Welcome, everybody to today's, presentation.
Very excited to have everybody from the UK over on over to
California with stops along to. Norway, Ark saw and beyond.
We got a lot to cover today,
and I will be paying attention to the Q and A, for diving into
things. Thank you also joining us from Calgary Canada, Peter.
So let's dive into it. What are we gonna be covering today?
Well, first, we're gonna cover what When I talk about the
term generosity experience, what does that mean?
Because that's an important recontextualization
of the things that you are already doing in your job.
Then we're gonna zero in on programmatic
design. It self. I think that a lot of nonprofits,
especially the ninety seven percent of US based
organizations making under five million dollars are shifting
more toward, let's do programmatic design. Let's do
revenue programs versus just trying out a bunch of random things.
There needs to be an order to the chaos that is humanity. Right?
And so that's how we're gonna go into that in steps three,
four, and five. Is to actually design it using the
lens of what we call generosity experience design.
Now, You don't have to remind yourselves of anything.
You don't have to write down notes on what this stuff means.
The deck will be available.. The recording will be available.
But we got a lot to share and dive into today. So first,
when I talk about generosity experiences and generosity
experience design,
What exactly does that mean?
How is this different than some of the ways that we've been thinking about,
philanthropy and technology in the past? Well,
first and foremost,
if you haven't read this book, the generosity crisis,
I'm gonna highly recommend it.
It's a fantastic
dive into the issues that we are facing as a
nonprofit sector today. And I will say that while most of the
data that I'm focusing on is United States based for
folks in different countries,. Canada, the UK, etcetera.
These are very similar things that your sectors are going
through. It's just very acute in the United States. Because
we heavily rely on social services being managed by
charities in a lot of different ways. So what is happening?
If we step back, there's a few very important points
that interconnect but might not seem like they are related on
the surface first is that according to the most recent
data for things like Lily. School out of, Indianapolis,
which I saw somebody use from here,
What what we're seeing is that about half of US households are
donating to charities or formal five zero one C threes. There's
variable numbers when you take into account.
Faith based organizations.. There is, of course,
still generosity for people doing things you know,
through mutual aid or PTAs or things that are not covered in reports.
But if we're looking at formal charities,
which all of you work at, about
We're seeing a consistent downward trend in people
supporting the nonprofit sector. We're also seeing that
when the economic crises that became very acute after the
pandemic began,
technology companies started to abandon the nonprofit sector.
You know, we've seen a lot of reorganization and,
and recontextualization
of meta's role in the sector and how they manage the fees
for things like, their. Facebook fundraiser platform,
you saw some massive layoffs at a lot of different companies
both within and externally to the nonprofit sector,
as well as even some pricing changes
for for companies such as. Mailchimp instituting higher
fees for their smallest free plan.
And so these things have an acute impact because especially
given some of the things that we'll talk about,
the typical nonprofit is balancing three to five
different data sources just to manage their revenue operations.
So if you have fluctuations in one of them,
it can actually have an impact on the other ways that you
manage the relationships through your technology. And,
and ultimately, This,
a lot of it comes down to communication when it comes to
building communities of generosity.
Doctor. Adrian Sargent,
has done extensive analysis on donor retention and found that
about eighteen percent of all donors are citing poor
communication as the top reason that they're not giving
anymore. So we're gonna address all of these things head on
when we step back and go, look,. It's not about the donor's
journey. It's not about, you know, automated workflows or
your CRM, like, this is too reductive to actually
solve the problem. We need to step back and rethink the role
of technology when we are building operational maturity.
And so when we talk about the generosity experience These are
all the things that you do.
In marketing, in revenue management, in impact analysis,
and the communications around that, that all tie and build trust.
That's it. The generosity experience is the marketing,
the revenue, and the impact all leading and either building
trust or herding trust. And that's it. And that's it.
And so the issue is that most of us, myself
included when I was a fundraiser actively,
at my last job before Neon. One are taught that this
is how donors should be organized. It's the pyramid you
have your people on the bottom and then you build up.
The issue of this is that it is an inaccurate
and in some ways harmful representation
of human relationships.
It is a built in scarcity mindset,
as well as the fact that it doesn't take into account the reality
that this is actually what a generosity experience looks
like when you interact with people.
It is organic, It is flowing,
and it has different
revenue flows and communication flows and impact flows that
you need to organize. It's much more common when we step
back and understand that these are the reasons that people
give. And so when we get into our presentation today,
we're gonna view this
organizational goal
through the lens of recurring giving as a program.
And so we'll get into this. And yes, the slides will be part of
the, the follow-up, by the way.. And so why are we focusing on
recurring giving in particular for our presentation today for
the next fifty two minutes. Well, first and foremost,
recurring giving rocks.
We are actually just finishing up some research on this topic.
We've historically partnered with the University of Texas at
Dallas as well as giving. Tuesday when it comes to this
research and recurring giving is an extraordinarily effective
as well as equitable program that your organization of any
size can benefit from.
We actually found in our five year study that, again,
we'll be releasing on. April eighth to the public,
that there's been a hundred and forty four percent increase
for all size nonprofits.. We looked at, organizations under
a million dollars between a million and five,
a million dollars and above five million dollars as a cohort.
But across the board of all those twenty one hundred plus non profits,
a hundred and forty four percent increase in recurring
giving revenue. We also found that the average lifetime of a
recurring donor versus a one time donor is eight years
versus maybe two. Right? A first time donor actually tends
to to only show up twenty percent of the time.
In fact, the fundraising effectiveness project,
which is initiative of AFP the Association of fundraising
professionals in giving Tuesday finds that first time donors,
so people who gave to you last year for the first time Only
eighteen percent of those people are gonna typically
stick around. But with recurring donors,
that retention rate goes near eighty percent,
seventy eight percent across the entire,
analysis group. And a lot of this is also affordable and
leans itself toward more digital communications.
You were actually finding that ninety one percent of these
gifts are coming in with credit cards.
And then the rest of them are likely coming in through ACH E
check. So even when we looked at, you know,
things like people giving pretty consistently sending in
a check monthly or things like that,
we would be able to do that. And to Tracy Ballett's point,
Erica Wastorp is an expert spotlighted in the report.
So, yes,
we've actually have worked extensively with her to help
even scope some of this research.
So also why recurring giving?. Well, there's a few key reasons
and especially because we focus on the ninety seven percent
of the nonprofits that are making under five million
dollars. These are things that, yes,
they work for the big nonprofits.
But especially for those organizations,
what we love about recurring giving is first,
it increases annual revenue.
We just saw that It's a very healthy increase, but it also
has projectable sustainability.
You can actually say, okay,
I'm getting it for I'm getting a few hundred dollars from
these people on a monthly basis.
I know that they're gonna stick around for a while.
I can expect by December that this amount of money
has come in. You can't always do that, especially with
grants, or even major gifts at this point. All it takes is
one bad interaction with your nonprofit for a major donor and
they might disappear.
The other things is that this is providing also a really
great return on investment.
We are, able to, actually
do a lot of things that are very affordable or low or
no cost once your infrastructure is set. We're
gonna be diving in and going through that in a really
practical way today. I don't like talking about theory.
I like actually executing on that.
And so these are these are things that we are constantly
testing not only with our clients, but also some you
know, with myself as well, because I,
still do fundraising,
as a volunteer in a few different organizations,
including helping my mother-in-law with her strategy.
The reason that recurring giving is also something that
can be very, very good for your mental health is that it
helps overcome that scarcity mindset. Oh, well,
we don't have enough time or we don't have this. Well,
the reality is is that. If your staff is feeling overwhelmed,
then you can treat recurring giving program launches like an
event that you give some excitement behind this,
even when we're launching our report, for instance,
we're doing, you know,
special launch parties and some special swag,
you can do the same thing by making it where you're not
dumping a bunch of money into a gala but you're still having an
experience around it.
And if you're worried about the resources that this takes,
start with your homepage.
All you need is something that can take a recurring donation,
and there's a bunch of different software on the
market there. And then just tell the story through the lens
of your website. And again,
I'm going to show a lot of practical examples of this.
And let's say you don't have a big staff, right?
I was even meeting with, two nonprofits the last two days,
and they, at most,
have an executive director and an assistant that working with
them. So, start with volunteers, start with board members, and,
and get them to help share the love and build upon this
experience that you were building.
That you were designing rather.
So first,
as a data person,
I always think it's important to start with a good foundation
of how you are going to organize this and set yourself
up for success in the first place. And so it's always good
to at least have established both organizational and in this
case programmatic smart goals and key performance indicators.
So when we're thinking about our strategic planning,
it's good to kind of step back and go, okay,
we're gonna do this campaign, we're gonna do this program,
and what are the things that go into it.
And you have to think about the objectives.
You have to think about milestones.
So you can have some some momentum that you're trying to
hit. You have to budget for this.
You have to think about the tactics.
You have to think about the risk of this versus doing other
things, and who's accountable.
Now this could be very overwhelming if you kind of go
and start from scratch. So that's why it's good to say,
okay, before we start all of this,
let's get a sense of where we are. And so, one, When you're
beginning to design your revenue programs to build
communities of generosity,
that's kind of taking into the holistic nature of the
acquisition to retention process.
And notice that we don't worry about grants.
It's a different thing.
The volunteers are are definitely something that might
rain down on top of this and give us some some love.
But at the end of the day,
we are looking for repeatable and sustainable growth that
gets us into people identifying with your nonprofit.
So again,
we're gonna go through that lens of even motivation in a
really big way. But at the end of the day,
you need to think about your programs as well as your
organization through the lens of your maturity for these
types of programs. And so very small nonprofits,
they might just start be starting up and going, okay,
I'm just trying to find a few donors,
I'm just trying to get my feet wet here and starting and
saying, okay, let's design a program
around this is a good way to start.
But let's say you're even a very established organization,
you still need to start a program.
Let's say you're starting from scratch And I'm not talking
about simply having a monthly giving option on your homepage.
It's about a program.
And so that's why we need to think about the infrastructural
development of this as you mature.
And so where we ideally wanna hit is that programmatic
maturity, and then you start to expand the impact on
maybe you start to wind down some some costly programs that
are not as mission forward and realign it and reinvest that
toward this program.. Because otherwise,
you start adding different things and you start drifting,
and eventually that leads to organizational death.
And that's what we want to avoid. We wanna renew.
It's a organic process, right?. It's constant reinvestment
back into what is working.
That's how you should be thinking about this.
And so the way to kind of even organize the lens of planning
here is to go okay. If I'm trying something out that's a
tactic. That is not the same as my vision of change. Right?
And so sometimes you have leadership that will do, do,
and and encourage whiplash tactics and experiments,
or let's try this, or let's try that.
And the issue is that if it's not tethered,
and viewed through the long game of the systemic change
that you want for the world,
this is just throwing stuff against the wall.
They all need to be connected to your ultimate vision.
So if you can realign
all of the different things that you do.
And especially with the recurring giving program,
it's really primed
to get to that systemic change by the very nature of what it is.
So with something like a smart goal, you are establishing
specific measurable achievable,
relevant, and timely
elements. So specific,
I'm gonna raise a thousand dollars by the end of December.
I'm gonna be doing this from a hundred and fifty donors
through this time period.
And this is achievable because we have previous data.
I have a lot of leaders that if. I ask them to say what's your goal,
they throw out a very large number that's gonna fill their
gap in funding.. That's not a plan.
That hope is not a strategy.
And so what smart goals do is that they help establish that
baseline for you to find success.
And then when you start to drill down into the specifics
of a recurring giving program,
some key performance indicators that. I would suggest are donor retention,
recurring giving revenue projections.
I expect this amount of money from these number of people.
Something like the donation page conversion,
how many people that you're maybe emailing about the program,
and are they ultimately converting into sustaining
recurring donors.
You may hear me use monthly recurring and sustaining
as terms, by the way,
those are relatively interchangeable in practice.
And then finally,
the growth in giving rate is something that I think every
non profit should just have as like a baseline metric
regardless of what they're doing,
which is the net gains and losses in the giving compared to last year.
Again, very resource rich deck. This will be available in the follow-up.
So how do we do this?
Now we're gonna shift out of those first two sections into
the practical brass tacks. And look,
we got forty minutes to do that. So we got a lot of time.
And I am focusing on questions.
So if I do see questions relating to the content,
please put them out here if you want me to consider something.
So first,
now we're gonna start to establish the psychology part
of our presentation.
One of the main things in the title of today's presentation,
right? And so first, it's important to understand what
drives donor behavior in the first place. And so a lot of
this is tethered to, self determination psychology,
which is that people really at the end of the day in all the
things that they do. They are most happy and that they the
the behavior that they're gonna consistently be rewarded by in
terms of the dopamine in their brain is when they feel competent
in something. So did they give to an organization that they
can trust?
Right? So that's the establishment for your
marketing of trust.
That's that component. Then there's the autonomous side.
Did you guilt them into giving.. Were they were they at an
event and they were cornered and said,
why don't you sign up for this thing? Or, you know,
grabbing somebody on the street with a clipboard and saying
fill this out and give a monthly gift, that's not going
to make them feel that they made the decision on their own.
And then here's the final component that I think gets
lost a lot of times,
but where recurring giving in particular can really kind of
showcase community is that connection.
People wanna feel that they're part of a bigger movement.
And so If you can demonstrate that with the feedback loops
that you establish in your program,
then it's really gonna reward all of these things at the same
time. And that's because ultimately
people want to feel not that they gave because somebody
asked Not even that they gave because they have a
relationship with a staff member of the organization,
but they actually gave because they see themselves in the
cause that you have. Now. Heather did forward me an email
from somebody that says, look, I'm struggling.
We're a film festival.
And,
hopefully people can still hear me.
And so, that that ultimately, this woman was saying, look,
I'm struggling with kind of even connecting with a younger
generation of donors and things of that nature.
And so if you step back and you start to understand that
there's different motivational
lenses that people wake up and they say, okay, this is who I
am. I am an artistic person.. Or I am a father, or I am a
friend, or I am a, you know, somebody of this generation, or
I love film festivals.
Or I live in Cleveland.
And so these are different things that trigger identity
based identification.
They go, oh, this is me. And that's ultimately what is
powerful about a recurring giving program is that you can
really hammer home.. Oh, this is me. I am a
person that believes in the power of of film and cinematography,
and I wanna make sure that this is something that's accessible
to everybody of my generation and beyond.
Right? And so when you start to actually lean into
designing copy, images,
even the program itself. So somebody can build a part of
their identity about that. That is powerful.
The one that I go give to locally for instance is that
I'm a community creator.
And I support this amazing arts organization called Create
Community Studios in. Schenectady, New York.
And so their program is called community creators.
So the first part is how mature is our program. And
let me make sure that. I don't have any,
mute on by mistake.. To my understanding,
we're still good on the sound.. So First, how do we start to
develop the core programmatic basics of our organization?
Well, first, it's about that acquisition.
Right?
So awesome. Thank you,. Laura Klein. Awesome.
Thank you very much, Karen. So
what we are doing when it comes to the ecosystem is thinking
about that acquisition and that connection stage.
How do I get people in and feeling that they are part of a
bigger movement. Well, first,
we have to think about how you articulate
your vision and mission. And so the four components of a
strong brand, and a brand is not the logo.
The brand is the things that you do that make people
trust you at the end of the day. And so first, your values,
are you values forward?
Does your visual identity match those values and the actions that you take?
Is the voice and tone matching those?
And what is the engagement like?
I'm also looking at Kailyn's
question.
I'm gonna possibly revisit that in terms of the,
the listing of the impact per dollar on donations.
There's a lot of conflicting research on that.
So I'm gonna try to parking lot that one because it's a kind of a deep question.
Okay. So then when you put these things together, what's
gonna happen is that this is gonna help shape the
perception, the connection,
and the identity that people have when interacting with
these components.
So when you design a recurring giving program, for instance,
you are creating things that help make that connection
and also make it a natural part of people's everyday lives.
I am constantly,
talking talking about people, about create community studio.
And again, when we're talking about things like brand,
brand visual identity, Josh, is one component of brand.
Brand is not the visual identity. Visual identity is
one part of your brand.. And so the brand is
ultimately the things that you do that make people trust you,
that is brand. Marty New Meyer has an amazing book on all of this.
And so, actually a bunch of these,
but the brand gap is my favorite one.
And so it gets into this where these four components actually
are what makes up why people trust you. That is your brand.
The logo, the voice, the tone, the things that you put out,
those are ways that you articulate your brand.
And so here's a solid example of that, is that this is
sparrows nest charity in. Hudson Valley, New York.
This is their homepage. You go to this now. And so, yes,
there is a consistency in the visual identity,
like the colors, like the logos,
But at the end of the day, people are recognizing that
this is special, not because of the the green,
not because of the logo,
but because of the fact that it is delivering home made meals
to people facing a cancer diagnosis.
And that is what we are supporting. We are sustaining
that mission. Notice the words, the phrases, all of these
things build upon this.
And so again, even to Kenny's thing,
when it comes to more sensitive
charitable causes, things like addiction, Well,
that's some somebody knows people that have that. Look,
I struggle with alcohol addiction for instance, right?
Like, I'm gonna admit that in this webinar.
And so that is something that when people talk about
sobriety, people talk about addiction, things like that.
This That's gonna resonate with me. You never know what
your cause is going to do for different people. You can't
make decisions for your donors you can just only invite them
in. And that is where things like this actually open that up.
Because then once you're hitting,
the actual financial components of the page.
This is a dedicated giving page.
Erica Wastorp talks about that, where Don't give them the one
time only or the monthly option when you are rolling out a
dedicated recurring giving program.
Just say, I'm gonna donate monthly.
Here you go,
and you make that very clear in the communications because you
want people to trust you. So if you're constantly saying,
here's our monthly giving program.
Giving monthly matters.
Here's how you can believe.
This is going to continue to spotlight this.
We actually spotlighted. Sparrows nest as part of our
generosity experience, generosity exchange conference,
with our partners at Visa last year. Let me just double check the,
chat as a designer and regularly reminding clients
that brand isn't visual. Oh, yes, Beth.
Can have a whole talk about that. Alright. Let's keep it going.
So how do we brand and bring this to a recurring giving
programs specifically.
So these are things that also. Erica Watts has a fantastic set
of books on these types things,
but I'm drawing these out again as kind of a surface level, touch point.
So first, Strong connection to your core brand.
Are you naming it something
that makes sense to the larger
work that you were doing.. Can somebody very clearly make a
visual or tone connection to what you were doing
year round.
And so then don't be the best, be the only. So,
Kenny, the things that you're struggling with, I would really
encourage any organization trying to articulate what they
do and why it matters to your community ask yourself this simple question.
If you disappeared overnight what would impact what impact
would you have that would have on your community?
Cause if you're the only one that does something,
it's gonna be a very straightforward answer to that,
and that's what you need to lean into. And yes, it may be uncomfortable,
but change is uncomfortable inherently.
So lean into you don't wanna be the best You wanna be the only
because that's why you exist.
And then you have to do the hard work of clearly
outlining that. Don't be clever. Be clear.
And do this from an audience centric standpoint.
Don't design for what you like. Design for what will resonate
with your community.. Of generosity.
So that's some branding based. I could probably do a whole
course just on that. But at the end of the day, we need to
focus on people and not the money.
Notice that I wasn't focusing on anything relating to? What
options do I put for the number of donations on this?
There was one question even relating to that type of thing.
And ultimately even the question that was asked related
to donation amounts translating into impact.
What will resonate with your audience? What will make them
feel that call to action?. This is where the experience comes
in. Rule number two.. Focus on the experience.
So we're a little bit further up We've understood who we're
talking to. Maybe we've even drilled down and said, you know what?
We think that our recurring giving program is gonna be
really resonant with people just coming out of our program
or maybe younger donors or maybe this geographic region
that we're operating in. And we're gonna brand it around that.
So we have some of those basics. Again,
only you can answer many of these questions. I can I can
just outline a framework to think about it? First,
you're thinking about people.
Now we're thinking about the experience,
and this is where we need to get a little bit more
sophisticated and the start to think about the money and the
technology a little bit more?
And this is where we get into situational giving.
And when what I mean by situational giving is that
there is something that happened in the donor's
environment that drove them to give. It is
temporary, though.
That's a very important part about situational giving.
If we think of this as a deep pool.
The situational givers are more like the fish who are reacting
to the flakes of food that you're throwing on the top of the water.
The deeper we go,
the more mature, maybe even bigger the fish become. But in
that top part there for situational giving,
we had to understand that this is somebody responding to
something that happened to them. They were asked
where they saw something in the news that drove them to give.
And so ways that you can kind of understand this is first
understand that psychologically, people
remember the peak of an experience and how it ends.
That's what that that's for everything.
You go to Disney World like. I did very stupidly in the final
last few days of the year,
and you're standing in lines for most of the time.
I'm not actually gonna remember that.
I'm gonna remember the fact that my kids loved Funder mountain.
That's what they're talking about.
That's what they're gonna remember.
That's what I'm gonna remember. Right?
So the peak and rule is a psychological concept that
basically says, think about how something is at its
height and how it ends.
And so you can do this through four key ways that you think
about this. First, tell engaging stories, showcase impact,
provide a personalized experience and end on a high note.
I think a lot of times we forget the ending because every
relationship will end at some point.
No matter what.
And so engaging storytelling.
So even when we're thinking about our home page,
maybe you can do a few things such as having the CTAs in a carousel,
and maybe one of them is dedicated to the recurring giving program.
It's also important to not make every single CTA about money,
because then your donors think they are only gonna be here
asking me for things. Don't turn your CRM into a rolodex
for just asking people for money.
Actually use it to build relationships.
So you do this with storytelling.
And so you tell that effective story that relates to your brand.
Then you need to showcase impact.
So you can do this through design choices.
So make it very clear what they're signing up for.
If it's a monthly giving program,
like what we saw in sparrow's nest,
make it clear that what they're touching from a button
standpoint is the monthly giving program.
So the calls to action or. CTA are the things that will
be very clear, that clear impact that you are articulating,
don't be clever. Don't write a big thing on the,
you know, the homepage or the landing page, be clear.
The other part is personalizing this.
What we're trying to do is make these things relevant to people.
So even when we've analyzed when people are giving during the day,
for online donations and some previous research that we did.
It's around lunchtime.
It's around the work week, maybe even later in the week.
It's like a Thursday.. People are zoning out.
And so think about where your donors are and when your
donors are reacting to things. Look at your own data.
Don't look at benchmark data. Look at your own stuff.
You can see for your online donations, likely the time
stamp of when people are giving.
Have you ever actually sat down and said, okay.
When do people give to me? And then then even take it one step backwards.
Once you understand a timing that might be the average
timing, is it because you
are doing this at a specific time of when you're sending emails?
It should be noted this is in central time,
and we have a little bit more of deeper research on this on
our website too. So, kinda Park and lot that one, Grant, but
it's a it's a nice deep dive that we did in a report from
twenty twenty two.
And the way that you can also personalize that experience is
during things like the giving levels,
so you can experiment with using descriptive text on the levels.
Sometimes I feel that that you can,
that could be a distraction to the giving process. I find, look,
just give people the numbers that they want to do and tell
the story around that.. They will decide the impact
themselves, but that's something that, you know,
there's been some,
some interesting research by next after on experiments for
that. This is where you could start to test and go, okay,
I'm gonna try levels that have the description levels that
don't have the description Maybe. I wanna do a dedicated
video on the page versus an image.
This is where you can have some fun with this and even talk to donors.
Call your donors, call a new recurring donor and say, Hey, you gave.
Why?
What drew you to this? If you could start to actually get
motivational insights, that's very powerful.
And that could be as simple as adding field on your donation
page that says, why did you give today?
And make it an open text field and don't require it and see what happens.
And that's why it's important to also end on a high note.
If your standard donation process is going to send them a
receipt, and maybe use their name in the first name field.
That's standard for everybody.. Everybody's zoning out on that.
You need to take it a little bit further.
So think about merge tags that, that go a little bit deeper.
Maybe you're collecting information on custom things
that they've provided you or programmatic interest or you've
done a donor survey,
or they're sharing things on social media,
or there's a volunteer opportunity that you want to drive people to.
Put that on the landing page of your donation page.
There's a lot of research that shows that people who give are
not responding the same way as e commerce. Psychologically.
There's a different motivation for this.
And so lean into the fact that they're not there because
they're they're excited about the the the Amazon Prime speedy
delivery that they're gonna get.
That's not why they gave you that money. Do it in a way that
leans into the fact that they care So a volunteer opportunity
right on the landing page after they've given,
you're gonna see some decent conversions from that.
So let's recap this before we shift into the more the
technical automation side of this because this all sounds well and good.
But you gotta organize this.
You gotta implement this. You gotta actually do this. Right?
So how do you do that?
We're gonna get into that very shortly. But first,
Brandon storytelling.
You gotta have that unique why come through.
This is why we've established the core brand and visual
identity in the very first part.
How are you gonna connect with people?
Then you need them to have a very clear call to action or CTA.
And so for this, it's become a monthly giver.
Give monthly. Here's What's gonna happen when that occurs?
And you can start to communicate them with them in a
little bit more ongoing cadence.. We'll cover that very shortly.
But they don't wanna just hear from you because of the receipt
that they're getting monthly.
Think about the donation fields too.
Don't put things like a thousand dollars on your
recurring giving program page.. People are not by default
giving a thousand dollars per month.
You can have an optional field.
The highest recurring gift in our report that we're
spotlighting was fifty one thousand dollars done on a
credit card. It it can be done.
But more often than not, It's about seventy eight bucks.
So keep that in mind that you don't wanna turn people off
because you're trying to to to frame it, like,
give us all the money now. Remember,
the typical donor is gonna give about a thousand dollars per
year through this channel.
So understand that, and then you can play around. And we
also found in our research that fifty percent of these donors
give another gift So there is nothing stopping you from
appealing to them with higher amounts later in the year.
It's not gonna necessarily turn them off if you do it right.
And that's why it's also important to give them
different payment
options.
And this gets to. Tracy's question,
which is covering credit card fees.
That's an operational expense.
I feel like like this rush to the bottom in digital
fundraising where we focus on all the free technology and
things of that nature in the tipping models and da da da da,
the reality is is that these are operational expenses,
and those can be passed on to donors with an optional
donor covered fee. And we find that, a very,
very high percentage could be as high as eighty,
ninety percent depending on the giving channel will cover the
fees. Because donors get it, they wanna support you. But if
you start to kind of just play around or pass all of that
money on to them or not invest in it, then that's, again,
getting into that scarcity mindset.
So give the option even potentially play around with
putting that checkbox as a default on and then move from
there. Most donors will not get turned off by this.
And the conversion rates have not suffered when implementing
things like that.
And that's because you're giving them that convenience
So if you are actually providing something like a
Google Pay or Apple Pay and making it easy, then they're
gonna be cool with it.
And again, listen to your donors on this.
And donors are telling us that they don't have a problem with
very reasonable fees, but there are some platforms that,
especially if you're like, oh,
I don't have to pay a monthly or I don't have to pay anything
that the actual donor fees could be
double digits. And that is where donors then go. What's
going on here?
So you have to balance that.
People gotta make money.
When it comes to the business side of things,
but the reality is is that donors will start to sniff if,
things are a little too off.
So keep that in mind depending on which platform you choose.
Which perfectly leads us into our final part in the last
fifteen minutes or so use technology to accelerate the
experience. Now, I work for. Neon One, and we provide a
holistic generosity ecosystem
that does a bunch of different stuff.
We are not gonna hear about that right now.
That's not why you're here.
So don't worry. This is not a secret sales pitch.
So when we get into the maturity of our programming,
technology must be taken into account.
And this is what the problem is with a lot of the legacy
maturity models or implementation strategic
planning approaches is that technology has not been
properly contextualized.
So this is what generosity experience design does,
is properly contextualizes its role,
which means it's a very important role And it gives you
operational guidance to answer questions like Tracy's one on
credit card fee coverage because if we are designing
with our audience and people first, while avoiding a
scarcity mindset,
then the very easy answer there is give donors the option.
Don't force it upon them.
And that is why building trust can be accelerated when you
make the right decisions with your technology.
Because technology can more quickly get you into the
relational and especially the identity based giving motivations.
And ultimately, that's because you want great donor retention.
Donor retention is people giving to you on a consistent basis.
The average donor retention rate according to the
fundraising effect in this project,
which is the largest analysis of this type of data. Is
around forty six percent, forty four percent depending on,
you know, what quarter or year we're looking at.
The new donor retention is only eighteen percent.
Yet when we looked at recurring donor retention, it was seventy
eight percent across the board. Small nonprofits,
big nonprofits, etcetera. It's very high. It's very high.
And so you should be paying attention to this because for
every dollar that you raise at your organization,
the industry benchmark is that that is actually costing you as
a new dollar, a dollar twenty five. Yet if you retain a
donor that drops to maybe twenty cents, something like that.
This is a great return on investment.
If we know that beats people are gonna stick around for eight years,
this is an easy call.
And so when you are tracking donor behavior and using
technology to scale that,
you're gonna look at things like frequency appreciation,
involvement, and feedback.
This is what your technology should be organizing for you.
If it doesn't do this,
then it's either digital confetti or it's legacy tech.
And that's because there's different levels of donor
maturity. It's not about the size of the gift. We need to
stop focusing so much on affluence.
It doesn't matter how many rich people you have in your
database. If they don't care about you, it doesn't matter.
So you have your new donors.
That's a very special segment of folks.
You have your connected people that are like, you know what? I get this.
I'm feeling more comfortable with with coming back and then
reinvesting in this.
And then you have mature donors who even a legacy donor which
some historical research out of the UK found that recurring
donors are six times more likely
Six times more likely to leave a legacy gift. That's amazing.
But a legacy gift doesn't automatically mean it's a
million dollar mansion,
but it's a mature way to think about giving.
A lot of times,
the more sophisticated giving vehicles like donor advice
funds or stock,
this is where people come in and they start giving a few
dollars here and there.. They lead up to this. Again,
think of it as that pool.
And you are trying to manage the pool.
As you get more toward maturity,
as you get more toward understanding people's
motivation and their identity with your organization,
they become more predictable.
So to answer Peter's plan,
or question rather,
which is how can you use technology to do these types of
things, Well, first,
you gotta do a few important components to track these types
of engagement points. So first,
things like development to develop a stewardship plan.
So every time somebody donates and joins our recurring giving
program, what are the steps that we are
communicate with them on a consistent basis.
Maybe I can do a new donor welcome series.
We gotta let donors in.
Maybe you're gonna do a private video about the capital
campaign that these recurring gifts have helped go toward the overall pledge.
Maybe you wanna have a special reception for recurring donors.
So provide opportunities for that personal interaction.
And then offer opportunities for increased involvement.
We saw the example on the landing page after the gift.
And there is a volunteer opportunity.
Well,
that's just a button somebody's clicking and then maybe going
immediately over to your CRM connected volunteer form.
And then all that information can immediately flow in and
trigger all these beautiful stewardship plans that you've put together.
And so when you're thinking about data,
you have to contextualize this to use it toward keeping people
engaged and people interested.
So you can look at people who are at risk.
Maybe they're a recurring donor, and they're on Amex,
which means that all the technology in the world's not
gonna help that automatically update a credit card.
Amex doesn't allow that.
So somebody's credit card expiration comes up.
We know it's at Amex.
You got the phone call ready to go.
Track owner engagement. They've come to the following events. Not the money.
They showed up.
How effective is my program?
I've spent all this time and energy,
and we've only gotten eleven people in the door for the
first six months. Well, it's only been six months.
Let's give it a little bit more time.
Are they behaving in a consistent way?
So you can take and even have theories about what people will
do based on the things that you put out there.
And recurring giving is a low
like, it's a very,
it's a very safe place to do experimentation.
You're not gonna get fired if you maybe do a small print card
mailing. For people at a certain time that they've given.
So maybe you send a postcard out to recurring donors ninety
days after their first gift.. Something like that. That's a test.
See if they do something. Ask them to share on social. Oh,
I got my thing.
You know, whoever shares on social gets us, you know,
entered into a special raffle.
You can, you can have fun with it. Okay.
We got about ten minutes.
So let's hammer this home. Why is it important to think about
retention? Well, first and foremost,
we even have found that donors who are giving at the end of
the year tend to have a higher retention rate than people
giving at other points of the year. So we're in this period.
Of that seventy percent of donors who gave their first
gift in January through October,
take a look at the retention rate.
And the theory that we have at the fundraising effectiveness
project is relating to the amount of communications people are getting.
In November and December,
a lot of nonprofits are constantly putting out
communications, giving Tuesday, end of the year, etcetera.
There's something Even if it's a bunch of asks, it's
something. Check back at how often you are communicating,
especially with this segment. Because you can really get into
and understand that as we build toward end of the year, where a
lot of those one time donors who are giving big gifts,
imagine if you were focusing on your recurring givers in the
beginning part of the year, and that is
you know, guaranteed revenue coming in for
eleven months, ten months, nine months of guaranteed revenue,
then you know that a lot of the people coming in in November
and December historically will come back.
That gives you coverage throughout the entire year.
So one way that you can actually do this yourself as a
roundup and kind of to wind things down and maybe have some
time for questions is
step back
and take out your post it notes and even start to
plug out the journey and even color code it if you want to be
like manual process automation,
you know, data collection,
things of that nature, and write out and put it on a wall,
what happens when somebody wants to give and become a
recurring donor as part of the experience that you've put put
put together.. Actually map it out.
And I and I talked to so many leaders that they focus in on
the giving form. You gotta start from before the giving
form. That is the generosity experience come alive.
It's the marketing and the revenue.
Coming together. So if you were starting with the money,
we've already lost the thread here.
So that post it note better start with somebody heard about
you. How is your ideal audience hearing about you?
And then what is happening through the entirety of that
experience? Because you can map this out
And then you can say, okay, my CRM
or my technology stack can do these things. And you can start
to even put a little note. Okay.
This is where tech take this on.
Or let me go look if my technology can do this. Or
where can I actually get this going?
So there's a lot that you can do.
Because so many people miss the website,
I do wanna put this up as we kind of take some final questions here.
I'm gonna kinda pause and take a look at some good questions
where he got one coming in.
But because so many people missed the website,
we did put together this beautiful website optimization quiz.
Take a look at this.
This is something that's absolutely free that we've put together.
It's very detailed too.
So you're gonna get some really good suggestions for overall optimization.
So I'll leave that up and start to dive into some of the
questions we have here.
What have our donors given anonymously through group
giving donations?
Well,
that's That's not the segment that we're talking about here.
I I would say, first and foremost.
So if the majority of your donors are giving anonymously, then
I I'd question the communication side of things. Now,
if you have a handful that are giving through a giving circle
or group giving or, you know,
a donor advice fund and are the small percent that are ripping
out their, their, contact information, you know,
that's understandable.
But
and we'll, we'll do this in the follow-up email, by the way as well.
So if the QR code isn't working for you, that's all good,
I did test it on my phone. So,
so I would say that that the point of a recurring giving
program is that people don't wanna be anonymous.
That they want to be part of it. It's also a small dollar gift,
and likely not anything that's going to trigger a need for an, anonymity.
So I would say that this is likely just outside the scope
of these types of donors.
If you do have a large amount of donors who are giving anonymously,
then I I think that's worth an internal conversation to try to
understand, well, what are we doing that that's driving that?
Okay. We got about five minutes.
I'm gonna go ahead and share my webcam now.
Told Heather I would do this during the questions.
So I'm wearing a tie for you folks.
Our biggest givers are during fundraisers.
Since price fluctuation, there is a little more poverty. Kenny,
I'm not entirely
following that question.
I would make an argument that if people are doing the
the majority of your giving is coming in through events
fundraisers, galas, things like that.
That's situational giving one zero one.
That's like they gave because they are in the environment
that they're gonna ask. Will that person step up if it's not
an event? That's the question to ask.
What are your thoughts about the expectation that board and
staff become monthly donors?
I don't think we should force any board member or staff
member to to to give you money?
I I I I don't agree with that.
Because what's happening there is that that is violating one
of the three core principles of behavior, guilt.
Part of the expectations could be given get things of that
nature, but we're seeing a a major
shift away from required giving programs for staff. I ran
one at my last job. It was an opt in program for alumni,
and staff, and things like that.
And I think it's much more powerful to focus in on people
willingly doing that.
Okay.
Where are the best ways to move people from a bet event based
giving towards recurring gifts. So trac Tracy asked this one,
and SPero's Nest did this.
So the the tips that we told them, which is make it an event,
start small
and get people excited to be part of it.
Maybe you don't want the board members or the board members
don't wanna give or can't afford to give,
but they can tell their friends, they can tell their
networks. That they need to be part of it.
Otherwise, you're in or you're out.
You're in the circle of trust or you're out.
There there there has to be mutual responsibility for our
actions here too. And so. Spero's nest literally had most
of their revenue tied up in fundraising events,
and they shifted almost all of it toward recurring giving.
We had a bigger dive on that.
That's actually on the Neon One website if you wanna check out
that talk that they did with Visa on that one.
Big deep dive on that.
We've got two minutes.
Lapse donors and sustainers back communication.
Ignore that they've been gone. Welcome back. Welcome back.
Oof.
Have you seen a difference in giving when you call a donor
for their thank you versus paper.
There's been some studies.
Don't don't look at that that terrible study about, like,
people not responding to phone calls. Right? Like, that's that's
it was so skewed in terms of a old phone phone call
study that was done with a radio station segment to say,
well, phone calls don't matter.
Look, omnichannel
is gonna help,
phone calls can be time consuming but very powerful.
What you could do is create an event around it.
I did gratitude of thorns. Thank of thorns.
One dedicated day for our recurring givers.
The board's gonna call all those people.
See how that works.
Don't call it a subscription.
We're not trying to Netflix this.
This is not Netflix.
This is not Disney plus. This is not me getting my Kiwico.
A recurring gift might act. In many ways, economically, like a
subscription, it is not an e commerce subscription.
Anybody who's describing that does not understand donor motivation.
So I feel that it's
important to be the only,
and you can't be the only if you're trying to be the best
subscription service. Guess what?
Netflix is gonna screw you over on that one. Peacock even.
Be the best
or the only recurring giving program.
I have very strong feelings on that one.
Heather, I'm at time.
Alright. I was just frantically taking notes myself,
in words. So that was awesome. Thank you so much.
You're gonna be sending the recording and the PowerPoint as
well as some relevant resources. Right?
Absolutely.
You got a positive feedback. They love it.
Yes. Thank you, everyone.. Thank you. Really,
really appreciate the time.
Alright. Thank you, everybody.. Let me get the shutdowns.
I can get the recording
ready, and they can get the email and the resources sent you.
Thanks, everyone. And thank you so much, Tim.
Another awesome webinar. Really appreciate it. Thank you.
Thanks. Bye.