0:00 Like blazer tie in and the ne, the neon hat just going hard to brand align. I love it. 0:06 Well, I am director of corporate brand. Hello, everyone. Welcome, welcome. We're gonna get started soon. This is an appealing, 0:20 what day of the week? Is it? Tim? Wednesday? 0:23 It's Thursday, October 6, we are six days into the fourth quarter. And yeah, it 0:35 really means we're six days into a fundraising season. Let's call it what it is, 0:38 let's, let's call it what it is. So so we will be diving into all things that basically, folks, we're going to give it a few more minutes. But this is going to be highly interactive. This is there is no deck today. And, and Brian, you're fine, by the way, just to stay as is. And and so this is going to be an ask the expert session. And so Nejeed is our expert here, I'm playing support on that, as kind of your co guides toward everything fundraising data that you may have a question about now, the way it's gonna work is, and we'll get the kind of first I want to make sure that things are working for folks from an interaction standpoint. So first, the two ways that you can interact with us our chat and q&a. Chat. Let's test that out now. And that's going to be for comments, that's going to be for observations like like, if you ask a question there, we just might miss it. Because a lot can happen. So we have folks in we actually have a lot of people sign up for this. So I'm going to kind of wait a little bit for people to get in. And we are recording. But let me actually go ahead and enable the transcript. We should have the transcript on now too. So let's check out the chat to make sure that that is working. Please type in where you're talking to us from today. And just put that down like physical location where we get people from chat disabled. Tim says, 2:30 Tim, someone said champs 2:33 Yeah, I guess that's why we're testing this zoom being annoying. So it's on now we got our Oh, we got Horry, we got Minnesota. We got California, Louisiana. We got Canada, Philadelphia in the world. Okay, now she where are you? And I need you to be specific. You need to be specific on this. 3:00 I am I'm somewhere somewhere off the coast of well, I'm actually not off the coast. I'm on land. But I'm I'm in Europe. I'm in Italy. So I'm on my first vacation. I mean my first vacation in about 10 years, so but I couldn't miss I couldn't miss spending an hour with the legendary Tim and talking one of my favorite things in the world. That's data, data fundraising. So here I am. So we're excited. Also I wanted to apologize to folks, because I'm on a web, an iPad, and they've got this ridiculous new feature where it like follows your round. So it looks like I'm like floating. So I'm gonna really try hard, to stay very still. So my camera doesn't move, but awesome. Don't worry, I'm not uploading. 3:50 So okay, I think I think we've given enough kind of green room banter, folks. So So I'm talking to you from upstate New York, specifically from the Mohawk Mountain House. If there's anybody from the Hudson Valley region, I'm I'm actually attending camp finance with our partners at NYCON. So excited about that love Mohawk. That's right, Sara, isn't it gorgeous? 152 years. So I'm really excited that we are kind of bringing the elevation here we have Europe involved. We have like Gilded Age mansions. And ultimately though, when you get down to it, folks, we are here for you. So the way that this is going to work is let's say you want to sit back. You don't have any questions. You just want to see what people are asking because Nejeed and I in a nuclear scenario that nobody has any questions that they want to ask, have things to talk about that are hyper focused on fundraising data end of the year, artificial intelligence and fear. We have a lot that we can go through but this is an ask the expert session we're kind of getting ready for generosity xchange where Or people will be able to ask anything of experts. Our expertise is fundraising data. And so and, and data in general. But if you have something that will help you, and you want to ask it, use the q&a. So start queuing that up even now, because we can start working through that as we kind of do some basic introductions, use the q&a section of Zoom's webinars. And we're going to answer as much of that as possible. And that's what we'd prefer, we would prefer your questions versus what we've come up with. So if you have anything that relates to fundraising data, to help you do your job, better ask it, this is the forum for it. So we maybe spend tops, 15 minutes, kind of going on some pre fab stuff. And then we're going to switch over to the q&a, for sure if there's something there. If there's nothing there, then so be it. But I already have one notification that shows that so I'm not going to look at it just yet. But I want to see those numbers and notifications go up. So Nejeed, before we get started into the conversation. What? Who are you? Why are you an expert on this? 6:20 So good, I guess good morning to some of you Good afternoon to others. It's a real pleasure to be here to be sharing the screen. I almost said stage but screen with a dear friend of mine, Tim, my name is Nejeed Kassam, I'm a I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a recovering corporate lawyer. I'm currently a charity lawyer. But most importantly, I'm the CEO of fundraising kit. And fundraising kit is a company that is literally obsessed with data. And our goal, our passion, our Raison d'etre is to ensure that everyone and every gets the most opportunity from the data that already exists in their CRM. So we're very proud partner of neon one, we're so excited to help fundraisers around the world unlock generosity, decrease the amount of manual work they have to do, and and empower people to give better all through data in a way that makes us not need computer science degrees to do it. And I think that's the most exciting part. And I've spent about 30 years working in and around the nonprofit sector, front, you know, kind of held every role in the space, including fundraiser, and executive director. But here I am today trying to use technology to power all of the work that we do every day. 7:42 And I'm Tim Sarrantonio, director of corporate brand at Neon one, my background working in nonprofit tech, I'll be coming up to my 11th year in November with the neon one ecosystem. But before that, I was a annual fund manager, a director of community a grant writer in 2008, which means I immediately pivoted to individual giving through snow grants. I've tried to create my own FileMaker Pro 10 database. And I've used things like raiser's edge, you know, little green light. So a lot of data is coursing through these veins who have somebody who ultimately wasn't, you know, a history major in college. The most pertinent thing that I want to point out for both of us is that we are actually both representatives of the Fundraising Effectiveness Project as well, which is the largest analysis of donor data in the world. So what I love about it, and this is a great representation of what FEP represents is it's an initiative of AFP, International Association of Fundraising Professionals, and giving Tuesday's data commons, and it aggregates giving data from multiple CRM platforms. Now, Nejeed is also the CEO of Keela. And Keela is another CRM in our space. More, you're sharing the same stage, how is that possible? Because it's important for people to understand what's actually happening and competitiveness is boring when it comes to that. So that's what I love is he is such a great advocate for the topic. And such a great partner for all things this so I see three different questions so far. Let's kind of Nejeed let's dive into some little bit of people setting, then we'll shift over in about 10 minutes to the questions that are going to start piling up there. So folks start using that. But she Where do you want to start with this topic, though? 9:48 I mean, I think the most obvious, boring but really important thing to talk about is like what the heck is data? Like what does data mean? And you know, like, I remember You know, 25 years ago, I thought data was like what you got on your cell phone? You know, like when you are maybe that was not 25 years ago, but like, you know, you got data. 10:07 Oh, my, my minutes are over and my data plan. Oh, that's amazing. 10:12 Right. But but the truth is in Tim please jump in is that data simply is a collection of information organized generally in a schematic way, something that is repetitive that it's done in the same way that it's somewhat organized. It can range from a piece of data can be somebody's phone number, or how much money they gave in the last campaign, a piece of data can be if somebody opened an email that you sent them in the last campaign, a piece of data can be whether somebody tweeted something a penis data can be something about their biographic information, or their financial information. It can be the value of somebody's home, or the number of kids they have. You know, those are all things that I'm literally like pulling from Neon or Keela, or Raiser's edge. But data can also be like, what did I buy for? Groceries? Last week, every item in there is a piece of data. It's ultimately just a collection of information that's organized in a specific way. Would you add anything, Tim? Yeah, I, 11:13 I kind of want to use the phrase. And I told you this in our in our pre call for this. But when I got my job for the organization where I was working with raiser's edge, I've never had a background using a database properly went my the first job I had in the nonprofit space in 2008, no database whatsoever. I downloaded a PDF for some open source thing, because I didn't have any money, your entire organization's budget was $89,000. And so I downloaded a thing. And I'm like, I don't know what the hell I'm looking at. So that got abandoned real quick. And then the second place I had, they had an Access database, and then one of the founders walked out the door with it. And so I didn't have a donor database when I started, because that happened. And then I worked for a nonprofit that had raiser's edge and was actually one of their earliest clients. And so they're like, Well, why should we hire you? And I said, all data, all the databases is an electronic representation of our relationships with people and the history that we have with them. That's it. And I still hold that to be true. And, and ultimately, what's gotten more sophisticated is being able to better understand behavior. Beyond transactions, I would say, kind of intent data, things like email, open rates, things like website visits. That is where the evolution has come. But if you even go as far back look, even the Catholics knew, you know, databases are not electronic, even 12:50 though we they could be written on paper. Absolutely. I'm reading about the incredible. It's not scary. 12:55 It's not a tech technology is a very misunderstood term, because they think it's this stuff, they think it's this. And, and we've had technology for a very long time, obviously, it's just the nature of it has evolved, and the purpose of it has evolved. So let's shift to action, then a little bit. And as you were, you know, understanding what data is, and I'm continuing to see the questions pile up, which is great. But let's start with kind of a baseline question. What do you think we can say, we've defined what data is, we've evolved it a little bit in the context of our conversation. But what's a good next step in terms of addressing the role of data in a nonprofit fundraisers life? 13:40 So I think So firstly, I'm going to answer your question in kind of, like, an obtuse kind of way and and get very specific, so 13:48 I wouldn't have it any other way. Of course you would. 13:53 The role of data in a number of fundraisers life is to make your work easier. It's to make your work more effective. It's to make your work more targeted. And if data is used in the right way, it can do all those things. There's, you know, Beth Kanter wrote a book basically about how the whole sector is stressed out, and especially fundraisers, the physical, the emotional, the intellectual toll it takes on on all of us who do this really important work that keeps the sector alive, we're all burnt out, we're tired. We're frustrated. data isn't a silver bullet, but it can certainly help us it can certainly move us to, it can move us to a healthier, happier, more effective place. And that's to me that like the, you know, kind of magical and I say that kind of tongue in cheek power of data, but specifically speaking, there's two things to think about. Data can tell you what we've done. So it can look at the past that can give you a better understanding of things like efficacy of benchmarks and how you sit within your own organization. How you sit against the broader folks in you know, in our communities doing this. It can help you to find patterns, which are then going to help you predict what's going to happen. So you start by organizing your data in a specific way in a CRM, or even in a spreadsheet to be really honest with you. Then you learn how to slice and dice it, you segment it, you report on it. From that you can see trends and from that, then you can create insights and predictions, which are going to help to guide your work. And so that's almost like the the chain of data and how to use data in our work as fundraisers. Does that make sense? tim? 15:35 I think it does. And segmentation, by the way I've been checking the questions is going to be where we're going to start when we shift into things and have just a few minutes for the open, ask the expert session. But I think that the biggest thing that I want to make sure that we address before we get into this, because yes, a lot of times there's also not all data is created equal? Absolutely. And it can and it can, you know, we hear the term vanity metrics, right? A vanity metric is basically something that makes us feel good about our work. And it might not actually have any real impact. So number of Facebook Likes on a post who gives a crap, right? Like, like, that doesn't necessarily mean anything when it comes to the goals that your organization has, which is why a term like key performance indicators, or KPIs is also critical. Because you have to say, Okay, I'm going to decide to focus on a few things very much. Exactly. 16:33 tim, you cannot track everything. And even if you do, you cannot possibly turn your attention to everything. Because if you're looking at everything you're really looking at. 16:44 I love that. I love that. And that's and that's, I think, take that same idea for segmentation when we get to that question, if you're appealing to everybody, you're not actually appealing to anybody. Well, and that's these, 16:55 we'll get to it. We talked about target asks and all these things, but but I'll let you finish 17:00 the question. I want to go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. No, no, no, please, please, please. I want to make sure we we address one big thing that doesn't get talked about this. And then and then maybe a final thought from you. And then we'll shift into the open q&a. So seven questions plus, let's bump that number up. Fear I, it's so real. And Mallory Erickson does a great job talking about this people like tim Locky talk about this extensively. Because a lot of times and I just came out of a presentation at Mohonk for camp finance. And I was talking to a few fundraisers afterwards. And all of them were addressing the fear that they have. They're like, I have a database. And I'm scared of it. And in fact, actually one of them was a neon user. And she's like, I just came on, I've been told I need a CRM, but I don't know what this is. And I'm scared to touch it. And, and part of the job of firms like ours is to alleviate the fear with things like absolutely, and onboarding and stuff like that. But even all the resources in the world cannot overcome an individual's internal fear of the unknown and of what they should be doing. So how can we properly think about the fears that people have around data? Because I didn't get started being a data person by any means I thought I was going to be 18:25 i'm a lawyer. Trust me, I don't like to die data was not a word that was in my daily lexicon and 18:34 put in the chat, what you thought you were going to be when you grew up, versus what you ended up being at your current job. I'd be interested to hear that in terms of like, like that, because I thought I was going to be a lawyer and a PhD person. So go ahead Nejeed how do we 18:49 know I want to talk about data and the fear of data? Because again, I think it goes back to like level setting as to what it is and what it is, right? data isn't the answer to any questions. It's a better way of how to get there. It's a tool. It's not a destination, right. And I think that's really important to think about, because if you're like, oh, data is gonna solve all my problems, data is not going to solve any of your problems. You got to data is going to give you an opportunity, it's something you can use to solve a problem. And I think that's really where I see it as as a mechanism of fear. There's two fears that we've heard a lot from from our client base at fundraising kit. the first one is, I'm scared my data sucks, which is a legitimate one. We'll, I'll talk about that in the second one. But the second one is like I'm scared, my data is going to tell me a story that isn't actually the truth. And so like, I don't know if you've seen iRobot, but I'm going to quote a terrible movie 19:44 that were like, the will smith movie 19:45 that we're like, take the robots like takeover? 19:49 Well, it's based off of Isaac Asimov stuff. So yeah, it's true. 19:53 It is. So but in that, and I like to use this example because in that movie, the fear is that the robots are going to take over that The and I use that we talked about machine learning and artificial intelligence, but they're going to do the work, they're going to do the job, and ultimately they're going to turn on us. And that's fearful. Right? I get that. Yeah. data isn't for an unthinking fundraiser. But I know none of you are unthinking fundraisers data is simply something that you have to look at use as a tool, but then look at and think about critically, right, if, if you haven't, you know, data is never going to overpower instinct and fundraising. But we cannot as fundraisers rely only on instinct. And that's the fear. I think that that's, that's one of the fears, we can dig into that more. 20:34 Trust your gut, yeah. But you need to have the gut be, be informed. 20:40 Guided, right, I think guided gut is a powerful fundraiser, that can be like a digestive add to, so we should be careful. But like, the other fear that I think is important is like my data sucks. And I'll be honest with you, some of your data does suck straight up. And so to use data effectively, it's and Tim Lockie actually talks a lot about this, too, like he's a friend of both Tim and mine here. And he talks a lot about about data and the power of data and the human side of data. And, you know, the idea is like, your data is cleaner and dirtier than you think it is, right? If we've had discipline, which is something that a lot of folks don't have in our sector, especially on the fundraising side, because we're so tired, we're so busy, our data is probably pretty good. You know, things like, what's missing? Are we recording all the events or interactions, people are engaging with our organizations? Are we updating things properly, or putting things in the right formats, and so like, there is a fear. But there's also really, really simple ways to use it. The first one is a human one, I'll give an example. And the second one is a technological one. Right? So the human one is like, pick something in your database, and like for one or two hours a week, run through it, even if 30,000 contacts, make just check it make it better, because make them high priority. Things don't make it like son, or daughter's, you know, birthday, nobody cares about that, really. But like, you know, are my dates lined up? Are my receipts, you know, have I received those donations? You know, really, because then we're duplicates, 22:14 duplicates? 22:17 Exactly. The second one is like what part of my data is missing? Right. And so actually, Tim, I don't think you actually know this. But at fundraising kit, when you plug your neon or whatever in, it actually runs a report, and it'll tell you what data points are missing from your database. That's really, really cool, right? Incredibly powerful. And so if you put the work in to get your data, it'll start to alleviate that fear, get it in a place where it will start to go to work for you. And I think those are the two biggest fears that we've identified at fundraising kit that people like, oh, that's actually not that scary. I just have to think about it, I have to know about it, I put my mind to 22:57 it. And that and that's actually the first one especially and the second, both of those is how I got really good. As a database administrator, I actually called it like, I'm going into the matrix is what I was like, tell people I'm going in. And I would just be doing batch updates and deletions and adjustments. And I would just focus on like, I'm going to knock this out. I'm going to knock this out. And I had a process where we had 23:23 to take six weeks and you don't have to know we spent two hours a week 23:27 we started our database. When I got there. We had 90 What Raiser's Edge calls constituent code. That's right. And I just was like, why do we have like decision making? And we're gonna shift into our questions. Why do we have 90 of these because segmentation was impossible then? And so we'll shift into our questions next, but like, that's why I did it was because we couldn't segment properly. We couldn't understand who people were. Now before Nejeed We shift to the back and forth portion, folks. So so keep asking now, this is the time this is your time. So we're going to dive into that. I want to share what some folks shared with us on what they thought they were going to be when they grew up. I love this when Eva says or Eva. Apologies if I'm saying that wrong psychologist but now I'm a prospect researcher, which means that you're the same thing in my opinion. But I thought of a software engineer, but turned to be marketing and communications. I got another fun there's a fun fun I thought I would be a marine biologist. But now I'm a fundraiser and enrollment director, guitarist 24:37 everyone goes through a marine biologist phase though in that person's defense like we've all been through our marine biologist phase you might go to 24:45 fourth grade fourth grade I found we're gonna like adopt a manatee and that's what I would focus on. Guitarist this one guitarist new now director of IT for a health care company rockin programmer analyst But I'm a bookkeeper and web designer, communications manager, but for a small, but effective nonprofit love that Annabelle, thought I would be a teacher ended up in fundraising. Guess what you still are Susan, you are an educator on generosity. Okay, let's shift to our questions. So I know that we've gotten this a few times, both from John. So I'll say John. John says best practices on segmentation for campaigns. Let me just say, I'm going to answer that one. And then very similarly. Let me see, I thought I had Oh, and then Amanda said, very similar question, best tips for segmenting your donor base for the first time. So kinda. 25:43 So I want to start by segment. Yeah, when you talk about segmenting, you got to be looking for a specific, you got to ask a question that you want an answer to? And I think that's really important. You know, it can be as simple as like who gave in the last 12 months? It's a very simple question, right? Or it could be like, who gave to my end of year campaign, or last year who gave within 100 hours of Giving Tuesday? I don't know, you know, or whatever it might be. But when you're segmenting something, you've got to be looking for something, right. That's the whole idea of segmenting. It's, you know, you're gonna find treasures no matter what you do. But there's got to be a question you're trying to answer. Who did this? What happened this? When did this happen? And I think that's a really important thing, because some people, we get this a lot at fundraising kit, where people like, Oh, I just want to segment my data, what do you want to find out? And once you know that, that'll help you find out. So that's one thing I wanted to start by saying. And I think the second thing is like, don't try to segment too much, you know, pick something that's relevant, like people who live in Chicago, or people who live in Chicago that gave in the last four months of 2021. If you try to think about people who live in Chicago, who gave them last, in the last four months of 2021, who are under the age of 30, and have two kids, and their birthday falls in November, firstly, you will have trouble doing the segmentation. But more importantly, you probably aren't going to find a big enough group what's really relevant? So two pieces of you know, my visceral response, and that is one pick what you're segmenting answer a specific question. And, and don't try to be so specific. That unless you're looking for a very, very, very specific person or group of people. 27:26 Well, and it's also choosing because there's some questions here that that are, can get into Neon specifics. And we can get into that, which is perfectly fine. But but some of them are more general. On the question like Amanda's is like, Where do I even start? And it's, and it's choosing what data point like you said, exactly, what's the hypothesis that you have on your do, your donor base, and for me, where I've been trying to push in that audience design is what is going to be moving the needle from, from what Professor Jen Chang talks about, at the Institute for Sustainable philanthropy. Moving it from a situation based gift I gave because I was asked versus an identity based gift, which is where the donor data is most critical, because your understanding the most about them. So something like why did you donate to us today, as an open text field on your online donation form, or something that you ask people to fill out a survey on, can be very powerful for segmentation. But the example that actually got amusingly brought up when I presented this Mike Buckley, actually Killoe group and collective partner of our, both of our companies cited somebody where they asked that, like, why did you donate, and there was an animal conservation organization, and they cited an animal that the organization did not help. And so donors can be inaccurate. That's the other thing about data is that, especially if it's not hard data, such as when somebody gave a gift online, we know that with pretty clear accuracy, if it's up to interpretation, keep that in mind as well, when you're designing qualitative 29:26 data, and there's quantitative data, right, and we have to remember, like, they both play a really important role in telling a story, but they can play very different they can tell different kinds of stories, or I guess, and or play, play different roles in the telling of those stories. And that's important to note. 29:42 Absolutely. Now, I want to make sure that we cover some of these other questions, too. So for Amanda for John, kind of the basics of segmentation, best practices. I think we've covered that. Can I just one more time keep going on and it's a big topic. It's a really big topic. So it is 29:59 and we could talk for ours on it. But I want to say like, you know, one thing that I like I sit on, I think five or six boards of directors now. And when one of the things I have challenged all regardless, some of them do $2 billion a year, and others do $100,000 a year. And I kind of have the gamut. It's like pick a couple of things that you care about, Do I care about repeat donors this year. So when you're thinking about it on a quarterly or monthly basis, you want to segment who are my one time donors and who are my recurring or repeat donors, depending on language you use, like, I cared deeply this year about LYBUNTS or SYBUNTS, well, then that's what you got to focus on. Those are the people you got to target or I care about this demographic, like, pick a couple of data points that you're going to focus on, that you're going to obsess about, and segment around those because I think that's gonna, it's gonna give you clarity, it's going to give you confidence, it's going to make you increase your data fluency. And it's also going to give you it's gonna give you valuable information, which you can then turn into to behavioral changes that are going to lead to you being more effective as a fundraiser. 31:01 So I think this is a good question, because we're getting some some specific questions around product functionality and things like that. And just to clarify, this is not a product demo, or anything relating to that. So we might follow up if you're asking specifically around, like fundraising kit interacting with, you know, neon, or things like that. So, where I want to focus, though, is some some kind of really nice evolutions of how we think about like, understanding donor behavior. And one of the things that gets screwed up across the board is soft credits. Soft credit. So we have a really deep question for how can you can you clarify how soft credits and households can and should be used to acknowledge donors? And we want to be 31:50 exhausted different schools of thought on very different 31:53 schools of thought? Yeah. Yeah. So let's go into that. Because it's kind of like, I think, Susan, there's a lot of ways that you can approach the exporting and receipting of people and things like that. But she talks about the different schools of thought on the roll first, what is the soft credit? If somebody hasn't heard of that? And, and what is the the way to kind of evolve from your thoughts on this? And folks, we're gonna be talking at least for another 15 minutes, by the way, so if you thought that this was just going to kind of end at the half an hour mark, we're gonna hang around more, as well. Absolutely. 32:25 So I want to think about like the beauty of something like a soft credit, but also the confusion on it, right? Because I think it's such a beautiful example of data in fundraising that is either misused or misunderstood, right? So to me, the way that I like to my mom doesn't know anything about fundraising. Okay, nothing, except that she always asked me to give donate whatever she's fundraising for. But other than that, she knows nothing. And so I if I, if she was sitting here, I would say, Mom, a soft credit is like the assist, for a donation. Right? It is the person, company, family that either influenced supported or directed a gift from somebody else. So the easiest example, that I like to think about is in a peer to peer campaign, right? You're running a peer to peer campaign, Tim is cycling around all the old houses across the United States, including the one he's sitting. And he says, I want to raise money. And he emails me a link, it says nejeed, I'm raising money, and I make a donation of 100 bucks. And Tim really had no part in that other than that, he's the guy who sent me the link and is campaigning for something. Tim, under you know, most schools of thought Tim's getting the assist, right tims, getting the soft credit. And it's my donation I'm as as a as a legal entity, as a person, I'm donating to whatever organization, you know, nonprofit org, save, save the houses, let's call it that. And Tim is gonna get a soft credit because the donation that came from me, which is a direct relationship between me and save the houses org is actually because of or due to Tim, so he gets the soft credit. Now that can be through friends, it can be through family through can be through board members, it can be through companies, it doesn't have to be peer to peer. The question then is like, why are soft credits important? And to me, the really visceral answer is because there are so many people who are more valuable to your organization than simply the money that they give or the time that they volunteer. 34:39 So soft credit, the operational role that we have here when designing generosity experiences is start with people not money, right? And as relationships are messy, they're going to come in so we got an employee giving reference too like, I'm oh boy, oh boy. And then there's some cool things that we've rolled out. So specific to soft credits for acknowledgement in CRM, actually in our last release. So we have recognized the importance of this, but keep going as well. So that's, 35:11 you know, kind of school, or that kind of the most obvious basic one. And I think if you think of an organization as a bunch of people with a ton of webs attached to them, and they're all interlocking in some way, you know, the soft credits is like a webbing, if that makes sense. It's what connects Tim, to me and you to the person I recommended, and it helps you to understand the people, right, like you said, you know, in your framework, tim, it's about the people, it's about the relationships, ultimately, it's about more than just asking people for money. It's not that the act in and of itself is, is kind of less important than the relationships that get them there. And soft credits are a mechanism of tracking. I think the other really common one is the households family. One, when I make a donation doesn't matter if it's me, or my wife, or my, my two year old, whose name is on the receipt, we at least as a family in my home, and many homes across the United States and Canada. Give it as a family. And you know, what, whoever ends up putting their credit card down and doing it doesn't really matter. And so by understanding the families, and the the law, again, like the ecosystem of giving and attributing stuff that to other people in the household, that's the purpose of self credit. Does that make sense? Tim? 36:31 I think it makes sense to me if you want to put in the chat, folks if there's any further clarifications, but but even like something like employee giving from, you know, Benevity, right, like something like that your cause when you're putting that into the database, donor advised funds, right. Like, that's why we had to roll out new acknowledgment emails specific to all of this, because the relationship, the webbing, netting, what however you want to think of it, of that ecosystem is so messy, sometimes. I was even attending a conference recently where somebody was talking about should matching gifts always be soft credits? I think so as well. It depends on the database. 37:16 Well, but I think, as a philosophy, I would argue, yes, I would argue yes. But because if your company or your family is matching a gift, that gift is doubled. Well, actually, not always. It depends. I take that back most of the time. But But I believe there is an attribution, unless it's a match from a large philanthropist who is just doing it to encourage other people to give and there's not really matching 37:45 champagne. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Specifically, well, okay. I also think there's a difference between and this is a whole thing is is what do we mean by matching gifts? Yes to Okay, so that's Yeah. Right, because matching gifts is either the Corporate Social Responsibility side of things. Or it's, it's the match, challenge grant type thing. I recently got a support answer about employee giving to be logged as a matching pledge in neon. So I was confused. Well, that's the thing, right? So matched pledges in something like neon CRM, were originally designed to address the employee giving side as opposed to the individual donor side. So we have a thing called matched pledge, and match pledge, historically, as many people use it, but others, like the person who's in here might use it differently, right. So if the the terminologies instituted differently, but the reason that got developed by us is that we said, well, corporate stuff is different than a soft credit. Right? And so soft credits can be people focused philanthropy focus versus the kind of I expect Said gift to come in, in this month, because I've submitted it through your cause platform. Right. So that could be different. 39:05 Well, I want to say one thing, I don't think it really matters. I think what matters more is that organizations are consistent internally. So because when it comes to segmentation, when it comes to doing your analysis, when it comes to actually being empowered by that data, as long as you're consistent, and you write it down, and you make it clear as to what your organization's policy around that is, yeah, like no organization is going to work exactly the same. The the biggest problems come when different people, different staff members, different fundraisers, maybe different volunteer fundraisers are actually using things inconsistently. And that's where the largest problems from a data perspective, cleanliness perspective come up. 39:41 Because you kind of like we can guide you on expected functionality. But there if you look over the years, we've also had to either make some hard decisions to be like, Look, this is just how it needs to work versus things where we can give you the tools to figure that out. And what I want to do is make sure we address kind of two things, Susan, who asked the original soft credit question, which could probably be its own webinar. Like, Oh, I love talking about this. And Annie even had a funny thing to where she's like, this is funny, I'm having the same conversation about match pledges, soft credits and workplace giving earlier today with my boss, and our need for consistency. Part of it's like, you have to understand what your database does here for expected functionality. And you also got to be blunt, you might be talking to support people who aren't fundraisers, they're like, I was just gonna say that. Exactly. And so you might be asking them a question where you think you're actually asking somebody who is like a fundraiser perspective? And it's like, no, they're just going to tell you what the functionality does. And they don't get the context that you're asking it too. So so keep that in mind. That's a little trick, too. But yeah, definitions is key. And it's understanding what intended functionality versus actual usage gets to. So what I want to do is kind of do double double duty here. Susan has a point that, I think connects to Katie's question. Thanks for adressing. I think the bottom line is that this is confusing, agreed. And that there's really no way around this. In many ways. Yes, but I think that you can get to it. I struggle most with invitations to donors, when we want to invite both spouses and the soft crediting person doesn't show up maybe when pulling reports. And I think ultimately, it comes down to how does your database handle things like households? And how do you run accurate designations that you're sending things, which is Katie's question, which is, how do I like tag people with this too. And that's because there's like, really three main things that a database that we are talking about needs to take into account a person, and that a person could be a company too. That's one thing to keep in mind. It's an account. Right? And I love this, this kind of like Steven Spielberg's zoom thing that your iPad is, 42:02 it's my I haven't even moved, 42:03 you haven't even moved really staying exactly the same place anyway. Anyway, so I went, it went and we're holding the crowd. But I think technically, this was supposed to be half an hour. And in my bed, I was like, Oh, this is an hour. So apologies if we're going either over or ending early, folks. But you know, we'll try to try to wrap things up maybe a little bit about the future. And Nejeed, how about we do that? Because I want to make sure that we address case question too. And it comes down to like, there's people, there's actions people take that are like, not monetary. I got a letter, I got an email, I would want to volunteer. And then there's money. And there's like different reports that stare at all those different things and databases. So when you're flagging something, like appeals, Nejeed, and looking at analysis of like those leading indicators, because somebody even asked about things like social media for kind of lookalike audiences and things like that. How can you think of intent data? Like open rates and things like that? How does that relate to fundraising? 43:14 Okay, so I'm going to do a plug for something that Tim, you saw us supported something called the c d d f. It's called the certified data driven fundraiser. It's a nonpartisan, it was a number of tech providers that came together certified data driven fundraising program, or cddf, I think it's called it's like data driven. fundraiser.com, I think is the right one. And it actually has one of the , the goal of this educational program is to make every fundraiser data fluent to make them you know, Tim, have data be part of the way they think about problems. And we really proudly fundraising kit was one of the one of the participant organizations that put it together. And there's a unit in there that talks about, about the difference between leading and lagging indicators. Okay. And I think this is really important, because the power, Tim talked about two kinds of data. He talked about data about money and data, but actions, but the thing is, those two things don't live in isolation. They're powerful when they're brought together. So if I know, for example, that 13% of my emails are opened. And from that 8% of people click on the donate button. And from that 25% of people convert on the form that pops up. Well, that data is a combination of those two things that's going to help me understand giving patterns better, it's going to then I can test the efficacy of messaging on that email, which is, you know, I can test where I placed the button. I can, you know, there are so many things that I can test and learn from that. And some of those things are lagging like people made a donation or dollars raised and some of the things are leading like How many people open an email and then that casket and they're, they're connected, right? So what we always say to fundraisers what I always say is focus on your leading indicators and your lagging indicators will take care of themselves, you're lagging indicators are gonna measure the efficacy and success of your leading indicators. And you know, I used an email as a really simple example. But there's so many more that we can do. And I really recommend i'll get Tim and and the neon team to send everyone like a really fat promo code for CDDF. So you all get a really great discount, it's like really reasonable price and get CFRE credits and everything put it 45:35 on, and we'll put it on the landing page for the event. Yeah, folks can 45:39 you know, getting into that? leading and lagging indicators has really helped me frame that with with the boards I sit on in the fundraising I do because it allows me to focus on things and connecting those those two things, right. 45:52 So I think we've, we've actually done a pretty good job, like Janine did ask best practices for year end tax receipts, just make sure that you send everybody something, you know, at the end of the year, different systems have ways that they can aggregate different 46:08 countries. And different countries, obviously have different regulatory frameworks. And, you know, again, cra 46:14 versus the wild west of the IRS versus, you know, if it's under $250, and stuff like that, you know, and there are some highly specific product questions that I do want to give a plug for generosity exchange segmentation, for an instance, our own Sam groebart, in professional services, we'll be getting into segmentation at generosity exchange with a hands on workshop, where people can actually share their, their screen, you know, they could talk directly to him. And so 46:49 if I can make one plug for the relationship, between kit in neon, we actually have a lot of pre built segmentations in there for you, which is something that like one of the powers, why Tim was so excited about this partnership, that kit fundraising kid and neon have done, you plug it in, you connect your database, we pull the data, right from Neon, yep. And you press a button and it segments, the content, you know, it's pre built all that there's board reporting, there's lybunts, you know, there's so many different kinds of segmentation and analysis you can get from that. There's, and so, you know, if you're a little intimidated, or you're really busy, and you want a little bit of help, and you want technology to help you with that something have been built by fundraisers, you know, take a look at the partnership that we've built, because I think it's really exciting. 47:37 And that can be found also on the neon one website to learn more and absolutely under our partner in the marketplace to right, yep, that's in the marketplace. So okay, let's let's round things out. Because, you know, I wanted to kind of we've, I think we've kind of as best as we could address the questions that we've had come in, and there's been a lot of great ones, soft credits alone, make me want to go back and think about just so much on we should put 48:04 a panel together about like the different approaches to soft credits for platform agnostic. Like, I think the lexicon, the language, the decision making, it's so interesting. I will 48:13 do people have the patience for watching a bunch of people argue with each other for an hour, because like, that's what I think would end up happening. I mean, maybe probably put on the chat, if you'd watch that. Where Where do you think all of this is going? Like, let's say on that, what's the future of all of this as especially relates to small shops. 48:33 So firstly, I don't so my belief, the reason I left my day job and came into technology was because I believe Tech is a great equalizer, I have founded and served as executive director of multiple tiny nonprofits like less than $200,000 a year. And I don't believe they deserve second class treatment, I don't believe we deserve second class treatment. And so to me, technology is a great equalizer. Because Don't kid yourself, big nonprofits have a lot of resources. Remember, if you know they have a lot of money, they have a lot of fundraising power, they have to want a brand. And that's wonderful, because they do incredible work. But to me, technology is a mechanism to level that playing field. It's a mechanism to hold yourself accountable, track the work that you're doing. And this is what we didn't get into much, Tim but like, using things like machine learning and artificial intelligence to give you a leg up in your work, to help you prioritize what you're doing to use the, you know, buckets and buckets of data that exists in all of our databases to actually make decisions more effectively and understand what could happen or what is more likely to happen and have that be a little edge off in our fundraising because I do believe that like that unlocks even more generosity, which is ultimately what we're all here. Right? 49:57 And I think that's the thing that people always gets scared of when they hear artificial intelligence, which is heavily abused in, in my opinion in terms of its definition. And we don't have time to get into that. But it really comes down to saving people time. That's That's what all of this comes down to is 50:17 the less work and more success. It's both right. Right. The beauty Yeah, yeah. 50:21 No, you want to work less than, than get get less money, right? Like, no, it's, it's, yeah, that's a good call out. And so something like AI as it develops into the nonprofit sector more firmly. And as it gets distributed into systems where you don't pay people $50,000 a year to have some magic algorithm run through your database, it's gonna come down to make helping you make decisions. But you said something earlier in a sheet that I think is critical here for everyone to remember is, it's not going to replace you. By any means. 50:58 It actually can't like it's not impossible, like, fundraising is about relationships. It's about genuine connection. It's about people or things, you know, something related to people. And, you know, I build AI powered fundraising tech for a living, that's what we do, right? That's what fundraising kit is. And I'm the first to say, it's an enabler, not a replacement. It's an empower, not a replacer. And I don't want people to be scared and have that fear. But it's gonna make your lives better, and it's gonna make your lives easier. And I think that should excite everybody who's listening today. 51:32 Well, I don't, I think there's no better place to end than that. And, folks, I want to thank all of you for for joining us for this ask the expert session, we had a lot of amazing questions that we went through today, we're going to be following up with the recording, we're gonna be following up with some further information from our friends at fundraising kit. And, and besides the great education that they continue to put out, we'll also be covering some of these topics specific to neon CRM, as an example at generosity xchange. So we hope to see you there and we hope to continue to see Nejeed too so always. Thanks for having me. I know I can't get ready. Yeah, so I'm kidding. I hope you have a lovely day folks. Nejeed is gonna go and enjoy the Italian coast. And and I'm going to enjoy once every 10 years Tim. Yeah, once every 10 years. I'm not going to make you feel bad about about investing back into yourself. Awesome, folks. Have a lovely day and we will be here for you. Talk to you all soon. Transcribed by https://otter.ai