Planning Your End of Year Campaign

0:03 So let's get started ... y'all are at Visionality's Building Forward we're
0:08 really glad to have all of you with us ... you all know the jam we cover a really big topic in 25 minutes or less
0:16 we have all the answers in this room ... this is not a this is our presentation
0:22 and you guys know these things share your experiences this is a collaboration if
0:28 if you agree with something that we're saying put it in the chat if you have a different perspective let us know um
0:34 we're going to do our 25 minute thing and then open it up for ... questions comments feedback lived
0:40 experiences so ... definitely this is a a group project
0:46 ... my dog will bark so we that's just known ... nico do you think your dog will
0:52 bark no she's asleep and my cat will also sleep too okay
0:57 perfect ... so we're just gonna make space for everyone to show up as their full selves today right
1:03 ... okay shall we get started my friend let's do it all right today we are
1:09 talking about end end-of-year campaigns ... it's august it's not the end of the year
1:17 mikko why are we talking about this now because it is never too early to start
1:22 thinking about your end of year campaign unfortunately ... well not unfortunately i should say but yes seeing it as the
1:29 middle of summer ... days are longest and end of year campaign happens when
1:34 it gets dark at 4 pm ... but it is really never too early to start thinking about
1:40 to start planning for it i mean i think one takeaway if i can leave any wisdom with with y'all today by the end of this
1:47 is that ... kind of the more advanced planning you're able to do ... the more you'll be able to do it with your end of
1:53 your campaign and the more successful i think it'll be in the end so that's why we are talking about the
1:58 holiday season in the middle of summer excellent um
2:03 do you want to take us through the timeline first yeah absolutely so
2:09 a little bit of preface before i share my screen this is a timeline that we like to share with clients it's
2:14 obviously been updated for 2022 calendar now another caveat is that
2:19 this timeline isn't set in stone ... it's kind of our suggested recommendations on
2:25 when to do things but some of the you'll see some of the hours expected some of the due dates are a little bit different just because
2:31 every client is different right like last year one of our clients we didn't sign on with them until
2:36 ... october 1st and so the everything from middle of august to october we had
2:42 to crunch in about two weeks ... you know so with some of our other clients for this upcoming end of year campaign we'll
2:48 be able to to stick to this timeline more ... more faithfully so with that let me jump
2:54 right in and and another thing too like you need to tailor it to whatever
2:59 happens in your organizational calendar right so if if you have a big event at the end of the year like whatever like
3:06 this is a another reason why it's super important to get it started early ... because you might need to work around
3:12 other initiatives yeah that's a great point also y'all don't need to take feverish notes
3:18 you don't need to take a screenshot you don't need to do anything we're going to make this available on our website um
3:23 it's it's ... what is it in excel ... so don't worry about any of that ... you can
3:29 just download it from us yes so with that let's let's take a look so
3:34 i think we can all see the multi-channel end of your campaign some thumbs up if you're on video to make sure it's it's
3:40 viewable okay good i see some nods that's perfect ... so yeah so we'll just go ahead and start right in
3:46 so it's ... i've sorted it by the due dates which you can see in column d right here now
3:51 again just kind of what i mentioned ... those due dates are not hard and firm ... so you shouldn't expect those to be but
3:57 there are some pretty strong recommendations we make for clients just to kind of keep some benchmarks to keep the train rolling to
4:04 make sure ... by the end of by when the actual end of year comes around it's not so frantic not so health
4:10 or sculptor ... but so we'll start with pre-planning so obviously by
4:15 by the end of august we think you should have your ... your goal determined and ... obviously that's
4:21 different for every organization ... a major successful fundraising campaign could be 10 000 it could be
4:27 ten million dollars you know i there's no one size fits all but there at least should be some idea of what your funding
4:32 needs will be ... determine determining campaign themes and this is something that we'll kind of
4:38 get into a little bit later when we talk about content ... but we've noticed that the most
4:43 successful year-end campaigns we've been a part of ... all kind of have this sort of thematic
4:50 umbrella and i'll get into some case studies in in a few minutes but just kind of
4:55 thinking under some larger sort of theme idea that you as an organization wants to communicate to your donors um
5:03 instead of just kind of making a very generic basic ... hey it's the end of the year it's
5:08 time for your gift please give to us in a very sort of ... basic
5:14 sometimes boring sort of letter i'm kind of being able to tell a story within the sort of thematic idea that fits into
5:20 your organization's communication strategy has been really successful from what from what we've seen
5:25 ... and then more pre-planning to ... you know work with your staff ... getting
5:32 input from your staff on what their funding needs might be is a great ... way to get started if you're having sort of
5:37 a rough idea thinking about your ... about your theme just seeing kind of what comes up from the rest of your organization
5:43 and then just doing a lot of content gathering so if you need to take photos ... design some graphics if you need to
5:48 hire a photographer we've had clients do all this before and now you you may not need to do it but it's there and that's
5:54 something we we think you should have done by the end of september ... so then moving on so for the website we
6:01 always recommend having a landing page of some kind for the end of your campaign whether it's just a simple
6:07 ... you know a few paragraphs ... this is what the end of your campaign is about here's where you can give just kind of
6:12 making it easier for folks to give in a different place than your generic give now page
6:18 is kind of the recommendation we make ... and that usually should go live kind of right before you're ready to get started
6:24 ... so before thanksgiving after giving tuesday and we'll get to giving tuesday in a bit
6:30 ... and that's when that's when we think it should be ready ... the mail piece so
6:37 and before i get to the three channels let me start by saying that you know these these three
6:43 channels mail email and digital ... based on what your organization how it communicates with your constituents
6:51 ... you may you oh you will i should say favor one channel over over others ... some of our
6:59 clients you know we have one client in the past i can think of that they got really
7:05 they had really responsive or they really great response rates to their mailed newsletters that they sent out
7:11 twice a year ... their constituents really came to expect those would be concerned if they didn't
7:16 receive them which is ironic because they were kind of in the environmental space and you would think you know mailing things out
7:22 may not be good for the planet but they realized that they their folks
7:28 loved getting those newsletters having something in hand to read in the mail so ... we kind of put more of our time and
7:35 energy for them into their mail channel just because that's how their donors like to be communicated to other
7:40 organizations we did some mail pieces for them last year and we noted we noticed that their responses to those
7:46 were were a lot less than their emails like they sent out a monthly newsletter over via email like it's great responses
7:54 and so planning for this end of your campaign we're gonna dedicate a lot more time and energy into making those emails
7:59 really stand out for the campaign and obviously social media ... you know that's kind of
8:06 all over the place isn't the right turn of phrase but everyone's capability for social media is so different so we we
8:12 definitely would definitely recommend having a component in there but again kind of similar to the different channels like
8:17 depending on how you communicate with your donors whether they're active on social media or not ... just kind of
8:23 would determine how you ... kind of prioritize your time into each channel but again you can sort of see oh go
8:29 ahead and mikko i think another plug for starting early and having your basics covered which is do you even know
8:36 how your donors like to engage with you right are you tracking ... engagement
8:42 levels and and do you have that data on what your highest roi outreach uh
8:47 opportunities are yeah exactly ... and that's definitely something that can and should be added
8:53 to this sort of pre-planning channel up here just kind of getting getting your ... getting your ducks in a
8:58 row seeing what you're working with before you start embarking on this big journey that is the end of your campaign
9:04 and then the last channel that we put is optional but we recommend if you have the time is we really love this digital video or
9:11 this donor video software called thank you ... quick quick ... explanation for those who don't
9:17 know ... so someone in your organization can record a video
9:23 saying this it's the end of your campaign we're looking to raise x amount of dollars please you know please join us in this
9:29 campaign and we can send some examples after the session but ... we've used this to great success to have
9:36 ... people from the organization make a video pitch to their donors and it gets
9:42 sent directly into their inboxes and people can see it respond to it ... they can give right on the email ... then just
9:50 fill out the form right there it's super easy i can can talk all day about thank you and the basics of it so i'm
9:55 definitely happy to answer some more questions about that after but again it's not something that every
10:00 organization has the time or capability for but if you do we definitely recommend doing something
10:06 in sort of the video space we're seeing more and more organizations get great responses to that
10:13 so that is the timeline in a very brief nutshell i will be happy to answer your questions
10:19 after and again this will be shared with you and ... it shouldn't be taken as firm like if
10:25 you don't miss if you don't ... hit this due date the whole campaign's going to fall apart but we've noticed or we think
10:32 that hitting these sort of deadlines roughly on time will make sure your end of your campaign goes smoothly
10:38 and as the developers start rolling in ... things can be nice and relatively easy i guess
10:45 yeah awesome well thank you so much ... yeah if y'all have questions or comments ... put them in the chat or raise your
10:52 hand or whatever ... nico thank you for putting this together and i'm excited we can make it available to everybody ... yeah
10:59 absolutely from your from your seat nico what are the biggest missed opportunities in end
11:05 of year campaigns oh ... i think the the big one that comes
11:12 to mind is just not starting soon enough ... and again
11:17 ... you know every organization's sort of communication fundraising strategy calendars are different but
11:24 i would venture 99.9 out of 100 have some sort of end of year campaign
11:30 on the calendar and if that point one doesn't they probably should so it's just a matter of doing a little bit of
11:36 planning to start sooner ... the later you start the more frantic it's going to feel the more stress that's going to
11:43 going to come into play ... now granted it still may be successful dollar wise ... but on the
11:49 sort of staff morale and sort of sort of the soft the back end stuff that donors really won't see it will be a big
11:56 strain ... so i think the biggest miss opportunity is just not starting sooner and getting having those hard
12:02 conversations and figuring out the brainstorming and kind of getting stuck throwing things against the wall to see my stick ... have that done in summer so
12:09 then come september october you can start really putting together some great content yeah i love that i think too a
12:17 huge missed opportunity is in that content ... when when you are only
12:23 you'll have a few perspectives writing your content you may miss some of your
12:29 whys ... every organization has multiple wise probably three or four and so again
12:35 if you're like just in a tunnel ... and you're only representing the thing
12:40 that matters to you about an organization you're totally missing out on a whole bunch of
12:45 of donors yeah absolutely ... and i'll just add one
12:50 more in there ... kind of related to that having different whys i think another miss opportunity we've seen from some
12:57 end of year campaigns is that it's pretty clear that the organization did not do segmenting of any kind
13:04 i'm just talking to different people in different ways know that by this i mean
13:10 you might communicate with your donors differently than you communicate with volunteers then you communicate with
13:16 like parents for example we i can think of past clients who have a component like a child care
13:21 component so they speak to parents differently just kind of differentiating the messages and kind of
13:26 speaking in different speaking in tongues to different people now granted it's under the same content umbrella and
13:32 that's why having a theme is so important so you can kind of branch off and make the messages a little different
13:37 but ... end of your campaign should not just be one size fits all from just kind of one
13:44 kind of one voice from the organization your organizations are unique diverse and the people who engage with you are unique and
13:50 diverse too and so ... as modulated you can make the messages um
13:56 that should be should sort of reflect sort of sort of reflect that diversity
14:01 yeah ... i'm gonna add one more that i just thought of actually
14:07 while you were giving your presentation on a missed opportunity for me it's skimping on visuals and on
14:15 quality ... nobody has extra money in their budgets right we're in nonprofits we always by
14:22 nature maximize every single dollar nobody has extra money hire a photographer
14:28 please please hire a photographer ... and and use those high quality images don't use
14:34 stock footage please please please ... invest in photography
14:39 once a year ... it will pay dividends and then
14:45 some people will disagree with me but i like really high quality paper um
14:50 it doesn't need to be you know gold-plated paper but like invest in a
14:55 in in quality ... i think it i think it matters again other people have different
15:00 opinions and i certainly have heard from donors ... like i don't want you to spend my money
15:07 on paper but from from where i sit i i think it represents the quality of the
15:12 organization what do you think nico ... yeah i can kind of i see both sides
15:18 of the argument ... i guess i can see the donor's perspective who might say why are you spending
15:23 x amount of dollars on high quality paper if there isn't that sort of a track record before of
15:29 as an organization using your dollars wisely but i think and we're all assuming we are wise
15:35 stewards of our donor's money here that if you are doing that then there really isn't an issue ... or a downside to not
15:43 making your end of your campaign content ... and materials quality that much higher like there's no from that
15:49 perspective there's really no downside well there is a downside of cost and you gotta you know put that in your budget of course but
15:56 assuming the budget is there and there's time for it like go for it we'd say yeah i love that
16:02 ... any other from your seat ... missed opportunities
16:08 one that i can think of that i i didn't really touch on and this is sort of towards the end of your end it will not
16:13 the end but sort of right when you're in the middle of your end of your campaigns is not tracking
16:19 like gifts are coming in and not doing as much tracking as you're able to um
16:25 to know like not just who it's coming from but just kind of getting all the all the information that's associated
16:31 with someone making a gift i'm kind of having that kind of tracking that putting it storing
16:37 it somewhere securely and ... kind of cleanly in your donor databases
16:42 i think is a bit is a big miss opportunity that would be helpful for stewardship after the campaign
16:48 yeah ... ashley has a question hi my friend ... is mail a must can you have a
16:54 successful campaign without physical mail mailers that's a great question ... i think you
17:01 can i i would venture i think i would say it depends on
17:09 sort of again the the work sort of pre campaign of how you speak to your donors and constituents
17:16 now if like i kind of mentioned at the top we have the the client i'm thinking of whose donors expected to be
17:22 communicated with by mail that obviously would not work for them but if you're really not getting the return
17:27 on investment in mail because it's a big time ... and money investment ... if
17:33 if you're really not getting the results that you would expect then by all means go
17:38 for it like save that money you can sort of reinvest it into higher quality photos and content even some video ... so
17:45 i think you i think you definitely can i'm not sure i would recommend it for every organization but ... it's it's possible and doable i would
17:53 say well i think you're right what's what's the roi what's your track record but two
17:58 what's your capacity right like we all i i think let's add that to the list of
18:04 of mistakes or missed opportunities ... not having the capacity to execute on
18:09 your plan so i think we all you know we're so in nonprofits we're so used to
18:15 doing more with less and and that's a great ... fast track to burnout and so
18:21 like just being realistic about the the complexity and the scale of your
18:26 campaign and what's truly achievable for your for your team within your own constraints
18:32 yeah and before we move i'm i can add some personal testimony to that in
18:37 a time where we as a consultant actually did not assess that as well as we should have ... so one of our past clients in
18:45 their lab the end of year campaign 2021 ... we we made the pitch them about thank
18:51 you ... they were kind of looking to do more and kind of have some new ideas so thankfully was an easy one they loved it
18:58 and the mistake that i made was not realizing how just how busy their ceo
19:03 was ... and their ceo founded the organization ... he's just like
19:09 he and the organization are kind of synonymous and that's how people kind of associate and so i wrote this really elaborate um
19:15 thank you script it was great i worked really hard on it ... and the problem was
19:20 that i just put too much on his plate and he wanted to you know he recorded it and he was very
19:27 finicky and wanted to get it right which to his credit is totally fine ... so he spent a lot of time recording
19:33 re-recording these videos he ended up recording individual videos to individual people which took up a lot of
19:40 time and it just added way too much stress onto his plate which is already big enough and so you know as going
19:46 forward ... in their next fundraising campaign which happened earlier this year i kind of took that into account knowing that okay
19:53 person a is super busy he loves doing thing for you but he can't do as much as
19:58 we asked him to do back in december kind of make it a little easier and we noticed that his stress levels went down
20:05 ours went down ... so just kind of being honest about your your internal capabilities and if you're not able to
20:10 do much that's okay there's still plenty to do but just not trying to give yourself too much to do
20:16 ... then feel like you really need to cram and stress out to meet those expectations yep love it ... my friend we
20:24 have six minutes left yeah so quickly share
20:30 why we hate giving tuesday yeah i'll make this i'll make this brief
20:35 so we by we i mean Visionality we kind of we steer our clients away from giving
20:40 tuesday in part for in part because it has become ... a lot
20:47 of sharks swimming in a very shrinking pool ... a lot of organizations are competing
20:53 with each other for those giving tuesday dollars which you know sometimes can be lucrative but
20:58 it's just so competitive and it just becomes too much and it's become sort of corporatized in that way
21:04 ... to where it can take away from your organization's mission ... so we have not
21:12 recommended to our clients to put out anything on giving tuesday we usually do it a couple days after even a week after
21:19 ... and we've seen you know the dollars coming in don't really alter all that much ... and i think some
21:27 i think some of the bigger bigger like national global
21:32 nonprofit organizations can really dominate the giving tuesday space and just not leave room for anyone else
21:38 ... in those inboxes so that's the main reason why we stay away from giving tuesday there are a lot of other reasons
21:44 i'm sure we can get to some other time but ... yeah we're not real big giving tuesday people around here pass use your energy
21:51 in other ways all right we have another question from kathy hi kathy ... with all
21:56 the mail people received during the holidays what advice can you give us regarding how to get your mailer noticed
22:02 is it envelope size holiday card format versus letter also what is your advice regarding the timing of sending out a
22:08 urine appeal and regular newsletter we often find that sending them weeks apart reinforces our ask
22:16 ... all great questions so let me start from let me start from the top so what advice
22:21 can you give us regarding how to get your mailer noticed so envelope size is something we have noticed can make your
22:27 mail stand out ... one case study i can think of from one of our past clients so
22:33 we ... we came up with the idea to do a sort of wish book as it were kind of like those
22:38 old jcpenney sears catalog and the way we made it work was
22:44 ... you know instead of buying something for the organization we we said like
22:50 for this if you give 300 you would be giving you know like storage cabinets to
22:55 to this program and we kind of made a really glossy book like that and it was
23:00 it was probably actually ... about maybe as big as this yellow legal
23:06 notepad so that is a little bit different it was glossier it was nicer so again sort of investing that quality
23:11 was a way to make it stand out ... but again that was because we were able
23:16 to do that because that organization had donors and constituents who
23:21 didn't mind being communicate communicated to via mail so if you already had that track record
23:26 built up ... yeah doing something a little bit different with the size and the quality especially
23:32 of your materials i think is a great way to make it stand out ... i would also
23:37 advocate so the next question here is holiday card format versus letter ... i'm not really big on letters personally
23:44 ... i think they they can be they can be really well well written and that's great but doing something a
23:51 little more visually appealing ... like a card as opposed to a letter something i would advocate for personally ... in this next
23:58 question what is your advice regarding the timing of sending out a urine appeal in a regular newsletter so we
24:06 i've actually seen it work just as well the other way as well where ... you know one of my clients has i kind of
24:13 mentioned earlier they have a very consistently read and opened email monthly newsletter and i've seen
24:19 gifts come in whenever we included in that newsletter something about the the most recent ask whether
24:25 it's a campaign for one of their programs ... or for the end of your campaign coming up i know i'm going to
24:31 plan to have something about the year-end campaign in their monthly newsletter because i know it's going to get read ... but you know spacing it out in that
24:38 sort of way too is something we've done for other clients and it works just as well so um
24:43 i guess my advice is if if it's reinforcing your ask and you know that it's working ... then if it's not broke
24:51 don't need to figure no need to fix something that isn't broken i guess ... so keep keep it up if it's if it's working
24:58 for you so thanks for the questions kathy yeah so we have two minutes left my friend
25:03 before we open it up for sharing time what
25:09 what is your most important list maintenance to be
25:14 done right now from your perspective list as in your
25:19 your donor database yep yeah i would be i would say it's making sure contact
25:25 information is as to date as you can ... especially if you're going to be doing something over the mail ... yeah
25:31 obviously email too but just getting getting contact info as clean as you can ... when it's in the summer and maybe
25:39 it's a little bit quieter for you as opposed to the end of the year that's the perfect time to send out hey hope you're having a great summer
25:45 we're looking forward to you know these programs or whatever we're doing in the fall we just want to make sure you're
25:50 getting we want to make sure you're hearing from us can you make sure your contact info is correct love it it is or if it's not but
25:58 just making sure your contact info is as up-to-date as possible so you don't get a lot of those envelopes in the mail
26:04 with the dreaded yellow return to sender stickers ... that are just demoralizing
26:09 to receive truly and you know we've already said it like we're all trying to do more with
26:14 less no one has extra money in their budget and so like yeah the the um
26:20 the it's less bad with email right because it doesn't cost you so much to
26:25 print and mail and all that stuff final thoughts
26:32 ... just my my biggest my biggest pitch for today is just being
26:38 honest with what your organization is capable of doing and again if it's not a lot that's okay there's still plenty to
26:44 work with ... but then also it's never too early to get started to start thinking about
26:51 the sort of content themes you want to tackle kind of asking your staff ... hey what are your what are the
26:57 biggest needs as an organization that we have because oftentimes they'll come up with things that you may not think of
27:03 ... and just kind of starting that groundwork now in the summer oh and getting getting your database as clean as you can just starting now in the
27:09 summer will pay off in a lot less stress and hopefully more dollars by the end of the year
27:16 yeah and i would add to in like in terms of asking staff what their needs are don't be afraid to
27:23 let your donors know that you need money right it's it's okay to say you know we have done this incredible
27:29 work this is how our program has evolved or grown or changed or whatever throughout the year and we have a gap
27:36 and the gap is really and we need to fill this gap and and what's the issue if we don't fill this gap so yeah so
27:42 don't be afraid to to say hey your investment is really needed at this time
27:48 absolutely well my my friends lived experiences ... end-of-year
27:55 campaign success stories questions horror stories ... come on camera if you
28:02 would like put it in the chat ... i wanna i wanna hear what what y'all
28:08 have done oh there's my friend patty thanks patty
28:17 glad you were here
28:23 all right we have another comment we are a small theater and have been mailing out letters and large posters and
28:28 brochures with minimal return i am hoping to convince our directors that a less verbage more visual postcard yes
28:36 yes yes might have been a better return do you think this might be more beneficial yes yes
28:42 no don't tell yes please show don't tell invest in quality um
28:48 in quality photos you're right yes yes and ... to sort of
28:53 reinforce that ... you are a small theater arisely and so you know having photos of plays
29:01 happening on stage you already have you have a lot of great um
29:06 content at your disposal that you just haven't maybe haven't utilized yet but i'm definitely leading with that over
29:12 over verbiage ... i can think of a past client they're in the environmental
29:18 space and they were doing they had a sort of similar issue where they wrote these very beautiful um
29:24 long letters but they work in the environment so they we recommend to just go out and take care take a camera and take some
29:30 pictures of the landscapes that you work on ... and a lot more visually appealing that way so definitely recommend having
29:36 some visual content with your plays and other activities happening in action
29:41 i think you can really lead with that ... and have a lot more return yeah what's nice too if you invest in
29:48 good photos you can use them as ... thank you notes as well so you can get those photos printed custom printed on a card
29:56 ... which just like doubles down invest investing in your mission vision in like
30:02 every piece of your communication another cool thing that we've seen clients do is ... this was the ventura
30:09 botanical gardens you know they hired a photographer to take beautiful images of the gardens of the
30:16 different flowers and the views and then created ... sets of five um
30:23 ... thank you cards and gave them out as gifts at like at their annual event or
30:28 as a donor thank you so it's entirely on mission it's a pretty low-cost um
30:34 engagement tool and then it even furthers the mission out right because now people are sending i'm gonna send
30:42 their card to nico to say thanks for being a great team member right so i just loved i loved that for them
30:50 ... who what else who else has a success story they want to share question
30:57 struggle
31:02 perhaps we've done it nico i think we solved the end of your campaign so now everyone's going to raise
31:08 a dollar wait wait we've got kathy hold on one one thing that um
31:15 one thing that i think was very helpful for us last year ... part of it was due to timing
31:20 of our newsletter is that we wound up putting our thank you in our end of the
31:26 year edition ... thanking all of our circle of inspiration donors which is our major giving campaign so i think a
31:32 lot of people saw that their name from the previous year and wanted to give again and i noticed that we had some
31:38 repeat gifts ... from that campaign in the year in mailer because the timing of
31:43 the names being in there so i think that's something we're going to do again ... previously we had thanked
31:49 them in an earlier issue but having it closer to the end of the year really helped with renewing those
31:54 pledges i love everything about that and here is one of my very favorite um
32:03 cash extraction techniques so so ... what something that you can do
32:10 when you're doing like an annual report or like something like this if you list your donors and you group them by gift
32:17 level i personally don't like to put the dollar amount but you could like name the different categories but what you
32:24 can do is you get that mock-up and you put your donors in their categories and then you send it to him to them to be
32:30 like hey i make sure that your name is right like did i get the the order correct is everything spelled properly
32:37 ... but then the donor looks to see where they are and everyone knows like who you give
32:44 like right and so they may see that their colleague their giving colleague is one level above them and they'll ask
32:51 hey what do i need to give to give to get bumped up to the next level it's just like a nice little tweak plus it's also
32:58 a good idea because then you get people's names spelled right but that's my little secret
33:04 no that's it i like that's a great idea kathy i'm glad that's i'm glad that worked really well for you yeah it's
33:10 kind of a little nudge to hey you haven't made your gift yet but also that's a nice bit of nice bit of stewardship of thank you for
33:16 all the people who've given already so kind of doing soft asking and stewardship all in
33:22 one that's a great way to utilize resources and kind of be efficient in that way
33:27 yeah awesome ... i have a follow-up to that if that's
33:32 okay yes ... actually we did a similar thing with our donors on one of the campaigns that
33:38 we ran for our summer education program that really worked which was ... running a report to find out what they donated
33:45 last year and putting that in the letter saying last year you donated a hundred dollars we'd be very thankful if you
33:52 could donate the same or more ... and on that campaign we actually got a huge
33:57 return ... rather than the other ones where we didn't list it and we also put it in an
34:02 email form with a link to the donation page and so people just have to click it
34:07 and then basically click you know a couple things and send the money so that worked really
34:13 well letting them know what they've already donated just you know last year
34:18 love it and make it easy for people to give you money people
34:23 like have have a couple people go through your donation process and tell
34:29 you if it's easy or hard and what's confusing right we want to make it easy for people to give you money my my
34:36 favorite horror story i read a newspaper article about a local nonprofit and i was so i had no connection to this
34:42 organization i was so moved by the article that i was like i'm gonna give them a gift like i don't know who they
34:48 are i'm gonna give them a gift no donation no no donor portal on their website
34:56 no information about how to mail them a check i had to call them to ask them how to
35:03 give them money and i'm like y'all come on like make it easy to take my money so i love
35:10 that i love it i love it good job that's yeah and that's a great use ... or a
35:16 great example of you having really good data on your donors and keeping it in place where you can find it easily and
35:22 store it so you can recall it in a in a way that sort of that is speaking
35:28 to the donor they kind of they can see that you you have their information using it well
35:33 and you can communicate to them ... in a different way so great work way to go
35:39 other success stories we want to celebrate you
35:53 so i don't know if it was at this meeting or another meeting but i went to sort of like a an end-of-year
36:00 annual giving workshop webinar and ... i took a lot out of it one being um
36:08 what arsely had mentioned around mentioning their previous gift we gave them like sort of options for
36:14 giving their their giving level a little bit above that and then you know maybe quite a bit above that and
36:21 specifically wrote out what that would fund for each level ... which people
36:27 loved ... we did a longer letter we included a ps at the end that referred
36:32 to our newsletter ... we hand addressed envelopes that were over you know for for givers who
36:39 gave over a thousand dollars and then we also used stamps as opposed to using a
36:44 mail house and ... that really increased our returns pretty substantially wow that's great
36:51 awesome yeah awesome awesome yeah that's sort of um
36:57 segmenting your your major give major donors i guess in a way ... and especially if you have the time and
37:03 capability which it sounds like your team did to handwrite and stamp because it's it's a little bit time
37:09 ... conducive but having kind of investing that time wisely into your major donors pays off
37:15 and just kind of speaking to them in a different way than than other than your other donors yeah so great
37:22 work love it
37:27 other successes questions challenges
37:36 well perhaps we really have done it nico i was saying i think we did it now
37:43 all right so we saw in the chat that there's a little bit of interest on a thank you tutorial
37:49 like i don't know they should they should be paying us or something we love thank you so much um
37:56 it's still really new in our community so it's a great way for you to stand out um
38:01 and so yeah so look look for us ... more content coming soon if you have a topic
38:07 you want us to cover email us let us know if you want to be like nico and be a guest star we want
38:13 you to come we all have the information to share with one
38:19 another so please tell me what you want to talk about you can be a guest star just like just like our friend nico
38:26 all right but the more star worthy thanks
38:31 all right everyone thank you for being here we'll see you in a month. Thanks to everyone and good luck out there and
38:37 start planning. Start planning!