Four Pillars of Donor Retention: Techniques and Strategies to Retain Donors and Grow Revenue

People are the heart of DonorPerfect. It all starts with our staff. By focusing on our employees needs happiness and wellbeing, we ensure they can best support you, you’ll quickly realize that working with our team is like having additional members of Read More

People are the heart of DonorPerfect. It all starts with our staff. By focusing on our employees needs happiness and wellbeing, we ensure they can best support you, you’ll quickly realize that working with our team is like having additional members of your own staff that will always be there to help you. When you get started with DonorPerfect, we provide a full data transfer and onboarding team to make sure your system is set up correctly, and that it matches your unique needs and ways of working. Our professional trainers will then make sure you get off to a fast start explaining what you need to succeed using a variety of training programs that cater to your preferred learning methods. Our customer care team provides ongoing support whenever you need it by phone, chat or email. They’ll answer your questions help you improve results and quickly become your best new work friends. While you focus on your mission. Our product managers and developers are incorporating your feedback and prioritizing your needs and concerns to deliver easy to use software that will enable you to achieve all your goals. When our customers and employees are asked what do you like best about DonorPerfect, they both say the same thing, the people, you will to learn more about how DonorPerfect can meet your unique needs by speaking with your account manager or attending a product demonstration webinar.

People are the heart of DonorPerfect. It all starts with our staff. By focusing on our employees needs happiness and well being we ensure they can best support you, you’ll quickly realize that working with our team is like having additional members of your own staff that will always be there to help you. When you get started with DonorPerfect. We provide a full data transfer and onboarding team to make sure your system is set up correctly, and that it matches your unique needs and ways of working. Our professional trainers will then make sure you get off to a fast start explaining what you need to succeed using a variety of training programs that cater to your preferred learning methods. Our customer care team provides ongoing support whenever you need it by phone, chat or email. They’ll answer your questions help you improve results and quickly become your best new work friends. While you focus on your mission. Our product managers and developers are incorporating your feedback and prioritizing your needs and concerns to deliver easy to use software that will enable you to achieve all your goals. When our customers and employees are asked what do you like best about DonorPerfect they both say the same thing, the people you will to learn more about how DonorPerfect can meet your unique needs by speaking with your account manager or attending a product demonstration webinar.

People are the heart of DonorPerfect it all starts with our staff. By focusing on our employees needs happiness and well being we ensure they can best support you you’ll quickly realize that working with our team is like having additional members of your own staff that will always be there to help you when you get started with DonorPerfect, we provide.

Hello, everyone, my name is Jonathan blockin and I’m a technical support representative for DonorPerfect. Welcome to Lynn West her session, four pillars of donor retention techniques and strategies to retain donors and Row revenue. Here’s a little bit about Lynn. She strongly believes that donor relations are the key to unlocking fundraising success. And that organization should be as dedicated to the donor experience as they are to the ask itself. Lynn regularly lends her fundraising expertise to national publications, and CO hosts the number one nonprofit podcast in the world. Fundraising is funny, known for positively disrupting the status quo. Lynn helps organizations when they need it the most. When crisis or opportunity arrives, Linda and her teammates at the DRG group partner with nonprofits large and small to develop sound strategies and create meaningful donor engagements to impact their bottom line. In addition, she’s is a passionate advocate for diversity, equity, inclusion, access, justice, and belonging, especially in the fundraising and nonprofit sector. Before I hand the session over to Lynn, I want to remind you of three housekeeping items. All the presentation slides are attached to the detail section of this session. And they can be downloaded for your review. Please be sure to add your questions to the q&a tab so we can see them and get them answered for you. And lastly, all of the sessions are being recorded. And those recordings will be available at our DonorPerfect website following this conference. So let’s give a warm welcome to Lynn and Lynn, take it away.

Thank you so much, Jonathan. I’m happy to be here. With you all I’ve been getting to know some of the attendees in the chat. If you haven’t yet chatted with us. We are in the live chat, love to know where you’re from, and what your favorite summer beverage is. And so would love to hear that from all of you. And that’s Lynn with an E. So excited to hear from all of you and hear about your favorite beverages. Hopefully, you’re sipping on something yummy. Right now I have my ice water ready to go. And we’re ready to talk with about the four pillars of donor retention. Feel free at any time to ask questions I’d like for our session to be interactive. And I want to make sure that you get as much out of this session as you need and everything like that. That’s a first person that says diet, Dr. Pepper, any soda. And even now I have people chiming in Maggie loves Diet Coke. And so you know, if your diet coke fan, I don’t drink soda. But I hear McDonald’s has the best diet coke. So excited to learn from all of you and hear from all of you as we explore the four pillars of donor retention. So the four pillars of donor retention are identification, operationalization, connection, and renewal. And we’re going to walk through an overview of those four, and hopefully give you an idea toward what you can do at your organization to help you retain donors, both now and in the future. So I love that and Margo, I love a dark and stormy. So you’re the first person to say that one. So winning there. So pillar one is identification. And we’re going to talk about how you can identify what donors you would like to retain at your organization. Most of our survey data in this session is going to come from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, which is led by AFP and many partners in order to bring this data forward for you. But first, it’s all about knowing where you stand in terms of donor retention. So if you currently know your organization’s overall donor retention number, pop that in the chat. So and the first step is knowing if you don’t yet know your donor retention numbers, this is an opportunity for you to go back to your shop. Once you’ve done all this professional development and really think deeply about it. A lot of us know how much money we raise. But we don’t often know how much money we keep or the percentage of money we keep every year. So for those of you who do know, kudos to you gold star and extra Arnold Palmer are your favorite Bebi to give you some refreshments because knowing is the first what you’re seeing on the screen is from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project and it is the average overall donor retention number year to year. So right now it’s hovering in the 40% range. So overall, most nonprofits lose more donors than they keep which is a huge issue in history. If you are running a business As a for profit business, you wouldn’t be able to stay open long if you lost more customers than you kept. So if you’re above 50%, give yourself a little pat on the back, have an extra umbrella in your Bevy. But look at what is happening. As an industry, our new donor retention rate or our first time donor retention rate is falling. So our time donor retention rate, on average is less than 20%. At this point, that means, if you ran a restaurant and 10 people came to eat at your restaurants, then eight out of 10 of them would never come back and eat at your restaurant again. And that is not good. You would tap initely have challenges there. And so you really want to think what you’re doing in order to retain your donors, which is what we’re going to talk about today. Robin made a great comment. She said it’s super tough to keep no donors, especially when they’re derived from events. And Robin, you might come to find out that I don’t consider event attendees donors, so event attendees or ticket purchasers, but they’re not donors unless they buy something, or they make a donation. So in my mind, they’re in a separate category. And you’re very much right, if you’re paying them as donors than not gonna work for you. Really, really great point. Why is donor retention important? Number one, it’s more expensive to get a new donor than to receive a than to retain, excuse me, a donor that you already have. So cost for acquisition is five times that of the cost per acquisition. So it’s five times more expensive to go and get a new donor than it is to keep the one you have. So retention is actually cheaper than acquisition, right? To acquire a new donor, it cost two to three times what they actually give, right. And renewal response rates are 20 to 30 times higher than an acquisition response rate. You send out an acquisition mailing, or an email and you get 1%, you should just be thrilled with that. Not the same for retention. So we’re going to talk through, first of all, for those of you wanting to understand your retention rates, I know DonorPerfect has a formula and a dashboard for you. And we’re going to talk a little bit about who to count who not to count and all of this as well. So it’s summertime and some of us get the opportunity if we so choose to spend time next to a body of water facts, this illustration, it’s a pool. So let’s picture that all of you are at your nearest pool lake or beach or body of water, whatever you want it to be a sparkling stream or running ocean, whatever you want it to be. Tell me about what you like to do around a body of water or in a body of water. So what do you like to do? What are some activities that you see people doing next body of water? Okay, we’ve got reading, kayaking, meditating, swimming, picnicking, boating, reading while tanning, hiking, fishing, swimming, napping, paddleboard, nobody’s said my thing yet. Oh, float in the pool. There you go. Marlene float with a beverage that’s mine. Some people take selfies people watch nature. I like to watch people which is kind of nature. He likes to enjoy Dark and Stormy I like to float Bevy you know, Oh, Barry is cannon balling. Oh my goodness, you just got to sweat. Some people swim laps some people play in the water. You know, all of this is completely except for maybe Barry. Just kidding. acceptable behavior around a body of water whether it’s napping, floating, making sand castles, finding shells or glass. It doesn’t matter. All of this is great behavior. Right? Just relaxing is another great behavior right floating with a beverages called flinging. Okay, Patricia, I’m picking that up and I’m going to add that to my vocabulary.

All this to say is so is every donors response to your communications. They do all kinds of things. Some donors dip their toes in. Some donors do a cannon ball. Some donors swim laps, some donors aren’t there to get their hair. They don’t want to sweat out their weed. Whatever it may be, some donors want to get tan. Some donors like me want to avoid the sun, so we put on sunscreen. Either way, all of this is unique donor behavior, just like your behavior at a place of water is unique. That is the same for donor. So we can’t lump all our donors into one pond and say, Now you all do the same activities, which is sometimes when we set our strategy as acquisition, and raising as much money as we can, our attrition goes up. So one of the things that we have to agree to and one of the things we’re going to talk about today is how to have a retention driven mindset, not $1 driven mindset. So one is short term, and we’ll get you short term results. One is sustainable fundraising, which is something that you can have year after year after year. And so as we identify in the first pillar, who are the donors that we have, who keeps coming back to us, what does the future of our donor base look like? We need to come up with a strategy that is retention mindset, not acquisition mindset, right? So here are the things that you can control that during the impact donor retention, hey, number one, you’re asking patterns you’re asking patterns are your number one thing you can control, that impacts donor retention, number two, existing communications. And within those communications, the channel in which you communicate. So we know for a fact that when a donor, the way in which a donor gives is their strong preference for communication channel and how they want to be communicated with, so if I write you a check and mail it to you, I want to be communicated with in an analog channel. If I go online and make an online gift, I my primary method of communication should be digital. So the first thing is, number one, are you honoring my communication preference when it comes to how I made my gift? And then what kind of content? Also how quickly are you asking me to renew my gift, most nonprofits asked way too quickly, for the second gift without getting to know them. And then finally, data hygiene. So I said early in the chat, I saw somebody had misspelled my name. And I said, Oh, I’m Lynn with an E, my mom bought an extra vowel. But that’s a one great way to alienate your donors. And to make sure people feel like you don’t care about them is to misspell their name, right? Another one would be to put Mr. And Mrs. In their greetings, right to gender them or to comment on their marital status, right? So we want to make sure that our data has good hygiene and that we’re using it responsibly, so that we don’t also alienate our potential for recurring and renewing donors. Okay, so we’re gonna have a candid conversation here, about which donors you want to retain. And some of you’re gonna say, I want to retain all of them, right. And I am going to tell you that that’s a lovely thought. But that’s not reality. No one retains 100% of their donors, and none of us want to retain 100% of our donors, right. So I can totally imagine that some of you would love to bless and release your donors. Now. I grew up in the South. And we have a phrase saying, bless your heart, when we don’t have anything nice to say we say bless your heart, or I used to work at Disney World. And our phrase at Disney World is Have a magical day. That’s not what we mean at all. We just can’t tell you exactly what we’re thinking. So we tell you to have a magical day. So the fourth time you ask us what time the three o’clock parade is, we’re going to tell you that it’s at 4:15pm and you need to have a magical day. So you know what I mean there. So some of our donors, we need to not count in our retention numbers. And also we need to bless and release them. I’m loving seeing all my Disney alumni. Can’t wait for reunion next year for our programs. So okay, who do we not calculate in our donor retention numbers? So number one, dead donors, so I find it very hard to get dead donors to renew. They are true it’s very quiet. They don’t complain. but they also don’t give again. So we’re going to immediately remove any trusts and estates. Anybody who has gone on to greater things, we’re going to bless them and release them. Yes, I know some of you are thinking my bad humor is funny, and I’m here for you. So, love it. Yes. Number two, any in honor are in memoriam gifts, I’m gonna bless them and release them, we love them, we’re glad that that’s the way that they showcase their care for the person that lost someone or they’re honoring. But the retention rates of an honored Memorial gift is less than 3%. They’re not giving to your organization, they’re giving through your organization. Okay, so we’re gonna bless them and release them. Yes, yes, Kelly removing deceased donors, we don’t remove them, we mark them inactive, right, because we won’t record that they existed at one point. We just don’t need to carry him around with us. Right. So we’re gonna bless and release honor and memorial donors because the likelihood of them renewing is slim to none again. So you know, we really want to think about that. We had a teensy weensy part of a conversation, earlier event or third party people, people who give through me because I’m going to do a Disney 5k People who come to an event and sit at someone’s table, but don’t buy anything, make a donation anything if they are not making a direct donation to your organization, folks. That’s the definition of a non donor. I know we hold on to events, attendees, I know we hold on to third party people, but they’re not likely to retain so we’re gonna bless them and release them from our retention numbers. Okay, that’s a separate channel, you can try to convert event donors or M donors, but I’m giving you the I’m a nonprofit, I have limited staff time, budget, and things like that. But you might as well pretend that they don’t exist, because again, getting them to give is very difficult. What criteria is a dead donor? Vijay? Anybody who’s no longer living? It’s, I go very basic. I’m not a very fancy girl. But if you’re dead, I’m not going to ask you for money. I’m also not going to ask you for money. Your kinfolk, your cousin twice removed, I might get a casserole. But I’m not really interested in asking dead people. Yes. So for money, I mean, I just find it to be really fruitful, although they are nice and quiet. So there we go. Who do we fight for? We want to fight for donors who give small amounts loyally over time, or donors who give multiple times per year. Right. So again, we want to exactly Nancy, if I’m buying a raffle ticket, I’m not donating. Exactly, exactly. So raffle ticket is basically scratch off people, people who are paying the penny slots. blessum release them, we appreciate you. But we got to let you go because we’re not here for you right now. Okay. We don’t want you hoping and thinking we need real donors, right. So and donor meaning somebody who gives up their own resources or through their donor advised fund or something like that, not somebody who’s like, Okay, I sat at so and so’s table and my presence brought you my grace. No, this is not bridgerton. We don’t use words like my grace. Okay, we need to think about our strategy in long term versus short term. Yes, we could totally hurry up and get a second gift. But the likelihood of us hurrying up getting that and then retaining isn’t going to work, right. So we really have to think about our long term strategy. And every donor deserves a thank you, every donor deserves Thank you, y’all are cracking me up, like I should take it on the road. I cannot do stand up because I have self competence. Again, you got to work on that. We have to bless and release also the idea that once a donor has lapsed for more than two years,

that they’re going to just think about us and longing one day while sitting next to a window looking gazing outward and going, you know, I used to give to them. I really need to do that. Again, less than 5% Is your shot at a lapsed donor. It’s kind of like dating somebody you already dated before. It’s familiar. It’s comfortable. It’s not gonna last y’all I mean, let’s be honest. I mean, it can end up in a Dateline so we got to be real careful there. So requiring lapse donors is hard, it’s better to treat the donors you do have really, really well. So the two groups of people that I’m going to fight for over and over are small donors over multiple years. And it doesn’t have to be consecutive. Or people who give me more than one gift in a year. So love that question. Got to make sure I got that repeated for y’all. You’re good. I’m popping in and out of the chat and the key. So if you have a hard hitting journalistic question, pop it into the q&a, and then other people will upvote you, which will make you feel real good about your self esteem. And then I will answer it. So yes, right. So exactly, Katherine, every now and again, you get a gift from a donor hasn’t given in five to 10 years. But as my father would say, a clock is right twice a day, no matter what a broken clock is right? Twice a day. So if you want to sit around waiting for somebody to just magically give you a donation, not really what I want to bet my life on, right, so you can communicate. But we want to be mindful, okay. After we identify who is going, who are identifying who we’re going to keep, we have to operationalize things. Now, that’s a very big, many syllable word, I get it. So just put it in your ops, meaning, make it part of your habit. So the first thing is agree, you have a strategy of retention. And in that strategy, the first thing you’re going to do is you’re going to reorganize your budget resources. So right now you probably have budget resources, going to acquisition and remember, acquisition is five times more expensive than retention, right? So we’re going to move 10% of our acquisition budget, over to retention, that’s the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to move percent of our acquisition budget over to retention, and we’re going to get a fantastic return on investment there, we’re gonna put that energy into retaining our donors, not just asking them for money, because again, who wants a one sided relationship? Right? So here’s how to affect change at your organization, everybody thinks it’s go to a conference here an amazing idea, and then implement it. No, the first thing is, you have to understand the concept. The concept that I’m teaching here is that retention is more important than acquisition, and we need to resource it. The second thing is, not only do I have to understand it, my organization has to accept it. Look, your acceptance is a thing. So let’s come to terms with ourselves. But acceptance is a thing. So you have to accept that in order to have a retention based strategy, you can’t keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That would be the definition of insanity. Right? You can not do that. You cannot do that. And then you have to put it into action. So once you’ve accepted that this is the road, we’re gonna go down, what are the actions we’re going to take in order to change our behavior, right? So in order to change our behavior, okay, you need infrastructure that scales. So that’s why your data hygiene, having the information ready for you, and DonorPerfect having your infrastructure, so every donor gets a receipt within 24 to 48 hours, every donor gets a separate Thank you within seven to 10 business days. And again, all of this preferably in the channel in which they gave, right. So again, the channel in which I gave should drive my communications. So Julia asked an original question. She’s the OG question asker says, we keep adding new donors, but we’re not retaining first time donors, how do you keep them and what gets them more engaged? Julia, you need to build a first time donor journey, I’m going to show you an example you should have seven touches with a donor without an ask before you ask them for more money. So seven touches before you ask them for more money. And so I’m going to show you what that looks like. Now, if you cannot get to seventh grade. If you can get to three, that’s better than none. If you can get to four, that’s better than three, always doing better than what you had before. Right? So I’m going to give this to you. This is in your slides, it will be in the recording, you need to do your tech stack. You need to look at what is the technology that I have at my organization where I can engage with donors, right? So I love that right? I so love this. So this is outlining what technology do I have and what percentage of it do I use? In other words, what am I missing y’all like there may be two, you don’t necessarily need to add something new. It’s use what you have, and scale it. And again, operationalize it. So get out your colored pencils, get out your markers, especially those edges skips those sniffy ones. Do you remember those from school? Oh, my, the blueberry, I can still smell it. And I still have blue dots on my nose from inhaling those markers. And in that, so yes. So now we need to build a connection with the donor. So Sarah knows what I’m talking about having sniffed those markers. But remember the brown one, it always smelled weird. And so yeah, and it wasn’t called number. So it wasn’t fancy. So you were like, I don’t want to have that. Yeah, I may or may not have have too many of those smelly markers in my time. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me. I’ll tell my mother and see what she thinks. You know, totally, totally up to her blue was Maxine Blue was my favorite Jessica, child of the 80s. I see it, I see it, you’re laying down the truth there. So the first thing in communications is to have a retention mindset, which means that you can’t always have an acquisition mindset. Yes, acquisition is lovely. Don’t we all want more. But sometimes more is more and we’re not getting quality, we’re not getting the type of donors that we want to retain over time. And if we think about our organization, and its commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging and justice, we say that we are down with the Eni, right? But we don’t demonstrate that we say on our charts, oh, if you give $5,000 We’re going to do this. And if you give $50 We’re going to do this, thereby saying that if you give more, you’re a better person. Well, that’s crap. How do we know that that’s not less of a person sacrifice, right? So if we’re really going to do a retention mindset, we must value a $50 donor. The same way we value a $50,000 donor or a $5,000 donor, this whole ranking people by a mouse I mean, that is some Hunger Games Nandi and I compliant BS, right. So we need to work on that as an So retention mindset is, regardless of amount, it’s your behavior that matters, right? So we need to make sure that our communications This is the best on our Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Yes, Heather dollar value is not an indicator. And we know that 70% of first time gifts are test gifts, they’re nowhere near a person’s capacity. Right? So if you say that the bigger donors matter more now, no. Not cutting, oh, Margo, I don’t have a problem with opinions. Because let me tell you something. When I did my Master’s in fundraising, I did a study of all million dollar donors up in a certain university and not a single one of them started with a gift of more than $5,000. So don’t value me when I’m worth $250. And you’ll never get to the million. Go ahead. Go ahead. You know, what do they say f f around and find out? Yeah, we’re not going to do that. Because everybody who’s

deserves our attention. Everybody who’s generous deserves behavior. And they deserve our loving and belonging because they identify as donors and to them, that $50 may be 10 times more of a sacrifice than somebody who cuts a check for 5000. So we want to focus on donor focused, cause focused, communicate communications, right? So we want the donor to understand that they’re important to us. Becky Floyd from gift, butter is one of my best friends. So bring it on, we would sit there and talk and we would not talk fundraising at all, we would just love on each other. So here’s the thing. In real time, donors have an aspirational identity. I am a donor I, no donor walks around and goes, I’m a major donor. No one walks around and goes, I’m a minor donor. I’m a principal gift donor. I’m a vice principal gift donor. That’s our nomenclature they go trying to be generous, right? And so here’s how our shared beliefs fuels that loyalty. donors have an aspirational identity to give and do good things. And we share in those beliefs that every gift is a good gift, that regardless of amount, someone who’s generous, is fantastic, right? That donor will reconcile their values with our shared beliefs, and they will renew but the moment that we put out things that don’t They’re their beliefs like, oh, I don’t know, a big cardboard check that says, Oh, this rich white person gave a million dollars. Well, I can’t relate to that. And I work in nonprofits, so I’m never going to give you a million dollars until after I croak. Because Grey’s Anatomy didn’t save me. And there will be a sad song and everything. But I can’t relate to that. What I can relate to, though, is an article about a donor who gives every year for seven years regardless of amount that I can relate to. Those are shared beliefs, right? shared beliefs that you value people and people are generous, not you value dollars. That is the problem with retention is we’re constantly quoting our dollar amount goals, we’re constantly saying, we raise this much what we’re not talking about is the people that helped us get there, right? The people that helped us get there. So shared beliefs look like this. Like you, we believe better isn’t good enough, together. So this is a problem. change makers like you again, helping them have an identity, right? You care about people and are here to help. Again, you centered language, not organization centered language, nobody needs to hear about your mission statement. That’s why they gave they got it. They don’t need that regurgitated for them, right? They don’t need to meet your CEO or your executive director that’s not sweated, what’s important to them? What’s in them is their belonging, and their generosity, right? Again, you know, Seth Godin always says that the most magical word to a human being is their first name, right? So use it, use it. So here’s conventional segmentation, where we segment on a mound, the type you could do different types of donors, I work a lot in higher education, we have lots of varied types of donors behavior is the way if you’re going to pick conventional single single factor segmentation, then you should have a behavior path for every single type of donor listed there first time donors loyal donors, lapsed donors and increase errs. Right? The source so the source how I get make my gift tells you a lot about me, and where I’m giving at your organization. When we send communications, y’all y’all need to stop sending me five course dinners. I get nonprofit communications, just like so many others do. donors give to about five to nine different charities. And y’all be sending them like a whole stuffed turkey with some carrots and a casserole and a dessert like somebody has died. And the donor cannot digest all that like stomach hurts. I get the itis afterwards I fall asleep. I cannot handle it, y’all. But we really need to do is we need to send snacks. It’s not about how many communications it’s what’s in them so I can handle and you know, some of us maybe girl dinner. You snacks is a full meal. Like I mean, don’t get me started on dots pretzels, which are you know, manna especially the honey mustard ones write snacks, so small snackable content over time, rather than trying to be everything to everyone. When your communications try to serve up big old meals. That is when you become buffet food. And nobody likes buffet food. Nobody. I have been to conferences all over the world, even in Italy. And the conference food in Italy is troughs of pasta. I mean, it’s better than what we have but not much. Not much at all. Not much. Right? So nuggets, snacks, meals just little numb yum. Right? Because then you feel like oh, I didn’t really eat I can take more than that. So here’s an example of snackable content. Yes show snacks as we call them in fundraising is funny land. This is a snackable content behavior based for a first time donor. And y’all if you can’t get to this, fine, do your best. Never let it rest though. Keep trying to do your best. So boom. Within the first 30 days I get my receipt. I get my new donor postcard and I get a thank you y’all postcards are the jam. If you haven’t yet done postcards, love a postcard, right? Love, love, love a postcard. So love a postcard. Then in three months, they’re gonna get an impact report either an email or a piece of mail depending on how they give. Then they might get a video or a phone voicemail, a text message. Don’t forget text messages are fantastic. Then they might get a phone call from a board member or handwritten note and then and only then do you re solicit them Um, y’all most of us are really soliciting way too quick, way too quick and we’re not understanding that people need time to get to know us and build a relationship with us. So here as the Grim Reaper he’s coming for you he’s coming for your donors and this is what kills retention irrelevant content. Okay, so I gave to support your flooding relief, right? And then you sent me something about I don’t know your camp. Okay. But that’s not what I gave to you. I don’t care about camp if I gave to flooding, really. Retention killers. You’ll remember this forever Lynn with an E? Write incorrect information or when you send me a letter to Mr. Wester there’s nothing worse than when you gender me. Lack of trust, meaning you didn’t tell me what my money did? And the communications are impersonal. Did you send this to everybody? Did you not include my first name and the email y’all mail merge is not. So then we have to renew the gift. And the first thing we have to do is make sure that we’re not asking every time we talk to someone. So I’m showing you three examples.

of what I call a fast it’s a word I made up I’m hoping Webster’s I’m Western not Webster’s picks it up but that’s when you put a thank you and and ask no thanking and asking Nope. Asking. So if you look at January newsletter to a donor that’s an ask, match my gift. That’s an Ask Donate Now, that’s an ask. That’s a no no folks. People know how to give. You don’t need to bombard them with Donate now. Buttons, they’ll figure it out. First, we need to thank them. Can you imagine? So again, dear grandma, thank you so much for my birthday gift. I will love and play with my cabbage patch doll. I will love him forever. I love his curly blonde yarn hair. But by the way, grandma, my birthday is coming up and Rainbow Brite seems kind of cool. How about you get on that? Your grandma would never give you another present? Can you imagine? Well look at what nonprofits do. Oh, thank you for your support. Can we have more? Rude? Rude, just rude? No, no fast us not doing it. And yes, Rainbow bright because the 80s is life. Hello. So the vast majority of donors give again, within the first 18 months, y’all we have to slow your roll. Like it’s okay. You do not have to slap people around with asks, there is nothing wrong with letting people breathe and build a relationship with you. Calm it down. You have time to build a relationship with them. Right? So if your E blast has an ask in it, take it out. Take it out. Chill. It’s gonna be okay. God forbid. And I mean this in all sincerity that you put an envelope in your receipt, please stop doing that. That is rude. Can you imagine putting your return envelope or return device our UPS shipping label to your grandma, or to somebody that came to your wedding? Right? How you came to my wedding. Thanks so much for the gift by the way, we’re knocked up. How about some diapers? I’ve put a convenient return envelope and postage in there. So you could ship us some diapers. How about you get on that? Can you imagine? You imagine but in nonprofits, we think oh, that raises more money. No, that kills retention. The solution to retention is asking for monthly gifts. Recurring, giving us the way 90% retention rate, right. Donors love it. They prefer to give monthly and we need to ask them so your default asked for renewal should always be monthly. Let me say that again. Your default asked for renewal should always place so to my friend Julia, the OG of question asking. In addition to your welcome series, I want you to ask them for a monthly gift. When it’s time. I want you to ask them for a monthly gift when it’s time, right. So don’t ask them just for one gift. say could you make that a recurring gift that is the way to retain donors. The other way is to use your tech folks. Use your tech right? And so here’s what you want to do. someone visits your website, maybe they don’t make a gift. Well, how many of y’all go to Nordstrom or Old Navy or I don’t know and you don’t buy everything all the way through? Well, then what happens the next day you get a coupon like the only place where I buy things all the way through now is Amazon every other time. I go and I put a ton of stuff in my cart like I have money and If I don’t check out and I close it out and don’t you know, they send me free shipping or discount. I’m here to save your money because we work in nonprofits. Don’t ever buy anything all the way through unless it’s Amazon. Everybody else will send you that. Yes, Carly, that promo code? Well, you can do the same thing. As matter of fact, if you go to doctors without borders, and you go to make a gift, and you don’t, those doctors without borders are like, hello, hello. Hi, don’t you want to make a gift? Yes. So keep that in mind. So you’re, you’re having a little emoji moment where your brain is like, I want to do this when but we’re running out of time, you’ve got four minutes, quit, quit talking so fast. You want a car, you want a retention based mindset, great. Don’t start out wanting a car, you’re going to start out you’re going to build yourself a skateboard. So you’re going to build yourself touches for first time donors, postcard welcome video, text message anything and you’re gonna make it scalable. And guess what? first time donors, it’s so amazing, because you only have to design that once. You’re only going to get it once. So you don’t even have to redesign a new one every year, you just have one first time donor postcard, and it always goes out, right? Then you’re going to add a handle and you’re going to add something for your loyal donors, then you’re going to add a bicycle wheel. And then and then and then you’re going to do one thing, you’re going to do it really well. And then you’re going to move on, you’re going to do one thing, you’re going to do it really well. And then you’re going to move on, you’re not going to try to do everything. Right, not going to try to do everything. So I’m going to jump into the q&a. This is my contact info, including Thank you cut in half, because what’s the top half of a thank you, you only need the bottom half. Y’all I have 15,000 samples on my website for free. You can come hang out with me, you can email me. I’ve got tons of videos and free learning opportunities for you. But So Rebecca says so if a donor gives to a summer appeal, do we omit them from the year end appeal and focus on touches with that donor instead? Yeah. Hallelujah. Amen. Rebecca with a K and H yesterday, ma’am. Because remember, they’re giving on their calendar. Just because it’s the end of the year doesn’t mean they’re going to give right? So you don’t have to ask them. You need to focus on the relationship. So I’m going to run through these are weekly eblasts considered a touch point for the purpose of retaining donors, no, ask just news about the organization. Okay, Maria, I get my news on the bottom. Phone and little blurb, blurb blurb, what about stories about donors and the impact I made instead of news about the organization, news about the organization, kind of a snooze fest, I don’t really want to read it. Maybe you think about how our values align, and you do something for me. Right. So gotcha there. Gotcha. Gotcha, gotcha. Let’s see who else has got one? Wow, this is my favorite. What if our ideas for placing value on donors differs from that of our board? or Executive Director? Well, you’re a professional darn fundraiser, aren’t you? And this is your chosen vocation. I mean, I have a master’s degree in it. I think I know more about fundraising than a board member who is an insurance salesperson. So I’m gonna go with it. You’re an expert, and your board member just wants to have another golf term, and nobody needs that kind of energy around them at any time. I mean, thank you. No, thank you. How about as a board member, you thank some donors. And then we’ll talk about your ideas, but until you think some donors and give to you capacity, I got nothing for you right now. Nothing for you. But thank you, it’s my profession. Let’s see, there’s some DP questions that I’m gonna let that team get to. Let’s see, is retention different with businesses and organizations versus individual donors? Love this question. Yes. What a business is made of human beings, human beings. Businesses are made up of human beings. And so I treat businesses, like I treat individual donors except I do everything with businesses, digitally. I’m big on digital with my businesses. So love that. So Tammy asked the great question. I’m going to end on this one. When we value all donors with limited capacity. How do we do it with exhausted comms? You do small snacks over time, and you change your belief that all donors have value. And I’m going to end it there because Jonathan is going to take over y’all get in touch with me. Go listen to the podcast. I’d love to have you. Y’all have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all soon.

Lynn that that was wonderful. Everyone give it up for Lynn. I thought that was not only entertaining but extremely helpful. I’m sure you’ll have a lot of great takeaways. Just like I have a The next session is going to begin in five minutes at 2:25pm. Eastern, we have Mina dance with centering humans in nonprofit AI and personalization. And we also have Craig Parker from Microsoft with AI for fundraising success. How to kickstart your nonprofits AI journey. No matter which session you choose, you’re not going to miss any content because all of our sessions are being recorded. We’ll see in a few minutes.