Name: Donor Retention - From First Gift to Lifelong Support
Uploaded: 2025-03-20T18:16:21.086Z
Duration: 54 min 56 s
Description: Donor Retention - From First Gift to Lifelong Support

Transcript for "Donor Retention - From First Gift to Lifelong Support": Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for our session today, Fundraising Teams, Empowering the People Behind the Work with our amazing nonprofit expert, Maureen Walbioff. Before we kick it off, I just wanna introduce our colleague, my colleague Daniel Gwynn. He's our Blackbaud representative. He's here on the line. If you have any questions throughout the session about our solutions or would like to connect, so you can direct message him and I'll post that in the chat as well. And then I just want to give a heads up, we'll be launching some really fun polls throughout this session and you're able to interact with those polls. There's going to be a poll section that opens up right next to the messages panel on your right hand side. So that'll open and close when we launch the polls. Alright. And I think without further ado, let's go ahead and pass it over to Marie to kick this off. Thank you, Abby. Hi, everybody. Super excited to be here on the first day of spring talking about donor retention. Right? Who doesn't wanna talk about donor retention no matter what day it is? So really grateful to Blackbaud for giving us this opportunity to gather together and, start, with the content. So let's start sharing the slides. Okay. Excellent. I just wanna make this a little bit bigger here. Fantastic. Great. So heart of fundraising, donor retention from the first gift to lifelong support, whatever that looks like for your, organization. Let's just see. This is a new interface. There we go. Okay. Great. Whoops. There we are. We're gonna roll with it. Okay. Thanks everybody for two seconds of patience. So my name is Maureen Walbeoff. I'm a nonprofit digital strategist and technology coach, and my whole passion in my professional life is helping nonprofit folks who are not super technical without a lot of technical training, make really good decisions about the systems they use and how they use those systems. We all have databases and email tools and spreadsheets and fundraising tools. My my, excitement is in solving problems that people have with those things and helping them get a re good return on their investment. And I live out on Cape Cod in Massachusetts where it is a nice spring day. Yeah. Okay. Our agenda today, we've got three big topics that we're gonna talk about. Why retention really matters. We all know it really matters. We're gonna talk about why. Meaningful donor journeys and how to use data to deepen the connections that you've got with your supporters, and we'll have some time for open q and a at the end. Before we get into the first agenda item, though, I just wanna make a connection to the webinar that we held last month. If you did not see it, I bet you could sign up and see the recording. This series is all about how to build emotional, not necessarily transactional relationships with our supporters. And one of the things that I spoke about last time was we do a lot of high touch work with a certain part of our file. Our major donors, our major donor prospects, planned giving prospects, those folks get most of our time and attention. But they're only usually about 20% of your overall donor mix, which means 80% of the time for 80% of our supporters, we are sort of relying on email, direct response, pretty pro form a for most of us, not a lot of, like, relationship building, getting to know people, personalizing the experience that they have working with us. And so we're gonna tie those threads together today. Why donor retention really matters? And I will ask you to bear with me because we're gonna look at some numbers before we start to get into the heart, and how to really get people to respond emotionally to your outreach and opportunities to support the organization that you're sharing. Before we get into the numbers, though, of donor retention, I wanna know some of your numbers. What's the average donor retention rate at your organization? What is it for last year? Let's let's pick 2024. Is it more than 50%? If it is, we wanna talk to you because you're doing a lot of things right, I'm sure. Is it somewhere between '25 and, you know, 50%? Is it between 1025%? Or maybe you're not sure. You don't track those numbers or maybe you don't have those numbers for 2024. So we'll give you a minute here. I'm very curious because I do have an average for us. Hi, everyone. I'm 2024. Sorry, Maureen. I'm popping back on. So you know, if you all could please go into the poll section, that should pop up to the right of your messages tab, instead of putting it in the chat so that we can see the results, that would be great. Thanks, Abby. A a new new interface for many of us here. Some of us are in Zoom all day long. So more than 50 rock stars, between twenty five and fifty, between ten and twenty five, not sure. Abby's gonna show us the results when, when we give it another second. Abby, what are you seeing in the q and a out of curiosity? So we've got a nice, a nice mix. A lot of lot of d's, couple not sure's, a lot of b's, a's, couple c's. Yeah. So here's what we've got. We've got more than 50%. Fifty of you who are here today. Excellent. 21%. Between 2550%. More. Almost double. About 32, 30 three percent, between 1025%, another healthy chunk. And a bunch of you are not sure. Go find out after this webinar because it's important information to have. Let's get back to the slide here. Okay. Great. Donor retention rates for 2024, and I've got my source linked on this slide. The average retention rate is close to 35%. All sizes of organizations, all missions and causes sort of blended together for the whole of 2024. So that's 35 ish out of a hundred donors, long term first gift sustainers, will make a second gift within twelve months, about 35%. So for those of you who are over 35, you're rocking it down. Let's break that down just a little bit more, though. So first time donors, and I've got a really let me just hide something because I've got a now I can read my own slides. Fabulous. First first time donors, 20%, twenty new donors out of a hundred are going to make a second gift sometime within twelve months of that first donation. Repeat donors, about 53, close to fifty four percent of those who have given in two or more consecutive years will make another gift within twelve months. So that's a nice healthy repeat donor number, about half of them. And then recapture donors. Donors who have been lapsed for at least twelve consecutive months, you do a good job of bringing them back. You sort of balance out to that average amount. Right? 35.72%. So take these numbers and check your own performance. You may have very different numbers than this, but these are sort of our industry averages. So if you're under the industry average, I bet you could do a little bit of testing, a little bit of work to try to get more in line with the averages. And the reason that we're spending time talking about donor acquisition at the beginning of this webinar is because it costs us money to acquire new donors. About 50 to a hundred dollars per donor in 2024 was the average individual donor acquisition cost. And we want to keep them around so that we get a bit of a return on our investment. If you're spending $70 to acquire a new donor who gives you $25 and never gives again, you're in the hole on that donor. And so we wanna make sure that our efforts are spent keeping donors around as long as possible without a lapse. It's the age old thing. I've been working with nonprofits since 1991, and we've been talking about this stuff pretty close to thirty years. But we have more tools and tactics and information to help us do a better job. On the slide here, I've got four real common ways that we tend to acquire new donors. I did not put list buying or list sharing in here. I did not put Google grants for Google search ads in here. These four are kind of the tried and true that most of us use or have used. So digital marketing, highly effective, low cost, high likelihood of a return. So digital is email and SEO and social media ads. It's got broad reach, and it helps us find younger donors. Millennials, the oldest are over 40. So millennials are quickly moving into what we would consider an average age of a donor, industry wide. Direct mail, the old engine that brings in a lot of money every year for many of us, it's moderately effective because it costs us money to do it. It costs us more to do direct response outreach and appeals than it does to do digital most of the time. But it has been a cornerstone of our fundraising for many, many years. It's never gone away in our lifetimes. We'll always use it to some degree. They're lower, but the gifts that come in are generally higher. So, you know, it kinda all works out in the watch. Events, five years post pandemic now, thankfully. So whether it's virtual or in person, these can be moderately to highly effective ways for you to grab new donors, bring them close to you. It depends on how much you can invest in staff time, money, how successful your sponsorships are, if you have auctions, as a part of your event planning structure. You're investing a lot and, you know, you're crossing your fingers that you'll come out of it ahead, with those new donors in hand ready to continue to partner with you in the future. And then peer to peer fundraising. It's highly effective because we're not the ones who are asking. It's highly effective because people who have relationships with those new donors are actually doing the ask. And whether you run walks or rides or dog washes or you've got peer to peer software that lets people do a DIY. I'm running in a turkey trot for Thanksgiving. Please donate to this organization or, you know, peer to peer in honor or tribute. I'm seeing more and more organizations have peer to peer as a really healthy pipeline of new donors coming into the organization. Then you just really need to turn them into people who are actually supporting you because you asked them as opposed to supporting you because my sister asked me to do that. We all know poor donor retention is a problem. This is not a news flash at all. But I wanted to spend a second to talk a little bit about the impact that it has on our organization when we have a lot of churn. We get a hundred new donors, 70 of them never give again. It's a lot of work upfront. Right? And it has an impact on us as a team, fundraising team, as an organization financially and strategically. So if you are, you know, good on acquisition but not great on retention, you've got an unsustainable fundraising expense. You're spending a lot of money at the top of the funnel, and, you're losing most of that investment because people churn out really fast. If your revenue is super inconsistent, it leads to difficulty in planning and budgeting. You know? Can I hire that new person? Can we, run this event the way that I want? Because I can't really predict whether I'm gonna make my fundraising goals this quarter or not. Overreliance, generally speaking, on one time donors, one and done, they're in and out, really forces your team into a firefighting cycle. Right? Constant emergencies. We've gotta make up our shortfall from last year, last quarter, last month, last campaign. We want people to stick around so that we can count on them to continue to give for at least a little while. Losing those big pool, the 70 out of a hundred new donors, also means we don't really have a chance to do prospecting with those folks. They may come in giving you $75 or as a modest sustaining gift. But if they leave too early before you really have a chance to build that relationship with them, you are missing the boat on larger future gifts. Right? Bequest, planned giving, major gifts, etcetera. The longer people stick around, the likelier they might be to be a prospect for one of those other giving opportunities. And don't generally, all of us, who don't feel connected are just not gonna wanna do other things, volunteer, serve as an ambassador, introduce you to people who might be helpful to your work, and just kinda spread the word about your mission and the fact that other people should support you. It's a heavy price to pay when we're not really able to keep our donors around for longer than a one time gift. And this is where we're gonna bring in the heart, the emotion, the heart centered fundraising. This is all about soft skills at scale. New donors, you don't know who they are. You don't know why they made that first gift. Our job, as soon as that donor makes the first gift, is to begin to build and strengthen the relationship with them. So avoid using transactional language in your messages, acknowledgements, appeals, newsletters. If your newsletter is, like, an appeal disguised as a newsletter, not gonna resonate with people in 2025. Pick a couple of donors, new donors, and send them a personal email, like, five every month. Block the time out in your calendar now. And it almost doesn't matter who you pick, you guys. But just the act of reaching out is gonna help you build that muscle and help you know what works well with that new donor outreach so that then you can do it with your technology in a way that feels genuine and personal and warm. Don't make giving your only ask. So if a new donor comes in, it's great to find out how else they might want to get involved with you or for you to offer a non donation buffet of other things they can do. They may cost the donor five minutes. They may require learning how to become a volunteer, going through a background check, volunteering at your organization for real, tabling at an event. There's lots of opportunities most of us have, to help a new donor feel connected to our community, to us as people, and want to do more to help us meet our missions. But what many of us do because we are busy folks, We run lean. I don't care how many people you have in your organization. You don't have enough. It's usually the the way that it goes. Right? So we've gotta know how we're gonna retain those new donors long before that first gift is made. If you've got a big donor acquisition campaign coming up this year, priming the pump for lots of new donors for end of year. Can't believe we're talking about November, but we all we plan ahead and we know how the the fundraising cycle goes. So you have to have the plan and the tools and the messaging even if it's super simple, not sophisticated, and it's in a test type of mode, a pilot mode, you have to know what you're gonna do the minute that Abby makes her first twenty dollar gift. What is the experience that I want Abby, my new donor, no matter how I acquired her, to have in the first ninety days, in the first six months of our organization's relationship with them? People don't believe me. This is true. The highest likelihood of Abby, new $25 donor, making a second gift is in the first ninety days after she made her first gift. Best time to ask someone to take a second action is within ninety days, sometimes even shorter of that first action because you're still sort of top of mind. She still has some good feeling about that first twenty five dollar gift that she gave you. You can maximize on that. Capitalize on that. Build immediate trust and connection. We have all done online shopping or signed up for a course or a mastermind or done something online, and we know right away if this entity that we've started a relationship with is gonna work for us or not. So if you are transactional, here's your autoresponder, here's your tax receipt, you don't hear from me again until it's time to ask for more money or it's a sort of a more general monthly or quarterly newsletter. What if you had a newsletter just for new donors that speaks to building that relationship, opening their eyes to the good work that you're doing and getting them excited to continue to build that relationship with you. And it also reinforces the impact of the gift right away. Do not wait to start building that connection between Abby, new $25 donor, and the work that you do. A retention plan for a brand spanking new donor maps out that donor's journey and experience well into the future. I like the first year, frankly. I think twelve months. If I can get Abby to make a second gift, then she is no not gonna lapse. I have probably made back my retention cost depending on how she came in or my, my acquisition costs no matter how she came in the door. And it's going to give me and my team practice at thinking about many donors like building individual relationships with them. That is my soapbox about, donor acquisition and retention. Meaningful donor journeys. You know, constituent journey, supporter journey, marketing automation. There's a lot of different terms that we use to describe an experience that we provide to someone who has taken an action. And there are so many easy ways for you to use technology to provide that really high touch, feels personal, feels like you're paying attention to what I'm doing, feels like we're getting to know each other, and, we're developing a long positive relationship with email with email. That's really all you need. I wanna know I'm a curious person. Do your new donors receive any special messaging? Whether they wandered by accidentally or, you know, if they were targeted as part of an acquisition campaign. Do your new donors receive any special messaging? As Abby asked, please use the poll on the right hand side of your screen to select your answer. Do you send new donor mail or email other than an autoresponder? New donors get something special. Are they just added to your general communication list as long as they've opted into getting communication from you? Or are you not sure? Let somebody else handle. Maybe that's your digital team or your comms team, fundraising development folks. You know, they're just assuming that, your communications people take, ownership of those things. We'll give you a second here. I usually see quite a mix of answers to this question. Abby, when you think you're ready, we can launch the poll results. Yeah. More than half of you are doing something to bring a new donor a little closer together. About 35, 30 six percent of you are you know, Here you go. You're opted in. You're in the stream. Welcome. And then not too many of you aren't sure, which is great. That means you sort of have your finger on the pulse of what's going on. Let's get down to the slide here. There's our poll slide. Share that slide. Great. Let's talk for a minute about what a donor journey is. I mentioned this a second ago, but I think it's helpful to think about it like someone got in the car with you. It really is a journey. And you think you're going the same place as that person to a better world, to curing a disease, to feeding the hungry, whatever your mission happens to be. But every experience, looking at your website, looking at your social media, opening text messages, telling you more about themselves. That's the journey. And our journey's goal is kinda twofold. Keep them taking action and engaged to build that relationship and put things in front of them that we want them to do. Donor journey isn't just about, you know, learning more about Abby. It's used I use that information that I learn about Abby to give them a better experience. And again, to use our major donor prospects or, plan giving folks. We do that with them. It's moves management. Right? You know, like, I've identified them. I'm gonna do this, then I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna give them a proposal. And, hopefully, I know enough about them and the things they wanna support and the amount they can give at to make an ask that will be accepted and fulfilled. We can and should be doing that for everybody else in our file, the other 80%. The goal of journey is awareness. Abby's like, oh, bikes for kids. I'm a bike person. I'm gonna give that $25. But Abby hasn't really explored who you are, how you give bikes to kids, the impact that having those bikes has on kids. That's connection, and connection leads to long term commitment. You can't skip connection if you want somebody to stick around more than a gift or two. I think when I talk with folks about donor journeys, people get very nervous and already throw up a lot of barriers. Like, it's very complicated. I don't have time. I'm not a technical expert. All of those things are can be very real, but they can also be solved. Because at the at the core, you really just need four things to create a donor journey. And do it soon so that new donors who come into your organization can get that experience. Try not to wait on this. You need realistic, measurable goals. And this is where people get, like, overwhelmed very quickly when I talk with them about setting up donor journeys because it feels like I need to do that for everyone, and I need to make the equivalent of a journey of the New York subway system. You know? It's gotta have 17 stops and a lot of branches. No. Start super simple. Nobody needs to overcomplicate this. So pick a time specific retention goal. I want Abby to make a second gift within the first six months of her first gift. I want Abby to, get involved with our, teaching kids how to ride bikes program. Whatever it is, could be a little action, could be a big action. Keep it modest. Keep it simple. Second thing you need is a defined audience. You don't need to reach out and build a a donor journey for every type of donor you have today. You just don't. Pick one segment. Brand new donors, lie bunts, just my peer to peer donors. Let's see if how many of those we can convert into real supporters of our organization. Maybe just online, maybe just donors who gave under a hundred bucks, maybe donors who gave over a hundred and 50 might, get more raise more money if you focused on that segment. So don't scatter shot, niche down, and practice with one segment. You also need assets that prompt action and feeling. Right? That emotional response. Your appeals, your newsletters, your updates should be action requesty filled. Tell us more. Take this poll. Which is your favorite image? Cat person, dog person? Fill out this survey. Gather more information from them. Makes them feel like you are more interested in them. And, again, that connection starts to get built. And number four is just smart technology and data use. It is 2025. We all have spreadsheets. We all use paper for some things, but your data about your supporters, what they do, what you've put in front of them, what they give to, what they don't open is gold. It's your second most valuable asset after your staff is your data and how you're using your technology. So any data that you're capturing along the way should be stored on the donor's record and is reportable. So realistic goals, you're not gonna convert. If you're you're at the 25% donor retention rate, you're not gonna turn it into 75 in the next ninety days. I mean, it'd be great if you did, but reasonable goals that make you feel successful and niche down that audience. I've got a couple samples for you. This is a sample new donor welcome series plan that I have used with lots and lots of organizations over the years. It's thirty days. Sometimes you end with an ask. Sometimes you don't. But this might give you a pretty good framework how to plan a journey for donors that you've identified. Let's look at this together. So in the left hand column, we've got the timing after that first gift. They're gonna get the autoresponder on day zero, the day that they made that donation. So, hopefully, that is not transactional. It's got effusive thanks and recognition in it. You cannot overthink someone for their first gift. The next day, you're gonna send them an email that is a welcome to your community. You're gonna share some stories of hope, and you want that new donor to feel inspired and appreciated. That's why you're sending it. Ten days, tell us what you're interested in. Maybe you try text messaging that. Goes to a donor survey. Wants them to feel connected. At the twenty day mark after the first gift, maybe a video email message from your CEO or someone who has benefited from one of your programs or a staff person or a volunteer. Those work really well too. The theme there is accountability in progress, and we want people to feel trust in us. Video helps with that. And hope. Yes. Using my money well. And then at the thirty day mark, you could do a a campaign with a hashtag why I give. Maybe you experiment with both email and text, encouraging that new donor to share on social why they love supporting your cause. And it's getting them to take that next action publicly, representing your community. I stand with this organization. Messaging plan to align with that. So, like, spreadsheets are your friend here. Piece of paper is your friend. Message one is your autoresponder. Plan this out. Message details are important. Who's the sender? What's the subject line? Those two things are the reason people open messages. What images are you gonna use? What call to action will you have in that note? So this will help you sort of set it up and build out, gather the assets to build these messages out in your texting system or your CRM if that sends emails for you or your email tool. And I would buddy up with my comms people. If you got digital savvy people on your team, come together collaboratively and plan this out and give it a run. Don't assume anything about your new donors, and we do it all the time. They are young, they're old, they're on an iPhone, you know, depending on what data you're getting from your fundraising tool. But if you put people in boxes before you start to really learn about them, you are gonna shut down some innovation. So you might misunderstand what they really want from you unless you ask, overreliance on stereotypes. You might avoid modern payment methods, very exciting stuff happening with Luminate online right now where all these new payment methods are available. It's super cool and swanky. Or avoiding texting. Right? My donors are old. They don't like texts. You don't know that unless you've tried. Assuming that someone who's disengaged means they're disinterested, you just haven't connect wrung their bell yet. Try again. It stops you from soliciting feedback because maybe that would mean you would have to change something, and it will suppress creativity and innovation. And creativity is what you need here. These are new donors. They have no impression of you. You kinda can't get it wrong. New ways to connect with these new donors helps build that high performing strategic donor retention strategy with heart, with emotion, building that community. This is very true. When donors see that you're interested in them, what their interests are, what their connection to your organization is, they feel a stronger bond and a greater sense of commitment to your organization's mission even if they've only given one gift because they know you're trying. And if you're creative and flexible, if you've got, like, a pilot method, Like, I'm gonna try this. I'm gonna do a pilot. New donor journey. People who gave over a hundred bucks. 1 time gift. Brand new donors online only. If you can get really creative and innovative, some video does not have to be professional. Be a little saucy depending on your mission. Some missions do not support that. It's very, life or death for some of our missions. But you're better flexible. You're building in flexibility at the beginning so that when you learn donors love this, don't like that, you can drop that, do more of this over time. Definitely will improve your retention rates, like, right out of the gate. Okay. Back to data again because I know you collect a lot of it, and I'm not always sure what you're doing with it. We collect so much information about our supporters, and we don't really use it to our advantage most of the time. It's just there. So, again, a question from curious Maureen. How are you using donor data today, my friends? Is it for performance performance reporting only? Yay. We hit our campaign goal. Double yay. We exceeded our campaign goal. Didn't hit it. Not so good. Gotta make up ground. Do you use it for prospecting and list building only? Like, who do I wanna run through a wealth screening tool? See who might be able to give more personalized donor content beyond your first name. Some combination of these uses of data to customize your outreach to these new donors, or something else, which would include none. We're not using any of this. This is, again, another place where I see patterns over and over again that I would love to bust in 2025. So please use the poll on the right hand side of your screen. How are you and your team using donor data today? I was gonna pull you on whether you trusted your donor data, but maybe at a future webinar, we will do that. So Abby will give it a second, let folks respond, and then you can share the results. I see a lot of a and b, I'll just say. Not oh, I'm gonna my miss will be busted today. I love you guys. Performance reporting only, 23 folks. Prospecting and list building, 15 of you. Some combination, 80% of you are doing at least some of this stuff. What makes me a little sad is I don't see a lot of personalized donor content. That's you're missing a big opportunity. Your email tool and your database should talk to each other. And even if they don't, which is a lot of worlds that a lot of us live in, you can and should be taking donor information and using it to segment your audience so that the dog people see a dog picture or get a dog heavy newsletter. Cat people see a cat picture, Get maybe the leading story in your newsletter or on your donation form is a picture of a cat instead of a dog? We can do all this with technology today, and I think it might feel like a giant step. We don't wanna get it wrong. If Abby's a cat person, I don't wanna share a dog picture with her. I'm gonna offend her. It stops my building the relationship. I think we can be a little less careful about that. You still have to have clean data that you trust. But I think if you do baby steps with personalization and and, conditionalization of lots of things that you're gonna put in front of your donors, it's it's really a a win. Let's go down. Oh, guys. Okay. Here we go. But data feels like robots, and we've been talking about emotions and feelings and building one to one connections with a lot of people using our technology, we have to use that data in a human centered way. Right? So look beyond the numbers. Sometimes our gut or our experience tells us that the data may not be correct. Pay attention to that, but do not then say that data is worthless because my gut tells me it's wrong. Do some investigation. Detect giving patterns thoughtfully. If a group of donors that you've always counted on stops giving or your average gift amount goes from a hundred and 12 down to 50, Consider reaching out. Find out from those donors what is up with them. Don't ask them like that. But, you know, you've been a longtime supporter, Abby, of our organization. And I I can't help but wonder, you know, is there something about our mission that no longer appeals to you? Or, you know, what could we be doing? How could we help you come back to our organization? Just a couple of outreaches can tell you a lot about a big population and measure impact, not just revenue. You know, track how donor contributions are helping your organization meet your mission, and be sure to share that with those new donors. You can use your donor data for a billion things, but here's five. Use giving history, engagement preferences, and demographics, I just said, to tailor messages. Segment those donors. No. I just watched your chat. Love it. They're getting a dog picture anyway, no matter what. We worry about that. We do nothing if we are afraid that we're gonna make a mistake. So, tread carefully is what I would say, but with some confidence in a entrepreneurial attitude. Segment those donors based on giving levels, frequency, the type of giving that they do. Predict who's gonna lapse. This is a thing that I don't think we'd spend much time on, if any. When do people start to flake out? What are the signs that they're going to stop giving, that they will become a lapsed donor, that they will not be retained? No longer opening email, maybe not giving the same dollar amount, giving less, changing their sustaining gift to a one time gift. They leave breadcrumb trails that if we pay attention to in our data, it helps us pivot and keep them with us longer. And AI or conditional giving levels. So there are tools out there, Blackbaud has several of them, that depending on my giving history, I'm gonna see different donation levels on my donation form than Abby will. Or I give using an iPhone, Abby uses Android, my donation levels are higher than hers because some assumptions have been made about my ability to give a little bit more. Data problems and solutions, then we'll move into some q and a. These things stop us, but they can be solved. Poor data hygiene. Update your addresses. Fill in missing information. Merge those dupes. You got 16 John Smiths in there. It's gonna be awful hard to give them a personal experience and the right donor journey. Stand to lose those folks early? Storing information for no defined purpose. I wanna know if someone is a vet. How are you gonna use that information? Is it pertinent to your organization today? So be sure that as you add fields to your CRM or your surveys that there's a goal for using that data. Data silos. Right? Over here, I've got information about email. Over here, I've got information about donors. Bring those silos together and define a source of truth. Where is the real information about what a supporter is and isn't doing with you? And not doing segmentation at all. Like, everybody gets everything. If your message is for everyone, it's not for anyone in particular. And that is not a relationship building, heart centered, emotional fundraising strategy. Lastly, always keep the donor's experience in mind. So take a test drive of the stuff that you're giving to them, online direct response. And bonus points if you can pull in a friend, a neighbor, your uncle who is completely disconnected to the work that you do, have them do these things and report back. Is it easy and clear to do these things, or is it glitchy? Where can we personalize stuff? Do does that experience make the person feel valued? Are we putting them in the story? Are we generating the right emotion? Is it frustrating rather than heartwarming, and I feel good? So this is all up to you. And if you haven't done this in a while, I would encourage you to do it, like, before the end of the month. So we've got just a minute or two for open q and a. Abby, has anything come in that we should spend a sec on today? Oh, yes. Absolutely. We've got lots of great questions in here. And I'll go ahead and start. Wendy asked, what is your advice if 80% only give mailing addresses in terms of, you know, personal outreach and Mhmm. Right after they give? Yeah. So, you know, if you just have a mailing address, I would send them something in the mail with a link to a form where they can give you more of that information. That's like the ease in one of the easiest ways. Not everybody's gonna do it, but, if that's all you've got, it's a great way, to make them feel recognized and appreciated and then get them to give you more info in a way that your staff doesn't need to take another piece of mail and do data entry into your system. There are also services out there where you can it's the cool creepy line where you can share your list, your file, or segments of your file with a data append company where they can say, here's Abby's information. You've provided the mailing address. We think this is Abby's phone number. This is Abby's email address. There are a zillion services out there that are tracking all of us that have that information. So that would be another way to do it. And then I would make sure that you're trying to get people to do things online. You're spending money when you go direct mail, as I mentioned earlier. And as you know, the more you can transfer people to doing things digitally, the easier and less expensively it will be to communicate with them frequently. I hope I hope that's helpful. Definitely. Jonathan asks, should new donors receive one welcome email or a series or maybe some combo? Series. I'm a I'm a big welcome series marketing automation person because you can write them all, schedule them, and walk away. Just measure how people are interacting with those things and improve them over time. So I like four messages in a series over four to five weeks after the first gift because it's not annoying. It's not over messaging. Maybe, you know, you wait ten days in between messages, sprinkle them around. And another good thing to test if you are doing a series is have them go out in different days and different times of day so that you can then have more of those messages delivered at a time when people are actually opening and interacting with them. Love it. Going back to the beginning of your session, Noelle asks, which of these donor acquisition channels typically have the highest retention looking into the future? Oh, man. That is the best question, and I don't know. I'm gonna be honest as I always am and say, I'm not sure. But, Abby, let me do a little bit of research, and then, we can we can answer that question. Either you can do a follow in the follow-up email that you sent to folks who registered for this webinar. If I get it to you today, do you think we could do that? Absolutely. Alright. Such a great question. Now I wanna know that answer too. So, Abby, I'll be in touch with you before I log off today. Perfect. Well, great. We'll get a couple more questions here, and thank you everyone, if you have to drop. So Gloria asks, Ray, a ninety day timeline for the second ask. Does it matter what the amount of the first gift is? So, for example, if they gave 10 k, do you go for a second ask after ninety days? That is an excellent question, and I do think there's a threshold. So if someone makes a first gift of 10 k, it is it's possible that they did that online. We've all gotten those magic, you know, like, I got $10,000 on my online donation form. Most of the time, that's gonna be a check, or a a donor advised fund gift or something like that. I do think that any gift over 5 k, you can wait. And I might do more relationship building work longer. Instead of ninety days, I might say, you know, four to five months before I would pursue and ask. Or I would really actually move that person into my, planned giving or major gift pipeline. If their first gift is at 10 k depending on how your organization's you know, who's a major gift prospect versus who is individual giving. 10 is a healthy amount that I think most of us would move and assign a solicitor or a prospect manager to them. So for me, it's about $22,000 1 time first gift, journey and ask, and the ask might be for them to become a sustainer. I don't want another $10,000 gift. I mean, I do want another $10,000 gift from you one time. I want you to become someone who gives to me every month at a lower amount and sticks around longer. It's one person's opinion. I happen to agree with you, Maureen. It's all two people's opinions. Yeah. Alright. We'll do another one here. Amy asks, what if you do outreach and you, you know, you send asks for gifts, but they never call you back or email you back? Mhmm. Yeah. It's very frustrating. Right? And so what I ask myself when that has happened to me in the past, Amy, is am I communicating the right information to them through the right channel? So I'm emailing. I'm calling. It's nothing. No response. You know, eventually, you've gotta stop the outreach if, you know, their behavior is saying leave me alone, like, talk to the hand. But I might switch channels at that point if and I might change what I'm asking them for. That might be where I would say, I want I thought of you, and I wanted you to hear about this new program. Or, you know, our new our annual report, it's not on our website yet, but I wanna make sure that you had it. Figure out what other things you can put in front of them or use a different channel. And if you've, you know, text nothing, email nothing, phone call nothing, then I would put them in a in a let's see what we can do about getting them to give one more time and maybe it's end of year. Because you do not wanna over message. You do not wanna annoy people. We interpret silence as annoyance, and I hope people sometimes interpret my nonresponse, like, to a salesperson as, annoyance. You're annoying me, but I think we can be a little bit more creative and imaginative. Maybe they would watch a video if you sent them a video. I would play around with what you're sending them in the channel that you're using, Amy. Love it. Okay. I think we have time for one more here. Michelle asks, do you have any advice for bringing the twenty to thirty year old, generation into becoming a recurring? Yeah. Small they are the younger generation likes sustaining gifts because they pay for everything through Venmo or PayPal or their phones or what have you. Low, low dollar, 5 bucks a month, you're more likely to get those people giving to you in tiny amounts that they're not really gonna, you know, bulk at. But at the end of the year, you know, you've you can acknowledge them as a donor who gave more than $50, 60 bucks, 70 2 bucks, a year. So small micro gifts is the campaign that I would set up, and I would use video, and I would use TikTok. I would not try to sound like a youth because I am not one, but I might have a youth be the sender of those messages. Who's the youngest person on your team? Who's an ambassador? Who is a millennial or a gen z person who actually will not sound like they're trying too hard to get in touch with those folks. So little tiny gifts, effusive thanks and recognition, give them hashtags so that they can connect with you on social media. And, and that would be my advice, Michelle. I love it. I happen to agree. And if, you know, if your staff member isn't in that age range, you know, reach out to your friends, find a niece or nephew, ask them. They're happy to be. Is this is this lame or is this okay? Does this have no see, I know a little bit. I know a little bit of the lingo. Don't try too hard, and it will feel false, and they will think that you're lame. So so don't do that. Well, with that, Maureen, I think we will wrap it up. Thank you so much for such a wonderful session. Everyone, you will receive a link to the recording in your email. Don't miss our next session, that'll kick off in April, and we I'm so excited. Can't wait already. It's all about your team, How to support your team with heart and still get the work done. So I cannot wait to share that content with you and April. Great. Well, thank you, Maureen. Have a wonderful day, everybody. See you. Bye, folks.