Stay the Course: Individual Giving Tactics for Changing Times

The key to digital fundraising success is an online donation form that converts a website visitor to a donor. DonorPerfect Online Forms increase conversions in several ways, such as enabling nonprofits to brand their forms to match their website using their Read More

The key to digital fundraising success is an online donation form that converts a website visitor to a donor. DonorPerfect Online Forms increase conversions in several ways, such as enabling nonprofits to brand their forms to match their website using their logo, both colors, photos and videos. This makes donors feel secure and helps build trust in the donation process. Another way to increase conversions and average gift size is with forms that provide suggested giving levels. These recommendations are also adjusted to appropriate dollar amounts for monthly giving, which is a proven donor retention strategy, payment options like PayPal and Venmo also boost conversions by making donations quicker and easier, increasing donor trust with proven, safe technology. Another key to digital fundraising is a fast, automated acknowledgement process. DonorPerfect online forms allow you to customize your confirmation pages and automate receipts for immediate, personalized acknowledgement to show gratitude for every gift. Digital fundraising is an ongoing process, so to encourage donor retention, regular communication via email, social media and other digital means is crucial. DonorPerfect automates this process by ensuring all information collected flows directly into your DonorPerfect CRM transactions are organized in the appropriate donor record for additional acknowledgement, identifiable in campaign reporting and tagged for inclusion in future targeted solicitations. Learn more about how DonorPerfect can meet your unique needs by speaking with Your Account Manager or attending a product demonstration webinar.

You with DonorPerfect, it’s easy to raise more. Our fundraising system simplifies every aspect of your work, community, fundraising, organizational success, donor engagement, the giving experience and revenue growth. Nonprofits raise 25% more in their first year with us, and they don’t stop there. 93% of our clients stay with us to keep increasing their revenue and efficiency. DonorPerfect, life changing, work made easy. You

the key to digital fundraising success is an online donation form that converts a website visitor to a donor. DonorPerfect online forms increase conversions in several ways, such as enabling nonprofits to brand their forms to match their website using their logo, both colors photos and videos. This makes donors feel secure and helps build trust in the donation process. Another way to increase conversions and average gift size is with forms that provide suggested giving levels. These recommendations are also adjusted to appropriate dollar amounts for monthly giving, which is a proven donor retention strategy. Payment options like PayPal and Venmo also boost conversions by making donations quicker and easier, increasing donor trust with proven safe technology. Another key to digital fundraising is a fast, automated acknowledgement process. DonorPerfect online forms allow you to customize your confirmation pages and automate receipts for immediate, personalized acknowledgement to show gratitude for every gift. Digital fundraising is an ongoing process, so to encourage donor retention, regular communication via email, social media and other digital means is crucial. DonorPerfect automates this process by ensuring all information collected flows directly into your DonorPerfect CRM transactions are organized in the appropriate donor record for additional acknowledgement, identifiable in campaign reporting and tagged for inclusion in future targeted solicitations. Learn more about how DonorPerfect can meet your unique needs by speaking with your account manager or attending a product demonstration Webinar.

My name is Mark Spencer, youth mentoring partnership. I’m the CEO and founder. We have been in operation programmatically since 2000 and have experienced some exciting growth. Really, there’s a lot of issues, as we know out there, especially kids living in generational poverty. There’s educational gaps, there’s food and financial insecurities, you know, drugs, alcohol, teenage pregnancy, a lot of these things can be really traced back to a mentoring gap. One in three kids in this country will grow up without one consistent, positive adult in their life. That that’s a crazy statistic we exist to close the mentoring gap. So many of our kids, especially those living in generational poverty, don’t have a positive adult in their life. So many ills of society can be taken care of by just having one positive adult, and that’s what we do, and these kids are worth it. So we use Fitness and Sports as our connector. Movement helps in so many different ways. So that’s the way we connect with kids, but we do it in many different ways. We insert trauma, informed, professionally trained mentors, many who are from the communities we serve in the physical education classes we have our 3g curriculum that we’ve talked about, which is really goal setting and planning skills, the development of grit and resilience and the practice of gratitude. All three of those things are evidence based, ways to connect, to develop and to be successful in life. It’s not really if we do. We care if you can throw lacrosse ball, quite frankly, or shoot a basketball, but we’re providing safe havens for many of our kids. You know, coaches are more influential academically than teachers in the teen years and behaviorally than parents. So our mission hasn’t changed. It’s really our messaging around how we affect those various things, you know. And then we’re like, geez, we really, as we grow this, we need some type of platform to organize. This is how we landed on DonorPerfect, because we also did the looked at seven different ones. We can’t figure out the language, who’s doing what, how, so I understand that can be a very overwhelming process. We jump on DonorPerfect, right? And we started doing a few things, I think, well, you know, we started entering everybody’s names, making sure it profiles that, that type of thing. But we were definitely able to use some things with constant contact. So it helped us with our messaging, that was a big plus for us. No doubt it was also a great check and balance with QuickBooks, we have a form online. It wasn’t the greatest of forms with the help of the DonorPerfect staff, and I mean, maybe a 45 minute tutorial, and then half an hour investment of our time. It’s a form I’m really proud of. I feel like we can put this out in front of our high level donors and look like a professional organization. Really are the majority of our cost is for program staff is to, is to be able to put these angels, if you will, out out on the front lines. We get so much. I just, you know, I the stories I hear, interactions I get to see. I’m the luckiest guy now. You

Hi everyone. My name is Roberto Campo. I am a DonorPerfect training specialist. Welcome to Robbe Healy session. Stay the course individual giving tactics for changing times. Here’s a little bit about Robbe founding member of Aurora. Philanthropic consulting. Brings 40 plus years of experience in fundraising, strategic planning, board governance and nonprofit management. Has advised over 150 organizations, and is a recognized sector leader. Served as chair of a FP global board and ethics committee. CO led the 2023 AFP Code of Ethics revision. Recipient of several honors, a. Fees, fundraising Executive of the Year, Barbara Marion award, distinguished fellow FA FV helped establish the landing age philanthropy network holds a BS from Northeastern and an MBA from Villanova, where she teaches in the MPA program. She is a, a, CF, R, E, A license, N, H, A, A faculty for AFP and C, A, S, E, active community volunteer, including roles in rotary leadership trusteeship at Westminster Presbyterian Church, the Housing Partnership of Chester County, and is a dedicated member of natural land forces of nature team. Before we begin, a few housekeeping items, you can download today’s presentation from the details section on the right side of the presenter window. Please submit your questions in the Q and A tab so we can address them during the session. All sessions are going to be recorded and will be available on the DonorPerfect website after the conference. And with that, I’ll hand it over to Robbe to get us started.

Thanks so much, Roberto, and thank you all for joining in. I want to say I noticed in the chat there’s a comment that the donor retention worksheet and the philanthropy Action Plan seem to be the same document. If I’m reading that correctly, there should be two different documents in there, so maybe someone at and on the conference backstage can figure out whether we can get that straightened out. But they are definitely two different things. So thank you to whoever posted that comment. So staying the course in changing times, it’s interesting. I’m sure if your experiences like mine, every week in our office seems to bring a different kind of conversation about revenue and public funding. And I really wanted to go back to what we learned in in 2009 2008 and nine, but also put it in a context so we know that in changing times, there can often be a panic where boards and other leaders make decisions that actually make revenue generation worse, not better. And I want to give you some context around that, but we’re also going to talk about generational contact, engagement preferences. What is it that we know from the demographic data about how people of different age groups tend to want to hear from us and engage with us? Now we’re all smart enough to know there will always be exceptions, but the research does give us some trends. If you were listening to clay Buck’s presentation, which I thought was amazing, as Clay Buck always is, if you were listening to his presentation about donor retention and the tactics that we use in treasuring donors, he obviously talked about direct mails, not dead, but how many of our boards want us to be all in on digital and ignore everything else? So hopefully some of the generational data will give you some ammunition or rationale for why we need to stay multi channel. We’re also going to talk about donor engagement track tactics, from very transactional to high touch. And that is where the worksheets, I’m hoping will help you. I’m a worksheet girl. I like to be able to work with something, with people and say, you know, here’s the checklist. What? What are we currently doing? What could we be doing? How are we going to create the bandwidth to do that? So we’ll talk about using that worksheet and then action plans for strong relationships. I’ve spent my career in small development offices. My bandwidth is often volunteers and board members. I’m smart enough to know most board members don’t join boards as fearless fundraisers. So we’ll also talk about taking them through a journey. So as as we go through this, I the the first thing I really want to talk about is what happened in 2009 which was obviously a reaction to the mortgage banking crisis that started in 2008 giving didn’t stop. 2009 was supposed to be a terrible year, and it declined slightly, about 3.7% but total giving was still. On 303.7 5 billion. I don’t know about you, but I think almost 304 billion is still a huge number. So even though there’s volatility in markets right now, and we know public funding has declined and will continue, in all likelihood, to decline, stable would be good, but none of us have a crystal ball. What we know from 2000 2009 is not 2029 sorry about that. What we learned from 22,009 is not everyone was impacted the same way. Some people did very well, the value judgments about people who did very well were myriad, but the bottom line is, some of them did very well. Not every organization was affected the same way. Some organizations did well, and that’s analogous also to COVID, because what we know during COVID is the direct service agencies, the agencies serving people really on the margins, did get a lot of attention from their donors, but at the same time, part of the reason some organizations did well is because we reacted differently to them. So when we’re in a role such as development officer, Executive Director, if you are also wearing the development hat, how do you interpret the current environment? Are you Chicken Little The sky is falling, or are you trying to be a calm, direct voice, helping to navigate through the challenges? Because what we know is resources may have changed, priorities may have changed, but if you are a development officer who operates from a philosophy of abundance rather than scarcity, there’s a lot of generosity out there, and we really have to drill down on innovation, but never lose focus on our mission. So the tendency to chase the money can be much more temptation tempting in an environment such as we’re in today. So I think we really have to do a gut check with our leadership volunteers if they really think it’s too hard to raise money right now? Do we really need to raise the bar on their thought process and say, if it’s really too hard to compete successfully, how worthy is our cause? Food for thought? So the current reality, we do need to be very candid about the current situation, doom and gloom. No, let’s not go there and and as ethical organizations, with a good, strong message, we can’t fall into the blaming focus. We really need to look at our mission, our unique strengths, and develop ways to maximize our strengths. Of course, we should be doing that every year regardless, but sometimes we get mission creep on the fringes, and we may need to look very carefully at what’s our core mission? What’s our core business? What are our unique strengths, our competitive advantages, and how can we maximize those? We also need to engage candidly and sensitively with our donors about their needs and priorities. And clay talked about that, didn’t he? He talked about treasuring the donor, stewarding the gift, some of our donors will be harmed. Some of our donors may reduce or pause their gifts. We need to continue to challenge donors in their giving, but underscore the fact that we are hearing them and listening to them about their personal circumstances. If a donor needs to take a pause or give less, we still need to give them the same dignified love that we would if they were still with us. I think about this with the sixth grade dance. So sixth grade, in my world, was the first time when you were in a new school with lots of new people and making buddies and friends, and you might have had a conversation with someone who you thought was pretty special. They may not have paid attention to you after the sixth grade dance, and you were hoping that they might maybe three or four years later, they discover you again, and you remember how you felt being ghosted by them. So are you going to take a chance on developing a new relationship with this person who quite. Frankly, several years ago, hurt your feelings. Now that may be an over simplify simplification, but in my opinion, and what we learned from 2009 was the organizations that stayed the course with their development departments stayed the course with their development programs in a sensitive and appropriate manner. In other words, didn’t abandon the donors who couldn’t give or couldn’t give as much they wound up on the other side of that economic environment with stronger relationships with their donors, and the donors who did have to take a pause, the donors who did have to decrease their giving, were very grateful that the organizations had continued to treat them with dignity. And of course, Clay, in his session, talked about stewarding donors regardless of the size of their gift. And this is an overlay on that. But when you really think about do you want to

attack is probably the wrong word. But do you want to pull back from a donor who’s been candid with you about their situation, still treasures your work, still wants to move the needle to the degree that they can. We need to stick with them. So there’s only one thing you remember from the time we’re spending together, is don’t stop stewarding your donors. Don’t stop treasuring your donors. Don’t stop loving your donors. It can’t that. That has to be job one for all of us. So the age of the donors we’re working with does matter, and the way that they want to engage with us. Obviously, these are generalizations, but you may find, and if you think about yourself as we’re going through the generational pieces, you may find that you are on the cusp of a couple, or you’re outside your group. That’s why asking donors how they want to engage with us is so important. But this, these data can give you a starting point. So the silent generation, most of those donors are no longer with us. Some of them still are, and a lot of them are people who we’re working on with estate giving, but they were a very generous generation. 88% of them still give to charities. They’re still about 26% of total giving. They average $1,400 over six organizations, which means if you want to be on their donor list or their their charity list, you’ve got to work hard to be among those six. They tend to be very loyal to the causes they support. They they have made that journey with us, and they aren’t giving a test gift to a couple of organizations. They’re being loyal to the ones they they’ve supported for decades. They do value personal relationships and from an ethics point of view, we have to be careful, don’t we, that we may become their social calendar. So we need to make very certain that the boundaries are clear. If they’re able, they do like to give, attend in person events, not necessarily huge gala style events, but donor receptions and updates as well. They are giving via bequests and legacy gifts. They still answer the phone when we call and they like direct mail. You’ll see none of the digital engagement is is on the surface with this group, and I don’t know that that would surprise us. The baby boomers theoretically have the highest amount of disposable income they’ve ever had in their lives. They are responsible for 43% of us giving, as opposed to the silent I’m sorry, the silent generation that was 26% boomers are only supporting a little more than four organizations, and they’re giving less to those four organizations. But there’s so many boomers, the 43% rises to the service. 71% of all of boomers are volunteering locally. So when you think about our volunteers, good prospects to be considered as as donors, certainly yes. And our donors potentially good prospects to become volunteers? Yes, so think about that. From both ends, 58% of boomers still like to attend fundraising events. They are brand conscious. They want us to have a positive reputation and and be well respected. Now, interestingly enough, 24% of donors in the baby boom generation give online because they got a direct mail that gave them the option to do that. So two modalities caused them we still see them sending checks. So if we’re not giving a reply envelope in our direct mail, we’re probably making a mistake. They like impact reports in monthly newsletters. Some of them are are liking to get text messages from us. They still like voice calls direct mail and email, and they’re starting to give online. So this is kind of all the channels. How do you know which ones to use? Use the ones you can support consistently over time, but also ask them how they want to hear from us. Gen X. 64% volunteer locally. 56% still like fundraising events. They also see charitable giving as part of their identity. So the causes that are important to them are part of their value. As an individual, they will do their own research first. This was the first generation where we weren’t seeing one way messaging charity to prospective donor. They were looking for us online and not always finding things that were positive. So this is where we began to need to manage our digital brand and digital reputation. They are supporting four organizations a little over $700 they like giving online through their mobile so obviously, the way their their giving form on mobile looks is huge. And of course, DonorPerfect gives you a great opportunity to make that customized and beautiful. Email prompted 31% of their donations, and they tend to support health, animals, Environment and Community Development. They are more focused in the way they want us to engage with them, voice calls, text messages, email, social media and online giving notice direct mail is not in here. I don’t think we should ignore them in direct mail, but if your donor cohort is largely Gen X, you may want to look at that if you’re having trouble with spreading your bandwidth. Millennials are obviously very heavy users of technology, very tech forward. They will research and advocate using tech. They are more selective than other organizations, and this is where we begin to see individuals who will bounce between causes so they may stay in the same sector, but give to different organizations serving within the sector. That kind of behavior always begs the question for me, should we be giving them ways to support collaborations where multiple organizations in the same space are joining together to do collaborative programs, and in an economic situation such as the one we have today, That might give boards more confidence in doing collaboration so that we can leverage our resources. Millennials right now are about 11% of us giving. This is where participation in monthly giving programs starts to show up. So it doesn’t mean that older cohorts aren’t, but 40% of millennials are and of course, the interesting thing there is, once I enroll in a monthly giving program, does the organization have to screw up in order to lose me as a monthly donor, a monthly subscriber to Supporting your work, 46% donate to peer to peer campaigns that one’s always a challenge for me personally. It may not be for you, but how do we make sure that the peer to peer donor loves our work as much as they love the person asking them to support the peer to peer campaign? I have a good friend who participates in a bike ride every year. Every year she rides her bike. It’s a 50 mile thing. Every year she rides it for a different organization. I am willing to admit I stay loyal to her, not to the. Cause. And so because I behave like that, I think about that when I’m thinking about, how do we engage donors through a peer to peer program to make sure they are finding out enough about us Millennials like workplace related volunteering. So how do we leverage a day of giving, such as MLK Day in the US, if your company has a Day of Giving Day where they deploy people in the community, how do we as the agency, get in front of those companies. If I happen to live in suburban Philadelphia, there’s a big Delaware County gives day, Delco gives day, which is a Giving Day, and lots of organizations benefit from that. Could there be a way of leveraging a Delco volunteers day, I don’t know, but I don’t see why we couldn’t.

Millennials are an or an age cohort that likes crowdfunding and social media, and they will follow their causes on our social platform platforms, and we want to make sure they are motivated to share not only our work, but their their engagement in our work, because obviously, if their social friends see them, that’s a much more powerful impact. The millennial generation tends to focus on immediate needs, disasters, humanitarian issues, domestic abuse, child development, so urgent, immediate needs. So we’re seeing more local and more urgent. So how urgent is your cause? If you’ve been around for 150 years, if it’s not still urgent, you wouldn’t still be around. But how do you tailor your messaging around what’s important today? Millennials, digital, texting and SMS, social media and online giving again, direct mail is not in here, but look what happens in Gen Z. Direct Mail shows up again, and that was something we talked about in Clay’s session. I always love it when someone speaking before me agrees with me. And I’d imagine Clay’s always glad when someone’s speaking after him agrees with him. But the bottom line is, this is where the loop is coming back. So 32% of Gen Z has already become a donor, they are much more likely, three times more likely, to advocate for an organization, maybe because of their call, their their social justice call to action, but also, it may be a matter of economics, they’re in a better position to give time as an advocate, perhaps, than what they think of as as a meaningful gift. 59 almost 60% donate because of an image or message they saw on social media. 76% of of these donors prefer to give directly to an individual. Think about GoFundMe rather than through an organization. They are extremely tech savvy. So think about again, think about your mobile presentation. They will interact online through videos and petitions and other channels. So make sure they are robust and user friendly. And again, create the things that you know you can sustain, because what you don’t want to do is start and stop something think very, very carefully about bandwidth, and we’ll talk about that a little bit more. Dei is important to Gen Z, and so is our sustainability. So social media, online giving, but also direct mail. Roberto, maybe I’ll take a little pause here and see if there are any questions or feedback about any of the generational things we’ve been mentioning. So

I’m not hearing you.

We do have one question. So far from Pam, her question is, how can you distance yourself from a donor without wrecking the relationship?

I guess, not knowing why you’d want to distance yourself from a donor? I wonder if it’s a reputation concern. And those are hard. Those are very hard, I think, since COVID and the ME TOO movement and a lot of the issues. Issues surrounding the brand of a donor, the brand of a company, boards have been much more willing to adopt donor recognition policies that give development officers a structure and a platform for being able to make those decisions. So if your consideration is a donor whose personal brand or business brand may not be in alignment with your mission and your brand, to be perfectly honest, in my opinion, that may be a donor that you need to walk away from. Now, I am smart enough to know if that’s a very significant donor. That’s a hard decision, but in my opinion, that’s a decision that the board leadership, through the development committee, needs to be involved with. They need to support you with a structure and a process for going through that discernment. I don’t know whether I answered Pam’s question, but if I didn’t, maybe we can circle back at the end in the Q and A, and if I did, great any any other questions.

We do, we have a question from an anonymous user, how would you go about asking someone to become a monthly donor.

I think there are a lot of tactics, and DonorPerfect provides you with many of those for helping donors leverage their impact through becoming a monthly giver. I think first of all, making the option available on your giving whether it’s it’s your mobile or your online giving form, always making that option available when they first log in, also then talking with them in those treasure Conversations, the follow up conversations, just asking them point blank, would you consider amplifying your impact by supporting us on a monthly basis? So if they’ve given you $100 and you encourage them to give you $10 a month, you’ve already increased their gift, or $25 a month. So I think having conversations about that with them as individuals, converting donors to becoming monthly donors, is really a specialty of annual giving tactics. And I don’t know that we have a lot more time for that here, but I would look in the DonorPerfect resources for their suggestions and approaches to leveraging monthly giving. But thanks for that question.

Another question we have, how do you ask a donor’s age without seeming intrusive?

Sometimes you’re making an assumption, and I think you can look at things such as, have they retired? Yes or no. When are they recent in the workforce? Yes or No, how long have they been in the active workforce? So I think LinkedIn can be one of your best research tools for trying to us to imagine the donor’s generation. Because if they’ve got a work history in their LinkedIn profile, and it’s got how many years they worked in different places, I would absolutely start there. Now I am smart enough to know not everybody’s on LinkedIn, but don’t ignore LinkedIn as a prospect research tool. It’s probably one of the most powerful, free tools that we have. And if you’re concerned about everybody knowing you’ve looked them up, you can use a LinkedIn premium, where you can not be your name doesn’t show up as the person who looked them up, but at the same time, we’re being transparent in in our relationships with donors. So I would go with LinkedIn as my my go to for trying to figure out, and also, have they retired yet? Of course, retirement ages vary, so you could be in three different generations and be retired. So that’s not nearly as reliable, I don’t think as LinkedIn. We good. Yeah, we

have some more. We have one from Samantha. Should I worry how I present myself on social media, affecting donors? I leave politics out, but I’m pro black lives matter, the LGBT community and anti war, et cetera.

That’s a complicated question, because I think when social media was. First a thing, many organizations develop social media policies as part of their personnel policies. So I think part of the answer to your question is, what is the mission and philosophy of your own organization, and does your organization actually have a social media policy? Now, the way that organizations dealt with that was to ask us as individuals on social media, as individuals, to put a statement that said, my statements are my own opinion. They are not a reflection of my organization, some of us and not me, I don’t but I know other folks who use personal social media with a pseudonym, but I really think if your organization has a social media policy in its personnel policy that you’ve signed, you have To abide by that. But I am pretty transparent myself, but I think those are decisions we need to make, informed by our workplace culture and our workplace standards, as well as the mission fit. And I’m assuming, if the mission of your organization is in opposition to your personal values, you might be looking for a job.

We have another question from Kim, how do you get into companies, getting donors to donate via paycheck?

Well, that’s an interesting question, isn’t it, because the United Way was very good and is still very good at doing workplace solicitations, and even in their model, the donors don’t come to us. The United Way gift comes to us. My personal opinion is, do work days where people from the company you want to engage with come and volunteer in your program or your campus. Now, I’m smart enough to know if you don’t have a building based program or a location based program, that can be really challenging, going to chamber of commerce business fairs, being parts of recruitment fairs. I happen to live in Chester County, Pennsylvania. We have a thing called Leadership Chester County where businesses send their mid level executives to learn how to be board members being part of those groups. But I think Chambers of Commerce can often be a point of entry for making contacts with important businesses in your community, and if your nonprofit is not actively involved in your local chambers of commerce, that could be a real door for you to open.

We have one more question from Tracy, how do you feel about mailing out an invitation to a gala versus digital invitation? Our demographic is Gen X, millennial.

I think if I think you need to do both, and I think they need to be beautiful. And if you have a beautiful invitation that you have designed, or you’ve had designed, put a beautiful stamp on it and get your squadrons of lovely volunteers to hand address them. Because I personally believe regardless of your age group, with the possible exception of of Gen X, people are going to take that envelope out of their mailbox, and instead of dropping it in the recycle bin before they go in their door, they’re going to at least open it up. So I’m a fan of beautiful invitations, so I want to, I want to keep going, and we’re going to talk a little bit more about how can you begin to structure what you work on. So one of your worksheets, and I hope this is straightened out in the resources, but one of your worksheets is the high impact donor retention tactics, and these are the instructions at the top of the worksheet. So I’m suggesting that do not go to work tomorrow and say, I listened to this webinar, and we’re going to fill this out and we’re going to start doing this, keep it as a resource until the timing is right for you to use this. So I like to find an ally in my development committee who will agree that this kind of personal reflection is timely. So at the beginning of the worksheet we’ve got, we have a list of tactics that might be implemented organization wide, in other words, through the development office or on an individual level. In other words, donor by. Donor by donor, person by person by person, to help retain lower level donors. So we’re hopefully already paying attention to what we think of as our major donors. So how do we share the love with our lower level donors? So you as the development officer, circle each of the tactics you think your organization is always doing success, already doing successfully. Then ask don’t, but don’t, share with with them what you’re doing. Ask them to do that. Then ask them to put a check mark next to all the tactics you’re not yet using, which would have to be done on an organization wide level that they think are important, but would require bandwidth, because I want to challenge them, not to tell us to do stuff, but to realize if they tell us to do stuff, there has to be financial support under that. And then here’s where it’s going to get interesting. Put a star next to the five that they as an individual, would be willing to add to their own calendars. So these are the 25 things that are on the donor retention checklist. So as they go through and there is a descriptor of what each one of these 25 things is, because I’m smart enough to know they won’t know what a low dollar impact story is. And a low dollar impact is a story that you would create, saying $25 did this amazing work, or this wonderful program was made possible through a $50 contribution. So they aren’t going to know that, but when you download my worksheet, you will see the descriptions in there. So some of these 25 I’m sure you’re already doing. Some of them you might want to be doing, but you don’t have the bandwidth with yet. So getting the stars next to these worksheets is going to give you an opportunity to find out what they are willing to do, which is, why don’t email this form out to everybody you want to have help you and ask them to fill it out and email it back, in my opinion and experience, if your development committee embraces this, if your development committee gets the board and any other fundraising volunteers, you might have to be willing to work through this in a face to face session. And yes, I know we could do it on Zoom, but I’d rather have them all in the same room. I think this can be a glide path for you, letting them know exactly what you are already doing and what you would like to add incrementally in order to ramp up your care and and and treasuring, of the people who are your your donors. So this is the first one. So I think everyone can find their role. I don’t know about you, but I am a real fan of Kay sprinkle grace. Kay sprinkle Grace’s book, The Triple A way to fundraising success. Success has been out of print forever, but you can find it online and of course, typically on Amazon, but it’s a small monograph that really describes the ambassador, advocate and ask a role of board members. So as they are circling or putting a star, I should say next to the things they’re willing to do, this will help you see how they see themselves fitting in. So an ambassador. Every single volunteer leader in your organization needs to be Ambassador if they’re not willing to be an ambassador. In my opinion and experience, they’re an empty seat on the board because they’re not doing the outreach you need to help you get your work done. So 100% of people on the board need to be ambassadors. None of this is asking. This is only storytelling the next level advocates. If 100% are ambassadors, a third are going to drop out by time you get to the advocate role. So these people are taking it up a notch. These are often the people who will go with you to a political advocacy day. These are people who will go with you to a foundation presentation or be with you. At a United Way Community Impact panel. These are also people who are comfortable interacting and handling objections and answering questions. So they’re very comfortable talking about your strategic plan. They are very comfortable talking about your program, and they have taken it up a notch from being an advocate, I’m sorry for being an ambassador. By the time we get to askers, and this is just as obvious as sounds, these are the people who are comfortable actually making an ask by the time you get to this level, two thirds of them will have dropped out. So if you’ve got a board of 1515, are ambassadors. 10 are embed Ambassador advocates, and five of them are Ambassador advocate askers. Sometimes the askers will have their own portfolio of people. Sometimes they will go teamed with another board member, teamed with a staff member or teamed with you. So if you’re not familiar with Kay’s book, I urge you to find it, because when you look at what tactics your leadership volunteers are going to be willing to take on this book, and Kay’s structure will give you a way of helping fill them in on how to take on what they’ve said they would do. Because, my opinion, most board members know they’re supposed to be involved in fundraising and advocacy, but they never learned it. And in our country and culture, we have trained people never to admit what they don’t know. So Kay’s book gives you a platform for how to help them learn, and I’m hoping my worksheet gives you a tool for helping them look at the incremental pieces of how they can engage.

So the second worksheet, and I just want to briefly talk about this one before we get to the formal Q and A. The second worksheet is a personal action plan for each volunteer. So once you’ve got the stars, once you’ve decided where your bandwidth lives, once your organization recognizes even in the current climate, we’re not going to retrench. We’re going to commit to good stewardship, in the traditional sense, stewardship of our donors. And I loved what Clay said, treasure the donor, steward the gift, but in the traditional sense, the philanthropy action plan for each board member job, one is make their own generous personal gift, and on the action plan where I’m asking them to indicate what they’ll give in the current year. Secondly, who are the people they are willing to be the relationship manager for most, many of our board members are relationship managers in their day job. So giving them the opportunity to identify the people they are willing to take on personally for whatever the tactics are they said they’d use, this is where they’re going to put their names on that list. If you get people, multiple people, picking the same individuals, then you can settle out who is going to be the best lead and if, if there’s a team, great. If not, you don’t want two or three board members taking the same individual obviously. Third one is I’m willing to make Thank you calls to donors and supporters. This is an ambassador role, so hopefully 100% will do that. The fourth one is, participate in donor meetings, face to face meetings with you or with another board member. Not everybody will have a check mark there that’s going to probably be your advocates and your askers participate in special events. We know two of our biggest donor constituencies still like special events. Where I live in Chester County, Pennsylvania, if you don’t have a special event, you’re invisible. Not every jurisdiction is like that. And if you, if you have a if you’ve got five or six special events, I’d be rethinking that. I like to say, have one event where donors have to get dressed up, and one where they don’t have to, but again, having too many really minimizes your your time for higher level engagement. Will you host a house or an office party? Will you have a small group of people come to hear about our work and mission in. In your space, and are there other ways that individual can think of that they would like to support our our organization? So I hope the worksheets give you a structured, tangible way of of rolling out, staying the course and making sure that the donors know you love them, whether they can give at the current level less, or perhaps take a pause and really give your board members, which for most of us are the way we have boots on the ground doing donor engagement. I hope the worksheets will give you a structure for doing that. So I’m happy now to go back to Roberto. I think you’re going to curate our final Q and A session. Yes.

Thank you, Robbe, for your presentation. It was great. Here’s a question from Constance, are donor are donor drives an option? How would you go about that?

I guess I’m not sure what donor drive means in this context. Is there, is there any more information about that? No,

there is not. Let’s see if there’s other questions.

Yeah, we have another one from an anonymous user. Or our organization has two special events both barely break even with revenue and expenses before factoring in staff time. Do you recommend continuing these events

on the surface, based on the information you’ve told me, I would certainly want to do a deep dive into why they are just breaking even. When I work with my clients, I tell them, I really suggest they have to look at three things. They have to look at constituency. Who do you want in the room at the event? Well, how do we want it to strengthen and interpret our brand, and what revenue do we hope to have at the end? And if your events are not strong, the first thing I would be doing is talking to people who used to come and aren’t anymore about what made them decide not to come. And then also talk to people who you invited, who didn’t accept the invitation, if they’re donors in some other way, or people who are engaged with you in some other way, and really try to drill down on why your events are struggling, because I think of events as the way to introduce ourselves. I think of events not as the money raised, but the connections made, but obviously with the amount of staff time they take and the investment in them, we need them to have net positive revenue. So based on what you told me, I think the answer is, do a lot of research before you decide what to keep. Did we get any more clarification about what? Yes, okay, yeah, yeah.

From Constance that just came in a nonprofit donor drive is a structured fundraising effort where individuals and groups donate items or monetary amounts to support a nonprofit organization’s mission and program.

So I guess I think of that as a solicitation. I think we always need to be doing that, whether we’re soliciting in kind contributions to support our work or actual financial contributions. I don’t think there’s any perfect time to start one if you don’t already have one, but I’d be looking at, how many are you doing? What are they asking for? I’ve never worked with a board who didn’t want us to recruit to solicit unrestricted donations, and that just doesn’t happen. We need to offer donors the opportunity to support the programs that we run with with gifts that we can spend the day we get them. So I think looking at, I like to think of a contribution, a solicitation, one time of the year that supports people like scholarships or financial assistance or something like that, and buying things at another time of year, because there are some donors who like to buy stuff and some donors like to support people. And also, of course, donors who like providing product for us, such as to a food bank or a homeless shelter or a domestic violence organization. So I certainly think yes, you should be doing that. But looking at where’s our impact, how do we tell the story through that, and how do we make sure we’re engaging donors in the outcomes they’re helping? Spy, not the bills we want them to pay.

Robbe, we have one last question. Are the three a board roles typically shared with potential board members during the recruitment stage to help them understand where they might best continue?

I certainly hope so. And I say that I happen to serve on a nonprofit board, but I chair the Governance Committee, and we do, and people will say to me, Oh, my word. If we tell them that in advance, they’ll never join. And my response back is, if we don’t tell them in advance and they join and they don’t do it, we’ll have an empty seat. So I err on the side of transparency, but I’m also smart enough to know the development office doesn’t control the board and the Governance Committee, so hopefully your development committee chair is bringing that message to your board and your governance committee on your behalf.

That’s all honor and thank you everybody for attending Robbe’s session. We hope you had some great tech takeaways. Next session on stage one is Tammy zonker, reconnecting your work. How to think bigger, bolder and braver. Next session on stage two is Michael Blanton from Sage, the growth equation fundraising plus finance equals healthy growth, and no matter which session you choose, you won’t miss any content. All sessions are recorded. Thank you everyone. Thank you, Robbe,

Thank you. Applause.