8 Ways to Get to Know Your Supporters Better

Hey, everyone. I'm Sarah Lange, and I'm here to spark the philanthropy revolution. The word philanthropy means love of mankind. My show is all about the ways we can revolutionize our fundraising so we can raise more money and do more good.

Hey everybody, it's Sarah Lange and I am psyched to be here for another episode of the philanthropy revolution. This is episode 29. I can't believe I've done 29 of these episodes, but thanks for joining me and listening to me blather on about things and with my guests, that's always really fun.

For those of you who are joining me for the first time or don't know who I am, I am a professional fundraiser. I live in Massachusetts and I've been raising funds since 1989 and I know I was 12 then, right? So I've raised over a hundred million dollars and I started this show because if I can raise a hundred million dollars, so can you. And I want to teach you the tricks and trades of the trade so you too can revolutionize your philanthropy.

Today. We're going to dive into eight ways that you can get to know your supporters better. And the first thing I want to do is talk about current giving in terms of individuals.

In 2023, $557.16 billion was contributed to US charities. Again, $557.16 billion, not million, billion. So there is a lot of money out there being contributed. Compared to 2022, it was $499.33 billion. So you can see that is over $50 billion in one year in terms of the increase. So how much of that was given away by individuals? Sit down, because you might be shocked. $374.40 billion was given by folks, just people, right? So that was an increase of 1.6% over 2022, and another $42.68 billion was left to charities as bequests. So those are gifts people leave to you in their will. And that was an increase of 4.8% over 2022. So you can see individual giving is going up, up by billions. So the total given away in 2022 by people was 3.9, or sorry, $319.04 billion. And that was followed by 45.60 billion in bequests. So that was an increase of 2.3%. over 2021. So again, you're seeing these increases in billions of dollars that people are giving away. So of the $557.16 billion dollars that was given away, where did that money go? I'm sure you're all very curious because I was, I'm always curious, like who's getting this money? At the top of the heap, and this should come as no surprise, is religion, right? So they got 145.81 billion dollars and that was up 3.1%. Now what I'm going to say about religion is it's not about guilt or God, right? So everybody thinks that's why people give to religious institutions, but it's about setting the expectation, right? So most religious organizations have this expectation and it's explicit that you're going to tithe, right? So you're going to contribute a certain percentage of your income, it's usually 10%, to keep that congregation going. That's to pay the heating bill, pay the clergy person. There's probably a secretary. There's things that they have to get, for those of you who are in religious faith traditions that practice things like communion. Obviously communion wafers cost money.

The thing about religious institutions is not only do they set giving as an expectation, but they ask. They ask often, right? Every single week they're gonna ask. They make giving easy. So I've been in religious organizations where they pass a basket or a plate literally right in front of you, right? It does not get easier to give than that. And then they appreciate donations of all sizes, so if there's a kid in the congregation, they throw a dollar in the basket. That's valued just as much as the person who just dropped a check for a hundred dollars in. So there's a sense of gratitude that comes with the donations. And then also, they're really good at engaging people in their community. So those are all lessons we can learn from religious institutions in terms of why giving is working for them.

The second category is human services. That was $88.84 billion. This was an increase of 5.8%, folks. So for everyone in the human service world, that's good news. Education got $87.69 billion, that was up 11.1%. To foundations, that was 80.3 billion and that was up 15.4%. I'm guessing that's because there's lots of boomers who are retiring and thinking about their legacy that they wanna leave in terms of philanthropy. So anyway, public society benefit, $62.81 billion, that was up 11.6%. Health got 56.58 billion, that was up by 8.7%. International affairs, $29.94 billion, that was up 2.5%. Arts, cultures and humanities, $25.26 billion, that's up 11%. I am psyched. My undergrad degree is in art and I love art. Art and music, like art in all its forms is so nourishing to my soul and so I'm very excited to see that go up. And environmental and animals,  21.20 billion of the pie and that was up by 8.2%. So you can see this is pretty significant increases for most of our sectors. That's where the money is went in 2023.

What I want to say about the money and where it goes is that a lot of us are trained to chase wealthy people. Right? And I'm not against building relationships with people who have wealth. And at the same time, first of all, everybody else in your town and your region is also going to them. Right? So they smell you when you're coming and they know what you want. But beyond that, the bulk of the money that's being given away is not being given away by billionaires and millionaires. So more than three quarters of the people who donate to charity make less than $75,000 a year, right? So you're talking about people who aren't making a lot of money and that are proportionately give away more of their income than upper income strata people do. And generally people give to five to 10 nonprofits each year. So this is really good news for us. We don't have to find Sally and Dick rich person. It means donors who are generous and already in the donations game are down the street around the corner and across town. This means that the majority of people we meet are already trained donors. You don't have to train them or convince them to donate. You simply have to invite them to join your cause. So when I think about raising money, I don't think about it as asking people for money, right? Because asking is energy that's going this way. Instead, I like to carve it out as an invitation to join the cause. Come join us, right? That's friendly, there's no pressure, you're not freaking out. Well, maybe you are, but maybe less freaking out because you're issuing an invitation, right? And so that's really how I like to think about raising money.

Now is the time to increase your efforts on the individual donor front. Why? First of all, our work is more urgent and important than ever. More people are hurting. And while most of us recovered from the pandemic and have moved on with our lives, the pandemic revealed how many systems are broken. And guess what? Those systems didn't get fixed. So we still have a lot of broken And in some cases, they're worse because demand went way up. So for example, I have a client that runs a food pantry and there's 29 food pantries in Worcester, which tells you a little bit about food insecurity in the city. And a bunch of them closed down during COVID. Well, that was a big problem for the people who were relying on that pantry for food. So my client just said, look, we're gonna serve anybody that shows up. We don't care if you're on our service area or not, because each of the 29 food pantries has a designated geographic turf that they cover. So they said, we don't care. If you're hungry, you need food. Come to us. They literally had people lined up around the building. So they had to figure out how do we distribute food in a way that's quick and efficient and where we don't give everyone less because we have more. people to feed. So they went to the Worcester County Food Bank. They said, look, we are one of the only food pantries open. We need more food. And so they, their allotment went way up. And then this was, I thought a genius strategy on their part. They thought, well, all these schools and colleges are closing, right? So they called all the colleges and they called all the private schools and said, Hey, we know you're about to go into shutdown. Do you want to give us your food? So I thought that was so clever. I was like, yay, great idea. So they got a ton of food that way. But anyway, believe it or not, their numbers have not really gone down. Even though the other food pantries are open and running again, because of certain circumstances, which we'll talk about in a second, their numbers continue to stay pandemic high, right? 

Because of the whole system issue not getting fixed, a lot of people got left behind as others recovered. So the other piece to why it's more important and urgent than ever is that the economy is not helping. So wage stagnation in the United States has been a feature of the economy since the late 70s, right? So we've been struggling with wage stagnation. So if you look at pay that's adjusted for inflation, It has not kept up with productivity. And while the highest earners have seen their pay increase, middle income Americans have not. And let's face it, most of us are middle income Americans. So I'm sure you are one of those people that is like going, how is my dollar gonna stretch any further before breaking? I know I go to the grocery store and I'm like, what? So it's a little shocking. I go to the gas pump. I'm like, what? So. It's tough out there, and I'm sure many of you know that.

Gentrification is not helping. So there's a lot of areas in the country that have become gentrified. And as real estate prices climb around the country and rents go up, more and more people are finding it harder to afford their homes and pay their rent. So far in 2024, real estate prices have climbed 6.5%. So that's a lot. So people are having a hard time, excuse me, staying put in their gentrified communities. The second reason is that post-pandemic people are yearning, right? We went into isolation, we went into lockdown, we went into these little bubbles, right? And so now we're kind of free to roam again and we want to connect, we want to help. So we have this deep yearning that we want to act on. People are really tired of being asked to do the least they can do. And this is particularly true for boomers who were the architects of social change. So think about civil rights, women's rights, Vietnam, right? They were troublemakers in the best way. So this crew is gonna carry philanthropy through 2035 and they want to make an impact. 

This is why we're seeing a steep uptick in donor-avised funds. named funds at foundation and impact investing. So impact investing is where, say for example, I give away $5,000 to charity every year. Well, I might choose to not spread it across five to 10 organizations, but I might narrow my giving down to one or two, right? So that's impact investing. So my dollars can make a bigger impact. So that's a trend as well. So if you look at the statistics though, All the generations are yearning. So individual giving has increased year over year by billions of dollars for nearly the entire past decade. So my experience is that the majority of people want to do good. Now, are there some knuckleheads out there? Or as my friend Larry would say, bozos? Sure, you can find knuckleheads and bozos, but my experience is that most people are good people. and they want to do good and they're yearning to make a difference and have a meaningful impact with their lives.

My question to you is what kind of opportunities are you providing to people to connect and engage with the organization? What I have found over the years is that a lot of times we kind of shut people out of the process, right? So philanthropy has kind of come this narrow thing of. money in exchange for a thank you note or maybe your name on a building if you're operating at that level. But that closes a lot of people out and so people have gifts they can give but sometimes it's up to us to think about how do we open the doors and bring them in. The other thing to be cognizant about is that the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the United States is happening right now. It already started, it's in the process. So between now and 2035, approximately $69 trillion, yes, that's what I said, $69 trillion, is gonna pass from one generation to the next. And the people inheriting this money think differently about investing. So many of them are looking for opportunities to create a new kind of ROI, which is return on impact. So now is the time to build and deepen rapport with our supporters.

Just as a reminder, philanthropy is a heart centered activity. Philanthropy actually means love of mankind. And there are lots of different ways people are looking to express their love. So it's not just an exchange of cash for a thank you letter, right? That's one very narrow way. But we have to remember that people give to causes they care about and that their donation is a gift from their heart. So for example, if my heart is breaking over the increased number of homeless folks in the community, you know, I could run around handing out bottles of water and snack bars and giving people as much money and I'd go broke, right? I'd be exhausted and I'd go broke. So as an individual, it's hard for me to have an impact on homelessness. But if that's what's making my heart ache, I can give my money to an organization that I trust is working on the behest of homeless people and is doing right by them and say, here, here's my gift, please help the people who are homeless. So my gift, is it really to your organization? You're kind of like the thoroughfare for me to get to the homeless people that I can't really help. Right? So it's a gift from their heart and what I was taught and which I'm sure most of us have been taught is that transactional Philanthropy which I call fundraising Is more efficient, but what data shows over and over and over and over and over? is that relational philanthropy results in 39% increased lifetime value of donors who are engaged in this way. So think about 39% more from your donors. Wouldn't that be awesome? And what could you do with that money, right? So it's like dating. It can take more time, but it yields better results. Like you can't be the one out there dating a hundred donors. So this is where it's really important to engage your board, volunteers, other donors. I'm working with an organization right now to develop a peer to peer fundraising campaign using their biggest, most loyal donors. And I'll talk about that a minute, but you can't date everybody by yourself. So you got to get, build a team, get some help. But it is going to yield far better results if you put in the time and effort.

I'm going to talk about eight different ways you can get to know your donors and supporters on a deeper level and bring them in, engage them more deeply. And what happens is when we build a stronger relationship with them, cultivate with them, we can ask more money, right? So my grad school has done an amazing job of cultivating me and storing me and my money over the years. And I am giving them more money than I ever thought I'd give anyone. I'm like, how am I giving at this level? And the reason is because they've done a really good job of engaging me in ways that have been meaningful to me. And when they made the big fat ask, they broke it down into a monthly payment. And I was like, oh, I can do that, right? Because the number to me was like, what? You know, I've been a single mom since my kid was three. So most of my time, energy, and resources have gone into raising him. And they were smart. They waited till he was out of college to make the big fat ask. So they were paying attention. Because when he was in college, I was broke. Every time I turned around, I was like, the university is like, oh, we need this payment. Okay. Or he'd call, he's like, I need more sheet music. I need drumsticks. I need this. I need that. I was like, okay. So he's 28 and he's doing great. So yay for us.

The first thing I always do with a new client is a donor data dump, right? And so obviously you want to know who your top donors are, who are the people giving you the most money. But it's equally important to know who your most loyal donors are. And those are not always the same group. There might be some overlap, but I think you're going to be surprised by people who have been hanging out. I call these the sleeping giants. They've been hanging out under the radar, and we've missed their cues. So when it comes to philanthropy, Loyalty is everything, right? So we can lose up to 30% of our database every single year. That's a lot of attrition. And that's a lot of donors that we have to replace. And a lot of these donors are not first-time givers, although you can lose up to 50% of your first-time donors. These are people who may have been giving to you for a while and have walked away because we've done a lousy job of stewarding and cultivating them. So. I've had that experience where I've been giving for like five years and no one's paid attention to me. I get these generic, the same generic thank you letter every year. So it just makes me feel like my investment, my contribution, my loyalty doesn't mean anything to them. And so I'm going to walk away and find an organization that's going to treat me better. So you have to be careful about how you treat your first time donors and how you treat your repeat donors. So if someone's been giving you for three or more years, even at a relatively low amount, even 25, 50 bucks a year, they're invested. And most of these people are ripe for an upgrade, but have we even noticed them, right? So when you think about the giving ladder, somebody comes in on the bottom rung, which is they make a donation. And hopefully you're not having 50% of them walk away, but if you engage them, then they make, they become a habitual donor, right? So this is when they make a habit of giving to organizations. We have donor, habitual donor.

Now they've been floating around, they've made a habit of giving, the next thing we wanna do is bump them up to a significant gift. Now, a significant gift looks different for everybody, right? So a significant gift for me might be $500, but for the person around the corner, it might be $100. But we want them to really start thinking about their philanthropic engagement with us. And so this requires engagement and stewardship and cultivation. We can't just expect them to go up the giving ladder. We have to use cultivation and engagement strategies to move them up the ladder. Then when they've been giving at the significant gift level for a few years, now I would suggest it's time to make that big fat ask. So Boston University School of Social Work got right in there and made the big fat ask. So maybe it's for some capital campaign, maybe it's for a scholarship. Usually when you're making a big fat ask, it's for something particular. And the good news is you can make stuff up. So, you know, one of the things I did with one of my clients was they were a housing organization. And so we would have them like say that their donation was going towards the living room furniture, which it was. I mean, it's not like there were shenanigans going on. So they had a little plaque in the living room saying furniture contributed by. But you want to make it a specific ask because they're making an investment, a sizable investment at this point. And so you want to be very clear about where that's going. And I had another client that I was working with and they had a domestic violence shelter. And they were actually doing an addition with extra bedrooms. And so those different parts of the rooms got different recognition.

Anyway, so then you've got them to make a major gift and then there's the capital gift. Now, sometimes these are the same things or they're interchangeable. And then once somebody has made a major gift, now it's time to start talking to them about our favorite topics, death and money. right? Estate planning. Especially for boomers, we want to have a conversation with them about, you know, what do you want to leave in terms of your philanthropic legacy? And boomers are primed for this conversation because they're already having that thought in their head. So you definitely want to move as many people up the rungs as possible. So move people to the giving ladder, be intentional about it. Intentionality is so important. And so when it comes to your individual donor program, I really recommend starting with your largest donors are those people who are giving at the highest level. And then also what I call these sleeping giants, people who have demonstrated their loyalty. Because if we don't acknowledge their loyalty, they might walk away. And then we gotta go out and find another donor to replace them. So try not to do that to yourself. You can also group donors based on geography. This is mostly useful for universities and large institutions that have kind of a multi area constituent base. So for example, when I was at BU School of Social Work, I had a work study job and it was my job to create this, I don't remember what the program was called, but to connect alumni with prospective students. And I just had this instinct that doing it geographically was going to be better than the way it was set up. So I reorganized everybody by geography and started pairing people up that way and it worked really, really well. You could do it based on their giving history. So for example, you might start some kind of legacy giving society for people who've been giving 10 or more years or other interests. So for example, you know, do they volunteer? Are they involved in your peer to peer fundraising program and then cultivate and steward each group accordingly, So this is really going to depend. You can get as complicated as you want. Me, I like to keep things simple. But if that makes sense for you and that's going to help you do more detailed and appropriate solicitation and cultivation, then do it. But don't complicate things just to complicate things.

The other thing, so strategy number two. is it's really important to personalize all of your communications. Please use the donor's preferred name. Please use their preferred title. And it's really good to reference past giving or engagement. So today's technology makes all of that so easy. So if you don't already have a CRM, customer record management, please get one. My favorites are Bloomerang, Kindful, and Little Green Light. Now I'm gonna tell you, I don't get any kickbacks from any of these companies. And these are just the three that I am most familiar with. And I have a hundred percent confidence in them. That's the only reason I'm recommending them because I know them, I've used them, I like them. They're user friendly. So you don't have to like go off for a 10 day training and figure out how to jump through all the hoops and playing a tuba while you're doing it. So those are just three that I recommend. Feel free to do your own thing. But personalization may seem insignificant, but I can tell you that when I get a letter that's addressed to your friend, I stop reading. I literally will not read the letter. It just goes straight to the recycling bin because if you can't be bothered to run a merge using your CRM, then that's a problem for me. Because it's an indicator that you don't even care enough about me to figure out my first name and how to get that into the letter. So dear friend, no.

The other thing about personalization is it actually deepens the relationship between your organization and the donor. So again, this goes back to donor psychology. We all need to be seen, right? As a human, we need to be seen. That's so important for us. And so when you don't use somebody's name, you're like, oh, they don't see me, right? You're just a number, you're just a cog in the wheel. And in today's increasingly depersonalized world, getting a personalized letter actually matters. So to this day, I still remember a letter that I got from WGBH. which said, dear Sarah, thanks for your support for the last six years. Now six years is kind of a random number, right? But the fact that they said, you've been supporting us for six years, I was like, oh my God, thank you. Not only did they see me, but they acknowledged my giving history. And I'm not dumb. I know that was a generic letter that was merged, but it hit my heart. You know, you can't, you can't logic away like donor psychology. Those things matter. And I've had another experience where I had a nonprofit organization that my son and I supported. So my son has a different last name than I do. And somehow someone married us. So we started getting letters. Mr. and Mrs. His Last Name and I was like, this is gross. You just married me to my kid. No, thank you. So you have to be careful about that. You have to understand your donors that there are two people in the same household with different names, don't assume they're married, right? So the other example I'll share is, I don't know how many of you know of Tom Ahern, but he is like a major force in donor communications. He totally knows his stuff. totally love and respect him. And he told the story about how he kept getting emails from moveon.org, dear Thomas. He's like, my name isn't Thomas. My name is Tom. I have never been a Thomas. I will never be a Thomas. Please stop calling me Thomas. They never made the correction in their database. So guess what he did? He moved on. So please be careful about the way you communicate with people and don't make assumptions. You always want to check with your donors about their preferred names and their titles.

The third strategy I'm going to recommend is being very intentional about creating engagement strategies. So you're going to want to customize your cultivation and stewardship according to the donor groups you've created. So people who are fairly new donors should probably be getting a welcome drip sequence. This is a sequence of emails. I like to, I recommend one email a week for six weeks, right? So the first one should be like a thank you from, preferably a video from your board chair or your executive director or even a client saying, thank you so much. Your contribution is going to make a difference, here is how it's going to make a difference. You know, you'll be hearing from us for the next five weeks with information and uh, news that we want to share with you. So it can be any kind of content you want. It could be your annual report. It could be an impact story. It could be, an op ed or an article on the issue. So you can do anything you want, but it's important to have that touch six weeks in a row. And then for more established donors, you can send them some kind of, again, it could be an article or an op-ed on the issue your organization is addressing. You could send out a monthly ‘did you know’ news brief because, you know, no one likes to get lectured, especially when we're grownups. We don't have time or tolerance for that. And plus people are so busy. So what about a news brief? Like, did you know? You know? And so again, it's a way to educate people. You could even host a Q&A once a month. I knew an organization in Boston, and they had a monthly coffee with Karen. And Karen was their executive director, so they spelled coffee with a K. But it was the same morning every month where anybody who was walking by could just take the elevator up to the conference room. And they were like, coffee and fruit and bagels. And they could just ask, what is this place? And she was always in there to answer questions. Now, sometimes no one showed up. So the staff scarfed down the bagels and the fruit and stuff. Other times she would have like 30 people. So, and she also, obviously they also advertised this on like social media and they also advertised it in their newsletter. So they let people know it's kind of like open office hours, right? But that was a really great way to engage people and those relationships stuck. That was like a high sticky level to that. So the thing about sending out these sequences is it's really gonna help your donors understand the issues at a much deeper level and it's gonna bring them closer to the cause, right? So be sure to ask your donors which way they'd like to hear from you so you can use the appropriate channels, right? So if I'm broadcasting on channel A and you hang out on channel B, those two worlds are never gonna cross. So make sure you collect that information.

The other thing I would really suggest, and I know this works wonders, is tell your story. Because don't we all love a good story, whether it's a movie, a book, a conversation movie, somebody new, or even a short story on like TikTok, right? We're getting engaged very quickly and very deeply. So stories are the ways that we connect to one another and revisit our humanity. So when we tell heartfelt stories, this is a massive shortcut, because remember, philanthropy is love of mankind. So we want them to be heartfelt stories. So this is a great shortcut for connecting your supporters and your mission. You're building that bridge very quickly. And you want to craft stories that show impact because that's what your donors are investing in. They want to see transformation. So what's happening to somebody when they come to you for help and then through your services, programs, whatever it is you offer. transformation happens, right? So they come in state A and they leave in state B. So show those impacts. Also, you wanna be sure to weave stories into your communications program on the regular and make sure you have some on your website.

Now, I have a book called Story Find and this is by Kristin Sukraw, and I met her at Cause Camp last year and she gave me a copy of her book and it is really good. She knows her stuff. So this is called Story Find, the handbook for finding and telling your non-profits most impactful stories. I'm going to give this away to the first person who sends an email to Sarah, S-A-R-A-H, be using, well [email protected], right? So Jesse, can you pop that in the chat so people have it? So the first person that emails me gets this book free of charge. And it's even signed. She signed it. So. This will help you figure out your stories. It's a great book. And Kristin's really good at what she does. So tell stories.

The fifth thing I'm going to recommend is making sure that you're keeping track of key metrics. So the whole point of communication is to garner a response. We're not standing on the mountain top shouting into the distance just to hear our own voices or hoping we'll get an echo back. So it's like, Marco. We need to hear that polo back, right? So my question is, is your communication compelling your store, I’m sorry. Hi, Eloco. I just got a message that somebody is watching. So doing a little shout out to them. Okay, I'm gonna get back on track now. So are your communications to people compelling them to act? Are they even opening and reading what you're sending? How do you find out? Well, you have to look at your open rates, your click rates, your conversion rates, your unsubscribe rates and your bounce rates. And all of these things are gonna help you figure out the effectiveness of communication. So for example, say you're sending out an email and you want people to click through and sign a petition. Okay, well you can see how many people felt compelled by what you wrote to actually go sign the petition, right? So, excuse me. You want to make sure that you're communicating effectively, because otherwise you're just yelling Marco and there's no polo. The other thing you can do is A-B testing. This is really useful. So you send out the same email, but you use two different subject lines and you see which subject line is more compelling. Now this is where you can use AI. I'll talk about that in a minute. You can actually use AI to help you find very compelling subject lines, right? So that's one way you can up your open rates.

The other thing is to utilize retention tactics. So again, we can lose up to 30% of our donor base every year. That's a lot of work. You did a lot of work to get that donor to give to you and now they walked away. It's exhausting. Anyway, You want to gather feedback from your donors by sending out an annual survey. If you want a sample donor survey, send me an email saying donor survey in the subject line, and my fairly assistant, Jesse, will get it to you. So it's really important to ask questions like, how often do you want to hear from us? How do you want to hear from us? And then based on their input, particularly in response to how they view themselves as donors, I always ask, please use five words, what five words would you use to describe yourself as a donor? And then I use that right back. So somebody might use the word generous, right? Okay, great, now I'm gonna say, I know what a generous donor you are, right? So you're literally creating a resonance by using the same language. You are literally speaking the same language, right? And again, people feel seen and heard when we use language that they subscribe to. Does this mean you have to personalize every single email that goes out? No, no, no. You just collect basically a word cloud of words that are most frequently used by your donors and then just echo that language right back to them. So play with new messaging, play with new campaigns, do that A-B testing. Thank your donors as often as possible, because studies show that seven times a year, if you thank donors, it makes a huge difference in terms of retention. Now does thanking somebody seven times a year sound exhausting? Probably, but here's some ways you can do it. You could do handwritten thank you cards or postcards. These can be signed by your board members, volunteers, or clients. So I actually had a client who at the beginning of every board meeting just had board members spend 10 minutes writing thank you notes. 10 minutes. That's all it took. They got all of them out of the way, and they were hand signed by board members. Made a huge difference in terms of retention. You could do shout outs on social media. They don't have to be specific. They can be generic. Shout out to all of those of our supporters, can't tell you how thankful we are. You could say, so one of the things I did one time, totally stole this from Boston University. One of the things I got from them was a photo. Excuse me, of students and each student had a letter and it was T-H-A-N-K-Y-O-U. Totally stole that from them. Had a client of mine get some of their clients to volunteer, made the little signs and then took a picture. And then that went out on social media. So it was a big shout out to all the supporters of that organization. Can I tell you how many likes we got on that one? You also want to make sure people are sharing your stuff if you can encourage them to do that. You could do a donor spotlight. So I've done this before where I interview a donor and ask them sort of like, why do you give to this organization? Why is this organization important to you? It is like literally a quick 30 to 60 second video. It is raw. It is unedited. You know, if there's a huge gap, I'll just say keep going. We'll edit that part out. And then I'll use a program called Descript to edit it, because then you can edit the words and it edits the video. Anyway, you do donor spotlights. If you're going to do them, I would really suggest video, because again, very, very hard, hard-hitting stuff. You can put a donor page on your website. That is going to take some maintenance. So you want to make sure that if you're going to make that investment, that you can continue to maintain it so that it's accurate and up to date. You could use signage at your events. So for example, last week I was at Tanglewood and my brother and I were out on the lawn just hanging out on our blanket with 17,000 other people. But anyway, they had these screens and they just played the same slides over and over but two of those were thank you slides. So it'd be like. Thanks to all of you tangled supporters. We couldn't do this without you. And another one was worded differently. But I was like, awesome, good idea. So they're taking advantage of real estate that they're already using to thank their donors. So you can do things like that. You could use Giving Tuesday to thank donors instead of asking them for money. And I've done this, a client of mine, well, they've been on our roster for 10 years. We've been doing this every Giving Tuesday. We have a board thank-a-thon. The board freaking loves it. They love making those calls, even if they're leaving a message. You know, we provide them with a script and we provide them with donor information so that they can have a detailed conversation like, oh, I see you've been giving us for 23 years. I can't tell you how thankful we are for your support. So they love it. The board loves it. They look forward to it every year. It is one of their favorite fundraising activities. So it works. Plus what's really funny. is the day either that night or the day after we see donations go bing. So they're so excited that they got thanked. They get online and give. So unintended consequences, but hey, we'll take the money. And anything else you can dream up. So thank your donors at least seven times a year and it will really help with retention.

The other thing I'm going to say is to embrace technology because it's here to stay. So you're going to want to stay updated on all the advancements in fundraising technology. Doesn't mean you have to use every tool that comes along, but it's good to know your options. And I'm getting more and more into the world of chat GPT because it is really, really helpful with donor, efficient donor engagement and communications. So what I have seen chat GPT gpt say that five times fast do in less than one minute blows my mind so that being said i'm still a newbie when it comes to AI and i have to admit that i find it a little bit overwhelming, mostly just because i don't really know what to tell it, but the good news is my friend Jaime O’Connor is a master at ChatGPT and she's going to come on my show in a few weeks and help us all get started with that. But it really, really can, like, we're all so busy, right? We're being pulled in 50 million directions. But if you can train chat GPT to like your voice, the tone of your organization, how you want to communicate with your donors, you can tell it, you know, write a welcome drip sequence, you know, to new donors for our organization. And yes, you have to keep training it so you refine it and refine it and refine it. But pretty soon it is cranking out content that would take you an hour. And that was like two minutes. So AI can be super, super helpful. So anyway, Jamie's coming on the show. Shout out to Jamie. Thank you for offering to come and teach everybody a chat GPT.

The other thing is we all know that the non-profit structure could be a little. bit slow to change in terms of the environment. But we need to watch the industry. So find a couple of periodicals and people that you trust. I'd suggest no more than five, ideally three, so you don't get overwhelmed. I mean, I don't know about you, but I had to unsubscribe from all, pretty much all the newsletters that were coming into my inbox, because like I can get 200 emails a day. I can't sit through that much information. So I just had to make a uniform decision to unsubscribe and trust that if I need information, I can go out and find it. But keep up with what they're saying. Find some industry leaders that you know, like entrust, like Tom Ahern. I used to follow Simone Jouaille religiously. Unfortunately, Simone is no longer with us. And there's other people out there that really know what they're talking about. So find them and follow them again. Three to five, no more than that, three to five. This doesn't mean you have to implement every single tactic and strategy that they suggest, but it's good to keep your finger on the pulse. So I actually read Harvard Business Review, Fast Company Entrepreneur and Inc, again, four, to see where for-profits are heading. And then I sit around and think, how can I apply that to the work that I'm doing in the nonprofit sector? Because I actually believe that nonprofits are businesses. So we are in the business of providing food, housing homeless people, providing, we're in the business of substance abuse recovery, right? So we are in business. And just that we have a mission. So we're in the business of blank, whatever your mission is, and 100% of our profits have to be invested back into the business. Beyond that, I think there's more similarities than differences. We're all selling a product, right? So we call those services. We all need customers. We call them clients. We need to make sure that we're delivering customer service, which client satisfaction, right? So there's so many parallels that I actually watch what the for-profit sector is doing. And then I kind of innovate and do my little alchemy thing and figure out how to apply it to nonprofits. Similarly with things like, for example, I've studied neuro-linguistic programming, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only person on the planet who raises money who has done that. Maybe there's two other outlying people, but I find it really, really useful in terms of accessing people's subconscious, because that's where we make our decisions. And I've also studied donor psychology for the same reason, right? So I just have this weird, wacky, curious mind, and I'll just go down the rabbit hole. So you might think about things like that too. What are some things that you might become a master at? Whether it's the connection between homelessness and housing and like housing prices, whatever it is that's piqued your curiosity in your industry, you might just do a little research. Go down a rabbit hole or two, see where it brings you. But I think it's really, really important to keep your finger on the pulse of where things are headed and make sure that you're ready to respond to changes in the environment.

Those are my eight go-to strategies for getting to know your donors and supporters at a much deeper level and engage them. I hope they were helpful. And what I would suggest is just take one strategy at a time and see how it goes, right? You just want to test one experiment, right? And then just see how it goes. And if that works, great. If it doesn't work, you can tweak it. I'm always here to help. If you're trying to implement a strategy and you're running into a brick wall, send me an email and we'll figure out what's going on. And then once you've fully experimented with that strategy, then move on to another, because you can't do eight things at once, right? So. Take it slow, do one strategy at a time, test for success, and then try another. And I'm willing to guarantee that by implementing just one of these strategies, you're going to see a boost in your revenue. So thanks for joining me today. Don't forget, if you want Story Find, send me an email. Jesse, can you pop my email again into the chat? So we've got the Story Find book. And then if you want a sample donor survey, shoot me an email and let me know. And you can also, if you're not already on our mailing list, again, send an email to [email protected]. And you could put the word ‘list’ in the subject and Jesse will get you on our list. And that way you can get this transcript, not only from today's show, but from future episodes. And I'm gonna be back on July 24th with Dr. Dan Young. And he actually got his doctorate on giving to nonprofits by millennials. So, I don't know about you, but I am super excited to hear what Dan has to say on that subject. So have a great day and I'll see you in two weeks. Bye. 

Thanks for tuning in. I'll be back in two weeks with another episode. Got topics you want me to cover? Organizations you want me to showcase? Let me know. Also, I'm here to help you revolutionize philanthropy at your nonprofit. If you want to talk about what that looks like, drop me an email.