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Neon One Webinars: Hey everybody, it is so good to see you. I am so excited about today's session. I just got a little sneak peek at what we're going to be doing, but, before we get started, I want to go over a couple really, really fast housekeeping items. I promise I will not keep you from the working session. This is a working session, so, we're going to be talking to you, I hope you talk to us in the chat, I hope you're asking questions, I hope you're talking to each other.

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Neon One Webinars: So do please talk in the chat.

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Neon One Webinars: That said, if you have a question that you really want to make sure we answer, please do try to drop that in the Q&A box. The chat can get going pretty quickly. Sometimes you guys are a talkative bunch, which I love, it's very fun. But putting any questions in the Q&A box will help us make sure

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Neon One Webinars: That we actually are able to answer that. And then to answer a very popular question that we get every time we have a webinar, is this being recorded? The answer, of course, is yes, I would never have a session and not record it for you. You are going to get an email from me tomorrow morning.

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Neon One Webinars: With a link to the recording, we'll have the transcript in there, and we'll have a link to the resource that we are going to be using today as we plan your end of year. That is all you have to hear me talk about. I am delighted to turn things over to Kelly. Kelly has a fantastic session planned for you. I'm so excited, to see what you guys do in the next hour.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yay! Awesome! Thanks, Abby! Welcome, everybody. I see some familiar names in… on the attendee list. Some of my clients are here, yay, hi. Some names that I see on my regular free webinars. So I'm so excited to welcome everybody.

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Kelly McLaughlin: When… I'll just go ahead and just give you a little background. Why am I talking to you? Why should you listen to me? My name is Kelly McLaughlin. I run From Scratch Fundraising, which is a consulting…

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Kelly McLaughlin: A practice that works with small nonprofits that are starting their fundraising programs from scratch.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And I also, in particular, specialize in hard-to-message missions, so getting individual giving systems and messaging right for organizations who have really complicated, non-direct service missions. So that is really my jam.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And I have been in individual giving for 17 years. I was the director of individual giving for a much larger nonprofit fairly early on in my career. I did a small stint as a major gifts officer, got to see how major gifts works.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And then became a solo development director for a succession of a couple small nonprofits before I started from scratch fundraising, because I realized I had built systems that made things easier for other development directors, solo executive directors, and that is what I really wanted to focus on when founding From Scratch Fundraising, was helping small organizations grow.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Quickly, stress-free, and making sure that small organizations, development directors and executive directors just stay far, far away from burnout, because we can build systems that help us stay stable and keep our fundraising sustainable.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, that's my quick spiel. As Abby said, please, drop me a note. Who are you in the chat?

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Kelly McLaughlin: And while you're doing that, I'm going to share…

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Kelly McLaughlin: share my screen. The first thing I'm gonna ask you to do is to go follow this link that I just posted in the chat.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And it will send you my year-end fundraising workbook, and like I said, there are no slides. There are absolutely no slides in this whole presentation. We… I have designed a workbook for you.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I am going to… if you put your name in here, it will share the workbook information with you, and then you should just check your email, you should get a link to a template.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yes, I will absolutely repaste the link. Here is the link, again.

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Kelly McLaughlin: That will email you with the template for my Year-End campaign workbook, and we will be working in that for the rest of the session. So, what I would encourage you to do is, if you have two screens, keep the webinar in one screen, and work on the other screen with the, with your own workbook.

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Kelly McLaughlin: When I come over here, I want to show you just once you get the email and get access to the template, don't ask for edit, access. That will not help you out, because it means you will be editing this one that I'm working in, and everyone will see your work.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So I want you to go to File, and you can either make a copy.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Or, the other thing you can do is, if you don't have access to Google Sheets, you can download it in whatever format is going to work in the system you want to use. I make no guarantees that all of the formulas and formatting are going to stay the same, but you have that option.

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Kelly McLaughlin: But the easiest thing to do is go over to make a copy, and make your own copy, and then work in that copy that you've saved to your own systems.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Alright!

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, I see a few people have access. Amazing. I love this. Just give me a thumbs up in the chat, or say, I have access, whatever, when you've got the template all pulled up and you're ready. I will paste the link again.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Just a moment, there we go.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Pasting the link… People are popping in.

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Kelly McLaughlin: We just decided it's not showing in your chat. Okay, well, if you look at my URL here, it's from scratch.myflowdesk.com slash Year-End.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Alright.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Awesome, awesome. When people have access, give me a thumbs up. I don't want to start moving until you have access to it, because I want you actively working in the workbook as… as we're going.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Adam's here! Hi, Adam. Adam is one of my clients in Sustain and Thrive.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Nellie… Nellie's got it! Alright, all of my people are on top of it.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I bring my own people with me, yeah.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I love it.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Awesome.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Alright, not seeing the link. Alright.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Okay, Abby's on top of it.

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Kelly McLaughlin: There's the link.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Or you can just…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Copy it from what you see. Jess says, victory! I assume that means you have it.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Waiting for the email, it should come quickly.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Excellent. People are getting it. Wonderful.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Love it, love it.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Alright, so once you have access to the template, again, make sure you are coming to File, make a copy.

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Kelly McLaughlin: make your own copy in your own Google Drive, or download it, in whatever format will make sense for you, so that you can work in it yourself.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Alright.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, without further ado, I'm gonna go ahead and step you through everything.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And again, this is a work session, so I will pause and let you find things, and think through things, and various

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Kelly McLaughlin: things like that. I'm using the word things a lot. I need a thesaurus. Anyway, the first…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Step we're gonna go over is how to set goals.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Often what you see is nonprofits set goals based on some sort of deficit. We have to close this deficit this year, or we have to fundraise around this thing.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And I think that is where…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Often we go wrong, and that's how we can set ourselves up for failure, is we're not actually rooting it into past performance. And so it's really, really important that we think about past performance first.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Alright, let's see… you're supposed to make a copy, yes, and I will go ahead… And…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Paste that again… Alright, so that's… the first step is we're going to want to set our goals.

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Kelly McLaughlin: The second step we're going to talk through is how do we think about theme? How do we think about what we're going to highlight in our year-end campaign?

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Kelly McLaughlin: And then the third step we're going to talk through is segments. How do we think about our audience? We tend to talk to everybody on our email list, the same way, everybody in our… on our list, the same way.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And I want to complicate that a little bit, so that we can talk to specific people specific ways. It doesn't necessarily make the campaign that much more complicated, it does make it more successful, though.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And then the last thing we're going to talk through is calendar, how to calendarize it, plan everything out, and then

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Kelly McLaughlin: My calendar tab will actually hand you something that can be a working management tool for your year-end campaign. So, when I say that this is totally actionable, it absolutely is. I built this based on how I used to manage campaigns.

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Kelly McLaughlin: When I was a frontline fundraiser.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And so, I hope this is really, really helpful. And again, I will have the chat up. I will try to check in on the chat. This is a workshop, it's not a webinar, so please don't think, sit back.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And, like, eyes glaze over. We're gonna be working through this, and if there are any, like, big questions that I don't get to in the chat, make sure to drop them in the Q&A. Abby will be watching the Q&A, so that if I miss anything really important, you can stop me there.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Awesome. Alright, so I've gotten quite a few people saying they have it, so I'm gonna go ahead and dive in.

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Kelly McLaughlin: what I have set up for goals is a system where if you put your data into the green.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Into the green cells.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Then, leave the red cells alone, and they will auto-calculate.

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Kelly McLaughlin: What you need to,

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Kelly McLaughlin: What you need to be thinking about, and data points you need to be thinking about.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, if you can, pull up your year-end campaign data for the past few years, even if you can't go back all of these years.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Try to go back as far as you can.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And what I want you to put into this for us to look at is, what is your total income from the campaign? These are real stats from one of my clients.

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Kelly McLaughlin: This is total income from the year-end campaign, the number of donors, because we want to look at both, right? We want to look at how much income did we make, but how many donors gave to the campaign.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And then, if it's important to you, if monthly giving is something that you're trying to work on.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I would also track monthly giving sign-ups, because sometimes the income will be a little bit lower, but if you get a lot of monthly giving sign-ups, you know you've got a lot of income coming. So, that is what I want you to pull.

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Kelly McLaughlin: The monthly giving you might not be able to do within the context of this webinar, but I want to give you a few minutes to hop into your CRM and…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Take a look at that data.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Does anybody think that's, like, gonna be totally impossible?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Otherwise, I'll just pause. I'll give you till 1.15 to kind of go in and pull big picture data from your reports.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Hopefully that's not too hard. If it is very hard, that means we've got some work to do on the database.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Could you walk through how to pull this from a Neon report? I don't have, a Neon system I can pull up, because they're all my clients. Abby, is that something you could do real quick?

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Neon One Webinars: Because the system is flexible enough that everyone can have it set up differently, I am reluctant to give you complete step-by-step directions, but…

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Neon One Webinars: I… let me log into my own instance and see…

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Neon One Webinars: what I can pull together for everyone quickly. Of course, I have my.

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Neon One Webinars: Two-factor authentication set up, so…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yes, yes. Like, if I go into a system.

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Neon One Webinars: Zoom is good.

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Kelly McLaughlin: It's gonna be one of my clients' systems, and you'll see my client's data, and I'm… that's not ethical, so…

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Neon One Webinars: No, I can'.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I had to do that.

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Neon One Webinars: Yeah, Galen dropped a note in the chat, if you created campaigns for the past years, you can run a campaign report for.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yes.

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Neon One Webinars: here, and get it from Neon.

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Neon One Webinars: That…

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Kelly McLaughlin: is the easiest thing.

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Neon One Webinars: I saw that you joined a little bit late. I just dropped a link to where you can download the Year-End Planner. Kelly, your links aren't showing up. If you change your chat to everyone instead of.

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Kelly McLaughlin: That is…

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Neon One Webinars: That is true.

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Kelly McLaughlin: That's why nothing I'm doing, nobody's reading. All right, that's.

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Neon One Webinars: I was so puzzled when it was happening, but…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Good knowledge.

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Neon One Webinars: Alright. Oh my goodness.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Someday I'll learn how to use Zoom. I only use it 2 or 3 times a day.

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Neon One Webinars: Diana dropped a good note in the chat. I am defining Year-End by filtering transactions from December 15th through December 31st. What dates are others doing? Anna noted

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Neon One Webinars: that they use the 1st of November until mid-January. That's really helpful if you.

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Kelly McLaughlin: That's a good one.

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Neon One Webinars: check transactions that are processed later. I am looking around to see the fastest way…

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Neon One Webinars: To get some of these.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah, I think what… what Galen said about pulling a campaign report would probably be the best option.

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Neon One Webinars: Yes, and I am looking at my own instance, and because this is an instance that I use only for marketing, I do not have any campaigns put together.

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Neon One Webinars: Or otherwise, I would.

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Kelly McLaughlin: There you go. Alright.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah, so I would say for dates, everybody pull whatever date your campaign begins and ends on. Ideally, you're setting up campaigns, especially if you're using Neon, set up a year-end campaign.

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Kelly McLaughlin: That's obviously the easiest way to pull it. Yes, and Neon also has that campaign overview page that will show you the amount and number of donors. That is actually the… what I used to pull this client's numbers into this, was… I just went through… they use Neon, and I was just going through

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Kelly McLaughlin: each of their campaigns clicked on Year-End 2025, it… that overview pulled up the…

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Kelly McLaughlin: income and the number of donors. The monthly giving sign-up was something we were tracking separately,

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Kelly McLaughlin: But yeah.

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Neon One Webinars: Oh, Jenna, good question. What if my area has never had a campaign because I'm pioneering? We have just had one large fund since I got hired in July 2025, and this actually is a really great question. Sure. I'd love your.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yep.

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Neon One Webinars: What do you.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah.

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Neon One Webinars: If you're a new person that doesn't have a lot of data.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah, absolutely. So, something I do with clients who don't have a lot of data… I mean, it's guesswork, right? And until you have a few years of track record, it's gonna remain guesswork.

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Kelly McLaughlin: But what I like to do is, if you did… if you've had a couple fundraisers, even if it's not a year-end campaign, like, a couple fundraising efforts.

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Kelly McLaughlin: You could use that data.

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Kelly McLaughlin: If you've only done one large fundraising thing.

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Kelly McLaughlin: then what I would suggest is really just kind of looking at who's in your database, who's a current donor, how many of those people do we think we can activate. Don't think you're going to be able to do that in the couple of minutes that I'm giving everybody to update this, but…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Usually what I'm doing there is kind of looking at what did we raise last time? How… how warm are those relationships feeling? Can I…

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Kelly McLaughlin: can I count on a similar outcome? Am I doing something similar or wildly different from the last thing? But always root it in what you've done before, because I've seen…

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Kelly McLaughlin: No joke, I had a client come to me, and they said, we've… you know, last year we raised $50,000, and this year we want to raise $150,000. I said, well, what did you do the year before? And they were like, it was, like, 25, or $75,000. Like, that's…

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Kelly McLaughlin: you went negative, and now you want to, like, triple the size? Like, that… that's not… that doesn't seem super doable. I was eating my words later, because the campaign I put together for them actually raised $173,000, so…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Look at me say something's impossible, and then do it. But, but the… we were really tempering expectations, because I didn't want them to think that… that that was, you know, from $50,000 to $150,000 with this thing, donors was gonna be…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Something you could really rely on matching, if that makes sense.

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Kelly McLaughlin: All right, let's see, we are now using campaigns, but previous staff did not use them, so trying to figure out how to get a number. Yeah, and it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be perfect, just,

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Kelly McLaughlin: Just to, get a rough idea, yeah?

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, Anna says, Genna, we also started recently, in a proper way, we use any income generated in the focus period as year-end, yeah.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So… Yes, yes.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Alright, so I'm hoping some of you are at least finding these numbers somewhere, and can use this, but as you can see.

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Kelly McLaughlin: As you fill it out, the income growth, donor growth, and monthly growth, it's gonna give you… obviously, it doesn't calculate it for that first year, because there's no prior year data.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So we don't have that data to go off of. But as you update these numbers, right, if I make this 100,000, or, yeah, 1,000, it radically changes the numbers, right? So, I can't remember what it was before.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So anyway…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Again, these are numbers that then… this is what's going to auto-calculate. As you see, when I put this down to 1,000, it said we can raise a million dollars, because we had 400,000% growth, right?

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Kelly McLaughlin: That's… We're gonna take all of this with a grain of salt, but it at least has…

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Kelly McLaughlin: the math behind it. So what I want you to look at, what I am looking at as I'm developing this client's campaign as an example, right, is I'm looking at… we had some pretty massive constriction, and then growth, and then a little constriction, and then massive growth.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, it's really, really hard to see, like, there's not a through line here, right? So when we average out growth, it's about 25%, and honestly, that feels like a decent place to land for me.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And then donor growth, it contracted, it contracted, it grew a lot, it contracted. So we're also… what I'm thinking from this is we don't want a whole ton of…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Donors, what we're focusing on is really growing the income without having to worry about donor growth.

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Kelly McLaughlin: What does that say to me? That says to me that we've got to up the average growth, or the average donation of our donors, because we can't expect to bring in a lot of new donors, so what we're going to try and do is upgrade the current donors that we have. That's going to be the winning strategy.

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Kelly McLaughlin: But also, as you're seeing, they are getting steady monthly giving growth, so this is something we can lean into, certainly. So where that lands us in our suggested goals is $129,000.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Again, you looking at raw data, looking at a raw percentage, and then seeing this, you may or may not think that's a good idea. What I know, because I know this client that I pulled the data from, that feels like a really extremely reasonable goal right now for them.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I think the number of donors goal, we're just trying to get one more than last year, we're just trying to sustain, maintain. I… I like that idea, too. And then monthly giving sign-ups.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I like that idea as well. I really think we want to lean into monthly giving.

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Kelly McLaughlin: How do I track monthly giving sign-ups? I honestly feel like, generally, I'm manually tracking that still, even with the best CRM systems, is… those are just gonna count as one donor when you're pulling reports, but then if you can segment out, like, how many of those were first-time monthly gifts.

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Kelly McLaughlin: That's what I'm looking at. So, unfortunately, manual, I wish there were better answers for that. Yeah.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Awesome. Alright, so for those of you who are able to put your own data in here, are we seeing numbers that feel maybe reasonable?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Let's see, Rachel says, last year, it was before I started with the organization, they didn't do a Giving Tuesday campaign, is guessing…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah, guessing a goal…

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Kelly McLaughlin: that… I mean, that's… that's all you've got if you don't have a track record, right? But I think it's… it's about educated guesses, right? It's… if last year they did run a year-end campaign.

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Kelly McLaughlin: What was that? How much do we think a Giving Tuesday will pull from the Year-End campaign? I always say Giving Tuesday should be integrated into your full year-end campaign, so we'll talk about that later. But I think that's,

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Kelly McLaughlin: That's what we're trying to do, is set goals, right?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Let's see, somebody said, I am confused… whoa, the chat's moving too fast! Why the suggested goal is so large despite my lack of donations.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Okay, so this is where, Jenna, if… if you… as I… as I was showing folks earlier, if I change this to 1,000,

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Kelly McLaughlin: then it shows this massive year of anomalous growth, and then when we average the growth out, it's saying they should be raising a million dollars. If you don't have a multi-year track record that you can put data in, it's… it's…

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Kelly McLaughlin: You're gonna get a misfire like that.

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Kelly McLaughlin: But I'm hoping that by looking at how I'm calculating it, you can kind of get an idea of how to do it if you have fewer years.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Carrie says, last year was not a great year for our year end, so the suggested goal is even lower. How is it calculating that suggested goal?

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, what I was saying earlier is it's looking at income growth rates for each year, and then averaging it, and then average… adding that average growth to your year-end campaign. So, if your… if your campaign has been contracting.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And your average growth is negative, it's gonna tell you to shoot for lower than last year. That, again, this is a spreadsheet that I made very generically. If that doesn't feel correct for your organization, then look at the data. The main thing I want you to do is look at the data.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right? And see, okay, maybe last year was really bad, but there were extenuating circumstances, so let's look at the last couple years, right?

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Kelly McLaughlin: there's… there's a part of this that, if I didn't know this organization, know how they were growing, how much work they've done on stewarding donors this year, that seeing this 50, slightly below 50, and then 100,

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Kelly McLaughlin: if I was just coming into this organization sight unseen, I would probably tell them not to try for this. I would tell them to try a little bit lower, somewhere between these two years.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Does that… I hope that answers that question.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So for Rosemary, if you're planning

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Kelly McLaughlin: If you're planning a year-end and you're running something else throughout the year, like, your annual fund isn't necessarily what we're using for this. We want to be tracking the things that came in due to your Year-End campaign.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Damn.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, okay, Rachel's good.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Rebecca says, goals are lower than expected. We've seen a decline a year in giving in recent with an increase.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Okay, that makes sense, Rebecca. If you're running another campaign, your September campaign is probably more cannibalizing your year-end giving than bringing in separate things. So, yes, if your year-end has been contracting.

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Kelly McLaughlin: This is not to say that if you plan a different type of campaign, that you can't change the outcome, but this is… if nothing changes, if you keep going the way you've been going, this is what you can expect.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Your spreadsheet is not calculating. Rosemary, did you pull it out of Google Sheets and put it into, like, an Excel? Because sometimes that'll deformat it.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Alright.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Upgrade, yes. Yes, yes, yes. More things are coming.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Alright, so I'm gonna move on. If you have questions, I will share my email at the end, but I want to move on so we can get through everything. So…

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Kelly McLaughlin: That is just a snapshot. Again, treat it with a grain of salt. I set up some algorithms, and like all algorithms, it can be flawed, because you have more context than this spreadsheet does, right?

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, this is just a way to make sure you're looking at the data. My main… the main, main thing I want you to take away from this is look at the data. Do not say, oh, we raised…

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Kelly McLaughlin: $50,000 that year, $50,000 that year, $100,000 that year, let's try to raise $200,000. The growth rate and the trajectory does not support making a decision like that, right? So, often what I see is, well, we need $20,000, the data would not support $20,000, but we're gonna try and raise $20,000 anyway.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And then we go forward, and then we're super bummed when we don't raise $20,000, right?

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Kelly McLaughlin: And that is what I want you to really be taking away from this, is don't…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Don't go nuts with the goal, make it reasonable, make it grounded in data, some sort of ground-truthing.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Alright.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, the next thing, step two, if you go to the next tab.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I want you to think about how to figure out your theme.

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Kelly McLaughlin: The main thing I talk about when I work on messaging, because I do specialize in non-direct service, so most of my clients are advocacy.

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Kelly McLaughlin: arts-based. They do something that is not quantifiable, right? I don't service a lot of food banks, or a lot of medical clinics, or things like that, because

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Kelly McLaughlin: that… you've got clear data for that, but advocacy organizations, performing arts organizations, it's a lot harder. Youth development organizations, it's a lot harder to quantify. You know, the kid went to 5 mentorship sessions, but what did that get us? What's that actual ROI, right?

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, when we're figuring out our theme.

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Kelly McLaughlin: what I say is organizations are really, really great at talking about what they do, but what you're doing is sometimes confusing, complicated.

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Kelly McLaughlin: really hard to message, something the donor doesn't understand, right? And that's why sometimes fundraising around what we do is very, very hard. So the first thing as you're thinking about your theme that I want you to think about is why does your organization exist?

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Kelly McLaughlin: And I want you to think about that in really… Big picture terms.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, not just, well, we… why do we exist? To provide youth mentorships.

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Kelly McLaughlin: it's so much bigger than that, right? What do mentorships do? Why… why youth mentorships? Why not…

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Kelly McLaughlin: a soccer team? Why not a dance team? Why not, you know, math tutoring, right? We want to think about why our organization exists.

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Kelly McLaughlin: In that big picture, right? So, lead… lead from what you do all day, every day, to, like, why is that helpful, and why, ultimately, in the big picture, does that make a difference?

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Kelly McLaughlin: So think that through.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Then, think through, like, what is our biggest need right now? Are we trying to launch a new program? Is there a budget deficit? Is,

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Kelly McLaughlin: you know, what we really need is another staff position, actually, right? I just talked to another fundraising consultant yesterday about how do we message needing more staff and fundraising around that, and there are definitely ways to do that, right?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Jenna, I will say, your organization's mission statements might be your why. Often, mission statements are…

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Kelly McLaughlin: word salad that are meaningless when you take it out of context, right? Like, as a consultant, I see so many people that apply to work with me, and their mission statement is, like, we empower people.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I don't know what that means, right? How? Why? To what end? Right? I've read so many We Empower People mission statements, it makes me wanna…

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Kelly McLaughlin: put my head through a wall. So a lot of the time, they're really generic. If you have really, really nailed it on the mission statement, awesome, you can use it. But I wouldn't just say it's your mission statement, because

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Kelly McLaughlin: mission statements, mileage may vary based on the quality of the mission statement. So, not knowing yours, Jenna, I can't, I can't say yay or nay.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right, so the next thing is, we're saying, what is our biggest need right now?

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Kelly McLaughlin: What gap are we closing, or what are we trying to accomplish?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right? And then the last thing is, what are our biggest accomplishments this year? Like, what are the things we really want to highlight? What are we really proud of? And what I often say is that doesn't have to be direct impact all the time. If you've done some really massive organizational sustainability work.

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Kelly McLaughlin: shout that from the rooftops! You know, I'm really sick of people saying donors won't fund overhead. They do, if you talk about it the right way.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right? I have seen it.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I just literally just had a client ask a major donor for a gift to fund her work with me, and the donor was like, yeah, absolutely, that sounds great, right?

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Kelly McLaughlin: I am overhead, right? Fundraising is overhead, but we pitched it, the donor loved it, was really excited, because we were able to connect it to

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Kelly McLaughlin: Why will working with this fundraising consultant help us stabilize our fundraising revenue, help us become a more sustainable organization, and therefore serve more people, right?

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Kelly McLaughlin: So… That is…

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Kelly McLaughlin: what I would say. So, think these through. I'm gonna give you a minute or two to just…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Think about that.

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Kelly McLaughlin: All right.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So as you're thinking that through, What's bubbling up for you?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Or everyone's hard at work, and I love that, too.

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Neon One Webinars: Eli, can I ask a question while people are working?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Absolutely!

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Neon One Webinars: We got a really good one from Angie in the Q&A, and they asked, how would you differentiate between what is our biggest need and what gap are we closing?

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Kelly McLaughlin: So… Yeah, so,

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Kelly McLaughlin: Sometimes we're thinking about gap as in, like, we have a budget deficit, and, like, literally we have a gap to close, and what… what are we gonna have to cut in budget cuts to, like, get rid of that? But the rea… it's… I'm axe… I'm axing… I'm asking the same question in two different ways.

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Kelly McLaughlin: What is your biggest need? Sometimes organizations, like, it… there isn't a gap, right? Or there is,

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Kelly McLaughlin: actually, our biggest need right now is this… is to launch this program. This is what's going to help us be more sustainable, or this is, you know, we've really decided that this is the next thing that we really need to offer in order to

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Kelly McLaughlin: Progress our mission, serve our people better, all of that kind of stuff.

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Kelly McLaughlin: But what gap are we closing? Sometimes that's a budget deficits. Sometimes that is…

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Kelly McLaughlin: You know, I was talking to somebody earlier today about

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Kelly McLaughlin: they are a foster care organization that kind of bridges the gap when kids are graduating from foster care, right? That is a gap that they're closing. There is nobody else in our community

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Kelly McLaughlin: working with these kids. They just get flung out of the foster care system, and they're on their own. And we are making sure that somebody is on the other side waiting for them, right? That… that is a gap, or what we're trying to accomplish, which is different from the biggest need. Does that answer that question?

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Neon One Webinars: Yeah, and it kind of touches on some of the other questions that we're getting. So we're getting questions about, like.

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Neon One Webinars: Do we talk about organizational sustainability, or how do we address in a positive way that we want to close a budget deficit? How do we say that, like, we need to pay our people? And I think what you're kind of getting at is that you take it a step further. What happens if you don't meet that?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Exactly.

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Neon One Webinars: impact are you making? So, how would you…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Exactly. So, the way I often suggest organizations and the way I have been successful fundraising for staff capacity

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Kelly McLaughlin: is…

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Kelly McLaughlin: not to hide the staffing, right? Like, I'm not trying to hide it in, you know, in other things. What I'm trying to show is what added benefit will we get from adding this staff person, right? So, I think often donors have this weird, like, well, I don't want to fund overhead or staff salary.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Because I just want to make sure people are getting food from the food kit.

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Kelly McLaughlin: from the food bank, right? Well, who's opening the doors? Who's handling the food? Who's, you know, doing the outreach? Who's making sure that the community knows we need these resources, right? So, one of the things… I was… I was working with another fundraising consultant on another workshop earlier this week, and one of the ways she suggested talking about it was, to think about saying.

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Kelly McLaughlin: you know, we need to raise X amount, which is the salary plus the program cost.

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Kelly McLaughlin: To ensure that our food gets handed out in a timely fashion to the people who need it most.

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Kelly McLaughlin: By a caring, concerned member of our community.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right? And highlighting… really highlighting what your staff does. And I… I really think… if… if you really want a deep dive on this.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Google the overhead myth. There's some great thought pieces coming out of, like, Candid and Charity Navigator about the overhead myth and how we need to get rid of it. So that…

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Kelly McLaughlin: That's what I'm thinking about, is how do we message it to make sure, like, you know, our after-school program, you know, we hire the best

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Kelly McLaughlin: You know, mentors and tutors, and obviously there is a cost to that, but if we want to give these kids a quality education, we have to pay for the best people.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right? That is how one of my clients, they're growing massively in the past few years, and that is how they've messaged their tutoring services that they provide, is just, like, our kids… these kids deserve the best, and so we're hiring the best, and there's a cost to hiring the best.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And so, that is what we're funding, and their donors have responded beautifully to that. And I think it's just, we keep hearing donors don't want to fund overhead, they don't want to fund overhead, but I have found when you just talk about it in terms of that line from the overhead expense to the outcomes.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Donors… donors get it.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So I think that, yeah, that's…

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Kelly McLaughlin: what I would like people to hear is, like, it's not that they won't fund overhead, it's just when you say, we want to hire ex-staff member, and don't connect it to the outcomes that the donor can see, and how it's going to benefit the community, that's what they have a hard time with, and don't want to fund.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Does that make sense?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yes, good summary. They need to understand how overhead creates outcomes, that's it.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah.

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Kelly McLaughlin: All right.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Angie says, we also like to highlight the digital security tech costs to make our systems secure. Yeah, that's true, too. If you're doing medical stuff for things that require HIPAA compliance, like, that's expensive.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Absolutely.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So it's… it's really, though, it's about… don't just talk about it like overhead. And I think the other thing is, when we go to fundraise around overhead, we get embarrassed, and then the donors read us, and they're like, you're embarrassed to ask about this, so I must… there must be a reason that I shouldn't fund it, right? And so we're creating kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will. If you just go out there and really…

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Kelly McLaughlin: I mean, I've fundraised millions of dollars that were 100%

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Kelly McLaughlin: staff salaries, right? But because I… it was… well, we don't have a lot of expenses beyond our staff, and so if we don't have a professional staff, here's all of the things that don't happen. So, we need more staff so that more of this great stuff happens, right?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yes.

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Kelly McLaughlin: All right, so I hope everybody's had a minute to think about the theme, and I want to walk through this. I want you to make as much progress as you can in this hour that I'm holding and protecting for you, but since we do only have an hour, I'm going to keep going, but I hope this was helpful.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Alright, so…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Jess says, maybe something here about interrupting the assumption that donors don't want to support people doing the work. Yeah.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I think, absolutely. Yes. I think when you're like, hey, we want to pay salaries, donors are like.

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Kelly McLaughlin: not interested. When you say, hey, we need to pay because our kids deserve amazing tutors, and we're hiring the best of the best, and this is what it costs to hire the best of the best every year.

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Kelly McLaughlin: As they said, my client who uses that messaging.

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Kelly McLaughlin: They've grown and grown and grown and grown and grown. Like, they've grown so fast, they're like, we don't know what to do with all of this money, which is amazing.

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Kelly McLaughlin: what a great problem to have! And they're raising it around paying tutors, right? Which is absolutely the overhead we're all scared to fundraise around. So, it can be done.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yes, my staff deserves to live inside the house, yeah.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I said that once, I did, I was in a major gifts meeting, and the donor was like, well, I don't understand why nonprofit professionals even feel like they should get paid, and I…

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Kelly McLaughlin: That is the only donor meeting I have ever just stood up and walked out of. Like, I… Okay.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right? Just like, yeah, no, straight to my face, I don't understand why you people need to get paid.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And I said, well, because I too have a mortgage, and I'm a professional. And then left.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Oh, that was fun.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And the best part was my ED, best ED in the whole wide world. When I got back and told her about it, she was like, good, take him off of all of our lists, he's not our donor. I was like, yes.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Alright, so that's the other thing. If you feel like you have to hide what you do because your donors won't like you if they don't understand what you do, or they don't think your people deserve a salary, they're not your donor. There are other people out there. Believe in that. I have seen it.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah? I stormed out of a donor meeting, and I found hundreds of thousands, millions of other dollars, so it's fine. We didn't need his $2,000.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Alright, so the next… Step.

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Kelly McLaughlin: is to think about your donor segments, and this is what I see people missing out on the most.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Is we don't think about the different people on our list, and we message to everyone on our list the same way, whether they're a current donor, former donor.

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Kelly McLaughlin: active donor, never donated before, major donor, all of that. Sometimes we segment out our major donors. That's the segment most likely to be segmented out.

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Kelly McLaughlin: But… That is a really huge missed opportunity, because we need to talk to donors in different ways.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And so I want to walk you through this.

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Kelly McLaughlin: We… just very easy ways to segment things, which, you know, if you're in Neon or any CRM worth its salt, you should be able to build these lists pretty easily. And if you can't, that's a signal that you need a different CRM.

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Kelly McLaughlin: But one of the first segments I always think about first is, like, who are the people who, like.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Gave last year?

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Kelly McLaughlin: And we're renewing.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right? That is a specific segment. We want to make sure 100% of these people come back in.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, what that often means is we need to think about, like, what did we do last year that activated them?

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Kelly McLaughlin: But also, these are the low-hanging fruit. These are the people who gave very recently.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And so, what are ways that we can bring them back in? What I tend to do is make sure that in October and early November, hint, hint.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I start doing thank you calls. I bring my board in, or get some volunteers involved, and I call and I thank them. Hey, you made a gift last year, here's what we've accomplished this year, thanks so much, really appreciate you.

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Kelly McLaughlin: do it as a phone call. If they answer, great. If not, leave a short, sweet voicemail. It leaves the same impact, whether you talk to them or not.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And before anybody puts it in the chat, nobody gets annoyed by thank you calls, alright? I've been doing it for decades, my clients do it all the time, people don't get annoyed by thank you calls, they love them.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I'll save you the typing.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, I do that kind of call to as many people as I can from last year's year-end campaign as possible.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right? That already warms them up. That gets them already thinking about donating to your organization. Gee, wasn't that nice of them? And it's separated out enough from Giving Tuesday and Year-End things that they're not feeling like ATMs yet.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right? So I want them to feel like, hey, your gift last year made a difference. We need to validate the decision they made before, before we ask them to make that decision again. So if you have not done good donor stewardship, if you have not given them good report backs and those types of things.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Make sure you do that before you launch your campaign, right?

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Kelly McLaughlin: And then, people who gave last year, these are also your best prospects for monthly giving.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, what I might do is anybody who gave to my year-end campaign last year, I'm going to do an email campaign, and I'm going to do the same series of emails, but instead of sending them the generic ask, I'm going to segment them into a monthly gift ask.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And this is where I love doing this kind of stuff, is you can add custom fields, right, and say, I want this custom field to be, like, half of their last gift.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right?

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Kelly McLaughlin: So that, so that we can,

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Kelly McLaughlin: ask relative to what their means are. And I think a lot of data, and Abby, you've probably looked at more data than I have recently on this, but the last data point I saw was most people can give monthly about half what they gave as a one-time gift.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And so, that's a great…

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Kelly McLaughlin: option. That's a great option, is to then customize that ask.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Anyone else have an issue with less engaged board? How do you do the thank yous? Anna, I do a lot of work around board fundraising. If they won't make thank you calls, they are not holding up their… their fiduciary responsibility to your organization, and you can tell them that.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Being engaged in the revenue generation activities of your organization is a fundamental fiduciary responsibility of the board.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And if they are neglecting their fiduciary and legal obligations to your organization, they should not serve on your board.

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Kelly McLaughlin: That is, my very blunt way of addressing that.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Carrie, tell me what your position is, right? If you're the executive director, you… you absolutely can say that. But I have gotten… I have gotten a lot of executive directors who are like, I'm never… I can never say that, and then, okay.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I, like, that's a trickle-up thing. You've got to get your leadership on board with that, and then get the board on board with that. So that's,

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Kelly McLaughlin: Usually, the best way to do that is to cite an expert. Don't,

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Kelly McLaughlin: Jeune Block is one. I love her book called The Invisible Yellow Line. She's got some great info in there, that's really easy to digest for leadership.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Alright? So, think about your segments. The segments I like to do is, they gave last year to our year-end campaign, and we're focused on renewing them, and I like to drive that to a monthly gift.

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Kelly McLaughlin: People who have never given, that's a different segment.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right? That is a different segment of the audience. Do not talk to people who have never given to your organization like they are donors. What I tend to see is, like, we're so grateful for your support, blah blah blah, will you make gifts? Why are you sending that to somebody who's never given?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right? They've never given, right? This is an invitation. You know, you've, you know, you've been… maybe you came to a workshop, maybe you did this with us, you've been on our email list, we're so excited to have you here, but we want you to invite you,

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Kelly McLaughlin: We want you to…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Take that next step with us. Show us you're committed to our mission, and that you care about XYZ issue.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right? That's the never given. Why is a monthly gift better, Rosemary?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Monthly gifts are ongoing, so if… like I said, most people can afford to give about half

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Kelly McLaughlin: Of what they give as a one-time gift, monthly, so if somebody gives you $100 once.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Bringing them in at $50 a month, I mean, it's 6 times the gift they last gave you. So it's a really, really easy way to, A, increase your donor retention, and also,

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Kelly McLaughlin: to…

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Kelly McLaughlin: what do I want to say? Oh my gosh, I lost my train of thought. There are so many questions coming in. The… it's… it… it makes it more sustainable, it's… your donor retention goes up, and it just… it's an easy upgrade. It's the easy, obvious way to get them to upgrade.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Mary says, would you give an example of the message that someone could leave? Mary, my email is kelly at from scratchfundraising, or actually, just reply to the email that sent you this template and ask me that question. I actually have a sample thank you call template that I can send you.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And then I don't have to say it here and take up time.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Awesome.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So…

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Kelly McLaughlin: gave last year and renewing, they've never given. Major donors, right? Don't forget current monthly donors. You could ask them to upgrade their monthly gift. I have a client, this works really, really well. Anybody who's already a monthly donor, we ask them to basically increase their monthly gift by 5%.

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Kelly McLaughlin: They get a great response rate to that. So…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Do you see how? Already we're seeing…

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Kelly McLaughlin: a way to distinguish this, and I don't have to write 4 different appeals for all of these people. I can write the same appeal, and just customize some of the language around it. The opening, the ask, different things like that, right?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Adam, we ask around 5-10% increase.

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Kelly McLaughlin: For that client, and it works really, really well.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, think about who is in that segment. Where and how will we reach them?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right? Very few of my clients actually do much on social media during year-end, because I'm really focused on upgrading current donors, is… that's my major focus. We're not gonna get a slew of

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Kelly McLaughlin: Random new people.

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Kelly McLaughlin: like, right around year-end. Like, people know… people know this game, right? Last Giving Tuesday, I got more complaints about Giving Tuesday from donors than I've ever seen before, which makes me nervous, right? So…

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Kelly McLaughlin: I want to, like, really make the most of the donors you currently have, but also remember, email is not the only thing you can do. We still have direct mail. Direct mail still performs really well, especially if you're doing it really targeted for renewals and upgrades.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Email, of course, that's what we're mostly thinking about.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Social media I tend to use to drive people to sign up for my email list, so I can solicit them there, because I just don't often see social media doing a great job for small nonprofits. Bigger nonprofits, mileage varies, right?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Telephone calls. Rebecca, timing is excellent. What about lapsed donors? One of the things I do is I, lapsed donors, I make their own segments sometimes, but lapsed donors are the best people to make

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Kelly McLaughlin: Make reactivation phone calls, too.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah?

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Kelly McLaughlin: I love making reactivation phone calls to lapsed donors, and it's actually often very well received, and often a, oh my gosh, I didn't realize I didn't get last year. I definitely want to do that. So, one thing I often tell my clients is.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Last two weeks of December, pull your Libunt list, L-Y-B-U-N-T, pull that list. Most CRMs already have it pre-built for you. Call everybody on that list.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Also, one-on-one meetings can be part of your year-end campaign. I have one of my clients, their 100% of their year-end campaign is just meetings with donors, because they're really laser-focused on major donors. That's allowed.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And then events, Rachel gave us an example of an event that's… that's integrated into her year-end campaign.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, think about that. Think about the different segments and the different asks you can make.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And then the last step, and I realize, oh my gosh, we're already at the top of the hour, I can stay for a little bit longer if Abby can, but,

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Kelly McLaughlin: but the… yay, Abby can stay. So I thought this was an hour and a half until this morning, so I apologize.

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Kelly McLaughlin: But the last thing I have is this year-end campaign calendar. And this is where the rubber meets the road, right? And I have every day from November 1st until January 9th.

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Kelly McLaughlin: For you to plan out.

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Kelly McLaughlin: What do you say to the Libunt? Carrie, email me. I have scripts. I have many, many scripts. All the scripts!

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Kelly McLaughlin: I also listed all the major holidays that I, that I tend to take into account for normal nonprofits. You might have days that are different and more relevant to your nonprofit, but I tried to hit as many as I could so that you have those laid out as you're planning your campaign.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And then what are we sending, right? We are sending the first email to our monthly donor prospects. We are sending, a generic ask email. We are dropping the direct mail in the mailbox this day, right?

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Kelly McLaughlin: And then you can say, what is the content type, right? What kind of thing are we gonna do? And it's gonna make it different colors, so you can see what your mix is turning into.

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Kelly McLaughlin: What's the theme? So going back to the theme, how are we pulling and parsing out this theme?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Within each piece of messaging.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And then the question, is this an ask or an update? Mix it. Don't… I've had… I've had clients send out, like, oh, I'm just… we've sent a couple ask emails, we should probably send a little update, something, light touch, relationship build, piece, and have those make more money than the ask emails.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right? So don't forget to mix that up. Is it an ask or an update?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Owner is who needs to make sure this thing goes out. So you can select that and assign it.

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Kelly McLaughlin: The status, in progress, on hold means we're waiting for something to come through. We're stuck, we encountered a problem, we need to get it approved, right? It's approved, and we just need to send it out, and then complete.

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Kelly McLaughlin: If you've got a draft or a Google file that you are adding to it, right, we can add that file right there, and any notes that you want to add about the piece.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right? So this is what will allow you to plan out

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Kelly McLaughlin: The, you know, the rubber meets the road of your year-end campaign.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Alright.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, I've blasted through that last bit, but I will head to the chat, and Abby, if you want to direct me to certain questions, because…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Chat's blowing up.

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Neon One Webinars: I know.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Mmm.

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Neon One Webinars: Adam actually had a really great question that I.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Okay.

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Neon One Webinars: how to answer. Can you still utilize the nonprofit bulk mail discount if the letters are customized for specific donors and amounts? Adam thought that bulk discounts, or for a bulk discount, everything had to be the same. How does that work?

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Kelly McLaughlin: I… I don't know the ins and outs of the bulk mail rules, but I have… basically, I mean, they don't have all the same address, so I…

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Kelly McLaughlin: And this is where I'm a little, like, the spirit of the law. So, I'm not a lawyer, though, so this is not legal advice.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I like to bend rules. So what I would say is, the way I would think about it is, just like you mail merge their addresses.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Customizing the ask is just a mail merge. The essence of what you're sending out is the same. So I think if, like, I think you're taking it too literally that it has to be the same thing. I think what they're trying to do is, like, you can't send a year-end appeal and a flyer.

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Kelly McLaughlin: as the same bulk mail thing and get the discount. But if it's a mailed appeal.

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Kelly McLaughlin: As long as it is all one mailed appeal, we can have customized asks on all of them, and it…

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Kelly McLaughlin: My understanding… it's all gonna be in an envelope, they're not gonna open all your envelopes and check, so…

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Neon One Webinars: True. And Hannah.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Again, I'm not a lawyer.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Not a lawyer.

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Neon One Webinars: Call out, that it might have to be… it has to be the same weight.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yes. I think that's… yes, that's very much my understanding. As long as it looks the same, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, they'll send it through.

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Neon One Webinars: Sure. And then, just a quick one, Mary, and then, what is a CTA? A CTA is a call to action, so that's the thing that you ask someone to do at the, like, in your letter.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah.

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Neon One Webinars: I shouldn't have used that phrasing. That's me being in marketing.

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Neon One Webinars: Jargon does not translate. Yes.

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Kelly McLaughlin: CTA, we also, more often you'll hear it, it's the ask. It's the ask. What… what are you asking the person to do?

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Neon One Webinars: Absolutely. Jenna had a really great question. I think it comes in two parts. So, if you were sending an appeal for… I'm gonna break it into two. Sending an appeal to someone who had never given.

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Neon One Webinars: We know that specificity is important when you're doing a call to action, and it's hard to base, like, or to put together a custom gift appeal for someone who's never given. What would you ask.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yes.

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Neon One Webinars: One who had never given before.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, often when I'm designing a campaign for people I know less about, one, I'm building my lists, trying to get that data, right? Like, what do you want updates on when you have them sign up for your newsletter? I used to work for an international organization where we focused on, like, 6 different countries and, like, 10 different topic areas. You couldn't sign up for our newsletter without telling us which countries and topic areas you wanted to

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Kelly McLaughlin: hear about. Did we send people generic things? Absolutely. But when it came to fundraising time, I knew this person wants updates, I'm gonna write three appeals and hit these different countries, and

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Kelly McLaughlin: send those to the people who are interested in that country, that country, that country, right? So that's how I worked on that.

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Kelly McLaughlin: But as soon, like, so, if that's something you can't currently do, build your system so that you can next year.

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Kelly McLaughlin: But in the short term, that's where I tend to say something, you know, I tend to vary it. So I'm sending it to everybody on my list, and let's use the example of the multi-country, multi-issue.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I might build my email campaign around, like, I'm gonna cover…

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Kelly McLaughlin: you know, 4 of our 6 countries and 4 of our issue… of our 10 issue areas, and then I'm tracking that, who gave to which campaign, right? So that I can better segment next year. But you can just… you can kind of sample out different things.

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Neon One Webinars: That's a great answer. The next one is similar, but different. So, you said that we don't want to, like, exclude major donors. We do want to talk to major donors, but I know that, especially for major donors, like, asking is very personal, it's a very personal.

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Kelly McLaughlin: relationship.

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Neon One Webinars: That should be approached differently than someone who's never given before.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Absolutely.

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Neon One Webinars: How would you go about Asking a major donor for a gift.

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Neon One Webinars: this way.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah, yeah. So, that's where I want to remind people that year-end campaigns don't mean email.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right? Your end campaign is not synonymous with sending lots of emails, right? So that's where telephone calls, those one-on-one meetings, those events.

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Kelly McLaughlin: that,

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Kelly McLaughlin: those are other tools, and so we want to craft our year-end campaign around that. So, as I said, I have a client who's not sending ask emails, because they're super focused on major donors. That is… their entire list is just major donors.

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Kelly McLaughlin: They're small, they're just starting out, we've just focused on that segment, we're not trying to do mass fundraising yet.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, her campaign is a mix of sending personal emails, house parties that her current major donors are hosting to introduce them to new people, and one-on-one meetings with her major donors.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, that major donor segment could include zero emails. It's still a segment, it's still a campaign… part of a campaign that you're planning, but campaign… year-end campaign does not equal emails.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Right? That's… that's what I'm out here talking about, because everybody else is like, oh, optimizing your email for Year-End campaign. I'm like, you… I have a client who's not sending emails for their year-end campaign, and that's allowed. It's rare that it's allowed.

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Neon One Webinars: Someone asked a really quick question, actually. If we're talking about, like.

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Neon One Webinars: going beyond an email. Hannah asked about, what are your thoughts on sending, like, postcard emails, particularly to people who either haven't given or are giving at lower amounts. I know I'm kind of wavering. I love a postcard, especially

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Neon One Webinars: So hard to get people to open mail.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah!

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Neon One Webinars: There is something a little special about getting, like, an envelope. Like, what do you think.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I don't know, I pretty much only open Year-End direct mail because I want to see what other people are doing.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I don't often get the random mailed appeals that I get.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I actually, like, I hadn't thought about that. I really love the idea of a postcard, because that's, like, that's something,

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Kelly McLaughlin: I will look at a postcard. I mean, it might be on the way to the recycling bin, but you're gonna get a message through, right? So I… I think if you can really craft a postcard that's, like, quick and punchy, it…

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Kelly McLaughlin: I don't know! It might be worth, like, A-B testing that, and sending some letters and some postcards, and like…

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Kelly McLaughlin: having a different URL to direct them to, and then see what works. I'm a big fan of testing like that.

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Neon One Webinars: And, I mean, I'm a little biased, but, I mean, I get a lot of direct mail appeals. I infrequently get postcards, and like you said.

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Neon One Webinars: At least look at it.

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Kelly McLaughlin: I was gonna say, I… I, like, I think I threw, like, 3 direct mail appeals in the recycling last night, and… but then I got, like, an election, like, postcard. I read that whole sucker. Like, it was right there, and I was like, I… I'm… I'm just somebody that, like, if there are words there, I will read them.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So… I love reading. So, yeah, I mean, it was… it was funny, because it was for a candidate that I…

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Kelly McLaughlin: wildly disagree with, but I still read their entire postcard, right? So, I don't know, maybe the proof's right there. I was like, I don't like this person, I will read the postcard.

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Neon One Webinars: I will read it, though. Yeah, I get postcards from my favorite nonprofit all the time, and this actually ties into a question we got a minute ago. I get postcards from my favorite nonprofit all the time, but they're updates and thank yous if I get an.

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Kelly McLaughlin: You're coming.

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Neon One Webinars: It's always in an envelope.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Mmm.

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Neon One Webinars: However, I was gonna say, someone asked about thoughts on sending a holiday card versus a traditional Christmas appeal with just a secondary ask on the back of the card. Carrie, I would tell you that if you want to say thank you, say thank you. If you want to say happy holidays, say happy holidays. If you want to ask for money, ask for money.

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Neon One Webinars: if you send me a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays card, and then you ask me for… for money, it's a mixed message to me.

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Neon One Webinars: Kelly, I'm willing to be wrong.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah, no, I… I say the same thing. If… if you're thinking, like.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Donor identification, donor cultivation, solicitation, stewardship, upgrades, these are all different processes, and we want to make our work more efficient by making them all the same thing, and what we end up doing is confusing the donor. So you have to decide, what is this piece doing? Where does it live on the donor journey?

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Kelly McLaughlin: And just have it do that. I also see people, like, we're doing a donor thank you event that is also an ask event for people who have never donated. And I'm like, no, that won't work. Because the people who have never given before hear a thank you, thank you, thank you, and they're confused why they're there.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And the people who have given before, right, that you are saying thank you to are seeing asks, and they're angry because I already gave you money, what's wrong with you? Right? So, don't mix them. I'm very staunch on don't mix them.

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Neon One Webinars: I will say, Carrie, I do hope that you are asking your monthly donors for an additional gift. We've done some research on monthly giving, and we found that

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Neon One Webinars: I think it… I think half of monthly givers give again to, like, give one-time gifts in addition to their monthly gifts. We also found that people who.

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Kelly McLaughlin: initiate.

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Neon One Webinars: recurring gifts on Giving Tuesday, 80% of them made another gift to the same nonprofit before the end of the year. So, if you're doing a good job, and it sounds like you are, you're thanking your monthly donors, you're keeping them in mind, you're, like, thinking about sending them holiday cards.

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Neon One Webinars: Don't just thank them, I mean, do it, obviously. We love to thank people, but also invite them to continue making a difference. You may be really surprised at how many people do give to you.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah.

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Neon One Webinars: Okay, okay, we're gonna ask one more question. I know we're.

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Kelly McLaughlin: That's.

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Neon One Webinars: And I so appreciate everyone sticking around, this is such a good.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah!

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Neon One Webinars: Mirabella had some questions about thanking people.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yes.

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Neon One Webinars: Especially since this is a big time of year for new donors, you want to focus on the relationship building,

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Neon One Webinars: how do you decide how much effort to put into thanking a donor? Who gets handwritten emails? Who… handwritten emails? Oh my gosh, handwritten letters? Who gets phone calls? Who, like…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah.

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Neon One Webinars: I mean, we all would love to write a beautiful thank you note by hand to every single donor, but that's not always feasible.

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Neon One Webinars: How do you decide what to… what to do there?

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Kelly McLaughlin: Yeah,

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Kelly McLaughlin: I… so I teach a whole workshop. Abby, maybe we can put this on the schedule soon, but, it's, basically how to succeed in stewardship without really trying. And it's…

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Kelly McLaughlin: Can you tell I was in theater as a kid? So…

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Kelly McLaughlin: But essentially, I… I help my clients build,

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Kelly McLaughlin: frameworks for that, so we always know, based on this level, all theater kids turn fundraisers, yes, there are so many of us! I like to…

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Kelly McLaughlin: use a framework with them of, you know, certain levels get certain thank yous. One of the things I do with almost all of my clients is institute a, like, Friday thank you call hour.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Which is just, like, any gift that has come in that week, like, spend an hour calling people and saying thank you. It doesn't matter what size they are, or what you're hoping to do, or if you think you can upgrade them later, it doesn't matter. Just put an hour on your calendar, and…

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Kelly McLaughlin: and call people and say thank you for as many people as you can in that hour. It really makes a difference. I talk to my friends who are not in the nonprofit sphere, but are very generous givers.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And, you know, of course, when I'm like, I'm a fundraiser, I'm sure so many of you get this, I'm a fundraiser, they're like, oh, you're the people sending me all the…

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Kelly McLaughlin: crap, right? But, like, there's a difference, like, there's a marked difference when a nonprofit has called them. My friends are like, oh, I love talking to the fundraiser at this organization, they're so great. I give to them every single year, because they call and say thank you.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And that's… I've run… I have run fundraising programs that had 80-85% donor retention. Like, Abby, that's… that's, like, amazing, right? Off the charts.

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Kelly McLaughlin: And it's… it's all because of phone calls, right? It's all because of that relational piece.

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Kelly McLaughlin: So, and people think, oh, that's gonna take up so much time, but honestly, we spend so much time doing other things that go into our donor spam, like, take 2 minutes to call them, it leaves a lasting impression. So if you do nothing else, I actually say call everybody.

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Kelly McLaughlin: If you can, or… you know, I used to work for an organization, we got a volume where I couldn't call everybody, but we had two volunteers who would come in once a week and call people for me and say thank you. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who's saying thank you. I had a board member who was, like, my designated thank you caller.

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Kelly McLaughlin: at another organization, right? Figure out how you can get it done, but that is the, like, single biggest thing I've seen that puts a dent in donor retention, is calling to say thanks.

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Neon One Webinars: when you say it makes a lasting impression, it really does. A few… gosh, it was, like, 6 or 7 years ago now, a friend of mine made a $20 donation to an animal shelter.

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Neon One Webinars: And the executive director called her and thanked her, and she went around the office and told everybody at the office about this nonprofit that had called her for a $20 gift. And she still donates to them now.

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Neon One Webinars: It makes a huge impression.

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Kelly McLaughlin: It really, really does. It really, really does.

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Neon One Webinars: Amazing. Kelly, thank you so much for sharing your.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Absolutely!

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Neon One Webinars: for, like, walking us through so many things. Thank you, everybody, in the chat. I know that it is such a bummer to just feel like you're speaking into the void, and you all have been so talkative and helpful and enthusiastic and sharing

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Neon One Webinars: expertise with each other, thank you so much for that. I know that this is an intensely busy time of year. I know that taking an hour and 12 minutes out of your day is no small feat, and the fact that you are here, and the fact that you are thinking through how to segment your list, and how to thank people, and how to retain your donors is…

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Neon One Webinars: proof of the fact that you care deeply about what you do, and I am so encouraged by all of the enthusiasm that I see here.

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Neon One Webinars: Everyone, I'm going to send you an email tomorrow morning with a link to this session. I've included a link to the workbook that Kelly used today, so you can use it.

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Neon One Webinars: bully your board members into phoning people, that's your homework from this. Get them excited now about calling so they can do it, later… later this year. But thank you so much, everybody, Kelly and everyone on the call for being here. This has been so much fun. I have learned a ton, and I am, like, optimistic about the end of the year because of this session.

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Kelly McLaughlin: Awesome!

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Kelly McLaughlin: Thanks, everybody, I appreciate you being here.

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Neon One Webinars: Awesome, we'll see you all soon.