Abby Jarvis  0:37  
Welcome to this session. It's rethinking resilience insight from the giving ecosystem. I got a sneak peek at the slides for today, you all are in perjury. There's so much good stuff here today. Just a couple of little housekeeping things. If you're unfamiliar with me, or with neon one, Hi, I'm Abby, part of the team at NEON one. And we are a nonprofit management platform. If you are looking to do anything from fundraising, to donor retention, or beyond, we can help you with that. I see some familiar names in the registration list today. So if you are in the online client, and you have questions about how to act upon any of the information or to hear today, do let us know. We can answer your questions or find someone who can. But if you don't use me on one that is absolutely okay. Everything you hear today is going to be applicable to you. And you will surely today with some really great takeaways. A couple little housekeeping items. Please do ask us questions. I and my coworker Tim are here we're going to be keeping an eye on q&a box. The chat came in pretty fast in some of these webinars. So do drop your questions in the q&a as they come up so we can make sure we get to as many of them as possible. And that's due please talk to us. We like talking to you all getting to know you and even seeing some of the conversations you have with each other. The perennial question is, Are you recording this webinar? Yes, we are. You will get a link to the recording and Woodrow slides and some of the resources tomorrow morning around 10 o'clock. So we are recording it, share the recording with whoever you think will find it useful. And keep your eye on your inbox tomorrow morning. That's all you need to hear from me about I'm going to turn things over to Woodrow Rosenbaum, who is going to share some really great stuff with us today.

Woodrow Rosenbaum  3:07  
Thanks, Abby, it's a pleasure to be here with you guys. As always, I'm going to jump right in because I got a lot of stuff to share. And there's my slide. I, as I said, a lot of stuff to go through here. Hopefully it will be it'll be evident how this all ties together. But also, there's always questions. And I want to make sure that what we share today is really useful for the folks on this webinar. So please do use the q&a. I'm very happy to go back over anything, go deeper into questions about how we got to something. But first, who am I I am the Chief Data Officer for giving Tuesday. So I manage our insights, our data collection, our research work, leveraging our global community of peer learning networks, that is the people the organizations who make up the GivingTuesday network. And, and this this is really important because GivingTuesday is actually created by you it is a co created thing. And our job is to try to understand that but also to use it as a mechanism for sharing what we're learning about giving, not just about giving Tuesday mean giving Tuesday's interesting for us to examine, to understand to experiment with, and I'll share some of that. But more importantly, the GivingTuesday Data Commons mission is to understand the full spectrum and ecosystem of generosity, how we motivate more giving but also what are the impacts of generosity and the ways in which people deploy their resources to make positive change. And I'm going to talk very broadly about that ecosystem and and the interaction between these these behaviors and the outcomes but also We'll try to really narrow this down to some actual best practices that you could deploy. So hold me to that, if you have questions about what this actually means for you both strategic and strategically and tactically, let me know. Because we are hoping that you're going to come away from this with a bit of a different perspective on the opportunities and risks in the nonprofit sector and how your organization can can navigate that. Some of you may have seen our look back at giving in 2022, we use many different mechanisms for gathering data about the ways in which people are giving and what those trends are, to get really try to get a high fidelity view of all of these different factors, how they intersect and interact, what it means for organizations and other groups on the ground. And what what we can do about some of the the risks in our environment. And I think that, you know, everybody is very aware of some of the current challenges. But one of the things that I want to start with right off the bat is the good news. And the good news is, people remain very highly generous everywhere we measure around the world, the vast majority of people are giving to others. And we've seen now as we develop these new mechanisms for measuring this behavior, more broadly than just a very specific slice of donations to registered charities, we see that giving is robust, its diverse. And that hasn't changed. Over the past couple of years, what we see is this continued desire to support positive change around the world. So abundant diverse are two things that I'm going to talk a lot about what that actually means and what we think that means for the nonprofit sector and organizations like yours. There are differences. I mean, broadly speaking, we do see some overall trance most people are giving, giving is very diverse, those things are true. Around the world. When we start looking at specific cultures and and practices both around the world and within us, we definitely see that there are there are differences within this overall trend of diversity. And I'll touch on some of that and why we think it's important, especially right now, we do notice that there has been a resurgence in volunteer behavior since the beginning of COVID. That's not surprising, it's encouraging. One thing that might be surprising to some is that our research has shown that younger people are displaying more generosity than than others. And I'll break that down a little bit further as we as we talk about this. And then as I'm sure most people aren't aware, despite some of these positive trends, the the number and value of donations to nonprofits in the US went down in 2022. And we'll unpack that a little bit as well, and discuss how that fits into this overall environment and trend. As I said, we get this data in a lot of ways. And one of the things that we launched last year is a new instrument that we're calling giving pulse. We are serving Americans every week about their previous weeks giving behavior and what what they how they feel about various crisis in the world, their response to solicitation, their values, their concerns, the ways in which they're giving. And we're looking at looking at this across a broad spectrum of both behaviors and recipients and mechanisms. It's a really, really deep, very high fidelity. And really essentially real time look at how these behaviors change over time, how they relate to each other, and what drives those shifts. And a lot of our findings in the 2020 look back report come out of giving pulse, which is a tool that we've developed with the support of the fidelity charitable trustees initiative. We also look globally outside the US and in fact giving pulse will start to roll out into multiple countries. And even if you're not working internationally or looking for international support, we think that there are some really important learnings that we can get about how we address the nonprofit sector here in the US and Canada. Learning about these differences around the world. We these differences are sometimes what is to be expected. We see people doing a variety of behaviors everywhere but in some places it's leans more heavily lead towards donations and other places more towards volunteering. So we do see that shift. However, globally, and this is really important. Everywhere we look, what we find is that there's most people are not doing just one type of giving. And this is includes the kind of engagement with the formal nonprofit NGO sector around the world. So this is not just in the developing world, this is true everywhere we look. We're interested in how people give to nonprofits, right? Registered organizations. At the other end of the spectrum, we're looking at how people give directly to individuals in need. And in the middle, there's some really interesting other mechanisms that people are using to deploy their generosity, other recipient groups. So this is organized structured entities that aren't necessarily Incorporated. So mutual aid networks is the sort of quintessential example of that. And what's important to understand here is that most people are using more than one of these mechanisms. In fact, many people are deploying all three. So when we look at this in different countries, they'll skew more registered or less so or more towards sort of mutual aid style giving or more towards into directly to individual support. And what they give will also vary. But the key takeaway here is that most people are not doing only one of these. In fact, that's quite rare. Anywhere that somebody is only doing one of those things. In the US, only people who only give money to nonprofits as their only expression of generosity are a tiny minority of people. And we think this is really important to understand as nonprofits, because if we're going to effectively engage people for support of our cause, financially or otherwise, we have to have an understanding of what the totality of their expression of generosity and how they're bringing themselves to make change. And I'll talk about a little bit more about that in a moment how we've seen some, some best practice emerging.

Not surprising, we see that older givers show greater trust in the value of charities and nonprofits. I don't want to overstate this too much, because actually, despite this fact, we do see that younger people actually do still have a fairly high degree of trust for for nonprofit entities. And we don't see this as a significant suppression, suppressing impact. But one of the things to note here is that whether people are solicited by nonprofits are engaged more often and their trust do seem to be correlated. So one hypothesis here is that one of the reasons that these older generations feel more connection to nonprofit entities is that they're just more engaged and more often by those organizations. Now, another thing to keep in mind here is that, and I'll talk a bit about thinking a bit more about the kind of mechanisms of giving, the younger you are, the more likely you are to say that various forms of giving are essentially the same. So if you're a younger person, you're more likely to think that giving to a political campaign is the same as giving to a charity. And I think this is a perfectly reasonable view to have, right. But we're talking about people thinking about how to deploy their resources to make the change that they want to see. What's really important to understand, though, is that we don't see any evidence that data do not support, that these behaviors are cannibalistic or competitive. The best indicator that somebody's taking any action for good is that they've taken some other action for good. So rather than think about this as competition for nonprofit donations, we should be thinking rather in terms of these are people who are looking to make change. They're doing so in a variety of ways, how can I be part of that successful change that they're looking to make? When we one of the I think so one of the things that folks have been surprised about is this is this finding that younger people tended to be more generous. This is true when we look at the full spectrum of giving and generosity. So the incidence of giving although it varies place to place, the incidence of giving is very high in young people, they that doesn't necessarily mean that the incidence of giving to nonprofits giving money to nonprofits is as high. But again, if we think holistically about people's giving behavior, what we find is that young people are very generous. That said, we do see that this is not the same in all places. And part of what we're what we observe is that in some countries having disposable income is an opportunity for people to be more generous and that's true both financially and otherwise if Money is time, then you have more opportunity to volunteer and to give in other ways if you're more financially secure, and some of the correlations that we see with daily monetary giving, and generational income tends to overlap, right. So the generations that have more disposable income tend to be more active. Nevertheless, we do, the fact that we do see some difference from region to region is an interesting opportunity to think about what is happening, and how are those people engaging with nonprofits in those places in ways that are successful. And one of the places that we're looking at, in particular, looking at Kenya and East Africa, but but across the continent, one of the things that's really striking is a really different dialogue emerging from the NGO sector, about the role of nonprofits in, in an ecosystem of generosity. Whereas I would say, you know, five or 10 years ago, while five years ago, at least, a lot of the discourse that I was hearing was, oh, you know, people in this place, the southern US, or Brazil, or various places, people are really generous, and they given their communities a lot. We'd really like to change that we'd really like them to stop giving over there and start giving to my nonprofit instead, because my nonprofit is that's a more important, more impactful way for people to give. And what I was really struck by, in by in the narrative in the NGO sector in Africa right now, is a really much more advanced thinking about what is the role of nonprofits within a civil society ecosystem, and thinking about the people and communities as first responders and nonprofits needing to kind of adjust this lens to think of themselves as partners with individuals who are already generous people making change, and not trying to compete for that generosity as if it were a fixed and stable resource. But rather thinking about those people who are closest to the issues are most are best situated to understand what's needed, how do we have their back and making more impactful change? And I think that, given our current trends in the US and Canada, it would behoove us to start thinking are ourselves about about that, and letting go some of the sphere of competition. We looked at how people are giving, again, differences from different places, we see a lot of giving online. I mean, what's interesting is that, you know, in the US we have this this unusual situation, compared to other places in the world where most of the money is still coming in checks. I told people in Sweden that and they thought I was joking, when firstly, you know what I was talking about? They were like asking me, you mean writing it on a piece of paper? It's like, yeah, talking about writing on a piece of paper and sending it to an organization. That's pretty, that in most places, that's outmoded. What's interesting is that the incidence of giving online is essentially as high as as giving by cheque. So it's really important to continue to engage digitally. But also, I think we don't necessarily, we shouldn't be thinking about donors as either online or offline. They don't think of themselves that way. And so I think where there is opportunity, not only is there opportunity to kind of move more of that giving online, but also, it just underscores how important it is to continue to continue to consider that your digital presence is really is really critical to your success in fundraising and engagement. So we talked about mechanisms of giving and how that's diverse. And what we find is that the things that people give, likewise, are quite diverse. So we look at multiple ways that people give, including giving advocacy. But when we look at just these three categories, money, things and time, it's really important to understand that two things First, the giving money is not the most common behavior, giving things is the most common behavior. But even more importantly, just like the mechanisms are very diverse, and that individuals give through lots of gifts to lots of recipient groups and in lots of ways. The same is true for what people give. So when you think about this, that it's a my very small minority of people that are only giving money, most people are doing at least two of these things. Many people are doing three of these behaviors. So how are you engaging people? Are you engaging people as donors? Are you engaging people, thinking about them as holistic givers who are deploying their resources, multiple types of resources in multiple ways to give? I've said before, people have probably heard me donor fatigue is a myth. But that doesn't mean people aren't tired of the same old message all the time, particularly if it's the same old monetary solicitation. So one of your opportunities here to address that is give people more ways to engage with your organization, you need to touch them more often, you need to be talking to them more often. So the fact that they're looking for multiple ways, and in fact, we'll be doing multiple things means that's their preference. So think about this as what opportunities can I give people to make change, as opposed to how often can I ask them to do something against their will, you're going to be more successful, and you're going to speak more to the way that people actually show up in real life. And in fact, when we look at that non monetary giving, interestingly, again, some differences place the place in which is more prevalent, whether it's giving things or giving time, or the degree to which the giving things is, is most prevalent. But the vast majority of people who donated who volunteered, also did other things. So, so these are all gateways to more engagement and more giving. And this includes advocacy, you know, this, we've heard a little bit less, I guess, in recent years, but there is, I think, still some concern about this idea of slacktivism, that of people, people kind of get off the hook by saying that they're giving or that they get the credit, forgiving, and then that that doesn't, then they don't have to actually give but we actually find that, generally speaking, when people put their money where their mouth is. And so one of the best ways to engage somebody is to give them that opportunity to be a partner in your cause. And I think one of the things we we see is that younger adults in particular, I kind of recognize that their voice has values of the organizations and the causes they support. And so that's one of the ways that they can give back.

We're looking at this with a perspective of not donations, our donations to nonprofits are the only thing that matters. And when we think about that, really broadly, one of the things that we're doing is trying to understand, we know that people's kind of self organize in the face of crisis and conflict. And so we're trying to get a better understanding of how do those networks form? And what do they tell us about how we can deploy large scale support more rapidly. So we've got research right now that's uncovering around the world in places like Ukraine, but also where there's natural disaster, looking at the way that ways that people respond tells us most clearly, what is needed by whom, where and how. And so we're trying to kind of bridge the gap between that on the ground immediate response and and it's and the, the, the rapid kind of flexible support of civil society with both large scale philanthropy and international aid, as well as just like the the collective philanthropy of the millions of people who want to give and respond to these crises to better engage that support where exactly it's needed. Okay, so then now let's talk about the money. Because it's to some degree, we see that there's, you know, there's a rosy picture, people are giving in lots of ways that remains pretty robust. It doesn't seem to change a lot year over year over year. We have some barriers to good fidelity data around the world, we don't yet have good data collection and sharing practices around the world, although we're making some progress and shifting that. In some places, talking about your monetary giving is kind of taboo. There have been some concentrated and somewhat successful efforts to change that. But it also but the fact that there are differences there make it some challenging sometimes to get the good data. And most money is not given through formal channels. And in some places, the vast majority of financial giving is directly to individual. So all of these are the kinds of challenges in getting the picture. But we do have fairly good high fidelity data on donations to nonprofits in the US, and the Fundraising Effectiveness Project. We partner with the Association of Fundraising Professionals on on developing and releasing these findings. This gives us a really good granular look at what these trends and nonprofit donations look like. And this, I think, is one of the most kind of informative use of the longer term trend here. So what you're seeing is a chart of dollars number or value of dollars and number of donors over time, normalized for at 2012 levels, right I am what we see. And this won't surprise anybody. The overall trend here is over the years, we've gotten more dollars each year, last year 137% of what was donated in 2012. At the same time, we see this consistent drop off in the number of donors each year. So we have got this consolidation of giving in fewer and fewer hands. So first of all, it's really important to note, this is really unhealthy. We know from our research that nonprofits with a broad base of support, including grassroots givers, were much more resilient to the last recession. And having too many eggs in one basket is just not a recipe for that, that that financial resilience. So we know that that trend toward fewer, more money from fewer people really set us up for some some risk. There's couple of couple of things to note within that overall trend. First is 2020 is a weird year, you probably remember, we saw an increase in the number of donors in 2020. And I'll be coming back to this in a moment. But there were a lot of things that drove that acquisition, giving moments essentially driving more participation and nonprofit fundraising, as well as lots and lots of other ways that people were giving, like donating money to small businesses, for example. Yes, a lot of that was COVID driven, either directly or kind of indirectly, people kind of funding the the secondary effects of the onset of the pandemic. But there were lots of other things, lots of other moments that drove that acquisition, that overall lift and the number of donors things like in August of that year, a lot of new donors coming in, in support of organizations in the fight for for racial equity. So we saw that that increase in 2020, we were back to a consolidation trend the following year. So by the end of 2021, we've ended the year essentially, we lost all the gains of 2020, we are right back to where we were in 2019. huge drop in 2022. All of this really seeming I mean lots of drivers of this, but one a couple of things that are within our control that we should think about a very, very high, like a significant focus, over indexing, I would say on large donor stewardship, right, we are designing a system, that this is the outcome, we should expect more money from fewer people. But when we think back to the last recession, we see that the large donors that we have come to rely on to support the nonprofit sector are more responsive to economic shifts than smaller donors there. That's where we see the the retreating from the market is in that higher end. And that's exactly what we saw at the end of 2022 was that despite three consecutive quarters of increase in dollars, we ended the year down because q4 was so weak. And that could end if you saw q1 2023 fvp report, you'll see that trend continues. Those large donors have retreated from the market. And the fact that we undermine that foundational base of grassroots support has left us vulnerable. So we end the year down on not just donors, which was the ongoing trend 10% down really bad, but also on dollars. And so our numbers showed about a 2% decrease in dollars year over year, some of you may may remember that Giving USA showed the same the same showed actually slightly higher decrease in dollars year over year. That's what we would expect to see. One thing to note is that the Fundraising Effectiveness Project Data is for organizations that don't raise any more than 25 million in donations in a year. So we're cutting off that very, very top end. And because that's where we're seeing the most decline, when you include that as giving us a does, we would expect an even bigger decline. So that sort of those those things are consistent. So this is where we where we're at. And the thing is, the question then is can we do anything about that? And I think one of the things to really keep in mind is that within that overall environment of decline, first consolidation into bigger donors. Secondly, decline overall, we see that Giving Tuesday grew again last year. And I think that one of the things that we can take away from that is grassroots givers are still highly responsive, we win when we can engage them. When we make that a key part of our strategy, they show up and the opportunity here is within our means are at least we have agency over this issue, we are not just kind of

at the whim of the economy, we can do something about this. At the high end, I think the other thing to think about here is that in the last recession, it's quite clear that donor advised funds mitigated some of the negative impact of economic impact on the sector. And those funds are bigger than ever. So there's an opportunity here to kind of bolster the top end with these dollars that have already been donated. If at the same time, we can build up a broader base of support, and I think is really critical to understand. Our recommendation here is not forget the big donors. But we can no longer afford to only focus on big donations at the expense of broader support. We're leaving people out, which has an equity concern, right? Like we're, those people have less agency over how this civil society is organized, and how nonprofits function. If they're left out of that engagement. They're going to be giving they're going to take care of their communities, how are we going to be part of that, and economically for the nonprofit sector, we can no longer afford to wait. And when I say that, I mean, it's not even about, like, do it this year, think about running a GivingTuesday campaign. I'm saying right now, like tomorrow, think about how you're going broaden your support, how you're going to do storytelling, how you're going to give people more opportunities, more ways to be your supporter, because we need to go into giving Tuesday in your end with a broader base of support ready to be leveraged, or we're going to have a very bad day. So what does this mean for generosity? Well, it's abundant. There's lots of generosity, people are ready and willing to give not despite tough times, but especially in tough times. But if we're going to be effective, we need to change our practice. And, you know, I think one way to start this is just by changing our frame of mind around this. So ask yourself, I know that there are there are factors that are limiting factors, people have less money, there's economic concern, organizations are stretched thin, I know that development departments are, are under stress, there's more demand on service. Yes, all of those things are true. And I'm certainly we Those are, those systematic challenges are critically important and and factors in that are the degree to which we're going to be able to successfully engage. But to start with, I asked you to think about, if you believe that we were in an abundant environment, what would you do differently? How would you approach things if you didn't weren't concerned about competition? If you didn't think that there was a limit to how much people could give? If you really believed that the opportunity was there? How would it change your practice? What would we do differently? Would we DCS analyze giving which we engage people much more often throughout the year? Will we partner with other organizations I mean, interestingly, we see some of these things on Giving Tuesday, when we celebrate all forms of giving as equally important will be give people more on ramps and connections. These are the things we can do and the data support that we are in an abundance environment. So what are we going to do differently? How are we going to address people as equal partners in the change you want to make in the world. Giving Tuesday give the day, the intervention gives us some indication of what works. The vast majority of people who are aware of Giving Tuesday say it inspired them to be more giving and that and they put their money where their mouth is we see them show up. Interestingly, in the US, we see that we've seen from the beginning of Giving Tuesday that despite the fact that most of the engagement from nonprofits is highly transactional. It's very donation focused. The most common behavior on GivingTuesday is giving money, but the least common behavior is only giving money. So people are showing up in multiple ways already. So how can you be part of the party in more than one way yourself as an organization? And partly this is this. I'm saying this because it's it's important to understand kind of what is the secret sauce and giving Tuesday's most Giving Tuesday donors say that they gave on Giving Tuesday in order to be part of a bigger group of people doing good so you can tap into that. We get asked a lot about sort of small to mid sized organizations on on Giving Tuesday and small organizations punch way above their weight on GivingTuesday because it's this amplifying opportunity that is just a perfect product market fit for community organizations, people Want to take action in their communities with the organizations that they know our interests that are part of their network, but also want to feel like they're part of this big celebration around the world and GivingTuesday gives opportunity for both. But this isn't just about giving Tuesday, there is no reason we can't do this other times of the year, giving moments matter, we can create those moments are giving. When we look at 2020, where we saw an overall increase in the number of donors, we see lots of different things driving that participation GivingTuesday within that environment, and even on an over a year of overall growth, Giving Tuesday was still the single biggest day for donor acquisition. But it doesn't again, that's we, if you're in an abundant environment, I'm here to tell you we are you don't have to trade one form or another. Yeah, you should be active on GivingTuesday, you should do stuff with your network, you shouldn't be absent from that conversation, you should take advantage of that amplifying opportunity, all those things are true. But we don't have to only do this on GivingTuesday, we can create these moments for givers, to support our causes and multiple ways we can partner with one another, we can change this landscape all year long. And that's both the need and the opportunity. So some specific recommendations. First of all, don't wait, like really don't wait, start tomorrow. We need to start doing this more broadly. And that means things like not thinking about development as separate from communications and marketing, like really thinking about this in terms of storytelling, recognizing that these generous behaviors are not competitive. They're not cannibalistic, that the in fact giving tends to be generative. So don't think about somebody's giving behavior as an obstacle to them giving, but rather as an opportunity, you've identified somebody that cares about something and I'm talking about whether it's they're giving to something else, or whether they're giving to you stop filtering your best donors out of your fundraising campaigns, like I see this, see this sort of issue a lot where people think about the frequency of their engagement instead of the quality of their engagement. So somebody's given you recently the the the the general practice tends to be why won't ask them again next month. But interestingly, on Giving Tuesday, where we see the most acquisition, we also see that those donors are stickier, and they're more likely to give again, in December, and the following year. So instead of thinking about why better, don't ask them because I just asked them thinking about how can I give them another opportunity be generous? How can I engage them in the support of my organization, you're providing them opportunities to have agency. Now it doesn't mean you can't be the same message all the time. But that's why that broader approach is really critical. Yes, broad. Yes, grassroots. I think that's our big opportunity here. I think I really hope that what we see from the National Daffs and from Community Foundation's is a lot of engagement and to get those Daffs grantee out this year in support of the sector. But I think the biggest obstacle to that is organizations not asking, not engaging those givers, this money has already been donated, it is a great way to bolster that top. And while we build our fat rebuild our foundation, don't forget your website. It's critically important. There's lots of agencies that can help you with that. And then, don't you segmentation. And we've said this many, many, many times. But But we cannot engage people one way and then try to fit everybody into the same donor stewardship model. We have this is about generational differences, but really across the board, we need to think about how did the individualized, segmented approaches am I and that means that it does mean more work. So and again, it's critical to be efficient about this, you really need to think about your communications, your marketing and your development as a cohesive approach about storytelling for an outcome. And that's how you can get better at doing that kind of segmentation. Again, lots of tools, I'm sure neon would love to help you with this. But it's really important because the that don't that old style donor stewardship model is starting to fail us. And if and we're in a situation now where we have to we have to change it up. And and that means that the way you acquire a donor needs to inform how you continue to engage them. Okay, satellite stuff. I will pause for questions. Thanks to all of the supporters of our work. We couldn't do it without them. Abby, Do we have questions?

Abby Jarvis  40:05  
Every time the first question is actually from me, so you mentioned at the beginning of this session that it's important for, for nonprofits to be talking to their supporters more frequently. Do we have any kind of insight into what a good pair of Kansas is to begin with?

Woodrow Rosenbaum  40:25  
Okay, yes, we do. And in fact, I would point them right back at you, because you guys have done some really some really good investigation, your email report was awesome. That's so in fact, I would turn that question right, right back at you, Abby. But first I will, I will say, I don't like the question. And here's why. I come from a commercial marketing background. And the question about frequency, the answer to the question about frequency is more. How do you get frequency? How do you buy frequency you buy it with quality? The quality of your message matters? Absolutely most like creative is what gets the job done. So that's the that's the real answer is more and more and more and more and more, how do you get more be good? Good, good, good, good.

Abby Jarvis  41:15  
I like that. A while ago, a long time ago, actually, we did a I did a research study with another group, and how frequently people wanted to hear from the nonprofits they supported. Interestingly, younger donors seemed to want to hear from the causes they supported more frequently. But that's starting to change, especially since more and more baby boomers have really embraced social media. So we always tell people kind of your, your, your group of donors is unique. But I will say I, if I'm getting great content from a nonprofit, they can email me weekly if I'm getting boring content from a nonprofit, they can email me once a quarter and I still won't open it so interesting. Laura asked a really great question in the chat. Do you have a kind of a brief list of recommendations for touch points that could apply to most nonprofits? I know it'll change from from group to group a little bit.

Woodrow Rosenbaum  42:08  
Yeah, for sure. So what So one thing is that I think volunteering is an important one, because all organizations can really find some mechanism of engaging volunteers, right. And that doesn't mean everybody has like boxes of food to unpack in their warehouse, I get that. But virtual volunteering really came to the forefront like never before during the pandemic, and and businesses started to recognize that with remote workforces that's a way that they can maintain employee engagement. So volunteering first and foremost, we also see from other people's research that we've always known, there's good correlation, the volunteering and donating, there's pretty good evidence now to suggest that that volunteering leads to donations. So that's the number one thing. And then remember that when you talk to a donor, remember that they are volunteering, like they're giving their time in some way. They're giving things in some way. They're giving directly to people in need, probably, and they're probably also giving to unincorporated entities and think about this in terms of great, like, how am I part of that ecosystem of their support, as opposed to how do I compete for that. And then, one, advocacy is the other one that's kind of universal, right? Like, giving people an opportunity to talk about your cause, in ways that aren't like bragging that I gave money to a thing, but rather about, hey, I care about this organization, because of the good work that they're doing that? Yeah, sure. Some people are gonna like that, that makes it look good. But the important engagement there is that they're helping you by telling a story about you to the people that might also want to support you.

Abby Jarvis  43:47  
I like that a lot, especially since Laura pointed out that they're a small online publisher, they don't really have volunteers. But I imagine as someone who loves and supports a small online publisher here in my hometown, I'll advocate for that group. I can't volunteer with them, but I can advocate for them. Do you have any suggestions or tracking or even quantifying some of that advocacy that you get from community members?

Woodrow Rosenbaum  44:12  
Yeah, I mean, there's, there's, I mean, the the classic thing would be just, you know, social media gives you lots of opportunity, obviously, to get good, good specs on what people are doing. If you put something out through social media, then it's easy to track, how are easier to track kind of how that gets picked up. I mean, anything digital, though, like email campaigns, again, critically, like give somebody something, give people something to share, put some UTM code in those links. It's easy to see how that came back to your organization.

Abby Jarvis  44:44  
I do love that. Javier, I hope I pronounced that appropriately asked a really great question. Their organization relies on government funding, and that government funding goes down 7% Every year, and they need to understand how they can communicate to their donors that they need unrestricted funding to cover that deficit. And I know asking for unrestricted funds can be kind of tricky, especially because donors like to have some specificity around where their money is going. Do you have any advice for them?

Woodrow Rosenbaum  45:15  
Yeah, I mean, partly, it's about ensuring that this really again, it's about, this can't be a one size fits all communication, right, like thinking about that narrative is going to be different, you have a really big donor that wants to do something, you're going to spend time like talking about what kind of impact they want to have, what program they wanted to live with, that is going to be different there. Like there, there's oftentimes there's going to be more strings attached to that, because that's the nature of the game. I think that they're at the high philanthropy and there is more conversation within that community since 2020, about the value of general ops. And so that I think part of the opportunity there is to talk to those donors, give them an opportunity to get into that conversation, so that they're influenced by their peers, at the other end of the spectrum, donors who do not care unless you ask them, so don't ask them, right, like giving Tuesday $3.1 billion, and under essentially, almost exclusively unrestricted donations, right. It's just like lots of small donations. And in the middle, I think often organizations just get in their own way. Right? They want to they they over index on this idea that they have to tell people that all your money is going to programs instead of just communicating the cost, that we have a cost of programs that includes the people who work here. And I'm just somebody just said 90 days still giving Tuesday, What a rude thing to do to me. Wednesday afternoon. The Yeah, so really, I gotta go. So I think partly is it's about like, it's like we have some agents here area and changing what this narrative is, and just talking about are like, what do you what does your money accomplish? Well, in that conversation, just factor in the fact that it takes people to do the job.

Abby Jarvis  47:02  
I like that, I think there can be a lot of trepidation around some of that. But I know especially I'm in I'm one of the millennial generation, like I think my generation and some others have a really good understanding that like, you have to pay the electric bill, and you have to keep the lights on and you have to pay your bills, and you have to buy printer paper. And I think people are starting to be a lot more receptive to that.

Woodrow Rosenbaum  47:23  
I think that's true. And I also think that most donors don't care unless you ask them.

Abby Jarvis  47:27  
Right, true. This is a fascinating question that I'd love to hear your insight on. This person is repairing the Chanukah campaign, it's gonna drop two days after giving Tuesday. And they're wondering if it makes sense to show their board and their children, their youth services organization, and kind of get them engaged in their own giving on GivingTuesday on social media. It doesn't make sense for folks to donate to us necessarily on that day, since they've planned another touch point. But do you think how would you navigate that launching a campaign so close to giving Tuesday? Do you still suggest participating in Giving Tuesday? How would you navigate that?

Woodrow Rosenbaum  48:03  
Yeah, I mean, so yes, you should definitely engage on GivingTuesday. First of all, because I part of it, we think about this in terms of why I messaged all my people. And and we think about that in terms of so they all heard from me. Every time you message, a small minority of the people that you've sent that message out to are actually going to get and register that message. This is why we need six, seven touchpoints to actually get an action from people, right. So don't be so worried about how often you're talking to them. That said, it has to make sense if you want someone if you want, like giving moments matter. And urgency matters is the number one thing. It's one of the reasons why Giving Tuesday and other things like at work because you want to be part of the fun you got to give on the day. But Texas a&m did some research, which I found really interesting, where they asked people to donate, they put up a match. They did it in advance of Giving Tuesday. And in the communication, they essentially said, whereas we have another match on Giving Tuesday, and we're going to ask you again. And the best performing combination was I think a five week intervals. So they did they the best thing to do was to ask twice, including are giving Tuesday in with a five week interval. Now, with two days, you got to think differently about this, but two days is also zero, right? So thinking about how you kind of used like pre launch, I think is the way to think about that soft launching campaign. Think about the value of starting a crowdfunding campaign when you already have 20 or 30%, which I think was the optimum on crowdfunding campaigns. When we look at it something like that. There's the opportunity there, right? It's the preload some stuff. So and then I and then also, people want to gauge in lots of ways so can you give them opportunities to advocate to be evangelists This maybe not the best term for Hanukkah campaign for for your, for your upcoming campaign on GivingTuesday as a way of again, getting the getting the motor rolling, get get that flywheel spinning before you officially launch your campaign. And those are the kinds of ways I would think about that communication.

Abby Jarvis  50:19  
Yeah, I love that. And Naomi mentioned in their question, that they're considering showing their board and the students that they serve engaging in their own GivingTuesday. So amplifying their supporters and their communities engagement in other places.

Woodrow Rosenbaum  50:34  
That's so that's such a Giving Tuesday way to think about it, right, like, great, I can get out there. So on Giving Tuesday, I'm going to talk about all the other ways people are giving Yeah, that's an abundance mindset. That's what works on GivingTuesday. That's what should work all year round.

Abby Jarvis  50:49  
Yeah, I love that, especially since if you're a donor, or if your students and board members are supporting you and other organizations, it's a really great way to build some bridges with organizations in your community. We got another question, do you recommend this is a good one? Do you recommend including higher level donors, those who might have like portfolio managers in Giving Tuesday asks, they generally exclude them from direct response fundraising.

Woodrow Rosenbaum  51:17  
So those givers are gonna want to be part of the fun as much as anybody else. So why are you withholding an opportunity for them to be part of the fun? That doesn't mean that the engagement should be the same, like think about when we think about a good campaign. And one of the things to note here is that the single biggest factor in whether GivingTuesday campaign is successful is whether that the organizers set a specific and measurable goal. And then part of that acting on that is, how do my different stakeholders get to be part of this success. So your board members, your volunteers, your your kids, the mailman, the and your high net worth, high value donors are all going to have different kinds of opportunities to engage with that. Matching guests do better on GivingTuesday than your average day. That's a good example. So yeah, why don't leave them out? Why do they not be get to be part of the fun, but that doesn't mean that they are participating in exactly the same way as everybody else.

Abby Jarvis  52:23  
That makes a ton of sense. And I like that you've used the phrase, involve them in the fun a few times, because giving is so much fun. And it makes people feel really good about themselves. So I know this comes up a lot. If you're afraid to ask people to donate to you on GivingTuesday. Like you're inviting them to do something they love, and you feel good about it. So great question from Danielle. Anecdotally, fundraisers seem to be shifting away from giving Tuesday because of the ad spend differences for smaller nonprofits. What advice can you give people from smaller mid sized nonprofits who are being kind of pushed out of the conversation, especially through platforms like men and Facebook, where the big nonprofits are getting a ton of attention? How do you cut through the noise there?

Woodrow Rosenbaum  53:09  
Yeah, so the first thing is, the data don't support that concern. That's good news. So this is a trend that we've seen in giving Tuesday's since early days. So what's interesting is that the earliest days are giving Tuesday, what we saw was the biggest organizations got the biggest share of wallet. That's to be expected. What's interesting is what the trend year over year has been since then, the growth is also all categories have grown. But growth in share has gone to the mid sized organizations primarily who are now getting the majority of the share of wallet on Giving Tuesday, mid sized organizations, not the biggest, more importantly, small organizations get the smaller share of wallet on Giving Tuesday, three to five times bigger than their annualized rate. They do way better on GivingTuesday. They're punching above their weight on that day. GivingTuesday is optimized for the smaller grassroots community organization. Now if we look at the total volume of voice does, major, you know many, you know huge organizations spending millions of dollars on online advertising gotta get more eyeballs. Yeah, they are. But that's not that's not what matters. This opportunity is in fact best align for those smaller organizations and they do better on GivingTuesday they do other times of the year, what we get what you get, and I've seen this their groceries, I don't have enough time to go into this from my commercial career. What you're getting here is the value of the giant media sped by all those big players is priming the pump. They're they're softening the ground for your campaign. And when you come out and you engage, your, your, your givers, they know there's something big happening and they want to be part of it. and you are optimized for being the conversion opportunity. So you're actually riding the coattails of that of that media machine, much more than it is, quote, drowning you out.

Abby Jarvis  55:11  
I never thought about it that way. And it actually drew me to Danielle. This isn't an anecdote from meta or from Facebook. But it is from some research we did into GivingTuesday activities from smaller donors through email. Large organizations who have the big teams and the big intricate campaigns are raising more overall, but small nonprofits are raising more per donor than the large counterparts are. So I never thought about the activities from large nonprofits kind of softening the ground, so to speak for the small orcs, I can actually see it happen in my head, I'll get an appeal from some large organization like, oh, yeah, today's Giving Tuesday. But when the little nonprofits that I love show up in my inbox, I'll be more likely to engage with them. Yeah.

Woodrow Rosenbaum  55:56  
I, you know, I, I have an interesting story. For those that care later about two brands, you'll recognize where one was leveraging exactly this the spend of our client on on major advertising campaign to out sell them at store. So it works. So next time you see one of those big organizations doing an ad campaign for GivingTuesday. Just know that they're making your job easier.

Abby Jarvis  56:19  
Absolutely. And Danielle, that could be a really cool way to start engaging. Some of the people that advocate for you year round they make your followers may be seeing no ads on Facebook, but if you have a couple of people in your community who will advocate for you, their networks will see that and it will mean more coming from your supporters, and it will from someone pushing an ad across a feed. That's

Woodrow Rosenbaum  56:40  
That's especially true on Facebook,

Abby Jarvis  56:43  
for sure. All right. Well, um, we've got another couple minutes, I'm going to ask you one more question that occurred to me just because I don't know anything about it. So you alluded to donor advised funds as being a nice way to kind of fill the gap as we start building relationships with smaller donors, smaller individual donors. But if you don't know where to find a donor advised fund or know who to ask, like, where would you suggest people start looking?

Woodrow Rosenbaum  57:11  
Yeah, that's a great question. And I recognize that it's easy for me to say go after those donors, and they are actually a small minority of donors. So that's a thing. So two things one is, Community Foundation's are a good example, right of their donor advised funds in those communities. If you especially if you're a smaller organization, like thinking about that engagement, there's an opportunity there, talk to the Community Foundation, where you are. And then the other thing is, I think I actually do expect that for year end, what we're going to see is the the major national labs are going to be coming out with a strategy to help nonprofits tap into some of that, some of that opportunity, because there's a recognition that the sector is in need of this support right now to to make this a rainy day fund. Guess what it's raining.

Abby Jarvis  58:00  
That's such an optimistic way of looking at it. The rainy day fund might as well you shit. All right. Well, thank you so much, Woodrow, for being here. And for sharing all of this. I know that we all see the reports that show like downward trends. And I think everybody could use this kind of encouragement. And remember to think about all the different ways that donors are generous, even if they're not necessarily putting their credit card numbers in. Everyone. Thank you so much for being here. I know that right now is a particularly busy time of year and the fact that you took an hour out of your day to hang out with us means a lot. I hope you learned something new. I certainly did. And remember, I'm going to send you an email tomorrow morning with a link to this recording and some slides and some other resources that you can use. Whether you're planning a GivingTuesday campaign or just ramping up for the end of the year. We will talk to you soon everybody have a great day. Thanks for

Woodrow Rosenbaum  58:54  
having me. Thanks, everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai