you, as opposed to cool. Thank you, Deborah. And, yeah, I mean, the fact that the volunteer thing is in it, like that's a big deal, in my opinion. So Unknown Speaker 49:26 Allison, thank you so much. You're, Unknown Speaker 49:29 you're the best. Have a great day. Thank you, Deborah. Thank you, Alison, everyone, have a great day. Go outside. Get outside. Have some time if you can. And we'll talk to you soon. We'll see you with Greg next week. Unknown Speaker 49:43 Okay, bye. All right. Transcribed by https://otter.ai