Cracking the Code: The Secret to Raising More Money with Smarter Systems

Okay, all right, looks like we have some people filing in here. We’re going to get started,

we are working with T. Clay Buck today. So good afternoon, and thank you for joining our webinar, cracking the code, Read More

Okay, all right, looks like we have some people filing in here. We’re going to get started,

we are working with T. Clay Buck today. So good afternoon, and thank you for joining our webinar, cracking the code, the secret to raising more money with smarter systems. Our presenter this afternoon I just mentioned is Clay buck, and he is a CFRE and has been working in fundraising for over 30 years. He is the founder and principal of next river fundraising strategies, the creator of fundraisers, planner and co host of the fundraising is funny podcast. Clay specializes in individual giving, from acquisition to major gifts, strategic planning and bringing a systems thinking approach to fundraising. He makes his home in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he’s owned by two poorly trained Golden Retrievers who have mastered the art of the ask, especially at dinner time.

Okay, so just to get some housekeeping out of the way, please note that the webcast is being recorded and will be sent out in the next few days. If you have any questions during the webinar, you can add them to the Q and A section. They’ll be answered throughout as we can keep pace. So just make sure they go there. And if you want to throw into the chat where you’re you’re coming from, where everybody’s located, it’s nice to know

where we have people attending from. So welcome to Clay, and you are all set to get started. Well, thank you. I am thrilled to be here and already popping in the chat to welcome everybody and their fundraising dogs with us. It’s so nice to see you all today. Thank you so much for making time. Thank you DonorPerfect for hosting this. I’m really thrilled to be here. This is one of my favorite topics, but let’s just own like right from the outset that talking about systems, right? It sounds like we’re going to talk about tech and data, and maybe not everybody’s favorite conversation. So I applaud you for being here in January. I know for many of you, it is cold, cold, cold where you are. So hopefully we can add some warmth and some humor. You all are. Are this chat is on fire already. I love to see it. So please, let’s keep the conversation going. I really do like to keep this as interactive as possible. There are a lot of you in the chat, which is great, so I may not see every piece of conversation, so do be sure to put questions in Q, A, I’ll try to answer them as we go. I’d much rather kind of take the time in the moment, rather than coming back and trying to remember what we talk about. But if they’re pretty extensive, like we might hold off to the end, but anyway, we’ll see where we get keep it conversational and keep asking me questions and talking as we go. Gosh, it’s so great to see you all. So thanks again. Thanks again for being here. I’m going to switch us over to this is always the the awkward part, right, where we have that, that moment of

that moment of stumbling a little bit as we get things ready to go. So first hit some thumbs up there in the chat, if you’re able to see the slides there, and everything’s looking good for you there. I do want to shout out. I know there’s a lot going on in the world today, of course, in many things, in many different parts of the country. A shout out, though, to those of you that I see coming from Southern California, from the LA area. I know you all are still dealing with a lot there, and as you’re so close to us here in Las Vegas, know that, know that you’re on my mind and thoughts. And you know, many people around the country pulling together to to help that LA community as much as we can, of course, communities across the country. So as we, you know, jump into this work that we do, we keep, keep folks in our thoughts, keep folks that are, that are dealing with a lot in our minds today. So we’re going to jump in. And again, I’m watching the chat, keeping an eye on questions. We will, we will have a great conversation here. So we’re going to talk about, number one, what we’re all here to do as fundraisers, raise more money. I mean, let’s be honest. Let’s Be direct. That is the thing that we are all held to. We are we are measured by. We are held accountable to,

yes, there is a recording, yes, you will get the recording, and yes, you will get the slide deck. I should have started with that as well. So those of you that are here now, when folks join us late, later, and somebody else pipes in and says, Hey, are we going to get the slide deck? You are all deputized to jump in and say, yes, there’s a recording. Yes, you’ll get the slide deck. Okay,

let’s have some fun with that, as folks continue to ask that, because it always happens in webinars. I’m sure you know that, talking about systems, we are all held accountable to, to to the work of raising.

Me, that’s what we’re here to do. And today, I want to frame it in this context of systems, which, when we think of systems immediately, you know, again, we think of tech, we think of data. I want to talk about systems as a whole, and kind of reframe how we look at the work that we do through this concept, through this idea of systems thinking, because it applies to everything. And what we know so much more now about neuroscience and how we how our brains work, how we think about things and how we name them, how we frame them is how we interpret, interpret them and internalize them, and very often, by changing slightly how we think about something, what we name it, and how we look at it, can change how we approach it and what we deal with it. So that’s kind of what I’m asking you today to do with me is come along with this idea of, kind of reframing how we look at things. Because James clear and atomic habits. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. And I’m a goal setting guy. I mean, I created a whole planner specifically for fundraising because you believe in goal setting and achieving goals. But this is exactly right, right? I mean, think of personal goals too, right? So, I mean, it’s the first of the year ish, right? How many of us set the goal of, I’m going to lose weight, I’m going to be healthier, right? And that’s a goal. But if we didn’t go out and actually join the gym and actually go to the gym or go to the grocery store and actually buy healthy food, then our system isn’t supporting our goal. So we fall to the level of systems sometimes, rather than rising to the level of your goals, sometimes setting a goal of raising more money for more donors, it’s a worthy goal. It’s absolutely what we’re here to do, but it doesn’t quite inform us of how we are going to achieve that goal and how we’re going to reach it. So in systems thinking. And this is, this is a practice. There are degrees in this. There are all kinds of books on this. So I encourage you to dig deeper into it, in the in the context of systems thinking, we think about how things work together to achieve that single purpose versus cause and effect. So in fundraising, we do tend to think of it as a linear approach. Don’t we identify a donor, ask them for support, get the support report on impact, and we just kind of keep repeating that cycle. Yes,

if you’ve worked in and I see a couple of you, you’re new, brand new to your role, you’re new to the job of fundraising. So you’re going to learn this as you go. But for those of us that have been doing it for a little bit, right? We actually start to realize that it is anything but linear and anything but cause and effect. I mean, just think of, just think of the simple act of getting a gift, right? So we think, Oh, we get a gift. We enter it in DonorPerfect, we enter it in the CRM, we receive it, we acknowledge it, and repeat. It’s so much more complicated depending on how your process works, right? The gift comes in, you got to report it over to finance, you got to enter it into the CRM. They’ve got to measure it in the GL, then you’ve got to report on it. Then you’ve got to print a receipt. And did it come in via email, or did it come in via letter? And then if it came in via email, then that gets a digital but if it came in letter, then that gets a print receipt. And then over in finance, they’re pulling that together, and they’re reporting on the GL and they’re standing in your office going, Are we getting a hit goal or not? And you got to report on it based on what’s entered in the CRM. And of course, the gift entry enters a whole stewardship process, which means they have to go into the renewal plan, which means they have to get a thank you and an augment and follow up. And right? All of that is a whole bunch of interrelated working parts. It’s not as linear as we think it to be. And you know what’s, what’s the best way to upset the universe is right? Set a plan right, and our linear often doesn’t work the way that we get to it so the way we want it to so when we’re talking about a system, we are talking about a group of interacting in a related or interdependent parts that form a complex and unified whole to achieve a specific purpose. Think about that from a development shop, because when we’re talking about systems, we’re not just talking about tech and data. We’re talking about your storytelling, your case for support, your beneficiaries, your board, your events. All of those are systems. All of those are interconnected parts, all working together to achieve this goal of fundraising, this goal of developing missions, developing organizations, advancing our services, right that specific purpose, but all of this has to work together, and when these are all disconnected, how effective are we at reaching the goal? So what I want to ask you to do is start to think of the work as interconnected, interrelated parts, whether you’re a shop of one person or five people, or you’re a large shop and you’ve got marketing over here and fundraising over here, and advancement services over here, and development ops over there, and every.

Everybody’s in different silos. It is still multiple parts working to achieve the same goal. So if we think of a system in terms of something that we use every day, think of a car, right? Think of a car

because a car is a perfect example of a system. Systems must have a purpose in order for a thing to be called a system. And true system thinking, there must be a purpose, and all parts must be present for that system to carry out its purpose to its best effect. And systems, again, by definition of a system, they attempt to main stability through feedback. So think of this in the context of a car. We’ve already said that a system is interconnected, interrelated parts in a car. You’ve got, and I am so not a gear head, so I’m going to get the stuff wrong, but you’ve got the exhaust system, you’ve got the drive chain, you’ve got

you’ve got the air conditioning, you’ve got the radio, Sirius XM, all of that, like, that’s me. You got steering. You have all of these different systems or processes within the single system that we call a car. And the purpose of a car, of all of those systems working together, is to get us from point A to point B. How do cars attempt to main stability through the dashboard. So everything on that dashboard is telling us how the system is working. And if one part is not working working optimally, that dashboard is telling us, hey, at the blinker fluid. Jonathan, I’ve fallen for that before. I have seen that video. I know what you’re talking about, blinker fluid. And if you’re going to get me talking about sports ball next right? So it’s telling us, Hey, we’re out of gas. Well, if we don’t have enough gas, then that system is not going to get us from point A to point B as well as it could. If a tire goes flat, if the wrong song is on the apple, music, play. Recommend whatever piece of that system, that dashboard, is telling us, hey, it’s not working. So systems, interconnected parts, working together, must have a purpose. All parts must be present for a system to carry out its purpose optimally. And systems attempt to maintain stability through feedback. Keep those three points in front of you. The rest of we go because now think about it from a fundraising perspective, right? Systems have a purpose. Raise money. All parts must be present if you’re not getting gift entry done, if storytelling isn’t strong, Rachel made a really good point about about storytelling and how important is to all of us, and how it informs everything. If the data is not getting entered correctly, if your auction is not working at your event, if your board isn’t pulling their weight, whenever it may be, whatever part of a system isn’t working optimally, we’re not achieving the purposes effectively and as strongly as we want to, and we attempt to maintain stability through feedback.

That’s our CRMs, that’s data, that’s our metrics. That’s how we’re looking at the work that we’re doing and reporting back on it, kind of that interaction with finance that I talked about earlier. So what do systems require? Listen as I study more and more about systems thinking, the 5c really left out for me as kind of core values and personal approaches, especially in the work of fundraising, systems require curiosity, clarity, compassion, choice and courage. Think about that in context of how we fundraise, right? Being curious about how people work, being curious about what makes people give, being curious about how we can raise more money, the clarity of case, the clarity of the clarity of our systems, the clarity of data, requiring compassion for those we work with, for those we work for, for our donors and communities that we serve, the choices that we make in the courage to stand in this gap that we do as fundraisers between real human need and the people that can and want to help. A system is a collection of different elements producing results that are not obtainable by each element on its own. I am a direct mail annual fund individual giving guy, right? But no fundraising program is as good it can be as it can be without major gifts, without planned giving, without events, without whatever, all of those different elements together, coming together to produce the results that can be incredible. And just some general concepts of systems engineering, you’re going to hear me use these kind of as we go. Engineering is integrating those multiple disciplines, groups and people into that structured process. The systems integration is bringing those systems into one system, or a system of systems, right? To achieve the massive purpose, the overarching purpose, and then systems architecture, is using that structured approach to develop the potential for future conditions, right? So we’re breaking the system down into interacting perspective, perspectives, different people, information process, tech people, whenever you change one.

Of those elements, you get different information, you change the process, you get different technology, where you bring in or lose different people. That system changes, and how we build it. I like to think of it, too, as the system of fundraising is the architecture of generosity. There’s there’s your phrase for the day, right? How we are building the systems of generosity and encouraging generosity within our communities in the world that we serve the I referenced earlier. We do tend to think as fundraising as this linear thing our best practice, if you will, right the donor life cycle, identification, qualification, cultivation, solicitance, stewardship, stewardship. We’d like for it all to follow that nice, right linear process, one step leads to the other and the next and the next and the next. Indeed, our whole concept of Moves Management is built on this rigid sort of structure. We identify, we qualify, we cultivate the donor pyramid. And listen, I will champion these two concepts of management till the day that I retire and or quit fundraising, whichever comes first,

and also acknowledge that they are flawed in their linear approach. Right? The donor pyramid. Right? The idea that we start as prospects or individual or low end donors, and we move them up to annual donors, and then we move them up to mid level donors, and then we move them to major donors, and we move them to planned gifts. This hierarchy of giving, right? It never happens. I mean, it does. It’s a good plan. But anybody that’s been doing this for a while, I’m sure you all will agree. You have, you’ve had that major gift visit where you’ve sat down with a donor and they make the gift right there at the first visit, you’ve had that $50 donor that stays at $50 for 20 years and never does anything else no matter what you do. Right? It all kind of break the it all kind of works together and it happens and it doesn’t happen in 2014

Claire Axelrod, a nonprofit pro published this article called Rest in peace, donor pyramid. Claire’s view on this, and I completely agree with her, is that the pyramid is great and the life cycle is great as a management tool, as a guide. The reality of human behavior is that we are much less logical and donors are much less interested in following a specific path. The modern more modern, wow, say that three times fast, the modern model is more like a vortex. It’s an energy cycle where everyone is equal. People are moving in and out as needed. Our job as fundraisers is to keep the energy flowing. We joke a lot about we’re wearing multiple hats. We’re keeping multiple hats, plates in the air. We’re juggling on a lot of balls at the same time. This is we’re talking about, right? Keeping this energy flowing. Because one day we might be deep into major gift plan. The next day we’re out running around town, picture, picking up auction items. So our job is kind of keeping all of this moving and all of this going, understanding, sure, yeah, our goal is to increase giving. Our goal is to engage more donors, and people aren’t going to be you know the old saying? Well, let me paraphrase the great philosopher Taylor Swift, and say, rather than haters, going to hate. Let’s say people are going to people, donors are going to donor, right? They’re going to behave in the way they want to behave. Our job is to keep that vortex, because a lot of times donors don’t behave the way we want them to. They don’t fit into our nice little buckets of current and laps and lie button all of that. So how do we keep it going? We keep it going by managing and looking at everything through a systems approach. Jeff Brooks takes another view of this, which I also really like, which is this idea of this, this lake of generosity, if you, if you will, and it’s constantly flowing. And he says, a real donor file is not much like a massive ancient edifice of stone, ie a pyramid. It’s more of a seeding, organic thing that can grow, shrink or even die, absolutely 100% true. How we nurture it, how we take care of that system of donors, and whether it’s managing data or storytelling or whatever it may be, all of it is part of fundraising. So I want to encourage you to rethink fundraising in that context of managing multiple systems, and also rethink it in terms of the difference between Tria transactional and transformational. Right when we talk about transactional giving, we’re talking about giving within these prescribed boundaries, giving in these very rigid, money focused, revenue centered way. And you know, let’s be honest, this is what our leadership wants of us, right? Our leadership is focused on dollars, and they want us. They don’t want to hear about relationships and touchy feely kind of stuff. They want to hear about how much money are we going to raise? Because development is the revenue generating arm of the nonprofit sector. We know as fundraisers that giving is transformational. It’s changing future.

Future focused. When somebody gives, they’re challenging the status. They’re making a difference. What we know about donors today, more so than we ever have before, if you’ve seen any of the recent reports on the decline in retention rates overall, retention rates are now way less than 40% overall, meaning more than half of donors are not going to make a second gift to a nonprofit, and we are seeing,

both in Canada and the United States, declining numbers of households giving to charities. The interesting thing is, it’s giving to charities is the key point there. Donors are giving. People are giving. They’re giving to go look again. Do respect and all love. But look at it from a fundraiser, intellectual kind of research point of view, and look what has happened with any you can point to any situation, but at the LA wildfires, the number of gofundmes, the number of giving to giving circles, giving to direct aid and mutual aid, people are much more interested in giving where their generosity is going to get an immediate effect that outlines and highlights their identity and their values. And they’re saying to us, they’re saying to us, Hey, I’m not getting that same value from traditional giving to a traditional nonprofit. We’ve also seen trust in nonprofits decline, right? So how do we rebuild that? And we rebuild that by focusing on values and identity. And Craig, I love this question, right? How do we bring in external influences, like the ever changing donor environment? We nonprofits base monthly. Um, so first, what I want to say is we talk about, we tend to talk about donor behavior as this external thing, this, this mystical creature called donor. And donors do things well, okay, in in Giving Tuesday, the organization Giving Tuesday did a survey about three years ago, and they’re repeating it now, like every six months every year, encourage you to the go to their website and look up their data, commons, where they’re reporting on this regularly in surveys, global surveys, particularly in the United States and in North America. So our colleagues in Canada and Mexico,

when surveyed, something like 90% of people say that they give

so if we were to look at a Venn diagram of humans and donors, the overlap is like almost 100% so when we talk about donor behavior, we’re really talking about human behavior. So all of these things are true. You are correct, Greg, this ever changing donor environment environment. We’ve got political pressures, we’ve got economic pressures. We’ve got all kinds of pressures. What never changes is the capacity to care.

Donors aren’t donors. There’s no such thing as donor fatigue, forgive me, but there isn’t. There is reaction to bad systems. There’s bad storytelling fatigue. There’s

there’s fatigue with being asked all the time. Think about that friend that only ever calls you when they want to favor right? There are fatigues like that. But even in the toughest times of the economy, yes, we might see wealthier people be more affected by huge fluctuations in economies, and therefore making decisions to make gifts later on in the year. We saw this last year tremendously, where a lot of wealthier people wanted to wait and see what the stock market did through the election before they made their major gift at the end of the year. But in general, your average person, yeah, okay, eggs are expensive, milk is expensive, gas is more expensive, all the things are more expensive. But we see this again and again and again, that people still give. They give what they can because giving is important to them. It’s when we make decisions for our donors and communities that we miss the boat. So how do I bring in external influences? I believe we keep telling good stories. We honor and recognize what is going on, and we honor and recognize that when people give, they are giving so out of a sense of identity and values they’re giving because this is a thing I believe in. This is who I am, of course, of course, I support this because that’s who I am as a person. It’s when we make decisions for them. Oh, it’s, you know, it would be insensitive to ask now, because of the economy, those kinds of things that we do start to see we kind of become our own worst enemies in some ways.

But let’s also build great systems that support us in the long term. Because it’s January, and I fully recognize and understand where you are. I have been there multiple times. I would love in January of 2025, I want to be planning january 2026 like, I’d love to have year end plans. Everything all done this year so that we can adapt when we need to, versus scrambling to keep up with it as we go. Like when you get to August and you’re starting to go, boy, I should really get my year end letter in.

You’re going to.

Get it done, sure, but imagine what would happen if you planned it in advance and you had the systems to support that, because that’s exactly what we’re talking today.

Okay, I lost screen there for a minute. I also want to bring this definition of fundraising for forward for you, because I read this book as part of my research, and it really changed the way that I think about the work that we do right fundraising, not as asking, it is, isn’t it Hannah? It’s, it’s Hannah just posted. It’s this book is so good. It is. It is a book that I would recommend, regardless of what your faith background is, to have as part of your library on your shelf, something that you refer to frequently, but in it, Henry Nolan, who is a monk, a monk and theologian, was asked to raise money for his monastery, and he went into it with a lot of trepidation and a fear of what does this mean to ask and in prayer and research and theology and understanding, he came to this definition, that fundraising is proclaiming What we believe in such a way that we offer other people an opportunity to participate with us in our vision and mission. Wow, isn’t that a much better way of looking at this work than I’m going to keep asking people right? I’m a professional beggar. We are offering other people an opportunity to participate with us. And if we think of fundraising, if we think of giving and generosity as participating with us, as being a part of this work, then fundraising is mission, right? If we cannot, if we cannot, fulfill the mission of our organizations without fundraising, without asking people to be a part of it, without asking for grants, without asking for gifts, without seeking out foundations, without seeking out individuals. If we cannot fulfill our mission without that, then the people that we are asking to give become a part of this work with us. They become a part so fundraising is mission. It doesn’t give them the right to tell us how to do it. So let’s then donor dominance is a whole other conversation. But if we start to think of it as an offer to participate, an invitation with us, then fundraising is mission. So with that thought of systems thinking with fundraising is mission, with this transformational approach, then how do we start to build better fundraising systems. How do we start to look at this? Right? So we’re gonna start with goals. A goal without a plan is just a wish. So number one, setting clear, achievable goals. We’ve all heard investing in our mission is good too. Betsy, I like that. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And Craig is saying honesty should be number one for all donors expressed by the nonprofit, absolutely right. And there’s their friend. Is another system? How are you reporting back? How are you telling donors what their gift did? How is that impact happening? And that’s a system that can support that overall goal of inviting people to be a part of it. So excuse me, number one, setting clear achievable goals. Raising more money from more donors is not a goal.

Raising more money from more donors is not a goal, because we all know SMART goals, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and time bound right, increase donor retention by 10% by December 31 that’s a goal, right? Identify 20 new major gift prospects by the end of the fiscal year. That’s a goal. It is specific. We can measure it. It’s achievable, is it? It’s relevant, because it matters, and it is time bound. There is a time that we can do it, secure five new gifts over $10,000 within two years, increase annual fund average gift to $250 by September, right? So,

Raymond, Don’t let me forget that. Raymond, I want to come back to that point. So if I don’t come back to the point that you just made about generational, hold me accountable to that, and I will come back to it for short, right? The goal then implies the action. The action informs the system. Because go back and look at the SMART goal, these specific goals. In each of these goals, there’s something that you have to do if our goal is to increase annual fund, average gift, okay, well, that tells us a lot about what we have to do. So the goal implies the action that we’re going to take. The action informs the system, and then that system informs the overall fundraising system. So we’re going to change our tactics. We might change our processes to support the goal, which does mean the system is going to have to support what we do. So let’s look at one of them, right? Because I promise you, it’s, it’s honestly why, if I, if I had my druthers and you said to me, Hey, I need to set goals, or I need to define systems. I will tell you, define systems. Define.

Design systems first, because if you focus on the system, the goal will take care of itself, right? Again, if my goal is to lose weight by the end of the year, well then the system I have to take care of is going to the gym and and chopping and making better food, right? So the system supports the goal. If you do the system, the goal will take care of itself. Let’s look at one increase donor retention by 10% by December 31 Well, first, you got to know what your retention rate is now, which means you have to have accurate data and metrics. You have to

you have to make sure that your gift entry and data capture are accurate, you have to ensure that the system of data processing is is right and is supporting what you need. The and I listen, you all tell me, but the number one thing I see, truly, honestly, is data, more often than not, the biggest challenge that I see when people come to me for help when I have stepped in as a new development director, as a chief development officer, the thing that I have discovered most is data is bad, right? Codes are old. Their data is poor quality. A lot of us don’t trust the data that we have, which makes changing the system extremely difficult, because if we can’t get accurate data and metrics, then we don’t know what our retention rate is now, and therefore we can’t set a goal to increase it, because you might look at your retention rate and go our retention rates actually 50% we’re good. I need to focus on retention rate. I need to focus on increasing average gift or whatever it did, right? So we got to know what our retention rate is, then we got to look at okay, so if we’re going to increase it by 10% it means we already have some retention rate, which means some donors did renew. Why? What’s different about them than the donors that didn’t renew? What’s happening there that schema so we look at our history, we look at our tactics, we look at what was done with the donors that did renew versus those that don’t, and then, how do we replicate that with these what are we going to do differently to affect those renewal rates? What is the plan that we’re going to do? Well, we know the number one things that affects renewal rates is Impact Reporting, stewardship and thank you as quickly as possible.

Oh, you just asked the greatest question in the world on Yes, hard credit, soft credits, I will come to that. Hold on one second, right stewardship, thank yous, more Impact Reporting. How are we going to do that? How is that going to be accomplished? Because that’s the number one thing that affects it, and we have to look at what we’re doing and go we need to increase our thank yous. We need to increase our receiving. We need to increase our impact reporting. If that’s our goal, that’s a system over here we got to change. And if we’re going to increase it by 10% by December 31 how are we going to continue to on January 1? Are we just going to increase it by 10% and then let it drop back down again? What are we going to do to maintain the long term solution? Quick aside, yes, how you enter data is tremendously difficult and does affect and this issue of hard credits and soft credits is massive, and it is one thing, with all due respect and love to DonorPerfect into every CRM in the world. It is something that I will harp on frequently, because I will just tell you this quick story. I’m digressing right?

Three jobs ago, I was the director of individual giving, and we had a new person come to town who made a $5,000 gift, which was, for us, was as a first gift was a big deal. We looked at it, looked into him. I reached out to him, got to know him. Come find out that just moved to town, he made a few gifts in a few places to see who responded. To see, you know, because wanted to get involved,

unbeknownst to us, his girlfriend, slash fiance, made a gift to a different program from a completely differently named account, her account, right? But they lived together. They were a couple together. So he gave over here, she gave over there. We had no idea that the two were connected as we continued to cultivate him, he actually joined one of our committees. He made a significantly larger gift from his family foundation, not his personal account. She joined an advisory committee. Then we made the connection that they were together and together from a business account, they made a larger gift to that specific program, which was under both of their names. In other words, there’s six different gifts in operation here, and all of them are hard credited to a different entity, but soft credited to him, his and her record, which was joined in the system when we ran donor retention reports. Guess who didn’t show up as a retained donor? Guess who looked like a lapsed donor, right? Because the soft credits were there. Half the battle is knowing that they’re there. Yeah, exactly. With increasing in donor advised funds. It all the different ways of goodness, corporate giving, business accounts has shot through the roof. I’m seeing so much more coming from 30.

Parties, Benevity and other employee giving programs and so forth. Like, I mean, yeah, the key, I’m sorry to tell you, is getting as much information and staying on top of that, soft crediting as much as possible, and then setting your reports,

setting your reports to track soft crediting as well. You have to remember to do it, because it can impact more often than not, I will see an organization with like, a 35% retention rate. We start factoring in soft credits, and it goes up by five or six percentage points because we’re looking at the different methodologies from where it comes. So again, a system that supports your metrics, it’s being aware of it is for is the first part of the problem? It’s such, such a great question.

My buddy Adam cleaver and I will sit and talk about soft credits for days. So don’t let me go too far down, down the road on that. But think we can probably have some conversations. That’s going to perfect, but how we can do it, in fact? Well anyway, I’m not going to I’m not going to go there, but that’s something we’ll follow up on, right? Okay, so let me keep going. So talking about data, and I do more soft credits, I do tend to focus a bit on data because it is one of the things that you can affect most directly and most easily when it comes to systems. And I got it a lot as a fundraiser. Hey, why are you spending so much time focusing on data?

Why are you focusing so much time on data you should be out in the community. Data doesn’t have any value. Incorrect data actually has huge value, and it has more value than you think it does. This report, this, this, this, looking at the ROI of data is one of the best,

the best tools you can use to with your leadership to justify why you want to invest in data. So just concept, you got 25,000 records, just to make the math, math easy here, 25,000 records. I know that’s a lot for something small for others, total donated from those 25,000 records, 1.1 million. 1.1 million divided by 25,000 the average value of every record is $44 let’s assume that you lose 1% of those records to data hygiene and quality. Addresses, change emails, change phone numbers, get entered wrong, whatever it may be, but 1% of your records you can’t contact because the data gone bad, $44 on average value of each record times 250 that’s $11,000 you’ve lost just because bad data side note, on average, you’re actually losing eight to 10%

every year. You’re losing eight to 10% of your records just to data quality, right? So it’s much higher than this. Okay? So that’s one year we’ve lost $11,000 that doesn’t include lapse donors, that doesn’t include live on cybuns. That’s just data quality. Year two, if you do nothing about those 250 records from year one, you add another 250 records at 1% now you got 500 that you’ve lost, data quality. You can’t contact them anymore. That’s $20,000 multiply that over five years, you start to talk about real records lost. Is there any nonprofit that’s okay with losing $50,000

over five years, just because of data quality, when you can do a data append, an NCOA append for, I don’t know, $500,000 a couple $1,000 that the dividends pay off on that the time spent correcting data can have huge dividends moving forward because of the value that data represents. Doing a database audit is a phenomenally good way to find out where you are and how good your data is. In this case, this is an actual organization where I worked. In this case, when we ran the data audit, we found that we were pretty good. Oops, so sorry. Hyperactive mouse, we found that we were pretty good with addresses, zip codes needed some work. Home phone wasn’t too concerned about we didn’t do a whole lot of phoning, even so an area of improvement, but 78% of our records did not have an email address. Hey, this organization had, this organization had decided to go to a full digital strategy. Nobody’s responding to direct mail. We’re going to go full digital, we’re only going to do email, and then the results plummeted, and they couldn’t figure out why,

because 78% of the records didn’t have email address, so the data the system didn’t support the strategy. Right now, I’m not saying the strategy was right or wrong. I keep direct mail because direct mail is still very valid, but that’s a whole other webinar, right? But going to a full digital strategy was not supported by the data here. Once we did this, once we audited the data and knew that we only had 78% or 78% didn’t have email, that changed our approach our system, and we started capturing more emails, right? We went into a very proactive mode of capturing more emails, and we produced a really good impact report, newsletter that donors started to really love, that increased our email acquisition rate, that increased our ability to contact via email. We got more permissions to solicit by email. It took us a couple of years, but we did get there.

Okay. The point being is we often make assumptions about what we can and can’t do without really knowing what is in our data. So I encourage you to look into a database audit to find how many of your records are solicitable. How many can you contact? What are you losing or not losing? And knowing that as you start out, it also gives you a good look at giving history, how many of our records are giving what do those retention rates look like? Et cetera. So we’re covering a lot of things in terms of systems. I did want to touch on the value of data, and looking at data audits and really knowing what you have as part of that system, of helping to set goals. Because if you don’t know where you’ve been, how can you know where you’re going.

Okay? So we set goals. Then step two, we define the process.

W Edwards Deming, if you don’t describe what you’re doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing. I know it’s a little harsh, but have you ever been in that moment where somebody asked you what you do and you’re like, well, well, it’s this, but it’s complicated in this, and this isn’t right. So being able to define the process is extremely helpful in defining what we do. How does what we do get done? Right? If, again, we’re increasing our donor retention rate, well, how do we get thank you letters out now, if the number one thing that affects retention rate is a thank you letter. How does that happen now? Is it? Is it? Are we leaving it to chance? Is it as soon as somebody can get it? Are we not contacting donors because we’re afraid our data quality is so bad, but we’ll get to it, because data is hard, right? But we’re going to make assumptions, figure out where the stumbling blocks are and remove them, and also remember that people are part of the system.

People First. In any system, people come first. Can they do? Can they do it? Yes, job performance, sure. But buy in in strategic planning. And I teach strategic planning to graduate students, and the one, the number one thing that we find in successive strategic planning is buy in. You can have the greatest plan in the world, but if everybody isn’t bought in, the plan is going to go nowhere. The same thing is true with systems. If you’re if the person who’s responsible for data entry doesn’t understand the importance of it, and that accurate data entry is the thing on which everything hinges, and they have tremendous responsibility there, and they’re bought into making sure that it’s accurate. It’s a much different story than Hey, we’re just getting the data in as faster we can. Systems are interconnected processes that achieve a goal and will fault in one process can affect another or the entire system. How often can fundraising fall apart simply because of bad data, or thank you letters not getting out. Or, I know a lot of organizations that that don’t send out thank you letters because they don’t trust the receiving process, because the data isn’t accurate. This is where you start to think,

oh no, oh Jessica, oh, that breaks my heart, that that is an uncomfortable conversation, right? This is where, so I told you before, don’t think cause effect. Think system. This is where we start to think cause effect. Process Mapping create the visual workflows, gain an understanding of how things are operating. These do not have to be formal, right? Your vision, you’re just trying to visualize how it goes. You and your team, everybody that you work with, volunteers, etc. You’re using this process mapping to bring clarity to reduce confusion and find out where things go. I don’t care if you do it on post it notes and, you know, ripped out spiral paper, as long as you take the time to visualize and see where things go, you start to see where people are missing it, where the bottlenecks are, where things are not where things are not going. Things are not going the way that you think they are. I’m hearing a couple people say they can’t see the full screen. I didn’t see anything on my end. Change, but pipe in if you’re not able to see the screen. Let me the full screen. Let me know,

right? So don’t spend too much time, unless you’re that kind of person I am, like, I love a good flow chart, right? So don’t spend too much time on this, but do take the time to map it out, to visualize and to see where how things work and where you can fix it. Then step three, optimize your tools, right? Technology should improve your life, not become your life. And I, you know,

tech, I’m not a tech guy by nature, and it can be a little daunting, but like our colleagues at DonorPerfect, there’s a lot of investment in the world now in making tech easier to understand and easier to access and and they don’t know that I’m going to say this, but I am going to say it because I can. But in my experience, DonorPerfect has the best customer service in the field, and like DonorPerfect, CS reps are

and do a fantastic job of being responsive, at least they have for for me and my clients in the organizations I’ve been with. So don’t.

To reach out to the to the folks that run your tech, because they’re there to help you all in this. There’s a huge conversation on Das, which I love, right? And I couldn’t follow it all because it was going so fast, but a couple of people, have you reached out? Have you asked? Yeah, exactly right. Define what is it working? Is it a tech fall? Is it a flaw in tech, or is it a system process error? Because I’ll be honest, you can make any tech work the way you need it to. I was famous another software platform before DonorPerfect existed, so no offense there, but in another software platform, I kept going into trainings, and people would say, Clay, that’s not what it’s built to do. I’m like, Yeah, but I need it to oh, I tricked it right? Is, is the tech slot, or is it the system itself? And can you get the tech to do what you need it to do? It’s 2025

it’s 2025 we have automation. Now. If we had automation in 1991 when I started doing this, my goodness, we’d be light years ahead in fundraising today. But automate what you can what can you set to automate and run with just a little bit of time and invest in that training to really know how things work and how they can optimize right

step three, optimize again, optimizing tools, letting the system work for you, and optimize those systems so that you’re getting scalable better donor listen, I get this in direct mail and digital fundraising all The time. You can’t scale relationships. Sure you can, sure you can personalization. Is

they ask me when I join a is it t Clay or Clay? Well, in writing, it’s T Clay. In verbalizing, it’s Clay. The T is silent.

The number of letters I get to Thomas, all the time, all the time, tells me you don’t know me. You took my name off my name off my credit card, not what I filled out on your form, right? Let your systems work for you to develop that personalization, personalization in the closeness with with donors and with your communities. Consistency is critical in setting up systems. Right? Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose and of action. Bruce Springsteen, come on the boss, everybody in your world, right is built on our job as fundraisers, is about our donors in our community. Are we standardizing? Is every donor getting the same experience? Are we developing routines? Is everybody following the same routine, and is everybody doing it? Are we following up. Do we have consistent processes? I used to say all the time in social media, Well, should we be on LinkedIn? Should we be on Tiktok? Should we be on here? Should? Yes, you should, if you can do it and do it well, because one of the worst things is to commit, to say you’re going to commit to doing a donor newsletter, and you send it out once, and then you don’t do it again. That’s almost worse than not doing it at all. Somebody asked earlier about donor surveys in 2025 simple donor surveys and information from ask them, What do you want to receive? How often do you want to what do you want us to call you? Simple as that, when we say you send you a letter that says, Dear so and so, what do you want the so and so to say? We love giving our our opinions. I referenced the fundraising philosopher T swift earlier. Now I’m going to reference the other great fundraising philosopher of our time, pit bull, who said, you know, ask for money, get advice. Ask for advice. Get money twice. It’s the same thing with donors, right? We love to give advice. We love to be asked what we need and who we are, right? Thanks, Joanne. I appreciate you getting it right and who we are and bring that forward, right? Really building you can scale relationships, if you’re building routines and systems that support it and assigning clear roles and responsibilities, it does take sometimes, sometimes to set consistent workflows. To set the system, you might have to set a few plates down for a little while. You might have to let a few balls drop for a little while. But the investment in this system to fix this one thing is going to pay dividends beyond right, what this immediate need is right,

consistent workflows, letting the system work for you, establishing dependent processes. And then the final step of building better systems is monitoring, adjusting and celebrating. So you’re regular, reviewing what is happening. Our goal is to increase donor retention by 10% by December 31 well, you can’t say that in January and then not look at it again until December. So every month, what’s our donor retention doing? What are we doing towards that goal? How is is the system working, checking in with the team? Are we getting that letters? How many of you all hate the phrase wet signature? It’s like the word moist oh, it just goes up my back. But wet signatures, right? We want to send a hard signature, a written signature, to donors at a certain level. How many of you do that and let her sit on somebody’s desk for

until they go out because somebody didn’t have time to sign them, because somebody wanted to write individual notes. And we applaud, we applaud the personalization. But.

The timing of it takes forever, okay, Oh, somebody’s I gotta, I gotta. I got an angry emoji. Um, good for you. Marianne, appreciate you signing that. Hey, what would happen if you just put one thing in between, right when you get the wet signature and the gift? What if you happen if you put in a letter in between? I did this at one organization was huge. Within 24 to 48 hours, we got out a letter that said, Dear Jack. Just wanted to let you know that we we have received your gift. We are deeply grateful. There was a huge shout of gratitude here at the office. In the next few days, you’ll get a more formal acknowledge. You’ll get a thank you letter and a warm, fuzzy thank you letter, letter. You’ll get your receipt that you can use for taxes. Those are all coming, but right now, we just wanted to say it’s received. We’re putting it to work, and we thank you. Got it out in 40 days. Everybody was happy. It meant we could send those wet signature letters once a month, right? We didn’t have to send those out regularly, because we had had one point of communication, and we discovered that that was much easier to do than trying to merge the gift receipt information and all that, and holding that up and then waiting for signatures. We just got a general letter out. We got it. We received it. We’re putting it to work. Thank you. Boom, right, staying flexible and adjusting your strategies based on what you want to do and what real time donor behavior, and above all, celebrate the small wins, right? Somebody does a great job at gift entry one day. Good Lily. Call, yes, yes, absolutely. Call, within 24 to 40 hours. That’s great. Um, do you know you can turn your handwriting into a font? You can, there’s a there’s a program. You go online, and you can write out all the letters, and it’ll turn your handwriting into a font. And I happen to have the PMS colors for Bic blue pen. You’re

not fooling anybody that you printed it. But still, it’s close enough that people anyway, right? Celebrating those small wins. What are those things along the way? Somebody comes in and goes, Did you know you can turn your handwriting into a font, and we’ve got handwritten Good, good. Yep, exactly right. We can turn our handwriting into font, and we can sign it in blue, and we can get this out. Celebrate that. Celebrate the person that’s getting the soft credits fixed. Take the time to celebrate and acknowledge and encourage, because this can’t all be heavy, hard work as well as we build it.

So again, letting the system work for you, insights at your fingertip, et cetera. So how do we bring this all together? Well, work smarter, not hard, by focusing on the systems. You’re creating a support structure that’s amplifying your efforts. Again, working smarter, not harder. They’re setting you up if you if you focus on the systems and get them fixed, you can let them run while you do what you do best, building relationships, telling stories, inspiring generosity. Get out there and do what brought you into this business to begin with, which is changing the world, and let the data and the systems in this, all of those processes work for you by taking the time now to invest in them, and then you can go do right? You have to tweak them and keep them focused. But so in my best Gen X mode, which reminds me to go back to the generational question. So Princess Bride fans, anybody out there? Let me explain. Nope, there’s too, too much. Let me sum up, right? Think system, not cause and effect, unless you’re working on a process, take the time to make the system work for you. Be proactive, not reactive. Find out what systems are holding you up and fix them. And think about what would you do if you spent less time fighting broken systems? Just pick let me pick on data. If you had good quality data that you could rely on for reporting, for messaging, for all of that, what would you do with that time that you didn’t have to spend editing your letters or fixing salutations or all of that? Right? Stacy, that’s just good parenting right there. That’s just good parenting introducing them to Princess Bride. Bravo. You think about how much time you could spend showing people the Princess Bride versus fighting bad data, right? So what do you do next? Well, this is going to be a shameless plug DonorPerfect. I don’t think claimed this exactly, but it did work out really well. Cherian Koshi is one of my best friends, frequent collaborators. He is chair of the Clay Buck needs help board of directors,

and cherians coming on, I think, in the next two weeks, to do two sessions for DonorPerfect on creating personalized, scalable donor journeys. That’s one system. Cherian is brilliant at this. So in a way, I just kind of gave you the 10,000 foot view. Cherrian is going to go in and with those webinars, and this workbook that they’ve just released is going to go into the detail of just one on personalized, scalable donor journeys. It’s going to be phenomenal follow up with that. It’s one system that you can run. This is the thing you’ve got 20,000 things wrong in your shop. Let’s be honest, there’s 20,000 things that you need to do. Pick one,

pick one. You can’t do it all. It’s okay. Fix one thing

1. Make time for cherrian. Download the guide. Breathe. You’ve got this. I saw a little bit there in the chat. There’s a little bit of stress.

Going on. We’re all under it. I am I am burnt to a crisp. I am burnt out. But breathe. You got this, and you’ve got people like me, like doing a perfect like Cherian, like others, cheering you on, supporting you, believing that fundraising is the most important work that we do, and that you there on the front lines of doing it, are doing critically important work for our communities, for the people that we serve. Don’t hesitate to lean on your support group. Remember that what you do is important fix your systems to work for you, and do not hesitate to reach out to me, to DonorPerfect, as I said, to people in your support work network, even if it’s just any connect, I just need to breathe for a minute. I just am not feeling great today. And somebody there will, I promise, cheer you on. Beth McGorry, I know is in the chat today, and if you follow Beth on social media, Beth is one of the greatest encouragers in the world. So Beth, sorry to call you out, but I know that you’ll be there to cheer on your fellow fundraisers as well, and don’t hesitate to reach out to me if I can be helpful to you. I have set up a code for those of you that attended today. If you want a copy of the fundraisers planner, we’re about to sell out of this edition of it, so you can get it now for just 25 bucks, which is like $40 off. If you go to fundraisingplanner.com DonorPerfect 2025. Is the code. We’ll get it to you, and that does include shipping. But don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

Don’t hesitate to reach out to DonorPerfect. Come to the next webinars, the generational question,

if I remember correctly, look at what. Look at what the donor.

Kevin Schulman at donor. Voice just posted some stuff about generational giving on LinkedIn and on the donor voice blog, check out that blog. It’s a great resource talking about generational information. We can talk more about that as well. Yes. Ross, donor questionnaires do work to motivate asking somebody why they gave again, that pit bull advice. And Sarah, thanks for the question. The strategic planning course that I teach is a university course at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, there are some great, great, great, great, great resources online, on strategic planning courses. I will gladly share my opinions with you, but also encourage you to look out some of the look out for some of those online as well. Happy to answer any questions I’m I can hang out for a little bit if need be. But so grateful for you all being here. Thanks for the great conversations, and I’ll look forward to seeing you again soon and at Jerry and again soon, and at cherian’s webinar in a couple

weeks. Okay, so we’ll see if we have any other questions that pop in.

Well, the last one, Sarah just asked if you’ll be receiving the recording. And yes, that’s going out along with the slides,

but as we close out and Clay, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. It is always a sign of a great presentation. When the chat is just constantly buzzing. It was non stop and it was it was great. You you had them hooked, you really did. And I’m confident that everybody is going to walk away with some valuable insights and some actionable takeaways. It was, it was really a great presentation, and you see in the chat that they all say the same thing. I feel like,

Tracy, Tracy, whatever. Anyway. Go home. Go home.

Are you still here? Yes, right.

All right. It looks like, I don’t think I see Sandra’s asking. The reference that I made was Kevin Schulman at donor. Voice, he posted on LinkedIn, if you go to donor, if you, if you just Google donor voice, it’ll come up and you’ll see a blog post that he just recently did on generational

gaming. Okay, I keep saying somebody had asked about, please talk more about soft credits. I’ll talk about soft credits like all day long.

Yep, yep. We had some people helping out in the chat about that, tracking it and doing a perfect Yeah. So, yeah, okay, have coffee next time, so I’ll be better motivated. Thanks, Randy. You don’t want me on more caffeine.

You all are wonderful. Appreciate what you do, and thank you for having me. This was a real joy, a pleasure. Oh, well, we hope to have you again soon. This is great, and thank you for taking up the next few I think it’s going to be a great series for q1 I’ll be here for sure.

All right, great. All right. Well, thank you everybody, and I hope you have a great afternoon. I think everybody should be afternoon by now.

Yeah, yeah, well, how about a great day? Everybody have a great day. Take care. Everybody. All right, thank you. Thank you. Bye.