Rescue Mission Fundraising Summit Day 2

0:00  

little bit more time here and let a few more people file in. Glad to see you all back today, we’re certainly excited to kick off day two of the DonorPerfect rescue mission Summit. We’ve got some Read More

0:00  

little bit more time here and let a few more people file in. Glad to see you all back today, we’re certainly excited to kick off day two of the DonorPerfect rescue mission Summit. We’ve got some great content today. And we’ll do a little bit of a review of some of the topics that we touched on yesterday. And so we’ll kick that off in just a few here. Hopefully, everyone got some good content yesterday, and, and we did see some people reaching out with some questions about the presentations, after we close things down. So that was great to see, by all means, let’s let this be an interactive session. And hopefully, you’ll always go away fulfilled with whatever information you wanted to get out of each specific session. So that said, let me just sort of kick this off for today. So day one recap, I wanted to just revisit a little bit of what our presenters shared with you. We had Justin from the Keystone rescue mission, their executive director, and he gave his experience in terms of bringing the direct mail process in house. And some of the key things that I really took away from that, because I’ve talked to some other organizations that have brought it in house and they’ve had some mixed feelings about it was that Justin ended up using real guest photos, that was a unique thing that sets them apart. They also took the resources that they got back from the checks, scan time savings, and then they use those resources to call people to give them a very specific Thank you. And I think that helps generate some additional giving into the future. They also use radio and TV, which I think you know, for a lot of rescue missions, maybe those are channels that are could be very expensive. But I remember in my initial discussions with with Justin, he was able to, to negotiate some really great agreements with with those providers so that he could get his message out. And the message was consistent, whether it was an email or whether it was direct mail, he talked about going with some oversized pieces of paper, which we know gets some better attention. But it was the same kind of message. And I think that’s that’s really key to try and make in house work. And then after all that was done, he was doing a very targeted major gift fundraising after they did a screening of their of their constituents as well as their acquisition records. So by and large, it was a really great, great presentation. Good set of numbers at the back end of it. Of course, this will be recorded, and it’ll be shared out after we finished up day two here. But you’re going to have access to all of that information. We then covered the the check scan product, which Justin uses that his rescue mission as a time saver, we typically find that it will bring one full time equivalent or an employee’s time back into your use for other tools. It also it’s reading the solicitation slip and the check data automatically. So it updates the records and DonorPerfect without anybody having to import or key that information in. And there are the options for the automated bank deposit, which saves time from a reconciliation standpoint, as well as having to drag the checks to the bank. We then wrapped up the day with a discussion about volunteers. We received a presentation for volunteer local and how to manage lists and jobs and schedules. They talked about creating and I’m interested signup form. And I actually after our session yesterday, went out to victory rescue mission in Springfield, Missouri, which I know that uses the volunteer local product and took a look at their form. Very nicely done, I would encourage you to perhaps take a peek at it. If it’s something that you wanted to step up the game for your volunteer management program, we talked a little bit about the automated background check the solution that they have, as well as how the hours worked ends up getting integrated in with DonorPerfect, so that you have a comprehensive view of your donor and whether or not their volunteer hours are a component of what you would like to thank them for in your reach outs. And lastly, we had the always fun, Matthew Montorio from Constant Contact, talking about ways to format your email to improve the rewrites and the actual action. So keeping your content above the fold of the email, no more than three major points and make sure that you got button and calls to action inside that are very easy to find and easy to click on. So some great information yesterday. You know, we’re looking forward to sharing out again, as we said the video and we’re really excited about today’s content too because it focuses on some other key elements of the fundraising, some of which Justin ended up talking about and yeah, looking looking for Really good stuff. So today, I wanted to remind you about the DonorPerfect community. There’s a new rescue mission user group that is out there. And I was actually going to go ahead and show you a little bit about how you can get to that space. So inside of your DonorPerfect log on, I know that some of you are not customers, you’re perhaps looking around for different systems that are out there. I’m actually logged into DonorPerfect right now. So any of you that are clients, you would be familiar with the community button that we have here. And when that launches into the donor, perfect community, this is a place where you can access our knowledge base support cases, we have a suggestion ideas section in here. But if you go into discuss, and you say talk with community members, that brings up a list of topic areas, and one of the new ones that we have is the rescue mission user group. Once you jumped into this section here, you can just go ahead and click join the group. And once you’re in the group, you can go ahead and start asking questions. And I think this is a great way to continue this discussion. And to keep the conversation going about what works and what does not work for the rescue mission clients, I was discussing the whole idea of this very specific sector specific discussion group with some other sectors this morning. And they totally were in agreement that fundraising across the nonprofit world is a little bit different depending on which sector that you’re in. So I think this is a great section inside of community, I would encourage you all to go ahead and register and just click that button and start up some discussions. I’m looking forward to hearing what else you you might want to know in terms of what our other clients inside of the rescue mission space are doing these days. So that said, let me just jump back to our just opening comments here. So

7:06  

a reminder, we have

7:08  

two sessions. And then we’re going to have the bombas sock drawing where your organization can win 500 pairs of socks. So we’ll announce that at the beginning of the roundtable. And we’re really, really hoping that you will join us for the roundtable session today. And you’ll get to find out who the winner is. For the Roundtable, I’m going to plant the seed right now. But I want you to think about it. But don’t distract yourself from any of the sessions that are going to be presented. But as you are maybe on the break, or maybe you and as we’re sitting here in this, this presentation, I want to hear from each of you in we’re gonna put it in the chat. I’d rather the chat instead of the questions in the chat, you put one of these four categories. And you have a comment about events, maybe the events that you’re doing the events that you’re planning to do, what you’ve seen work, what you have seen not work inside of your organization, this is an opportunity for all of us to share. We’re just using some of the virtual tools that are out there. So go ahead and post that in the chat. We will look through that then when we get to the roundtable. And we’ll bring these up as discussion topics. And it’ll be a way that we can kind of make it interactive. So the first one is events, which ones are working, which ones are not working, are you looking to do virtual live or even hybrid event events. We’re seeing a lot of fast transition that’s happening right now on our clients time. If you’ve got any time saving ideas for the rescue missions. You know, we’ve talked about a lot of them here inside of these presentations. There’s others that are just waiting out there. We’ve got, you know, ways that you can send video thank yous that are so much faster and see the the hand cramp both of writing personalized notes that we’re getting great responses from the donors. We’ve also got solutions that can automatically send a printed thank you letter. Our one partner appeal maker has the ability to connect to the DonorPerfect database and automatically send out and mail a thank you letter that goes right to the donor and decrease your time to thank you as soon as the record goes into doing a perfect that letter is on its way the next day. So time saving ideas. Campaign, what was your best campaign in the past year? What do you think was unique aspect about it? If you can share a little bit about that we’ll bring that up as a topic in the roundtable. And then Yikes. What are you most afraid of in the coming year and 2022? What can we talk about from a fundraising perspective, but maybe not even limited to that but maybe we can even use the community here to share what they’re most concerned about in triumph in terms of keeping the viability and keeping the mission the rescue mission mission going. So quick review here for what We’re going to cover today, I will soon be turning this over to Kelly ravage, who’s going to be covering the recurring gift program and how that recurring gift can cross the generation. We started to hear a little bit yesterday, we know that millennials have a feel towards, you know, some micro giving and so forth and recurring ends up falling nicely into that fold. But Kelly’s going to cover a lot of ways that you can elevate your recurring giving to be a more significant portion of your of your donations. And then we’ll we’ll have a session with Kelly and Frank to do major donors. And then we’re going to wrap up with the roundtable discussion. So with that said, I am going to turn control over to Kelly grammage that will be able to start our

10:52  

recurring gifts session.

10:53  

All right. Thank you should have gotten the reins?

11:00  

Yes, I believe I did. Let’s see here. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Kelly Ramage, I am getting the cue from my little portal that everybody should be able to see my screen. And I’m not seeing any flagging hands at me from Darryl to say, hey, they can’t hear you. So I think we’re good to go. I am thrilled and excited to be here today to talk about building your recurring giving program. And the thing that is most intriguing about this title is building could mean building from ground up because you don’t have one, it could also mean building like you want to refresh it, you want to make it stronger. And before we dive into the the whys, and the how and all of that I’m always impressed with some of the numbers that circulate in the industry about recurring giving programs and more specifically, it’s often called monthly giving. But what I thought I’d share with you, as we get started, here are some of the numbers that relate to our customers that are using DonorPerfect for monthly giving program. So did you know that the median annual amount of a monthly donor is $360. So it’s pretty impressive number, not a number that I would always think of that would be falling in the middle of the list of all possible amounts of monthly donors. The donor retention rate of a monthly donor is 85%, which is just an amazing number, it will actually bump up a little bit higher if you use some of the DonorPerfect functionality, which I will be highlighting as we move along here. But that alone is just staggering. The median lifetime value of a monthly donor is $2,400. And when you stop to think about that, and the effort that you go through to engage your donors and retain your donors, and then you start thinking about the the length of time and the relationship that they can have with you and the impact that they can make this is just an amazing number in and of itself. And this one is the one that I always kind of marvel at because I I have to admit, when I think about monthly giving, I tend to think of dollar amounts that are not necessarily at the $53 amount level, I tend to think of the 10 to $15 amount. And those are important too. I’m not saying that they’re not but when you really take a look at all of the information. And again, this is for all DonorPerfect customers that are that have a monthly giving program. This is the average monthly gift amount of those donors. So I am excited to share these numbers with you. But I am equally excited to be here because I truly believe that a recurring giving program can provide revenue that you can depend on. So you can expand and enhance your other program options. And the work that you’re doing is so critical. It’s always important, but especially coming out of a pandemic, I think it’s even more critical. For many reasons. You know, it’s the year and a half that we never imagined what happened here in America, but it did. And we survived and we got through it. Some Thrive some not so much. And that’s where we can all partner together. So let’s talk a little bit about the specifics of our conversation today. So I’m going to break it down into two main things, why and how. So when I think about why I could have approached it in a lot of different angles. But what I chose to do is to really look at the Y from the perspective of things that I have heard firsthand from our customers who are using DonorPerfect and they have a recurring giving program. So this is coming from people that are in the small to mid range pocket, just like you and obviously as Darrell said, you know when you look at everything across a nonprofit Have it industry, everybody has things that are unique to them. But recurring giving is recurring giving. And I believe that there is a thread that can be the same across all nonprofits. We’re going to talk about the why. But it’s really just you know that the what I’m about to share is coming from customers of DonorPerfect, then I’m going to jump jump into the how, how can we make this work? And I’m going to really try and stay away from the the the nitty gritty details of building a form, and using some of the specifics, but focusing on the practical tips and best practices. So as we move along, if you have questions, I’m happy to answer those. And I will feel those at the end, you can also bring them to the round table. And if I catch something in the corner of my eye, that’s a question I might answer it immediately. So let’s go ahead and dive in and talk about why. So why monthly giving or why a recurring giving program? Well, one of the things that I heard consistently, is that it’s a reliable source of revenue. Now, you might have to work to get it that to get the program launched. But I mean, that was a consistent message that I heard when I was interacting and asking some very specific questions. We recently hosted a panel discussion, and I heard it there, it’s it becomes a reliable source of revenue. Another Why is retained donors are loyal donors. And with that, is becomes a solid foundation from which you can build additional programs. Now, I think this is so critical. When I think about the little bit of understanding I have from what the work that you do is that you have a lot of programs now they might be very targeted to the region you’re in, as Justin spoke about yesterday, and, and what your mission is, is doing. But one, there’s because you’re working with people, there’s always going to be additional programs, and there’s always going to be additional needs and and you have to keep your business running. So there’s always those needs. So these retained donors become loyal, they become partners with you. And they are shouldering the work with you. And it really does provide that solid foundation from which you can build an additional program. Retain donors save you time and money. Now acquisition is important. I absolutely know that that is true. But these retain donors, the ones that you have a relationship with, you don’t want to forget them. And you don’t want to take them for granted. But it certainly is going to be the case where you probably will reach out and tell them don’t bother mailing me stick to email, you don’t need to spend your time, you know, interacting with me, I am committed to what you’re doing. So they will in turn save you time and money. And this last one is Darrow kind of pointed out is the potential is huge across generations. Now I’m not going to necessarily, you know, do a poll to find out if you were to tell me, what’s the average age of your donor? does it fall in the older category now I realized that’s all relative because you know, as you turn 30, that’s that’s old, 40s old, 50s old. And then when you get 50, you’re like, Oh, that’s not so old, 60s old. So, you know, the older generation, I’ll let you decide what that means. But if you were to think about the average age of your donor base, where would it fall. And the reality is, is you know, we have to keep people engaged with what we’re doing and what you’re doing. So this recurring giving this monthly giving program really truly does provide the potential to cross generations because older generations likes the predictability of giving. They like that, that is something that resonates with them. But Millennials like to show support for causes by giving smaller regular gifts. Now again, you’ll notice there’s a common thread there, the predictability of giving that sounds you know dependable, predictable, and regular ongoing, that it’s there’s a theme that you could tap into, but it allows you to kind of expand that base with a way of providing or creating a reliable source of revenue. So these are some of the why you might want to consider a recurring or a monthly giving program. They might be the the wind in your sails to rejuvenate your recurring or monthly giving program and there’s many others I took pages of, you know, information and comments and kind of boiled it down to some of the themes that I saw of our customers and this Here’s what I discovered. Now, this is all well and good, but how does DonorPerfect fit into the equation and this is really where I want to camp out and kind of draw attention to some of the features and functionalities in DonorPerfect that can really make a monthly giving program a success for you. So in terms of how, again, there’s a lot of information out there about the actual how to launch a monthly giving program, and then you bring it into DonorPerfect. And there’s a lot of information about how you can set up DonorPerfect to be part of your monthly giving initiatives. I’m choosing just a couple of those things. Of course, if you have questions, don’t hesitate to let me know.

20:48  

So the first thing that I want to think about is how do you get started? Or how do you make sure that you’re positioning yourself in the best way possible? Well, the first thing that I think is going to have to be reviewed and ensured is true is that you want to promote it in everything and everywhere. It doesn’t matter if it’s a letter, it doesn’t matter if they’re at their website, if it’s a social post, it makes sure that the message is there that you have an opportunity for your supporters to be part of ongoing support, you want to make sure that they know about it, it shouldn’t be something that they have to go digging for. If they’re at your website, can they see it? Is it visible? If they’re reading your newsletter, whether that’s electronic or paper? Is there a shout out to it? Is it directing them to where to go? Is it promoting the value and what you could do if they decided to become a monthly donor. So you really want to kind of step back and promoted in everything and everywhere. And one of the things that I heard from a client, which I just thought was an ingenious idea, and it’s so simple, is to ask a friend, you know, whether it’s a close friend, or just somebody that you know, and ask them to go through the process of becoming a monthly donor and reporting back to you. And if you haven’t done it recently, maybe you want to walk through it, see what your experience is like and see if there’s ways that you can improve it. Now this next, how to have a successful monthly giving program or getting started is an interesting one, because there’s actually what I’ve discovered is there’s two schools of thought on this about the asking. So if you’re informing, asking giving opportunity to your supporters to become a monthly donor. There’s a school of thought and I heard this from our own customers, they don’t target don’t segment, just ask everyone let everyone decide. And then there’s the other school of thought is no, you want to target target it because you want the message to be specific to them. And I see value on both sides. It’s an interesting thing that I will actually want to dig a little bit deeper on. But no matter what you want to ask them, you want to inform them you want to keep them informed. So whether ask is a true ask or it’s really you’re, you’re making it point number one known that you have a monthly giving program that is what I have discovered is again, important they have to know about it if they don’t know they don’t have the choice to make. Now a little bit more specific is you want to name the program. So just a quick comment sharing if you will, and you can use the question pane if you would like is if you have a like you currently have a recurring or a monthly giving program. What do you call it? Do you have some names sustainers of hope that’s the first one that I saw come in. And you can see that as I’m looking away from my camera that I have a monitor over to my right so sorry about that. Driven Oh, I like that. Now it’s in all caps. I don’t know maybe that’s an acronym for something like keepers club. Oh, very nice.

24:16  

Alright,

24:16  

I’m not seeing any others come in. But those are some really great names. Oh, we use become a friend of the mission. Very good. Now, why is naming the program so important? Well, what you’re going to discover is one they have to have that. Like that point of what they’re committing to they need to understand what they’re doing. And it has been proven in the data that if you have a program name, it’s kind of like you go to the gym member become a gym membership. Well, you join a certain level you join at a certain price point think about your DonorPerfect plan. You have certain plans. There are names for it. Well this Same is true when you are thinking about monthly giving. So you want to name the program. Now I’m going to come back to that in just a moment. You do need someone to oversee the program. Now, I will pause and say, but if you’re using someone DonorPerfect functionality, it’s not a huge task, it is a job, I don’t want to say that it’s not that the primary job of this person that’s overseeing the program is, of course making sure that it’s working and dealing with any hiccups that might encounter. But it’s the second point. So they they are overseeing the opportunities to provide or engage in that relationship building with these monthly donors, these recurring donors, so they need that face to interact with. And again, it might be that the face is going to be a picture that’s included in your E communications are in your letters or at your website. I mean, I know when I’m going and I’m working with different DonorPerfect customers, I go to their website to see pictures design, find out who am I working with? Are they on the board? Are they the executive director? Are they the the Development Director, so we you need someone that’s going to oversee the program again, yes, for the oversight of it, but really for building the relationships. Okay, now, here’s another how to tip and that is recognizing them. Now, what I’m sharing here is again, a spattering of things to think about, for how to have a successful or growing recurring giving program. And you want to recognize your donors. Now, that is not to say that is not saying they have, you have to give them gifts. But what I discovered from listening to many of our customers is that they were saying their donors told them, we don’t want you to spend money on us. But we do like to see our name on the website, we do like to see our name and newsletter. So they like that recognition. They do like early access if you’re having an event or services offered. But they they really are loyal, they are part of your program. And they can become champions of your program, which then supports the need for the name. So I think you know, some of these things, I think, you know, are known tidbits of a successful recurring giving program. But if you’re getting started in this as new, these are some of the things that I found are really kind of important as you’re getting underway. Now as we dive a little bit deeper now into DonorPerfect, I’m going to kind of break it down into a couple of different buckets. So the first is, when you’re thinking about a monthly giving program, you want to draw comparisons between a casual spend versus a donation. Now, why do you want to do that? Well, I’m suggesting you want to do that, because you want to be able to identify what will connect with your audience what’s going to resonate with them? And you know, you might hear that you want to connect at some sort of an emotional level. So let me ask you this. If I were to tell you I’m an avid coffee drinker. How can you draw a comparison between my casual spend of a Starbucks coffee although I don’t drink a whole lot of Starbucks, but Starbucks coffee? With how I could be engaged in your monthly giving program? How can you draw a comparison? How is my money that I spend? Let’s say that I get five Starbucks a month?

28:51  

does it translate to it bag of groceries? does it translate to a night’s out of the cold? does it translate to a blanket? does it translate to a coat? I know for some of the missions up here that I am familiar with where I live, is you know, I live in the New England area, it is cold and they are always asking for scarves and gloves, things that I kind of take for granted. And I admittedly, that cup of coffee comparison to you know what it costs to go buy a scarf was really kind of yep, I think I can go do that. It got me. So coffee equals so many meals. Absolutely. Absolutely. Now another thing is to show the impact of a monthly gift. And now we’re getting a little bit more specific about some of the things that you can do, including the buttons on a form. So I don’t know how familiar you are with using DonorPerfect and recurring giving, but I’m now going to have up into DonorPerfect. And I’m just going to navigate into my online forms area. And this is going to just list my existing form, which is my monthly giving rescue mission. And it is not, you know, the shiniest star, but it is a functional form. And one of the things that you can do to communicate that value of their monthly gift is to label your buttons make it that comparison, try and say, here’s what your gift amount could do. It’s just It’s simple. But it gives them a visual gives them something practical and interesting thing that I read recently and then actually saw in action is don’t don’t use those normal amounts. $5 $10, you know, use unusual numbers $12 $27 because it gives them pause, like, oh, wait, what, what is that, you know, it’s just it’s an A simple way to use the tool to communicate with people who are inquiring and going through the process of becoming a monthly donor. Alright, so we want to draw comparisons, we also want to show impact of a monthly gift. Now, some of the other things to kind of think through in the how like best practices, if you will, is you want to make it ever so easy for a person to sign up. Now, that, of course is going to bring me to online forms. But I don’t want to just leave it there because the form is the is the tool that’s gonna gather their information, their name, their credit card, or bank account information, their dollar amount. But in the ease of signing up, you interacted with Matt yesterday in constant contact, that online form can be embedded in that email, that online form has a short link that you could place at a social post. There’s also DEP text and other partner where you can text out your online forms, you’re making it as easy as possible, you want to meet them where they’re at. And then we have some other really cool technology called Smart give, where you can have the donors name on auto populate. So really, truly all they’re doing is deciding on the dollar amount and then entering in their credit card information. Now, you absolutely want to make it easy on your donors for them to become a monthly donor. But you also need to be thinking about yourself, keeping it easy to maintain. And there’s a lot of different options that you can find in DonorPerfect to make it easier on you. One being automatic monthly giving another being account updater. So I’m gonna kind of just hop into DonorPerfect and talk a little bit about the online form and the automatic monthly giving. But it’s the tools that are there that we are providing that if you embark on using them, it will save you time so that you can be focused on other things. So if I scoot back into DonorPerfect, what we’re going to want to see here is I’m going to start at my online form, I’m going to enter it in as if I’m a donor, then that’s going to be pushed into DonorPerfect and then we’re going to review some of the other tools best practices that make sure that you’re aware in terms of just simply what they are. So here I am going to choose to make my $12 donation it’s a monthly gift and I am going to be the donor

34:20  

one of the things with online forms is that you can enable to give your donors the opportunity to help cover costs.

34:43  

Now one of the things just as best practice is that you want you know obviously this form to be branded in a similar color scheme if not the same. You want the message to be clear and concise. You want it to be engaging. Now I just built a form just for demonstration purpose. versus so obviously it is lots of room for improvement. But it’s a functional form. Okay, so I’m still the donor, I got my confirmation, and now it has been processed. And I can print this out from my receipt. Now if everything is working as it should, I can now scoot into DonorPerfect. And I can see that here is my record. And it came into DonorPerfect. And there are several things already populated. So first off, what happened is because I signed up to be recurring donor, that recurring commitment, if you will, is going to be stored here. And I am going to get an email that was part and parcel of the online experience thanking me for my contribution. And the first monthly gift is going to be processed immediately. So here’s my commitment, here is the money received from that first time commitment. Now a couple of other things that are going to now be available if you choose to set them up and use them. One is I am giving my gift on a monthly basis. And in DonorPerfect, there is a a tool a feature a behavior, whatever you want to call it, it’s found under Tasks week lit, call it monthly giving, that is automatically going to process my gift every 16th of the month until I tell the organization to stop. And that is something that is just automatically going to run. Now the other option that is automatic that I can use if I choose to as a donor, perfect customer is to have an automatic email receipt sent to those donors. Now, again, some people are going to say monthly donors recurring donors don’t expect a monthly Thank you. Others are going to say split right down the middle. Yes, they absolutely needs to be thanked. Now it’s an email. So it doesn’t really cost anything. And once you use automatic receipts, it’s really again, just that person overseeing what’s happening. And you get to craft what that message says you can change it on a regular basis, you might have more than one depending on the dollar amount. There’s a lot of different options that you have. But what I’m highlighting here is that I have turned on these automatic processes. And now it’s just going to run. So if it’s just running, then I have more time to interact with prospects, because of my acquisitions to encourage them, educate them, inform them about my monthly giving program, I can also interact on a more personal level with people that might become have become first time monthly donors. So there’s this is a way you’re using DonorPerfect as a way to stay connected to them expressing your gratitude, telling the impact of their gift on an ongoing basis. And it’s happening on a monthly basis. And it’s on the day that they made their contributions. So for me the 16th of every month until I tell the organization to stop, I am going to get an email that says thank you for my gift. So it’s serving as a hate a reminder, but it’s more importantly saying thank you. Now a couple of other things that can happen in DonorPerfect. And you’re watching what I’m doing. I’m doing all of this right before your eyes. I’m not I’m not here, her here, both my hands. So the other thing going back into my record I showed you that it was immediately brought in all you saw me do is fill out the form then I went into DonorPerfect and it was already there. The other thing that it can do should you choose to use it is I can enable what’s called a smart action. And a smart action is a business rule that I can have tasks created. And these tasks can be driven or triggered based on things like the fact that this was my monthly gift. It was my first time giving a monthly gift. And now I have switching hats. I’m no longer the donor. Now I’m the director of development. I have a task that’s been assigned to me. Now, we can get into a lot of really cool, exciting functionality. But all that happened is the donor filled out their gift and it all came into DonorPerfect and everything from this point forward was done for me. So there’s a lot of other you know, details that I could show you you about how to get this up and running. But I think one of the things that I’m hoping you’re hearing as a best practice is to really check out some of the automated processes that are in DonorPerfect to afford you the time to spend it on something, something else, something else to keep your mission thriving. Now, if I were to go back and talk about a couple of other howls, which I’ve alluded to, is the importance of thanking your donors. So saying, Thank you, nobody’s ever going to argue is something that you should ever stop doing. So you want to thank your donors, you want to thank often and you want to be real. And as I just highlighted, the automatic monthly receipts is a great asset, it is something that you can enable. And you want to show how show, show and share how the donor was part of your success, you can customize those email templates, and I’ll go back and show you that in just a moment. You can share your ongoing impact stories, ongoing gratitude, and that’s another use case for the integration between DonorPerfect and constant contact. So in terms of you know, kind of thinking just solely about recurring giving DonorPerfect, really can become that tool in your toolkit, your fundraising toolkit, the biggest hurdle sometimes is thinking through how like, what do we want to say? Do we want to say thank you every month? Or do we want to do that differently? If we say thank you every month that they give their gift that it’s processed automatically, do we want to then send them an additional email and use the integration between DonorPerfect and Constant Contact. But everything that you say and do can have that personal touch, and I wasn’t in Yes, Matt’s session yesterday, but I have heard Matt speak. And I know he talked about that personalization, I’m almost confident that he did. But one of the things that I just want to kind of highlight before I forget, is in the banking on a monthly basis using that automatic receding, thank you is where you can personalize this, you can make this say whatever you want, you can include pictures. It’s it’s, again, just it’s the importance of saying thank you, DonorPerfect will do the work for you. You have to provide the creative information, the stories and the impact. The other kind of piece that I just want to part with is one of the things that I have discovered, as I have worked with a lot of customers is it’s it’s overwhelming, especially as you’re getting started, but I believe that it really can be well worth the investment. So to that end, there are a wealth of resources available. We have starter kits, we have template kits, we have articles, we have suggestions. So all of this information that is listed here, can be found. And I’m just going to try and drag it across here can be found in community. So Darryl is pointing out join the user group absolutely ask questions, it’s a great way to get connected with each other as well as us. But within the knowledge base itself, there is endless information about monthly giving and how to set it up. But the other thing if you go to learn that you may not be aware of is that if you are looking at all of these choices, this one right here, the fundraising resource library is filled with lots of different ebooks. Two of them are specific, there’s actually three I highlighted two specifically related to monthly giving. If you look at the feature story library, there are all sorts of resources here. But here’s one talking about asking monthly donors to upgrade because our next training our next session is going to be interacting with Frank, I don’t want to do all of his introduction, but it might be tying into that a little bit. So monthly giving, recurring giving is one of those programs that I believe is. I think it’s it’s necessary in nonprofits because fundraising is hard. It’s challenging. It’s at times exhausting, but at the same time rewarding. So monthly giving I believe is a solid fundraising strategy. I believe that monthly donors are major donors you can count on now let that just sink in for a moment. So when you think about it, A gift amount that a monthly major donor might have to give.

45:05  

I’m just going to pick a number $200. Now that might be low, some of you might think that’s pretty generous. Okay, so just pick that amount. Now, if you were to divide that into 12, do you think that you might be able to find more major donors that give that on a monthly basis or monthly donors or major donors you can count on? And here’s an interesting one that I found very challenging is you want to try and think of in terms of Yes, and so here’s what I mean. So right now, if I were to ask you, what is one item your rescue mission needs on a regular basis? What’s one item your rescue mission needs on a regular basis? Maybe it’s bars of soap? Maybe it’s boxes of pasta? Maybe it’s shampoo. Coffee? Okay, so what’s one item? All right. Now, what’s one item, that would be a nice to have? Maybe it’s a new, like the linoleum in the kitchen, sugar,

46:19  

a new phone system?

46:22  

I’m guessing new computers. It could be new mattresses. Now, if you take each of those things, and you think about those, if we turn monthly giving around and saying yes, we’re going to have it now you can say yes, we have it. And we have our ongoing revenue. And now we can do something else. It’s an interesting play on words. It has been in the back of my mind for several months now. And it actually has snuck into other aspects of life. But it definitely ties into what I do here at DonorPerfect. So I am going to just look to see if there’s any questions or comments that you have. It has been great interacting with you. Let’s see here. Does the program offer graphs or charts to see which month or program events were most successful? So that’s a great question, Shannon, and DonorPerfect. There are a couple of different ways that you could see charts and graphs. And we actually have a we have several dashboards, but we have a specific dashboard just for monthly giving. So here you can see exactly how your monthly giving program is performing.

47:55  

And this is one view, there are some financial reports that could be charted as well. So So yes, it just it really is going to depend on how that information is entered.

48:13  

And let’s see here. I don’t see any other questions. I’ll just pause to see if there are any questions. Otherwise, I think I am with 30 seconds to spare. Darrell, let it be known.

48:37  

All right. All right. That was actually you got some great responses to your questions. I’m glad that everybody was was able to use the q&a area there to to offer some ideas and be interactive. So that’s, that’s great. So monthly giving, clearly a strategy that every nonprofit should employ, but also an important one for the rescue missions. And then Kelly was talking a little bit about, you know, the major gift component of that. And, you know, one of the indicators as to whether or not somebody has engagement to your organization of courses if they do sign up for a monthly giving program. And I think our next presenter is going to speak to that aspect and others that would make it important for you to screen them and to explore whether they become a major gift candidate, as Justin talked about, in the very first keynote presentation to this to this summit. He ended up doing some very targeted major gift fundraising, and that was one of the keys to him, increasing his total gift value year over year. If you’re doing acquisitions, if you’re bringing new people in your donor database, you have an opportunity to actually explore whether or not they’re candidates. And so that’s a really good tool. And I’d like to introduce Frank Choi from donor search. Frank, if you want to go ahead and turn your cam are on and join us here, he and Kelly are going to cover the major gift topic. And Frank’s experience is one where he actually came from the industry as a major gift fundraiser. And he can talk about the process that he went through, to go through 1000s of records in a database and to decide which way to spend your time, most effectively, to do major gift fundraising. So with that, Frank Kelly, I’ll turn it back over to you too, and

50:31  

talk to you soon. Thank you so much. And thank you donor search for letting me have this opportunity to speak to everyone. Like Darrell had mentioned, I actually come from the nonprofit world. I’m based in Maryland, but I’m originally from Philadelphia. And up until six months ago, I spent the last 20 years in nonprofit fundraising, I primarily worked in prospect research and advancement services. So I was really a back end person. And I worked at organizations ranging from a domestic violence center in Howard County, here in Maryland, to larger organizations like Catholic Charities, and Johns Hopkins, the Philadelphia Orchestra, so kind of had a bit of a mix of different industries within nonprofits, but always, you know, looking at trying to help people, you know, get to a better place or reach their fullest potential. A little anecdote about me, which I always hear is like, you know, a good thing for presenters to give is a little personal thing, the only real personal thing I can think of that’s new is that since the pandemic I’ve been a little bit more outdoorsy. And I put that in quotes, because outdoorsy for me is probably not outdoorsy for anybody else. I grew up in a city, I was spent most of my life in cities. So I started going out to parks and taking my family and my daughter on hikes and stuff like that very minimal ones not too stressful, which is a stretch for me, since I pretty much growing up. The most kind of foliage or anything that I was really exposed to was whatever was kind of spray painted on the sides of concrete. So I count that as a win. And I’m pretty happy that I’m getting a little healthier, I guess from that exposure, although I also developed out cheese. So it’s a it’s a give and take, I guess. But jumping in, for those of you who don’t really know that much about prospect research, or maybe you are new to it, or it’s just very limited in terms of exposure, I just wanted to kind of briefly explain what prospect research is. Basically, it’s the start of your prospect pipeline. It is the gathering the analysis and the distillation of Prospect information that carries into your prospect pipeline, and then helps the gift officers to you know, identify, strategize, move those people into the cultivation cycle through the cultivation cycle, and eventually get that that gift a lot of times the major gift but you know, prospect research really also helps to identify and kind of segment your annual fun population to so it works on pretty much every tear. Prospect Research also helps with management. So really kind of working with the gift officers to to kind of monitor that activity, help them strategize. And again, like, you know, move those prospects through the cultivation cycle. Why we use prospect research? It’s pretty much the industry standard in terms of identifying new prospects, right? It’s it’s uncovering new prospects for you. It’s the start of your prospect pipeline. Further, it makes you more efficient and makes you it really maximizes your time so that you can do what you do best, which is being a gift officer which is going out and getting the resources that you need for your organization and for your mission. Because we provide those kind of like warm leads so that you’re not just going off like a shot in the dark. And you’re you’re focusing your time on the best prospects and the ones that will yield some real awards for you. Further, it also helps you like build those bonds with your current owners. So that those As Kelly had mentioned, you know, those recurring donors, they can then become major gift donors. You know, like when you’re talking with them, you’re more informed about your not just your internal relationship, but other things that interest them outside of your organization that might wreak reconnect back to us. So it’s providing information for you, that is valuable in how you relate to your donors. Now, the big question tends to be is it ethical? And I can safely say, Yes, it is coming from, you know, 20 years of doing this, we it’s an industry standard number one, just about everybody uses it. In the for profit world, you probably are used to prospect research in a consumer kind of way and not realize it because that’s what Amazon does. Every time you click a button on their website or any other kind of online shopping tool, they’re gathering that data to see your, your behaviors and your affinities and your likes. We’re doing that but in a much more aboveboard way, so we only look at published public information. So anything that is maybe under the radar or buried or something like that, we do not touch any of that stuff, we only go for things that are published. So stock information, so on publicly traded companies, of course, real estate information, but we don’t go like digging through your trash or anything. So it’s not as though there’s some clandestine kind of operation going on. And as an industry, we adhere to a very strict code of ethics, we cannot report on things or dig deeper outside of our capabilities or excepted capabilities. So any of these vendors that you go to whether it’s us at donor search, or you go to WealthEngine, or whoever has to be aboveboard, we also have to adhere just like any prospect research that works in the nonprofit side, we also have to adhere to those because we cannot cross that line of, of ethics in order to be used or utilized by nonprofits. And then you some of you might have already come across this, but as an industry standard, you’re going to hear that the practice of prospect research be recommended through fundraising associations like AFP, or or whatnot, or even your consultants, if you use them for especially in a campaign to start with campaign readiness to see what sort of in house resources you have. So let’s jump into like a use case. So let’s say and we’ll see this kind of inaction right. So let’s say for instance, you are looking at your your gift report activity. And you see that $2,000 gift was just made by a gentleman named Eddie Brown. And you see that his last year, it was at a significantly lower level at $50. So that person pretty much has self identified is how, you know, we would describe it, like nobody jumps from 50 to 2000, without kind of, you know, maybe giving a wink at you that they want to talk to you further about potentially being a major gift donor. So we look inward. And we look into our own internal data, our own database. So if you look in your your donor, perfect CRM environment, let’s look at his activity. So he’s giving has been pretty consistent or relatively consistent, but at a very low rate, right. So like 25 $50 And then all of a sudden he gives us $2,000. And very minimal engagement, no personal engagement whatsoever. He’s just been getting mailings and and showed up to a couple events or something. So it’s really this guy just kind of jumped up to say hey, I’m you know, I’m somebody that is interested or somehow connected to your mission. And you know, could possibly give more. And if we delve even further, we can see, you know, his donor type is just an individual it’s not like he’s a volunteer or a board member. So there’s even that lack of connection there. And prior to the $2,000 gift, the his total lifetime giving has been $170.06 gifts total, and then over six years of giving. So internal indicators show Yeah, he can be a really good prospect. But what not like, what do we do now? Well, this is where you do have to employ prospect research, and you have to look outside of your database and look outside of your internal data, because your internal data is only going to give you just that, what is this person’s interest, involvement, you know, to our organization, and nothing else.

1:00:25  

And, you know, that’s really making an assumption that our donors are monoliths, and they’re not, you know, they’re, they’re three dimensional people, they, they have other interests and whatnot. So that’s why when we’re looking, we want to look at like their outside philanthropy, we want to look at their wealth, and their involvement and what they’re doing out in the community, because, you know, some of what we do, could also, you know, align with those other, those other interests that they have building a better bond between us and, you know, namely Eddie Brown, who is actually a real person. So if you’re looking and this screen is actually an example of a well screening integration that’s built into DonorPerfect. And you can, you know, use any Wellspring that you like, I’m just showing this as an example. But when you have it inside your CRM, that also helps with the efficiency of time, it also helps with reporting, because it’s all internal now, and you can use your DonorPerfect environment to to really report out on all of this. So once we screen him, like, you know, to give a summation of what he is, it’s, he’s given, you know, what we found 353 gifts that he’s been recognized for that total, over $57 million. His last gift that he was recognized for, again, this is all publicly published information, he was recognized for giving a $6 million gift somewhere. He’s capable, because of his wealth, his net worth, he’s capable of giving 10 to $15 million, he has 10 properties, that amount to over $51 million. He has some stock ism, business revenue kind of looks like a bit on the low side. But since I actually have done research on him, I know that his business revenue has to be significantly larger than this. It’s just probably in a lot of private holdings, because he’s an investment banker, that puts them at a R rating, which is a DS one, one, but that What that indicates is, he’s a very high rate of person, just his philanthropy and his his wealth alone would put him at that marker. I mean, you know, it’s just an, he gives a very, very impressive amount of money away. So when you delve further into what he’s capable of, we look at his wealth, this is just a small segment of it. So you know, he has, he’s counted as ultra high net worth. He has, these are just two among many properties that he owns. But you can see one alone is worth $38 million. So if you only own that, that would put him that would set him over the bar regardless. And if we look at his philanthropy, and again, this is just a snapshot of a much longer list of information. But you can see that he’s he’s very philanthropic he gives to an array of different causes. Here, it’s mainly, you know, the arts and culture. But I know if you know, through the expanded view that he gives to a lot of shelters, a lot of human services organizations, a lot of food banks, I also know that he does have a foundation with his wife a charitable foundation that they give a lot of money through. And the bottom chart here, you can see, you know, some of his involvement, he sits on the board of the or did sit on the board of the Baltimore County Foundation, Community Foundation, the C Foundation, which is actually a Educational Foundation. So he’s involved, you know, what this shows combined with the capability slide is that not only does he have a lot of means, but he feels very involved and very connected to his community to the degree that he’s willing to participate, not just monetarily, but using his own time to which is I think we could all agree is the ideal donor, right, like the ideal candidate. So now that we have both our internal and external data would we know now, right, we can combine all of that and he checks all these markers like he has six years of consistent giving very, very little contact and no Oh, personal engagement whatsoever. High wealth, high philanthropy volunteers and is, you know, very, has a great affinity and inclination to human services, has his own foundation, very involved in the community like, these are great markers, these are the things that we’re really looking for. And then what you do is you take that information. And you, you know, depending on how you’re structured in your shop, you can build that profile to give to your leadership, because if this is somebody who rises to that leadership level, and you want maybe your executive director or your president to talk to him, you want to give this information over to them so that they’re informed of what this kind of person is, so that they’re not talking to them about something that maybe they’re not inclined to give to like, say, if he wasn’t in the healthcare or something like that, you don’t really want to talk to him about giving health care dollars. You want to see through the information, are there any people that were connected with? Maybe he sits on the board of a nonprofit, and we have a volunteer that also volunteers there or sits on that particular board? That could be an introductory point, that could be a place that we can connect? Are there other programs that fall in line with ours? Again, it is another common point that we could use to open those avenues to engage him. And then really kind of follow up, excuse me. If you want to take that a step further. And a great way to do it is model him. Because now you come up with your strategy. You’ve come up with your strategy on, you know how to approach any brand specifically. That’s great, you started that conversation, you started that relationship. But where do we go from there? This is where modeling comes in. This is where you take those, those characteristics that he’s displayed both internally and externally. And you find that convergence of the two, to find prospects of those with those similar traits. So if you were to build like a model, you would take from the internal data column, say five years of giving some threshold of consistent engagement, at least one connection, whether that’s a board or volunteer, what is their responsiveness? Have they been responsive to like mailings and other types of engagement? What are program inclinations I kind of put in there, because if you really want to get a little bit more complex, and really kind of put your people into funding buckets, or C program buckets, you can you know, sprinkle that in to truly segment people. And then, you know, look at the external data, if you want to take people at only that high rating, and at a certain wealth capacity, like say, like they have a wealth capacity of $100,000 and above, they had the demonstrated charitable giving, say $5,000 and above, they have demonstrated they give to human resources or food banks. And they sit on nonprofits. So now you can combine those all those data points, and you know, get really specific and you can model them and use that in your DonorPerfect environment, to build reports. And so that can really help you narrow down and data mine. Because then you can take your, your entire database, which I assume from all of you, you know, if it’s if it’s a similar to my experience, the database can be huge and very overwhelming. And so to extract that data and extract what you need to get that really good prospect pool and a manageable size prospect pool, you really want to do proper segmentation ones that are really focused and those type of characteristics will help you to pull a report that will give you very relevant information and therefore relevant prospects that you can you can actually manage and handle in the most efficient way. And then you can start to splice from there to you can even take that even further by really leveraging your DonorPerfect environment by using say Smart Actions, because you can automate them. You can set automated screenings, if you have an integration, or you could set alerts for yourself where You know, if, if a high rated donor comes in, or is given

1:10:06  

a gift of any store, you know that you could get an alert to let you know you can have maybe your just as simple as your gift reports, run on a weekly, or monthly basis and send out to you via email. And that way, you know, if you put like some of that effort on the front end, just to set those up, it saves you so much time, and it maximizes your time on the back end. And then you can take it further and keep building on it, you can segment even further on various criteria. can imagine, you know, and that can really inform your mailings, how you mail in the messaging, like the how you mail part is, you can then segment between people who are the most responsive to emails versus actual physical mail, and there for you can then save yourself probably like a lot of money on resources, messaging, you know, put them in the buckets, maybe there’s particular messages that resonate with certain segments of your donors that don’t resonate with others, make sure you, you do that in a focused way, so that you really show them that you’re listening to them. And that way, it’s more impactful, and that, that raises the chances of you not just getting a response, but you know, getting a donation and and a significant one. You can also plan more effectively for your travel, for your gift officers even for maybe for your events, because then you can really cluster based upon interest based upon giving levels and see where geographically, you could plan an event that has the maximum attendance, maximum impact.

1:12:04  

Darryl had mentioned acquisitions, and acquisition lists are really, they’re expensive, and and can be scattershot. When I worked at Catholic Charities, acquisition lists were a big thing for us. And it was tough because you know, the response rates tend to be low. Therefore, the expectation is very low. And I kind of as a data person, I kind of find that counterintuitive. So, for me, I like to be a lot more targeted, like acquisition lists, depending on you know, where you go, who you talk to, can vary. But a lot of times it can be relatively general, there’s some direction with it. But if I kind of feel like if you use a resource like, like a screening resource that has a marketing list feature, those places where are where you have more control, and therefore can actually be more efficient with your dollars. So in this example, if you could see here, you know, I pull up our marketing list, and I created the filters myself, rather than relying on a third party to create those filters for me. And ultimately, what I did was out of a database of over 230 million consumer records. I put the parameters of looking at people between the ages of 50 and 69, in the city of Baltimore, who have, excuse me, displayed, or have been recognized as giving a gift of over 100,000. to organizations that have a mission relevant to housing and shelter, Human Services, and religion. And or I’m sorry, and order religion. And that whittle down that 230 million records down at 248 Records much more manageable, right? Because typically, in my experience when we were at Catholic Charities like excuse me, the Yeah, acquisitions list would be like in the 1000s. You know, I think our minimum was like, somewhere between five and 7000. That’s a huge expense to be sending out and the return the rate of return to mail that we had not even like responses, they were actually just the wrong addresses was astronomical. So we were spending a ton of money on something that could have been, I think, a lot more focused and a lot more targeted. And this is a simple, much more economical solution to that And this is just an example of what it looks like. But basically, you know, to reiterate, this is how you can target your audience better, therefore targeting your message much better, and therefore saving you on your resources, it can, it can help you really maximize your time to at the end of the day, I know it is a lot of information, it is a lot of data, and any, any sane person that’s going to look at it is going to kind of get cross-eyed, a little totally understandable. I do too. And this is something that I actually kind of like, so even for me, it can get really hairy, right. But if you leverage the debt properly, and that’s the exciting part, if you can leverage it and organize it properly, it can pay dividends, it can really help you further your mission, because you’re not only thinking of the money, that can be donated back, but you’re thinking of that connection of support. So that can be volunteers. That could be, you know, donor dollars. But more than anything, it’s getting out there and getting your message out to not just that donor, but then translates to that donors, social network. And so it’s furthering your mission, and really bringing you to the attention of people who probably didn’t even think that much or didn’t know that much about you. So you know, you want to be more efficient with your, with your information, your data. And you want to be more mindful, because you want to bring in that external with the internal that will help you with your strategy. And again, it’ll help you build those better relationships, the stronger relationships with your donors, because you’re showing them that you’re paying attention. And you’re bringing them into your, your mission in your circle in a much more kind of impactful and connected way. And you’re showing them how they fit in to your organization and your mission, on a much more kind of like, I guess, operational stance, and this is coming from my background in advancement services, database integrity, because your fundraising operation relies on your database, your reports, your segmentations, the very basic reports that even come from your database that comes from your DonorPerfect database, you want to make sure that’s clean, and that is accurate. External Data is integral to making sure that you have that checks and balance that you’re, you know, updating it properly with the cleanest information. So that’s just normal upkeep. And that’s just kind of, you know, bare bones, great housekeeping. Before I close out, I actually want to show just given a bit of the impact that you know, external data can help you with. So one of our clients is a CRM for Sioux empire of the United Way. They’re in North Dakota. They have I mean, I’m sure the pandemic has has affected this greatly. But you know, in the past year, they provided over 1100 children with safe child care 500 meals daily to older adults, like that’s astronomical to me, I can’t even imagine the the amount of resources and effort that that takes, and they saw a 94% increase in cost to their health center. So if anything that shows the need, right, that shows just how much of a need they have for what they’re doing. The silver lining and all this, they have one fundraiser, and she’s amazing, but she’s one person. So that’s just a fiscal barrier right there. But through using the external data, and being able to use it, leveraging that to identify donors and supporters who would be more inclined with their mission. She was able to recruit 20 volunteer solicitors, who then also employ that same data to talk to potential donors and prospects and current donors on a level that’s much more focused in on them and relating the information and the mission of the United Way to them, and what that’s turned into for them. In the past two years, they were able to acquire 30 new donors at the $10,000 Plus level annually. So that was from one fundraiser trickling down that information, being able to use it in the right way. Recruiting 20 volunteers like this is just kind of one of those, those like spiderweb kind of effects. And it translated to 30 new donors, and not just 30 new annual fund donors 30 new major gift donors 10,000 Plus, I think, in any level, typically is a major gift. So I just found that astounding, and I applaud her, I applaud them. They’re doing really, really great work. And it was, it was phenomenal to see. So with that, I’m happy to take any questions that you have. And I thank you again, thank you for your time.

1:21:12  

Hey, Frank, great presentation. Thanks so much for sharing all of that about major donors, as well as acquisition lists and from your personal experience. So as Frank said, if you’ve got any questions in terms of major gift fundraising, if you want to go ahead and put them into the q&a section, here in the webinar tool, we’d be happy to go ahead and answer that. One, actually, two points, I kind of wanted to mention, just and maybe I can put Kelly on the spot a little bit. Many of our clients should have received a free trial to go ahead and access donor search. And I wanted to make sure that everyone was aware of it. Sometimes you put little pop ups inside of the program and things like that. And I know they may get ignored and so forth. But Kelly, if you want to, if I guess I need to make you a presenter, if we can do that, maybe just to show them where they might be able to access this tool. And you can get as many as 50, free lookups to go ahead and see the donor search data on very specific, specific accounts within your system. I think it’s a it’s a thing well worth trying to see if you can explore. So I’m going to just make Kelly, the presenter here, as it’s relevant to exactly what Frank was talking about.

1:22:28  

All right, I think we are in business here. So within a donor account, you will see different pages, and I’m looking at the main page. And there are different action items here. And there’s one here called Access donor search. And it is giving me a prompt that says would you like to view the prospect information for this record or update this record? So I can open donor search. And I’m in a trial version. So I don’t know exactly what this is going to do. But that but there goes yeah, it’s always nice when everything works as you expected. But it’s that easy. And then you can navigate through in throughout donor donor search. Now, I will say that one of the things that you may see in your own system that is not visible in this system, is that there were I want to say three donor search fields moved to the main page to have a bit more visibility. So right now I access donor search from the main page, but if I go to the bio pages is called DonorPerfect. I’m going to see all of the different screening fields and a couple of these the DS rating. And I’m drawing a blank, there’s two others that are were pulled to the main page. So it is possible that you will see some of these fields on the main page. And it tends to be I believe, the three that were used the most.

1:24:11  

Gotcha, yeah, I think it might have been matched quality was one of the other ones just to get people to get a reference, but perfect, perfect. So for those of you who maybe do not have a donor search account today, you can go ahead and try this, go ahead and into your donor preference system, pull up a record that you want to do some research on and go ahead and follow the clicks that Kelly had showed you. And then you’ll be able to launch into donor search. The second option that was on there would allow you to actually bring that data back in just as Kelly showing you here on this field. So great, great. Let me just see if we’ve got any questions inside of our chat. So when you purchased the donor search tool, are you able to run it on anyone in your database, or are you limited to a certain number? So typically, there’s two two different flavors. There’s that actually a batch screening, where you select a certain number of records that we then submit to donor search, and they come back in bulk, and we load them back into your DonorPerfect system. So that is a record by record basis. But if you just purchased the online tool or something that we now call donor Search API. Actually, I take that back. If you purchase the online tool, I believe it’s an unlimited number of times that you can launch in and do searches inside of the donor search piece, the DS API is a slightly smaller scaled down version, kind of what this free trial is all about. And that one is record based. So you can expand your free trial with a DNS API. And I’m not sure Frank or Kelly, if I missed anything, in terms of what you would describe that product does

1:25:44  

not sound I mean, that sounds good to me. Right? Might be able to enhance it a bit, but I can. No, you nailed it. Okay, all right,

1:25:57  

great. And, you know, just another plug for our community and the new rescue mission forum. If, if you’re new to this free trial, love to hear your feedback. Go ahead. And, you know, create a thread in there post what your experience has been? Are you learning anything new by the product? Can you see your way through to maybe using this as a tool for your major gift fundraising, especially after you’re doing a large direct mail campaign, and you’ve got some new people that are inside of your database at this point? That said, I don’t see any other questions. Anything Frank or Kelly that you wanted to wrap up with on the donor search piece?

1:26:42  

No, I will add that the when the data lands and DonorPerfect, and Frank definitely mentioned it in terms of being able to use it in reports and Smart Actions, that you are not left to figure it out on your own, that we are here to help you kind of navigate because what that’s going to entail is setting filters and or sometimes referred to as queries and segmenting. And we have some canned like simple, easy reports and some safe selections that you can use. But that just know that it’s it’s an amazing resource. And we are, you know, quite happy to help answer your questions. Well, if I want to see this particular segment, and based on this data, how would I get that out of the system? So we will walk you through the very specific steps to be successful in in kind of using that information? Whether it be for a report that you want to present to your board, or it becomes your pipeline of activities and tasks, or if it’s going to be smart actions or all of the above? Just know that we’re not going to let you flounder.

1:27:54  

Great point. Great point. Yeah, there’s a lot of data and there’s some complexity to it. So able to navigate and get the reports that are meaningful for your major gift campaign is certainly a good thing. Thanks, Kelly, for that. So that said we are just about on the hour of two o’clock, I think our agenda said that we’re actually going to take a break here, we will convene at 215. So a 15 minute break. And when we come back, I am going to invoke Mike the magic monkey as part of my raffle assistance, so that we can decide who the winner of the bombas 500 pairs of socks will be. So I’m sure you will not want to miss this and what Mike has to say about the Sox. A little bit of levity, but you know, you always like to present with a partner and and Mike’s here reporting. So anyway, come back in 15 minutes. Go ahead, grab a break. I’m really looking forward to the roundtable. Now is the perfect time for you to insert questions or chat in terms of those four topic areas. And I am actually going to go ahead and post those on the screen as a reminder to you and they can serve as some of our topic conversations. I see that some of our panelists are going to be filing in here in a little bit. So 215 Looking forward to be back with all of you. Thanks so much. Thanks

1:43:10  

Alright everyone. Just give it a few more seconds here for the group to come back and we will start off our discussion for the roundtable. But we’ll also have our drawing first where the bombas socks working their way back in the room, we’re assembling our roundtable I have Monty here with the ready

1:43:44  

all right. So as our team is getting assembled here, as we said, we were going to have a drawing to win 500 pairs of bombas socks for the rescue mission. That wins and Mati here is going to help me out. So Monty is one of the universal raffle tools that you can, it is available out there, they use some modern technology. So here we go. So this is actually chip encoded. And so we just need to read the chip. And it looks like Melissa Avery from Muncie Mission in Indiana is our winner. So congratulations, Monty. You’ve won 500 pairs of socks. Hopefully that will be a great tool for three year guests that are staying there at the homeless mission. And we certainly appreciate bombas for their participation and their donations here as well. We have our panel assembled. And we’ll kick off our roundtable discussions. So appreciate all of you that have actually posted inside of the chat. Your questions? I think I still have the slide up so you can see some of the categories that we’re we’re We’re looking to generate some discussion about. And I am going to go back just a little ways because somebody had voiced that concern inside of the yikes category is with the new donors that came in and 20. And recently, the concern of being able to keep those donors active in 2021 and 2022. And out of our panel, I think one person that probably has some great experience with that, or some thoughts about it, maybe Justin, So Justin, can you tell us your thoughts, I’m sure that a lot of missions have actually brought in new donors, there’s been a lot of acquisition that’s been going on what is Keystone mission planning to use to keep them engaged and keep them giving.

1:45:47  

So we do a lot of outreach and education to them. So we’re continuously reaching out to our donors, it doesn’t matter if they’re $1 donor, or they’re a million dollar donor, we reach out to them and cultivate them I, I was listening to Frank’s at the when Frank was speaking, and about how he was talking about, you know, it’s not so much just you’re looking for that dollar donation, but also that volunteer aspect of it, and also making them feel part of the organization. And so we’re doing a lot more here at Keystone mission to make them feel like they’re part of this organization, and that they’re there, there’s partnership out there. So we do a lot of activities, we have a lot of things planned this year. We know that with COVID, everything was all virtual and everything was locked down. So now we’re trying to open up those doors and really engage people to coming out and seeing who we are and what we’re about. But it’s a lot about education. And like I said before he yesterday, getting that message and sharing that message and continuing following up with that message over and over and over again. So that they understand where their dollars are going to and where that money is being spent. Because they’re graciously giving up their God’s money to you know, put towards your cause. And we want to make sure that we follow through and make sure that they actually know that their money is being spent wisely.

1:47:09  

Interesting, interesting. So one of the things that we oftentimes hear from our clients is whether or not you know, everybody would love to solicit general funds, do you find that a lot of people are designated givers, and they want to know that that specific area of your mission is being impacted?

1:47:26  

So yes, and no. We’re capitalizing, obviously, everybody, everyone in the rescue mission feel you capitalize on a project that’s brand new, you know, that people are going to donate towards that project. So a good example is in Worldstar, we’re putting up a 5015. Bed transformation, Senator, well, that’s the new Hot Topic, right? That’s the new product that’s out there. That’s the new thing that everyone thinks out. I like to use the word that’s the sexiest thing that’s out there right now. So people want to, you know, be part of that team. And so we put out we do a lot of fundraising for just that specific topic. But the piece of you have to remember is we don’t want to neglect that general account, too. Because if everything goes towards that transformation center, I’m going to start losing the revenue that we normally wouldn’t count for for our other projects and our other operations. So we always got to make sure that we keep up that general topic. When it comes to the average donor that we’re seeing, we’re seeing that they’re they’re donating just to the general cause. Because they want to feel like they’re part of this organization. It’s not the actual product that you produce, or the service that you produce. It’s actually the organization that they want to donate to. And that’s what we want them to understand as donate to the organization. Because we’re doing the good works, and we’re sharing the gospel getting to where they need people need to go.

1:48:39  

Great, great feedback. Also, on that same topic, let me introduce to others that the group has not yet met not yet met. Miriam Qureshi, who is part of our support team at DonorPerfect, gets to speak to hundreds, if not 1000s of clients every year, and Jacqueline Tressler from constant contact. And so any questions you have for constant contact there, certainly, she will be able to feel those. And so what about the rest of the panel? What are you hearing that, you know, people who may have made some new donors, what are they doing to stay in contact, to be able to keep those donors engaged? Any other ideas that you’ve heard that would be different than than what Justin has shared?

1:49:27  

Um, I guess I’ll, I’ll go. I think, from my experience working in the Human Services realm, they they were doing as Justin said, they’re doing where they’re where it was consistently, staying in communication with him, with the donors, reiterating the message and the mission. When I was working at Sheppard Pratt, which is mental health hospital in the Baltimore area, one of the things that they were doing to really kind of strengthen their connection was there’s this movement in healthcare right now, where doctors were always hesitant to to be a part of like the fundraising kind of aspect, if they found it a bit, I guess exploitive in a way. But they fundraisers had started to change the conversation on the topic, by talking with the the doctors to repackage it. That sounds a bit superficial, but lack of a better term, basically, kind of reorient them to say, You’re not asking your your patients or foreign patients for gifts or support. That’s not what we’re concerned about. You’re trying to build a culture of gratitude, not a culture of philanthropy, because culture of philanthropy was always like the kind of the buzz phrase in our industry. And so they came up with the idea of what’s at the root of anybody who’s going to be on throbbing, what’s at the root of all that. And it’s gratitude. Like, whether it’s your doctor, whether it’s a shelter that helped you out, or help somebody that you knew out, it’s the gratitude that they were there, and they were able to offer that support for you. And so the gratitude could come in the form of monetary vehicles. Or it could just be as simple as, you know, me volunteering, me, writing letters of encouragement, connecting with my social network, connecting with other people that I know, to help support, you know, so the gratitude aspect of it was where the root was, and they were using that as their messaging to really kind of approach their donors, their current donors and their prospective donors to build a less, I guess, exploitive kind of approach or feeling that donors could kind of maybe misinterpret that, you know, like a gift offers are coming at them. We’re even the mailings alone. So the mailings, I know, in a few of the places I worked the way they were trying to hang on and really keep their retention rates at a, at a good level, where segmentation, because, especially in higher ed, they’re really good at this is they’ll take different funding, like streams, and programs, and specifically build lists off of that, so that their messaging is, is relevant to those people. So it’s like the English department is going to have a particular type of written mailing campaign versus like, say, the math department. So if you translate that to rescue missions, like my shelter, my homeless shelter should have a different letter or the content should be different than my food bank. Right. So you’re not sending like this general letter letter to everyone that just kind of, you know, smacks of generalities.

1:53:35  

Gotcha, gotcha. Segmentation is so key. And I’m sure Jackie could probably speak on that a little bit as well. I are there. Jackie, are there any statistics that constant contact has this speaks to the segmentation, the AV testing? How does it improve your result?

1:53:53  

Don’t have the statistics, Darrell, but I will say that segmentation is is one of our more largely used Email Plus product, as Frank is, it really is very, very useful to to understand what your donors want to see. So if you can segment them into different buckets, and send out information based off of those things they would be wanting to read or be inspired to help you get more donations from them.

1:54:26  

Gotcha. Gotcha.

1:54:28  

And so there was just a little bit of a like issue. I don’t know you’re coming in and out. So we’ll want to want to see if we can make some adjustment there. But yeah, so segmentation, and changing your message and making it relevant, is going to have a huge impact to the results that you get from your community. 2021 2022 concerns that are out there any fears that perhaps, you know, we’ve given to the human services sector for so long are the other sectors going to rebound? And is human services going to see a decline? Is that a concern that we have out there? One of the things that I know that the organization that I talked about a little bit before that I served on the board, and this may be relevant to Martius question, we are in a very rural section of Pennsylvania, about an hour west of Philadelphia, we have maybe a million and a half dollars budget that is used, but it’s a total Senior Center, that that has to be appropriated for and they had a very successful campaign last year. Two things that I know that we are talking about the board level to try and maintain that level of success. You know, one is to make sure that we’re conveying the need, Justin talked about the idea of telling the people what you’ve done with the money that they’ve already donated, absolutely critical. But to prevent the, the people from Bing, assuming that is being taken care of. If you’re still delivering three times the number of meals on wheels that you were prior to COVID, you need to make sure that that message is getting out there that the need is not disappeared, I can tell you that we work with age organizations, as an example, when the media started taking some of the communication off of the AIDS message. They struggled because people thought that, you know, it was result and and if you’re not communicating that need is still there. I think it’s it’s an issue that you may end up having in 2021 and 2022. Getting that continuation of donors. The second part that I’ve mentioned, and we talked about this in any kind of communication is the kind of communication you’ve got donors that fit into, if you’ve ever heard of this profiles before, you know that there are some people that love statistics, there are some people that love stories, you should make sure that your messaging is going out. And if you can’t segment to the ones because you’re not sure who is is each make sure that those points that go into a constant contact email might resonate with each one of those categories. Right. I always use the contrast of the SPCA, and Sarah McLachlan song can make everybody sad, because it’s a very, very emotional, heartfelt type of story. But you probably also should have a statistic for the number of people that you’ve taken off the street or something, you know, a statistic relevant to the rescue missions. One other piece that Marsha asked was, or mentioned, I guess, was that radio did not work for her. And just to lean on you just a little bit since you had some success with radio. Was there some key that that you had, Marcia was hoping to get 300 new donors and friends and I guess there were only about 23 That appealed. What’s the secret? So

1:57:48  

radio is not going to get to the donors. But radio will get to the donors in another way. Never that seven points of contact the seven touches. So when you flood the market with radio, and they hear about Keystone mission, and I’m only going to pick on my organization, because that’s the easiest way to do it. And they hear about Keystone mission over and over again. And you know, they’re driving down the road, most people listen to the radio when they’re in their car. And so when we focused on that piece of it, we’re only putting it on radio stations that we know that these are the places that we’re marketing to when we go with direct mail are whether they’re going to be on TV, or whether we’re going to be putting out in a parade or something like that, the location. So we’re using that in conjunction with everything else. I think what we have a tendency to do, and this is probably a segue to giving my soapbox real quick is that in the rescue mission field, we put all of our eggs in one basket, right? We all expect, okay, if we put the male out there, we’re hoping to get this back. And I don’t think we can do that anymore. We have all these generational gaps, right? We have the Generation X Generation Z, we have the Baby Boomers, we have all these generations that get their information in different directions. And so we recognize that, and what we wanted to do is we wanted to focus in every single aspect of it. And what it is, is that some of this will blend over to other generations. So the radio might blend over to Generation Z and might wind over to the baby boomers that are driving home from work. It may be blood blend over and Generation X. And then when we send out that mailer, they see that and everything starts connecting, and then they start saying, You know what? Well, I remember that I remember that billboard sign that I just saw driving down the road, heard on the radio, and they also saw on on on a commercial radio after the new station. And now I just got a mailer asking me for money because they want to do good works and continue the good works. And then they’re like, Wow, this is a legit organization. Right? This is a credible organization. I want to research more about that. They go to your website. And then that’s why your website presence has to be good too. And making sure that they’re It’s user friendly and they can be a it’s attractive and they like to look through that and they do their research. And once they make make that decision that they’re on board, then it comes to the next piece, which is the follow up, you know, dating them, becoming them, making them become part of your organization being partners with you. But I think it’s not the if you’re looking at it going into it, right, I always, one of my friends used to tell me when you when you go to a casino, right, and you’re gonna gamble, if you put $20 down, and you know, you’re gonna lose $20, you’re not angry, right? If I’m going to put money down on a radio, right for radio advertisement, knowing that I’m not looking for acquisition, that I’m only looking to get that message out there and spread that message. I’m not angry. And I’m not saying oh, I didn’t lose anything. But I know on the flip side, it’s going to it’s going to gain, I’m going to get something at the end, knowing that I’m working with all these pieces together. And that’s what I like about, you know, when we use DonorPerfect when we use donor search, when we use check skin, and we use all of these products that are out there, and we use them in conjunction together, we’re moving in the right direction, we’re using it all to the best resources that we can, we can’t just focus on one drastic piece of it. And I, you know, I may be a newbie to the rescue mission field as an Executive Director and CEO. But I will tell you that we have to start taking risk, as an as well as rescue, no pun intended rescue missions, we need to start taking risks. And we also need to start looking outside the box, right? Because everybody’s fighting for these dollars, everybody’s trying to go for these dollars. And we got to do something different the rescue mission field, we need to start selling our products. And we started to have to start looking at using all the resources that are on our channels. And that’s what we started doing. And we started seeing great success, we started seeing things moving in the right direction. We are my one of the board members is an accountant and a treasurer. And he does the numbers and he predicts what we’re going to have at the end of our fiscal year. And when he with his prediction, you know, God bless him, I hope it’s I hope it’s correct, you know, with what he’s predicting with us, because we’re gonna have one of the best years that we’ve ever had a keystone mission. And I think it’s because we’re starting to utilize all of the services out there, not looking at it as I’m going to put a billboard sign hoping that I get 45 new donors. But looking at as I putting a billboard sign out there to spread my message, I’m not looking at going in and doing that scan to find out new donors acquisition through donor search, that hoping that I’m going to get 50% of them coming in. No, I’m looking at getting to target my exact person that loves the organization that I do, and that they’re going to love it. And they’re going to share that message. And they’re not going to donate, but they’re going to share that message. Because eventually somebody’s going to connect, build that partnership, build that connection, and donate back to the organization. And that’s what I want. I want a donor that cares and loves about Keystone mission and cares about what we do than a donor that just throws $5 out there and says here, good luck, hope everything works, I want someone that’s going to be there, and then you’re gonna have a better result, better outcomes, better love and compassion for what we do. And more importantly, than any of this is we’re gonna be changing lives, getting people off the streets and moving them back into the society, doing great things, making better change, doing being an example of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, and setting that tone and moving in the right direction. That’s what this is all about. And that’s why I use everything we can to get in the right direction. Most myself has done.

2:03:22  

No, I mean, you kind of hit on on a vibe that even you know, DonorPerfect. We were communicating last year about the multi channel approach. It can’t really be a single channel, that you’re going to try and reach all the donors and set your expectations realistically, I think another component that Marcia mentioned, and and she did say about a successful campaign that they had raffling an eight by 20 foot shed, they use social media to promote it. And it came out very successfully, particularly in the last few hours of the day. I think those kinds of things, you know, they can work I know, from the events, the activities that we’ve held inside of my nonprofit, you know, getting a $10,000 return is is decent, you know, for those kinds of events in a small community. If you can even get that far. I think we see and I’ll put Miriam and Kelly, maybe on the spot in terms of what our clients have talked about, you know, what are we seeing for averages, maybe from an auction? And, and then I’d kind of like to hear from Frank in terms of, you know, does donor search, is there any way to get a demographic of the population, you know, within your county, you know, to maybe set a realistic expectation is there, you know, maybe $5,000 for an event is really great for what you can do based on that population. So, Miriam Kelly, I guess, you know, what’s, how would you advise somebody or what are you hearing from our clients as far as income?

2:04:53  

I’m sorry. So, with Ready Set option, you know, I think Darrell, you said this like a lieutenant $1,000 is just is really solid, especially for a smaller event. But I’ve seen it vary. So I’ve seen, you know, a lot of those more small $10,000, you know, being the goal events, especially with options, but I’ve also seen it go way past that, especially with ticket sales and sponsorships. But they’re doing a lot of a lot of outbound things to get those people engaged, usually if it’s if it’s a bigger event. Gotcha. Gotcha. Cool. Kelly.

2:05:40  

I don’t know that I have, you know, dollars that I’ve been tracking in terms of return. But I do think one of the things that I am hearing and speaking with customers about is in, in 2020, you know, in this, you know, sector there was huge, huge, like, crazy numbers of first time donors, and what did they do? How do they find them? What, what’s next, and you know, certainly all the strategies that everybody is speaking to is fantastic. And that’s part of the the success of moving forward. But I want to just make sure and put a plug in for DonorPerfect that one of the strengths of the program is tracking, who are your new donors, like seeing it in a report and finding out exactly who those folks are, and taking all of the data and kind of breaking it down in various ways. And one of the things that, you know, as I educate myself, just in terms of the first time donor, and trying to really get them over the hurdle to be that second time donor, that is a big hurdle. And there are ways that DonorPerfect can help, you know, you identify, hey, get an email when somebody gives their second gift so that you can really celebrate what they’re doing. And then if that gift count is two, then they can be part of an email campaign that you can really have a big party that, hey, this is really cool. Look what we’re doing, you are making a difference here. And so that’s really what I’m hearing more is like, Well, how do I keep track of all this information and DonorPerfect. So I think thinking through like the source, or I call it source, like Where did the name come from, so that you can follow up and say, Okay, well, we got them from this acquisition list, or we got them from this appeal, or just simply their 2020 donors, you know, and making sure that you’re aware that DonorPerfect really can help you find who they are, when they give their second gift and kind of track that those details so that you can have those targeted messages. So to that end, I also got permission that on the 20th of July, we are hosting a free webinar that is speaking about that, how to get that second gift and track that second gift and DonorPerfect. So you all will be invited to that just so you know. But we’re targeting we are targeting our customers that kind of fall into the arena of Food Banks rescue missions, because we recognize that many of you are in a very unique position coming out of the pandemic.

2:08:23  

Excellent, excellent. The second gift I love it. And I think even with the DonorPerfect research, that report that I pulled up on the first day and talking about the opening, the key to the success was donor retention. And that was the underscore the whole report. So more information in terms of how to do that. And putting Frank on the spot here. What What kind of metrics do you think that an organization can look at to appropriately size a realistic fundraising goal? I think assuming that most of our rescue missions are truly regional, I realized that with the pandemic, the potential existed that if you were in Wilkes Barre, you might have got a donor from Seattle. I’m guessing that Justin, did you have that? No.

2:09:09  

We got a few donors from outside of the Luzerne but it was all marketed and targeted, they care about their own hometown.

2:09:17  

So knowing that these are truly regional organizations, are there different ways that donor search can can help them you know, size or get a feel for what’s realistic?

2:09:30  

I think yeah, I mean, I think with leveraging the marketing list, because that can be there’s so many data points that you can filter down from. So anything from any sort of demographic data because it’s a combination of our our proprietary donor database, which is all like charitable gifts that are published, you know, through annual reports, but also come lined with consumer reporting data. So it’s I think I mentioned in the, in the slide deck that it’s like over 230 million households. So you can whittle that down by age by giving amounts by capacity buy, it even gets so granular as to like, because it just got updated. And before you could, you could even pick out, oh, I want to look at anybody who has a child in the household. And then, but now it got updated. So you can get more granular and you can pick between, if they have no children, one child, two children, three, or four more children in the household, and combine that with like, you know, in whatever county, like Harford County, or montgomery county, and, you know, is between the ages of, again, like 50 to 69, who are, you know, have an interest in woodworking. I know, they’re like one of the criterias, like, do they own an RV, stuff like that, you know, could because it’s like, you know, when you when you fill out credit card information, they always ask you insane amount of like personality questions, all that stuff gets recorded. And again, it’s all technically publicly available information. So it’s not like anybody’s, like digging in your garbage are hanging out in some alleyway like spying on you. It’s part of what you know, the age of information is, and it’s all readily available. That’s why you all that fine print says, you know, your information will be will be shared. But that’s one way to do it. Another way to do it is really kind of looking inwardly into your own database to mine that data. And if you use and you could do that a couple of ways. I mean, one, you can actually do segmentation on your own on your own database, it’s a little bit more labor intensive, because you’re gonna need Somebody to analyze it themselves, and understand how to really slice and dice your database, how you wanted to do it. So if you wanted to do it demographically, and then break that up by counties, or geographic areas based on like giving, you know, like, I just want all these people who are between the ages of x and x, who have given $500 to $1,000, in the Erie, Pennsylvania metro area, you know, and then have another bucket for say, like the Harrisburg metro areas, and like that, you can do that you can also then take that a step further and use a vendor, you know, like donor search, and you can then use that criteria, screening through donor search to whittle it down even further and say, from that list, grab all the people who have had a demonstrated gift to another organization of $5,000 in the budget. So now, you know, well, they only give $100 $200 to us annually. But they’ve been giving like five grand to, you know, the United Way of Erie, Pennsylvania down the street for me. What is it about that connection? That’s different from our connection? And is there any kind of programming overlap that might, you know, speak to their affinities with their inclinations, you know, that type of behavior? In terms of like trying, you would track all of that, like Kelly said, within Jonah, perfect. I think when you marry that, and you track it within DonorPerfect. Now you have the capability of truly getting metrics out and leveraging metrics.

2:13:51  

Gotcha. Gotcha. Actually, that’s a great idea. I mean, I remember when I was looking at some of the filters, you could key in the zip codes of a specific area, and you could do those filters. And it’s a good way to not only target and get the list, but you can probably use that for a statistic on from a major donor perspective, what might be what might be realistic? Well, one of the other topic areas and this was when we were putting this webinar together was a debate as to on the event side of things, you know, where do events play with rescue missions? And by and large, you know, the conferences that I’ve been to? events have been sort of a light topic. I mean, there aren’t a whole lot of 5k runs that are surrounding, you know, a rescue mission. You know, you’re not getting the American Cancer Society type of events inside of your community. But that said, you know, galleries do seem to be a thing. I’ve heard the, the, the auctions are a component of that. What and I invite all of you to offer up your ideas as to what events are perhaps work for you. But as well from our panel, You know, what has worked in the last year? What has been a successful virtual event that you could envision fitting in for an organization like a rescue mission? I think it’s, it’s a relevant source. And who knows, when we emerge from the pandemic, there may be even a greater desire for more of that kind of activity. So some thoughts from the panel.

2:15:21  

Yeah, I was funny, my development director is listening on everything that we’re talking about. And he’s like, I’ll bring this up real quick. So we did a thing that was, and we probably raised more money in this fundraiser during COVID time than we do in most of our other events, is that I sat on a bench for 24 hours straight as the executive director. And we did on FaceTime live. And I talked to the public about homelessness. And all I did was educate the public for 24 hours straight. And I called out those that challenge homelessness, and those that want to be against it, the NIMBY to come sit with me on the park bench. And let’s talk about homelessness. And let’s talk about it. Let’s be frank about it. And I had people from Congressman’s to state senators, to state representatives, to mayors, to police chiefs, to those that were homeless that are now living, you know, in apartments, to those that were homeless. To those I had people sitting in my park bench. And we talked about it was the most beautiful thing you would have ever thought it was amazing. And we had each hour sponsored by somebody who gave a donation to sponsor that hour, and I would talk about them. At the same time. We were fundraising at the same time. This is you know, hey, here’s the call to action, you want to end homelessness, if this is something that’s on your heart, come on, and donate, you know, put out and donate, we have people dropping off bags of clothes at my bench, we had people dropping off bottles of water we have. I mean, it was amazing of what happened in that whole event. But what more important happened is, is we’re going to be doing round two this year, in October, again, me on a park bench. But people are now saying hey, I want to sponsor our block, bla bla bla bla, I want to sponsor our black blah, blah, blah, blah. And now we’re starting to start fundraising. And now it’s become what they say, well, the second time you do it’s a tradition. You know, now it’s starting to become part of this, you know, realm and all out there. I think that we as a society always want to have the dollars where we can wear the suit and tie and be like, Look at me Look at me, or we want to do the five K’s where we can run and do all that. We got to start thinking outside the box. I’m not going to go back to my soapbox Derby, and go back on animal kick. But listen, I came up with a thing I watched I heard. I went to a men’s group and I heard a conference of about a guy who wanted to talk about you know, let’s stop beating each other up. We’re in LA and we beat ourselves up in a ring. I’m going to be boxing professional boxer for three rounds as a fundraiser here in northeastern Pennsylvania. I asked this professional boxer would you be willing to he was a heavyweight champ not heavyweight champion but who tried to be heavyweight champion. He’s bossed Evander Holyfield. He’s boxing Muhammad Ali. And now he’s gonna boss Justin Behrens and executive director of Keystone mission. And you know what, so what if I get a broken nose or I get some bruises on my on my face, it means nothing, when the money is going to come in to help those transform lives. And that’s what we got to start doing. We got to start thinking outside the box, we got to start looking at things that are going to bring people in to say, hey, that’s where I want to go. That’s where I want to be. That’s where I want my money to go to. The other thing to I want to bring up real quick is we need to start asking people that donate to us. How did you hear about us? Where do you? How do you know about us? Was it that mail? And wasn’t that radio show? Was it that TV show? Was it that? Well, maybe it was a newscast, maybe it was an idiot that was sitting on a park bench talking for 24 hours on Facebook, maybe that’s guy that has a broken nose because he went to a boxing match? How did we hear about you, because that’s how we’re going to start dating and building that relationship and getting them to start talking to other people to bring more donors in, and all that. And to Frank’s point, and then I’m done talking into Frank’s point, we did that wealth skin, we did that. I can tell you shame on the development director, shame on the executive director who doesn’t know who their donor is, if you don’t know who your donor is, you have programs out there that show you who it is. We did that with what Frank was talking about, and I know who my donor is. So when I go out in the public, and I’m talking to somebody, I know, hey, this is somebody that’s going to look at Keystone mission and want to be part of be partners with us. And there is products and products to do that. If you can’t do it yourself. There are organizations with us. Sorry, with donor search that can get that program to help you get that person who is that model, because you know what? It may sound silly, that person that owns RV, you know clicking that little button, but guess what? Campers donate campers love to be part of an organization. We click that button. I laughed when you said that because we did the exact same thing. We clicked RV, and that’s who we targeted. And that’s where we went to and we’re seeing a better solid donor coming to our organization. I’m done talking people probably are sick and tired of hearing me. This is probably the reason why people in northeastern Pennsylvania don’t want to see my face anymore. But I, I’ll let everybody else talk. But thank you.

2:20:15  

Well, I don’t know if we’re going to meet you either on the park bench or in the boxing ring at this point. But you certainly are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice if you’re stepping in the ring with that crowd. Wow, that is some very innovative thinking in terms of event based fundraising. I think you know, the, the virtual aspect of it. And that would be a great one with the park bench idea where you can actually have a video that’s constantly streaming with a little thermometer next to it in terms of targeting your goal is a great way to do some virtual fundraising, whether or not the people are coming out and seeing it or not, I think we’re going to anticipate a good number of hybrid type events. I know for our major conferences, here, we’re currently talking about it still being entirely virtual. Because we’ve been able to access a lot of additional people through these virtual ones where travel and so forth is impossible. So as you’re considering your events, for 2021, and even into 2022, keeping that virtual aspect available, might be a good component. Anyone else in the crew here want to speak to the virtual aspect of it.

2:21:26  

What what I thought about while justo was speaking, if there was going to be like a boxing match, what sounds really cool, is I would make it into a virtual option at the same time. So with readies that option, I would have like a boxing events for the people that are there. But then also have a virtual option running simultaneously Hawaii, you’re you’re doing a lot of different things there. And we do have ReadySet option that could do that.

2:21:59  

Yeah, no, no, it’s it’s great idea.

2:22:02  

To contact you guys.

2:22:04  

If it’s not, if it’s not over the line, you could always just do virtual betting to see how long you can last in the ring.

2:22:12  

No, actually, we will not do the betting piece. It’s a good idea. But that piece, but the option piece, were we that’s the next level we’re going to we’re looking through, I think you need to master one program, right, and get what you need, and then go to the next one. Our master programming was, well scan, we wanted to make sure that we got no understanding how to pull the information, it’s one thing to run the program, it’s another thing to pull that information out. If you don’t know how to pull that information out, it’s worthless, you might as well give money to a drainage system, you know, but if you can pull that information out, which are experts that can help you with that, and utilize those skills, you’re golden, you’re gonna have what you need, you’re gonna be you’re gonna be set up for, you know, for the success, and I know I sound I’m making it sound like this is easy. And like, you know, it’ll happen overnight. And it doesn’t happen overnight. I mean, listen, there were multiple nights that I cried, there were multiple nights that I was ready to give up Executive Director and CEO, there was multiple times that I told my development director, you know, I’m turning my bags into yours, you know, you’re gonna have your trials and tribulations. But you know, what does didn’t walk on this earth to you know, sit there and not have his trials and tribulations that he went through and look at what he’s done for us, you know, you gotta sacrifice to get the end. And and I believe in that 100%. And that is reason, if I’m willing to sacrifice and keep going and plugging away and what we need to do, we’re going to be successful as an organization. And again, I reached out to those that are listening. We can’t do it alone. I can’t do this alone, we need to work together as a whole rescue mission field, that lift server, I don’t even know what you guys call it in this technical world anymore. That thing where you plug in a question and everybody answers and it goes through in the what do you call it

2:23:58  

down? The DonorPerfect community?

2:24:00  

Yeah, I’ll just call it a listserv, because I think that’s when I did it was what do they call it? We need to utilize that we need to work together as a team, we need to work as a united front as a rescue missions around and go forward, we need to move forward and push together as as one. Because our voice will be louder than any other voice that’s out there. If we do it together as a group, you know, and I’ll be more than happy to start that and work with a whole bunch of organizations all across the country. In rescue missions. To make that happen, we need to start doing that. Because our voice needs to be out heard by everyone else, we need to be louder, stronger, and get that message out there because it will bring the donors back in there so that we can extrapolate the data from DonorPerfect so that we can use the donor scan to get the information and so that we can use the check scanning so that we don’t have to worry about wasting our resources on a person we can have it go through the machine so we can put those resources to something else to make it even better. That’s what we need to start doing. So I’m putting myself out there. If anybody wants to utilize me, reach out, call me do whatever you got to do. give me information from Kelly, Jacqueline, Darrell, Miriam and Frank, I don’t care. I want to work together as a team. I want rescue missions to be known that we know how to do it. We know how to do it right. And we’re gonna put everybody else and say, Listen, follow our path, because we got people behind us that are backing us. Again. I’ve done my soapbox.

2:25:18  

No, it’s good. It’s good. And actually one of the things that I want to mention that I know that this word is this group has the city gay conference, it’s going to be coming up in September. I know that our purpose is going to be there, Justin, I’m not sure if you’re actually going to be speaking again at the city gate. Yes, no. Okay,

2:25:35  

we’ve been asked. But hey, if I do, I’m more than happy to talk, you can tell.

2:25:41  

Okay. But But I mean, there are there are communities that you can certainly reach out to many different ways that you can end up building this community and doing some knowledge share, because it is regionally based, I think each one of these organizations can learn from one another. You know, I there shouldn’t be competition within the community that we’re all trying to serve at this point. Justin, talk a little bit about time saving ideas, time saving money saving ideas. panel, I guess, if there are, you know, thoughts that you have, you know, one of the things that we assumed many years ago, and Jack, you didn’t get a chance, perhaps to be a part of this conversation was that email was going to completely replace direct mail? How wonderful would that be, you know, all the money, we end up sinking into direct mail with stamps and papers. But the reality of it is, is that it’s still direct mail is very, very strong inside of this industry. If you can convert somebody over from a direct mail person to an email person, there’s some clear savings that can be had any thoughts on what might be a technique to do that maybe increase your your email list, get more people signed up for electronic versus paper?

2:26:50  

We know we actually had been doing a bit of research into that. And yes, it does cost those mailings and, and I know in donor space, they are still pretty successful. Um, but I do also think that it’s important to somehow get on that mailing something to do we sign up for our newsletter, go to this link, go to our website, and click here. You know, Constant Contact has a link that you can embed on your website that will then allow you to add people to your join a mailing list, which is very important you do so much is coming to look at your site, this about what you what you’re doing and the story of, of, you know, just how to donate or why it’s important that they can get more information. And so I would say like still, Darrell, it’s really important to have the mailings if if it is costly, but it’s still good to have. But email marketing is just another piece of it. And I think I think it’s a good way to know who is getting your information, there’s reporting back to you, you see who’s actually looking at things on things, whether they look at it on a desktop or their phone, they’re all looking at our phone. So I mean, we’re looking at our email, so so is everyone else. Gotcha, gotcha, great feedback.

2:28:17  

You know, one of the things even in our organization, we’re going to be asking people for their preferences, and even sort of a campaign to say, if you’d like to be contacted electronically, instead of paper, we were about to go to print with perhaps a 2000 piece annual report, very expensive piece, we debated who to send it to, should we send it digitally to some and, you know, those are the kinds of decisions that will, you know, you have to be responsive to the way you’re doing or once the information back to the hilt, even the old DiSC Profile thing and the format thing, but learned and you get to know them. You know, like Justin said, you know, you’re going to be able to communicate, maybe do the surveys and the polls to find out they’re the best form of communication. So that said, I think we are just right upon the three o’clock hour. I want to congratulate all of our attendees for being a part of this two day session. And being a part of this what I think is our first ever focus on the sector within the nonprofit community, and being able to generate discussions that are really relevant to rescue missions. Congratulations to Melissa Avery from Muncie Mission in Indiana. We hope that your organization can make good use of those bombas socks and thanks so much to bombas for supporting this. Justin, thank you so much for sharing your insight and all of our panelists and speakers that we’ve had here. It’s been a it’s been a fun session. I truly enjoyed working with this group. And looking forward to doing it again, hoping to get down to see many of you at city gate perhaps. And with that, we’ll sign off. Thanks, everyone.