Name: Top Trends Impacting Higher Education Annual Giving Fundraising
Uploaded: 2026-10-22T19:31:53.794Z
Duration: 59 min 24 s
Description: Top Trends Impacting Higher Education Annual Giving Fundraising

Transcript for "Top Trends Impacting Higher Education Annual Giving Fundraising": Hello, everyone. Welcome to our webinar today, top trends impacting higher education annual giving fundraising. We have great content for you today, and, and we wanna get started. But before we do, let me just cover a few high... Housekeeping items. First of all, the audio for this webinar is being broadcast to your computer, so please check your volumes. And if you are having trouble, please refresh your browser for audio or technical issues. A lot of times, just a quick refresh will fix everything. You will receive a link to this webinar recording via email, the email that you use to register, within twenty four hours. You can also download materials in the docs, tab right on your screen. You can use the q and a to submit questions. We also have the chat open, and I see that a lot of you are commenting on where you are. So thank you for that. And then the cogwheel below just... To adjust any settings you'd like to do during this webinar. With that, I will pass it over to Stacy. Thank you, Lolly. Hello. And I did see that you were hearing some echo. Somebody in the chat mentioned a little bit of echo. I'm not sure if that's true or if that was just Lolly. We'll see maybe if, it... I'm gonna We'll I'll... We'll test see what we can do about that, but thank you for letting us know that. Okay. Maybe... Is it better, folks, in the chat? From both of us? Okay. From Lalex, Tracy. How about Brian? So we have echo for Brian. Twice as nice from Brian. No? Hey. Alright. Okay. Okay. Our assistant. Well, All good now. we will, I'll try to minimize how much I speak because we'll let you go. But hello, everyone. I'm sorry that you are enduring the echo, but you are here. We're gonna introduce ourselves. But just to let you all know, in general, our agenda here, for those of you that have come in other years, we do like to anchor on a little bit of data, in general, and Brian is gonna fill us in on what's been happening or not happening on the data data front. And then we're gonna have a a special focus, time in our conversation to get into this concept of attention economy, which is not a term I had heard until recently, and it is fun to think about. And then we're gonna have some... Try to have some takeaways for you all in terms of measuring health, and then we'll have plenty of time for questions and answers. So in addition to stay active in the chat and then also anything from q and a, we want this to be very conversational. And when... I'm gonna move here into intro. So those of you that don't know me, I am Stacy Rooney. Hi. Hello. How are you? I am a strategic consultant here at Blackbaud. And I, I... As I said in the chat, I am in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I have gotten to work in fundraising for over twenty five years and, specifically at Blackbaud for twelve, I guess, as part of that journey, and always a lot of data and a lot of insights. And believe it or not, we're gonna... I'm gonna let Brian introduce himself, but he and I have... For those of you that have been coming to these webinars over the last several years that we've gotten to do, he and I actually have a much longer history from probably at twenty plus years ago where we have been nerding out about fundraising and data together for a long time. So I was just saying... And then, Brian, Brian, I'm gonna let you introduce yourself and, mention who our special guest is before we go into your slides. But while mid my introduction, I did wanna say ahead of this conversation that by default, I I run a little on the controlling side of things. But one of the things that I love about this webinar in particular is that it's kind of... I take the reins off, and a lot of it is, that Brian and myself and you're gonna meet Caitlin. It's trying to bring you all into some of this ideation and thought leadership that, like, in some of the things you might be ahead of us, it might, like, spark little nuggets, but we really want to try to bring you all into our nerdy excitement on the off chance that you also have family and friends that don't like to get as nerdy with you as we do. So that is part of the vibe today. So I am gonna be probably off stage for a chunk of this, but, Brian, do you want to, introduce yourself and, tease our our guest? Absolutely. Thank you, Stacy. Can you hear me alright, Stace? Alright, wonderful. Yeah, it has been fun. Every year Stace and I ride around, oh, kinda midsummer we connect and we said, Are you ready to start talking? And literally we just said, What do you wanna talk about? What did you hear over the last year? What have you been seeing? And, we'll have a couple of follow-up calls, and we ramble for an hour. They're like, where did we finish? Alright. This is where we finish. What's next? And and we come up with these topics, which we're really excited to share with you. So for those that I haven't met, I do, several different things and wear several different hats. So I have been a consultant with Campbell and Company, for about twenty two years now. So I do some annual giving consulting work part time. I also part time do work with, and behalf of Target Analytics, the donor centric's product, that's owned by Blackbaud. So I've been with them for twenty two years as well. And so I lead several of different benchmark meetings. I also do online data reviews and have been looking at this data for many, many years and absolutely love the product. Absolutely love what it provides. And one of the great joys that I have is sitting in on the meetings when we share the data in our collaborative benchmarking meetings and talk about them the best practices. That's where I think, the the joy and the excitement really happens. So that's all part time, full time. I'm the president of the Ama Legasse Foundation. So I've been doing that for twelve years based here in New Orleans. Prior to that, though, for about twenty years, I worked in higher ed advancement starting as a student caller to, you know, running a phone. That's when Stacy and I first met when I was at Iowa State to large schools, small schools, medical programs, and finished my hiring career as the senior vice president at the University of Arizona. So that's us. That's who we are. But we're really excited that we're gonna have a special guest joining us later on, and we'll give just that little bit of tease as well. So Kayla and Addison is gonna be joining us, and then Kayla and I met at one of those meetings that I mentioned. We were in, where are we? We were kinda in Massachusetts. I would call it Boston. I forget that name of the exact city. And we were catching up a little bit. And she started to share some things with me that I just thought were fascinating. When you when you get me to put down my glass of wine and go, what? What? That is interesting. That's when you know it's some good, good stuff. So Caitlin's gonna join us a little bit later on and tell us about some of the research that she's doing in her PhD program and how it ties into this. So I really look forward to that. So when we, always look at this presentation, we like to take both the statistical and the anecdotal and kind of blend them together. And as Stacy said, we like to do it in a casual way where it's a conversational way. You all can get the data. You can... Whether you're an FPM client or a DonorCentrix client, or looking at either one. And if you haven't joined either group or both, please do so. This is just a taste to wet your whistle of all the great stuff that's in here. But we know that it takes two things. It takes both the statistics and then the conversation and some of the, some of the stories behind it to really understand what's happening out there. And so we were able to take some of those data trends and look at them and say, what's been happening out in the world? And I'll go back to that slide. I I like this. I think Stacy, and I came with this. The trends are still trending. You know, isn't that what trends do? But, really, there's not a lot that's been changing year to year, but over a period of time, there has been a lot of change. And there's some things that are changing that we don't want to change, and there's things that we, would love to see change that aren't. And so we'll take a look at those as well. And when we start talking about statistics and looking at statistics and analysis, I think we need to make sure and back up a little bit to think about what are you analyzing internally as you run your programs. But maybe more importantly is what does your leadership look at? What are they measuring? And sometimes that's your immediate boss. Sometimes that's your boss's boss. Sometimes it's the head of the foundation. It might be the head of your school. It might be the head of the university or college that you're at. And really take time if you have it to understand what do they think is success because then that will also or should impact what you think is success. Now you see some beautiful fruits and vegetables here. I do work for chef Emeril Lagasse. So we gotta tie in a little bit of food, and I love food, but, you're actually gonna see this theme throughout. And it's not just because we love food. It's also because it talks about what we're trying to do in annual giving, and it's about growing something and harvest and yield. And you hear us use all these terms over and over again. And so I is it that you think your leadership is asking you to grow and ultimately to yield? And then you've gotta find that North Star for that measurement. So I'm gonna give you a couple just really high measurements that we've been looking was. just gonna. jump in, Brian, too to say on that. Like, on the previous slide, part of it that you'll see... You'll hear the... That we're saying is what leadership is telling you is a measure of success might not actually be the measure of healthy growth. So they're... We're teeing up a little bit of tension here and how to how to maybe educate yourselves and your leadership on ways to actually measure long term. But, yes, carry on. Get it... Get in. No. A great point, and I think Stacy will really kinda wrap this up in a nice bow when we get to the end. I mean, to her point is exactly they might say, well, I want more donors this year, or I want more dollars. Okay. We can do that. I can build a garden, and and I can grow something and harvest something that's gonna give me the highest yield for this year. Is that something that's sustainable long term? Let's take food for a second. Even if I can yield it high, is that good for your health, quote, unquote, your overall program health? These are the things that I think we have to really look at, and that's what we're gonna focus on here today. And I think Kayla had some really interesting things that when we're thinking about, what we're growing and how we're growing it and what kind of fertilizer we're using to grow it, is it the type of things that we want to yield in the end? So thank you, Stacy. I think that's a perfect example. So if we start with some high level metrics, we can take a look. This is from a presentation, that, my colleague Sean Keiser does, along with Catherine who also works at, Blackbaud. They do it earlier in the year. This is the donor centric state up, and from the nearly 200 clients that we look at and looking at change in donors. So when we say the trends are trending, this is one of those trends that are trending that we wish weren't, and that is the decreasing number of donors. So I just wanna play a little bit of math. Everyone knows this this has been happening, but I thought this was fascinating. So let's pretend you're a program, and in 2021, fiscal year 2021, you had 15,000 donors. What does this look like by 2025 if we took that number and followed the math here of down 2%, down 4%, down 3%, down 4%? Did the math. That equals... You would now be at 13,141. Start at 15, now at $131.41. Okay. Well, that's less 1,859 donors. If your average gift, which I'm gonna show in a moment, or your revenue per donor is $900, So if you take the 1,859 that you no longer have and you multiply that by what the revenue per donor is, which is... I'm gonna be modest and say $900. I'll show you the number in a moment. That's a loss of $1,600,000. So even if you were a revenue program, this is kind of what Stacy's talking a little bit about, is decreasing donors is going to have an impact on your revenue. So this example alone, and this is the national data that we are extracting from our donor centric reports. If you started with 15,000, you're now at 1,141 minus 1,859 donors, 1,600,000. Significant. You can do the math at your own institution. So how then have we seen some increases in revenue? We have. But note if we went back to 2020 and take out 2020 because it was kind of a strange year, but we go to nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, revenues have been going up. It's starting to flatline now. And the reason being is the number of decreasing donors is finally catching up and starting to surpass the difference we're making in the increase in revenue per donor. Right? So 2023, it's one of the first times we saw nationwide with our data a decrease in revenue year to year, flatline in 2024, and then up 4%, but that still does not take you back to where you were. So for one of the first times, we're now seeing revenue. We've stretched. We talked about this last year. We have a rubber band. We stretched it as far as we can. It's starting to break. And we are able to maintain that because of the increasing revenue per donor. So remember when I talked about using an average of maybe 900 for revenue per donor to do the math? This is where I got that number from. The revenue per donor can no longer keep up with the pace of the decreasing donors. And so that's the situation that we're in and that's where we're at. And if we're looking at just what's the harvest, the amount of broccoli that you have, what story is that telling? If we're looking at the quality of the broccoli, what is that telling us? Is it offsetting enough of the broccoli that we need to sell or to put in our bodies? Broccoli, I guess, is my theme today. So here's another trend that's been trending that, again, I kinda wish we weren't. So for years, boy, for twenty two years that I've been working with target analytics, we always talk about donor retention. Donor retention, donor retention. We gotta do donor retention. With all the effort, the time, the resources that we put in donor retention, if you look at multiyear donor retention and even first year donor retention, it has not changed nationwide for the last five years. It's been static. So this is then sort of like, okay. What does that mean when I put all this together? And again, we're gonna come back to this measuring health because when I put these factors together, what's happening is my pool is getting smaller. If I'm retaining the same amount and I keep losing that same 35% every year, but I'm losing 35% of a smaller population every... It's gonna just keep shrinking. Okay? And that's what we see right here. And here's another way to sort of look at this as well is even if we're shrinking because we're losing the number of retained donors every year, the population gets smaller. It's compounded then by the fact that I'm not refilling that donor pipeline with new donors. So if you look over the last three years, the number of new donors being acquired has been declining from year to year. So the pipeline of new coming in is decreasing. We're not getting any more efficient in our donor retention. And so what does that mean in the end? It means the donor population is smaller, but here's the crazy factor. Because the denominator... I gotta get my math right. Denominator's smaller now. Oddly enough, percent of new donors is a bigger portion of our population. So please ignore the little coding colors down here. We had a little grumbling getting our system and put in the wrong colors and codes. Let me explain to you this dark... I don't know. I'm gonna call that, my daughter used to call it grinser when she was a daughter, a dark greenish blue. Feel free to use that color terminology, grinser. You can see in 2012, 63% of our donor population was made up of retained donors, 20% was reactivated. 16% was new. Look how that's changed now. 20% still reactivated. 56% retained. 23% new. Even though we have less new donors, they just make up a bigger part of the population. And I think these are things that we have to consider and to keep in mind as we're thinking about our programs and as we're trying to not plan just for this year's harvest, but for next year. Because what we plant today and what we do in our garden today has an impact long term. I really, really wanna tell you about some of these documentaries I've been seeing about soil and soil health, but I'm I'm I'm trying to hold back and not get into it too much. But it's so very true that if we scorch our earth this year and we're gonna try to replant into that same earth that we scorched, what kind of yield are we gonna get that next year? Maybe a little bit less. What if we do it again and again and again? And so that's part of what we're discussing today is, are we planting the right type of crops in the soil in the donor fields? Are we planting in the right fields? Are we planting the right seeds, the right soils? What type of fertilizers are we using that are amplifying that girth? Maybe for one year? What does that mean for our bodies in the end? And I know this sounds all sort of hypothetical and we're talking about these sort of Parables little stories, but I think it's very very true And so we know this. A lot of you know this. We've been talking about some of these donor trends for a while, as we sort of looked at, our programs and where we're going. And so we were at a meeting. As I mentioned, we called our PCC private college meeting, and also we have some of our independent schools there. And after our meetings, we go and always have a nice dinner, some nice, food and and drinks provided from our friends at Blackbaud and, met Kalyn. And Kalyn is, someone that turned me on to a term that I'd never really heard before. And so I'll tell you a little bit about that, and then I'll introduce Kalyn for you. So Kalyn, introduced the term attention economy. And I like to think I'm a smart guy. The reality is, but it was a word I hadn't heard before. And so tell me more about that. And as I said earlier, the opening... Put my drink down and leaned in and said, I wanna hear more about that. What is the attention economy? And so she started to tell me and how that's applicable to annual giving. And that was an eye opener to me. And what was really cool about it is this wasn't just her opinion. This was based upon a PhD program that she was doing and actual studies and research. So with that, I am excited to have as our special guest speaker today, our project manager campaign strategy initiative at Simmons University. This is my announcer voice and PhD student in studies in higher education, the one, the only University of Kentucky PhD candidate, Kaylin Howdy. Thank you so much. I... You know, that makes me feel like I'm going out to play Kentucky. basketball. Right? Like, Yeah. that... You should... They're. like. the announcers coming in. too. You guys are, looking football. good. Absolutely. Yeah. Go cats. Yeah. Absolutely. So, Kalyn, tell me to start off... So, again, we we were talking for a moment and you said, well, you said, oh, I'm doing some PhD in higher education. I said, oh, what are you focused on? And you said the attention economy. And again, I said, well, I don't know what that I don't know. I looked around, and I wanted to act like I was a smart guy in the room. Yeah. I said, I don't know what that means. What what is the attention economy? Well, can you define that, what that is? Yeah, so it actually is a term that comes out of the seventies. Herbert Simon, I literally wrote his name down in the bar, I forgot, I'm pretty sure that's his name. You know, talked about this idea that there's so much information. Our limiting thing isn't actually time. We think, oh, we only have twenty four hours a day. That's our limit. But you can actually do multiple things at the same time. You can't pay attention to multiple things at the same time, right? So your attention is really that limiting factor. And that's really the scarce resource, right? So the attention economy term came a little bit later, I think in the nineties, but this idea that there's so much information, there's only so much attention you can pay to it, that attention itself is a scarce resource, right? And so the management of that attention and recognizing that attention is something with value and that attention can be turned into value, literally money, is something that really underlies pretty much the entire design of the Internet. When you look around, you look at these social media platforms, you look at websites, you can see really clearly how they've taken this idea, both, the science and the psychology of attention and the actual economics of how do we turn this intention into money, right? One One of the things that I think a lot of social media platforms have discovered is that it's not actually about holding attention, it's about, getting your attention over and over and over again. That's a much more powerful, mechanism in your brain than sitting and focusing on something. So, it's actually a lot more powerful for them to get your attention over and over and over again. So if you look at, if you just go to a Facebook page, just count the number of things that are trying to get your attention just on that homepage. Right? It's it's literally dozens of things at once. The infinite scroll, they want you to constantly get new things and be looking for new things. Right? And so that's kind of the the underlying idea of the attention economy is, attention is a scarce resource. It can be, evaluated and measured and monetized. And that's really what the the definition of a lot of, or a lot of social media platforms have been built on that idea. So, again, this is, you know, this sort of lit my eyes up and sort of... Okay. Sounds great. This is all true. And then I started making the jumbies. I'm a fundraiser. You know? It's all done my whole life. I started thinking of, like, oh, wait a minute. What what does this mean for annual giving? And I started to make some jumps and leaps in my head, but, you started to share with me, which this is when I went, wow. Okay. We we have a different world. So when we talked about the trends are trending, lot of things aren't changing. This is one thing that to me has changed a lot. So tell me a little bit your thoughts and from some of the research you're doing now, how is the attention economy Absolutely. being integrated? How is it impacting annual giving, the stuff that we're talking about today? Yeah. Maybe I'll back up a little bit and say, you know, kind of how I got into this was, you know, I work in higher ed, annual giving for, over ten years, almost fifteen years now. And so, you I think when I first started doing things like digital communications, of course, because I was the young person on the team, so they're like, hey, why don't you write the emails and do the social. media? Right. But I didn't have a background in marketing. So I had to learn all this stuff really on the go, learned all the best practices. This is how to do annual marketing digitally. Something always bothered me though, right? I could never really figure out what it quite was that I didn't like about what we were doing. And over time, I kinda started to realize that there's this thing that we say that we do. We say that our job is about building relationships. And yet the thing that we actually do when we send appeals or do things is look, you know, we send something, look at its immediate results, and then, adjust our strategy based on those immediate results. And that's something that, you know, the attention economy has really turned on to 11, right, of this how quickly you can get the results and how easily. you can manipulate. Manipulate is probably a strong word, but I think it is probably. I. know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. We're we're sending you things. in one new results. Yeah, absolutely. Because we think, oh, that's what people are paying attention to so that's what's going to produce the value for us. And so I think for me, when I really started realized, oh, these things, when we pay attention to conversion rates, when we pay attention to these kinds of things, what we're actually doing is extracting attention and extracting value from that attention rather than building the relationships. Right? And so I think in particular, when we use platforms that are built to extract attention for the platform's benefit, right? These platforms that we use, were created and designed by and for for profit companies, right? And so they're designed for their purposes. You've seen all the changes that have happened to Facebook over the years, to Instagram over the years, to TikTok, all these new things. They're just getting better and better and better at taking your attention and extracting value from it. But that's not really what we do, right? We want attention. We do want attention, but we're really trying to build something much longer term. I don't need somebody to get my job done in the five seconds since somebody is paying attention to me. I want to get their attention, but then I wanna give them something to actually use, right? And I think that's one of the. key differences of philanthropy because one of the things too, in my program that I'm really focusing on, my advisor is actually a philosopher. His background is in philosophy. And so, I am... Yeah. So I'm really coming from the ethics perspective, from the philosophy. What did Aristotle say about generosity? Right? What is this idea of ethical and meaningful generosity? And so how do we preserve people's ability to conduct philanthropy in an ethical way, in a meaningful way? And one of the key things is that people need to be able to stop and think about it, right? You need to be thoughtful. You need to be intentional about your philanthropy. This is not something that can happen quickly. This is not something that can happen, impulsively. Right? Because it's not really generosity if it's if it's impulsive in that same way. Right? It has to be thoughtful and meaningful and aligned with your values. And so the the... So many social media platforms just are not set up to build long term relationships. They're built to extract weight value. And. that that I think is. incompatible. Right? I mean, this whole sort of going into this world, I I I know, you know, yes, we've been into this for ten, fifteen years now, but, Yeah. gamification, our social media sites, how we do email, all these things was based upon a model that was created by the for profit world. Right? Yeah. And. now we're trying to use it in the nonprofit world. And so what I'm hearing is some of the impacts of that, I think we have to be cautious of or at least be aware of, this idea of... I I was talking about harvest earlier. Right? It's this is like the fertilizer. And what kind of fertilizer are we using to make something grow really, really fast? And maybe I get something really quick, but is that a sustainable growth cycle? What does that do? It's really interesting. And so that's am I kinda hearing that right? That if these platforms, and strategies were built for for profits, then how do we use them to accomplish our goals based upon what I'm hearing and what I think what we want. It's... You know, I wrote down here. I just... I had my moment. Every time I listen to you, I go, it's like hurry up and slow down. Right? So hurry some, pay, attention becomes it. this, Yeah. but then I want you to have a meaningful Yeah. interaction, this or with me or my institution. But... So how do we how do we deal with this juxtaposition, so to speak? Is there an answer, or is that what we're still trying to figure out? Let me write a dissertation, then I'll get back. to you. on it. Alright. Alright. Yeah. I'll figure that out eventually. I mean, I think really... I mean, that's where I really might... This garden ideas really came... Come from came from for me is thinking about, okay, so what are we trying to accomplish? And what we're trying to accomplish is, you know, if we think about our constituents as plants and as our constituency of this garden, right, what we really want is healthy plants that are sustainable that produce over and over and over again, right? We are not interested in annual giving. We really are not interested in one time things that we just discard and move on from, right? So we really want something that builds and is sustainable. And the thing that really worries me about, a lot of these digital tools and what the digital tools encourage, right? They encourage, quick and immediate results. The things that are most easily measured is the harvest, right? That dollars, those gifts, Right. right? That's easy. the harvest. Right? It's so easy to measure when we optimize for that harvest and when that's all we measure and we think, oh, this is working because it's producing gifts, all we know is how to harvest really, really well, right? We aren't actually measuring how well something waters or fertilizes the plant and produces it for later, right? So if we get really, really good at harvesting, now we can get somebody to give us $5 at a time really easily, really quickly. But how are we actually building their relationship with the institution? And I think that really, other nonprofits may have a different idea about this, but for higher education in particular, when our primary constituency is our alumni, that relationship matters separately from the philanthropy, right? We have a philanthropic relationship, but there's also an institutional relationship that we are the stewards of, right? For most colleges, some colleges may kind of split some of those out in terms of engagement, but just about every annual giving office knows now that other types of engagement are absolutely crucial to giving, right? Event attendance, volunteering, communications, all of those cases, standards recognize this, that there's so many ways that somebody can be engaged with their institution and we have to be stewards of that as well. We can't just use them for our, you know, for donations. We do have to steward that relationship. And I think we have to be conscious of the entire relationship, for the long term. And we can't just, if all we ever do is optimize for what gives us the most gifts right now, we're going to really quickly get into an extractive cycle where all we're doing is just taking and taking and taking and never actually measuring how we grow people, how we grow their relationship. And so we really have to find ways to measure that. And social media in some ways actually helps us do that because people can comment, people can, you know, you can start to see what people actually respond to, what people actually, what's resonating with them. You know, you can use things that do grow people's, not everything has to be measured in terms of how many dollars it produces it. You can measure it in different ways. And so in a way that's helpful, but at the same time, we have to be, social media platforms are a black... They call the algorithm the black box, right? We don't know what they want us to do. They don't know what they're gonna do, but we don't know what they're gonna do with our content. We don't know where our posts are gonna go or who's gonna see them. And so it's it's messy to say the least, and it's confusing. And, a lot of it we are not in control of, and I think we kinda just have to accept that. You know, there's a level of precision that we're just never going to have. We we are never going to know what is the right message for the right person at the right time. And even if we did, that starts to get, again, really kind of extractive of of saying like, oh, how do I get the money... The most money out of this person by pressing this button and pulling this lever? I think we really need to think about how do we grow our relationship with our constituents, in a meaningful way that really helps them align their philanthropy with their values and with their relationship with the institution in a way that encourages... I think part of our job is to encourage the mission of the institution, right? To encourage higher education. How do we improve the status of higher education in The United States? Because that's something that's gotta be our job now too because that's in trouble as much as anything else. Yeah. Yeah. I... It's just fascinating. Again, this this idea, first of all, that a lot of these tools that we're using and maximizing were built maybe for someone else. I I wrote down again another word, this extraction, and how can we get the fastest, quickest results so that I can get it on a piece of paper? And no one even put it on a piece of paper. Shows you. how old I am. So I can message it to someone over here to say, look how good we are. And and what I'm hearing is a couple of things. One is it still goes back to relationships, still goes back to trust, and how do these tools... We can still use them for that. But if we. use them based upon how they were originally created, that might not match. And then what are other things that we can use to measure? And that's where we're gonna turn to Stacy in just a second is, okay. What could we be measuring? What other things can we do? Because it's not going away. We're not gonna say great. None of this is... We're not doing any online platforms for Giving. Day. No social. media over here. We're not gonna use this really cool tool. That's not gonna happen. So how can we use them in a way that matters to us and matches our values? I always come back to that. That's so important. Yeah. Back to our values as an institution who we represent and that we're trying to build something. We're trying to build this garden. We're trying to build this farm. And I don't... You know, the word sustainable gets thrown around a lot. I don't wanna use it in the terms that that, you know, the message uses, but something that is repetitive because, look, we have to go back on July 1 for a lot of us. It's back to zero and we need to go again. Yep. We also know... We've talked about in the past, Stacy and I during the session is the donors we talked to today, we know it takes about eighteen years between their first gifts and their first gift of a thousand dollars or more and that they give 40% of the years on file. They move one level at a time. All these things. So it's interesting. We use the term annual giving, but, really, that's about the one. year harvest. But, really, we need to be thinking about the vitality of this farm and what we're growing, what we choose to grow, how we grow it, and the different resources we're putting into it of soil health or water or or Yeah. or. fertilizer, all these other things to see what we yield in the end. So I I think, those are some of the things that I'm hearing, but to me, again, the the big wow is we are trying to get people's attention. Yeah. So how do we how do we balance that? This is so difficult. No. Right? It absolutely isn't. And so much of it, I think, because it is digital. Right? There's so much, promise of precision. It's... We're like, oh, look at all these numbers we can get. We can test them, we can measure, and we can do all these things. But I think the problem is it really can lead us down that road. I mean, you know, the Facebook and all these social media, you know, claim to connect us, right? They wanted to connect us. They wanted to bring us value, and they certainly did. But as they started optimizing for their own profit, they also started going in directions. I mean, that's... We found that Facebook went into, you know, much more divisive political posts, got a lot more attention than more neutral or more, you know, general posts. Right? All these things that you can really quickly, I think, fall into the wrong, mindset. And so I think for me, I don't have the the full answer of, like, this is how you do it exactly correctly. But, you know, no. Generally, I avoid anything that makes you want to say like, oh, okay. We can really optimize for this. We can really maximize for this, especially if it's one thing. If it's just giving, you know, just the number of gifts, just the, the participation rate or the conversion rate, you know, it has to... We have to start having a longer view of these things, right? Retention. rate over time, exactly what you're saying, acquisition, retention. Another thing too that, you know, something that I haven't gone as far into, but I would like to is how do we kind of get out of this fiscal year cycle where exactly where you say on July 1, we go back to zero. How do we start looking at, more like either twelve. month or eighteen month or longer? Because some people just aren't annual donors. They might be more occasional than, that. it's celebrated doesn't mean they're. not loyal, Yeah. right? That. doesn't mean they're not loyal though. Somebody who gives every eighteen months, you know, it may be not be perfect, but, that's still a real... They may see in their mind that they're a loyal donor, even if it's not, you know, on our books every single year. Right? So how can we start thinking about, oh, that person still has a good relationship with us even if they aren't doing what we want them to do? And I think that's the that's the other thing too. So think about what, do our constituents want versus what do we want them to do? I think that's the big problem. That's where social media platforms going. They're trying to get us to do what they want us to do for their profits, right? So how do we make sure that we're not controlling our donors in a certain way so that they behave in the way we want them to behave. We let them make their philanthropic decisions in line with their values, in line with their relationship with us. It's our job to make a good relationship. It's not our job to find ways to to needle money out of them regardless of what their relationship is. so good. It... Yeah. I mean, we say that always always, and what do we live that? I think that's perfect. And, you know, I I think what I'm also hearing tool too is it's not necessarily tools. We're not saying everything is evil. It's just it was created for a different purpose. And if we use it the exact same way, we may get a result that is not sustainable or we want in the. end. And. there are some things that we can measure along the way to make sure that we are doing some of the right choices, and that talks about building that sustainable, you know, giving. So, you know, Caitlin, I could talk to you for hours. I love this. I find this stuff fascinating. But any final comment, anything that we didn't touch on, and, again, there is so much more to share, but anything. else that that we didn't get to hit before we start talking about, okay, we know here's the... Here's some of the obstacles, here's some things we need to be aware of, here's the environment we're in, What can we do? What should we do? What should we be looking at? But anything else that that we didn't get to touch upon, again, we look forward to the thesis. We're all gonna have, like, you know, Or... we're gonna, be... yeah. They're gonna call Stacy, and she's gonna be on that board that you have to defend it against. But any. big. big points that we miss? I I mean, I think just remembering that that digital tools are not neutral replacements for offline tools. They are cheaper usually. They are faster usually, but that doesn't mean that they... You can just take a mail and turn it into an email and expect it to be the same because it's it's happening in a different environment, and that environment was created to keep people distracted. Right? Even email inboxes. Right? Like, we think that we have more control over email, but your inbox is a messy place. You know? So, whether it's email, whether it's social media, even your website, right, you think you control that, but it's a design and its design principles are based on the attention economy. And so, I I think always remember that digital tools are not just cheaper neutral replacements for offline tools. We still have to invest in, in things like mail that people can read and receive and touch. Like that matters, you know, in personal contact, whether it's through a volunteer or a staff member. Maybe you hire some students and they pick up the phone and they call people. What a concept. You know, I think, you know, we're seeing that, you know, some of those... And it is actually... People don't actually answer the phone. I fully admit that, but I think conversations, I think that the... We have lost a lot more by losing those conversations than we even realize. I I I think we've lost a lot I I I think we've lost a lot there. And so anytime that you can have a real personal connection with somebody, is is really what I'd encourage. And that's really that's really where I see everything going, you know, the trust, the satisfaction, all that stuff. Those are those are real measures and those are things that are gonna pay much longer dividends than any immediate gift. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Caitlin. We really appreciate. your time. Stacy and I do this every year. Caitlin agreed to join us for this year. We really appreciate you. Fascinated and and look forward to hearing more in the future as well. So thank you so much. So, Stacy, I think this tees up really well some of the things that you're gonna share with us is so that... What should we be measuring? How could we be looking at it? Are there different ways to look at the overall program health beyond just what the final yield is? What's the weight of all the broccoli you grew? I'm I'm on this broccoli thing right now. Yeah. Yeah. We got it. Well... And I a. little bit of doing that sustainable program and and some different ways of measuring health? Yeah. I'll jump into that and that I do wanna acknowledge a couple of things. One, I do think there's still an echo if there's two of us. So if you don't mind muting, but certainly keep me honest and come back on when you have anything to add, Brian. And big thank you to Caitlin, and hopefully you'll stick around because there will be questions. I'm sure they're coming your way later. But very aptly, Samantha in the chat asked, like, what does this look like in practice? And that, I don't know that I'll answer that wholly, Samantha, but that is part of what we're working toward here in this next section of, like, we've been to the big philosophy gods. We've talked about, like, what is generosity and the attention economy. But we do wanna have something tangible that you can maybe hang on to so it isn't just, I talk about this in terms of, like, Google Map view that sometimes you zoom way out and zoom in. So we're gonna try to zoom in a little bit on, like, what... How can you start thinking about this and particularly that tension of are we measured is... Whether it's our leadership or others, are they measuring us just on the harvest in this analogy? And or where can we start to add some measures that are also about soil health, to this? And I know I've referenced this, I think, in other years when Brian and I have done this conversation. The... Years ago, I watched that movie Idiocracy, which the title right away, like, gives away a cynical point of view. But the the part that feels appropriate to this is one of the elements in it is that in the future, this hypothetical future, people are, watering their fields with Mountain Dew instead of water. And I feel like that's part of what we're talking about here of, like, are we just watering our fields with Mountain Dew and we aren't aware that, like, pretty soon, we're not gonna have the same broccoli that we had five years ago and how to think about that. I also... Before I get into my slides, we'll we'll say that I think Caitlin was talking about... Oh, I kinda lost my train of thought. But that the idea... I really hung on to that idea of... That when it's alums, particularly for those of us in higher ed, that that they have... They hold multiple relationships with the institution. When those of us on the fundraising side have the opportunity to help nurture their philanthropic relationship, there are additional relationships that we need to recognize, and I think that will show up when we talk about not just alums, but other relationship types. So whether it's people who are giving to athletics and friends and those types of relationships, we need to think about in terms of health. But, here, we are gonna work through some ideas here on what, a sustainable program looks like. So part of it here is... That says balance the scorecard. So this is thinking about how we are tracking performance, how we are in donor health, pipeline health, and learning health together. So part of this, I would say, is particularly if... And to, again, get to something somewhat practical of what what this looks like in practice. If you've got a leader, that is just coming to you and say, like, why are we losing donors? No matter what, you have to have the same donor count as last year. Well, that is really a short sighted element. Because if you're trying to backfill the donors with just Mountain Dew instead of water, you know, that is gonna be a very short sighted solution. So part of it is to to have a conversation, and we'll get into this more. But, like, what are those measures and making sure that not only you as annual giving leaders, but up and down the chart, like, even when you're tee up your VP for success so that when she or he is talking to the development committee and if the, you know, the development committee is giving you pressure about, like, what about that unique donor count? Hold on. Let's take this as an educational moment and say it's not just about the harvest. It's also about our soil health. And so we'll talk about some of those measures around that as well. Next, we are also thinking about how to protect retention. So it's not just retention rates. And this is part of what we were showing early on. There's there's the retention rate. The... And you can look at that as donor retention rate and dollar retention rate. But it's also the... Like, what kind of donors are you retaining? And what what is the, again, in that soil health, are you retaining? Particularly, I tend to think of when it's donors that start giving a $100 or more, that's when retention starts to improve and maybe when their philanthropic intent is, a little more real than just... And I... I'm not saying this in a negative way, but, like, just a Giving Day donor who sends in $20 because their classmate elbowed them to do that. That is something, that is an earlier stage, but it isn't maybe, like, where you're gonna expect that ultimate ultimate retention. So watching that to make sure that it's, not just that you're retaining folks, but then also in terms of that retention that... Of those retained people that you're watching the downgrade rate and not letting folks downgrade. Then it's also to think about developing that full pipeline. So how can we think from beginning to end about, like, those emerging? What is mid level? I have a whole separate conversation. I wanna talk to you all about that. Reactivating folks the the the long term annual donors. So not just thinking about, you know, the next major gift in that exact same way, but what are those donor experiences in every stage of the pipeline? And to tease, I guess, what would be potentially another future conversation, I do think there's a lot to be said about... I I kinda call it the messy middle, that there's a lot happening between, like, annual giving and major giving, and we tend to talk about it as if it's one thing. And there's a lot happening in there that we maybe need to unpack in future conversations. Then also looking into experimentation, and part of this came up. I know we haven't gotten into it as much in today's conversation, but, it's certainly... I know Brian and I have both, talked in the past about, like, really being clear about, like, what is that experiment... Or experimentally intentionally. So, like, is it that you're on a direct mail piece, setting up guidelines about, you know, what kind of results do you get if this is the signer, that is the signer, this is the message, or that is the message? And, you know, what kind of results you're getting from when you do multichannel versus just one, but really trying to set those up pretty intentionally. And I think in the spirit of this, when we were doing our preparatory things, we were also talking about the emergence of AI as part of all of this that, AI is... We are consumers of it, and we are, you know, trying to experiment with it and just being really careful. I I get the image of, like, being scientists that we, you know, put on our lab coats and really kind of approach it with some intentionality and watch those results because we... Everyone on this call, everyone in the world right now, we're all learning a lot together on this and how to keep pace with that and where it's really showing up in your program. And then, that leads into this building that preparing for change. So the AI literacy, both for how you're using it, and we're potentially using AI in ways that might change the donor experience. So some of you might have virtual agents, and you might have donors that are starting to engage with a virtual agent. But, like, keeping track of that, not only your own literacy, but, like, being mindful about what the donor experience is. And I think picking up on the attention economy idea that that so much of AI in general is just... It's an amplifier in many ways. I know there's, like, different kinds of AI, agentic AI, and, you know, language models. But in the form that it's an amplifier, what is it amplifying? How can we amplify it for the best donor experience and the best donor, behavior, that we're motivating and not just building on kind of a false, maybe a false bottom? Is it a house of cards if we're building this on a a false attention economy at the base? So those are some slightly practical things to, to think about. But, also, then I wanted to... I'm gonna jump to this slide and have us walk through, the other elements. So this may be... Again, I don't know, Samantha, if this actually answers your question, and you can chime back in either in the q and a or in the the chat. Or when I'm done here, we'll have, Caitlin and Brian jump in, and we can all answer some questions. But ways that I think of actually starting to think about measuring that soil health. How do we measure soil health in this whole analogy? So if we think about donor trust, part of that is gonna be if we're getting that multiyear retention. So how can we build that? Because that's gonna help serve our pipeline. So not just overall retention rate, but as Brian had in the earlier slide, separating out multiyear from the new, from acquired, or even renewed, but, like, how are you building the file over years? And as I had mentioned earlier, really minimizing the downgrade. So within the universe of those that you are able to retain, it's not just about the upgrades, but minimizing the downgrades. We don't want them slipping away and, you know, trying... We want them to still prioritize your organization as much as possible. So that's part of the soil health. The other elements here, if we move into new growth, that's thinking about, what is second year retention specifically? So I know I said overall multiyear retention rates, but what is that experience from the time somebody is a new donor? Like, kind of maybe they're a new seed in your soil. How do you support them? How do you make sure that they start to come forth into this beautiful world of, of your harvest? So, thinking about that second year retention, so it's not just have we... Do we have a unique donor count and or how many of them are acquired? Who are you acquiring? And this is my other thesis about, like, some of the relationship between when it's our alums who also have kind of an ongoing relationship with us, those folks are more likely to be the future pipeline, not exclusively. But, if you think of, like, maybe an aunt Linda who gives to a crowdfunding campaign for her niece's soccer team, there's probably... Aunt Linda, you're not gonna expect necessarily. It would be kind of unusual if she is still donating ten years later. And so aunt Linda's are gonna come and go. Hopefully, there'd be a new aunt Linda who backfills, but there is gonna be a fair amount of leak in your bucket, and that's okay. But, like, being really aware of which elements of your bucket are leaking and if it's people that you could expect to and plan around of, like, that's okay. We'll find a new one, Linda. Or is it, somebody who... You know, like, if it's your alums that you're losing and that aren't... And they've already had that, that would be an indicator that your soil health is struggling, that they're not feeling nurtured in that same way. So, again, in that... The the retention, but also then the upgrades from that. So when you can get folks to give into that second year and then hopefully really lock in and start to upgrading. The third element there of balancing, we wanna share the the share of donors that are acquired, retained, renewed. I admitted in the chat with the slide that Brian showed earlier, I was the... I'm... Hi. It's me. I'm the problem. It's me. Taylor Swift would say that I was the one that got the the colors mixed up. But the point of that slide is that the whole pool is shrinking and... But the slice of the pie that is acquired, even though we know we're getting fewer acquired donors, the slice of the pie is still more acquisition than not. So that becomes really important to, like, know what you currently have. So any of you could do this with any tool that you have. Although, for those of you that are interested in fundraiser performance management and or donor centric, I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you about those. But, you can go in and see what is the share. Like, just look at who donated in the last year and, like, by... Hopefully, you know their donor status and that you can assess, like, how... What share of that and then use that as a foundation. There isn't necessarily a right or wrong, but you wanna look in the mirror of your own data and really recognize, are you growing in a healthy way? And then finally, and I see some questions coming in, which is great, that pipeline vitality. So, again, soil health, the number of donors that are giving at particular giving levels for... Or getting to particular giving levels for the first time. So are... Is somebody... Like, just looking at how many first... How many donors got to a thousand dollars for the first time? How many donors got to $5,000 for the first time? And you could do it lower levels, high higher levels. I know we have different organizations here that have kind of different, stages of what is a major gift or a mid level gift. But really, like, trying to see, are you inspiring people to increase to notable, like, a new level? Are you consistently bringing enough new donors in at particular giving levels to, to feed the health of the program? So all of these, I would say, even a screenshot of this slide to me is one of the more practical things about... And empowering yourselves. This is picking back up on last year's element of, like, be your own storyteller. So if you are getting pressure from a leader saying, like, we need unique donor count, you may not be able to convince them overnight. But a version of this slide is what you're gonna wanna start weaving in and saying, actually, it's just not the unique donor count, and it's not just unique dollars. We need to really be mindful about not only that we're sitting in the seat today, but who's sitting in the seat in five years and ten years, and are we leaving them a field that can continue to grow? So I know, early on, we thought we were gonna end early, and we're not because we're now very much at the... Toward the end. There is potentially time here for questions, and I I see... I don't know, Brian or Caitlin, if you've been reading in the chat or in the q and a, of any questions that we might wanna have time to answer one or if you have final thoughts. Yeah. So just to get about some of the practical things that we look in here, and I think the story I'm hearing from you too, Stacy, is is to know some of those numbers and those results and look at some of those other measurement tools. You know, that's a whole another session, right? Like practically what we do, what does an appeal look like, or how would you say... All these other things. I think what we really wanna encourage today is think about the world that we're in, whether it be the focus, the attention economy, the pressure for immediate unrestricted dollars, the the the big focus... A lot of the pressure on immediate unrestricted dollars has been then placed on the leadership gifts, which I get. I understand. But if we're not billing the base and have good soil, we're not gonna have it later. I'll give you one other stat that we see quite often. So I said earlier, it takes about seventeen to eighteen years between someone's first gift and their first gift of a thousand dollars or more. But I've been tracking with the 200 schools that we look at. The size of the population of fifteen or plus more year donors so that where you would yield that from has been decreasing every year for about the last five or six years. So the soil that you're trying to grow it on, the farmland that you have is getting smaller. So even if... And then when you start pulling all that and yielding really high at... What are you left with in the end in five, six years now? So, again, we're not telling you exactly what to do, and and we can never do that. And I think anyone that tries to tell you that in an hour. But I think what we're... Hopefully, is inspiring to think about your programs in some different ways, and and to keep these things in mind. And that's what I love about these conversations is it's less of here's a sample, copy it, and use it. Nothing wrong with that either. Those things are great. But I think, hopefully, just a little inspiration of some different ways to think about things today. Yeah. And I apologize we didn't leave a ton of time for questions. I do want to, one, give a shout out to, to Lolly who helped us here on the tech side and many others on the marketing. Did note in the chat there's a poll, that I would like you all to take if possible. That would be great. Also, I don't know, Kaylin, if you're in a position to come back on camera and, give us... That we can give you virtual flowers because you are amazing, and we appreciate you and the extent to which you have helped this, give all of this conversation shape. And we wish you the best of luck on your research and hope that you will always, like, keep sharing your thoughts with us. And I did put up on the screen our LinkedIn connection. So, I think we're all open to hearing from any of you if you have additional thoughts and, but. again, that poll. And I think we're right at the top of the hour. So just a big old thank you to Brian, to Caitlin, to Lolly, and to myself, if I'm being honest. Thanks. I see. you. Absolutely. Here. Here's all the flowers to use too, Stacy. Absolutely. Appreciate it. And, Lolly, any final instructions about, I see people asking for some of the slides or recordings, things in... Of that nature. Anything, that you can share there? Will people be able to get copies? I think there'll be a link to a recording at some point as well. There... There's a link to the recording for sure. You'll get that in email. I was just trying to make a PDF out of the PowerPoint, but it's gonna take me too long. So reach out to one of us, and, we can just share a PDF of the... If the presenters are okay with. it. You can reach out to me. I'll I'll I'll volunteer. But anybody on LinkedIn or I'm at... It's just my name, stacy.rooney@blackbud.com, Okay. and any of you can reach out. saving, so sorry. I couldn't get. it done. I appreciate you, Lolly. on time. great. But, yeah, I'm happy to help with all of that. Because I've done some funky things on the slides too, so I wanna correct it. Okay. Yeah. Alright. And there's a couple of hidden, yeah, that we probably wanna get rid of, so it took. me a minute. But thank you all so much. It was great content. Great to be, with you. all. Thank you all so much. Bye.