Spark the Journey: Igniting Donor Passions for Lifelong Engagement

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

And we are live Hello everybody. My name is Sean McLoughlin and I am a senior DonorPerfect Training Specialist. Welcome to sharing coaches session spark the journey igniting donor passions for lifelong engagement. Before we get started, let me tell you a little bit about sharing. He is a pioneering leader in the social media impact sector with over 25 years of experience as a member of the global board of the Association of Fundraising Professionals who shaped global philanthropic standards. He also received the 2022 governor’s Volunteer Award for his work as chair of volunteer Iowa is nonprofit OS an AI driven platform revolutionized the sector leading into its acquisition by kind sight as kind sites VP of Product Strategy, who few melds technology with strategic impact offering insights that transcend industries, as an international speaker, LinkedIn top voice and Forbes nonprofit council member. His expertise is recognized globally, making him a valued thought leader for those in social impact business and technology sectors. And I have also attended his presentations before we are all in for a treat. Before I hand the session over I just want to cover a few housekeeping items. All presentations are attached to the session and can be downloaded for your review. Please be sure to add your questions to the q&a tab. So that’ll be next to the live chat tab. And we will circle back to your questions towards the end. All sessions will be recorded and found on our DonorPerfect website after the conference. So please, let’s give a warm welcome to sharing. Take it away.

Well, thanks on and thank you all for being here. I’m thrilled to be able to talk about this subject that’s really been important to me over my fundraising career. And in case or in the wrong room. We’re talking about donor journeys, donor passion. So if you’re thinking about AI, it’s time to go to the other room with Scott. I love Scott, I’m I’m thrilled that that presentation is happening right now. But here’s the thing that I wanted to share with you about not my own work with donor attorneys, but also what I’ve been researching and trying to understand. And this goes back to what one of my coaches really talked about. And that is what what is a donor journey, you may be familiar with this concept, you may be new to it, wherever you are, and there’s lots of you here in the room. I want to just share with you kind of the the way in which I think about this and my my coach used to say that if you don’t know where you’re going, you don’t know if you got there, if you don’t know where you’re going. You don’t know if you got there. And at the time I thought this was really an it is really insightful. It has a lot of applications not just to the work that we do, but also in life. And I thought it was something that you know, she came up with as on our own. But it turns out that this has truly been a historic principle that when cartography when mapmaking was a concept, they would sail around and try and figure out where land was, but there were times where they didn’t know what was beyond a certain area, either because they didn’t have chips that were able to go that far. Or they didn’t know how to map that piece of water or land, whatever the case may be. And so what you’ll see in ancient mapmaking is pictures of sea monsters. And sometimes there’s, there are dragons or other types of, of animals that are in the water, primarily because they didn’t know and this is the concept that’s called there be dragons. It’s an idea that they don’t know what’s out there. And so they put something as a placeholder there, just to indicate that something might be out there, but we don’t really know. And this comes back to the idea that, if you kind of are if you’re multitasking, I totally understand we’re all very busy. Here’s the thing that I want you to get out, get out of this session. There’s lots of content here. And of course, you’ll have access to all of the slides and how to put this into practice yourself. But here’s the thing that I want you to get out of this session. Everything that you do, in engaging your donors,

crafts, or changes how they think about your organization, it crafts, or changes how they think about your organization. So my encouragement to you is to make intentional choices to make intentional choices about what are the pitstops on this donor journey, what are the really intentional pieces that you are ensuring that donors see, touch, feel experience as part of that process. And as I said, at the beginning of that section, what is really important is that everything that you do shapes, how they perceive your organization. So many of us, myself included, will engage in unintentional behavior, whether it’s not thinking through the process of donor engagement and the donor journey, or just relying on what we’ve done before as a pathway because we don’t want to upset the applecart. And all of those things are unintentionally shaping donor behavior. So whether you so you have the choice, you’re going to listen to the next half an hour, 40 minutes of content here and decide, is this another piece of content, and I’m going to move on and just listen to more content? Lynn Westers coming up, which you should definitely check out. She’s brilliant. And there are all of these other sessions that are coming up afterwards. Great content. What do we do with all of this? How do we move forward? And my recommendation to you, whether it’s Julius before or Lynn’s after, or this one? Is that you really think about how do we be intentional with what we’re doing? So let’s get into the content itself. And what I want to share with you if you come from a faith background, this may sound familiar to you. But if not, doesn’t really matter. I think it’s helpful in thinking about how donors interact with our organization as a framing for the donor journey that they will go on. And so the idea that I want to share with you is we send out kind of fundraising appeals if a fundraising fundraising appeal folds in the forest, but nobody hears it, nobody responds to it, if it doesn’t convert, did it actually happen? I don’t know. But in this parable, the idea is that a farmer goes out to sow some seeds. And that and is taking the seeds out of their basket and throwing them out into the field. Now, some of those land on the path on the like, on a sidewalk, and there’s no ground there for the seed to grow. There’s no response. And so as a result, the birds come in, they eat the seed. This happens to me every time I every spring when I try to put grass down in my yard and mistakes are made. The idea here is that many of us tend to send out fundraising appeals to people who will absolutely never respond, they will. They just don’t love you. They just don’t. They don’t care as much about that cause as we would want them to, or as much as some other donors do potential donors too. And this happens to every single one of us. This is not a fault. This is not a criticism in any way. We send out appeals. Some of them go to people for whom your cause is not a priority. And the thing that we have to grapple with is that we want to do less of that. Then, then some people would recommend some people will say cast a really wide net. Any donor is a good donor. And what I really want you to focus on through the course of this section is that not every donor Are is a great donor. Some not every fundraising activity is a good fundraising activity. This is a really good example of if we’re sending out emails or social media posts or direct mail pieces or anything else that you do. But it’s not engaging people. It’s not, it’s not meeting people where they are, if they don’t care about this cause is one of their priorities, then growing awareness of your organization, while nice, doesn’t translate into meaningful behavior, it doesn’t change their hearts and minds into becoming volunteers, we’re becoming donors. Now, as a side note, I talked about this as the parable of the donor, but it’s true of volunteers as well. And this entire talk could be about volunteer journeys, as well. So obviously, you’re here because you’re thinking about donor journeys. But realize, and as we go through this, this could apply to quite literally any number of things to the second kind of quadrant of where those seeds of where those appeals could fall is on rocky ground, where it’s not as easy for those appeals to take root. But they do start to grow, they do start to grow, but they after a little bit of time, they don’t really sink in, they don’t get to develop good roots. And from a seed perspective, from the analogy perspective, this is the example of a lot of the activities that we do, that don’t really build on the philanthropic goals of the person, it doesn’t really change how they think about the cause. They’re great examples that many of you do, that actually don’t produce good fruit, good results. And, and I’ve been guilty of this hundreds of times in my career, I’m, I’m old enough in fundraising to remember when we had to get funding, we had to get typewriter ribbons in order to type out with a typewriter, donor cards, and it was the, I’m glad I don’t have to ever do that again. But we would send out stuff to people and maybe invite them to an event or to a dinner or a gala, something like that, where they didn’t really necessarily care about the thing that we did, they wanted to be in the room where it happens, or they wanted to engage with that group of people, but they didn’t really care about, they’re happy to do something nice for charity, but they didn’t really care. And that’s the example here is that for these donors, their journey ends, quite literally right after the event or the activity is over. They’re not truly donors. They just sort of, they don’t take that route and and start to grow. So there’s that sort of the second quadrant is those rocky donors. And I think a lot of that has to do with our retention rate problem, because we sort of cast a wide net, we want lots of people to our come to our events. And we use metrics around how many eyeballs or how many butts and seats. And because of that, then we say, Oh, we have all of these donors, but their one time donors, or maybe one or two time donors, and they don’t really engage. So what’s that third quarter quadrant, and that’s what I would call the thorny donors. These are people for in the analogy, they sow the seeds, and they do take root. But then weeds develop, thorns develop and they block out the sun. And they don’t allow real growth to occur. They don’t allow real growth to occur. So in this example, you have someone who maybe came to an event and they got really motivated, they saw speaker, they saw your mission in action, they got really excited. They’re like, I want to give money to this, I want to volunteer, I’m excited. And then they went to the next event. Or they went to another golf tournament, or they got an appeal from a really compelling other organization on Instagram or something like that. And they said, Oh, this cause is really important. And they end up forgetting, they forget that moment where they were excited about your mission. And they were compelled by the the case for support that you offered. And they got overwhelmed by all of the other, whether it’s donor offers that are out there, and their journey was interrupted with your organization, or they just got got 30 When it comes to life, there are people who go through seasons of life, whether it’s with family or with circumstances, and priorities change, and they fit their giving or their volunteer focus. And so their journey looks very, very different because of kind of where they are in that season of life. So it might be external. It might be internal, but whatever it is, they might be one one time or multi year donors but they stopped giving and they it seems like they were really into you but they weren’t and they they are no longer a current donor. They’re a lapsed donor. So then the last group, the last quadrant These are the fundraising appeals, the volunteer appeals, whatever it might be, that lands on that fertile ground, and they take root, and they start growing and they grow bigger and they grow stronger. And they continue to build there, that trunk that build that built up structure that produces more fruit. And those fruit trees fall, and they produce even more fruit because they become seeds that grow. And this is our holy grail, if you will, of donors. This is the really the donor journey that we want to capitalize on. I know that’s a weird word, but capitalize on from the perspective of our time and our attention. These are our growth donors. So maybe they give $10 Or maybe they give $10 a month, but then they they get deeper into the mission, they understand what you do, they get to meet some of the people who are being served, or they get engaged with staff or whatever it might be, and they start giving $1,000 or $1,000 a month, or maybe they consider a major gift, potentially even a planned gift. This is the exciting opportunity that we all want. We all want every single one of our donors to go down this route, we want them to become the most invested to their capacity that they can be. However, not every donor is going to be that way. And so we spend a lot of time. And I’ve done this through multiple organizations, throwing out the wide net, seeing who we can collect and bringing them in through this process to sort of sift and understand which are these growth donors and which are the ones that are not how do we differentiate between those. So let me give you a visual picture of this. And I can see some of you, I can’t literally see any of you. But I can see some of you trying to take a picture of this Don’t Don’t forget, you’ll get access to these slides. And you can use these however you would like inside of your own organization. But all of you, I assume, are involved in donor acquisition in some way. If you’re not, that’s an important piece of the entire sustainable donor infrastructure. So you’re going to try to acquire new donors, some of them become new donors, some of them continue to make a gift, those are renewed donors, you’ll see that on on your screen. And then but some of those donors will stop giving, they might give, they might give once and then stop giving, that’s our first time donor retention problem. Or they might stop giving after two or three. And that kind of fits into that parable, as you will note, so they become lapsed donors. So then we have current donors, those are those are donors who are currently giving to your organization. Typically people define that as in the last 12 months, I don’t know that that’s really the best metric. But that’s up to you. Just because I think people don’t necessarily care if they gave in December one year or January the other, but neither here nor there. Generally, we would say it’s over the last 12 months. And then a dormant donor is someone who has not given in that timeframe, but for sure has not given the last two, three years or so to your organization. They pulled out the credit card before they written the check, but they haven’t done so recently. So now we have three groups of donors, those prospective donors on the left side of your screen that haven’t ever given the people who are currently writing a cheque or swiping their card or getting the money taken out of their account, whatever it might be, there’s their current donors, and then the people who have given before but who aren’t currently. So then you’ll see two options from those groups. And those are people who could move from becoming a dormant donor to a current donor that we call a recaptured donor, someone who’s given a few years ago, and then says, Hey, I forgot about this, I want to come back I want to give again, maybe they then become an upgraded donor, but any of your current donors could become upgraded donors. Now, I’m going to show you this next slide. And you’re all going to sort of freak out about the math, I’m going to say, this is math that needs to be customized to your organization. I’m using very general industry standards. And the idea here is that we would try to acquire 1000, we’d have 1000 prospects, we try to acquire new donors from this pool of 1000 prospects. Generally, we would say about 2% of those prospects would convert into donors, your number may be higher. Absolutely. That’s great. Fantastic. So putting your own numbers when you get there. My point is your pathway from prospective donors to existing donors, relatively small, right? The number of people who are going to lift up their hand and pull up their credit card relatively small from the great big universe of people. Then industry standard, again, the number of people who will remain as current donors. Are it the industry standard, the Association of Fundraising Professionals. Fundraising Effectiveness Project says that numbers around 40 ish percent every year, it’s around 40%, the new numbers will come out giving us a will come out in the next few weeks here, we’ll get better information. But I’m not expecting huge tips in that data. So about half of your less than half of your donors will continue to give to your organization, you’re over a year, again, your numbers may be different, but more than half of your donors will stop giving to your organization next year, than did give this year. So now you have that split. And now Now as you’re thinking about the parable, right, most of those donors did not give they did not build routes they did not engage with your organization 20 stuck on and then have your kind of whether it’s thorny donors or growth donors, you have about nine left, you’ve got nine people that are engaged in your organization, how many of those will continue to grow about 10%? That’s your upgraded donors. Again, industry standard, and how many of the people that were dormant donors will come back into your donor file again, about 10%? So we’re looking at about, you know, oh, that group? How many people? Are we are we talking about a very small group of people. And so as you increase the volume on the left side of your screen, that’s one solution. And some experts will say, that’s what we need to do. What I’m here to tell you sort of controversially, is that as you increase the volume, if you aren’t paying attention to all of the steps that are happening, from prospect to upgrade a donor, that growth journey, actually will cost you more money than you are making in donation revenue, or that you will engage in volunteer, you know, process or whatever it might be that you’re doing. That donor journey is so so important to understanding, how do we solve the problem between acquisition of our prospects to growth donors to that current donor and the upgraded donor process. So every single piece of this lifecycle could be a donor journey, your prospects will have wondering your new donors or first time donors will have another journey, your renewal donors, people who have given one time and are looking at a second or multi year gift, that’s another journey, you’re keeping your current donors and moving them along a continuum, yet another journey, laps donors. Here’s a fun kind of little hint. One of the things that I do a lot go into organizations help them solve their their fundraising problems. The first thing that I tell them, which you’ll now know is that your dome dormant donors is the donor journey that will solve many of your problems. If you have not been intentional about it, if you’ve just let donors lapse, and you haven’t engaged them. Going back to that group. And building an intentional donor attorney will translate into a lot of revenue. Why? Because it’s a total bonus for you, they’ve already pulled out a credit card, they already have the muscle memory. So all you have to do is move them from one to two, rather than from zero to one on the left side of your screen. And then moving someone from two to three, that right side of your screen, like I said, is another donor journey. So as we think about back to the parable, and now what are we looking at in terms of our engagement? My advice, again, this is just me, you choose how you want to implement this. With those first two quadrants, there’s really too little depth. And I, I would encourage you to bless and release those donors to say, those are folks either they never gave to you, or they gave a little bit to you, but they came in for the wrong reasons. This is not a priority for your time and resources. It’s going to cost you a lot of time and money to get those donors to give you a gift, and there’s no assurance that they will continue to give or continue to become growth donors. Are there exceptions? Absolutely, totally. I had a friend who reached out to me and said, Hey, can you do a donor profile on this donor, they seem to have a lot of wealth. And we’d like to ask them for a major gift. I ran the profile they never given to charity. They do have wealth, like millions, you know, must be nice, but they’ve never given to charity. And I said, Nick, I’m not going to encourage you to pursue this donor. And here’s why. Getting someone to give to an organization for the first time really, really hard, really, really hard. Getting them over that hump will take a lot of time and resources on your part, I would focus your attention elsewhere. So when we’re looking at the other quadrants, the thorny donors and the growth donors, this is where you can remove friction and pursue growth with those individuals in that donor journey. So hopefully you’re now seeing exactly what you can prioritize. How do we go about deepening donor connections, how do we go about deepening those relationships? A lot of times we look at our donor file, and we have this very static set of information, their address, their amount they gave, when they gave and what fund they gave to. And that’s kind of what we look at when we’re thinking about knowing who our donors are. But what is that persona and not just a one person, not just of Harriet, but what is that? What what do donors to our organization? Again, also volunteers look like? And what are the scenarios? This is an example. I’m not going to read this out to you. But who is that avatar? Who is that ideal donor profile? And you can build this just like, you know, I built on the screen for you. But the idea is really saying, Who? Who are the people who are most likely to become those growth donors in our organization? And how do we talk to them in our messaging? How do we talk to them in our appeals? How do we encourage them along the way, and so I’m going to simplify this. There’s lots of different methods out there, I’m going to simplify this into the five A’s awareness, analysis, action, acknowledgement, and advocacy. And what I mean by this is that they’re going to go through a process do people skip steps absolutely are your steps different, may be totally fine. I like five A’s. It’s easy for me to remember, but they’re going to become aware of your organization. And our ultimate goal is not here’s the controversial part. It’s not for them to take action. It’s not just for them to give a gift, it’s actually for them to become an advocate. So let me walk you through this process. Again, I’m not going to read out the slides to you, but I’m going to give you because you have access to them, I’m going to give you a sense of what this looks like. So for awareness, they’re going to become aware that your organization that your cause exists for Harriet who’s working in, is interested in performing arts, she loved the arts, she may attend a local festival or see an ad online, or maybe she hears from a friend, we’ll come back to that in a moment. You’ll notice here that the timeframe is six months, it takes a while that is going to be different for your organization. But it takes a while for that to occur. So in that timeframe, there are expectations that Harriet has, and there’s thoughts that go through her mind about what is she expecting to occur here? What is her reaction to your work? How are how is the reacting to your intentional or unintentional behavior, then in analysis, she’s going to understand more about your organization and what you do it might be visiting the website and might be going to a performance in this example. But ultimately, the same is true. There’s a timeframe involved. There are expectations that she has, and she has thoughts that she’s whether she’s actually verbalizing them. Or if she’s saying this in her head, there are thoughts that she has around that analysis, then comes the part where we’re really excited. The axon, she volunteers, or she makes an online gift or, you know, whatever the case may be for your organization. That happens relatively quickly. Once that under the iceberg stuff happens. And we look at that we say yes, that’s the thing, again, with this process, their expectations and their thoughts around what does this look like for the action of giving. And this is where most of us will stop, we got the gift, and we’re done. But what really needs to be an immovable feast in your process in your journey is this acknowledgement of the giving. And so within the first couple of weeks before she forgets, before the thorns come in, to find her memory of what she did she you want to do things that reinforce the value of what she didn’t have to do it. How do we talk to her about that, maybe it’s a note, maybe it’s an event, maybe it’s a feature, maybe it’s something else, whatever that looks like, in the same way, she has expectation, she has thoughts about what this looks like. And then fun. Finally, the fundamental goal of this process is not that she repeats the process, not that she does it again, this is where I differ from a lot of folks. And if you’ve heard me talk before, this is very consistent for me, it’s not that she makes the gift again, it’s that she becomes an advocate and Ambassador sees the apple tree from which apple fall, the seeds go down and more apple trees are grown. That’s the ideal journey from my perspective. So she shares her experience. She invites a friend to attend, she might become a peer to peer fundraiser or something else like that, and certainly is using her experience to share with others. Again, she has expectations and thoughts about what that might look like. Now I’ve mapped this out for you and if you want a you can take this and make it your own. I do a blank one. If you want to reach out I’m happy to share like an editable PDF But this is just the you can kind of see what this looks like. And again, remember, you can do this for prospective donors, you should. I hate to be a subhead, I gotta enunciate when I say that, but I think it’s helpful to be intentional about each of these steps for prospective donors or current first time donors for multi year donors for lapsed donors, and really take the time really after, well, after Lynn’s done in the, you know, this afternoon, when you’re done with the session, go through the process of identifying what are the different steps for those different audiences? So what does it look like to create those deeper engagements, you want to look for points in the journey where expectations are not met, that caused them to move backwards or stop in the journey, if they don’t know where they’re going next, they may not engage. So this is the idea of donor shortcuts. And it’s based on their own beliefs, not on facts. A lot of organizations will say what are the best best kept secret in town? That might be true, but they donors have their own kind of framework, their own beliefs about what matters and what doesn’t matter. And you’ve all seen this, when you’ve gone to a park, there’s a pathway, and then there’s where people actually go. So really understanding your donors behavior is, is really seeing this piece, right, like they’re going that way they want to go that way. We need to at least acknowledge that that’s the way they want to go. Maybe they want to become a monthly donor, and we’re not making that available to them. Maybe they have no desire to be a monthly donor that happened to me at one organization, we really wanted them to become monthly donors, and nobody wanted to become a monthly donor. That’s fine. So then what are some unnecessary or distracting touch points? Are there things that we’re doing that actually don’t matter that don’t make a difference in that journey? And this is the idea of cutting the cognitive costs, especially when there’s friction involved in the donor turning? Are there things that make it too difficult for people to engage in the next step? We tend to think about that from the giving step. Right, a frictionless donation form, that’s important, don’t get me wrong. But what is the friction in the acknowledgement? On our end? What is the friction in the advocacy to turn them into ambassadors of our organization? How much time is involved in those different steps? What are some things that we can do to improve that every one of your organization’s going to be different, but I want you to think about what this looks like inside of your organization. So to give this very simple approach, right, if I need coffee, this morning, I throw in a coffee cup, if I want to coffee this morning, we tend to think of that decision process is I need coffee, I’m going to go get coffee. In reality, it means I need to brush my teeth, I need to take a shower, I need to get in my car, I’m at a hotel, but go I need to go down to the coffee shop, I need to park I need to go through the door, I need to wait in line, I need to look at the menu, I need to talk to the barista I need to hand over some cash, and then I get my coffee.

That’s a lot of cognitive load for seven o’clock in the morning. Which is why Ironically, when I do this in person, and there’s coffee shop next by next door, I’m like how many people ordered your usual the thing that you normally do? Even if you were at a new coffee shop? Why decreasing cognitive load, we don’t want to waste time thinking about what else is out there. We’re on a mission to get caffeine and we just want to figure out how to decrease cognitive load. What does that look like inside of your organization from prospective donor, first time donor multi-year donor lapsed donor? Think about that? And what are the different pieces that are required? And this is the idea of focusing on those moments of truth? What are the things that people gravitate towards in those journeys to really make their next decision. So want to talk a little bit about these different segments that I provided to you. And I’m going to show you an example of something that I used. I use the performing arts example because I used to work in the performing arts as the VP of development there, we did a segmentation that identified all of our different donor groups and what their percentage was, and then we actually appended based upon the framework, how much of our, our donor file was based on, you know, each one of these segments. So you’ll see here at the bottom, the names are silly, our friends at percent did that. But the idea is we just called them fives, the seam directors, we had a specific action plan for them maintain and maximize were rising actors. The action plan was to optimize and grow. And because of that, that number down there 37 and 29. That was our strategic priority for fundraising. Whereas, for example, the emerging stage crew, smaller group, but we assigned that as a as a plan for someone within a larger plan around cultivating those folks because they’d be our next generation donors. And then we thought about distant sector designers. These are folks that were far away from our performing arts center. How do we engage them from a distance knowing that we couldn’t spend the time and resources to go meet with them or you know, because they were all over? How do we engage with them? So those this is an example that might be helpful for your organization to kind of think through how do we divide and conquer our donor file in a way that identifies these are the people that we should meet with. These are the people that we should engage with in a different way, data and technology can help you do that. And so I’m going to show you a really quick example of how we’re seeing this now play out inside of CRMs, inside of the tools that are available. So we can identify new donors with high potential and create personalized engagement plans, personalized donor journeys. So there’s a way now for us to when we collect information, maybe they come to our organization for a service, they attend an event, whatever, we have some information, they’re immediately screened, we’re able to see from third party data, what else they’re giving to what are their, what are the things that they care about. And we’re able to see that right inside of our database, and what their capacity might be. But then we’re able to also identify a series of tasks, maybe it’s sent an email to folks who are not as engaged those kind of early quadrants, maybe it’s set up a phone call or a meeting immediately with those other quadrants, so that we’re prioritizing our time and resources. And then if you’re, you know, missing some of what Scott saying on the other side of the virtual room, building out those AI pieces where you have a draft of an email, meal email script, we’re talking points for a meeting with a CEO for those high potential donors. Those are even a thank you note right so that we can make sure that those acknowledgement pieces are set and ready to go. Now, will you use this verbatim? Of course not, you are smart, and capable and good, but a starting point, it’s easier for me to edit than it is for, for me to start from scratch. Here’s the last thing I will say before we get into questions to start thinking about what questions you have, start somewhere, start somewhere in terms of identifying what you were unintentionally doing and what you could be doing intentionally and know that you want to constantly improve the process. So assess, ask good questions of your donors and internally analyze the data around what you’re doing. Adapt as your donors change, and technology changes and then reappraise your donor attorneys, they should not be static. I showed you an example of that. But as we continue to talk about donor journeys with DonorPerfect in the next few months, we want to encourage you to kind of keep in touch with DonorPerfect because we’ll share additional content around this kind of continuous process to improve the work. But start somewhere, start wherever you can. And I know that this can seem hard and daunting, it can seem overwhelming, I shared a lot of content with you. But what I want you to think about is that the idea, the ideas of donor journeys is just saying we want to take someone on an intentional process, we want to make sure that they are engaging with our organizations. And I feel like we have, you know, lots of tools and opportunities out there around how to move people from one step of the process to another. Most of all, I want to thank you for the work that you’re doing. Thank you for being here. I know there’s lots of other places that you could be, but it’s know that being here is the first step in this engagement process and building out donor journeys. So so um, what kind of questions do we have about this topic? All right,

can you hear me come through? Okay. Okay, so

seeing my friend Mallory in the in the chat. Hi, Mallory.

All right. So the people want to know, many of our donors donate in tribute or memory of a friend or relative, or just jumped out of the way for me, or organization is often listed in obits. How do you recommend retaining these donors? How do we translate them into lifelong living?

That’s a great question. I’ve struggled with this a lot. So I totally hear this this issue, what I would say is, try to make an effort to try and keep them engaged by talking about the person if you can, the person who they’re honoring and their commitment to the organization, so reaffirm the relationship, before you reinforce the cause. And then talk about that as part of the process as as they make the gift, because you don’t really have control over that. They’re just saying donate to this organization. And so you can say I want to thank you for honoring this person and their commitment to this cause we’d love for you to consider but I wouldn’t push it just because sometimes people just do it as a one time thing. And this is where I would say, if they’re not responding to, you know, a follow up ask or whatever, just bless and release. i The one thing that I found to be super, super helpful is on the anniversary of the person passing away, just thanking them again, and some Time’s that leads to that opportunity. But I wouldn’t. Again, this is one of those areas where someone’s done something nice, but they don’t really have the intention of continuing engagement.

It makes a lot of sense to me. We have a little bit of time, let me just Beth asked, What are your preferred acquisition sources?

So, the example that I’ll give you is I know Judy’s from from Iowa, I love the Iowa State Fair, it’s coming up, but I take my kids, my daughter is really small. She’s seven, but she’s actually a tiny human. And if I lose her at the Iowa State Fair, millions of people, I don’t run around the fair saying, Hey, who is who, who has seen a kid? Right? I don’t want Mallory’s little girl. Their names are very similar, but I don’t I mean, I like Mallory, and I would love Mallory’s little girl. But I want my little girl back. Right? So the idea is, I’m gonna hold up a picture of my little girl of Evie. And I’m gonna say, has anybody seen this person? So the idea of Harriet and that donor persona is where I want you to think about acquisition. Building, that donor persona will tell you who does Harriet hang out with for EB EB is going to go to the cotton candy stand and the chicken and waffles stand. So I’m going to go there. If she’s lost, I’m going to try and find her. At those places. Where does Harriet hang out? Where does your ideal donor avatar hang out? And that’s what I think will help you from an acquisition perspective. I think cold lists, buying or renting list is really, really hard. That’s where your acquisition and conversion is going to be really, really limited. And I think you know, even the best in the business will tell you conversion rates are really small. So you spend a lot of money on those, and not a ton of results. So that that’s how we would approach it. Every organization is going to be very, very different, and where acquisition goes from, but I think starting with the persona is the right way to start.

You can find me with the fried Oreos and the chicken waffles. So what are we there on that one? I got one last question. Before we wrap things up. How far back would you recommend going to include laughs donors in an annual appeal or any appeal? Really, this organization generally goes about three years back. Alright,

so my friend Anna is apparently on the session because he’s sending me text messages to Anna and I worked at the performing arts center together. So she’s very familiar with that slide, I would say that you want a different strategy. And we did this for short laps versus long lapsed, Sue. And this is just this was us personally, this is are. corporately, the two of us, what we did was look at someone who made a gift 13 months to I want to say correct me if I’m wrong in 24 months and did the data part to sort this, but you would have a different strategy for that group, because it’s more likely that they forgot their their gift anniversary. In that short lapse window, a long lapse window, they know they’re not getting to you, right. So you want a different strategy. And what we built was what I what we called a We miss you letter, it was framed around this avatar of someone who gave before but had not given recently. And we said we miss you, here’s the impact that you had, Anna was really smart about doing some cool data pieces around like, here’s how much you gave. In total. Here’s what that impact means given our specific programming. And thank you, Anna 13 to 18 months. So we would say you made this this huge difference. And here’s an example of someone that you helped during that time. And you don’t literally say you miss, we miss you. But the framing of it is, we miss you here, you You made such a difference. Your place is here with us making this different? Would you consider coming back. And so you can kind of think about adapting that to your organization for both those different pieces. But at a certain point, the long laps, don’t spend a ton of time on that try, you know, because if they’re long laps, and you don’t get a response after a couple and again, Anna can correct me if we have a certain strategy. And and at a certain point when they haven’t given for a certain period of time, we’re just blessed and released as well and just said, this isn’t going to work. So I’m Karen, I think, let me can you just reach out to me, I think we can find a version of that that isn’t like based on the organization. Maybe we can maybe there’s an anonymous type of version of it. But honestly, the you know, and I’m happy to share any resources we have that aren’t suddenly some other organization that I used to work, that kind of thing. But the thing that I would encourage you about is just to say these are all things These seem complicated, but it’s really just about being intentional about it. It’s just saying You know, a lapsed donor is someone that we met. Let’s just think about that concept and how would we write that letter from our organizational voice and saying, how do we, how do we talk to this person about missing them truly authentically missing them. The other thing that I’ll share in advance of live session is that part of the reason why they’re lapsed is because of the the accent and the acknowledgement step. So make sure that you go back and and fix your leaky bucket before you dump more things into it. Because if you reengage a lapsed donor, but there but you don’t do a good job in the accident or the acknowledgement phase, you’re going to lapse again. So you’re just kind of running on the hamster wheel. So as much as possible, fix some of those early problems that happened in the process before moving into the next step.

All right, well, that is all we have time for today. So everybody our next sessions with Lynne and Josh are beginning momentarily so we will see you there. Take care. Thanks, everybody.