Hey, everybody. It's so good to see you all filing in.
We're so excited that you're here today.
We have so much cool stuff to share with you,
but I wanted to do a really quick sound check.
Could you do me a favor and type in the chat?
If you can see me and Tim and see the slides and hear us, let us know.
Well, I am hopefully being heard. Ugh. Amazing.
Thank you so much for confirming that everything is working.
It's one of the drawbacks of working from home.
It's really hard to to test things.
So welcome to this session.
We are giving you an insider's look at the recurring giving report.
We have so much to share with you today,
and this is only a fraction of what we wanna talk to you
about, but we can't keep you all here all afternoon.
So that said, let's dive right into it.
If you are not familiar with us, hello. We're Abby and Tim.
We're with the Neon One team.
I see some familiar names here,
and I wanna say hello to our Neon One clients.
If you are a Neon One user,
you're gonna see a lot about recurring giving in the coming weeks.
So if you have questions about anything,
if you want to use our tools to start or launch or expand your
recurring giving program, you're in a great place.
We have tons of things to help you.
Let us know how we can do that.
If you're not a user, that's totally fine.
We are so thankful that you're here,
and everything you're gonna learn today is applicable to
you regardless of the tools that you're using.
Yep.
So couple little things.
Really excited that you all are actually talking to us in the chat.
I hate speaking into the void.
I love seeing people talking to us in the chat,
so please do use the chat to talk with us.
We'll ask you questions.. We'll keep an eye on it.
That said, the chat can move pretty quickly.
So if you have questions that you would like to answer at the
end, drop those in the Q&A box.
When the chat gets going really quickly,
even if Tim and I are doing a good job keeping on top of it,
it is possible that we'll miss an important question.
And if you have a question,
someone else almost certainly has the same.
So ask those questions in the Q&A box.
And then to answer the most common question we get in that
Q&A box, we are recording this, and you are going to get a copy
of the recording in your inbox tomorrow morning.
Keep a lookout. It'll come from me. It'll have a link.
It'll have a link to the report, and,
it will have it will point you in the direction that you need to get in.
Okay.
All of that said,
let me introduce myself a little more formally.
My name is Abby Jarvis.
I'm thrilled to be with you today.
Like I said, I'm part of the team at Neon One.
I've been in the nonprofit tech industry for a little over
eleven years now, which is kinda wild to say out loud,
and I've gotten really passionate about understanding
donors and how and why they support the causes they love.
And so it's gonna be really hard for me not to just ramble today.
Tim, you wanna to give a little intro of yourself?
Yeah. Of course. Hello. My name is Tim Sarrantonio.
I'm Director of Corporate Brand.
I've actually been in the nonprofit technology sector for
over a decade at this point.
I'm a dinosaur, folks, I guess, at this point in the sector.
But before that, I was actually working just like you and handling things
like events and annual fund management,
major gifts and events.
And, so I I'm really jazzed to kind of be able to to
connect the dots between the data that we are able to find
and the action that's very important to us.
And, again, regardless of your technology stack,
we are here to help you,
understand the importance of recurring giving.
I'm speaking to you from upstate New York.
So if there's any upstaters here, then some I got some
Capital Region love coming coming your way.
But, yeah, let's get into it.
I'm gonna I'm gonna also make sure I have the chat there.
But, Abby, we are gonna try to, this is a bit of a tease, folks.
We want you to pay attention to us right now, so just bookmark
this for later.
If you are moved or you just want the possibility of free
stuff like this hat and a copy of the report,
there's only a hundred of these.
You can be like Meghan. Meyerson here of the
Interfaith Partnership for the Homeless, or IPH,
and win your own hat and report.
If you just tag Neon one on your favorite social media
platform with what did you learn about recurring giving or
what you are going to do for your own recurring giving program?
We're gonna revisit this at the end, though.
This is just a heads up because we want you to be engaged with
the webinar today.
So, Abby?
Yes.
Why recurring donors?
So I am actually a vice chair of an industry
initiative called the. Fundraising Effectiveness
Project, and I just wanna make sure I have the pop out chat.
There you go.
Awesome. Thank you, Elizabeth.
I hope to bring that same energy to our afternoon session.
And so I do wanna address that there has been a lot of
headlines coming out of,
some recent reports that have come out,
including the fundraising effectiveness project,
which I am vice chair of.
It's the largest analysis of individual giving in the world,
but Blackbaud also had similar data.
And, generally, we see those headlines.
Donors are down. Retention rates are struggling.
People aren't trusting the work that nonprofits are doing.
And here's the reality is that we cannot ignore these trends.
There's too many,
in my opinion, even digital vendors that might kind of try to paint this, like,
really inaccurate picture of what's happening underneath the
surface because it fits how they sell their products.
Right?
The reality is is that generosity is a much more
holistic experience that people go through,
and there's a lot of good,
but there is some struggles that we need to address.
And that's what's so exciting coming out of the conversations
that we're having, the research that we have,
and also the validation with other research that is
happening in parallel that recurring giving is a powerful
vehicle for any small, mid sized,
or large nonprofit as we will see.
So why we focused on recurring donors is because we wanna
start to shift the conversation away from affluence,
away from major gifts and donors that are gonna,
you know, save you with one big gift.
That is not a sustainable way to keep your organization growing.
Recurring donors, as our research will show, is of an
amazing, amazing investment,
especially if you turn this into a program.
So on the next slide,
how did we put this study together?
Because we started to actually interrogate this type of data a
few years ago in a previous research project,
we partnered with the University of Dallas,
Texas at Dallas to look at several million transaction
records within our data and and to look at recurring giving.
And we found some very interesting research.
So then we said, okay.
Let's revisit this topic now that we have a fantastic writer
and interpreter named Abby Jarvis,
let's actually get into it.
So the way the way that we built this report,
and I would love to know in the comments,
have you read the report yet?
If not, then great.
But, like, I would be interested to know if anybody's read the report too.
Thank you, Darlene. Very, very cool. And thank you, Alex.
Oh, Alex. Thank you. Awesome.
Got a lovely email from Alex, actually, the other day,
and we will tell you how to get it.
And so it's look.. It's a meaty report.
That's what this webinar and other things that we're doing
is, but let's break down what's in it.
Because a lot of times, folks,
we we we have a skeptical eye toward
research that sometimes comes out from vendors.
Right?
You should because they might just try to paint
things in the light that makes their product look best.
And what we wanted to do is go, no.
What are actually people doing?
And a lot of times when you read research,
it could be a survey that goes out to about two hundred
nonprofits at most.
And we said no.
Let's actually look at the way people are using the system.
What are donors actually doing?
Let's look at the behavior, the actions that people take.
And so this is the largest analysis of recurring giving
that that I believe the sector's seen.
We looked at over two thousand nonprofits,
two thousand one hundred and forty non nonprofits.
They had to have a transaction in their system logged every single year.
We also removed over performers if people were,
performing three hundred percent and above sometimes.
Right?
This is when you see the really exciting reports,
and then you look underneath and you're like, oh,
there's actually only twelve nonprofits driving that.
This is, in our opinion,
going to be the typical lived experience of you regardless
of what size you are.
One of the things that we did a few,
last September or so is we shifted even to a revenue based
pricing model because the reality is is that nonprofits,
doesn't matter how many accounts you have in your
system, it's what you're doing with those folks.
And so we wanna more accurately understand
the ninety seven percent of nonprofits
making under five million dollars in revenue annually,
but we can't leave out the folks who are doing some really
interesting stuff at the higher resource end.
So this is a pretty comprehensive report.
We're also gonna get into later on how we sliced and diced it,
how we looked at some of the benchmarks as well as some
other research that we did on donors themselves.
But that's what's in the study.
There's a full methodology section in the, report as well.
We're very, very proud about how transparent we put this type of information out.
But, Abby, anything else to say on this one before we get into the meat of it?
Well, I was gonna ask before I start going over some benchmarks.
So this I have here how we broke out organizations.
So we looked at industry wide trends,
but we also looked at trends for small, mid size,
and large large organizations.
And I have here on this slide how we broke those out.
So just out of curiosity,
do you fall into the small nonprofit size?
Are you a midsize organization?
Are you perhaps a larger organization?
I ask because I will focus, where I spend a lot of my
time, talking based on where you are.
Lot of midsize. Small, small, mids, small, midsize. Great.
Amazing.
Good.
Oh, we've got a good mix here. I'm very excited.
A good mix. We have a good mix.
And it's also the one of the interesting nuances that that
just it's hard to kind of convey this in the report is
that the large organizations, a lot of times,
their revenue from individual giving was actually matching
what the midsize were.
But the reason that they fell into the large nonprofit side
is grants.
A lot of grants that people had that would actually help push
that into that size.
So program fees, you know, things of that nature.
So we have a lovely mix.
We got folks who are even supporting organizations like
Michelle there for small to mid. So you know what?
There's something for everybody in here.
That's the exciting part.
Amazing. Okay.
Let's let's let's try it.
To see such an improvement to people. Okay.
This is great. This is so cool.. We can talk about everybody.
So let's look at some some actual benchmarks, and I'm
gonna I'm gonna show you some stuff today for all nonprofits.
I'm gonna break it out into the different bands,
and then we'll talk about what this means for you.
So alright.
Let's get out of the way.. Let's start the bad news first.
Nonprofits are right now having kind of a hard time keeping
their supporters.
Okay? So I want you to hear this.
If you are looking at your your donor base and you're seeing
that you you have fewer active donors, you're not alone.
I know that's a scary thing, but you're not alone.
We're seeing it across the industry.
So when we looked at the numbers across the industry,
so all and all nonprofits of all sizes,
the average nonprofit had just over eight hundred and fifty
active supporters.
So when I say active supporters,
what I'm talking about are people that have in some way,
shape, or form,
donated money, bought an event registration.
Tim, did we include volunteers in there,
or was it financial assistance?
This is focused on financial engagement,
but but our understanding of generosity is holistic to
volunteerism as well.
But, this is transactional in this review.
Perfect.
And we'll touch a little bit more on the transactional side
of things in in a little bit.
But, so what this doesn't include is this doesn't include people who
are on your email list but haven't given or people who are
Dropped off.
People who dropped off.
They might be in it,
and they stopped giving during this period of time.
Mhmm.
So we're looking at active supporters in that there is a
financial transaction tied to that supporter at some point.
So in twenty eighteen,
the average nonprofit had around eight hundred and fifty.
By twenty twenty two,
that number had decreased around three and a half percent
to eight hundred and twenty two.
So that's industry wide.
What about individual organizations like you?
So small organizations saw a larger drop than the rest.
And it just to reiterate,
large organizations make up the vast majority, more, I think,
what, around half of our data set here.
So they they had six hundred and eleven active supporters in twenty eighteen.
That was down to five hundred plus.
Ones. Yes. Not the large.
Small organizations.. Clear. Yeah.
Midsize organizations had a lower drop.
Large organizations actually grew their base of active supporters,
and that's a whole interesting trend that we dive into in the
report that I would keep you here until five PM today if we went into it.
So this is just gift.
This isn't just recurring.. This is just anything.
So any gift, any transaction.
And if you wanna look at the individual recurring donors,
this is where things get really exciting.
Why is that not working?. There we go. Alright.
So the average number of recurring donors, on the other hand,
went up every year between twenty eighteen and twenty twenty two.
So at the beginning of the study in twenty eighteen,
the average nonprofit had around eleven donors.
By twenty twenty two, they had twenty five.
And that's a growth of around one hundred and twenty seven donors.
Twenty five, and that's a a growth of around a hundred and twenty seven percent.
Now the reason I want to emphasize the number of
recurring donors is because from what we can tell,
a lot of this growth happened organically.
It doesn't look like, from what we can tell,
a lot of nonprofits are actively reaching out to their
communities and inviting them to support them in this way.
So this is growth that is happening organically.
This is happening when donors land on a donation form and
they see recurring options and they elect to make that kind of gift.
So let's look at this, for individual groups.
For small organizations, you doubled, as a general rule,
your base of recurring donors.
It went from seven to fourteen supporters.
Mid sized organizations went from fifteen to thirty five.
Large went from twenty nine to seventy one.
So what is valuable here, is if,
as is very common, if you look at recurring giving and you
feel discouraged because you haven't done it yet or you know
you should launch a recurring giving program,
but you just haven't had the time.
You maybe feel I've had I had someone express to me that she
felt shame about the fact that she didn't have a lot of
recurring supporters.
There is nothing for you to be ashamed of.
Now is the perfect time to start doing this.
But if you are just getting started or even if you haven't
started yet, there's still time.
You're not behind.
You have every opportunity to grow,
and now is a beautiful time to focus on this.
There's there's a lot of there's a lot of just I wanna
kinda hammer home in this point because we have to talk about
not only the data, but the people behind it.
Right?
And the reality is is that many fundraisers,
many nonprofit leaders out there,
they see these wonderful, big,
flashy case studies from agencies and tech vendors and stuff like that,
and they're talking about these numbers that are just not
backed up in the reality of the lived experience of the vast majority,
even some of our highest performers that's still worth in the dataset.
So so nonprofits that you know are not having
five thousand, ten thousand recurring donors.
That is reserved for a very, very, very small subset
of, like, the Charity. Waters and the St.
Jude's out there.
So what's exciting here is that,
especially when we start to unpack that people like
they, and, Jonathan, to answer your question,
we are grouping this by revenue size of the nonprofit,
not what they're processing through us.
This is government data that is indicating whether they're
small, midsize, or large.
So we can get into that a little bit more in the
methodology and what not.
But at the end of the day, there's healthy growth regardless.
I'd be interested as we continue on to put in the chat,
do you have a formal program,
or is this just an option on your donation form if you are
seeing recurring givers?
So what makes midsize versus large?
To kind of reiterate what we covered in the beginning,
midsize is between one million dollars and five million dollars.
Under a million is small, above five million is large.
That patterns the same data that the National Council of
Nonprofit uses to actually categorize in a very similar way.
Okay.
I think we've beaten that enough, so let's keep going.
Definitely.
So the reason we wanna emphasize this and these these
numbers aren't to downplay the significant growth.
These numbers are to reiterate that there's a lot of room for you to grow.
And the reason that we're so excited about the the the fact
that there is room for you to grow is because this growth
that's happening organically is really exciting in a lot of ways,
but it's especially exciting when you look at how long these
recurring donors stay engaged with the nonprofits they love
and the financial impact they have.
And and that doesn't even count all the other ways they impact your mission.
So, Tim, you wanna talk a little bit about retention rates and donor lifetime?
Oh, I love talking about retention rates,
and we see some really great op things in the chat.
Folks, the chat is always so awesome for this where we have somebody
like Dale talking about we have a formal program,
and twenty two percent of our donors are sustainers.
They're a large organization, and we even see slight nuances.
The and it's important to kind of note that why we did a five
year analysis is to smooth out any potential variances.
We did get one email back that was like,
you didn't include twenty twenty three.
This is a lifetime ago. No.
It's not.
Because the reality is is that from twenty eighteen to twenty
twenty two, we saw pretty consistent elements here,
and we did look at twenty twenty three.
We just weren't done with that year.
But even in retrospect, things still hold up.
And so why folks like Darlene,
I hope you look into creating a formal program is the retention rate alone.
This means that a retention rate is when somebody gives to
the organization, and then they give again the next year.
That is retention.
The typical retention for new donors according to the
Fundraising. Effectiveness Project,
somebody who gave for the first time to your organization is
around eighteen percent.
Within our dataset,
we actually found that regardless of whether they were new or not,
a person who's giving a onetime gift and then maybe coming back
thirty six percent.
Look at this retention rate
for the average across the entire dataset over a five year period.
Seventy eight percent.
Eight out of ten donors are sticking around, but, Abby, it
gets even better
because they're sticking around projected up to eight years.
Other organizations
are able to actually do and maintain things for a decade
long depending on the size.
Now we can answer how you can migrate donors into to
different systems, maybe in another thing.
I see your comment, Marie.
We do have ways that we can carry that over.
But a lot of this comes down to the trust that the donor has in
the generosity experience that they are interacting with with
your organization.
Right?
And a lot of it isn't the fact that and we're gonna get into
this into a later section on the why people give,
but there's a lot of evidence to show that recurring donors
are giving through the nonprofit to a a a cause or
thing that they believe in.
Whereas nonrecurring donors, they may be there for a bit.
They might leave.. It's very fickle.
And so lifetime combined with a few other metrics gets very interesting.
So let's keep continuing on to understand this,
but retention is one of the most
important investments you can make,
and that is why recurring giving is such a dynamo
because it actually costs your organization
one dollar and twenty five cents to acquire one dollar
from a new donor.
To retain that same donor according to fundraising
effectiveness project research is twenty cents.
So look at what happens when we look at if I spent
basically over two thousand dollars to
get that one person to give me two thousand dollars,
and I'm keeping them around for less than two years.
That's about thirty five hundred dollars.
K?
So and, absolutely, from the technical
standpoint, folks, we're gonna parking lot that type of stuff, by the way,
in terms of if you're worried about recurring donations
transferring over.
We're we're gonna parking lot that,
and we'll make sure our team covers that.
I wanna focus in on when those folks stick around,
look at what happens.
Because they are gonna be there and they are gonna project out
near seventy six hundred plus dollars over the lifetime
commitment there.
And what you can do is it's not just one.
We're seeing that donor based growth.
There's an amplification effect.
People feel part of a movement.
They start telling their friends because there's also a
real accessibility versus, well,
I'm gonna write a five thousand dollar check once.
I'm gonna write a two thousand dollar check once.
That is not for everybody.
So let's keep going.
This is a fun side by side comparison,
but there's even more rich information that we can look into.
Absolutely.
And what I wanna reiterate before I start talking with you
about how you can reach recurring donors based on what
we know of them, I want to reiterate,
there is nothing wrong with acquiring one time donors,
and I will never sit here and tell you that those donors are
not also invaluable.
They are.
What I do wanna show you is are these numbers.
And the reason we wanna show you these numbers is because we
encounter, at least I have, Tim.
I don't know about you.
I've encountered a lot of fear from nonprofits that
emphasizing recurring giving because we know that recurring
donors generally give less on average per year,
than their one time counterparts.
There's fear around prioritizing reaching those
donors because there is a fear that over time,
they will not rep you won't raise enough to meet your goals.
So I wanna show you this to reassure you that that's not the case.
So now that we've established that recurring donors are
valuable, people are looking for ways to do this,
It will help you grow sustainable revenue.
I want to share a little bit with you about how we can
actually connect with these donors.
So what we're gonna look at is we're gonna look at some data,
that comes from, from our system
and what that data tells you about the individuals who are
choosing to create this kind of gift.
So when we looked at this data, and this is all in the report,
we looked kind of at a number of things,
but we we kinda sorted them into three different categories.
So we looked at when donors give, we looked at how they
give, and then we looked at why they give the way they do.
And these have some pretty remarkable,
we found some pretty great things.
Okay.
And just one quick note because. Tracy asked a question that I
wanna address, which is,
is it okay to use these stats to push our new recurring donor program?
Oh my gosh. Absolutely.
Please. This is why we made this thing.
Because a lot of times, you have to get executive buy in.
You need to get leadership buy in.
You have people who and, actually,
one of one of the spotlights,. Jean Marie Trick, actually,
we we spotlighted that program because it was a very events
heavy organization that we we talked about,
this expert that we brought in to talk about,
because her experience when she worked for her nonprofit,
Sparrow's Nest, is that they were all, like,
seven different galas, basically.
Mhmm.
And she was able to work with the leadership to get them to go, no.
Let's refocus toward recurring giving,
and now it's the majority of their giving.
The reason we're so upfront about giving away this research,
about making the methodology very clear that it's not a
sales pitch is because we want people like Tracy to go to
their leadership and say, this is so
clear Yeah.
That this will work for us.
Look at this large amount of insight.
What else did we learn though?
Because you're gonna love some of the stuff once we get to the why especially.
But the when, the how, this is gonna help you, Tracy,
and others like you.
So let's keep going. Sorry.
Okay. So I want you guys to talk to me in the chat.
So when we looked at all the recurring donations initiated
over this five year period,
we noticed that the vast majority of them well,
the vast majority that's an exaggeration.
We noticed that a lot of them were made in May.
Mhmm.
December and November were the two,
the two other most common months.
Now why and I'm genuinely asking because I have asked
hundreds of people that's in no two people have the same answer.
What is happening in May that is prompting Yep.
These gifts? Why? Is that how we Michelle?
We validated this with other data from a different source.
We validated this against, what, the GivingPulse.
GivingTuesday.
GivingTuesday's GivingPulse found a similar data,
and that's what we try to do Yeah.
With these reports is it has to kinda generally if it's an
outlier like this, can we validate it against something else?
And so we have spring post tax season tax returns.
Spring spirit. Oh, that. Roberta, I love that.
That's like yeah.
Fiscal year, Mother's Day tribute gifts, fiscal years.
That's a new one.
I haven't heard that one yet.
That one.
I like that one. I like that.
I wish we had,
but the but the evidence on the honor and memorial attribution
then is like, I don't know.
Right?
The release of the oh, Chris works for us. Never mind.
United Way's do more twenty four campaign. Hey.
Giving days absolutely is a great kickoff for acquisition too.
Recurring gifts, stuff like that.
We like that, but not every community has a giving day.
We would love that.
But, yeah, utility bills are high in winter months.
People have more disposable income in that.
Jennifer, I like that.
I I think it is ultimately some economic elements that are driving this.
But I also think that it's important,
and we're gonna get into this,
is we sometimes remove the fundraiser activity from the
equation here too.
We kind of almost put donors on a pedestal and go, well,
they act like this.
And it's like, yeah. But we do stuff to interact with them.
So the question almost is,
are they giving because they wanna give in May or because they were asked?
May, May, May.
Yeah. So those are the three most common months. Mhmm.
The least common months were August, March, and February.
Now this one is funny to me.
I live in Florida.
March and February are the two most beautiful months.
Everyone starts getting the sads in May.
August, I do see being kind of a bummer.
It's too hot to go outside. I'm not doing anything in August.
So these were interesting to me.
Those are the only things that for me in upstate New York.
I I saw somebody was Albany, and they're gonna be like, yo.
Like, capital region in August is beautiful.
March, February, not so much. Not so much.
December, November, not so much.
And and I think this is gonna speak to when we get to the the
why question on on helping unpack this.
So So I I love this because the we want you to think this way too.
Mhmm.
So another interesting thing that we noticed,
just a little helpful thing,
we also looked at the time of day that people tended to
create these gifts.
And we found that most of them were initiated in the late
morning or early afternoon.
That was actually really cool because it validated some some
findings from what the donor report, Tim,
where we found that most most gifts,
regardless of whether or not they were recurring donations
or onetime donations,
those gifts were made late morning or early morning.
Noon.
A lot a lot of people are just kinda generally looking at
their computer, looking at their phone,
and and kinda phasing out and going, okay.
You know, I'm gonna open this email and and let this go.
Or they might go back after receiving a direct mail piece
and then finding their way over to it.
So so there's a lot of ways that people can get to,
to the giving experience itself.
Definitely.
So another interesting trend that we identified when we
looked at when people are initiating these gifts is that
we found that a substantial number of new gifts are
initiated on Giving Tuesday.
Now this may be a little convoluted.
It took I had to make Tim explain it to me a couple of times.
So Giving Tuesday is always either
in November or December, late. November, early December.
Yep.
Regardless of the month in which that day falls,
recurring donations initiated on Giving Tuesday accounted for
around twelve percent of all of the gifts set up during that month.
So if Giving Tuesday falls in late November,
around twelve percent of all recurring donations initiated
in November happen on that day.
If it falls in early December,
around twelve percent of all of those gifts happen in December on that day.
And that's a pretty substantial especially when you consider
that both November and December are two of the three most
popular months to create a recurring donation.
So that was a really interesting finding for us.
So okay. Great. What does this mean for you?
Knowing this is fine, but what do you do with it?
So there are a couple of things that you can do with this information.
So one thing I'm gonna tell you, look at your your own data.
Look at your patterns.
When are your when are your supporters making these gifts?
When does your community want to set up these gifts?
Look at your own database.
I will always tell you to look at your own data before you
look at anything,. Tamara, I bring you.
Your data is going to be more useful to you.
So look and see.
When do your community members want to create these
GIFs? Try running a campaign during that popular month.
If you don't see any patterns or if you don't have a
recurring giving program and you don't so you don't have the
data to base that on,
try launching a campaign in. May or December or November.
Give it a shot and see what happens.
The other thing you can do, of course,
then is try including an appeal for recurring donations in your
next Giving Tuesday campaign.
And at the very least,
include recurring options on your. Giving Tuesday donation form.
It's a simple addition.
It you can tell beautiful stories that help people
understand the unbelievable impact they can make with their
recurring gift that goes very well on Giving Tuesday.
So those are three things you can try. Look at your own data.
If you don't have any of your own data, try using,
some of our data, and then,
try running this kind of campaign on on Giving Tuesday.
Mhmm.
Yes, Kira.
These slides will be available, after the call.
I will send you an email with these tomorrow morning.
Okay.
So we know approximately when they give.
Now the question is how do they give.
And the first thing I'm gonna talk to you about is some
transactional information.
When we looked at how recurring donors give,
I'm sure all of you will shocked will will be shocked to
learn that ninety one percent of them use their credit or debit card.
So, you know,
that's fairly that's fairly consistent with what we see
across all kinds of gifts.
What I was surprised by,
and I think I actually asked. Tim to double check this,
was it more than eight percent of these donors set up their
gifts using ACH or eCheck?
And that's pretty great because it's a lot harder for, like, you know,
a recurring gift to lapse because their credit card expired.
But I, you know, I'm not a a standard donor this way.
I don't know where my checkbook is.
I don't know that. I have one anymore.
So that was really interesting.
That's that's that's an interesting thing for for us to see.
The other thing that we saw so there's you know,
that's a little over ninety nine percent.
The remaining percentage of folks used other methods like
PayPal.
That was fairly uncommon.
However, you again, like,
your data is going to be more valuable.
Jeanette just caught out in the chat that a lot of their donors use PayPal.
So look and see what your donors are doing.
And as you think through your next recurring campaign,
you will want to prioritize letting your donors support you
in the way that is most convenient for them.
So you may wanna consider adding the option to give via PayPal,
especially if you're like Jenna and you know your donors appreciate that.
You may want to add the option to pay via ACH or echeck,
especially if you know that your donors like Brandy's
may submit their gifts that way because they're submitting for a match.
So look at what your donors are doing,
accommodate what they're doing,
and make it easy for them to support you in this way.
We we have a few good questions both,
putting in the QA as well as the chat,
and I just kinda wanna wanna a few of these,
like the text to give one, the light box one.
We're gonna try to parking lot those for the end.
We will have some time for questions only because I have a
lot of thoughts on that.
But but one of the things that precipitated this was in one of
these webinars, I don't know, at least a year,
two years ago, something like that.
Somebody even wrote when we were talking some of our
initial recurring giving research.
Yeah. But what about people giving checks at church?
And from there, that kinda set me off to go, well,
what about checks at church?
They don't happen.
When we looked at the University of Dallas,
research at six point four million transaction records,
and they even looked for repeating behavior,
not even a triggered schedule,
it's just like people aren't doing that anymore.
And in fact, in our dataset,
religious organizations performed a little bit better,
than other certain segments of nonprofits when it came to
attracting people because I think the the pandemic helped
shift a lot of those organizations to go.
People aren't coming to to church.
They're not going to the mosque.
They're not going to the temple. Let's move it online.
And ACH, if you look at. Europe, it's actually the the opposite.
If anything, they're almost all, like,
digital bank connections.
They're much more mature than us when it comes to these types of options.
So we're definitely gonna get into, if we have time,
things like text to give and stuff like that, light boxes.
But it it kind of it what what we're gonna see when you get
down to it is those are tactics and a little bit of window dressing.
It's not the reason why people give.
Mhmm.
Yes. There you go, Jeanette.
There you go.
As you're getting ready to launch your next recurring
campaign, I would strongly encourage you,
especially if it's been a little while,
look at your donation form and ensure that it is easy to set
up a recurring gift.
I went to go make a gift on. Giving Tuesday, actually,
and the process was a nightmare.
And I really appreciate that organization,
and I didn't have the emotional or mental bandwidth to make
that gift, and I didn't do it.
Probably a weird thing to admit, but it was not easy.
And making your supporters work to support you is is
gonna harm your conversion rate.
Rate.
While you're doing that, double check your ACH and eCheck, options.
Consider adding those payment methods your donors prefer.
And I wanna emphasize those last three words your donors prefer.
If you have a form that has, like, every conceivable payment
method, that can feel overwhelming.
So if you don't have people who are sending you, I I
don't know, Ethereum or whatever,
it's like you don't feel like you need to include every every
possible payment method.
Okay.
This is something that I really wanna reiterate to.
Was it Tracy that wants to to talk about this with her her
board or something?
Yes.
And this is also I think it can help talk about Dale's it
touches slightly on Dale's upgrade question too in terms
of the possibilities of external and extra support.
So,
last screen, number three, Abby, by the way,
was I can grab oh, there we go.
Consider adding other,
other payment methods your donors prefer such as ACH.
Mhmm.
Yeah.
Scott, yeah, those numbers do, in general, seem low because
the vast majority of nonprofits probably do not have a formal
program, maybe like you.
And that's kind of the possibilities of of of
opportunity here.
So so people are very generous.
Let's keep going in terms of how they give, Abby.
And, I like that you called out that people are very generous
because a common fear and I've talked to a lot of fundraisers
about this recently,
and something that I keep hearing coming up over and over
and over again is,
either fundraisers or leadership or board members or
whomever are concerned that asking for recurring donations
will cannibalize gifts from other sources or to other campaigns.
If that is a concern for you, one,
I want you to understand that's a valid concern.
Two, I want you to understand that when we look at the data,
fifty percent of recurring donors gave at least one additional gift.
People who are committed enough to your cause that they are
committing to you on normally a monthly basis are committed
enough to you to support your work in other ways.
They are giving additional gifts
if you ask them and if you do a good job maintaining that
relationship with them.
They are also registering for events.
They are buying things in storefronts.
They are volunteering. They're tagged as board members.
And this these are only trends that we can capture as data
points in a CRM.
What we can't capture is all the other ways these
organization or these nonprofits are supporting, wow.
I can't talk.
These donors are supporting their favorite nonprofits.
They are posting on social media.
They're talking about their favorite causes with their
friends and loved ones.
They are ambassadors for you.
They are spreading the word for your organization.
These are some of the most committed individuals you have
in your community.
So if you are afraid of building a community of
recurring donors because you are worried that that will
impact their giving in other areas, please don't be.
Of course, you're gonna have to be intentional about
communicating with your recurring donors in a way that
is relevant to them and acknowledges the depth of their
commitment to your cause.
But these people are engaged with you.
They are committed to your cause.
And if you treat them well and prioritize the relationships
you have with them,
they can support you in some really remarkable ways.
And this is why I wanna make sure we do leave time for
Elizabeth's question because it's very kind of to the heart
of of how we can grow this community of generosity itself.
But we got about twenty minutes, Abby,
so let's keep it rolling.
We gotta go. Okay. So what do you do with this?
What you do is you look for ways to understand the
different ways these people support your work.
Then you create communications specifically for these donors
that do three things.
It thanks them for what they've done.
It acknowledges the depth of their commitment to your cause.
It updates them on what they have helped achieve,
and it asks them for additional support when it is appropriate to do so.
I don't know what else. I can add to that.
I'm obviously passionate about that.
That was a little surprising to me.
So, so as you are reaching out to
your community, these are the things to prioritize.
They are valuable, deeply committed individuals,
foster that, cultivate that,
and then invite them to give additional ways.
When we talk about over here the generosity experience,
it's not the donor's journey.
It's basically the ways that marketing and revenue and
impact interact with each other to build trust.
That is why people are going to be open.
But many systems,
many fundraising operations are not taking into account the
nuances of marketing, the nuances of engagement,
of storytelling, and that is a lot of reasons why.
And the data is very clear on this when it comes to retention
rates, what we're getting from GivingTuesday,
what we're seeing in other research across the sector with
the Edelman trust barometer is that people just don't know what's going on.
They don't understand what you're doing, and a lot of
times, they feel disconnected from that.
Now this is my favorite part of the entire research in my opinion,
because we wanted to know what donors were thinking at the
time of the transaction.
With the massive caveat that donor privacy
and ethical usage of technology was put first and
foremost foremost,
and this is in the methodology section that explains how we
did these types of things.
But we actually looked at when over a hundred thousand donors
and when they were setting up their transactions,
what did they write at the time of the transaction in a donor note?
And what we found was absolutely fascinating.
We looked at over thirteen thousand notes, again,
removing any personal identification information
before we did this because people put some wild stuff in
those notes too in terms of, like,
unencrypted credit card information.
It's like, what are you doing? Right?
So that is important because we
found some really interesting emotional and identity elements.
So we could get into communication tactics and stuff
like that, but here's the point I wanna make.
It doesn't matter how often you choose to communicate with people.
It's ultimately what is resonating with them.
I wanna say that again.. Stop focusing on tactics.
Stop.
I want you to focus on the strategic motivational
grounding on why somebody is even giving to you in the first place.
And what people are saying is not that I got a good donor note.
I got a great thank you letter.
Oh, I have a say in the operation.
What we saw was language of humanity.
Gratitude, love,
honor, honoring someone's memory, remembering a loved
one, being inspired by the nonprofit's work.
These are the words, the phrases,
the conversations that people were trying to have with the nonprofit.
What I wanna know is, are you listening?
Now in the next slide, to unpack this,
I'm very passionate about this point because this is killing
our sector by focusing so much on the
transactional elements of when you get down to it,
the gamification of how many times you're supposed to talk
to somebody, we're losing the point.
Now I'll get off my ranting soapbox in a moment,
but I have to hammer home the words, the phrases,
the things that people were talking about were the deepest
levels of humanity that were coming through at this time,
and it's for a twenty five dollar gift.
It's for a seventy eight dollar gift. It doesn't matter.
People were talking about,
I don't wanna have somebody live through the same economic
situation that I went through growing up.
I came out, and I wish I had this resource when I was there.
I love cats.
God is good.
God is great.
That is why I am so passionate about this.
These are the things that people said.
I am proud to be black. I am proud to be a Native American.
That's why people give to your organization.
And so if you tell that in a compelling way and you
consistently update them on the progress that they've given
through you toward.
That is what's going to have people come back and trust the
generosity experience that you're designing.
Now on the next slide,
what could you do with this information?
Brandy, thank you very much.
Now, again, I know I ranted there for a bit.
But look, folks, we are looking at a very,
very important crossroads in our sector.
And so what I want you to take away from today is invite
people in to share their experience with you and then listen deeply.
Listen to that information.
When you're doing a survey,
also remember that people say some wild stuff during it too.
I've had some situations where people put a donor note about
an, an environmental nonprofit, a conservation nonprofit,
and they reference animals that the nonprofit has nothing to do with.
So people's memory is fickle.
This is why to. Elizabeth's point,
consistent communication is a good thing.
I'm not saying don't communicate with donors.
I'm saying you're probably not communicating enough of them.
Check out the email report we did last year for more
information on that.
But, Abby, let's kinda round this home so we have time for people to have those questions.
So I really I want to reiterate this.
A comment I have heard from a lot of fundraisers,
and I know this frequently comes from
leadership or your board.
I have encountered fundraisers that told me they
intentionally do not use emotional appeals.
Appeals to emotion,
appeals to identity because they don't wanna be perceived as manipulative.
Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm.
And I want to tell you that this data shows us that
making recurring gifts is an inherently emotional decision.
It is deeply tied to someone's identity.
Don't worry about
manipulating people you're not.
People are giving to you because they already have an
emotional connection to you.
They are already deeply tied to your cause and what you do.
So instead, use language that taps into your donors'
emotions and use language that speaks to their identity,
and then reinforce the connection between your donor
and the work that is possible because of their support.
I'll start it in chat, but. I'll I'll reiterate it again.
You can email me every day if you are giving me information
that speaks to the causes I love.
So, I mean, you probably don't wanna email people every day.
It's a lot of work, but people are ready.
They're looking for connection. Look at your inbox.
How many emails do you get that are just nameless, faceless,
soulless, emotionless communications?
How much will you stand out if you are giving your donors what
they want, that connection to a cause they love?
It can have a really remarkable impact.
And here's one final part to put a bow on this one To kinda
get to some of the earlier questions,
the more sophisticated questions about light box and
button placement and color theory and things like that,
these are very great questions.
What we see,
to kinda Scott's point when he says those numbers seem low,
that's we agree.
And that's because I think a lot of nonprofits,
we have to sometimes remember that we are operating in a much
larger ecosystem outside of our own world.
Right?
And, one, we have a lot of people that are trying to equate recurring
giving with the same as a Netflix subscription.
They're not. They're completely different things.
You can absolutely find inspiration from subscription
boxes and things like that.
But at the end of the day, what we found,
and we spotlight several nonprofit stories
where the the the sophistication of the giving
experience varied in how deeply they were even using our platform.
Some were using even older forms and older things that
they have, and it didn't matter.
Retention rates in ninety percent for some of those
organizations are what that taught us.
The tech was secondary.
And I think what is a really good thing to work toward is
when you get these basic set,
then you can feel the freedom to experiment, you know,
to to some of these other things we'll get into once we have some time.
But let's let's make sure we round out on a good timing here, Abby.
So we'll we'll we'll, yeah.
Yeah. Definitely.
I mean, this was kind of the last point that we included,
so we did wanna leave time for Oh, good.
Yeah.
And, I did want to acknowledge this question that Elizabeth asked.
We've kinda touched on it, but I'm gonna I'm gonna Oh,
I love this question.
I do love this question. Yeah.
Elizabeth asked, you know,
you talk about generosity being a holistic experience.
What do you recommend in terms of frequency or types of
stewardship communications?
Would you automatically suppress all recurring from
seasonal appeal campaigns?
Absolutely not.
I say that really confidently,
so I'm gonna put a caveat in there.
Absolutely not.
Your recurring donors are, again,
deeply committed to your cause.
They want to support you.
They are obviously proving to you that they are very invested
in making your work possible.
What I would do is implore you not to send your
standard one size fits all appeal to your recurring donors.
And the reason I say that is because of this.
Think about I mean, who do you give money to regularly?
Think your kid comes up to you,
and they they get their allowance fifty dollars a month.
I don't know what allowances go for. I don't have kids.
They get their allowance and they come up to you and they
and they ask you for more money.
What what would you want your kid to tell you before you give them more money?
Maybe what they've been doing with the money they have,
why they need more, what that money will achieve.
It's kind of the same thing here.
Why why does your recurring donor need to give more?
What will they achieve if they give more?
Your messaging has to be different.
It has to acknowledge their ongoing commitment.
It has to acknowledge the depth of their connection to your cause.
It has to make a great, very
intentional appeal.
Don't don't suppress them.
Don't take away the opportunity for someone to
support a cause they love even more than they already do,
but do ask very differently than you would ask someone who
gave a gift to you three years ago and hasn't re upped.
Tim, do you wanna add anything to that?
Yeah.
One thing that is a little bit nerdy on the data side that
that didn't make it into the report,
this is cutting room only,
webinar only insight is that we actually looked at
whether people used the our platform's
conditional triggers to make a slightly
different message to sustainers, recurring donors,
during the receding process?
And and to one to to. Elizabeth's question,
would you automatically suppress all recurring, like,
questions and some appeals and stuff like that?
And, generally, like,
we didn't see an impact with those people as long as,
especially, you take into account Abby's point here.
But even in the receipt itself,
one of the biggest things that. I remember coming up I've been
with Neon for almost twelve years now,
and people would always be like,
I wanna make sure that recurring givers don't get an email.
Well, guess what?
The vast majority of people do not turn that email off,
and it didn't hurt anything.
But in turn, here's the interesting insight,
and this is a interesting point,
needs more exploration with some of these other things
about, like, upgrades and button stuff.
Like, we wanna do more research. Right?
We wanna also partner with other firms who understand this more deeply too.
But people who adjusted the receipt
to slightly to just talk to those recurring donors,
had a slightly higher retention rate.
Like, we're talking a little less than two percent,
but it was noticeable enough to go, well, that's interesting.
Mhmm.
Now generationally, Jonathan, in terms of now, Abby,
you've done some generation research here.
So so I'm actually gonna defer to you on the generational
split, but but I know Visa's done some stuff here as well.
I am going to consider. Elizabeth's question answered.
Okay.
Alright.
So, Jonathan, I I'm gonna tell you this and with the caveat
that it's been a long time since. I've done generational research.
And but what I can tell you are a couple of things.
One,
the Tim, correct me if I'm wrong.
The largest cohort of donors, at least in,
in terms of generation and probably revenue are baby boomer donors.
Correct?
Yeah.
Baby baby boomers,
and the greatest generation are are currently in terms of, wealth transfer.
They hold the most kind of equity and resources at this
stage of our Yeah.
World Okay. Basically.
So and the reason I I wanted to re to remind myself
of that is because. I want you to think
about the people who are baby boomer donors and the greatest
generation donors.
There is a perception that those donors are unwilling or
unable to navigate the technical
portion of making a recurring gift,
and I wanna challenge that because of two things.
One, my grandma was the greatest generation,
and before she passed, she was on Facebook every day.
She paid all of her bills online.
She was very familiar with that.
Did I have to help her send email attachments literally
every time she needed to send one?
Yes. But she could pay her bills online.
My parents, baby boomers,
very familiar with with conducting business online.
They have Netflix accounts.
They pay their electric bills online. They tithe online.
They do everything online.
So there is this perception that older donors are not
willing or able to make gifts this way,
and that's simply not what. I have seen in the past.
The other thing that was really interesting and, again,
it's been, oh my gosh, four years since I published this,
in a past life.
One thing we saw, when we did some generational
research is that baby boomer donors largely preferred to
interact with, nonprofits via direct mail.
They like to send checks.. That's not surprising.
I mean, it was surprising that it they were also extremely comfortable giving online.
But what we saw was during the pandemic,
when there wasn't the ability for staff to meet in the office
every day and collect those checks and,
take them to the bank.
We saw a lot of donors who traditionally gave in
analog ways Mhmm.
Switch because they were asked to.
So if you have, donors who are on the older
side, maybe they still prefer to give via direct mail.
An option for you is, one, talk about why this is an an
invaluable way to support your work,
and then make it easy for them to do that from their mailbox.
So the most common things I've seen I,
I might even have it, but I do.
A really cool way you can do this is by including a QR code
on the remit slip.
So there you go.. There's a remit slip.
Hey.
There it is.
Direct a direct mail appeal I got,
and there's a QR code where I can go online,
scan for a direct link to donate,
and I can just hop over there.
So and, you know, I. I initially was like,
I don't know if that would be a thing that that baby boomer
donors would love, but my mom uses QR codes all the time.
They they like it. They like it.
And and the adoption you know,
we even started look to because. I was interested to even ask,
like, how many people are receiving phone calls,
and then somebody's entering the gift in the back end.
And because we support these types of things,
not every platform does.
And so we were able to look at check versus this.
And even cross referencing Visa data that they provided us, the
number of checks are just it's just going down year after year
in the consumer side, and that will carry over into,
donor and supporter behavior.
We got a little bit of a speed run here, Abby.
Maybe let's flash.
Where can they get rid of the report if they haven't Oh.
Done it?
Speaking of QR codes. Speaking of QR codes,
and I'll I'll answer some.
Anthony asked, does anyone,
does anyone do a matching gift for the recurring program,
and do do you find if that motivates
while we didn't get into that level of research, one,
it has been discussed with a partner of ours to explore
matching a little bit more.
But especially on. Giving Tuesday,
there is a precedence that we've observed in matching
campaigns that are being leveraged.
So that's more of, you know, it's a it's a good tactic,
I will say.
Vicky Vicky's just dropping some knowledge all over the place.
But, Vicky, I I I once the overperformers were removed,
I kind of out of sight, out of mind,
I had two thousand one hundred and forty nine organizations to focus on,
but it would be interesting to go back and see if there's any,
like, interesting elements about the overperformers.
And this is where research, like,
what Classy does is very illuminating too.
It's like, okay.
You know, that's all they really do is just online stuff.
So what what's happening there?
Let's see. Okay. Thanks, Dale.
Some really good comments in the back there.
Yes.
Actually, we'd so if you go to this page,
we actually have a little go scroll down all the way to the bottom.
There's a little widget that we've built where you can kinda
get a quick snapshot assessment of your recurring giving program,
and you can filter by some of the most popular mission types
that we analyzed.
And religion, faith based is one of those, Jonathan.
Oh, yes. An anonymous attendee.
Well, we do have a service where we can transfer things
over if another platform such as Salsa provides
some some information that should be provideable.
So we can't do anything if they don't give us the stuff,
but there is ways that you can securely transfer over.
It should just be noted that, like,
any good platform out there like us,
we don't see the credit card information.
We don't touch it.
We have no access to this information whatsoever.
So, there's a complicated PCI bunch of acronyms thing that we can
throw on it, but it is possible.
The technology is there.
But definitely talk to your client account manager.
Okay.
Let's flash that little thing one more time to kind of
because I wanna give some hats away in all honesty too, Abby.
What am I flashing?
The last the last slide.
This is the oh. Oh, you put in there twice. We do. Video.
So if you folks tag us on your favorite social media platforms
such as Instagram, LinkedIn,
Facebook, things of that nature, I guess x.
But, like, on on LinkedIn, for instance, you can be like Megan
Myers in here, who is the development,
director of IPH, actually, director of donor experience is
her proper title.
And so she spotlighted in the report her organization.
Somebody actually asked about that.
We love talking about clients, and so,
they're actually we're gonna be doing more client spotlights
for successes because you
you all wanna know what people actually do.
It's nice that Abby and. I could talk about this,
but it's people like Megan that are actually making this work.
Yeah. Absolutely.
Yeah.
We're not on x anymore, so we're not gonna pay attention.
I mean, you can you can you can what do you tweet?
Yeah.
You can add us,
but I'm not we're not gonna we're not gonna do anything there.
We probably won't see it.
But, but yeah. So so, folks, any final questions?
Is there anything else?. Share in the chat.
Share in the q and a. Maybe we got time for one more.
Yeah.
While while we're we're doing that, I just want to reiterate
to you that if you haven't started this process yet, it is okay.
Yeah. Now is a perfect time to do it.
I know this can be intimidating.
I know you're gonna have to make cases to your board
members and your EDs and all your other leadership.
And, I mean, please do grab a copy of this report and use it
to inform what you do.
I Anthony's?
Yeah. Yeah.
So, Anthony, I will say that while we didn't get into recurring giving,
what we do find in the fundraising effectiveness
project is that the window for that first donor gift and the
second donor gift typically is happening in thirteen months.
Otherwise, you're probably gonna lose them. Right?
So it's about a thirteen month window that we found across the
fundraising effectiveness project to kind of secure that
long term retention.
I think within that window is a very good thing, but I will
say that the quicker you obtain the second gift,
and especially if you can turn that into a recurring gift,
so get that first gift,
then ask somebody and invite them in like Vicky talked about.
Invite them in to give through you. Right?
Their retention is gonna skyrocket.
Those folks are gonna stick around for a very, very long time.
Absolutely. Alright.
We have so much more on recurring giving coming though, though, folks.
Like, how do I do it?. What about branding?
What about a road map? Like, so much.
This is just the beginning.. You got the insider's look, though.
Abby, you wrote the report, so you get the final word.
I just wanna tell you this.
Your work is extremely important,
and the community that you have built and are building your
community is looking for ways to support you.
This is a really beautiful way for them to do that.
If you are intimidated, that's okay.
If you need data, we have it for you.
But I wanna tell you that what you're doing is extremely
important, and we're cheering for you.
I don't wanna keep you any longer.
I know it's past two, but and I know that you're busy.
So thank you for spending time with us today.
Thank you for exploring this topic.
Please let us know if we can do anything to help you,
and keep an eye on your inbox because you're gonna get an
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So thanks, everybody.
Thank you.