Values Over Valuables: Creating a Donor Retention Plan That Turns Transactions into Transformations

As your organization grows, you’re probably ready to expand your fundraising efforts and become more efficient in your operations to help you accomplish both goals, you’ll want a solution that integrates with your online donation forms, email and accounting solutions, donor, Read More

As your organization grows, you’re probably ready to expand your fundraising efforts and become more efficient in your operations to help you accomplish both goals, you’ll want a solution that integrates with your online donation forms, email and accounting solutions, donor, demographic, data and other top tier solutions. To make more time for your expansion efforts, you need to automate fundraising tasks such as creating personalized thank you letters and receipts. To expand your fundraising, you need tools to help target the right donor with the right message, whether they’re major donors or monthly givers, from events to Moves Management, having a solution that can offer these capabilities means you can increase fundraising capacity without having to switch systems to make better decisions. You need a solution with the analysis tools and reporting. Your team needs to understand where you’re successful, as well as areas for improvement in a time of frequent staff turnover. You’ll also want access to onboarding, training and support specialists whenever you need them, like members of your staff that will always be there to help you. DonorPerfect checks all of these boxes and perhaps others you didn’t know you needed. Get answers to your questions and learn more about how DonorPerfect can meet your unique needs by speaking with Your Account Manager or attending a product demonstration webinar.

You when it comes to your fundraising journey, you don’t have to do it alone. At DonorPerfect, our team has stood by nonprofits as trusted partners for more than 40 years. We’re not just great software, we’re the team behind it. DonorPerfect offers personalized onboarding and ongoing support to ensure you get the most out of your system. We’re beside you every step of the way with DonorPerfect, our people make the difference in Your success. Schedule a demo today you
i as your organization grows, you’re probably ready to expand your fundraising efforts and become more efficient in your operations. To help you accomplish both goals, you’ll want a solution that integrates with your online donation forms, email and accounting solutions, donor, demographic, data and other top tier solutions. To make more time for your expansion efforts, you need to automate fundraising tasks such as creating personalized thank you letters and receipts. To expand your fundraising, you need tools to help target the right donor with the right message, whether they’re major donors or monthly givers, from events to Moves Management, having a solution that can offer these capabilities means you can increase fundraising capacity without having to switch systems to make better decisions. You need a solution with the analysis tools and reporting your team needs to understand where you’re being successful, as well as areas for improvement in a time of frequent staff turnover, you’ll also want access to onboarding, training and support specialists whenever you need them, like members of your staff that will always be there to help you. DonorPerfect checks all of these boxes and perhaps others you didn’t know you needed get answers to your questions and learn more about how DonorPerfect can meet your unique needs by speaking with Your Account Manager or attending a product demonstration webinar.

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

My name is Lori Skibjak, and I’m the Training Operations Manager here at DonorPerfect. Welcome to clay session, values over valuables, creating a donor retention plan that turns transactions into transformations. Clay buck is a CFRE who has been working in fundraising for over 30 years. He is the founder and principal of next Ripper fundraising strategies, the creator of the fundraisers, planner and co host of the fundraising is funny podcast. Clay specializes in individual giving from acquisition to major gifts, strategic planning and bringing a systems thinking approach to fundraising. He makes his home in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he’s owned by two poorly trained Golden Retrievers who have mastered the art of the ask, especially at dinnertime. So before we get started, I have a few housekeeping items to mention. You can download today’s presentation from the details section to the right of the presenters window. If you have questions, do you want to make sure to submit them in the Q and A tab so that we can address them. And all sessions are being recorded and will be available on the DonorPerfect website after the conference.

So Clay, you are all set.

Thank you. Lori, thanks everybody for being here today. It’s nice to see some friends in the in the in the chat there some folks that are clearly familiar with fundraising. Is funny as well. And of course, the dog lovers in the audience happy to be here. Thanks so much for I’m just, I’m thrilled to be here today and really looking forward to this conversation. As you can tell I get the chat up, so I’m, I’m keeping an eye on the conversation as we go. Nice to see all of you just, I’m going to cover a lot, because it’s kind of what what I do, because I want to throw some data at you and support, some support at this. But fundamentally, what we want to get to is creating that plan. And I’m just that, you know, that’s the too long didn’t read version of this, that when there is a written plan in place, the chances that it succeeds, and the chances that you follow it go much, much higher. So that’s really one of the things that I want to leave you with is, is the importance of a, having having a plan, and B, what does that plan look like? So before we get there, let’s just start with some general, general things. As Lori already said, She covered my intro. Again, some of you clearly are aware of fundraising is funny, and that’s great, because I really do think that if sometimes, if we don’t laugh at ourselves, then we take ourselves too seriously. So I also want to frame this in the in the in the view that Seth Godin is really attributed with calling this period that we’re in, and then others have picked this up and expanded on it as well, the idea that we are in the connection economy. So if you think about preview the worlds we have lived in previously. Now I’m solid, full, born Gen X, proud of it, but I grew up in the greed is good, right? Wall Street, Gordon Gekko, right? That kind of of finance based economy, certainly we have seen industrial and technical economies really. Now what we’re talking about is how important connection is and the connection. Thank you. Heather, yes, extras, indeed, the connection economy. Really thrives on and is built on who knows who, and how you know him, and how you tie that connection together. It’s more about trust. And as Seth Godin says, connections create more connections. Trust creates more trust. Ideas create more ideas, if we move out of and this is a little bit about framing relationships and how we think of things, when we start to move out of that transactional nature, that financial nature, and into really building deep connection. That’s where success, and that’s where the true energy of our work comes from. It’s why I’m so thrilled that when Jonah perfect reached out and said, Hey, we’re doing this, this conference Connect. Yes, absolutely. That’s what we need to be talking about. Is how we connect. If you think of the stewardship of the gift, if you think of the retention and follow up as the end goal, not the gift, the gift is the starting point. It’s what happens after the gift and through that connection that really matters most. So what do we know about donor retention? What are the facts that we’re starting with before we dig into how to build it? Well, number one, and take this to your leadership. When you have folks that are and I know some of us do, I’ve certainly lived it as a development officer, I’ll spend all those time on thank you letters. You need to be out closing gifts? Well, yes, but acquisition and solicitation tends to cost more than retention does on average, in general, and this is a really ballpark level approach to it, right? Acquisition, if you’re talking about acquiring donors, we’re talking about somewhere between $1 $20.50 per donor or per solicitation donor retention is usually coming in around 20 to 25 cents, and however you’d look at that math, and there’s multiple studies and multiple ways to do it right, but it is quote, unquote cheaper to retain a donor than it is to find a new one. Also, once you retain a donor, we’re looking at donor retention rates right now of about 19% but renewing donors are renewing at 69% so once you get that second gift, they’re more likely to renew and to contain and to continue that higher level retention, the lifetime value increases with recurring donors, recurring with repeat donors and retained donors. Recurring donors, like you heard Dana Snyder talked about earlier, right? Recurring donors, those are giving monthly, quarterly, bi monthly, whatever it is, they’re retaining at 83% 59% of donors who make a second gift, continue giving and repeat giving is a higher indicator of planned gift likelihood than size of gift, and it’s definitely true for the lower level and small dollar donors, anybody that’s been in as I have in animal rescue work, those donors that give 20, $25 and have all the cats and all the dogs, right, and then leave you that large legacy gift. We have certainly seen that happen before. That dollar 20 to dollar 50 acquisition figure is really based primarily on direct mail acquisition, on digital acquisition. It does represent an average those. So it does include some major gifts, certainly foundations grants, etc. Run a little less than that if you’re focusing just focusing on institutional giving. But even so, writ large, it’s, it’s kind of an average of where we see with with acquisition, there are questions too, that I have about how we look at donor retention, and I say this as having been an annual fund guy for over 30 years. Did anybody tell donors that they were expected to give after year? Like we go out and we acquire a donor, but do we ever say hey, it’s, you know, we’re looking at annual support. We’re hoping to build a long term relationship with you, like, we’re going to ask you again. You’ve seen those direct mail packs that say, if you give now, we’ll never ask you again, and then, like, two years later, you get another Ask. So like, that doesn’t work, right? Did we acquire them or solicit them with retention in mind? Were did we approach them is just, we need you to make this oh my gosh, Bridget the Have you forgotten? Or it’s time? Yeah, those are those, yeah, and we’ll talk about techniques later. Anyway, right? Did we approach them with retention in mind? Was that our plan, or were we just going after that dollar goal as we’re looking at retention? Are you looking at at households and soft credits? Because if, if, if, if one donor in a household makes a gift one year and then the next year the spouse makes the gift. Are we looking at that? Because sometimes when you track soft credits or household giving, you find that retention is actually higher. Are we looking at retention just year over year? What about folks that gave two years ago, but then give this year? And they kind of do that for over 10 years. They’re leapfrogging. They’re giving what I call consistent, but not consecutive. And I love you. You’re wonderful. Your mission and your cause are important, but some folks just aren’t that into you. They’re just not sorry. We do have donors that all they ever intended to. Do was a one time gift. So all of those factors kind of affect how we look at how we look at the retention, how we’re framing it, how we’re thinking about it. Let’s talk a little bit. Yes, thank you, Rachel for posting that. That’s where that does that’s where that does come from as well. Thank you. As we’re talking about this, let’s look at what stewardship is. When we say donor stewardship, what are we talking about? So historically, the word steward, which comes from an old English word which meant the warden of the household, was literally the household keeper. In other words, so we’re talking about the Crusades area. We’re talking about the Middle Ages. We’re talking about times when, you know, wealthy landowners would leave to fight the crusades, and they left their lands in someone else’s hands. That steward then had to take care of that land, that property, the money that was entrusted to them, and when they came back from fighting battles overseas, they expected to find that their wealth was still intact, their lands were still intact, that everything was exactly how they had left it. So the word steward as household as household keeper, literally means taking care of something that is entrusted to us right the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care. Okay, now I’m about to tell you something that’s gonna for some this is gonna, well here, let me just say it right in the act of giving, what the donor is doing us is they’re entrusting us with the careful and responsible management of their gift. They’re trusting us to fulfill the promise we made in the ask. So when we ask them to help fund saving the world from revenue wombats, they’re expecting that we are going to use their gift to do that. Their their belief that their gift is making a difference, that’s what we’re taking care of, which really means you can’t steward a donor. You can only steward a gift. And this comes from my podcast host Lynn Wester, from the donor relations group. If you know Lynn, you know her level of humor and sort of direct approach, and the first time she said this to me, I went, what? And it took me a little while to get my head around it, but she’s exactly right.

If we look at stewardship, yes, Donna, we all do love Lynn Wester, it’s true, if we look at stewardship in that strict intent of taking care of something entrusted to us, what’s entrusted to us, not the donor themselves, but the gift and the information that they provided. So when we talk about stewardship, we are talking about taking care of that which was entrusted to us, their gift, their name, their information and who they are. The Veritas group, if you know the folks at the Veritas group, they phrase this kind of the same way which and they say, Stop stewarding your donors, because your mindset should be that because they they gave a gift, I’m going to do the unexpected and cultivate them so wonderfully that they can’t wait to make their next gift, right? So if we reframe, we’re taking care of what’s entrusted to us, stop stewarding donors and start stewarding the gift, but communicate with donors. It changes how we do it. Now, again, I’m moving a little quickly through some of this first part, just to kind of lay the framework. And I see that question about volunteers. It’s great question, but let me just cover kind of the neuroscience of stewardship and what happens. Now this applies to events too. And again, high level. I know you’ll get the slides and look into this later. You can come back to it. You can also, certainly, there’s plenty of this stuff online, or reach out to me and I’m happy to walk through it, because I’m a nerd about these things. Right? There are several parts of neuroscience, of biases that we use, of cognitive shortcuts, heuristics that we put in place as givers. Now, first, when someone donates, there’s scientifically proven flood of blame brain chemicals, the happy chemicals, dopamine, serotonin, we get flooded with that when we make the act of giving. After that moment of giving, what starts to happen is we have what’s called hedonic adaptation, right? So we have this thrill of I just did something wonderful. I helped rescue wombats. Yay, me, right? I’m a good, caring person. And then over time, life interrupts, and we start to feel that feeling less and less and less and less and less. Think about any high level emotion in your life and you realize, yeah, that was a wonderful thing, but I feel less strongly about it today than I do. This is why waiting to respond when you’re angry. I’ve learned this lesson the hard way. Waiting to respond when you’re angry works well, because that hedonic adaptation kicks in and we start to feel the emotions less and less as time goes on, right? Then there’s the what’s called Emotional residue, residue. So those lingering emotional impacts of. Of that experience, the memories, the warm, fuzzy, they start to fade as well. The peak end rule applies a little more to events than to the actual act of giving. But we base an experience based on how we felt at its emotional peak, at its high, I’m going to save wombats. Click, right, emotional. I’m a good person, right? And then how it ended. How do we feel at the end? If you think about this an event, right? You have that emotional high with the ask or the Paddle Raise, or whatever it is, and then a greeting as they leave. Thanks for coming. All of that with an online gift, with a with a with a mailed gift, writing a check. That’s a mental shortcut for me, right? It’s that moment of making the gift and then how we respond immediately to it. And then there’s the feeling of reciprocity. So that feeling of that reflection that we give them of self image and worth, and emotional reinforcement of being a donor, right? That relationship. This is the next few of these are just kind of visuals of how that works and what it and what it brings forward, right? So if you see that high peak right there at the event high, or the act of giving high, no matter how we look at it, it starts to decline. If we engage in effective follow up, though, we can remind of those emotions, right? And we see that reactivation of emotional residue, right, that reminds them how they felt when they give, and that identity that they brought forward when they gave. There was a study, a recent study, done, and I’m sharing this thanks to Cherian Koshi, who first told me about told me about this concept, and then he put together this visual. So all credit to Cherian on this but bringing this study forward, right? The feeling of generosity diminishes over time. So we have that impactful moment. We feel good about it, and then it starts to fade. It starts to drop. We remind them of it, so we put them kind of on this roller coaster. This is why you all are reacting to those don’t forget, it’s time we’ve missed you that kind of thing, because those are coming as reminders of the time we haven’t been reminded of the feeling. We now being reminded of the transaction. Nobody wants to be reminded of a transaction. It’s not a mortgage, right? So that reminding of the emotion and the feeling of it is really what matters to reinforce that feeling of generosity when we start to overlay a reciprocity, a reciprocity feeling that residue, that emotional residue, the adaptation. No matter how we look at it, we just start to see this decline across the board, which, to me, says, if we’re stewarding a gift, what’s entrusted to us, and we’re taking care of I’m here for the gift, yes, and we’re taking care of the donor and that relationship, and we’re stewarding the gift. We see this opportunity then in this declining feeling about giving. Now, what do donors actually want? Now, you notice I crossed out donors there and said people who give, because we do tend to think that there’s this mythical creature called donor right, that does this thing that donors do. Danielle, you’re exactly right. I never hear about the impact. I only hear about the exact the ask. And this is exactly what Penelope Burke and Cygnus research have said for years. Penelope has, of course, now retired. I believe Cygnus research is still doing this, but when Penelope first published donor centered fundraising, this is what the survey said. This is the core of donor centered at the heart of it, there’s three things. Number one, and we this is directly from people who give right, receiving a prompt and meaningful acknowledgement whenever they make a gift, having every gift they make, regardless of its value assigned to a program or project or initiative narrower in scope than the mission as a whole. I’m an annual fund guy. We’ll talk about that and then receiving a report in measurable terms on what was accomplished with the last gift before being asked for another Clay How do I create an effective stewardship plan. Do these three things. That’s it. That really is it. These three things, one acknowledge promptly and meaningfully making every gift assigned to the use of the donor intended, and report back how it was used before it was being before asking for another one, right our donor? Thank you. Is that important? Yes, according to research from Dr Adrian Shang doctors, sorry, Dr Adrian Sargent and Jen Sheng in the Institute for Sustainable philanthropy, donors who received the Thank You gave on average $45.32 more. That’s pretty specific than those who did not. Again, we’re talking about retention is is less expensive. There’s a stronger ROI. They give more on average, repeat donors tend to retain longer. Like there are all these these are all these things. Now you’re bringing another thing forward, absolutely that. I don’t really talk about that much here, but I do in other sessions. In taking care of what’s entrusted to us, we have to take care of data, spelling names, right? I mean, you’d be surprised how often C, l, a, y, B, U, C, K, gets misspelled. It’s eight letters, y’all, it’s not Clark, it’s not Chuck, it’s not any of those things, but it gets misspelled all the time. How about the number of organizations? And I know some of you are going to resonate with this. Are there any women in the audience who have any attendees who have received a thank you for the gift addressed to their husband that you actually made? Unfortunately, it happens all the time. So stewarding that data and that information is just as important.

Oh, no, the ex husband. I hear that story all the time. Y’all look at this look at this response. It’s so true, right? So taking care of the data is as important as stewarding the gift itself by what channel direct mail is dead. No, it’s not. Direct Mail is still creating greater resonance and greater attraction than digital is. We still like to touch and feel, and so getting that letter in the mail makes a huge difference in guiding that response. Gen-Z is actually growing in high probability for liking direct mail Gen Z is more and more saying, Hey, we like we like receiving things in the mail. Remember, they didn’t have grandmothers that sent them newspaper companies like I did. They had grandmothers that sent them Facebook posts. So it’s novel. It’s something different, right? It’s something new. 71% of consumers think that direct mail is more personal than online digital. 92% of recipients were driven to make an online or digital engagement because of mail. 87% were influential, infused, influenced goodness, to make online purchases. 54% after receiving mail, engaged in social media. 43% downloaded something like there’s a lot of thank you. Skyler, every time I bring that Gen Z statistic forward, somebody says, well, not my grandchild, and that’s true, not your grandchild, but I do like hearing that validation. Thank you, right. So direct mail, the physical mail, does still drive engagement, and it also takes less cognitive effort to process, even if you’re just flipping through the mail and tossing things in letter, just having that brand in front of folks was what is really important. That doesn’t negate the importance of digital as well. It just really means that your automated Thank you does not count that automated receipt that you that you send when somebody makes a gift. It’s a great thing to have. Don’t stop doing it. Make it warm and fuzzy, but it doesn’t fully count. Make sure there’s another follow up up there, right? Do not confuse channel of action with channel of inspiration, and this is one of the biggest thing. Oh, they gave online. So they’re an online donor, so I’m going to move them completely to email, unless they told you to, unless they told you to. Then don’t, right, keep them in mail there, there is, yes, I understand mail is expensive. There’s a cost to it, absolutely, but it will, it will prove dividend, higher dividends than if you’re digital solely, Larry’s talking about using direct mail in Canada, you do have some post office strikes, but, but Canada, the Postal Service in Canada, forgive me for not having the name right at the tip of my tongue, released a phenomenally good study on the reaction of mail and yes, and I’m coming to video in just a second. Right channel of action is the Canada Post. Thank you. Channel of action is the weakest segmentation when compared to recency or frequency, right? So don’t assume just because they give online, they’re digital. Don’t assume just because they give on mail, via mail, that there. You don’t know how many people are getting that email follow up and going, oh, right, I got that reply advice, and then they’re writing the check and sending it in the two work together. We are in the connection. Economy is about a multi channel approach across the board. Huge plug for DonorPerfect has phenomenal I work with a couple of clients on DonorPerfect that use the mail functions and the different functions and the online giving pages and all of that working together, and you can track the appeals. It’s amazing. Anyway. What about digital? Digital still only represents about 13% to 15% of total giving, but there is an impact on giving when they receive an email or a text explaining the impact of the gift, when they were receiving personalized communication, when the organization makes it easy to continue the support, we see higher responses from digital donors in that regard as well. So email does matter a lot. 44% of donors said they would donate at least 10% more for a personalized experience. So please let the days of dear friend, dear donor be over. Right? Right? And let’s ask donors, how do you want us to address you? What would you what would you like for us to call you, right? Personalized, at least name? Yes, but that impact matters a lot, too. When you made your gift back in May, any details that you can bring forward that would indicate that you see them and you know who they are. That matters in personalization, for example, and plug in the chat as I keep going here, if you were going to address me now that you know me a little better, what’s one potential thing that you could bring up in an introduction to me if you wanted to chat with me, what’s one potential thing that you could bring up to kind of pique my interest and let me know that you know who I am. I’ll look for your responses in the chat there, right? 72% of how’s your dogs? Yep, exactly. Oh, your Goldens. You guys were listening Good on you. Yep, exactly right. Exactly right. Hi, Clay, not Clark or Chuck. Thank you for that, right? 72% of customers, and that’s broad based, say, oh, Brett, went with the acting career. Well, that’s why I’m a fundraiser now. So that’s another story altogether, but good job, right? 72% of customers say they only engage with personalized messaging, right? So that personalization matters. And again, you’re giving all kinds of great examples of how to personalize, even if you can capture one data point, even if you can capture one thing about them, one thing that all of your donors have in common they gave to you. So there’s a personalized making sure that you’re telling them, Hey, you supported us. You’re part of this community, you’re part of this mission. That’s a level of personalizing that matters too, the exponential importance of second gift timing. I was raised, born and bred on the annual fund, and so that meant annual right over years like the annual gift, there are a number of studies out now recently that really show that the timing of a second gift matters, that it’s sooner than we think it is, that somewhere at the three month mark, somewhere at the three month mark is a prime time for a second gift. But God bless our literal minded friends, it’s truly wonderful. But a lot of people go, Oh, well, then three months I’m going to send a second ask. No, what matters is between the first gift in the second gift that there’s engaged and repeated stewardship. There’s personalization, there’s that engagement before being asked for a third one. But it does mean we don’t have to wait necessarily as long before we position that second gift, ask if we’re engaging in good stewardship. Personally, I like to that’s the point at which I like to put a recurring gift, especially for our donors, at the low and the mid range. But there’s a number of different ways to approach that. So in summary, cost less far more positive. ROI to focus on donor retention and relations, steward the gift and relate to your donor. Think beyond the bare minimum. Do more, engage in omnichannel and provide value. This is what donors are looking for, that reciprocity, that value, that feeling of, how do I belong and how do I fit in with this mission? Okay, so that’s a lot, that’s a lot of background, lot of science, a lot of neuroscience, a lot of great questions and conversations in the chat, and I am going to come back to some of them, but let’s talk now about putting it all together. Actually, let me just take a couple of these while we’re right here. Would it be acceptable to make the report back by email, or does it need to be printed to listen? Go with budget and go with what you can do. I would personally much rather, if you is these are the key is having an email addresses. If you don’t have email addresses, you have to put it in print. If you have donors that don’t have emails, you have to send them something by mail. So both would be best, but email can work as long as it’s very personalized, very addressed to the donors. Lots of those use statements and lots of that impact right in direct mail, newsletters with stories absolutely release yourself from the obligation of having to make everything super designed and super branded and all of that, sometimes even just a bullet point list on a piece of paper with your logo is enough, right? We did this. You did this. You made this happen. You made that happen. Here’s like five, three points and just bullet points that, boom, we get something out what’s the what’s the saying? Done is better than perfect, right? Social media, that’s a good question. I encourage you to post impact on social media, but unless you can direct it directly to the person you’re reporting impact at a broad level, and somebody’s looking at. At it going.

No, okay, I see that. But what about my specific gift? Right? Talk to me directly as a donor, versus talking to the the whole group of the whole group of folks. Okay, all right, let’s talk about putting this all together, shall we? If I can get the slides to move again, there we go. All right, first and foremost, as you put to perfect is the enemy of good. Is another? Is another way of saying that. Thank you. Elizabeth, right, so first is goals. What is your number one goal? Right? Is your number one goal, donor retention. Is it? Is it renewal? Or is your number one goal, engagement or affinity? Is it upgrading? Is it advocacy? I’ve seen a number of you asking about volunteers, right? And there’s a whole lot of, oh, volunteers make the best donors. That’s true if we steward them as well, right? Are you? Are you engaging in retention? Because you want more about like, clearly define your goals before you set out, setting a plan, because once you articulate it, then you need to determine how you’ll measure it. I already talked about some of the issues that can affect how we measure retention, like household giving, like soft credits, etc. So are you going to measure it by just by renewal rate, or also, are you looking at upgrades and downgrades? Are you looking at lifetime value? Are you looking at peer to peer results? Are you looking at conversion into advocacy or volunteerism or etc? Right? So define the goal and define, then the measurement. Make sure that you measure what you can. There’s nothing harder than a dashboard with a whole ton of reports that nobody knows what they mean or what they’re measuring. So pick one or two key KPIs, key performance indicators that really matter most to supporting your goals, and then bring and then use that to define really how your plan is is going to come forward, right? Sorry, I keep looking at the chat and losing. There we go. Then look at the infrastructure and the process, right? Who is doing? What are you a one person shop? Are you limited in your time and ability? Right? Somebody has to be the prime mover and the accountability factor for stewardship. If you’re a one person shop, you’ve got to plan your retention plan around what you can do physically like, what are your limitations? Can you do everything that you set out to do, and who is going to do it? How is it going to be done? Do you have the capability and the tech and the necessary the necessary platforms and knowledge and skills to do it? Do you have the CRM? Do you have a right digital platform? Can you do if you can’t do mail? Well, if you don’t have the budget and you don’t have the time and you don’t have the resources, don’t do it. Do email really well. The power of donor surveys, we’re going to talk about that in a minute, too, but the power of donor surveys, both print and digital, are a huge way of getting email addresses or other information. Folks, it’s okay to ask. It’s really okay to ask, Hey, this is how we have your name listed. How would you prefer to be called? What would you like for us to list you on the envelope? How would you like to be addressed? Ask, right? We would it’s easier for us to send email. Can we send you email? And if so, will you share your email address? And if they don’t, that’s fine, but at least ask, right? So what resources do you have to allocate? Because remember, the gift is the starting point. Your stewardship starts with not the completed giving page, but the Giving page itself. Your stewardship starts with how you ask for the gift. I love DonorPerfect Giving pages, and there’s some examples here, right? So look at the one right on the left. Make a difference in your community. Well, that’s your stewardship. We asked you to make a difference in your community and your follow up. Your stewardship is thank you for making a difference, right? What you put on your giving page, what you put on your giving form, is how then you informs your stewardship and your follow up. Donors want to know that the gift they made was used for what they intended. So make sure that your stewardship starts there, that you’re beginning with what they asked, what they gave to, and approaching it that way, right? Think about that stewardship in the I often call stewardship post gift cultivation as just a better term, right? When you’re designing your giving vehicles and solicitation strategies. So you want the giving to be as frictionless as possible. Make it easy all of these forms that we have to, I mean, it’s, it’s 2025, we have to use captcha, we have to use validation, we have to use these things, but remove as much friction as you can. You want that giving page to be. Above the fold on your page, right? I see it right here. I don’t have to wade through a whole paragraph of information. You are. You’re making it right visible and right there for them, and you make it as frictionless and as easy as possible. I’m going to pause for a second, because I see one person saying they can’t hear. Can everybody hear? Okay? Is that? Are we good? Okay, so make it as frictionless as possible on your giving page. This is kind of the number one thing that I see a lot on giving pages is we ask for so many things. Will you volunteer? Will you give? Will you advocate? Will you share? Will you do this? Will you join this? Will you come to here on your giving page? If you’re focusing on donors one thing, and that thing is a gift, you can ask for other stuff later. If you’re asking for volunteers, ask for volunteers and then ask for a gift later, right? Ask for one thing, because our brain cannot process, certainly those of us with any level of neurodivergence, hello. Add can only focus on one thing at a time. Remember, two people are on phones. They’re on desktops in busy places. They’re on laptops. There’s a lot going on. They’re they’re filling out your form while they’re doing their bills. So make it as frictionless and easy as possible to give and to keep moving forward, right? One thing, make it quick, make it easy, make it user friendly. Because somebody says, I knocked over my water bottle. See, there’s the add in action, right? I got excited, right? Somebody goes, Oh, yes, I love wombats, and I want to rescue wombats, and I don’t want them out ravaging the world. I want wombats to all have safe homes, right? So how do I do that? I want to do that right now, right now, right now, right my emotions are high. I’m in the feeling of it. Don’t make me work for it. This is not manipulation. This is not being inappropriate and how we use emotions. It is maximizing the human experience, which is we want to be there in that moment. Because once we start inserting logic, we start giving reasons why they can’t give. Because we are very good as a species at making reasons why we can’t do a thing, we will convince ourselves so well before we even have conscious thoughts on I’m not going to do the thing because logic takes over, and we want that giving feeling to be a good, positive, emotional experience. We don’t want giving. We don’t people giving because they don’t want to. We don’t want to manipulate them into giving them, but we want to encourage that high emotion and reinforcing that identity of who they are as givers. Right then number two, what’s your immediate, warm, fuzzy there’s the gift acknowledgement, there’s the gift receipt, and there’s a gift thank you. I’m going to commit fundraising blasphemy here. You ready? Don’t send receipts. What don’t send receipts, not immediately. You don’t have to. The IRS rule in the United States is, is the donor’s responsibility to get a receipt for any gift over $250 now we have adopted that it is the right thing for us to do to send the receipt, and we should two organizations that I was at and now with some of my clients, what we have done because receding requires that processing, right? We’re having to enter the gift and meet with finance and do all of that and create the receipt, and that’s a transactional thing. What we did was we started receiving once a month. So once a month, we would send out the tax receipts so that we could do them all. We had all the information, right? It took time, and instead, we sent acknowledgements. Dear clay. Just wanted to let you know that we received your gift here at the office. You should have heard the gratitude shout that went up from everybody here. Wanted you to know we’ve received it, and we’re putting it to work right away. Thank you so much for being the kind of person who cares about this mission. We’re so pleased that you’re a part of it with us. In the coming weeks, you’ll get a receipt that you can use for tax purposes, and we’ll share with you how the gift was used. But for right now, we just wanted to tell you we’ve received it, we’re putting it to use, and wombats are going to be better off because of you, quick, easy, just do that once a day. Do that once a week, right? Get the acknowledgement out, and then save the receipts for a time when you can do them. Some of you, I’ve talked about consolidated receipts in January, absolutely, I’m a believer on you do a receipt within a month or two after the gift, if there’s an acknowledgment, and then you do the consolidated receipt as well. It’s another good touch point. But again, what you can do and how you can do it right, the thank you is transformational. Make that transformational and make that engage. If you know the work of Lisa Sargent, if you don’t know the work of Lisa Sargent, now you do, but Lisa’s book thankology, and her work on thank yous is just absolutely astounding. And she has on Sophie and on her website as well. Sophie is a phenomenal grab bag of amazing stuff for you. But this is, this is an example of a thank you letter that Lisa did. The first one was thank you for your gift of blank right in support of and then she edited. It too, and I’m looking over here where it’s bigger, right? Robots were,

sorry I blew it. Robots were cosmets streak, tide pools gurgle. When science comes to life, anything is possible, and all because of you. Now, which would you rather receive? Right? So good. Thank you, Jenna, for posing this question. Great question. An acknowledgement in the form of receipt. Thank you. Letter, it’s hand signed. Is that still as effective it absolutely is. It absolutely is. I would just invest in making it more warm and fuzzy than just a transaction. The other thing too is it’s my experience. Hopefully your CEO isn’t this way. But when we’re holding up waiting for wet signatures, goodness, that I hate that term. It’s like moist, right? It’s a word that, anyway, when we hold up waiting for signatures, that can bog us down. So if you’re waiting for signatures, do something that you can get the acknowledgement out faster, get the signature, get the one with the the actual signed out later, but yeah, it still works. Still just effective. How often would you update that acknowledgement? I do a different acknowledgement for every appeal. So every appeal has a matching acknowledgement, right? If it’s general and people are just giving in general, I’m I update it like every month or so, right? So do keep updating it. Especially pay attention to for second and third gift donors, other donors, right? Make sure that it’s a different Thank you than the first one we received last year. I got a thank you letter in December for my consolidated gift to one organization. Had made three different gifts at three different times, and I was also a recurring donor. I got three different letters. I got three thank you letters. They all said the exact same thing, and they all had the exact same written note from the CEO. I mean, like, Did you not notice this? Did nobody see this anywhere? Anyway? Right? The immediate acknowledgement is quick. It’s heartfelt, it’s surprising, it’s delightful. All it has to say is, we received your gift. We’ll put it to use right away. Right now, a lot of you were talking about 48 hour rule there had this has been a thing as long as I’ve been in fundraising 30 some years, you must send a handwritten thing. You know, within 48 hours. I don’t know, I can’t find necessarily a specific study that addresses that and says there is hard data that a handwritten thank you note within 48 hours will increase giving it’s just not a terrible idea, right? The faster you can get it out, the better. Again, your automated receipt. Think of how many times you read the Amazon receipts that say we shipped your thing. We got your order like relatively rarely. I have a whole inbox full of them that I never read and never delete. Others read them, I know, but same thing with your automated email, right? We expect this now that’s expected in 2025 do the unexpected in your first stewardship, right? Yeah, things do pile up. I get that too, right? So what you must do in your plan acknowledging receipt of the gift, send, ultimately send and provide an actual tax receipt. You must say thank you, and you must report on how the gift was used. These are the things that must do. There’s a whole lot of things that you can do, email newsletters, print newsletters, cultivation events. Thank you more Thank you. Letters, impact, reports, video, thank yous all of these. All of these are effective and great and wonderful at building a stewardship plan. Do the unexpected. As Jen love from agents of good, says, surprise and delight, right? I’m a big listen. We tend to make fundraising very professional, and that’s true. We are businesses. We should and also this is emotional, personal stuff. So feel free to do birthday cards or silly things, or put one of those calendars that has all the ridiculous holidays on a happy wombat day, right? That relate to your mission, that kind of thing, right? Surprise and delight, and do the unexpected and build that in so that it is scalable, and do it. The single greatest question is, what can you do and do well, consistently and effectively? What do you have the resources in the infrastructure to do? And what will you need from others to do? Do you need impact stories from your program team? Do you need service metrics? Do you need signatures? Factor that into how you create your plan, because if you put too much and you can’t execute it, then what happens is it builds up, and we stop doing it, and then we had this great stewardship plan that’s just now gone awry, and we’re not doing any stewardship. So do what you can do and do what you can do. Well, what are the stewardship tools? Well, number one, remember that every gift is a major gift to that donor. Treat all donors as if they’re major donors. I know, I know it’s more expensive at the lower end, but you don’t know who at your lower end has higher capacity. You don’t know at your who at your lower end really loves you and is really testing to find out if they’re you’re, if you’re one of their charities. Don’t segment by gift size, segment by lower. Loyal and loyalty and affinity, right? And I started to say it. I hadn’t intended to bring this forward, but there’s a great phrase from Mark Phillips at Blue Frog in the UK. And he says, Remember, she is not one of your donors. You are one of her charities, right? How do you want to be one of her charities? So segmenting by key segments, by relationship, new donors. What is a new donor? Welcome pack. What does it mean to be a donor? This is a first time donor. Welcome them into the mission in some way that makes it special. It makes it different. That sets the expectations of what they are going to do. Right renewing donors or second gift. Acknowledge that you’ve noticed they gave again. Hey, Jack, thank you. You Wow. You’ve you’ve with this second gift that you’ve made, you’ve really stepped up as one of our most loyal and generous donors. We appreciate you. Acknowledge that you, see it, repeat donors. See this is where the thank you letter comes in, and the change in that don’t send your repeat and loyal donors the exact same acknowledgement that somebody from a first time donor is getting right, because now that they’ve given to you more than two or three times, these are one of your best friends. Is that? How? Right? Like, I’m not going to text my best friend and go, Hi, it’s nice to see you. Would you by chance like to come over? It’s like, No, you don’t come over for dinner, right? So be a little more familiar. Express that you know them. And with major donors, we’re expecting extreme personalization and really direct engagement with them as a major donor for the investment that they make. We’ve talked about donor impact. Impact tells the donor what they did, not what you did. It tells them what they did. So framing your mission in such a way, you’re describing what the donors gifted and how they are a part of the mission, not what they not what was accomplished. We fed X number of people. No, you joined with us in this mission, and because of you, we together commute as a community. We fed right, we rescued number of right. How they engaged it a donor. Newsletter also tells the donor what they did again. This is Lisa Sargent from her resources, phenomenal resources. There usually a donor newsletter, whether it’s print or digital, will will include a call to action. It might be a soft ask, but we’re asking for a renewal gift, or reminding them that they can give again again, not something I’ve done. Newsletters that are one page, one page, one sided. I hate losing the backside, because that’s real estate you can still use but they don’t have to be major complicated. Donor surveys are phenomenal. Phenomenal. What is it that the great philosopher, fundraising teacher, pit bull taught us ask for money, get advice. Ask for advice. Get money twice. People love to give advice. A simple, quick donor survey, three, five questions, right? Can go out and what led you to give? Why do you give? Would you share your email address with us? You’ll be amazed at how many people respond, both in print and digital, using a form to capture that information. Really an incredible tool for engagement. There’s a number of other things that you can do to help Minerva. The responses were fascinating. We’re approaching time, but boy, I really want to dig in on what fascinating means. There, right? Some great things that help. Did you know you can turn your handwriting into a font? You just fill out a form and upload it. It turns your handwriting into a font. Print it. I have got, I’ve got the PMS colors for Bic blue ink, right? It’s enough. We’re not fooling anybody, but it makes it look like you wrote a note Canva, of course, designers, I know I hear you. I hear you. Graphic designers, you’re right. But for those of us with small budgets and limited time, Canva is easily scalable. Somebody asked about videos earlier, DonorPerfect, DP, video, phenomenal. People love video, popping in their email, popping on their phone, saying Hey, just wanted to say thanks. The more you can personalize that, the better text, SMS, pre recorded voicemails. I am big on volunteer. Think a thons, my board doesn’t give. They don’t get engaged in fundraising Good. Get them involved in gratitude first. Seriously, get your board involved in thanking donors first, and once they get the feel and the warm, fuzzy of what it feels like to thank donors, they’ll want to be more engaged and more involved in the fundraising process. Take 510, minutes out of every board meeting to make phone calls or write handwritten thank you notes. Don’t let them leave with the data. That’s personal, that’s security. They are not entitled to take the data home with them, but you get my point right. Your donors deserve to have different information than the general public. They’re part of the in group. They’re part of the No. So social media is great, yes, but your social your social media and your marketing newsletter aren’t enough to count as stewardship, because they’re they’re broad based with donor stewardship communications. We want to target them. So every touchpoint with the donor should be focused on the mission that they’re now a part of and that they help bring it back.

Okay? This is what a donor journey template looks like. And let me just say right off the bat that this is perfect world scenario. You would actually need three to five. Staff members to execute this. But the point is, the point is setting a plan based on timing and who they are and what they get. This does mean that every month you’ll be sending out some acknowledgements, some receipts, some phone calls, right? So it does take some management, but by using reports and listings in DonorPerfect, you can actually create reports that are going to keep pulling in right the right people. So if you set those reports, then you always have access to who the right person to get. The right thing is. It’s just about managing. Again, you can’t necessarily do all of this, but the key to a plan is again, sitting down, going, What can I do? What do I have the resources to do. What can I do? Well with the idea that every month, every two months, you want regular touch base with all your donors. Don’t let a donor go more than two months without hearing something from you, directly and personalized. The last point that I want to leave you with in terms of creating this plan is from Dr Jen Cheng, again, why people give is much less powerful than who people are when they give, right? That why of the identity? Because every time we make a gift, we are saying something about ourselves, right? People are walking around. Most people are walking around. And they might be you know that person that microwaves fish in the microwave in the office when they go home at night, their dog loves them just as much as your dog loves you. I know. I know, because we all walk around thinking of ourselves as right? These are the nine adjectives that continue to come up when people are asked about themselves, we think of ourselves as generous, friendly, kind, caring, helpful, compassionate, fair, trustworthy, hard working. I’m sure if my cats love me, well, Rebecca, I’m sorry, that’s your choice in having cats. Oh, I said it. I love cats too. Kind, caring, compassionate. These are the things that we think about. These are the things that we think about ourselves. Right our job in stewardship is, number one, to take care of the gift and the information that was entrusted to us. And, number two, reflect back to the donor that identity when they brought forward, when they gave, telling somebody, I see you as a kind, generous, caring person, when you gave, you became a part of this mission. Thank you for being the kind of person who cares about our community, who cares about cats like we do. I’m not. I love cats. I do. I actually support regularly a cat organization in on the east coast because of a message that they sent about something I love the gift, something that their executive director had said online. And I made a gift, and then it became a recurring gift. And every week I get this report from these little kittens that are adorable, right? Because I see myself as a kind and caring person. Your donors do too. Shannon, that couldn’t be the more perfect question to wrap us up with. How do you make each one feel unique? Remember what Dale Carnegie said in How to Win Friends and Influence People? The sweetest sound to any person in their language is the sound of their own name. So is just using a name and personalization enough? No, but it’s good. It’s the first step telling donor that you see them, you understand who they are, and you reflect back that identity. Clay, Ruby, Sasha, McKenzie, you are kind, caring, generous people. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for being a part of this community, of bringing part of the DonorPerfect community, of being in the nonprofit community. We need you now more than ever, and on those days when it gets tough and rough, remember you got somebody in your corner, especially with the DonorPerfect team, cheering you on, believing that you’re doing great work. And thank you for what you do.

Oh, thank you so much. I know we don’t have time for questions, but you did answer a good portion of them from the Q and A as you spoke. So that was great. Great. So I want to thank you all for attending today and clay, thank you for your time today. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you. Next up on stage one is another set of power sessions with Tim Locke with agency in the age of agents navigating the human stack, when AI takes the wheel and Vanessa chase with here’s the thing to know about email, how to connect with readers right from the start. On stage two, we have Joe Scanlon from Microsoft with get your board, on board leading AI conversations with your stakeholders. So no matter what session you choose, you won’t miss any content, since they’re all being recorded, all right, so we’ll see you in a bit. Thanks again, Clay. Thank you.