0:19  
Right.

0:22  
Afternoon, folks, or good late morning.

0:29  
This is Tim Sarrantonio. Neon one. Welcome to our first official webinar of 2022.

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We will be getting started in about three minutes want to start on time

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we'll go over some housekeeping items, we'll make sure that the q&a is open all the good stuff and zoom.

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About a minute I'll share my screen

1:06  
but excited to have everyone here today

1:09  
got a lot of interest in today's topic for obvious reasons.

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Again, in about a minute, I'll share my screen start to go over some of the base housekeeping items.

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But excited to have you here.

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You may notice we are recording this. And there is a live transcript that Zoom is providing

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all of this will be available on the neon one website.

1:54  
And also will be emailed out to all attendees as well. I'll go ahead and share my screen

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go ahead and share this

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little interface chat going all the boxes that Zoom has

2:22  
should be able to see the full screen here.

2:28  
We'll get started in about a minute, formally.

2:35  
But excited to have Yeah, we got a lot of great stuff that we're going to be diving into some special things for you to get you pumped. Get you inspired, get you thinking that's what our goal is today.

2:51  
Okay, I'll give it about one more minute.

2:54  
Let me double check the participants are yes, people are rolling in. So I'll give it about another minute or two tops. And then we're going to get into this.

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We have no more than an hour together. I want to be respectful of your time. We got a lot to cover.

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But I'm excited to have you here today with us live. And if you're checking this out on the recording, welcome as well.

3:26  
Yeah, once that hits 101 For me, it's go time for us.

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Right.

3:44  
101 All right, let's roll.

3:48  
Rarely excited for today. We've been we've been hard at work crunching numbers, looking at analysis getting ready for some exciting things. So want to welcome you to neon ones official kickoff webinar of 2022.

4:05  
And we're what we're going to be doing is looking at 2021 nonprofit urine review.

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And so

4:13  
to kind of get into things first and foremost, some housekeeping items, this is being recorded, we also have a live transcript that it should be at the bottom zoom does allow you to turn that off on a personal level if you don't want to see that. So that's definitely fine.

4:31  
And the other thing is that and that will be emailed to you. You'll also be able to probably see this later today

4:39  
or tomorrow at the latest. But you're all going to get a copy of this the transcript and the slides too.

4:47  
This is interactive. So I do have a few polls. I'm taking advantage of our switch from GoToWebinar into zoom webinars and so I'm going to be playing around with the format and doing a lot of different stuff but

5:00  
We have some polls. But let's let's kind of get it interactive right now. If you think you can use the chat, so if you want to put in the chat, who you are and where you are listening in from today, that would be great. There is also a q&a item too. So I have both open that we could see. All right. We got Maddie from Nantucket, Massachusetts. We got Eric. We got Susan, Colorado. We got Southern California Littleton, Colorado DC. Whoa, here we go. Kalamazoo, Springfield, Oregon. What's my wife is actually near there. I saw New Orleans. Oh, yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So the chat is definitely something that you can you can kind of even interact with each other, if you want to kind of throw some comments out. Because we have a lot of people here, if you want to make sure that I'm answering a question, I'm gonna move the chat box. Hey, Dan, from Syracuse, I'm in upstate New York myself there. Hey, Nicole, I know, Nicole. So really, really excited to have all of you here today live? Um, there's a bunch of folks. And so if you want to make sure that I see a question, to answer me specifically, as opposed to just making a comment or things like that, there is a Q and A section, as well. So I have that open, I have the chat open. So I'll be paying attention to that as well, some polls, so just want to, you know, kind of make sure that you have all the interactive elements there. But I am pumped that we have so many of you from all over the country. Now what we're going to be doing is focusing on some high level trends, and then some tactical items that we're going to suggest to supercharge your fundraising. So we're trying to do a little bit of a balance between Yes, this is really interesting what we're seeing across the industry. But then what can I do with that information beyond one is pretty obsessed with making data actionable, in all different ways. And so we're going to apply that into even the session today. What I'm super pumped about is that we are going to deliver big for you folks. So we have some really awesome resources coming this is helping kick that off. February is going to be a big month for understanding the direction of individual giving. We have a big, big thing that we're going to announce more formally today. But really excited. This is just the beginning of empowering you with amazing resources throughout the entire year. So with that said a little bit about me if you don't know who I am, my name is Tim Sarrantonio. I am a new title director of corporate brand at NEON one. And so what that means is that I am our primary thought leader, researcher and just kind of generally nerd when it comes to all the data stuff that you're going to hear about today. I've been with the company for over 10 years now. I am a practitioner, I still fundraise but have raised over $3 million for various nonprofits over the course of my career, having helped start to nonprofits. And most importantly, for what you're going to be seeing today I am a steering committee, member of the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, which we're going to talk a bit about today. But overall, I am so so thrilled, most importantly, to be speaking, engaging with all of you today. So it's a bit about me. But most importantly is is kind of what what's the feeling that I want you to have today. And really, I want you to have a sense of hope, cautious hope, basically. And so the no act of kindness, no matter how small is ever wasted. I think that that's a good framing of how we can start to think about 2022. So this is from Aesop's Fables. I always like starting with a quote, to help frame things. And I think this is going to really lean into what we're going to see in the data itself. So if you are a nonprofit professional, you might be in marketing, you might be in events, planning, you might be, you know, running a program like a giving day for your community foundation, or you might be an annual fundraiser in the marketing department. This is for you. This is for you. This is a high level look of the entire industry in the nonprofit space. And what is happening in individual giving specifically, which is driving the majority of the revenue in the nonprofit space. When it comes to soliciting gifts. It's not grants. It's not corporate giving. It's not bequests, it's individual giving. So we are going to dive into that and look at the four key trends you should keep in mind when designing your own strategy. And then we've actually kind of crowd sourced and honed some six tactical suggestions to supercharge your own fundraising and give you some ideas

10:00  
What we're not going to be doing is getting into neon one stuff. This is not a neon, one product thing. If you're not a neon, one client, don't worry, you know, this is just really going to be for everybody to get insights, we have some really cool neon one data, because we have a lot

10:19  
billions to reference. But this isn't really about how to use our stuff, we're going to have those things for folks, don't worry. But whenever you kind of see my face this year, it's going to be for everybody. And that's what we're really excited about to make that distinction for you. And then we have a big announcement, when it comes to our donor report that I'm really jazzed about that has been a lot of taking up my time. So we're going to we're going to give you details about that. But we're not going to go too deep into that today. So let's go ahead and launch our first poll. I want to get a sense of gut of the you know, we got about just shy of 100 folks live here today. And so I want to kind of get your feeling. So I'm going to go ahead and launch this poll for you. Question number one, how do you feel? How do you feel about your fundraising going into 2022? So we're almost at the end of January, how are you feeling? How are you feeling? So we have about 20? That's going up? Going up? Going up? Going up? Going up? Okay, I'll leave it open for probably Oh, wow, we're almost, you know, we're in the 60 range. So once I hit 75, I'm definitely gonna cut it.

11:38  
But

11:39  
oh, okay. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna do that. So how do you feel about your fundraising going into 2022. So let's go ahead and share those results.

11:51  
Most of you are feeling cautiously optimistic, cautiously optimistic, while then coming in. Second is feeling the pressure but hoping for the best. And then people are like already feeling that they're rocking it, which is great to hear, I am also thrilled that no one not a single person feels that this is fine, and that there's a fire raging around you. And that that's, that's actually

12:17  
really comforting to me. And for the folks who are feeling overwhelmed, we want to address that we want to give you comfort, as well. And that's why we're balancing kind of that high level insight into those tactical items that you could start to implement. So thanks for doing that we got two more polls throughout. And an overall I think that that everyone's going to be happy with where we're going and and hopefully giving you some actionable items to do. So this is really heavy in terms of texts. So don't worry about reading through this. This is why we make the deck downloadable and clickable afterwards. But a lot of the data that you're going to see is from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, which is now a joint initiative between the Association of Fundraising Professionals and giving Tuesday's data collaborative. So a lot of the trends you're seeing will kind of be driven through 2019 into 2020. And then and then what we're seeing is some preliminary data from 2021. That kind of deepens the analysis that fap is already seeing. So there's a deep methodology that comes to this, that the data nerds can definitely like me can can get into. But when you see what we present, I really, really want to stress that that a lot of times when you're looking at data, when you're looking at things, it's always good to understand the methodology and the sources, because it's like, what's the agenda behind that? And what I love about fap is that that there is no agenda because it's Bloomerang. Its Donor Perfect. It's Keela, it's neon CRM, it's multiple data providers, putting in millions of transactions in a very secure way that that tells us what individual giving trends are just really kind of happening across multiple parts of the sector. And so it's always a good benchmark for us to look at and see, okay, what's happening. So when you're seeing the trends themselves, know that it's driven by not only the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, but then in turn us taking that standard of data and applying it against our own work as well. And so, with that said, what we're seeing is that cautious optimism, which again, 42% of you are also feeling and that's what we should generally be feeling when we're walking into work each day. And so, a lot of the 2021 data is is pointing to some clear signs and continuing trends from 2020.

15:00  
into what we hope is a post pandemic shift in in how donors are engaging with our organization. So first and foremost, we're seeing more people come back, there was a trend of, we might even have seen some some newspaper articles that said, like household giving is down in the United States. And the reality is, is that we're actually seeing more people, that trend is starting to reverse that we're seeing more people come back and say that that are new givers or haven't given in a while that they're coming back, that they're coming back and donating to organizations. We're also seeing that general alignment with continued growth of individual giving year over year. So some of the numbers that we're seeing basically continue to point to that there will be the be a general increase in overall giving. But and then also, another really exciting thing is the continued and significant increase in the number of recurring donors, people that are making a monthly gift, and spreading that out over a period of time, that has continued to rise in a very significant way, in many different areas, including some of the neon one data that you're about to see. So what we saw, internally that neon one clients are seeing is first and foremost, an 11.9%, jump in 2021 Compared to 2020, which was already huge. So if I actually do a trailing analysis from 2019, to 2021, like that number is massive. In terms of new recurring donors, these are people setting up a gift online, and donating. You know, the average when we did an analysis with the University of Dallas was about $65 per donation, with many small nonprofits actually attracting the most recurring donors, which is great news. That's great news. And so we continue to see that growth into 2021. With 11.9%, year over year increase. When we start looking at the so called major donor bucket, we're gonna zero in on $1,000 donors and above, we also saw growth from 2020. So 4.64% increase in the number of people who are giving a significant significant amount of giving. A lot of these are one time gifts, one time gifts that might be coming in at a certain point of the year. But in turn, online donations have continued to be extremely strong across the board for our client base 477 Different donations happening on average, per organization. And so that's again, really, really exciting that aligns with some of the things that we've rolled out in 2021. And we continue to to be very bullish, if you will, on that. Continuing now, what we also want to do is benchmark this against the larger trends that we are seeing in the industry. And again, if you do have questions, there is a q&a. So please, please, if you want to ask something, I will be paying attention, I'm also still paying attention to the chat as well. So four trends to watch. So this is not neon data, this is going back to the larger analysis that fap is doing. And we're crunching the numbers for 2021. And we'll be releasing kind of our overall analysis of of Q fours round up of everything that happened. That's that's, that's being done right now and should be done by the time.

18:48  
Definitely before AFP icon in May, probably well before that. And and so we expect preliminary data to continue on what we've been seeing in some of the 2020 analysis. So it's really a few key trends to positive two of concern that we want you to pay attention to. The first one is Trend number one is generally around, increase donor pools. So we talked about this, this is that there's more people giving, there's more people giving, as you can see, especially that under $100 donation is really starting to ramp up and that is continuing I think that is driving from a lot of the digital gifts that are coming in. But even across the board, even though we did see some general dips in those larger gifts that have come in you know not everybody's MacKenzie Scott basically. But in general, we've been holding strong for even the largest gifts and seeing an increase in the number of people overall giving so this is very, very

19:56  
positive as a trend. What we think

20:00  
that you can do to leverage this and think about this more strategically for your own organization, because we want to take that that benchmark data, because I always have a problem where it's like, Fine, Tim, like you've given me a really nice chart, what am I supposed to do with that information? So let's turn it into action. And so action number one is how can you find more donors? If we're telling you, there's more people out there that are generous and willing to give? How do you find this? So what this means is thinking about your communication strategy, first and foremost, what is your acquisition of new donors, and also just generally kind of making a broader conversation so people know about you, there are more nonprofits, there is more noise in general, and more causes, even beyond the nonprofit space that people have to think about. So thinking about how you stand out in that, we're going to get into some tactics on that later on. But the communication strategy is probably one of the most important things to step back and go, have we changed anything during the pandemic on how we engage and overall talk about our mission with our donor base and prospective donor base. One of the other ones that I think does not get a lot of attention, that we've personally seen success with organizations like open books, when we did an interview with them in 2021, is that they actually viewed engagement and affinity as a cycle. And so what would happen is that they would, whenever somebody donated, for instance, they inserted in their receipts, a call to action to turn that person into a volunteer. So there's definitely ways that the way that you can create tighter affinity and titer engagement by thinking about the different segments of how people support you, your board members, your volunteers, things of that nature, thinking more holistically about that, that overall flow of how those two things interact with each other, when it comes to getting people to to have a stronger connection with your organization. So think about that pipeline.

22:13  
Great question. Even though online donations are up, how does a small nonprofit compensate for the processing fees that decrease the amount of donations? Great question, we'll definitely get into that. And maybe what I'll do is bank that one for when we talk about one of the tactics, but I think that there's one thing that we've seen in encouraging data that can help address that.

22:36  
But the other thing is also a trend when it relates to

22:41  
definitely smaller organization drop out. And what this means is that what so let's explain this chart for what we're looking at, first of all, this chart shows the distribution from fap of organizations by size. And the ones that have reported data, versus the ones that are just kind of overall,

23:04  
you know, in the data set that kind of dark blue,

23:09  
when it comes to to reporting, are they fundraising or not. So when you see orange, that's not good. Basically, that's, that's long short, because if you see orange, it means that they're reporting that they're doing something, but they're basically reporting that they're not fundraising at all. And so or they're just completely dropping out of the dataset, and, and is a zero. And so there's a few things that we're going to continue to analyze here. But the general consensus from the data team is that this means that people stopped fundraising. And so pretty consistently through the pandemic, the organizations that

23:46  
that froze and hid the crisis and said, our donors are not going to give to us because everybody's struggling, those are the ones that actually ran into huge problems. So what we want to do is, get back into when you run into a crisis, making sure that your plan is to not freeze, but to engage a fundraising strategy that continues forward. So ultimately, unfortunately, this is not the pandemic is is just one of a larger cross crisis that's happening. But we've been through this before we went through 2008 There's always situations that are going to individually impact organizations through things like natural disasters, right. And so you should have a crisis plan when it comes to addressing your fundraising. And the last thing that you should be doing is cutting the development of your fundraising programs. This slightly gets into what the anonymous question we got about processing fees addresses, which is that we need to shift from a scarcity mindset of of kind of a

25:00  
We're worried about asking people for money, or we're worried about making investments into our fundraising operations and into an abundance mindset that the organizations that shift and focus on building up their fundraising operations are thriving. Actually, and these are small nonprofits, these are large nonprofits, it doesn't really matter no matter what, shifting to an abundance mindset, and having things like, okay, when we hit a crisis, these are the steps that we're going to take, or this is our overall appeal process. And we're going to try to extend that giving, so we're not concentrating everything into the fourth quarter, for instance. And then finally, looking for coordination and cooperation with other nonprofits in your community. This is going to be a major strategic shift for a lot of organizations, but one that we think is going to help not only whether the crisis but expand, and we saw this, we saw this in communities like North Texas, the Dallas metro area, where North Texas Giving Day, for the first time in its history, had all 3300 Plus organizations receive a donation in 2021, which is huge. And that's because they're all investing and cooperating and working toward that same goal of making that September day, it's not a Giving Tuesday thing. It's not a December thing. It's happening even in q3 technically. And that day, is really ramping up that communities fundraising opportunities, but no matter what, if your organization does not even have a response plan if things go wrong, and the first thing that that your board suggests is to cut funds, and to stop fundraising, that is a red flag that you need to be on guard against. So that's the first negative, let's go back to the positive, which is that we're also seeing more small dollar donations in general. And so, again, this is drawing from fap. And giving Tuesday analysis, they put out a really big report in 2020. Giving that that as we're unpacking 2021 data, and and applying the deep methodology to make sure that everything is accurate and right, these trends are still continuing. 2021 still saw more small dollar donations. And so that, again, even gets into the addressing the online donations and things of that nature, in that people are generous. People are also more apt to test out the experience with your nonprofit by doing a small online donation. Now to directly address the question about processing fees, what we're seeing is that donors are more likely to cover the fees as part of the experience, they're open to that they're okay with that, we're seeing an increased amount of organizations, donors covering the processing fee. So having your online form, offer to cover the processing fee is one of the easiest adjustments that you can make that will not offend your donor base. But in general, when I've done this, in the past, for instance, I just budgeted for that it's part of doing the business and especially if your your your system is tied to kind of more holistic fundraising operations, the fees are not going to be that much of a big deal. Unless you're you're solely working on something that is is kind of really jacking up the platform fee specifically, which is of course a concern.

28:32  
So

28:34  
awesome. Matty says giving people the option to cover the processing fee was a game changer for us. It really adds up. Absolutely. And we are seeing this. There's some healthy debates about overhead when it comes to that. But but I generally lean toward donor intent. And giving the option shows that donor intent is one where they're at okay with it. I personally cover it every single time I see. Okay, so what can you do with this? So first and foremost is shifting your strategy to maximize when somebody is giving online for instance, the best way you can do this is to develop a holistic monthly giving program. And so this is not simply offering recurring donations on your website, but actually diving in and doing a dedicated program just for people who are going to be giving on a consistent basis. So this is a great investment. I am a huge fan of this. I basically won't shut up about roughly giving and there's a whole dedicated thing in our upcoming donor report that you hear a little bit at the end today. Just on recurring giving. Tara said we did some fundraising in 2020. And most people covered the fee when offered the option. Absolutely. Absolutely. And and they're gonna do that with this too. And you can default that that the recurring element covers the fee as well. So that's why pushing for this so you're not worrying about a one time cost, but to actually be able to prepare to project in

30:00  
Come based around a recurring giving program really cuts down on the the anxiety that comes with doing online fundraising as well, if you know that you are guaranteed because the retention rate of a recurring donor is in the 80 to 90% range, these people are going to be sticking around and there's so much technology, it helps even bring them back if they if they even have a dropped credit card or things like that, that it's going to help you project and go, I know that 20 people are giving me $20 per month, and over 12 months that will lead to XY and Z your boards gonna come down, you're going to not have to worry about that type of stuff. So this is a great investment. But what also is important is also showing that meaningful gratitude. The we're going to get into this in the next section in terms of the other trend to address. But thinking through your gratitude and stewardship strategy in a post pandemic, environment and experience is very important, especially for the small dollar donations, because there is a lot of also evidence that showcases that even folks who are going to give a legacy gift labor later on or maybe even as large as a $5,000 and up gift. They enter your organization's giving ecosystem by making a small gift, and they kind of want to test it. They want to see what the the impact is going to be like what the reporting is going to be like, ah, Mabel, what are some examples of meaningful gratitude? Just you wait, oh, and there's more. So maybe we're going to get to that? Absolutely. Absolutely, really excited to do that. And that gets into why this is important, which is retention. And this is probably one of the biggest concerns across the industry is that we're continuing to see a downward trend in retention itself. So overall, this is something that we need to address. So when it comes to elements of understanding

32:07  
your donor base, there's different levels of retention, right. And so first and foremost, you have overall organizational retention. And then you have different buckets of retention. So So retention is just somebody who gave, for instance, in 2021, and you're going to see them again in 2022. Now, why this is a concern is that new donor retention is absolutely terrible. We're talking under 20%. And that continues to slide downward. So all those small dollar donors that we talked about, is a matter of getting into what can we do to make them feel as part of our giving community as part of our giving community, and an overall regardless of the size of the gift, what are we doing to make people feel that they are part of the giving community now, Professor Adrian Sargeant cites pretty much seven key reasons why people do not donate, we've talked about this in previous webinars, there's a lot of good research on this, but the too long didn't read is it's communication. It's poor communication. People just generally feel that either you don't care about them, or they forgot that you gave to them that they gave to you in the past. And so really, what we want to do is get into First, consider investments specific to retention, if you are building up your fundraising team, who are folks that can focus in on building reports, building analysis, and segmentation and experiences around keeping people coming back to your organization, regardless of their size. And then the other piece is that if your organization really is kind of wearing too many hats, when it comes to your fundraising operations, then invest in automation. There's a lot of things that you can do, especially if you're leveraging something like a CRM to automate the experience from simple receiving all the way to more sophisticated workflows that lead us to that personalization. So ultimately, though, I think the big takeaway is start to really look at that new donor retention in particular, and really kind of get into understanding the reasons why those folks are giving to you in the first place. And then what you can do to excite them to really keep coming back tactically, we will get into that.

34:41  
Now, I did see a question about neon CRM specific functionality, and unfortunately, we really can't get into that deeply today. But there's a lot of new resources that we've been rolling out, even including a new Slack community that we'll hear about later on, where people are having really great conversations and learning from each

35:00  
So, just wanted to kind of make sure to call that out that, you know, we'll be covering a lot, but we can't really get into neon CRM specifics today. Okay, so of the four trends. I want to hear which one of these impacts your organization's specifically. So let's throw that poll out.

35:26  
Alright,

35:28  
we got about

35:30  
data in 30% range for polls.

35:39  
Cool, cool. Cool.

35:42  
All right, well, we'll hit that 70% benchmark, we got more people who joined us. Okay, we're gonna end the poll. Okay. So out of the four. And Andrew, I'll check your question in a second. But let's go ahead and share the results. So first, most of you folks are concerned about donor retention and good.

36:03  
I'm always concerned about donor retention and some obsession of mine. But I am encouraged to see that the least fear trend is that you're concerned about being able to fundraise, but there are still some of you that are concerned about that. And so this is just generally things that, that when we roll out resources over the course of the year, we're going to help address all of these different items. So let's see, I do want to look at the newest question from Andrea. Looks like it might be a tactical one that we might cover, but let's read it out loud. Anyway, we have an annual membership program, who are recurring, which our organization is committed to keeping a low buy in level, how can I build out a monthly recurring program for those who are used to getting our perks in for a low buy in level? Ah, okay, Andrea, um, I might not be able to get deep into that today, I think some of the items that we're going to cover very shortly are going to touch on that. But I'm really pumped about a new resource that we have coming out specific to retention, and that and that, so I'm going to make a note to reach out to you with that, personally, once that is ready.

37:16  
But pretty jazz projects, or you can join the Slack community, and I just dumped those things out early. But yeah, we're definitely going to address that have some really good ideas about the buy in level in the perks thing, too. But maybe not deeper today. So I keep talking about this community. And And so really, what we're doing is investing deeply into you. into you, I don't care if you using our software, not neon one cares about building people who feel more connected to their donors, and leveraging their technology more effectively. So listening is a huge thing, that we are great, thank you, Elizabeth can confirm that the Slack community is a great resource, says Elizabeth. So one of the fun things that we just kind of tested out was even adding in a question and Comments field to the registration for these webinars. And here's some of the stuff that we heard about that influence the next section that we're going to see over the next probably 1015 minutes tops.

38:17  
How do I effectively campaign for funds and donations? Don't worry, I'm going to put it in, I'm going to put it in in terms of how to join the community. I'll put that in. But we also have some signup opportunities that we can put out for you in our emails, too.

38:34  
So the best strategy for increasing up marketing to current donors and new trends and practices, what are the best ways to get first time donors to become longtime repeating donors? And can you share a few insights into social media's role in this, and these are a few of the things just a few of the things that have helped us understand better the the ways to empower you with the right resources. So the six tactical items that we've come up with are really kind of geared to help address some of the key innovations that you can start to think about. These are not the only things, there's a lot more that we can think about in a more broader sense. But tactically, these are some really good top ones that also lead back into addressing the larger trends that we've been seeing. First and foremost is understanding your donor base more. Really, the biggest investments that you can do are trying to build a relationship with your community of supporters. And one of the cool thing and again, the deck will be available, you'll be able to click on all of these in terms of the supporting resources that we've curated for all of this so so just kind of get the the juices flowing in terms of your thoughts, but But overall, you know, we want to make sure that you have the right resources in your hands, so we're definitely gonna do that. So the first is driven by one of my

40:00  
favorite blogs Future Fundraising now has talked about a supporter connection survey. And this is different than just a simple donor survey, because it focuses in on why somebody is motivated to give to you. Why did they give to you? And so there's a few questions that they say to prompt in terms of something that will help unlock understanding about capacity, something about under whether they're open to giving a monthly gift, whether they're open to doing a bequest, these are also things to help lean into that general motivation of, you know, how did you hear about us, or, you know, what, what inspired you to give today, so thinking about your donation forms, even, or follow up surveys that you do, or conversations that you have, if you're you're doing interviews with donors, these are things that are going to help a lot as well as building out that demographic information. So, ultimately, a supporter connection survey is a different focus than then the experience, it's more getting into their motivation, and the reasons why they're excited to be supporting you. So that's the generally I'm a big fan of surveys. But this is a very specific type of survey that we suggest.

41:18  
Then it's also that visual storytelling about the mission itself. So one of the nice investments that that could go a long way is actually creating your own photo bank. So nonprofit marketing community has a really nice roundup of how to organize this, this can get unwieldly, right, like, like you have your stock photos, you have the photos that you've taken at events, you have things where it's you know, your team, where you're kind of taking a picture.

41:47  
And so, you know, maybe have a zoom call or something like that. And so really, it's kind of interesting to think about building this resource, and then leveraging that, because there should be a tight coordination between your development and your marketing teams. And Alicia, I see that also, if you want to make sure that other people besides me see things in the chat. There's an option to do that everyone sees as opposed to just me but but I have seen Alicia what you wrote.

42:19  
Oh, Amanda, oh, Amanda, hold on, I have a quote, I have a dedicated section on online donation forms, so don't worry, but but just thinking about your branding, thinking about how you're organizing this and making this visually pop is really, really something that is a good investment for your organization to make if you haven't created this resource.

42:41  
Big Impact through small gratitude. So Mabels question, what are some examples of meaningful gratitude? This is your question answered. So invest in micro moments, one of my favorite books in the world is hooked on a feeling

42:58  
by Frankie and forgetty. And it's this amazing book that looks at emotions in fundraising. And a big thing that he focuses in on is those peak moments that happen at different times of the donation experience. It can happen at the time of the donation, it can happen shortly after they make the donation. So what can you do to continue to lean into those moments that people are excited about? So Jeremy Rees has a nice roundup of different micro moments, small things that you can do. So you have your traditional handwritten notes, you can do a quick donor phone call, anniversary cards, social media shout outs, do a virtual office tour, using something like soapbox, which is a tool from Wistia, where you can do like a quick on the fly video presentation on something or even use your phone and just go hey, you know, we're opening back up, we want to show you what you know, your your money has helped us be able to come back to write unique mission centered gifts. So this slightly touches upon the Burke the perks item that Andrea is talking about, which is that you don't tie things necessarily to the transaction itself.

44:17  
But you shift into more of a gratitude approach as opposed to to saying if you donate at this level, you receive the tote bag, what you do is you first encourage the value of supporting your mission and then shifting into something that reinforces that value after the fact but not tied specifically to them making a transaction because unfortunately, what happens in the donors brain is that they start doing trade offs. And that they say if you give me this perk and I go to Vistaprint I can get the same thing for X amount of dollars and then you start having them think more transactionally about the relationship. So what you do is you reinforce the value and identity of the donor

45:00  
After the transaction, and even behind the scenes, postcards are really cool.

45:06  
Elizabeth, they do a donor spotlight in their direct mail newsletter, right? So these are little things, these are little things that you can do. And think about what is going to appeal to your donor community in particular, right? Not everybody necessarily is going to appreciate some of these things, depending on who they are, which leads us to segmentation. The other big investment to talk about and think about, which is segment your donor community who is what this is why going back and understanding your donor base is key. Because if you don't have the data on them, then you can't properly segment them. So when you're running reports, when you're building segmentations, around both transactions, and demographic and psychographic data, these are some good suggested starting points that you can really drill into first time donors. Notice the theme here, I'm going to talk about first time donors a lot. repeat donors, that's the people who keep coming back continuing to support them.

46:05  
Non donors, these are prospective folks monthly.

46:09  
So So non donors are people that really have only signed up for your newsletter. And so they're more at the top of the engagement funnel versus prospects, which your might be an active conversation with, for maybe a more significant gift, a capital campaign, a matching gift for Community Giving Day, things of that nature. So there's different messaging that goes into all of these. And we've done a pretty detailed dive into these in a previous webinar.

46:40  
Oh, Rick has a great question. So I'm going to get into that one.

46:47  
In terms of calls to action, and websites, and new donor attractions, and so when you're kind of thinking about your funnel, one of the ways that you should also not be ignoring is the post transaction messaging to a lot of people just go, Well, okay, we've completed the online donation or that they've sent in the check, and I got them a letter for that. I'm done, because I received them. And that's not enough. There's little really inexpensive or no cost things that you can do with this bad boy right here, your phone, that you can quickly rollout. And just say thank you, thank you. Thank you so much. So for instance, Rick is talking about attracting new donors. So while we have to get to the point of the acquisition discussion, and that's,

47:40  
that's a webinar and of its own,

47:42  
after the fact, imagine having something that the campaign was designed specifically to attract new donors, and the video says from Rick, or somebody in Rick's organization, as an example, says, You are a generous person. And you showed that today, by believing in us, you gave to us for the first time, I am so grateful for that.

48:07  
Thank you, we'll be in touch, we can't wait to report back on what we've just done.

48:13  
How long was that 30 seconds, I could have recorded that. And so just on my phone. And if you put that right on your thank you page, it starts to reinforce at the time of the transaction, that moment of excitement of why they made that decision in the first place. And so there's lots of different things that you can do with video videos, one probably one of the best investments that is low or no cost that you can make, because it's so easy to record something on your phone at this point. There's so many different ways that you can roll this out. And it's as simple as even putting a thumbnail in an email that somebody can click or putting it on a web page at the end of the transaction.

48:57  
Which gets us into one of the questions that had that somebody asked actually, we've had a few questions about online donations. And and this is something that we've put a lot of effort and thought into when we optimized our own donation pages and rolled out things like Google and Apple Pay over the last few months and weeks. And so elevation web great web firm, when it comes to analyzing the anatomy of things. And so this is a cool resource where they actually kind of chopped up all the different pieces of that donation landing page on moving beyond even just like the call to action, but the the experience on the page itself. So thinking about what the URL is like that's driving people to it, what's the imagery on the page? What are your donation amounts? The questions like Amanda is asking, which I always think

49:51  
having a free form text field, not a drop down field that simply says, you know, how did you hear about us, but you don't make it a drop down?

50:00  
Don't you just open it up? And and then you can dump that out and even do word clouds with that you don't even need to necessarily go deep in your CRM when you get that information. You can visualize that very quickly,

50:14  
just by simply looking at the free text field, right, so So these types of experiences and questions, think about the entire pieces and elements from top to bottom, on what that Dawn online donation experience is like, and, you know, we're going to continue to talk about this from a product standpoint, but no matter what are some of the biggest things that people need to start thinking about is their digital presence, even for folks who are so called major donors, they're still checking out your online form, they're still considering it, we're also starting to see some data that shows that people are getting more comfortable, because they have options like ACH to donate online. So don't

51:00  
judge. The biggest thing is, how many clicks does it take to get from your homepage to your donation page. And then what's the experience once they're on the page, because industry data shows it takes about eight minutes total, for the average donation page, to actually go from start to finish for conversion, which is terrifying. And so a lot of times when I see for instance, a PayPal button, or something like that as the primary vehicle, not a supporting vehicle, for online donations, that's a lot of where the bounce rates are going to come from. So think about it from top to bottom. And, and there's a lot of options to make that really, really a beautiful experience for people now. Okay, final poll of the day. And then we're, we're actually pretty much done. I got some really fun stuff to tell you. But I want to hear about what is exciting you What do you think you might be investing in? And if none of the above is something that you want to say? Then put it in the chat? Let everybody see it if you want to. So final poll for today, what do you think you might be investing in?

52:13  
When it comes to this year?

52:17  
Ah, love to see it. Love to see it. We got about 50%

52:22  
Oh, here we go. Here we go. I want 100%. Folks, let's end strong.

52:28  
Let's then strong.

52:36  
I'll take it, I'll take it. So with 79% participating, thank you very much. The vast majority of you are going to be focusing on those micro moments is going to be honest, that's one of my personal favorites too. Because videos are part of that. It's just a really specific call out for video. But optimization of your donation page coming up second, with over half of you making that investment. Love it. Love it. But everybody, there's something for everybody in terms of the supercharged ideas. So what are the things that that I'd love to and let me go ahead and move around my

53:13  
stuff here. So one of the ways that you can Oh, and actually, let me go ahead. And while I'm getting this ready,

53:22  
I'll go ahead and share the results. So somebody asked how you could join the Slack community, we have a few members of our Connected fundraiser community here today, I'd love to invite you to join the conversation.

53:36  
Here is where you can sign up for the connected fundraisers Slack. So if you're using slack, this is just going to create a new option for you to click between. But if you aren't using slack, it's just a communication tool. Think of it like, you know, AOL Instant Messenger with a lot more gifts. And so we had some really good conversation. Some of it's about neon products. Some of it's not a lot of it's not actually it's just kind of questions like this about, you know, what should I do with this forum where we share fundraiser wins and things of that nature. So really, really excited. So with about 10 minutes left.

54:22  
And and I'm going to go ahead and clear out our questions that have been asked because I think I've addressed at least them in the high level. What's next? What is next? And so, oh, the big one. The big one that I'm excited about is our new report. This is coming in February. And I'm going to be honest, I've been writing this thing since July. Yeah. gathering research gathering insights. And so we this is a

54:54  
and Kathy it's in the hair. I'll go ahead and

55:02  
Grab that again for ya, um, that that in terms of, oh, boy, we got tons of signups. But I'll get Kathy there. So I'm going to put how to sign up for this report in the

55:20  
the chat as well, the chat as well. And I want you to be one of our early,

55:28  
early, enthusiastic folks that see the analysis here, we're going to be breaking this up into different chunks, different content. If you know downloading a big PDF is not your jam, then don't worry, we're going to be slicing, dicing doing webinars doing info grass doing blogs that unpack this. But this is a huge step forward in the transparency and analysis of individual giving. This is probably one of the largest research papers for public consumption, not put out by an academic institution. And we are so thrilled to present some never before seen research. So I've put up that sign up page there, we're gonna have a lot of public stuff as part of this, that that you're going to get for free. But we're really excited, we're really excited about what this report can represent for your insights. And I'll even be presenting on it at AFP icon, if you're going to be there. I just got accepted yesterday for that. So let me know if you're going to be an icon to pop it into the Slack channel if you want.

56:39  
So the other thing is we're going to be building relationships for success. And we're going to be bringing on Sabrina Walker Hernandez next month. So you can go to neon one.com. And sign up. There'll be newsletters and emails specific to this. But when you check out the deck, or me popping in the chat, again, don't want to hit you have too many calls to action. But these are different different options, different stuff for different folks, right. So if you like today's webinar, we're going to deepen this and start to focus in on the question of who are our donors, that's the really big question that we have in February is Who are our donors. So we got a lot of fun content. But this is the first one that's going to help us deepen that, and understand that, so we hope to see you there. Um, other than that, that's what I got for you today. And so I'll go ahead and stop my screen share. But I'm so grateful for all of you to have joined, if you did sign up and I see dozens of people who sign up for the Slack community.

57:46  
Go into the fundraiser wins channel, if you can, if you just signed up, this is the first call to action that I'm going to have if you just signed up and post something that you're proud of that you've already done in 2022. Post something that you are proud of, that you've already gotten, or came in in late December, for instance, that is already driving your excitement for 2022. I want to see that I want to go into that after and and see all those wins. Okay. I don't care what you're using or what you're doing. I want to hear about it. And I'm so grateful for all of you for joining me today. So that's all I got. That's all she wrote. Let me go ahead and make sure that if I see any chats there, I'll hang around for maybe five minutes if people have any other questions. But yeah, really, really thankful. Hopefully, these trends help you with your own analysis. And there's so much more coming. There's so much more coming. We are so excited about what we can do for your fundraising this year. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Alicia. Thank you. Awesome.

58:53  
Ah, thank you, Antonio. Thank you. Thank you. Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude, right like I am so happy to do this and come into things for this so awesome. Thank you all good. Bryan. Bryan. Bryan, get into that slack channel. Let's help you feel better even further.

59:12  
Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, I'm gonna stick around.

59:18  
Ooh,

59:20  
look at that.

59:22  
Let's get that community going. Let's get some cat Jeff's going to. Oh, no, Amanda, we will we will be emailing this recording to you Don't worry.

59:33  
And and was there an email? Was there a link for the report to sign up to receive it? Yes. Let me put that in the chat again for you. We're gonna be sorry. We're gonna be

59:42  
we're gonna we're gonna be putting on a lot.

59:46  
We're gonna be honest.

59:49  
Awesome. Oh, so cool.

59:52  
So cool.

59:54  
I'm excited. I'm excited for to see what y'all are going to do. So I'm going to begin

1:00:00  
Do folks, you can always reach me on LinkedIn as well. Tim Sarrantonio I'm handling donor advised funds. Yeah, have we done that net? No, Tiffany. But really, one of the cool things that we're doing is we have dedicated team members who are going to be focusing on product usage webinars to that comes up a lot. So I think that I'm going to take that note to try to prioritize that sooner rather than later. We have some interesting things coming up when it comes to overall management. But as Alicia

1:00:35  
from Community Youth concepts can can attest to discovering soft credits can be a game changer, but we had a really fun conversation in the slack about solicitors too but I think I think we could do some fun stuff but I did post a donor advised fund video in the Slack channel Tiffany so if you get in there

1:00:56  
we got that

1:00:58  
awesome. Okay, folks,

1:01:02  
you have a great day. I'll talk to you soon I'll see in a few weeks tops could you have a webinar about recruiting donors or employees all the matching employee stuff okay, see oh, that maybe I should hang around to the fully matching employees I want to do matching stuff for a while

1:01:22  
Okay, second that like this, this is how we do it we crowdsource the stuff to like I have ideas but not drawn from you.

1:01:32  
Okay, all right. You let me know you let me know Timothy on one comm if you want to drop me an email to basics webinar, okay. We can do it all. We got a new training to where we got new training stuff coming for neon items as well. So, okay, I'm going to get into the slack and say hello to everybody. And then, you know, I'll see you soon. Thanks.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai