Donor Acquisition Strategies to Adopt: Data Insights and Relational Fundraising

Lori: Good morning and welcome to the first session of the day. My name is Lori [unintelligible 00:00:11], I will be the host for donor acquisition strategies to adopt in 2022. Your speaker today is Meredith Sossman. Meredith is an accomplished development professional who has helped Read More

Lori: Good morning and welcome to the first session of the day. My name is Lori [unintelligible 00:00:11], I will be the host for donor acquisition strategies to adopt in 2022. Your speaker today is Meredith Sossman. Meredith is an accomplished development professional who has helped nonprofits achieve better results in all aspects of giving and nonprofit management. In her 15 years of nonprofit work, she has worked with a variety of nonprofits to increase teamwork for better fundraising results, and effective relationship-building techniques. She has served as a campaign director, associate executive director, in-house counsel and chief development officer. For today’s session, you will find a handout at the bottom of your screen. You’ll need to scroll down, same process as yesterday, you can download the slides that she provided for you. Please make sure that if you’re going to ask some questions, they go into the Q&A. Feel free to throw comments and whatnot into the chat. That’s certainly fine but questions and answers are in the Q&A. They will be answered at the end of the session. Meredith, the floor is yours. Meredith: Good morning. Thank you Lori, and thank you everyone for coming this morning, I am really honored and excited to be here and to help you think about how to transform your fundraising this morning. What we’re going to talk about is data insights and relational fundraising, as it relates to acquisition of new donors and sometimes acquisition of bigger gifts. I find that nonprofits tend to talk about finding new donors, as though the only place to look is outside of the nonprofit. They neglect sometimes to look in their database at people that maybe they haven’t paid attention to or thought about yet. I want you to reframe, this morning, how you think about new donors and think about three things. Where do I find the new ones outside and how can this help me do it? Where do I find new donors that might already be volunteers or someone who was connected to me, whether loosely or otherwise? What does it look like to take those that I have now, prospects, volunteers, donors, and turn them into larger, impactful lifelong donors, because that’s a form of acquisition as well. To take a $250 a year donor and turn them into a $10,000, $25,000 plan-giving donor is acquisition. When we expand our definition of using our data to create deeper relationships all around us in a holistic manner, then we change how we do business and acquire new donors in a fundamental way that we don’t always think about the way that you might want to. The conversation really takes us into the world of the pandemic, which we are all, I know, so exhausted from. The bottom line is that, the pandemic taught us that relationships are crucial. Nonprofits by and large, were not ready for where they stood. It highlighted how transactional we can be. At the same time, we have this sometimes disturbing to some nonprofits, discussion, about the rise of big data and have to ask ourselves, how can something that cold warm us into better relationships? Why are we transactional, especially at small to mid-size? You know the answers. Every day, you struggle with the stress of limited staff, time, multiple tasks, and serving your mission. Fundraising is not always comfortable. I find that humans default to a give and get model. I once had a major gift officer who worked for me that was wildly talented. She was a warm and wonderful human. She represented the mission beautifully but it only took nine months for her to jump to a sales position. When she came to resign, she said it’s nothing that we do here that made me go but instead, the idea that when I bring in a new donor, they give money and get nothing in return. That mindset is the give and get model right? If you give me money, I give you widgets back. We default to that and worrying that our mission isn’t enough compared to others. With relational fundraising, how do we take a moment and realize that we’re being transactional? This is the big thing when you talk about acquisition of new donors because we often start out in the transactional world when we do that. We send a mailing hoping that they’ll return. I had an interesting discussion yesterday as I thought about this talk, and I quoted to a colleague of mine, “Hope is not a strategy.” That’s a favorite quote that another colleague uses. This colleague of mine said, “I hate that someone says that hope is part of the strategy.” Both of them are right. Hope is part of the strategy, but if that’s what we’re doing, sending out our side of the transaction and merely hoping for a response, then we are not doing relational fundraising, because we’re not recognizing and making an overture to the needs of that potential new donor. I want you to take out a piece of pen and paper. This is the interactive part, because we’ve all done zoom without enough interaction for a year. I want you to at least write down 5 to 10 donor names, preferably some of your best ones, and then one personal fact about them and count them up. If you don’t do it right now, that’s okay but this is an assignment if you will, to really think about a personal fact that has nothing to do with your mission. Then I want you to assess how well you know these people. As you do this, I want you to look forward at acquisition. If you write down these donors, and you can put a deep personal fact that you know, and realize that your relational fundraising is perhaps a little farther along, then you know that in acquisition, it’s the same kind of personal touch you’ll need to bring a new donor into the fold. How do we do that? What do our mailings look like? What do our emails look like? What do our personal interactions and phone calls look like if we want to do that? The first thing we do often is give ourselves excuses. That’s a strong word. None of us wants to hear you’re making an excuse because we don’t feel like we are. But relation– and they take time, the data is messy or not set up as we hope. Because we’re in DonorPerfect today, we’re going to do some talking about how to fix that data, and take big data options and turn them into relational acquisition and increased gifts. My board always an issue. We can’t raise money because. I want to stop on this one. I hear this more than I hope to. I work with over 95 nonprofits in my consultancy, and it’s shocking how often I meet wonderful, committed passionate executive directors, marketing people, development people, but they say to me, you know Mere, one of the reasons we can’t raise money is that we don’t, and they insert another mission. “We don’t feed people, we don’t, we only do this,” and they insert their mission there. When we do that and de-prioritize it, every one of those people when I challenged them, has also said no, I believe my mission is important. It’s just that that one’s better. I have to wonder how subconsciously that belief translates into what we do and everyone swears they don’t but I guarantee you that you do. Your authentic belief that your mission is one of the best and worthy of deep investment is incredibly important in every interaction you have with prospects. I also want you to do this, ready pen and paper time again. When you talk about a prospect when you write a letter or a postcard, an email for acquisition, how quickly do you jump to your mission and use the ‘I’, the first person. “I did this, we did this.” I would like you, in the next two weeks– I’ll give you lots of time because we’re all limited, to take out at least one of your acquisition pieces over the past two years. It doesn’t matter to me which one. Then I want you to take– a red pen is better. It feels hard to do but a red pen’s better but pick a colored ink black or blue if you don’t like red and circle every time in that acquisition piece, you used I or we are pointed at the nonprofit. Take the other ink color and circle every time you pointed at the donor with your language and then count them up. Just do a tally. If you’re like most people, including myself years ago when I worked in nonprofit, in-house not out, you’ll find that you quickly tally up a lot of I’s we’s our mission and speak about the nonprofit and not about who the donor is, what they can do, how they help, how others like them have made an impact and a difference on all of your constituencies regardless of what it is. When you start the you and the us and the inclusive language, you take that acquisition target; wow, big cold words like big data, and turn them into a partner in what you do. This is incredibly important in your acquisition work. Let’s talk about relationships. When I spoke to some people last week, donors are like dating and that is part of acquisition too. We don’t just meet someone that we’re already in love with and move on with our lives when we talk about dating or friendships. Instead, we run into this random stranger. I find friendship fascinating. All of us go through the world running into people. We run into and speak to someone in the grocery store, be it the clerk or another person, someone we run into in produce. I flew yesterday, so I ran into a gentleman as we stood waiting to get off a plane that was just sitting at the tarmac too long. We started talking, because we were stuck in a tiny little cabin right next to each other. We’d both been flying for hours and hours. I run into this other human and we start talking. Our brains immediately start making judgments about them, “I like them, I don’t like them. This is a human I want to know more about, this is a human I maybe don’t.” Donor acquisition is the same. You are taking you and your mission and going out into the world and bumping into people, be it by a letter or a postcard, an email, in-person, and you are presenting your mission as yourself. You are saying, “We are here and doing this and I seek others of like mind and like interest.” It’s dating with a mission. We take that and turn it into more as we get to know these humans. As I bumped into this gentleman in the plane last night, we started out, just asking, “Where did you fly from?” We ended up walking through the airport together, and eventually, he turned to me and said, “I’m Dan.” There came a moment when we realized that there was an interesting thing. “Who are you, what do you do? Here’s my name. How do I learn more about who you are and what you do? We exchanged websites. As he left my presence, he turned back and said, “Hey Meredith, when you do this–” he was talking about an endeavor I’m involved in that is interesting and newer in my life. He said, “Be careful because there are sharks out there in the world.” He expressed a moment of protection. When you run into donors or people, you have this opportunity to make them feel something with your mission, and what you do, and the impact they could have. I remember Dan’s name and I’m not good at names because he made me feel, for a moment, that he cared about what I was doing. Not only that he had asked, but that he had some investment that I be careful in this endeavor. That resonated with me. That’s what you’re looking for. That moment of resignation. Is that even a word? I’m not sure it is. You know what, it is today. We’re going to copyright it. As you ask questions, you’re building that impact moment. Was it Maya Angelou who said, “People will not remember what you did but rather how you made them feel.” Your letters, emails, acquisition, and relational fundraising is about how your nonprofit makes people feel right from the very first time you touched their lives. If you take nothing else out today, then take that with you and carry it as you go into your acquisition strategies. We have a little more time, so we’re going to do some other things. As you ask them questions and elicit responses, reflect on those interactions and then bring them back and put them into your database. That’s the least sexy thing I can say this morning. Take your interactions that are deeply personal in some way with your mission and type them into the database. I’m going to tell you, when I became a gift officer first, I was a bit of a cowboy that way. I generally have an outstanding memory. I love meeting other people despite being a deep introvert. I know many of you are rolling your eyes. Just my level of energy, even this morning seems to belie that I’m an introvert, but I am. Then putting it into a database felt so not relational, but it is because the database is the repository for you, and here’s why. As fundraisers, as nonprofit mission-oriented people, we are deeply outnumbered. At my first job, there were 423,000 individual profiles in our database and one of me. Even in the first weeks and months, I went to this event every week that we had for our best donors. It was a limited group of about 1000 attendees on a weekly basis and yet, I was deeply outnumbered. Here I am, this takes pride in her memory and remembering people cowboy, not wanting to do something as cold as put everything I remembered in the database. Yet I realized quickly that if I didn’t, there would be no relationships because I wouldn’t be able to keep them straight in an authentic way. Your database, your DonorPerfect is your key to a better career. I’ll make it self-interested first because we’re all human. Bigger gifts, and a stronger institution. I see stronger institution and I don’t like the example of hit by a bus anymore, though we all use it. I once worked with someone who was integral to the company that I was a part of and we used to say, “I hope Patrice never gets hit by a bus,” and then she was. Take a deep breath, she was fine, but it put her out for six weeks and the institution for sure took a hit. During that time, it was difficult. I prefer that we think about the database as the, “If I won the Powerball tomorrow, this information and these relationships would still reside here in some important way for someone else to pick up and not miss much of a beat with that donor.” You have in that database constituencies, report notes, and follow up but you also have the opportunity to use Google Alerts. Here’s why I bring Google Alerts into the conversation. I can’t know, even if you only have 200 donors, everything that’s going on in their lives every moment. I recognize and see you in your busy-ness trying to maintain everything you do to do good for others. A Google Alert on your donors or new prospect acquisition people can be a way to know them more deeply. Let’s take acquisition. You run into Steven. I’m pulling names out of the air this morning. You run into Stephen at something and think, “Wow, there seems to be some affinity there with me and maybe the mission. There is ability. They seem to have ability to make a gift.” I can’t make people richer than they are. I wouldn’t be here this morning if I could, as honored as I am to be. I’d be on the private island somewhere if I could make myself richer than I am. I love what I do, but the private island is looking pretty attractive because in the place I’m sitting in my hotel office here, it’s pretty gray. Blue skies, and a beach, sounding good. That Google Alert, when I run into Steven and put it on him, gives me the opportunity not just to add him to our acquisition targets but to find out that he’s changed jobs and I can remember and see him as a human by sending a congratulatory email, which builds the relationship with a big data trigger. Is Steven more or less likely to be acquired as a donor when I give that personal touch. We all know the answer is more likely because they are seen by you representing the nonprofit. DonorPerfect insights is a new tool that’s coming out and I can’t help but be excited too. When I reviewed all this at DonorPerfect to give you this moment. DonorPerfect insights is a new tool that will take your database and compile some of these issues to give you everything that you might want in terms of the ability to make more personal touches to add to your larger acquisition strategies. DonorPerfect can drive this relational fundraising ready to marry big data with acquisition and larger gifts. Grab a pen or pencil because this part you’re going to have all of my PowerPoint and notes. I’m going to geek out a little bit, but it’ll go somewhere great for you. I’m going to give you the testimonial all upfront. I’ve been working with a group that is a DonorPerfect client. Not through DonorPerfect, I met them separately and they are deeply invested in getting this right, their words. We’ve spent a couple of months doing that. Their acquisition has gone up by 823 donors since July. That’s a lot of huge owners that we’ve been able to find by doing what I’m about to give you very quickly. We’re going to look at constituent profiles, constituent types, the gift stages involved in acquisition through stewardship, predictive gifting, and then running a full picture report, to give you a snapshot in time, from your database on where you stand with each donor and your donors or prospects as a whole. Coding your data begins transformative fundraising. You need to know what each of the people, and I use that term lightly, in the database are. Because some of them are corporations and foundations. Those corporations and foundations act as gift givers to you but they have people behind them. You want to make sure that you have all of these constituencies but also that individuals who are at corporations are connected to the corporation foundation or what have you that you have. I won’t live too long on that because hopefully you know it. I hope you also know these gift stages but more importantly, understand that they belong attached to each of those constituents in your database. We talked about identification. That moment, when you run into the human in the world and say, “Hey, that one, I like them and they might like us, as a person and as a mission.” Qualification, I’ve spent some time on them and they have both ability to give us gifts and perhaps the ability for me to drive affinity. Meaning I can deepen the relationship with them and have them like us more. Be more deeply invested emotionally in what we’re doing. Cultivation is the dating part. We’ve run into a human, we identify them, they’re attractive to us in some way. We qualify them, “Will you go out with me?” “Yes, I will go out with you. I will have lunch with you. I will be your friend, your date, what have you.” Cultivation is the time we spend in knowing each other after that and donors are no different. Solicitation is the conversation. “I’m your friend, I want to be friends with you. I like you and want to see you more.” Stewardship is how we treat the relationship thereafter. Each of these stages should and can be attached to the individual profiles in your database. If Bob Smith is in the database and one of these gift stages isn’t attached to him, then you are losing the opportunity to track moving him or he and his spouse or partner, through relational fundraising. That means that your acquisition of Bob is already hampered because you have not identified and purposefully thought about where he is. Let me get some water, sorry. I’m in LA today and in Pennsylvania, my voice is great. In LA, it’s just not. Forgive me. Predictive gifts, what could Bob do if he was so inspired today? We’re going to stick with Bob. We walk on door through this. Is he $100 to $249 donor and you can change these numbers. I did this to give you a pattern. I gave you this pattern of donors fit into these groupings. You can make it. You can start it at 1,000 to 4,999 and go up to a million plus but I want you to have some matrix for your predictive giving on each of the donors. You’re going to turn that into an overall report for analytics. Now to be fair to DonorPerfect, this is an Excel sheet that I did. It is not a beautiful DonorPerfect report and DonorPerfect has beautiful reports. It will do it if you set up the database correctly. I did this for illustrative purposes only. You have your prospect names. There’s Bob. He’s in solicitation phase and you have tagged him and said, “I believe that if I solicit Bob, his ultimate gift right now is $1,000. As you put this together, you can start to see where everyone is. These donors, you have one in qualification and that person would do $150 gift, you believe. You have five in cultivation and if they did their ultimate guess would result in over $8,000. I’m looking at the bottom, giving these people numbers and stages. Solicitation, you have three resulting and maybe $27,000 worth of gifts. That’s your evaluation. When you do this overall report for analytics, you not only see where your acquisition, cultivation solicitation targets are but also where to spend your limited time for the most return on investment. Now, if your database is set up this way, you’re able to take those excuses we started with about time to acquire and cut down your effort in a very deep way. Now every time you go into the database and run this report, you know where to spend that first half hour a day that we’re going to talk about soon on donor acquisition, on who should it be and your who’s can be in mailings too. This doesn’t just apply to individual attention acquisition. It also applies to who is opening our emails versus who is not. Who sent back a letter or gift in response to our letter overture and who did not. You can make this report for analytics tell you all the things you want to know in different ways about who is sitting in your data. When you meet Bob out in the world for that first time, when you look at the community that engages with you in any way that you think about acquisition, I think first about Facebook likes. Turning likes into action is acquisition. They’ve made the first overture that they like something you did. To leave it sitting there as a tiny thumbs up on a screen is wasted time and energy. They have made an overture that I like you and you have done nothing back. The relationship ends there. You run into someone at the coffee shop and they say, “Here’s my card, I’d love to speak to you,” and you leave it on the table as an overture. That’s a Facebook like or an Instagram heart. I’m not of a generation that did social media. I was dragged onto it years ago by my then 11 year old niece but I see the problem with it. I also see the value and the ability for people to make an overture and give you the information that they are there for your response. Here is that prioritization. The data makes it clear suddenly, how to prioritize your time? Who’s out there? If you did nothing with Facebook likes to take those people and translate them over into your database, you would know who had already made an overture to you and how to go find them to make an overture back to acquire someone who’s already said, “I think I may like you.” Better yet, they’ve told you how they like you. Is it your page and all you’ve done? Or, was it a specific program that they came across that you were doing something with? They’ve already given you then not only do I like you, I like this that you do. You can make the overture back to them, when you’re thinking about fundraising you liked to this and we have an opportunity for you to engage more deeply with it, would you? That cultivation right the page before? There’s Charlie sitting there in cultivation and he’s got $7,500. The cultivations are only $8,800 total but Charlie jumps out as someone to call to move [unintelligible 00:28:37] in a very quick way from this report. Those relationships lead to bigger more impactful gifts even as you acquire. Think about all we started to string together here. How do we look at who we’re acquiring and what they’ve already said to us in a deeper way? How do we look in our database at those who dip their toe in the water with a $20 gift, but told you over and over again, “I give you $20 for this every single year?” That is acquisition. Don’t forget that that $20 donor that comes back year over year over year, either may not have more now but be a planned gift later, or may have more but is waiting for you to say, “Be more with us.” It’s the little things that do that. It’s always the little things in relationships. That’s where those Google Alerts come back in. The little things like, knowing they got that new job. They had a grandchild. They lost someone they loved from the obituary that will come up on your screen. That’s all stewardship. Stewardship, when we think about it in the five stages earlier, is a misnomer. We steward our relationships from the moment we meet someone or failed to steward them from the moment we meet them. Stewardship crosses boundaries in all of those other areas when we identify someone who could be a part of our mission lives and it doesn’t take a whole lot of time to do that. We have four, almost five generations sitting in front of us and the interesting thing is as divided as we think we are as generations, I think as a Gen X-er of the okay boomer and the millennials who are ethically ignoring this generation in the middle who is now working into our prime giving years, how we think differently and the same about things. What I mean by that is I do large group studies with the different generations. Over and over, I hear from millennials that they love getting mail, that they love the moment when they open the mailbox and see a handwritten note or postcard that is interesting to them because the rest of their mail is not inspiring or junk mail because they’ve moved their bills to online payments so even bills don’t come, but a handwritten note is a rare treat which they share with the loss generations deep sense that we are losing personal touch. A handwritten note for them and some of the older boomers, and I’m generalizing a little bit, but there’s a lot of scientific data out there, both from my work and from others that back this up. These four generations are not so different. Gen X is just looking to be seen in a way. We are constantly told that we are the smallest, the most insignificant generation and yet here we sit in our insignificance being older parents and raising children and also taking care of ailing and aging loved ones. More and more, that pressed in generation in the center looking to be seen and knowing that we have a voice that we can use for our mission and are willing to do so if you can get to us. So often that impact would be deep if you knew what we were thinking and took the moment to see generation X. Here’s the big practice tip for development. We don’t have time for it. We have come to believe due to our electronics that the moment we see a text or email, we must answer it. For 30 minutes, when you get into the office in the morning, I want you to turn off your email alerts. That irritating little– mine is off right now because I’m talking to you and you’re important to me. It’s not popping up in the corner of my screen constantly nagging, who wants to speak or get an immediate answer. I know that in the 45 minutes I spend with you this morning that no one will expire from my lack of answer because my honor of your time is to turn that off and set aside this time for you. Your first 30 minutes of the day are about donor acquisition, about those Google alerts and sending a personal touch. Do not answer your phone unless it’s a donor or prospect that’s returning your call or making the overture to call you. The voicemail will be there in 30 minutes and then ask for each action you make, are you moving relationships forward or is it transactional? Does your letter say I and we, or you? Does that phone call connect with the person at the other end of the line. Even a voicemail can be personal and interactive. Now, let’s talk for a moment about Richard Branson, Virgin Airways. He says, “Don’t take care of your customers, take care of your people and they will take care of your customers.” To all of you who are sitting there saying, “Who’s taking care of me? I sit here alone.” I feel you. I run my companies alone. I have partners in some and colleagues, but even in those, I am one of the I hope leaders, I will say boss this morning and it’s only at the top. What about professional development? How do we take care of ourselves or those that are colleagues that work with us? The database can do that too. There’s something beautiful about thinking about our professional development, be it for ourselves or everyone involved. This report has the ability to tell us who we are in our development and donor world very, very quickly. Let’s look at Bob and Marie very, very quickly so that I can tell you how we can use this for self-care. If we look at our assigned prospect total and if you don’t have one, you need one, you need to start assigning some of these people to you. It is okay if they are merely acquisition targets, that cold word again. If you don’t have a lot of definite prospects, then today reflect on those who’ve made an overturned and assign some of them to you or to the appropriate staff members to start working on, to think about, to set that Google alert to reach out. Bob has 50 assigned prospects and Marie has 72. As we look across at what’s happened, we can see that Bob has a great deal of fewer gifts closed, but it’s interesting that his percent number close, 40% of his gifts and dollars closed are 44%. Likewise, it’s interesting that Marie closes more gifts as a percentage, 74%, but closes fewer dollars. I know having done this with large development staffs and small ones, that when I look at this type of report, I know or I’m close to knowing a couple of things right now. Bob is a consistent performer, but it’s maybe the case that either his prospect pool isn’t as good as we hope, but due to the amount of 54,000 closed out of that, it’s possible that he’s either asking too soon or not asking for the right projects. We can do a deep dive and see what he’s doing by running his numbers and seeing, in those identification to solicitation, how long is Bob spending with those donors? Does he know them well enough? Does he understand their ability and affinity enough to make the right ask for them or is it too much money that he’s asking for and has to ask for? Similarly, Marie, we can see that she closes the gifts, but leaves dollars on the table. Is it that she is overestimating her prospects or is it that she’s asking too soon and not having deep enough relationships to drive that gift amount up with what are perhaps the right people? This becomes a very deep report for professional development for yourself as well. When I did run a large staff, I kept myself in this. I was always one of the fundraisers, never just the manager and it was always interesting to pick apart our numbers in a constructive way with each other and say, “What do you think of me?” It takes courage to put yourself up in your numbers up and say, “Staff, help me reflect on me. What do my numbers right now say about how I’m interacting with our donors?” That is a level of vulnerability that is game-changing inside. I engaged in doing it with my board too and being that vulnerable help them to talk about development in a deep way. We got along well and worked well together, but everything changed when I was willing to put what I did on a daily basis in reports in front of them. This relational fundraising, if you have a staff or even just yourself and it’s self-care is a key to reducing turnover, which is another major conversation. For those of you scratching your heads right now wondering how this relates to acquisition, let me tell you very, very clearly that when you stay with donors, acquisition becomes easier because they can have a relationship with your mission through those people who stay. When you have deep turnover in your staff, donors start to be nervous about the future. Not just of your nonprofit, but of their relationships. They see that there’s a revolving door and it doesn’t feel like a safe space for them to come in and share their deep goals and impact and the dollars that are important to them because they invest them in what they are passionate about, not just goods and services that they perceive they want or need. When you reduce turnover, not only do you cost your organization less but you make acquisition a major priority because you’re saying that, “We are here to stay. If you begin the relationship with us, you are likely to get to a happy end with us, those people that are in front of you now.” I want you to think about the continuum of the nonprofit life. Of setting clear goals as people come in the door. Of having a team mindset. That means that if you have someone who works only on the database, and I say only very, very carefully. Because they don’t get to go out and see that donor or close the gift. We spend a lot of time when we celebrate the gifts that come in from a mailing, celebrating the person who wrote the letter. The major planned gift gets a celebration for that executive director or gift officer, who brings the money through the door. Without the person that is deeply keeping your data, who is running these reports to make you efficient and better, that gift would never come through the door. Think of the team as one team that gets to the goal of donor acquisition altogether. I’m nodding to a program that I put in place years ago at a foundation with other colleagues called One Team With One Goal. When we became united in that way using our data and celebrating all the way through what we did together, our donors felt it deeply. They felt it so deeply that fundraising that year went from an average fundraise that we had done for years and years of $6 million to 12, in one year. The next year it jumped to 15.9. The secret to that improvement is what I’m talking about today and a deep impactful part of it was celebrating our team together. Finally, I credit my executive coach whose name was Dan and it’s not who I ran into last night. I can’t take credit for this. He once looked at a colleague of mine and said, “You make everything urgent. If everything rises to the level of urgent or important, then nothing is because it’s all equal again.” I want you to think about the way you approach your mission and your fundraising that way too. If everything on your plate today is urgent, then nothing is because you’ve elevated it all to the very same level which evens it out again urgent things are those things we must do to survive. Take everything today and look at that. Look at your volunteers, do they have a job description? They are your next acquisition. You say thank you but do you, is it little tokens of appreciation without the attention they so deserve to be seen? Here come those data points in Google alerts again? DonorPerfect insights. If you use it to compile everything about your donor and truly see them in your thank you’s it will change how you interact. Let’s put it all together for a moment because I know we want time for some questions or what you’ve been doing. I will see those in just a second and be able to spend a few minutes with you, I hope. Big data drives relationships but it helps you to do it efficiently. Donor prospecting is dating full in love with your prospects. The only way to fall in love is to get to know someone. You need to make the overture of the U take a little time each day and never forget that if everything is urgent then nothing is, I will close that. Someone said, “Hi everyone. This is me in LA.” Can I make that public, was that meant for Lori? Yes, One Team With One Goal is always meant for Lori and I’m so happy to see you. Lori is my host here at DonorPerfect. I’m so happy to see that some folks I’m working with that I love dearly. I fall in love with my clients? Joe and Lori, I’m so happy you’re here today. It’s good to see you. I see somebody said, “I like that One Team One Goal,” so did they. There was so much love on the team with that. Erin asks, “What are your thoughts on properly thanking a donor? Is it a phone call, a token or a combination?” Erin it is always a written note of some type unless they live somewhere that they can’t get that. The post office is making that challenging these days. If they love email, then truly that. What about filming yourself? If they can only get that email? What about getting on your phone or this, there are a million– a zoom account that’s free. You can quick zoom a thank you that is very short and say, “Look, I just wanted to look at you today and look in the camera and say thank you for what you’ve done. It’s so important to me that you see and feel our gratitude because without you, we could not,” and give that impact statement. A phone call can do that but we have all this technology and all this big data, put it to you and be personalized in what you do. Hey Lori I can see you. Lori: Hi. Meredith: Handwritten notes and cards. Absolutely. A postcard, don’t be afraid to send a handwritten postcard. Get a bunch of postcards, they’re cheaper than cards but when we go through our mail, this is an invitation of almost everybody now, we’re right next to the garbage can but a postcard, I will always turn over. I just want to see what it says and so if somebody wrote on the back of that, I’ll flip it and see it. “What about the standard thanks letters to donors that contribute regularly.” This is again where we’re going to use our DonorPerfect database. In July, I want you to take a day and write different thank you letters for the whole year and the season and then just update them with what’s going on when you get to that season and load a new thank you letter in so that donors are seeing that you care enough to update it. That it’s not just some form letter. Lori: Meredith I hate to do but I have to stop you because we’re going to start to run over at this point and we have a session butting up right next to this. I do thank everyone for attending our first session for day two. For this presentation Meredith, I saw some great comments come through and it was a pleasure to have you with us today. We have another session that is coming up here. We have community based fundraising with [unintelligible 00:46:09] and then we have DonorPerfect tool series. Just so you know, these sessions are being recorded. Whatever session you miss, you can always pick up later. Pick a track and join in on that session. It will start now so once we close out this head over to whatever room you decide to go to, thanks for attending today. [00:47:12] [END OF AUDIO]