Inspiring Donors to Reciprocate: The Case for Radical Connection

All right. So I think we are live now. You could just get some people writing in the chat that you hear us and that we’re live
taping about 90 people with us right now.
All right, well welcome everyone to our session inspire, bring donors to reciprocate the case for radical Read More

All right. So I think we are live now. You could just get some people writing in the chat that you hear us and that we’re live
taping about 90 people with us right now.
All right, well welcome everyone to our session inspire, bring donors to reciprocate the case for radical connect action. Today we have our speakers,
Finn Chapelle and Brian Crimmins.
Ethan is a thought leader, public speaker, author and inventor and as one of the world’s foremost
experts on the intersection between artificial intelligence and philanthropy. He served as the Senior Vice President of donor search AI where he leads AI deployments for some of the nation’s largest nonprofit organizations. Nathan darkmatter expertise has been featured in several public Asians, including Fast Company, University of Notre DOM, and the Association of healthcare philanthropy. In 2021, David founded fundraising AI as a member centric collaboration of nonprofit professionals with a focus on data ethics, data quality,
privacy, security and sustainability. He presented the first TEDx talk on the
topic of artificial intelligence and the future of general city in 2018.
And then, Brian Crimmins is a global leader in social impact. Popular public speaker on fundraising and philanthropy,
and the Chief Executive Officer of changing our world a trusted philanthropy and social impact. consulting firm, they’ll fundraising, corporate social engagement research and analytics and community vacations. changing our world raises billions and supports of causes,
canceling ensiling leading companies and brands to design and implement strategic corporate responsibility programs
that deliver social impact while driving this strategy. Ryan is a frequent contributor to nonprofit publications and has been invited to speak around the world on topics such as on corporate social responsibility, purpose and social impact.
Ryan also serves the purpose leader within changing roles parent company on the core, helping you to understand the community impact of more than 200 agencies across its network and advance its commitment to sustainable development goals.
With that said, I’m gonna go ahead and
remove myself from the stream and turn it over to Nathan. And Brian. Great. Thanks, Amanda. And welcome, everybody. Thanks for taking the time out. From this conference to join us here today, Nathan and I on the topic of overcoming the competition for connection through what we’ve called Radical connection, which is really, what we’re going to take you through over the next 3040 minutes and hopefully leave time for questions is really some of the highlights and the main themes from our recently published, book, The generosity crisis, the case for radical connection, to solve humanity’s greatest challenges. And so certainly, many of you are aware of the fact that charitable giving, defined by the percentage of those households that are contributing to a non for profit is trending downward. And while we’re all waiting this month, they’re giving us a report which will take us through all the highlights from 2022. But really, about 18 months, 20 months ago, Nathan and I were concerned enough about our industry and were giving was going that we put our heads together to write the generosity crisis. And about seven months ago, we were thrilled to have this book come out. And we’re looking forward to taking you through the the main theme today. You had an introduction from Amanda about Nathan and I. So we’re just going to jump right in and get into it. The first is, we’ve just been, I know I can speak for Nathan, when I say we’ve both been humbled by the response that the book has received within the nonprofit community. So thank you, to many of you, maybe who have not only read the book, but I’ve certainly sent past long feedback, we know that there’s groups that have created book clubs around it. So it’s just been way beyond our wildest dreams, the response that the book has had. And it’s you know, not a book we joke only say that you write called the generosity crisis to make a lot of friends. But we believe and we felt deeply that we needed to put this information and also hopefully some solutions, which we’ll certainly dive into today, into the into the market into the hands of great folks like yourself, to hopefully begin to really improve the overall health of our sector. So as I said, thrilled that Nathan, I have the opportunity to take you through those high level points today.
Let’s start by just talking about the nonprofit sector in general, which is that nonprofits are special and essential and uniquely
American, there’s no doubt about that Amanda mentioned in some of my travels, not only here in the United States, but abroad, the not for profit community in the United States is looked upon and really revered in for in terms of its size in terms of the impact and in terms of how well it’s managed. And there’s no doubt about that. And I said earlier, I’m preaching to the, to the choir with that message. But it’s for that reason, very importantly, we were concerned enough about our sector to want to write this book. For those who may not recognize this face, this is Peter Drucker, one of the more renowned management gurus of his time, written many books, which are still read to this day about business and management, management of people, management of businesses. Well, we’re fortunate enough in our sector that he wrote a few books about the not for profit sector. And Mr. Drucker had a great view of the sector in terms of its when his timeframe, the work that it was doing, but also the potential of our sector to continue to be such an important part of the economic engine of our society. And it is, when you think about the 10 million not for more than 10 million, not not for profits out there, there are worldwide 1.61 point 8 million of them here in the United States, we have 12 million people here in the states that represent and make up working for nonprofits. 12 million is a lot of people doing great work every single day, and the not for profit sector makes up roughly 5.7% of the US economy. So no small feat not not small and scale and size. And I think many of us know that. But what is really at the heart of the not for profit sector is this quote that’s up here. And that the not for profit industry. Neither supplies goods or services, like a business, or puts in controls, like a government, but its product is really a changed human being. And I think looking at some of the folks that are here today, and the wonderful organizations that you’re representing a changed human being is somewhere at the core of your mission. And so that’s what was really another aspect of what concerned Nathan and I not only for both he and I having, you know, been in this industry for 20 plus years, there was a concern for some of the the industry tactics and some of the ways in which we go about raising funds. But really the importance of getting out to all Americans and everybody beyond that, just how important the not for profit community is and how much of it touches everyday single everybody’s life every single day. So it’s a dual pronged approach. So it’s really important that we turn around the generosity crisis, and so that we can have a healthy sector to continue to play its role in our society here in the United States, and certainly abroad.
Yeah, excellent. And thank you, Brian. And just for the audience attending, we know that, you know, jumping into a session, titled The generosity crisis might seem a little depressing. But at the same time, we feel that it’s important to level set to essentially take stock of where we’re at. But I promise you, throughout this presentation, we’re going to fly the plane back up again. And we’re going to share practical examples of of how we can collectively reverse the generosity crisis because our hope, Brian, I really hope that there’s never a need for another book, or a follow up to the book on the generosity crisis in terms of the declining giving. As Brian said, generosity in America is is largely a mainstay. It’s something that Alexis de Tocqueville came to the US and wrote extensively about in his journeys and this unique commitment of Americans to contribute back to their community to connect in these deep, visceral ways. And now, of course, a long time has passed since then. And we know that, you know, business has changed, and nonprofits have changed and round.
To go back just about 2012. Something happened that I was just really, really curious about where we were going in our sector, I spent 20 years in the fundraising world in essentially every year, without without fail every year, year after year, essentially my goal increase. So if that sounds familiar to you, your goal increases but at the same time, when I was looking at the number of people that we are raising money from year over year, this increase schools, we are essentially raising more money from less people. In 2010, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett got together and they signed the giving pledge or created the giving pledge to put out there and essentially create this idea that would inspire more Americans to give and especially ultra high net worth individuals to essentially give away their at least half of their wealth while they were still alive. And that was something that was kind of unique, but also it was a look back to Carnegie and Rockefeller when Carnegie wrote a book called The Gospel of wealth, which if you haven’t read it, it’s a good read to really understand the American history of generosity. And really, it was this time where we thought, well, this could be really interesting whether or not this new Giving Pledge would inspire
are a net increase in generosity, or would have the opposite effect essentially, and essentially fill the bucket, if you will, the philanthropy bucket so that the average American could say, Well, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are on the scene, and therefore, I don’t need to give. Now this isn’t the only reason. But if we fast forward to today, and what we’re going to dive in a bit deeper on, we see that in a confluence of other circumstances that have led to this idea that our sector is at a boiling point, that we are, we have some data that we’ll share with you, that will lead us to the next slide, which leads us to this conclusion that the future of generosity in America is not guaranteed. And for people that have dedicated their lives and their careers and their passion into working in the philanthropic sector, the statement which is not ours, it came from the generosity Commission, which is a group of volunteers that came together to study what’s going on in generosity in America, and we’ll come out with our conclusions. The summer, actually, you should put the kind of hair on the on your next it should stand up. But with a statement like this for someone like Brian and I have spent our entire career working in the nonprofit sector,
the things that we we take for granted in society, whether it’s zoos, or hospitals, or higher education.
And, and the list goes on and on and on, to humanitarian causes, things that we tend to take for granted and 10. Things that people in America tend to take for granted, are not guaranteed. And we really need to take stock of where we’re at right now, if we’re gonna have any chance of essentially reversing this crisis. So take it away, Brian. Thanks, Nathan. So getting a bit more granular and practical. This is definitely a slide and information that you all probably seen, but I’ve referenced this up top, and that is the percentage of households that give to not for profits, from roughly 2000 to 2018 data. And what we know now from the 2021, most recent data, but really, we’ve been on a downward trajectory. Nathan talked about 2012. And I like to think of it as the right around the economic crisis of Oh 708 Something really happened in the pattern in the habit of giving, that really started us down this trajectory that we’ve been able to figure out how to curve back up yet, hopefully mindful that we’re gonna get some good news, and we’re gonna get this turned around. But this is not, you know, our book, by no means is the first time people have been talking about this, or even people have been writing about this. And then in the Chronicle, philanthropy, kudos to them in 2017, they published how America Gibbs, which was using 2015 data, and they were the first ones at least that I was aware of back in 2017 1617, to say, wait a minute, something happened in Oh, 809 2010. That’s has us heading in the wrong direction. And they themselves said to Nathan and I, not that long ago that when they wrote this report how America gives, there wasn’t much reaction from from our sector, there wasn’t a lot of, you know, webinars or podcasts, not that there were many podcasts back then. But there wasn’t a lot of dialogue. They, as they said, we weren’t sure our sector was ready to hear this, this news. And fast forward to last summer, Nathan, were interviewed for what they called the giving crisis, which really provided another lens on this downward trajectory that we’ve been on. And from what we’ve been told, you know, it was met with much more of a response, much more of people acknowledging the crisis, but also and I thought there this July issue from last year did a great job of highlighting some not for profits that were really turning around and getting more participation and getting more dollars in the door and really spotlighting what it wasn’t they were doing. So combination of that, admitting and acknowledging the challenging time we’re in, but also beginning to talk about some of the some of the solutions. And so for us, this is kudos to Nathan, when we were writing the book, he certainly he was spending a lot of time we both were but looking at data and trends, both in our sector and outside of our sector. And we’ll touch on that in a little bit. But Nathan really figured out that the downward trajectory that we were on if left unchecked, if left on attended to has given all but ending in roughly 49 years, which is hard to believe it’s just that short amount of time. It just I think it speaks volumes to the unfortunate downward trajectory that we are on now. Do here do Nathan are I believe that that will happen? No, we don’t. I definitely don’t. But I also don’t know where the bottom is. And I think if you look at Canada, you look at Europe. And granted, there’s different factors there relating to taxes and government, but they are at much lower levels. So the scary part for us is again, left unchecked. We just don’t know where the bottom is, where do we bottom out and start to come back up. But I believe collectively together. I think certainly the conversations that we’ve been privy to have in the last seven months since our book came out. I’m fired up and I’m energized by what we’re starting to see in terms of not only
acknowledgement, but some not for profits, putting in some great relational strategies in place to begin to bring back a donor base that is so needed for all the work going forward.
Yeah, and one of the things I will just add to make sure that this presentation is current, because of course, the moment our book was published, it was already out of date with, you know, existing trends. And so, whenever you see a long downward trend, that good path spans 2025 years, it can feel a bit on personal, you know, and, and so what we wanted to do is actually share some data that came out recently, and that through the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, and, and this data here basically shows that this trend continues. But it also is impacting organizations today. And in real time, in 2022, and q4 of 2022, the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, shared something that was a bit troubling that since 2012, for the first time now we’ve we’ve had this decrease in number of donors participating in charitable giving for quite a while, you saw, but in in q4 of 2022, we also saw the dollars going down. So as Brian said earlier, Giving USA will release their new report on June 20, of this will in a few weeks. And so we’ll see, you know, essentially how drastically or not, but if it fall in if it follows the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, but overall, essentially, what it’s coming down to is that our sector is a bit fragile, that as a sector, we’ve actually put a lot of eggs in a very few baskets, because people ask us well, if you know, giving us almost a half a trillion dollars or $487 billion, essentially, how is that? How are we still thriving, how is the bucket still being full? Ultimately, what this means is that, in large part, a lot of ultra high net worth individuals are making up a larger piece of the pie. And while doing that, we also look at things like uncertain economic times coming up. And right at the end of last year, we saw less people joining the giving pledge is ultra high net worth individuals than ever before. And so you know, corporate dollars and and ultra high net worth individuals making up such a large piece of the pie creates some fragility within the within the spectrum here that we’re looking at in terms of how are we going to continue to keep this now, of course, Brian knight will believe in the power of philanthropy till the day we die, because that’s what we do. And we have to drain optimistic, but it really, truly is proving the point that we need to take stock now to work together to make a difference. So one of the things that we’re asked often, almost in validly is are nonprofits, the victim or the culprit? And we get into this quite extensively in the book and the answer is absolutely yes to both. And I will cover the corporate side and, and Brian will cover the victim side. But at the end of the day, there are a lot of things that nonprofits have done in themselves. And there are other things that have been done to them, essentially in the in the changing economic environment. But from the corporate side, having spent 20 years in the nonprofit sector, I have tons of empathy, for those of you that are working in the space that essentially try to do more with less, you’re raising more money from less people you don’t have, for the most part, most nonprofit organizations don’t have r&d budgets. And if you do, I’d love to hear from you. Essentially, this idea that innovation equals risk. And risk is essentially something that nonprofits don’t take. Because anytime that you would lose money on something risky, it means $1 or money that didn’t go into your mission. And having lived this for 20 plus years in fundraising, I understood this idea of like really trying to, to move the needle forward, but with very few resources available. In the end, there are a lot of different things that we talk about. And we go in deep in the book, but the only one that I want to kind of hone in down to the bottom is really where we as a sector, I think for the most part, I’ve gotten to a point where we have believed that more is better. And of course, I used to hear this from my board members to say, Well, if we just got, you know, $1 from every person, you know, we’d be able to fill the bucket and we’d have more money than we need. And for most of my career, I really believe this idea that more was better that we would spend more money just to acquire a donor at any cost. And of course, we know now that essentially the acquisition, the acquisition or retention rate of a newly acquired acquired donor is between 19 to 21%. And essentially this idea of putting a lot of money at risk to essentially find more people at any cost is really a failed approach. And it’s what’s lead to really really poor on average around 39% retention rate in our industry, which is unheard of within any other type of business entities. So there
There is something that we have to flip the switch on. And to think about this idea that better donors are better versus more donors are better. And this has to go all the way from not just even executive directors and Chief Development Officers, but boards realizing that a better donor, a donor that stays with you, on average, has around 78% retention rate, versus the 19 to 21% of a newly acquired donor that barely knows you. And so, anyway, we’ll get into this a little bit more. But really, I wanted to hone in on that little piece, because it’s going to be a consistent theme, as we talk about AI later on in this presentation, and how we essentially quantify and find better donors versus more donors. So Nathan covered the culprit aspect of the victim or corporate scenario, I’ll touch on the victim. And to say that there’s external forces, just working with us against us sideways would be an understatement. There’s a lot of them. And as Nathan said, we covered a fair amount of these in the book, and we tried to, you know, unpack them a bit more than certainly we’ll be able to do here. But a couple of things I just want to touch on. One is the the annual decrease in trust. And really, we should probably add trust and happiness, because those are two things, that if you google them, you’ll see a handful of reports out and unfortunately, we as a society are, are at our you know, I don’t know about the lowest, but we’re trending downward low in annual decrease in trust, trust in each other trust in organizations and happiness. And I just think, in general, if that’s the backdrop of our society today, you know, giving is such a trusting aspect, it’s such a trusting act, that I just think it’s, you know, not a great environment for us to try to be operating in. And the second would be the the number of nonprofits, I think we’re competing, you know, 1.6 1.7, depending on where you are, and where you look, it was only about 20 years or so ago, that number was 875,000. So we’ve in a sense, doubled in size as an industry, which is great on one hand, but also problematic. And another when you think about the next box on the top middle there about the omni channel messaging, certainly there’s no lack of noise in the marketplace for organizations who are doing great work. The other one that’s really concerning for us, because of what it implies and implicates further is the annual decline in religious affiliation. And that has its own similar downward trajectory, those that are aligning with a faith based organization is on the decline similar to the decline of giving. And you know, why that’s important for us is really a couple of things. One is, it’s not necessarily we’re arguing whether people should be religious or not. That’s not the point. The point is that what concerns us is the fact that most religion, all religions actually have different ways of describing but all religions have this notion of giving back as part of that. And I went, and it’s giving back. And it’s often a giving back message and experience that many of us had, maybe when we were growing up. And so there was this habit forming, there was his learning of giving, learning about our society, and that there are others in our society who need help. That happened through that faith umbrella that we were a part of, and as more and more individuals at all ages are declining, being religiously affiliated, the question becomes, where will they even be aware of some of the challenges of their their neighborhood friends? But where will they be taught the lesson of giving back? And I think if we continue to project this element out, that’s the bigger concern for us is really this notion of where will we teach the concept of giving. And I think there’s some things that are emerging on the scene that could quote unquote, replace that. But that’s going to be a really important aspect, as we think about the next 510 15, even 25 years out ahead. But the biggest thing, and it touches on the number of not for profits, touches on the omni channel messaging, but really, it’s this notion that it even when you widen it out, it’s this term that we came up with, in the middle called the competition for connection. And this is one of the if not the biggest things that we want to leave you with and take you through something about how real this is. When you all try to put your message your needs, in front of donors, potential donors, you’re doing so in an extremely competitive marketplace, when you factor in the marketplace being competitive with the fact that in 2000, the average human all of us had an intention span of 12 seconds. So 23 years ago, we had an attention span of 12 seconds. If I were to give you an opportunity to guess what you think it is. Now, I’m sure many of you could probably come close to being correct, that we’ve lost four seconds, we’ve now gotten to the point where we as human beings have an attention span of eight seconds. Which purpose behind goldfish, believe it or not now who have an attention span of nine seconds. So if you think about that we have an incredibly crowded marketplace. We have more non for profits. We have a lot of people talking at us in so many different ways and you
yet, we’re doing that to an audience a marketplace, if you will, that has the lowest attention span we’ve ever had, and that we’re officially behind goldfish and our ability to pay attention. So I’ll let Nathan jump in and talk about his good friend, Elon Musk and what he has going on as well, that makes it challenging. Yeah. And this, you know, essentially, again, Brian always has a TV out with my best friend, Elon Musk. This really goes to the point that nonprofits are no longer competing with nonprofits, they’re competing with for profits, essentially, that are speaking, more like nonprofits. And we’ll give another example of that. But one of those still, to this day is the most common and the most viewed LinkedIn post I’ve ever posted, which came last year, when Elon Musk was interviewed by Chris Anderson from the TED organization and made this comment among many others that SpaceX Tesla neural link in the boring company are philanthropy. If you say philanthropy is the love of humanity, they are philanthropy, Tesla is accelerating sustainable energy, this is a love for philanthropy, and then goes into each company describing the post I I just shared, was essentially well does if Tesla, you know, is essentially a philanthropy, because buying a Tesla makes me a philanthropist. And what was so interesting about the post in the comments on that post, where the disparity of thought it, a lot of lot of people said, well, this is absolutely, you know, nuts. Of course, it’s not, you know, you’re not a philanthropist if you buy a Tesla. But what, and those are people that probably are in my friend network, and people that I work with that are very protective of the traditional nonprofit sector. But the amount of comments from the other side that came Well, absolutely. But essentially, we know that, you know, less than 50% of people buy products from companies that defy their values, at this point is average, the average American thinking, Yes, this is a modern day version of philanthropy that buying a Tesla, because it’s helping save the planet. Does it give me the same, you know, rush of dopamine and serotonin that making a gift to the nature nature conservancy goes, and so there’s a lot of change in our debate in our in our industry in the world around how business is conducted. And Brian will give you a couple of examples right now. Great, thanks, Nathan. And before I do, let me just segue, I think, Patti, I saw it in the in the q&a, the great question and an important one, the the directory downward in the 49 years ending giving was relating to individual giving individuals households, not not corporations, or foundations. So that was the specific data point with which we use individual household giving. So just wanted to answer that. So Nathan’s comment about companies and the role they play in society, but even more importantly, the way they position themselves, in society into ourselves. And you just saw a great example from Nathan’s good friend, Elon Musk, but we wanted to really unpack this. And just to give you a window, you know, what, besides helping not for profits every day, one of the other things change the world does is help corporations, and help them with their commitments to society. So I’ve had a front row seat for the last 510 1520 years to see how well companies are evolving, understanding that in order to sell more products, whatever that might be, they’ve really hit on this notion of values. And by that I mean shared values. And by that, I mean, if they can show us and you that they share the values you hold, well, then that you’re going to, you’re going to become a longer going back to Nathan’s comment a longer donor, a longer purchaser of their products, you’re going to be upwards of that retention numbers in the 70s and 80s, versus the one time acquisition, you know, acquiring one of their products, and then moving on. And so what they’ve done. And this is why we spent a lot of time in the book talking about this competition for connection because that’s what this is all about. Right now, companies not for profit organizations, people trying to compete with one another for our connection. And to give you an example, to play that out. There are three here’s three statements. One is a mission statement of vision and values. The first one being We exist to save our home planet. The next one being We exist to fight for a fairer, more beautiful world. And then we have one the values that says human rights, dignity, social and economic justice, Environment Protection, restoration and Riyadh regeneration. These are the values that we hold wonderful statements, beautiful statements that I would think many of you whether it be today, but certainly five years ago, and beyond would say these are the mission, vision and value statements of not for profits that this is the moral high ground that many of them hold. And in reality, these are the mission values and positioning of the these companies Patagonia Body Shop, and Ben and Jerry’s. And so just love to bring this up and point this out, because they are by no means the only three now they happen to be three pioneers, if you will, in the social impact space and the talking about this and talking about themselves beyond existing just to make a profit and just to sell a product. They really understood their role in society so much. So that pedigree
He has now actually created themselves into a not for profit with their with their with their product. I mean what their profits every year. So but this is what I mean when we think about the mind share that each of us have to figure out where do we want to do good in the world, where do we want to put our energy our money, where now therefore it puts not for profits competing around that, that mindshare with companies who are now positioning themselves in that values oriented way. And the results of this work by companies has been staggering and actually easy to follow the results of it through something called the Edelman Trust Barometer, which comes out every spring, and this is the result of the the this year’s report 2023. And if we think about the, you know, trust, if it’s measured on the axis of ethical and competency, this is what we show you here. In three short years, businesses have jumped 19 points in terms of being seen as more ethical, meaning they’ve gained 19 points on the ethical spectrum, which means it’s inching up if you’re seeing on the screen here, very, very closely to the ethical, I call it the moral but the ethical high ground that not for profits have had that position, and rightfully so, for the longest time while it’s being challenged. Now, the not for profits are being challenged, as being seen as more ethical as businesses. And when you combine that with the competency level, which is the left right axis, which as the not for profits, certainly behind the competency level of businesses, in terms of how they’re perceived, we have a challenge in creating that trust, we have companies who are absolutely moving, and the overall messaging of trust leaps and bounds in the last three years such that now they’re challenging this sacred space that as we said, I’ve said, once used to be the playground, if you will, of just not for profits.
But we believe and this is the real center of the book that the second two thirds of our book is that there is a solution. And that there is a way out of this for not for profits, but it’s going to take one that involves us kind of breaking away out of our old thinking, breaking away of maybe how we’re using old technology, and really beginning to think of a big change management that needs to happen within our sector for us to get back to that winning position that I know we can all get to. And I’ll let Nathan take you through what it is.
Great. Well, thanks, Brian. And, you know, hopefully, we’ve made the case. And you know, I know it feels like the airplane has been crashing this whole time that we’re, we’ve been talking, which is why Brian and I don’t get invited to a lot of parties. But we, we are optimistic people. And actually, when we wrote the book, we knew that it had to shed light on what the potential is for, for a more generous future. One of the things that we really came down to is this idea of connection. And what does connection mean? What does it mean today? What does it mean? What does it meant in the past? And what will it mean in the future. And just to highlight this, this idea that, that corporate America essentially is using lots of data and technology around individuals to what something Tristan Harris has called a bottom a race to the bottom of the brainstem. So essentially, this idea that corporate America for for many years now has been using artificial intelligence that was created through social media channels and different avenues, essentially, to get to know you in a more personal way. A few weeks ago, Tristan Harris came back and said, You know what, it’s no longer a race to the bottom of the brainstem. It’s a race to total intimacy. And so as we, Brian that we’re thinking about and writing the book, we knew that we couldn’t just say, we need to go back and connect with people the same way that we always did. We know that we’re competing not just with other nonprofits, but we’re competing with the for profit world for this, this finite amount of intimacy that each person has. So we really had to come up with a new word that we thought was somewhat radical that we get people’s attention. And not to say it’s the perfect word. But it’s a word that that essentially allows us to look at what we think we know about connection and redefine it in a modern era in an era where that connection is being harvested at scale every single day. So I’m gonna go to the next slide, Brian. And so really, what this means is that we have to really flip the pyramid of how we’ve thought about connection in the past. And for the most part, most nonprofits essentially, value success based on how much money you’re raising and the value of a donors by how much money they have. And one of the things a truism that we had to come up with that grounds everything in our book is that generosity is a manifestation of connection, and not the other way around. Generosity does not come from people that are wealthy. It comes from people that are connected. And we know this to be true because 51% of Americans don’t give no matter how wealthy they are. 49% of Americans give no matter how wealthy they are, has almost no bearing as to whether or not wealth relates to ultra
truism in the sense of of giving back is either something that you do, or you don’t do. So we have to ground ourselves by saying, this connection has to be at the forefront of everything we do. And to that point, we had to re essentially re establish what connection means and essentially compare it to what we have historically thought within our organizations are things like preferences and surface levels. And in areas where you’re you’ll do as little as possible to, to essentially ascribe to an organization, to what does it look like if we reinvent what connection means to your organization. And this is something that Brian, I’ve taken a lot of pride in and been able to consult with organizations to essentially, reimagine what connection means because the type of connection that we’ve done in the past has led us to that downward downward trajectory. The simplest thing is to really imagine either a brand or a nonprofit, that you go out of your way for what is that brand or nonprofit that you will literally instead of like it just being convenient on your way home, and you’ll stop, but you’ll literally go out of your way, in a new city to go to that, that that organization or to that corporation, and for me, Brian knows where I’m going. But it’s always Patagonia, because I’m they never put him in convenient places. But I go out of my way for Patagonia because I have this radical connection with it. In terms of nonprofits that you love, what are the nonprofits that when someone asks you about your affiliation with that nonprofit, that you can’t help but smile, the tone of your voice changes that you get excited, because you know what they’re doing, like, kind of in current terms, like in real time you track their success. And you’re proud of your affiliation with that, that organization. If you think about what that means, that radical connection that you hold, either with a brand, or with a nonprofit, that is truly the lesson for nonprofits, and really take stock, remove your biases about what you’ve always thought connection meant. Three touch points here and one touch point there and you get a letter, if you do this on a handwritten note, if you do that, put it all on a whiteboard, remove your biases and reimagine what if you could create radical connection with people that will stay with you at 78% on average retention, what would that look like? And this exercise is very free. And essentially, if you took this framework, and you created a survey on a scale of zero to or one to 10, you know, does a donor love you to the point of it’s they’re they’re just a preference? Or do they actually have a certain type of deep connection with you, and really looking at this and reimagine thinking about this as a new framework for how you measure the donors that are going to stay with you for a long period of time. And if I could just jump in at that I love the one I love to talk about. And I’ll just highlight before we jump on here, jump over is that the last one on the radical connection, which is I know you and you know me, I can’t tell you how how often it’s almost daily at this point, when I’m consulting, talking meeting with our nonprofit client clients that I see this in action I should light bulb goes off where they’re talking about or we’re advising, I’m like, wait a minute, this person absolutely knows this organization. And this organization knows that person. It’s just they’ve reached that, that that place where no matter what they talk about, or asked for or request that the answer is going to be almost a question of how much and how much time do you need? How much information do you need, how much product you need? And the I know you and you know me is that become sort of my new litmus test, when because trust me, there are plenty of relationships that aren’t at that level yet. And we see potentially, you know, pushing maybe a bit early thinking we’re there when we’re not with some of the strategies or some of the ideas, but that’s another one to be able to think through an important lens in which to figure out whether or not you’ve established radical connection yet.
And just for Jari, we’ll re export the deck for you. Because apparently there was an error and exporting that. So we’ll send that to make sure you have the full the full version. This really goes back to and it looks like we have some people that are resonating with this topic, it really goes back to this idea of redefining what success looks like in your organization. And whether it’s about acquiring more donors or about net increases in retention and in bringing people along and how do you how do you value we always ask when we’re in live audiences, how many people nonprofit professionals know their their revenue goal, and about 95 to 99% of hands go up, you know, your revenue goal. And then we ask a follow up question, which How many of you know your retention goal? And usually around two to 5% of hands go up? To that answer? We absolutely believe that we will not solve the generosity crisis until 98% of people know their retention goal. And that is a key metric for success. When we think about what the driver is of that retention, it really is this idea of radical connection and we created this slide just to show kind of the this idea this intersection between the axis of preference and intimacy is where you’re driving for the upper right hand quadrant to essentially create experiences you know, generosity experiences is one of our friends Tim’s here and Tony
He talks about is this idea that, that even the term DX O is coming up within the nonprofit sector, which is really encouraging about knowing that the donor donors go through a journey, they’re not static, they’re not finite, that we can move our systems and processes and our experiences to the upper right hand quadrant to really build this radical connection with our our constituents. And this is really how we should be measuring success. So the things we’re talking about are not rocket science, that a lot of times people will come back and they’ll say, Well, that sounds like good old fashioned major gift work, which I did for most of my career. And for a really long time, this is what we did before GuideStar, and I’m old, I was fundraising before GuideStar, it was entirely based on trust, we have to go back to the roots of really building organizations that are highly incentivized by building trusted relationships. So in terms of these essential ingredients, vulnerability, authenticity, and inclusion, transparency, and accountability. And the other is that this can’t be a one person thing. Proactive and consistent by many stakeholders, this has to be an institutional priority. And when I mean institutional, It can’t even be fundraisers in their fundraising leaders, it has to be the board’s as well, that are essentially looking at not just filling a bucket and a revenue goal. But looking at again, how many people did you start out with this year? How many people did you end this year, and by the way, the revenue will follow. And so that’s really where we’re looking and working really hard to help redefine what success looks like, within our nonprofit organizations.
And, you know, this isn’t theoretical, and I’m seeing you know, some of the comments that are going by there’s, there’s a very practical nature to all this, there are definitely specific, powerful strategies that you can be deploying that really drives to this, this connection centered philanthropy and philanthropy that we’ve talked about, I think, for a lot of the consulting work that, you know, we’ve done, that this notion of getting to know, the person, the groups, etc, the beyond just their wealth is is is, as Nathan said earlier, not rocket science. But it really, it’s really freeing, quite frankly, when you can start to understand the audiences and then ask the question, okay, if that is true, why don’t we try this? Or why don’t we try that. And it could be everything it could be from, you know, social media strategies, email to events, it can be, but it really is just taking a step back. And just as Nathan referred to earlier, let’s just start with a dry erasable board and think, if relationships and connections are the end goal, what might we be, you know, certainly doing differently? And for us, for me, personally, as I mentioned earlier, 20 plus years of doing consulting, this one was a hard one for me to really, to understand and swallow when we were doing the researching and writing the book. And we had this, you know, aha, which was Nathan saying to me, could you imagine a day where you go into consult with a not for profit, and you’re the first second third step you do isn’t just a screening of their database, talking to them about where the wealth is, but really understanding the depth of the connection? Where are the connections at all levels? And then more importantly, what strategies can we begin to get in place to move people up that connection quadrant that Nathan just took us through, and as I said, This, for me, thinking this way, has been freeing in and of itself, I find ourselves making, I think, more sustainable, more, more authentic, strategies, recommendations, etc, based on the solely wealth, of course, wealth is important. Driving for money is important. But having wealth as a data point, often layered on towards the end, versus it being the entire thing we look at is a big, big shift for us. And this next slide, I think says it all, and you all know this, but it really doesn’t matter how much you’re asking for when for what if you’re not asking the right person. And asking the right person is so much of it is now is understanding the connection, that will enable you to understand whether you’re at the right time in the right place with that relationship, to be able to make whatever asks you want out or not? And if the answer is not, then let’s back it up. And let’s try to figure out what needs to be put into place so that we can get our selves to that. But it’s also knowing not everyone’s going to eventually make it to the upper right quadrant with that radical connection. And that’s okay, too. There’s, as Nathan touched on, there is infinite opportunities for us as organizations and us as people to connect. But it’s thinking it through this lens that I think will help you all become more effective at the work that you’re doing. And really, can my plan given colleagues who have grown up with over the years worked alongside? This is me really asked, really, but I’ll speak for myself, me tipping my cap to them. I mean, what they know and the way that they operate with retention goals and the understanding of the long term relationships in order to secure a plan gift is really what we’re talking about. And I think it’s the plan giving professionals the plan giving teams that you all are a part of our you work with. There’s a lot they know and there’s a lot of how they work that we probably need to rethink and bring in some of those true elements to the work that we do every day.
Yeah, we
Do pay a lot of credit, because if you think about this idea of radical connection, a person that is willing to not only give in current dollars, but also associate their name with an organization in perpetuity past, you know, their life is truly like the ultimate version of, of radical connection. And so that’s where we, we pay tribute to those professionals, but also think there’s a lot of lessons to be learned in how the metric of what is the metric of success. And that’s what this slide speaks to is, which is when you’re presenting back to your board, what is the way you present success? Like, are you are you using revenue? Are you using retention? Or in which in which order? Are you using those and I serve on a board for a group called the FarmLink project that for now on, we present retention first before revenue. And just as a small nuance not to say revenue is not important. But it says a small nuance to say the thing that’s most important is how many people did we start with? How many people are we going to end with? And what are the increases in retention, this is also something that we really couldn’t have done a long time ago. Because to be able to look at the the depth of connection of your individuals, you have to be able to use big data and technology to measure that type of connection. So it really brings us down into this area that I focused on since 2017, which is around using machine learning and deep learning to essentially quantify connection. And doing the same thing that the for profit world is doing and spending lots and lots of money to essentially have this race to total intimacy is to understand through all of your data, what is the value of you not as a donor today, but a value as a donor long term? What is your lifetime value to the organization. And this is a term that’s not used a lot in our sector. But we’re really looking at this, this opportunity to look at every individual, not by how much wealth they have, individually, but by how deeply connected they are. And it really brings us into this term called precision philanthropy that one of my colleagues in the past, essentially coined that speaks to this idea that, like in health care, where there’s precision medicine, that every person no matter what type of disease you have, you don’t have a category of disease, you have a disease that’s unique to you based on your own specific DNA. And the same is true what Brian was saying, it doesn’t matter how much you ask, and when you ask in what way and what purpose, if you’re not asking the right person precision philanthropy looks at a person today and tomorrow and the next day as an individual not as a donor, not as a prospect, not as a good donor, or a bad donor or prospect, as an individual with a varying degree of connection, the organization. And by the way, that connection, the degree of connection will change tomorrow, and next week, and next month, and next year, based on the activities and experiences that you put in front of them. So when we really talk about this, and we’ll round this out and kind of conclude with the practical aspect of this AI machine learning deep learning is not a fad, it’s not going away. It’s something that again, the large nine of the 10 largest companies in the world are highly invested in is something that our industry is is been lacking in for quite a while. So while 89% of nonprofits agree that AI will make them more efficient, only 28% have either even implemented or even experimented with it. And it was like going a little bit deeper. This idea that of the nonprofits that are highly invested in AI, less than 10% of them are using it to their greatest capacity. The average for profit organization is using 3.8 instances of AI. Whereas less than 10% of nonprofits are using AI to its fullest extent, there’s only a very few, we have a lot of catch up if we’re going to compete in this world. That is not again competing with nonprofits. But for profits, we absolutely have to level up our ability to really understand our donors in real time.
So as we kind of finish this up and round out, we there’s one more there we go. We will we’ll kind of end this with some practical aspects. And we do have some downloads that you can download. We’ll share that in a second. But the first two I’ll cover and then Brian will cover the last to first and foremost, to adopt this idea of radical connection, you have to adopt a mindset that more is not better. It’s about lifetime value, and how do you maximize the donor experience to create longer lifetime value? That might be the need to bless and release people that are kind of dragging along within your organization so that you allow the time and effort that it takes to foster essentially better donors. The second is so important, easy to say hard to do is challenge all of your views and biases about connection affiliation. Allow your team to sit around and think through what would it look like if we prioritize prioritize connection through all aspects of our organization, not just on paper, but in real life as well and through our processes and policies. You know, I’ll come
continue with the theme of these are easy, I get it, these are easier to say and much harder to do. But the last two centering efforts inward by focusing on goals and KPIs as Nathan was referring to earlier that really focus on the relational aspect over the over the real revenue. And it might have to be that it for the short term, you really force it over revenue, so that you can begin to adopt a different methodology, because it’ll be very easy to fall back to the revenue dominating the money dominating the conversation, but really encourage all of you to think of it through that relationship lens. And I mentioned in the very beginning, and why not sort of round it off, to really think about evaluating your technology to whether it’s fostering that connection at scale, or maybe even in some regard, hurting it. And as Nathan has just taken you through at a very high level, you know, the use of AI really, I truly believe is ultimately at the end of it all centering it on connection, the ability to understand and know, a much more holistic view of the individual that’s in your ecosystem will only develop better strategies and better ways for you to engage in building up that connection and hopefully building towards that radical connection. So technology should not be left alone, it should be like everything else that you have at your fingertips. Let’s make sure it’s supporting this philosophy and driving connection ultimately, at scale as well. And Nathan mentioned that we have some free resources and at our on our website, generosity crisis.com that, hopefully someday we’ll be changing that URL. We’ve got a couple of things, we’ve got a conversation starters about the topic of generosity, whether it be on a personal basis with friends and family members, team members in the office, etc, we that’s a great thing to use. We’ve got a book club guide, I mentioned earlier that there’s just been amazing to see that these book clubs have been being organically been created and formed around the country. And so we put together a guide to help them go through that. And then really 10 ways to foster radical connection, a little bit of our shout out to David Letterman, speaking of older age, you know, the top 10 list, this is our top 10 ways to help you with radical connection.
And the last part, in a Brian, you want to just put our contact information, Brian and I are very fortunate and that we have jobs within changing our world and, and donor search that we are there to help other organizations talk through this. There are a lot of questions about how to use AI, how to prioritize the use, we could talk about that for about three minutes. But also take down our email addresses because we are always willing to get on a call, especially when you have organizations that have boards that really need to hear this message of that what we’re doing today is not going to get us there that we need to essentially rethink what success looks like within our organization. And of course, within our book, in those downloaded resources, there are lots of tools to help you just a couple of things because we can’t cover all the questions I know that I the idea of AI seems daunting for a lot of people. And it is depending on what type of AI you’re you’re talking about. For us with donor search, we offer AI within lots of different verticals within our core product and all the way up through custom machine learning models, which I work on. But things like chat GPT are free and will provide efficiency for you to allow you to work essentially smarter, not harder. Right now, we are only in the very beginning of really the adoption of of AI. And I will say and I wouldn’t, it wouldn’t be responsible if I didn’t say the word responsible AI, that in the nonprofit sector. Anytime we talk about AI, it has to prioritize humans and trust. And so with that, we have a LinkedIn group called fundraising.ai, which you can join about 1000 other people that are really interested in helping create what responsible AI is for the nonprofit sector. And so I wanted to share that. And again, let us know if we can help be resources for you.
And Brian, did you want to try to cover any other question? We’ve got one and a half minutes left?
No, I think I sound like maybe there was a glitch with the presentation. So we’ll make sure we send that out because there are a few questions here that I think we covered. So hopefully that’ll be you know, hopefully round out any gaps. But I’ll just reiterate what Nathan said, you know, our emails are up here. So if there’s any other questions, or if you even want to continue the conversation, certainly either or both of us are eager to continue to do that. And we love the opportunity to engage with folks in our sector about this. So important topic that we’re all facing. So thank you for the time today. Thank you so much.
All righty. And let’s see there. Sorry about that.
So I do want to apologize, I did start the stream about 10 minutes early. So Nathan and Brian, if there’s one other question you want to address, I think you’ll have the time to do that. Otherwise we can wrap it up.
Well, one of the things well, that’s great to know it’s always great to have bonus time. One of the things and I saw kind of some ongoing comments around the idea of Sustainer programs and
You know how to do this in practical terms. So if I were building a brand new nonprofit, today, I would focus on building a really, really robust, robust Sustainer program. And essentially, not only do we see retention rates and sustainer programs hovering in between 70 to 80%, those donors that are now conditioned to give to you and upgrade with you over time, are also your best major gift donors long term, you know, so. So that would be key number one, and only It may sound commonplace now, but pre COVID, that was not something that nonprofits did really at all. Yet, in Europe, that’s how most fundraising is done is through a sustainer kind of membership type program. So I wanted to be sure to highlight that it looked like there are some resources for you tomorrow, in some other sessions to jump in on and that absolutely is something that you should really lean into and invest. The name of the LinkedIn group is simple is fundraising.ai. And so if you just search on LinkedIn can be easier. We are actually going to be hosting Mallory Erickson, who’s on this call, actually, will be the chair hosting a two day virtual summit on responsible AI for fundraising in October. And we’re about to release a framework for Responsible AI in our sector. So again, super, super important shameless plug on that side. It’s a total volunteer project of mine, and many other people, including Mallory, Erickson, and
Natalie Monroe and others that are on this call. It’s been amazing to see the art community to come together and say, Look, we need to build AI that prioritizes trust in relationships. Because we know that in our sector, if there’s one bad actor, it affects all of us versus a Twitter that creates a ageist racist algorithm that affects price breach in our industry affects us all. And so that’s why it’s so important to bring up now.
Was there another one Brian?
You know, maybe Nathan just saw one that is important. If we have the time to clarify, which is the question was something along the lines of I can’t find it now about what what AI are using, I just want maybe you want to talk about the data, the percent, you know, the data points, the amount of data points you’re able to pull together that creates that holistic profile that I was referring to earlier. Yeah, yeah. So my my work back in in 2017. And machine learning deep learning was really around this premise, that it didn’t matter how much you were asking, and when you were asking if it wasn’t the right person. So essentially, what we’re using is our first year and a half of building the first machine learning model to predict gratitude, essentially use around 1000 data points per person to essentially look at how well does this person know us not whether they are wealthy? In fact, we don’t use wealth data in our models at all, we essentially using data and things like are they opening up emails? Are they volunteering? Are they making guests? Or are they if you’re a higher ed institution? Are they getting more degrees? Do they live on campus, or if your healthcare organization, it’s whether or not there are patients, you’re a patient that are being seen, or if you’re a zoo, how many times you visit and what days of the week. So essentially, every organization has a body of data that speaks to the experiences that people have, as those experiences increase, a person gets to know you better. And if you’re doing your job, they’re getting to know you better, and they’re loving you more. And so essentially, by by reverse engineering, by looking at all of your prior donors, and the conditions that they looked like before they made their first gift, we can extend now measure every other person to say this person is attending to the zoo a lot. And they’re, you know, they become a
an ambassador, or whatever it might be in any type of organization. Taking your data in enriching it with outside data is really where we get the ability to essentially measure a person’s connection and get away from this idea of how wealthy is someone, therefore, are they a good or bad donor.
And, of course, it’s a lot I mean, this, we’re talking seven years kind of in this making, and I can’t do this in three minutes. But we’re always happy to talk more and share our philosophies on what responsible AI looks like.
That’s amazing. So we have about two minutes left in the session. So I’m gonna go ahead and wrap it up. But thank you, Nathan, and Brian, for all of those valuable insights. I will definitely be joining that AI LinkedIn group. That sounds fascinating. Once again, I do apologize. I started the session about 10 minutes early, because I was super excited to hear what Nathan and Brian had to share. But we did record the session. So you guys will be able to go to our website and access that recording to watch those first 10 minutes. I’m going to encourage everyone to take a brief 10 minute break and then come back at 230 to join us for our next two sessions. How to review your engagement strategy finding donors on the fringe and reinvesting in women the future of nonprofit leadership. So looking forward to seeing all of you guys in those sessions and once again, thank you, Nathan and Brian for a wonderful presentation. Thank you for having us.
Enjoy the rest of the conference