Growth Tips for New and Beginner Fundraisers

0:01  

To get started, yes. Right if you are. All right, great. Hey everybody, how’s it going? Welcome. We’re so excited to chat with you today. My name is Julia. And this is Emily. And we’re Read More

0:01  

To get started, yes. Right if you are. All right, great. Hey everybody, how’s it going? Welcome. We’re so excited to chat with you today. My name is Julia. And this is Emily. And we’re gonna go ahead and get started. Yes, hello, good afternoon. I’m really excited about this topic today. So we are bringing you some growth tips for new and beginning fundraisers. And this is in tandem with a nonprofit growth kit that we recently released, that you’ll be able to order. It’s free, it’s completely free. And it was ordered at the end of this webinar. And it includes some really helpful resources and really encouraging resources to kind of guide you through your journey as a new fundraiser. I’m really excited about this, in particular, because we both been in your shoes, and we’ll tell you a bit more about our backgrounds later. But on both Julia and I are former fundraisers with them a fair amount of experience. So this came from our experience in the field, and it came from knowing what you’re all going through. And so I’m really excited to share this with you and hope that you find it useful, helpful and encouraging.

1:02  

So today, just to kind of guide you through our session together, we’re going to start out by getting to know you a little bit better, I’ve got a few polls to get a feel for where you are in your fundraising journey. And then we’ll start by going through the nonprofit growth kit, things like tips on how to learn all the lingo. I’m sure it feels like you’re just swimming in a lot of new vocabulary, how to get the tools that you need, how to determinate and what those tools are, how to gather your squad. So these This includes people like your professional network, as well as champions for your cause. How to evaluate your programs, after you’ve maybe put in a year or two and kind of see where you’re standing, see how you might want to grow, how to plan your fundraising and especially your stewardship. I recommend that everybody be a stewardship poor word shop, but we can get get to that later ways to set goals that are ambitious and achieved and attainable in a way that doesn’t have you feeling like you’re comparing yourself to massive nonprofits who have a lot more experience than you do. But still feel good ways to keep growing. And then we will gladly take any questions, both throughout the presentation and at the end. So please feel free to pop any questions in that question box and we will keep an eye on them. But if we do miss them, we’ll during the presentation what we’ll come back to them for sure.

2:15  

Yeah, definitely. Just so you all know, Emily and I, as she mentioned, we both were former fundraisers, but we’re also on the same team. And we’re friends. And so our goal for today is to really have a conversation not only between the two of us, but also with you as Emily mentioned, you can put your questions in the question box. We’ll try to answer them in real time so that we can have a conversation again, not only between the two of us, also with you all. My name is Julia Goggin. Beck. I’m the Communications Manager here at DonorPerfect. We’re so excited for you all to join us today to talk about some growth tips and some ways that your nonprofit can take new steps to grow and to figure out what’s next for you. And we’re going to help with some of our own insight. As mentioned, we both were part of nonprofits. I was a development director. Prior to that I worked in many other roles in nonprofits as I’m sure many of you have as well. Sometimes you kind of end up in a role that you didn’t expect. One of my roles was like planning conferences, and Italy. I live in Florida. I don’t know why I was planning conferences in Italy. But that’s kind of how it works, right? Sometimes you just put on a hat that you didn’t know you’re supposed to put on. So today we’re going to try and walk through some easy things that you can start implementing and from our own experience, so we’re excited to start the conversation with you. Oh, absolutely. So yes, my name is Emily’s ASIC. And I’m a writer with DonorPerfect. But before I joined the donor, perfect team, I was a fundraiser for about 10 years. And I’ve done everything from administrative support to events, to annual giving stewardship to grateful patient, fundraising, pretty much everything but being a development director. So Julia, and I kind of have all of your potential roles kind of covered with our variety of experience. And what I’ve found, because I’ve worked from shops, ranging from all volunteer squads, to big time universities. And I’ve found that these principles, these kinds of essentials of fundraising really apply no matter where you’re at what you’re doing, what nonprofit you’re with, it’s really about, you know, building those donor relationships, learning what makes them saying and how to do that. So I’m hopeful that this is going to be a really useful presentation for you. All.

4:26  

Right, so let’s kick things off with a few polls. I just want to see how you’re feeling both about funding or about fundraising, about professional development and how you find information. So let’s start. This should pop up on your screen. How prepared Do you feel to succeed in your role as a fundraiser,

4:44  

kind of ranges from the thought of asking for money might make you really nervous to you feel just born to do this role? Let’s go give you 10 seconds to think about it and answer it I think of when I was beginning fundraising because I sort of fell into the role I would probably

5:00  

I put myself at the final answer there that the thought of asking for money really made me nervous. But I was offered a job right out of college. So of course, I took it without really thinking about what it meant for me. So oh, okay, we’ve got a good variety here. Yeah, I think this poll is a great example of some of us who kind of fell into fundraising. And we’re trying to learn as we fly the plane, whether that’s reading or trying to learn or not even being able to think about the asks yet, but trying to figure out the stewardship part, things like that. I’m excited to see what everyone in the meeting has to say about this.

5:39  

So it looks like we do still have some votes coming in. Give it a few more seconds here, but it’s a pretty good spread.

5:46  

I am so in awe of the so far 11% of you who feel like you were born to do this, like, I love ya.

5:55  

That was not me. I wish it would have been. That’s awesome. You haven’t I mean, maybe that group can stick around at the end and give some insights from their experience, too. I will schedule you for the next webinar. Yeah.

6:09  

Go ahead and close this out. So you can see the responses.

6:14  

Yeah, it looks like the majority of us still have a lot to learn. And I’m so glad you’re here. Because there are so many resources out there. So I’m really glad that we’ll be able to share this. But there’s a good a good spread here of how people feel about about your your fundraising. All right, next question. Let’s see.

6:38  

I do want to take a moment to encourage the 14% the thought of asking for money gives me hives, I think many of us have been there. And if we’re not there anymore, we were there at some point, I think it takes a lot of practice. So don’t worry that you’re going to stay and stay in that place forever. There is opportunity to learn and we understand and empathize. I remember the first time I sat down to ask somebody and I just felt so out of character. You know, like I am a very people person, I like to bond with people. And I would rather than say to me, you know, Julia, it sounds like you’re doing amazing things. I would like to give this amount of money, as opposed to me saying, Hey, we’re doing a lot of great things. Would you like to get this amount of money, but it doesn’t quite work that way. So just know that we’ve all been there. And we totally understand the breaking out in hives about asking

7:32  

you I think the first ask that I made, I felt like I was like a kid wearing my mom’s shoes. You know that feeling?

7:38  

You don’t know what’s going on? And you got to clump it around. Alright, I’m ready for this next poll here. How do you find your information? If you have questions, particularly curious to see what your go to resources are? If you have any, if you just sort of blindly Google around, which is often what I would do,

7:56  

you turn to any specific colleagues, like if you’re at a more established nonprofit, gosh, one of my work moms, I would call her my work mom, she is who I would always go to because she had 20 years there. So she knew where the man when when the mail came in, she knew who to ask for which favors she knew not to ask for which they are. So I found that particularly helpful personally. Yeah, that’s really and that took me a long time to learn, I didn’t have someone that had been there longer than me, especially when I stepped into my development role. So things like that sometimes just take time to learn. And that I think, you know, fundraisers are so busy all the time. So taking the time is sometimes really difficult. So Google can be really quick, to give you the meaning of a word that you’ve never heard before, or to give you some example of an ask. So that’s probably what I usually went to. But then when I went to Google, it would continually send me to the same spaces or blogs, for example, I found DonorPerfect through learning from their blogs and their ebooks and webinars and things like that. So I started to become a little bit loyal to certain places that I learned from because I was continually pointed back there.

9:11  

Same day, but I found that it helps to to kind of share with my I would share with my colleagues like what I was reading and where I had all these amazing resources that I wouldn’t have heard of, or necessarily found just by Googling.

9:24  

Because I Googled very poorly. I know there’s like Google techniques, you

9:28  

talk to people, like if a person I’m like, Excuse me, Google, can you please help me write this angle appeal?

9:34  

You’re gonna find different, you know, answers depending on how you’re Googling

9:39  

most of the votes in now. So let’s go ahead and show these results. Got a lot of avid Googlers here, but I’m glad to see everybody, not everybody but about 30 of us, turning to our colleagues and having those conversations I think those relationships with your coworkers are just critical. Yeah, that’s great. I do wonder what that 5% And none of the above

10:00  

Have feels like maybe they don’t have time or maybe they just haven’t needed to google anything yet, which maybe they’re part of that 10% That was born to this. But we’d be interested to see, yeah, what what that group of people is doing to learn? Absolutely. Which kind of, which leads us into our next question here. Just out of curiosity, more than anything, do you have a budget of time and or money for learning and professional development, because it’s really important. Even if you don’t have the budget of money, that if you have a budget of time, and you put it in your calendar, there’s so many free resources out there that are really fantastic. And we can help you find. So I’d like to, I’d like to just know, how comfortable you feel even being here.

10:47  

I snuck in here, don’t tell my boss, then there then.

10:53  

For me on this question, I don’t know if I knew the answer to this question. Early on, I think that I needed to go to my executive director and explain the things I was trying to learn and vie for time or money. So for those of you who maybe don’t know the answer to this question, or would say no, for right now, maybe there’s an opportunity to advocate for yourself, and for your donors to say, hey, I need to learn more about this, I mean, time or money, or both, to accomplish what we need, if we’re setting certain goals, and we need to learn how to do crowdfunding, or we need to be better at making the ask, there are resources out there that you can

11:38  

get to learn more about those things. But making the Astier executive director may be a little bit intimidating, because you don’t know the boundaries or something like that just yet.

11:50  

When I was first starting out, I was very lucky. My supervisor just like gifted me a book. He was like, here’s, you know how I like, here’s my fundraising philosophy, basically, in a nutshell, like read this when you have some spare time, which I took as read this when you have spare time in the office. So I left the book in the office, you know, I think that’s a very important delineation to draw that sort of work life balance, they’re super helpful. So I hadn’t thought about, you know, fundraising books before. Looks like most of our responses are in I’ll go ahead and show this.

12:21  

But we do have a lot of people who don’t have a formal professional development plan. But I think it’s great that you’re prioritizing learning and that you’re here. And you’re spending that time developing your skills and knowledge, because it’s so much more efficient to work when you have that knowledge that other people can share with you.

12:37  

Yeah, and for that 13% that I know I snuck in here. Learning is incredibly important. And I think that if you can, if you can prove that to the people around you, and you know, go into your next board meeting and explain some of the things that you’ve learned in this, maybe they’ll give you a little more space.

13:01  

Okay, so now we’re gonna get into some of the meat of this conversation, we’re going to talk about seven steps for nonprofit growth. Obviously, there are a million ways to grow your nonprofit, there are a million things that you have to learn as a new or growing organization. But we’re going to go through seven things in the next 45 minutes and try and just talk through maybe some of the things that are daunting at this point, or some of the things that you can advance a little bit to make your organization grow. So step one is learning the lingo. Now, I don’t know about you all. But there were so many times where someone used a word, I had no idea what they were talking about. Honestly, I think that happens in any company, but especially in nonprofits. And if you’ve come from somewhere that’s not nonprofits, it is like a whole new language. So we would encourage you to write down those terms that come up, if you’re in a meeting, and you’re not sure what they mean. But also remember that you’re immersing yourself in a new language, and that you can give yourself some grace. So a couple of examples. So there are nonprofit terms like 501 C three, or the I bund for capital campaign, like what’s the difference between a capital campaign and a regular campaign. There are so many phrases that nonprofits use pretty flippantly, or that you’ll hear in webinars like this one, that maybe you don’t know the meaning of them. So we encourage you to write those down and either Google them or talk to another fundraiser or someone in your circle to define those. Additionally, there might be some things in your nonprofit that are a little ambiguous. For example, I remember my first day on my nonprofit was the development director. We had a full team meeting. And in that meeting, they talked about this acronym team, but they didn’t say it was an acronym. They just kept saying, oh, yeah, we’re gonna have to do team there. And then let you know

15:00  

Then like five minutes later they go, Oh, that’s, that’s a great use of team. Like, what are you people talking about? This doesn’t make any sense. That is not how you use that. But that doesn’t make any sense. So that I wrote it down and afterwards called my boss aside and said, Hey, can you explain this team thing to me, I don’t know what it is. Turned out, it was a acronym for something. And I didn’t even know. So just encourage you to give yourself a little bit of grace. No one expects you to know all the words as soon as you get started. But for the people coming after you, we recommend you writing some of these down, maybe in a Google sheet, or maybe making like a gallery whiteboard in your office or something where you use some of these words and define them. So other people coming into your organization will know what you’re talking about when hear us team and a weird sentence, that doesn’t make any sense. And you’re not alone in the sense that maybe you don’t know what that means. Because I’m sure that if I walked into your organization, there would be a whole language that I don’t understand. Totally. And so for the nonprofit growth kit, that you’ll have the link to at the end of this presentation, we created a glossary of commonly used words across all kinds of nonprofits. So it won’t have your industry specific stuff. But it will have things that I have heard at conferences that I’ve read in blogs, just across the board vocabulary. And we also turn it into this fun little crossword so you can

16:27  

give yourself like a glass of wine. If you’re into that and learn while you relax. I love her honestly, also, wouldn’t it be interesting to give this crossword to someone else in your organization and see if you’re maybe you’re not the only one that has some questions I mentioned, Emily and I are on the same team here at DonorPerfect. And we when we onboard someone new to our team, we have a meeting. That’s a no stupid questions meeting. And we just onboard a new writer, and we had a no stupid questions meeting. And all of us brought questions to that meeting. So it wasn’t just the new writer that had questions, it was all of us. And maybe there’s some people in your organization that have some questions about the language that you’re using, or the things that they’re learning, it’s a great place to be able to start the conversation about what some of these things mean.

17:12  

Yes, and I love using like a shared Google sheet or a shared Google Doc or something that everyone in your organization can access and like add to so it’s very living, and you all just have this shared language, and it can help you really make your communications with each other more efficient. And I want to touch on too. And here’s a link to another free guide that we offer. This is the clean data checklist for nonprofits. Creating a shared language for your data is also really important. So these are things like do you use Mr ampersand Mrs. or Mr. AMD misses in your in your like appeal letters, things like that. And it makes sure that everything that goes into your CRM into your spreadsheets, however, your tracking your data is consistent, and organized and clean.

17:57  

Because your data is don’t hurt your the information that you record, the information that you use is only as clean as the data that you put in. It also encourages you to ask questions like who has access to your data, who can view your data who can actually make changes, I will warn you having done this, it’s really effective. But it is really tedious. Because it asks just really, really detailed, all the things that you need to consider are in this guide. So I recommend taking this doing it maybe a section at a time. And then sharing it far and wide with your team so that everybody has that shared digital vocabulary as well as your shared, you know, verbal vocabulary. Yeah, that’s a great point. And this, this here is a QR code. So if you scan that QR code with your phone, you’ll be able to download this white clean didn’t matter this clean data checklist. And you’ll be able to work through it. It’s a workbook that you can work through with your team. So I encourage you to scan that. And if you decide later that you’d like to scan that you’ll get a recording of this webinar and be able to scan it.

18:57  

So step two is to kind of consider what tools you need, first of all, and how to get them. So it depends on I guess your organizational structure, if you need approval for big major purchases, if you want to figure out okay, what can I do for free? What can be achieved? What should I invest in? Here are sort of the the big questions and ways to think about that, and some of our own experience shopping for the tools that we need as well.

19:24  

So where are you spending your time, I think is probably the best place to start. And where would you like to be spending your time? So I like to create just kind of like a chart, where am I spending my time right now. And if I had all the time in the world, how would I like to spend it, you know, in an ideal world, and see how those columns line up and see what the discrepancies especially in those columns are? Because if there are things in that where you’re spending your time column that don’t appear in the how you would like to spend your time or what an effective way to spend your time is, then those are the tasks that you could consider trying to automate trying to find tools for trying to even find you know, people you could hire who could help you with those

20:00  

So some examples of these kind of across, you know, the fundraising spectrum could include like an annual giving,

20:06  

create an annual appeal with different messages for members or non member donors. For major giving, you could consider seeing in your community who supports other nonprofits with related missions. Maybe you could send you’re an executive director and alert whenever a gift over a certain amount is processed. Those are things that you could automate for grants. When are your deadlines for applying reporting? Does your whole team have access to these? Are they in a shared location? And for things like auctions and events? Like, you know, we can’t automate event planning? Unfortunately, I wish we could an event planning was always the patient by existence, it was so hard.

20:42  

I mean, it was enjoyable once it was all done. But what does that planning? But how are you tracking your donated items? And, and the sales of those items? How are you creating receipts like with fair market value deducted from you know, the tax, the tax receipt for your donors, all of this stuff can be automated, it can take a lot of time and give back to you. So you can spend more time on those tasks that you are particularly interested in on perhaps even building relationships with your donors, instead of just sitting behind the computer screen and wrestling with Word.

21:18  

So some ideas for some tasks to

21:22  

Okay, so you Sorry, you use these tests to automate, kind of take that list, and then build on it. So you can build yourself a wish list that includes kind of reports that you’re particularly interested in having any useful data you might want to know. And then add ons in ways to help your nonprofit grow. So it’s less worth your while to invest in a tool now that might help you automate one thing if to redo the shopping process, once you kind of get your feet under you. So

21:53  

add ons, add ons might include things like text to give that you might not be ready for yet. But knowing that it’s an option later, is really helpful. So kind of think about things in terms of like the present moment, the immediate future and the distant future. Yeah, that’s a great point. With this particular list, I just want to share I, I actually shopped for a CRM. So management system to track my donors as when I was a development director, I went around shopping for the best CRM for my organization, watch, spoiler alert, it ended up being DonorPerfect, I had everything that I needed. But in order to be well informed, to go find DonorPerfect, I needed to know what I was looking for. So this, these three points tasks to automate, I needed my receding to be automatic. From my form, I needed to know that when somebody gave to my organization, they immediately got a thank you and a receipt that was not on me, so that they would be acknowledged within the first 24 hours, I needed a report that was sent to my executive director every week, and needed this automated report that I didn’t have to think about that my executive director got every week, because he wanted to know who gave him the last week. And if he needed to reach out to anyone, for themselves. I also had a scheduled report that was people who gave for the first time yesterday, so that I could reach out to first time givers. Today by phone, when I was in the office, I would get a report and I’d be able to call them directly. So the scheduled reports and these really robust and data reports were incredibly important to me. And then as Emily mentioned, there was some add ons like I needed text to give, we use checks to give out our events. So if I was looking for a CRM that didn’t have text again, then that wasn’t going to work for me, I needed to know the exact things that we used in day to day fundraising, in order to know what the right fit was for us. And without making that list in the first place I wouldn’t have known. So definitely encourage you to start thinking about some of these things that you do day to day that could be automated, that are deal breakers that you have to have no matter what or that your organization will grow from.

24:11  

I do think it’s worth noting, especially because when I first started fundraising, and I think that was part to do with my age, but also parts of you, I felt like I kind of had to prove myself. And that meant working really, really hard and really long hours. And there were so many things that I did myself did manually that I just didn’t have to do. You could lean on tools, nobody’s gonna know. And you can take that time and rest and like, restore yourself and,

24:35  

and take care of yourself because you have to in order to really work at the top of your resume in order to do the really like creative work in order to do the really relational work that you’re meant to be doing here. So these tools aren’t just like, ways to cut corners. I mean, they’re certainly not ways to cut corners. There are ways to support the important work that you’re doing. So I think it’s important to think of them not as like, you know, ways that you’re like

25:00  

offloading work that you should be doing, but ways to make your work grow. Really quick, Julio, we have a question. What did team mean? I saw that question. And I have to tell you, I don’t

25:14  

remember what it meant. Because after that, we switched to a different acronyms, so I don’t even remember what it was. And I’m so sorry, I can’t.

25:27  

So once you start building a list of tools that you might want to look into, it’s, I can understand how like overwhelming it is, because there’s just so many out there, we recommend just talking to a pro like poking around. If you’re looking at a CRM, which if you’re not familiar with that acronym is constituent or customer relationship manager. So it’s something like DonorPerfect that tracks you know, all of your donors, all their gifts gives you all the the donor data and the donation data that you need.

25:55  

To talk to somebody from that company like DonorPerfect, we’ve got people on our team with decades of experience, who want to help fundraisers, like you figure out exactly what you need right now that will help you without kind of overwhelming you with the things that you don’t need, depending on what stage your nonprofit is at.

26:21  

And finally, we recommend gathering data that will resonate with your board or with anybody who has buying power, especially if you don’t really have much buying power I’ve never really did when I was a fundraiser. So I would have to get anything that I wanted any tools, any, you know, professional development approved by a manager or someone who had you know, the company card. So we recommend looking at, most importantly, I think is return on investment, do the tools that you’re looking for, or that you want to invest in, have a proven track record of helping nonprofits raise more money, because at the end of the day, that is why they’re here. They can be shiny, they can give you all kinds of interesting things. But if they’re not ultimately helping you further your mission, raise more money, retain more donors gain more donors, it’s really not worth it.

27:06  

We also like looking though, at things that aren’t just dollars, so staff time, think about like automating your tasks, not just how much time you’re gonna have back in your day, but how you’re going to use that and how it’s going to even just make you feel like I feel so dead and tired. And like it even makes my eyes hurt when I have to manually you know, mess with Excel spreadsheets all day.

27:28  

But when I had something that could do that, for me automatically, oh my gosh, I went one time from spending, I think, close to an entire day building a very customized report to working with our, when I was at a university, I worked with one of our prospect researcher who helped us automate that whole report, like had little every, like customization that I needed in it. And I’ve actually used that time to talk to donors, which I loved to doing. So I felt better about going into work, I was more productive, happier, you know, all those things just kind of snowballing to each other. So that staff time piece is not just a question of minutes, but it’s also a question to morale. And then finally, how will you prove to your board that you are investing in the right tools, maybe think of a few more categories, in addition to the ROI and the staff time to to evaluate these things? are we retaining more donors year after year since we started using this tool?

28:22  

How does it have like it has our staff? What’s the word I’m looking for? How does our staff feel about their day to day lives about their jobs since we started using this tool, and is there an improvement, and I think your your board or whoever is making those buying decisions will be just as invested as you are, if you you know come prepared with with this information. Oh, and before I forget, the nonprofit growth kit will include a buyer’s guide for specifically CRMs. But it’s a way to think about other tools as well. And Google presentation that you can use, make a copy and adapt and use it for your board. It’s got a whole bunch of useful data and compelling talking points that can help you get the tools that you need to succeed.

29:09  

Okay, now we’re going to talk about the next step. So we talked about learning the lingo and knowing the tools that you need. Now we’re going to talk about gathering your squad. I know for me, I felt a little bit alone. When I started in my role. As I mentioned, there wasn’t anybody that I was directly replacing. We were a small team, there was no one else focused on development other than my role. So I felt very, like a one person show. But there are some options for some people that can go on your squat. So we’re going to talk about that. For a few examples would be an industry friend or confidant. So maybe you came from another nonprofit to work at the nonprofit you’re at or to start the nonprofit you’re at. Talk to the person that started the last nonprofit you were a part of or talk to the person that was your boss.

30:00  

At the last nonprofit, and now you can talk more as peers, you can say, Hey, how did you learn this? Or how did you learn that to really, you know, sharpen one another, and maybe to bring you to a new learning level, we also think, talking to a fundraiser with a unique expertise. So maybe there’s a, you know, the maybe there’s a foundation I had, my organization was in kind of a complex and across the street, there was this foundation. And I haven’t really worked with foundations prior to my role

30:34  

as a development director, so I walked across the street and talk to these people that really knew a lot about foundations. And they taught me how to connect with people who give through a foundation or how to work directly with the foundation to do events or get our name out there or things like that. So I was able to find a unique expertise that I had no knowledge of that, and they were able to bring me in, you can also talk to a mentor that you can go to with tough questions. And this doesn’t only mean, nonprofit people, maybe you have a mentor that you can just talk to and say, Hey, I have this really difficult decision at work. How would you address this in your, you know, corporate job, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have any knowledge about solving problems or about getting through things. You don’t need to only talk to people in the nonprofit sector. And then lastly, donor or board member. This is for other nonprofits, but also for your own nonprofit, maybe those people can help speak into, Hey, did that event work? Well, maybe not. Or if they’re a donor for another nonprofit, maybe ask, you know, what, what? Got you to give what spurred you to give in the first place? Did you go to an event? Did you hear from a friend? How did you get involved with that organization, so just know that as you’re building your squad, maybe right now, it’s just you, maybe you just started this organization a year ago, you have no staff, you have no board that you don’t know what’s going on. But there are people in the world that can come alongside of you, you are not alone, you do not have to be on an island, there are people that can come alongside of you.

32:13  

And I think just personally of all of these, I mean, they’re all super valuable people to have in your professional network. But I feel like my work life really improved when I started making industry friends. And my personal life kind of improved to because I could you know, I had someone who didn’t work for my nonprofit, but who understood what I was going going through that I could, you know, go out for tacos with and just kind of vent or celebrate or whatever work related thing was going on, who got what I was experiencing, and then I didn’t take that like gunk comb.

32:45  

So I find that I think you know, someone that you can zoom while you step forward packets or prep event folders, or whatever it is just having someone who has your back is invaluable. These are people that I’ve met, like at conferences and things so you can now find people who know what you’re going through and then build that core network that way. Great point. So there are also some champions that you can rally around your cause. So previously, we talked to kind of about the people that you can have rallying around you. But what about the people who really are champions for your cause, so you can create guidelines for your board members. And that doesn’t only mean financial guidelines, maybe there are some guidelines of we need you to volunteer at our food pantry for four hours a month, or we need you to speak at a event once a year or or there’s some kind of guideline for their involvement. When it comes to networking or when it comes to getting the word out. You can also lean on skilled volunteers, your volunteers that don’t have to be the ones putting up the house. Maybe they are grant writers, maybe they have a great network of people who can help you understand zoning, if you’re trying to build a home or build a new office or something maybe they have knowledge about things like that you wouldn’t know at all. So leaning on skilled volunteers not only for the front work, but also for being sure that you’re using their skills, like writing or knowing the right people, things like that. And then lastly, crowdfunding and peer to peer fundraising. This is leaning on your current loyal donors, maybe they are giving their max capacity of giving you know, so there’s definitely boundaries and then what people are able to give. But there’s not really boundaries and people being able to use a platform to get your word out. So doing something like crowdfunding or peer to peer will help your loyal givers to give beyond their financial means, but be able to give networking or platform means which is a great way to rally some champions that I just want to know too especially on leaving on the skilled volunteers. So

35:00  

Other places that I worked for our leadership, were kind of hesitant to ask for things like pro bono legal counsel or grant writing, you know, they wanted to, like hire those people and have in house people. But when I was helping, you know, I’ve helped friends who have started nonprofits, or who are, you know, beginning on staff with very new nonprofits when they’ve asked me to help with grants, like they have final say in the content. And I felt really good that they came to me and asked, so like, that’s one of those asks that, I feel like it’s a good way to kind of practice asking, generally, because the gift of time is a little less like intimidating than asking for gifts of money. So if you’re kind of nervous about asking for gifts, try asking for volunteer time first and kind of making your about potential volunteers feel really good about the work that they do.

35:47  

Because they know that you trust them, you know that you’re coming to them, asking for this very important thing. I think it feels great as a donor of time personally. That’s a great point.

35:59  

So next up for this fourth step, we’re going to talk about evaluating your programming, which is more from a fundraising perspective, that it’s possible that you know, you’re a one person show and you are doing everything. But at least in most of the places I worked, I was fundraising strictly. And there were program officers or people delivering how to programs who were separate. But we worked really closely to make sure that we could

36:22  

deliver news about you know, how well the programs were doing, inform our donors, what growth could look like, and make sure that we’re working in lockstep to keep

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everyone who’s supporting your organization fill off landfill, philanthropically

36:40  

informed, happy and inspired.

36:45  

So some questions that you can ask yourself, and some things that you can report out on to your donors could include things like a whole bunch of quantitative data. So how many beneficiaries Did you serve in the past year? What was your most successful fundraising activity? And what programs or activities could you consider cutting that might not have done as well as the others, or replacing them with something else for next year? I feel like this is the way we’ve always done it is my least favorite phrase in the English language. It always made me so angry when I worked at, um, when I worked in nonprofits. So I think that that’s a really important, you know, just because an activity didn’t work. I mean, it means you took a risk and you learned something. I think that cutting programs isn’t necessarily always a bad thing. It can be a fruitful thing, it can be a strategic thing, too.

37:35  

You could also follow up with beneficiaries after they receive your services with if it’s appropriate, if it makes sense, with surveys and things like asking, say you’re an adult literacy organization, you could try asking your alumni, if they’re employed, or if how they feel about you know, living more independently since receiving tutoring, and translate that into data that you can share with your donors.

38:00  

So qualitative data could include things like beneficiary testimonials, I don’t think there’s anything more powerful than hearing directly from somebody who was impacted by your nonprofit.

38:12  

But it goes beyond that, too. You can collect stories from donors, I think that, um, people often forget how good it feels to give. And when a donor shares that wonderful giving experience that could inspire a whole bunch of other people to participate in a philanthropic way, as well. And then finally, volunteer impact. So this could also be quantitative, you know, number of hours, etc.

38:35  

But it could also be something like, I had a volunteer at a movie theater, or nonprofit movie theater, I worked at who that was how she learned English was coming to the movie theater, practicing her English. And everyone really benefited from that. So I think there’s lots of ways to think about how your nonprofit is benefiting your community that you can translate into this kind of data that will inspire and engage your donors.

39:04  

Then I’d like to take these

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data few data points and translate them into sort of what what are my dreams for my mission?

39:14  

Kind of like pie in the sky very long term, like I had suddenly had unlimited resources, what would I do first? What would I do in 10 years? All that good stuff. And then I like to think about how I can get there in a way that is more methodical and strategic and makes sense, but isn’t overwhelming.

39:31  

Are there any groups of people that you aren’t helping yet, but my life to? It is really important to stick with your mission now? Like, it’s not up to you, it’s not up to your nonprofit to change the whole world and helping even one person is so worthwhile.

39:44  

But maybe you could expand and if you didn’t expand, what would that look like?

39:48  

What kind of space serves your needs best? This could be, you know, a traditional building, it could be a pop up space, it could be a van or a tent, like totally creative. Are there other organizations that you can partner

40:00  

Within sharespace, so there’s lots of

40:02  

ways to think about how to accomplish these long term dreams. But most importantly, for the how to get there, I think it’s important to recruit board members who will best help you create an execute this strategic plan. So think about people with like a wide variety of experience.

40:20  

And a variety of you know, energy levels and time they can give. You’ll love people who are dedicated, but even sometimes having, you know, one consultation session with like, a total expert in something that you need is really, really valuable. And serving on a board is also beneficial for the board members themselves, both emotionally and like socially, and all kinds of things. So building your dream strategic board, I think, is the most important part of helping you get to to, to these long term successes. Yeah, and just to piggyback off of all three of the slides, Emily really mentioned the because we’ve always done it this way. That’s the point of this. Lee evaluating your programming. You know, many of you are just starting out, maybe you’ve been around for a year, maybe some of you have been around for five years, or 10 years. No matter how long you’ve been around, you want to take a moment to say is this working? And to just double check, if what you’re doing is aligning with what you intended to do from the beginning. It’s never too early and it’s never too late to really evaluate those things.

41:32  

So now we’ll talk about step five, which is my favorite step. But just to recap, so step one was to learn the lingo. We talked about knowing what’s being said, Step two was about deciding on your tools and knowing what you need and why. Step three is building your squad who’s going to be with you and who can you lean on in step four is reevaluating your programming, knowing where you’re headed. And now step five is to plan your stewardship and your fundraising and stewardship. This is how you get to where you’re going. This is the how part after we’ve talked about the who and the why, and the what you’re doing all those things. This is the house. So we’ll talk a little bit about the fundraising journey here. This the donor journey example, some of you may or may not have a donor journey written out. I know I sat down about 15 times and tried to write out a donor journey and I had so many arrows and somebody offshoots and somebody exit ramps and on ramps all over my donor journey. This is very easy, simple donor journey. So let’s just talk through it real quick. The first step is identification. This is

42:39  

acquiring new donors donor acquisition, step two cultivation, what really inspires your donors is building the relationship with your donors and your prospects. Step three is making the ask through solicitation. But being sure that you’re asked aligns with why your donors are giving, which is informed in the cultivation stage. And then the last step is stewardship. Making sure that you’re not treating your donors like an ATM, that you’re stewarding your donors building relationship with them, thanking them, it’s very important to show the impact that they’re giving. So we want you to either evaluate if you already have one of these, or create one of these and make sure that each of the steps is checked off in some way. How are you identifying new donors? How are you cultivating relationships with those donors? What are your solicitations look like? And what is your stewardship look like? This is different for any organization. So we encourage you to create something like this.

43:34  

What I like to do too, and it kind of depends on your budget, even your personal budget, I would sometimes just give $5 to organizations that matter to me, but I was mostly just curious to see what they were sending people. So I would be sort of like a spy donor.

43:50  

Take ideas and see what works, see what doesn’t

43:53  

in the real world. So you could do that. Or you could ask people in your life who who give them support nonprofits and see like, what does that look like for them like when they make the gift and then what happens and if they like it? So you can definitely yeah, take ideas from an inspiration from other nonprofits, there’s plenty of ideas to go around.

44:19  

So we also want to recommend starting a monthly giving program. Maybe some of you already have this, but sometimes it seems a little daunting to start a new fundraising program. However, our monthly giving program is quite easy to set up. Especially if with DonorPerfect we have these specific forms that are for monthly giving and you can give the option that someone is either giving a monthly gift or giving a first time gift and just by setting up that form you have now set up a monthly giving program. You can see the stats on this page 770 4.6% of monthly donors are retained. That is a huge retention rate compared to one time givers and the average annual

45:00  

monthly giving our the average annual giving for monthly donor is over $1,600, which I didn’t have many, I had some that I didn’t have many one time gifts that were over $1,600. So that’s a very valuable donor, even if they’re giving 20 bucks a month, 30 bucks, not whatever they’re giving, if they’re being retained and their annual gift ends up being maybe more than some of your one time givers.

45:27  

And this data comes from DonorPerfect users that I know that among DonorPerfect users to the retention rate for one time donors is about 43%, which is still a bit higher than industry average. But like compared to, you know, 43% to 70, almost 75 is kind of a no brainer. I know personally, another Millennials like me to like, I don’t know that I would be a little giver anywhere without monthly giving, I love that I can set it and forget it, I love that it fits in my budget,

45:53  

it feels like a way that I can make a meaningful difference that doesn’t,

45:57  

you know, really have a big negative impact on my life.

46:02  

I also want to point out too, that I’ve had monthly givers who also make another gift at the end of the year. These people are effectively you know, the people who select monthly giving are effectively you know, raising their hand and saying, Hey, like, I like what you’re doing, I want to flex supply sustainably. And you’re something I care about enough to be an item in my budget every single month. So they’re your, they’re your best people to go to for volunteers, they’re your best people to go to court plan giving prospects. And then even to make an additional ask at the end of the year, they’re really, it’s a good way to find the wonderful people who are really into your mission, but might not be to give a large gift in one lump sum claim. We also want to talk a little bit about multi channel approach. Here are some examples of multiple ways you can communicate with your donors. One size does not fit all with your donors. They are unique individuals who like to hear from you in different ways. Maybe you have someone in your database that

47:02  

has been giving to you for

47:06  

three years, and they only give through your direct mail, they only mail back that little envelope that’s placed in those direct mail, thanks, you never get an online gift from them. You never get them at an event. That’s the only way they give. But what if you have somebody else in your database that only gives that events you have to be in front of them, you have to explain to them the importance of their giving. Those are two very different asks. So we just want to encourage you to really tap into a multi channel approach and to use multiple ways to communicate with your givers.

47:41  

Absolutely, and kind of in that like vein of working smarter and not harder, you can have the same core message for every single one of these things and just tweak it and adapt it for each each channel. It also helps you reach the same person more than once and kind of stick in their brain a little bit. So if I say only give through direct mail, but I might see your ad on social media, and it might kind of remind me Oh yeah, that letter is in my my box, I need to go fill out that return envelope. Great point.

48:10  

All right. So Step six is to set ambitious but attainable goals that make sense for your nonprofit. And that makes sense for your mission. I found that if I was working at a small nonprofit that had you know, maybe four people on staff and we would see something like MacKenzie Scott giving a billion dollars to some giant organization or whoever and actually doesn’t really support giant organizations, that it could feel a little disheartening or it could feel like Am I really making a difference but when you compare yourself to yourself, and when you compare yourself and set benchmarks based on you know, other similarly sized similarly focused nonprofits,

48:48  

you’ll improve both your morale and your your results too.

48:53  

So I just touch on Yeah, comparison being the thief of joy, but not at the pick the right benchmarks. So to really focus on your own data, things like how much did you raise last year? What’s your average over the last, you know, five years or however long you’ve been in business? Were there any messages that particularly resonated with your daughters, any appeals that really worked? And did you take any risks with your strategy? And did they pay off and how are always to review your past activities and then consider what you might want to do in the future as a way to set your goals. But if this is your first year, and you are brand new, you can use industry averages as your benchmarks and there they should be pretty, pretty good for useful for you. I’d also recommend considering any outliers, I think, the pandemic through everyone’s fundraising for a variety of loops. I worked for a hospital system during the pandemic. So our fundraising numbers were through the roof but my friends who worked at arts organizations were really struggling. And so to compare pre pandemic and post pandemic just didn’t really make a lot of sense. So if you are using your own data to set benchmarks, try using a year that is similar to the one that you’re anticipating or the one that you

50:00  

Currently, that’s a great play. I’ve I came across that with a GivingTuesday campaign. You know, we did GivingTuesday for three years. And for those first three years, we were really focused on the amount that was given, we wanted to hit a certain monetary goal. But then for the fourth year, we decided we wanted to hit a goal for new givers. And so our our Ask was only $2. So as a very, very low

50:29  

fundraising year, but it was a high year for new givers. So comparing those two things would be very difficult because I would be comparing a year that we really focused on raising a lot of money versus a year where we really focused on new donors, those reports would not be comparing the same thing. And one would look like a massive failure because we didn’t raise as much as the year before. But we got 100 New givers. And that’s a huge deal. So trying to balance those, as Emily mentioned, those outliers and making sure you’re comparing the right things to things that are the same.

51:07  

salutely also like to inform, I think it’s important to inform your goals with your own data at a more granular level to so check out how each fundraising activity has performed over the last few years, and see how they’ve changed. So this is just some numbers I made up. But they would include things like maybe you hired a grant writer in 2020. And they got their first grant 2021. And they really hit their stride in 2022. So you can kind of see how that program is growing and how you can maybe you want hire another grant writer, because that’s going really well. Or maybe your email has kind of dropped off with it. Maybe you’re not engaging with your donors as well via email, maybe you’re ending up in more spam boxes, that sort of thing. So it’s very helpful, I think, to see not just the total number of dollars, but how you’re raising each of those dollars, and what those trends look like to help inform your goals and activities for the future.

52:03  

Just to answer the question, the chat, yes, we will be sending a recording. So do not cry. If you missed a point, it’ll be in your inbox.

52:15  

And then finally, I think it’s so important to look beyond dollars raised because all of your fundraising activities are going to be informing the dollars that you will raise in like distant future. So these are things like meaningful donor interactions, I would like to track you know, via Face to face visits, gift conversations, when I’ve talked to someone on the phone. Even if those interactions didn’t result in a gift right now, what they are resulting in is a really meaningful relationship with that donor. So that’s a really good goal to set is like, okay, even if I don’t hit my dollar goal, I’m setting myself up for success. And that’s a win. You can track things like social media and ad impressions to help build awareness for your organization. open rates of your emails, click through rates of your emails, ROI on fundraising activities, and especially events, I think this is critical in determining whether or not you want to do an event year over year,

53:07  

are you spending so much that hosting this event just isn’t worth your time, or maybe it is you’ll you’ll find out by looking at your data, you could look at the number of first time donors you’ve acquired the number of those donors that you retain year over year, the average gift amount your number of new monthly donors, there’s there’s lots of data points that can help inform your overall goals, and help inform your overall fundraising strategy.

53:35  

Great, so now we have about seven minutes left. And we’re gonna go through this last step, step seven to keep growing and we’ll just kind of do this rapid fire because that’s just a lot of ideas, on ways that you can keep growing the things that you maybe are already doing. So one example is to automate things. We’ve talked about this a little bit, but the importance of being able to automate your communications. For me, it was really important to automate that receipt after somebody gave and creating contact list that will update on its own that I don’t have to manually update this, I’m making some choices to be able to automate some of the things that maybe would take you too much time. Also you can work on segmentation. So sending the right communication to the right group, for example, maybe my Giving Tuesday goal is to have, you know, 70% upgrades, maybe I’m reaching out to everybody who gave last year for giving Tuesday. And my goal is for all of them to give, at least if not more what they gave last Giving Tuesday. So in order to do that, I would have to segment my list. Maybe I asked people who gave $20 and under maybe I asked them to give $30 But if I asked somebody who gave $1,000 on GivingTuesday to give $30 That won’t be the right message to that person that would be a missed opportunity. So maybe think about how you can segment your communications to ask the right people the right things.

55:00  

To

55:01  

Go ahead,

55:04  

I think one of the most important data points that you can look at for your future growth is your donor retention rate. So this describes the number of donors who gave last year and then gave again this year. industry average is an average is about 45%. But it can cost up to 10 times more to acquire a new donor than it takes to retain a current donor. So focusing on how you’re treating your donors, this number is so indicative of your students success of your stewardship program, or the success of your communications, how are you inspiring people to keep coming back year over year, and then those people tend to grow in time over their giving, and they tend to be the ones who leave you in their wills. So donor retention, I think, is probably the one thing you can focus on right now. That will reach the quickest growth. And there’s a for for the pupil people on the call this math equation at the bottom. That is kind of daunting to me, because I’m not a math person, I’m a people person, not that you can’t be both, I just have not both. But

56:02  

certainly tools do this for you, for example, don’t know perfect calculates your retention rate for you, which is another reason why I love to DonorPerfect. But if you don’t have a tool that’s doing that, then here’s a formula for you to calculate your retention rate.

56:18  

We also want to be sure to make giving easy so some kind of evaluation of how you’re offering people the opportunity to give Are you offering giving through QR codes at your site, like maybe you have, maybe you build homes, and you have a site that all the volunteers meet up that other QR codes there where those volunteers can give financial aid to your organization. Or you do have online forms that people can fill out when they visit your website or that are really accessible for the people that have attended your event. Does your form communicate directly to your CRM, like we’ve been saying DonorPerfect has these forms that communicate directly into your CRM and send information to your giver, as soon as they’ve given, make sure that you have tools that talk to one another? Do you have a text to give option, really easy for people to text from their phones, if they’re giving I mean, they’re on their phone anyway, we might as well give them the opportunity to give through their phone. And then lastly, do you have a plan for accepting gifts in kind or stock gifts, things that are maybe not specific financial gift directly, but might be an in kind or a stock gift, making sure that if anybody calls you on the phone and says hey, I have something to give you, you’re ready to accept it.

57:41  

And this is one of those things to where you could either be your own. If anybody’s working retail a secret shopper, so someone who is kind of a plant who sees what your process is what your shopping or your donation process feels and looks like and can report back, you can be your own, you can recruit a friend to like, you know, get five bucks and let you know how easy or cumbersome it was just to get that real time data. Great point. This is something we saw early on talked about a little bit earlier. So I want to spend too much time on this. But these are some questions about each of those phases of your donor journey and the ways that you can ask, How can I do this better? And you don’t have to use these specific questions. But going through your donor journey and thinking, okay, what can I be doing that will make take this thing to the next level is a very important part of continued growth.

58:30  

Absolutely. And then lastly is knowing the people in your database, knowing the people who are giving to your organization, this is something called a donor persona. This is something that DonorPerfect does through DP insights. But it pulls the data of the people that are in your CRM, and tells you what the average, you know, Age of someone who gave on Giving Tuesday, or what’s the average,

58:57  

you know, income size of someone who has given a gift that is over X amount, it gives you this real time data that helps to put a person to the people in your database.

59:12  

Especially like when you’re writing an appeal or something, it kind of helps you imagine your audience as a real person, I find that my appeals are way more effective when I do it that way.

59:22  

So finally, I just wanted to remind you how Joy how much joy there is in fundraising, that it is the gentle art of teaching, the joy of giving, which I really love that way of thinking about it, that it’s you are empowering your donors to achieve their philanthropic goals and achieve their social goals and whatever it is that they want to set out to do. You’re giving them that hand to do it. So I think what you’re doing is really beautiful. I love fundraising. I know I can’t speak for Juliet, but I’m guessing you love fundraising. So we’re just really happy that you’re here and really happy that you’re part of this wonderful profession. Cray plant. And with one minute left, we’re excited to offer you this QR code that will lead you to the growth kit now

1:00:00  

We’ve discussed a few times throughout the the presentation that leads you to that crossword puzzle that leads you to the buyers guide, the board presentation, some of these journal prompts that we mentioned some things that you can really use to reflect on,

1:00:18  

on the goal of your organization. So would love for you to scan this code and gain access to that growth guide? You have any questions? I know we went a little bit, we went right up to time. So hopefully you had all the information that you needed in this. But there’s also our email addresses here. And we would love to answer any of your questions. I know that you there’s one question here about donor personas, how do you get the personal info for the donor persona? So I can answer that just really quickly, if you have a CRM, you would pull reports from that CRM to make sure you know which people fall into which group. But if you don’t have a CRM, you can use some information like from other organizations in your area, or even from things like voter registrations. There’s some public facing ways to pull information like that. And if you go to DonorPerfect.com, we have a ebook all about donor personas. So I would definitely encourage you to go to DonorPerfect.com. And you can search in the search bar persona and it will take you to an ebook.

1:01:28  

Okay, wow, that was a lot. We just talked so much. Thank you all so much for being here. We hope this was helpful and you’ll hear from us soon with the recording. And let us know if you have any further questions. Thank you. Thank you.

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