How to Communicate the Variety of Services You Provide

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 0:00
Uh, there. We did it. Um, good morning, everybody it will or whatever, wherever you are in the world watching this now we’re watching the replay, we should hopefully we’ll have a couple more people popping in here this morning. But we are excited to be here for our last training of the year of 2023. As we did it, well, it’s not done yet.

Patrick Kirby 0:27
No, it’s not. You’re very much right. Um, I liked the way that we did this, though, because we’ve had a ton of guests on for this really, brass tacks at the end of the year is like how on earth do we set the table for 24 and beyond. So this is a really nice way to like, end the season. There’s a we’re gonna give some tasks and to dues and some opportunities, but it’s not gonna be like, conceptually, you’re not going to, you know, have your mind blown. You’re like, oh, I need to do that now in the next 30 days. So I like this today a lot.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 0:59
I love it, too. Okay, so why don’t do you want to just go ahead and, and just kick us off?

Patrick Kirby 1:05
I do. Alright, so 2024 is going to be an interesting year, I would like to maybe kind of give you a little bit of what we’re hearing on the ground from the fundraising perspective on just sort of like a state of the state kind of piece. And then I kind of want to go into, here’s some interesting concepts and questions to ask, and why. Because I know in the immediate need for money at the end of the year, and I know, fourth quarter is a massive, like, big push for everybody, we got to think long term. And we got to think about where those gifts come in, and then continue to come in going forward. And a lot of the things we’re going to talk today, right out of the gate, are are just that strategies and things to do on your well to do list to kind of keep in the front of your mind as you’re sort of rocking and rolling into your planning for next year. So let’s give a quick state of the state on all things nonprofits, it is a little bit tougher than one would imagine or think or want. Now, a lot of individual donors are kind of scaling back a lot. We’ve seen it over the last decade, decade and a half on individual donors just vanishing. And a lot of it has to do with their purchasing power and their ability to have additional revenue to distribute to nonprofits, people still want to give, that’s important to understand they want to give, they just don’t know how so whether you can transform their gift, their physical, like cash gift into time and talent, and sort of keep them sort of engaged. That’s really important. But understand that a lot of your non your, your non traditional sort of non major players, your random gifts that you get throughout the years, they’re declining. And it’s not just you, it’s everybody. Number two, the major donors, the bigger donors still give major gifts. But they are reducing the number of organizations that they are giving to. So if you are a major donor you give to like five or six big organizations every year, you’re probably scaling down to two or three. And that’s really important because those that have major donors or large funders at your organization, you need to do your damnedest to make sure that you are in constant contact with them about the impact that their gift has been making the need for continuous funding and the fact that you just need to be in touch. You don’t have to ask them for money all the time. But you do need to remind them what their gifts have done. And you need to do it in a fairly regular basis. No communication is enough communication. Sammy is going to talk about this at the at the second half of of this presentation, because it’s super important to understand is that when people open up your emails at your organization, they’re seeing what 2030 40% of openings, maybe, right? That means 60% of your donor base or 60% of your supporters aren’t seeing that particular email. So if you send out a secondary email that talks similar above the same thing, you’re not annoying anybody, nobody is calling you going, you’re sending too much positive impact notes to me, like nobody’s ever said that ever. Individuals who aren’t as connected to you might drop off your mailing list, and that’s okay, because it cleans everything up. So I don’t want to make this a thing about you know, you need to stop connecting with them and ask him for money. But I do want to encourage you to just continue your communication, your updates, your impact stories, etc. Because your donors want to hear from you. And if they don’t hear from you and they hear from somebody else, they’re going to move their money towards somebody that they feel an affinity to. So I say all that and I use the word affinity very purposely because those are the that’s the word of 2024 is B and find the Those that have the affinity for you? And how do you find out that they have the affinity for you or your organization? Well, we ask better questions. We talk a lot about this, I think in a lot of the trainings that we have. And really even in some of the guest expert trainings, we talk a little bit about this, but I’m gonna hammer it home today, is asking better questions is the most important thing that you can do to engage your donors. Because it’s purposeful, and it’s meaningful. I said this before, you know, one of the best pieces of advice that I’ve ever gotten as an individual from a fundraising perspective was from a mentor of mine that said, never asked for a major gift. Unless you know the name of your donors dog, it means that you’re asking questions about their personal life, and not solely how much is in their checking account. And that means a lot to them, because they’re not an ATM. They’re a partner in your organization, trying to make the world a better place through you. And you don’t get a relationship. If you consistently and only ask them for cash. You have to ask them how they’re feeling? How are they holding out? What are they up to? What are their likes? What are their dislikes? What are their passions? What are they concerned about? You know, they might have family issues that if you don’t know about them, and your ask comes in at the wrong time, it means you are not self aware enough to not make that ask because you’re not paying attention. And that’s really, really, really important. Especially at the end of the year, when you have this idea of gratitude and thanksgiving and wonderful joy. There’s no joy in reaching out to somebody, you have no idea who they are and why they give. So find out ask them. So some of the questions that I think you should write down, write down some of the great questions that you’ve been asked, like write a question that we really like asking our donors, as you know, you know us for a very long time you’re you’re a donor for, you know, a number of years. If you could wave a magic wand right now and fix a thing or help us with one thing, what would it be?

It’s a really open ended question. It’s very weird, because you get to play like a genie in the lamp sort of things, it gives them their creativity, it opens up the doors to their brain that that access, is that that creative module in there? What what would that be? And their answer might surprise you. Or it might align it with a program that you’re rolling out, or you’ve been doing for a very long time, or they might not know about or they might not have supported before. So for example, there’s a group that I work with it’s it’s an advocacy group for individuals with developmental disability and delay. And one of the magic one questions that answered was, I wish I didn’t have to explain that we were there were people behind our disabilities, people I go, what that is such an intuitive piece of answer. This person has a disability, but they’re also a donor. So I know now, and I didn’t know before, that they’re not concerned with, you know, a program per se, they’re not interested, namely, in politics, what they’re interested is in people. So if I have a program, and then we are rolling out a program, or there’s something in the legislature that has to do with people centric, seeing them as person, person centric, whatever, I know that this individual is the first person I’m going to call, because I know that they said, I wish I could be seen as a person, not just a label from a disability. So anything that’s to do with people or labels or, or triumph over tragic, those kinds of things are great. So I think that’s really one of the main important things that that we need to keep forward. It’s like, what are the interesting questions that you have? The other question is, if we go away, if our organization ceases to exist, what happens? What do you think happens? Or what would your opinion about us ceasing to exist be, and they’re gonna pick out programs that you might not have an idea of, that they were really fond of, or things that they’re passionate about, or then things they think about? So if they say, for example, you’ve got a, an athletic group, and you’re like, Well, I’d be really sad because the idea of team would go away, or I wouldn’t have the chance to engage with anybody here, you know, that, you know, that their camaraderie or their community means more than it is the actual sport itself. They’re not looking for their kids to be, you know, athletic wonder kids, they’re looking for community, it makes them feel that they’re connected, they have friendships, etc. So you now know that your questions or the things that you talk about for your donors are going to be very community, very partnership, very relationship based. And that’s super important when you’re trying to ask for money, super important when you do those things as well. And it’s such an interesting way. That’s way different than we have this program. Could you give me $1? It’s boring. Nobody really cares about that. They already know that you need money. But what they don’t know is that you’re interested in their perspective, one of the best adages that you can do is take it from the sales industry, which is if you want money, ask for advice. And if you want advice, ask for money. If I go up to a penny here, and I say, Penny, I need $10,000. Maybe you’re gonna go file your pin $1,000. Mary does go ask Mary, she’s gonna give me advice to people that she thinks is going to be a thing, right? But if I say, hey, Penny, I need your opinion on something. If we had to raise $10,000, where would you go first? Or where would you think the best avenue that we could go or create that would build a relationship that could get us to this avenue? Now her perspective is like, I’d love I’d love to see what maybe you have as your, your solicitation piece, or what are your materials and they’ll give you their opinion. And then at the end of that conversation, more than likely, Penny’s gonna say, Well, that was really fun. That was really interesting. It was different than being solicited for my cash only. How else can I help? And instantly, you have a way and I Well, we’re trying to raise $10,000 in this neck of the woods, is that something that you’d be able to help us achieve? More than likely, Penny’s already bought into the fact that you’re already going down the road? You’ve brainstormed with her? You’ve understood that she’s maybe a partner or a door opener or an influencer in her community. And of course, she’s going to say yes to something might not be the full 10 grand and that’s okay. She’s giving you such a valuable advice to take. And you learn something about that. She’s a helper. She’s She’s a creative helper. That’s it’s such an interesting piece of this whole, like asking better questions bit here. Sammy,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 11:28
I can ask you a question about this. Yeah, please, as we’re in your end, and we’re feeling that desperation to get all of the dollars we possibly can, how do we, like stop ourselves from going into that space and still approaching conversations from a value lead ask questions situation, because right now is when we’re trying to close all of the deal.

Patrick Kirby 11:51
Right? Well, this is this is what makes now talking about this now and planning for 2024. So important is that you, you the seasons of giving are really critical to under understanding your own organizational seasons of giving is super important. So if everything comes in in November, December, you probably don’t have a lot of time now, to sort of like, let’s pause and build some relationships with our donors already. They know that this is the time that they give, so you can go and activate them. But if you’re looking at February, you know, March, April, May, you’re looking at this dry time at your organization where there’s not a lot of money coming in, well, what are you doing to set the table for the next gift? Well, that’s your going out mode. That is your that is your time in which you go out Mary is a really good question. I know we’ll get to this in the second half as well, which is how do you keep the communication flowing with potential donors and supporters? It’s that it is, hey, I got an update for you. Hey, I’ve got an impact story for you. Hey, I’ve got a success that you helped make with your gift story. I wanted to reach out because you’re one of the people that helped make this happen. Mary, you’re a rock star, because you were one of the 50 donors that made this scholarship happen. You made this program happen to help spay and neuter animals that for free, so that we could take the pet population down it wouldn’t collapse. You know financially the pound here in town, you were part of this, look at look at what you’ve done and made these individuals a success. And in between your asks that rhythm of trying to figure out when’s the last time you talked with them? And and I’ll actually pose this question to you say me too, is that we all have a bunch of friends who we can pick up the phone and have a conversation as if we’ve never stopped talking to each other. It might be three or four or five months around, right? But if you pick up the phone constantly, and you get a call from let’s just say, I don’t know, Scott. And every time Scott calls you, they ask you for something right? Hey, do you have this? Can I borrow this? Do you have money do you have? Like they’re always going to constantly ask if you’re going to stop answering Scott’s phone call. The reason that it’s okay to pick up Scott’s phone because giving an update. Hey, how are you? How’s the family? How’s this? How’s that? Hey, did you catch this? Hey, did you see this? Hey, love your thoughts on this? Hey, it’s good to catch up. So when you’re thinking about the rhythm of your potential donors and your current donors, it is how you like to be communicated at think of it from a how do you like to be asked? Is it every single time you pick up the phone? No. How do you like to tell a story? Is it just leading with and always talking about money? No. So we know intuitively as human beings that we need to be bought in. We need to have a concept of of inclusive. I’m a partner. I’m making this happen with everybody sort of mentality. That’s the same is true with donors. Well, yeah,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 14:52
I’m gonna pop in and highlight something you said earlier because you kind of said it quick and it’s really important is that as we’re having these conversations and asking these questions, making sure or that that information goes into your CRM and it goes somewhere. So that’s when you’re like, Okay, well, I don’t really know what to call somebody about, like, maybe you know that they it’s their wedding anniversary, and then you can just call them up and just say, hey, we just wanted to say we happy anniversary, we hope you guys are having a great year and celebrating or even if it’s something, you know, less happy, even just to call and say, Hey, we know that this time of year is really tough for you. We just wanted to call and let you know, we’re thinking about you, you know, if there’s anything you need, let us know. Because having that information, there’s not a lot of organizations that are taking that extra step for that personalized communication, and it just builds that trust and increases your chances of you getting that bigger gift out of the charities that they’re choosing to support.

Patrick Kirby 15:49
You know, one of the things that I really like, and I’m going to be like a super champion of it in 2024 is a making a big deal about a donor Versary. So if you know exactly when somebody donated, and Mary, I’m gonna, I’m gonna give you an example, because you’re the one that asked the question, which is, you know, how do you keep the communication flowing? You know, there are a lot of people who think birthdays are a big deal. I know, I know a handful people who just birthday, that’s their thing. Mike, my coworker, Leah, if you don’t remember her birthday, you’re kind of dead to her, because that’s her thing. That’s what she loves. So if you could make a big deal about a donor Versary, or that kind of thing, and just say, Hey, I’ve been thinking about you, because next month is your anniversary, it’s a really big deal to us, because you’ve made a difference here in the whatever I go, I’m pumped, I can’t wait to celebrate with you FYI. It’s a free nugget of communication that you get to pass along to your donor without asking them for money, you’re reminded them that they donated money. So that’s kind of like a little nugget in their brain. But you don’t ask for anything. And then a week before Hey, next week’s your donor Versary. And then on their anniversary, you know, when they gave last you know what they gave? And why don’t you just go say, Hey, listen, happy anniversary. In the last year with your gift, we’ve done this, this, this and this, this is just an amazing feat. Thank you so much. You’re amazing. You’re a rock star, I’m having a cupcake for you, I hope you have one too. Happy anniversary, send them a donor Versary card, the same way that you would have a birthday card, because you have those two intimate things together that gave to you the gift to your organization. And this is the bond that you have between them, you might not know that their birthday is it doesn’t really matter, you know what their anniversary is. And people make a big deal about it. So that’s a unique communication thing that you can do. And you know, based on everything that you’ve got some information of when the gift came in, you know exactly when they gave, you could put together a donor Versary plan for everybody who gave to you at a certain significant level or a certain level or above. And you could have an entire communication plan built along that alone. And then your post birth, and then go hey, afterwards, let’s just say they don’t give on their don’t anniversary again. Let’s just say they forget, Hey, I didn’t forget about your anniversary, I just wanted to remind you that we just still have a party here, here’s what you’ve done, and you refer back to that date all the time. That’s a really good way to reach out to people who may have not given in a while, who maybe you’ve forgotten to communicate with. But it’s super important to go back to the same in the CRM pieces that to remind yourself of what you talked about. To remind yourself about what conversations you had. It’s okay, our superpower we think as fundraisers and as nonprofit tears is that we remember everything. We don’t we talk to a whole bunch of people. Nobody remembers all those kinds of things. Right? So it’s it’s it to note, note those things. You just got a mental note. I talked to Sandy about Chicago dogs. I don’t know why we’re talking about Chicago dogs. But I like Chicago. And I’m hungry already. Apparently, I would try to Chicago dogs, right. And one of the things we like we like the we had a weird conversation about the neon green relish on our Chicago dogs. small detail like Sandy put in the chat, right? No details too small. If I have a callback, and this is what if we watch a movie or you watch a movie series or you watch a show series. And in like season four, they have a callback for some line or some reference ahead in season one. You’re like, oh, good writing. Right. You know, it’s purposeful. They’re drawing you back to what got you into the show in the first place. Oh, good callback. It’s conversational callbacks. That’s by the way, actually a whole series of a webinars conversational callbacks. I think it’s a good bit. But like your my reference to like, Hey, I saw in a jar on or you walking down a grocery store aisle and you see neon colored relish. You take a photo and you email them you like hey, thought of you today in the grocery store. I found our relish. I go see I told you it was available. You didn’t ask him for money. All you did was have a conversation and send them a note saying that as you’re thinking about them, be your callback to that piece of it. information that was a random factor, random thing that you chatted about during your donor bid. And that’s a bit. It’s so I think it’s such a cool way to, to do something unique and interesting. For all those penny for Chamber members gonna go start celebrating 510 1520. Yes, make a big deal about it. You know, again, you don’t have to hit what would be very funny. Penny two is showing up with a very small cake with 20 candles on it. That’s, that’s just the just the funny things are the flaming cupcake. You’re like, listen, we’re getting too big, we need a sheet cake next time for your 25th anniversary or something like that. Like, it doesn’t have to cost a lot. It doesn’t have to be a thing. You can talk and make fun of how making fun of people How about how old they are, is hilarious bit if you have a good relationship with them. Like I don’t have enough candles for all of the things and all the time that you’ve been a member, it’s a great bit. So again, the whole purpose of this is trying to figure out unique ways to continue the conversation and ask unique questions to jot down the answers. So you can have a call that in future conversations, not necessarily just the immediate ones, it is the end of the year, we are all scrambling for gifts. But what you can’t do is let your sense of urgency for funding negate the fact that you have a long term relationship with these people. And that if you only think about it in terms of in the next 48 hours I need rather than in the next 48 months I want or I would love to vision with I think you’re making a very bad mistake. And even though that your brain is thinking about budget, budget, budget budget budget, your brain should also be thinking about relationship building relationship building relationship building. And that’s being unique in the way that you approach things. And the unique way that you can use either technology or a rhythmic communication plan to continue that conversation going forward. Which is I think, a very nice transition to you, Sammy, in so much that well. That’s what you’re going to be talking about next. But you’re muted.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 22:11
No, that was fantastic. And I think really good. And I think yes, keyed up perfectly, because my jam is really helping you use digital tools to still keep that personalized experience. But to fill your pipeline. So I just want you to take a moment with me because we are going to talk very in a corporate salesy way to a certain extent about filling your pipeline, and how do you bring in more people that are the right people, so that you can do all the amazing things that Patrick just said, and you know, who you should be having conversations with. And you can start the conversation already knowing something about them without having to be like, tell me a little bit about yourself, right? Like you can already kind of know some of the things that they’re interested in with your organization. So you can come in and get prepped. So I’m going to show you three tools that I am loving right now. They are not nonprofit focus. So that’s what I said, I want you to just like, go with me here. But they can totally be used in the nonprofit space and I think will really help you streamline not something you necessarily have to do right now. But just something to really think about as you’re going into 24 for how it can support your overall fundraising efforts. They are free tools but have a lot more options if you pay for them. I’m not sponsored or endorsed by any of these platforms, I just love them. And so take a look at that. I will also give you the caveat of always ask for nonprofit pricing, always ask for a discount and their paid versions are not crazy expensive, otherwise I wouldn’t share these tools with you. Um, but I’m gonna share my screen. So the first one is video ask and I will say you guys will probably start seeing some of these in the nonprofit boot camp marketing funnels as well just FYI because we are building these out for our own company as we speak. But the first one is video ask and it does a lot of things. I’ve typically used it in the past to get testimonials from clients because you can have direct video or text but they have this new kind of lead generation so they have different things here. But I love it because it’s kind of like a choose your own adventure. So and I have these templates so we’re just going to use this template slowly Can you see my screen the Yeah. So now you see we have this like Choose Your Own Adventure workflow. Okay, so I’m just going to show you real quick. It starts with like a video and then you click they get to choose kind of what they’re excited about. And so I’m just going to play this literally eight seconds.

Speaker 2 24:54
Hi, my name is Joanna and I help people in businesses with their Facebook ad campaigns. What can I help you with?

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 25:01
So imagine your potential donor. And we’re going to talk about how you might use this in a second. But imagine your potential donor gets here or somebody that’s interested in your your organization, and they see your executive directors face your program directors face somebody that’s personal, saying, Hey, we’re the Boys and Girls Club. I’m the executive director. And we have amazing, a lot of amazing programs for youth in our community, which one is most exciting to you. And these options are arts, arts and crafts, or sports, athletics, or youth development or leadership development, right, so they can immediately click through. So if I click here, then I go to the next video, where they’re saying, okay, they’re saying, Get the guide, or book a coaching session here, it could be another quick video that tells them a little bit about the arts and crafts program that you have at the Boys and Girls Club, then it would go immediately to do you want to learn more, or let’s chat about how you know what our needs are, or the impact how you can kind of impact our organization, this can then go straight to getting them on the email list, it can go straight to get out of here, it can go straight to your calendar, where they can book time with you right away. Calendly is a free tool you can use for this, we use acuity, but there’s free options here, they can automatically just book time with you. And it can go also to your website where they can learn more information about what’s going on. So it’s a great way to capture information, get people on your email list, get people booking time with you getting people to your website. And when it’s live, you get the data. So you get to see how people are coming through. So it’ll also give you information of like, these are the programs that people seem to be most excited about. So or these are the programs that we’re having more conversations with people about. So now we know kind of how to tweak some of our communications or how to tweak some of the things on the website to be able to engage with where our audience is finding more interest in excitement. So again, this is free, there’s a lot more options you can add into it. If you need to have more than three steps. And you do have to pay for it. I just want to be fully transparent there. But I just love quick short videos that allow people to make their own decision and kind of engage with you before it’s frictionless, right? You don’t have to call somebody up and make put them on the on the spot and say, Hey, can we chat, they get to have the opportunity to kind of control their own destiny without having to talk to somebody I mean, like that’s why we all love what I do anyway, when we can do chat support instead of having to get on the phone. Sometimes that’s easier. Like we’re kind of moving in that direction. So this is a great tool for that. But are there any questions, I don’t have my chat open, or anything that I should clarify with regards to that before we move on to how to use it.

Patrick Kirby 27:58
Nothing in the chat. But this is so brilliant for against specific campaigns as well. So if you if you, when you have somebody come into your email system, you could send them on this little journey and just have them fill out a form. Or you can watch what they like to click. I mean, this is essentially what social media does all the time, right? They see you pausing on a video, or they see you clicking on something you’re using now the tools that social media does exactly for you, and it’s gonna be great.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 28:34
Video, it’s a video app, that will I’ll put the URL for all of these in here married before we leave, I can’t talk and type at the same time. It’s not it’s not a skill I possess. But we’ll make sure you have all the links. So anyway, this is video asked. So one of the other ways that I love using this because Patrick you’re spot on is in a cold email campaign. So I know we all hate cold email, but I think done correctly can be really, really cool. And so this is a tool called Apollo. And it’s very much linked to LinkedIn. But what’s really cool about this is we can create they just moved this all around. We can prospect on Apollo and find who we want to talk to so that who’s our target audience so that we can send them specific messages that we want to just start the conversation. So again, in this email, you could link to video ask you could have your first email say hey, we you know we we’ve been in this community for 20 years. We just wanted to know if you’ve heard of us what you think about us. If you’re curious about learning more about our organization. Check out this quick short video right or you could even have fun with it and say, You remember those choose your own adventure books like we created our own Little fun adventure for you to go on, it would only take five minutes, we’d love for you to check it out something like that not pitchy, not salesy. Not asking for money, but just inquiring if people you know, really know about who you are. But what I love about this is we can really figure out who we want to target and generate lists based off of our ideal donor. So I’m just going to close out these filters. I was just kind of playing with it today. It does run a little slow sometimes. So just be aware. But basically, we can start by saying, okay, maybe we know that we want people I live in Minneapolis. So we want businesses that are in the greater Minneapolis, St. Paul, area organizations, right. And it’s, it’s spin in its thinking, and I know that my target is usually because that’s a lot, right, that’s more than we need. So we want 50 employees or less, that’s kind of who we think is going to be right for us. And we know that we want people that are in the do. Oops, I apologize for how slow this is. Sorry, we want people that are in the banking industry, because that’s kind of what we know, is kind of our sweet spot right now. So now we, let’s see what the list. So that’s still 188,000 people, that’s way too much, we don’t need that much. So you can kind of keep filtering with it and playing with it. This is not pulling in the right information. Clearly. This isn’t, this is why I don’t like live demos.

Patrick Kirby 31:58
Hey, it just means that we all get to work on this together. This is a this is good. Your real interest. Well, I’m part but part of this too, is that the intuitive training that you’ve got on this kind of thing, too is, is it is. And here’s where I love watching this is that taking the time to clarify who you’re actually going to talk with about specific things, especially towards the end of the year. Super important.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 32:22
Yeah, and I think sometimes this is a little glitchy, but I’m gonna go back to like, you have to reset it sometimes. But I’m gonna go back to this one. So we can look at an actual list. But you know, this was we have a faith based organization that is targeting churches to share their programs and services that they have to, you know, eventually it’s going to turn into an ask, but they’re going to start with free resources. So here you can see this one is working. It’s sorted. I got us down to 3.3 1000. targets. Yeah, so that’s a lot better. So now we can look at it. And we can see, okay, well, based off titles, you know, I don’t think the music and piano teacher is somebody that we want to target. So I’m not going to put them on the list. But I’m going to put the director of ops, I like that one, you know, I can put all these ones that are in here, I can see the organization. So you can sort by company, if you want to make sure that you only have one person from the company things like that, right? What it’s going to do then is put them into a list. And then you write your sequence. So you would write you would write your email sequence. And they have pre formatted ones. But I’m telling you, this is very much sales language. So you’re going to want to rewrite it for sure. But you put in your sequence, and it’s going to send an email about every three days, and you’ve gotten these emails in your inbox. I know. So make it personal, don’t be gross. But you can customize it so that it says, you know, whatever you want their company name, their first name, you can put in different information here. But it links to your email. So you This is coming. This is my signature that’s in my regular email. So this is going out from your email, it’s they’ll all show up in your Sent folder, right? And they’ll reply directly to your email. So now you have people connecting with you on a personal level, but this is handling sending them all out and mass and following up with them. If somebody replies to the email, they automatically get pulled out. You know, you’ll get all the this person is no longer at this company. You can follow up with that company. You’ll get all this information. And it’s just a great way to start to prospect with a target audience. But yes, to reiterate, what Patrick said is like really honing in on who is it that you want to target and then using a tool like this to make it super personal to get the information that you need from them. This is just going to kind of start to build that base of people because Patrick mentioned this earlier. We are seeing people give but there’s less donors retention rates are getting worse and There’s less donors out there. So we need to have new tools and ways of reaching out to the right people so that we can kind of fill that pipeline. And then to your point, Mary, once we have them in our email list, we’re engaging with them having regular communication, that sharing impact all the time to stay top of mind, whether that’s a monthly newsletter, you know, having that communication plan for different tiers of donors, so you know, who you’re calling who you’re sending handwritten notes to all of that stuff becomes critically important.

Patrick Kirby 35:33
You know, the other thing, the other thing Tuesday was just a really quick thing, going back to the video, ask is, once you know what they’re interested in, because they’ve already told you that, so let’s just say they go through this whole thing, and they don’t give to you, or they don’t donate to you right away, right, they do get to the end screen, and they just maybe sign up for your website, you now know that they’re really interested in x, y, and z, what are your programs are, so you can actually then do a follow up segment of videos exactly like this in your communication plan that says, Hey, I know that you’re a big fan of child art. And here’s what we’ve got here. And you feature this and do whatever, like, Hey, do you want to see more, whatever, and you can also then track them. So you are actually being so purposeful with what that solicitation process is. It’s unbelievable. Yeah, I

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 36:16
had a email just this morning from a colleague of mine, and it literally the subject line was like, I just made you a video. And her email was, I didn’t feel like typing all this out. So I just sent you a video and the video is it’s just in lieu, it’s recorded, just direct to camera just like this. And she’s just, you know, checking in and just saying, Hey, I, you know, she has something she needs my help with, and something that she has as an opportunity for me, but she just did it in a quick loom video is faster for her than to type Plus, she also gets notifications that the video has been watched. So then, you know, okay, well, I know you watch the video, but you haven’t followed up with me yet. So then a few days later, you know, to write that person and say, Hey, did you have a chance to watch the video yet? Any questions that I can answer? So I think video is really critical. And it just is so personal. So even in these situations where you’re like, I have donors all over the country, or I can’t possibly have that many one to one calls. There’s lots of little things like that, that you can use the digital space to make things really personal. And they don’t take a lot of time. And loom is also a free app. Um, okay, so the last one that I wanted to kind of share with you is, is quizzes. So this is a quiz we have on our website culture, should you DIY your website, and you couldn’t do, you could make quizzes out of anything. And again, have fun with it, get creative. But what this does is it takes people through just some fun quiz, who doesn’t love to do a quiz takes you through some questions. And then at the end it will give you your you it’ll click take you here to see your results. And what the results are for this particular quiz is three different ones. Are you a DI wire? Are you done with you? Or are you a do what you’re done for you? Like what are you prepared to do? So you’ll get the results, it sends you to a thank you page with where I have other free resources. So you could send people to an impact page where they can really see some more information. But more importantly, it takes you to an email sequence where you learn more about what it takes to build your own website. So if that whatever category you’re in, you get additional resources and information for that particular thing. So like let’s say, your nonprofit is a you’re trying to help with environmental causes and recycling, right. So your quiz could be like, what, what level of recycler Are you? And you could ask them all these questions about can this be recycled? Can that be recycled? Where did things go? Like how does this all work XYZ. And at the end, maybe they get a grade, like you’re a gold star recycler, you’re a Silver Star, you have no idea what you’re doing, right. But they get all of those resources that are attached to your organization, educating them on what you do and how you do it. But you also get all the data of what they clicked on. So you know more about what they know, or what they’re engaged with what they need, what they care about, so that when they get the results, they’re getting a ton of value, add they’re getting fun engagement with your organization, but you also get information that you can use aggregate for how you want to portray what you’re doing overall, but individually so that you can have conversations with those potential folks and already start to build them in your CRM with some baseline information. So it’s fun, it’s engaging, they’re not that hard to put together. And I think you know, you and your team I bet Patrick could give you all like 10 million ideas for fun quizzes, you could do

Patrick Kirby 39:59
the quiz Just the quizzes are interesting because you could send a quiz anybody or you could send a survey to anybody. Nobody wants to take a survey. And they’ll take a quiz. Right? And I mean that like in, I’m not being flippant with our donor bases, because the idea of like, kind of take a short survey, I know how this goes, or I gotta take a quiz. Yeah, I take a quiz, right? And so it’s a lot of this is just genuinely trying to figure out what the best route is to engage your audience and be purposeful with the communication. That’s the absolute key to all of this.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 40:34
Yep, you got to keep talking, because I’m going to type these in the chat.

Patrick Kirby 40:37
Oh, good. I like it. So what I what I like about this, too, is that you even if you don’t have, even if you don’t have any clue on who the heck is clicking on your website, right now, you will after this. And here’s the other thing, too, is the problem that a lot of people have is that they don’t know who their donors are, they don’t even know who their potential donors are, they’re just guessing you no longer have to guess with the type of information that you want to send your group. And it’s, this is so much more fun to do is so much more brilliant to have. And it’s just such an easy way to do it. And it’s creative, and nobody else is doing this either. So if your organization and again, part of the reason why we talk about this kind of thing is super important, because we want to know how to rise above the very crowded space that is the nonprofit realm or the or your for business, whatever that is, we want to go be somebody that’s different. This is gonna differentiate you from everybody else, because nobody else is doing a blanket email, they don’t have the luxury or the time or the you get this doesn’t take any more time. But all of a sudden, you’re more purposeful with it. And that’s so important. It will take time on the

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 41:43
front end, but then it runs in the background. And also then you’re more freed up to focus on the one on one relationship building that you need to do with people because you know, you know, once you’ve okay, I’ve got this one I’m ready for I’m ready to start really working on someone else, you’ve got this whole pool of people that you have to pull from where and you’re not just starting from scratch. And I also think it just really is important to include more video and include more engaging things. And these things help you stay top of mind, I want to make sure to that I drive home for you, Mary, how to get people started with all of these yes to your website. You can have your quiz or your your video ask be like a button that’s like get to know us or learn more you contact us like you can have different buttons on your website that send people to like watch the short, just short 10 second video, I mean, that’s where they’re going. And then you can send them there. I think having it in your footer and your email having in your email signature, you can always have it there. Putting it again in these cold email solicitations. If you choose to go that route. You know, create QR codes that you can share with your board. Arm your board members with this like this is a fantastic thing for board members. If they have their own business cards, put a QR code on those business cards that leads straight to your video ask so that they can just send people directly to something that’s going to capture information. Yes, you could have it in your your social media descriptions, all all the places.

Patrick Kirby 43:19
Last year questions make sense does it make sense to you is it’s kind of something that’s of interest. And again, it’s it’s really practical, easy tools, that if combined with purposeful conversation of the things that you just really want to talk to your donors about your dear supporters about your community about, you get to actually put what they care about in front of them regularly, rather than just guessing what they want, because they’re going to tell you, and you’re asking the questions that are going to allow you to do that particular answer to

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 43:48
well, I’m Kenny, since you’re here, I’m actually running a campaign for my local chamber for their membership drive. We’re running it through Apollo. So they have a whole welcome sequence group sending cold emails out to a, I think we did like 327 different contacts, all value add all just asking for questions. And she’s getting pretty good response rates, I think I mean, we’re a smaller chamber. And I think she’s already gotten off the first couple of emails, like four or five calls booked right away just from the first one. So it’s also a great thing you can use for membership drives, and things like that. But I think the key here is getting to know your donors and targeting the right people. So when you’re having those one on one conversations, it’s easier.

Patrick Kirby 44:34
Yeah, for sure. I love it. This is one of my favorite This is seriously this is one of my favorite ones because it’s again, you take these like things and concepts that we all know. But like now, how are we going to do it a little bit differently that doesn’t take, you know, a rocket science to figure out but done in a way that’s completely unique and different than anybody else is doing. And everybody’s talking about AI and everybody’s talking about these kinds of things because they’re spending a lot of time doing these See, this is the hard work, the things that computers in the robots aren’t going to figure out as asking this particular thing. And then using the robot abilities to actually do the work for you. This is the this is the future of have a lot of solicitation, more communication than ever, when you’re doing an in a rhythm on a topic that people really care about. And I think it’s brilliant. Yeah, Mark, chef’s kiss to this. So well done.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 45:25
I can’t believe we got through all that in 45 minutes.

Patrick Kirby 45:28
It’s, hey, listen, I don’t want to be cliche. Giving people back some time is a delightful thing. And again, I love the fact that you can do this. And so quickly, you can just get this this information, you here’s some solutions and move on and go. So here’s the other thing too, as you as you interact with this, let us know how let us know how it works, or let us know what some big wins are for you. And we’ll probably end up featuring you and either video, follow up to one of these things in it right. So I think be creative. You know, send some solutions and talk about this amongst your your colleagues on how you can leverage it to it’s really good. Well,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 46:05
this and all of the links will also be available in your student dashboard by tomorrow. So you can come back and rewatch it or share it with anybody else on your team that needs to hear it and watch it. But yeah, definitely share what you do. And as we get ours built out, we’ll share them as well. Yeah, and I hope everybody has a great holiday season because we’re in urine giving season because we won’t be back live until January.

Patrick Kirby 46:33
Ah. Also, hey, again, this was super fun. Thanks for sticking around, go back and watch the ones you didn’t get to beforehand. We’ll see you in January. Again, if you’ve got some other ideas, send them our way. We’d love to know we’d love to know what you’re thinking as well. So Sandy, have a great Thanksgiving. I get to talk to you on a fairly regular basis. Everybody else. I hope I get to chat with you on a regular basis to have a happy holiday season. Good luck. You got this.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 46:58
Hi everybody.

How to Communicate the Variety of Services You Provide

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 0:00
Uh, there. We did it. Um, good morning, everybody it will or whatever, wherever you are in the world watching this now we're watching the replay, we should hopefully we'll have a couple more people popping in here this morning. But we are excited to be here for our last training of the year of 2023. As we did it, well, it's not done yet.

Patrick Kirby 0:27
No, it's not. You're very much right. Um, I liked the way that we did this, though, because we've had a ton of guests on for this really, brass tacks at the end of the year is like how on earth do we set the table for 24 and beyond. So this is a really nice way to like, end the season. There's a we're gonna give some tasks and to dues and some opportunities, but it's not gonna be like, conceptually, you're not going to, you know, have your mind blown. You're like, oh, I need to do that now in the next 30 days. So I like this today a lot.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 0:59
I love it, too. Okay, so why don't do you want to just go ahead and, and just kick us off?

Patrick Kirby 1:05
I do. Alright, so 2024 is going to be an interesting year, I would like to maybe kind of give you a little bit of what we're hearing on the ground from the fundraising perspective on just sort of like a state of the state kind of piece. And then I kind of want to go into, here's some interesting concepts and questions to ask, and why. Because I know in the immediate need for money at the end of the year, and I know, fourth quarter is a massive, like, big push for everybody, we got to think long term. And we got to think about where those gifts come in, and then continue to come in going forward. And a lot of the things we're going to talk today, right out of the gate, are are just that strategies and things to do on your well to do list to kind of keep in the front of your mind as you're sort of rocking and rolling into your planning for next year. So let's give a quick state of the state on all things nonprofits, it is a little bit tougher than one would imagine or think or want. Now, a lot of individual donors are kind of scaling back a lot. We've seen it over the last decade, decade and a half on individual donors just vanishing. And a lot of it has to do with their purchasing power and their ability to have additional revenue to distribute to nonprofits, people still want to give, that's important to understand they want to give, they just don't know how so whether you can transform their gift, their physical, like cash gift into time and talent, and sort of keep them sort of engaged. That's really important. But understand that a lot of your non your, your non traditional sort of non major players, your random gifts that you get throughout the years, they're declining. And it's not just you, it's everybody. Number two, the major donors, the bigger donors still give major gifts. But they are reducing the number of organizations that they are giving to. So if you are a major donor you give to like five or six big organizations every year, you're probably scaling down to two or three. And that's really important because those that have major donors or large funders at your organization, you need to do your damnedest to make sure that you are in constant contact with them about the impact that their gift has been making the need for continuous funding and the fact that you just need to be in touch. You don't have to ask them for money all the time. But you do need to remind them what their gifts have done. And you need to do it in a fairly regular basis. No communication is enough communication. Sammy is going to talk about this at the at the second half of of this presentation, because it's super important to understand is that when people open up your emails at your organization, they're seeing what 2030 40% of openings, maybe, right? That means 60% of your donor base or 60% of your supporters aren't seeing that particular email. So if you send out a secondary email that talks similar above the same thing, you're not annoying anybody, nobody is calling you going, you're sending too much positive impact notes to me, like nobody's ever said that ever. Individuals who aren't as connected to you might drop off your mailing list, and that's okay, because it cleans everything up. So I don't want to make this a thing about you know, you need to stop connecting with them and ask him for money. But I do want to encourage you to just continue your communication, your updates, your impact stories, etc. Because your donors want to hear from you. And if they don't hear from you and they hear from somebody else, they're going to move their money towards somebody that they feel an affinity to. So I say all that and I use the word affinity very purposely because those are the that's the word of 2024 is B and find the Those that have the affinity for you? And how do you find out that they have the affinity for you or your organization? Well, we ask better questions. We talk a lot about this, I think in a lot of the trainings that we have. And really even in some of the guest expert trainings, we talk a little bit about this, but I'm gonna hammer it home today, is asking better questions is the most important thing that you can do to engage your donors. Because it's purposeful, and it's meaningful. I said this before, you know, one of the best pieces of advice that I've ever gotten as an individual from a fundraising perspective was from a mentor of mine that said, never asked for a major gift. Unless you know the name of your donors dog, it means that you're asking questions about their personal life, and not solely how much is in their checking account. And that means a lot to them, because they're not an ATM. They're a partner in your organization, trying to make the world a better place through you. And you don't get a relationship. If you consistently and only ask them for cash. You have to ask them how they're feeling? How are they holding out? What are they up to? What are their likes? What are their dislikes? What are their passions? What are they concerned about? You know, they might have family issues that if you don't know about them, and your ask comes in at the wrong time, it means you are not self aware enough to not make that ask because you're not paying attention. And that's really, really, really important. Especially at the end of the year, when you have this idea of gratitude and thanksgiving and wonderful joy. There's no joy in reaching out to somebody, you have no idea who they are and why they give. So find out ask them. So some of the questions that I think you should write down, write down some of the great questions that you've been asked, like write a question that we really like asking our donors, as you know, you know us for a very long time you're you're a donor for, you know, a number of years. If you could wave a magic wand right now and fix a thing or help us with one thing, what would it be?

It's a really open ended question. It's very weird, because you get to play like a genie in the lamp sort of things, it gives them their creativity, it opens up the doors to their brain that that access, is that that creative module in there? What what would that be? And their answer might surprise you. Or it might align it with a program that you're rolling out, or you've been doing for a very long time, or they might not know about or they might not have supported before. So for example, there's a group that I work with it's it's an advocacy group for individuals with developmental disability and delay. And one of the magic one questions that answered was, I wish I didn't have to explain that we were there were people behind our disabilities, people I go, what that is such an intuitive piece of answer. This person has a disability, but they're also a donor. So I know now, and I didn't know before, that they're not concerned with, you know, a program per se, they're not interested, namely, in politics, what they're interested is in people. So if I have a program, and then we are rolling out a program, or there's something in the legislature that has to do with people centric, seeing them as person, person centric, whatever, I know that this individual is the first person I'm going to call, because I know that they said, I wish I could be seen as a person, not just a label from a disability. So anything that's to do with people or labels or, or triumph over tragic, those kinds of things are great. So I think that's really one of the main important things that that we need to keep forward. It's like, what are the interesting questions that you have? The other question is, if we go away, if our organization ceases to exist, what happens? What do you think happens? Or what would your opinion about us ceasing to exist be, and they're gonna pick out programs that you might not have an idea of, that they were really fond of, or things that they're passionate about, or then things they think about? So if they say, for example, you've got a, an athletic group, and you're like, Well, I'd be really sad because the idea of team would go away, or I wouldn't have the chance to engage with anybody here, you know, that, you know, that their camaraderie or their community means more than it is the actual sport itself. They're not looking for their kids to be, you know, athletic wonder kids, they're looking for community, it makes them feel that they're connected, they have friendships, etc. So you now know that your questions or the things that you talk about for your donors are going to be very community, very partnership, very relationship based. And that's super important when you're trying to ask for money, super important when you do those things as well. And it's such an interesting way. That's way different than we have this program. Could you give me $1? It's boring. Nobody really cares about that. They already know that you need money. But what they don't know is that you're interested in their perspective, one of the best adages that you can do is take it from the sales industry, which is if you want money, ask for advice. And if you want advice, ask for money. If I go up to a penny here, and I say, Penny, I need $10,000. Maybe you're gonna go file your pin $1,000. Mary does go ask Mary, she's gonna give me advice to people that she thinks is going to be a thing, right? But if I say, hey, Penny, I need your opinion on something. If we had to raise $10,000, where would you go first? Or where would you think the best avenue that we could go or create that would build a relationship that could get us to this avenue? Now her perspective is like, I'd love I'd love to see what maybe you have as your, your solicitation piece, or what are your materials and they'll give you their opinion. And then at the end of that conversation, more than likely, Penny's gonna say, Well, that was really fun. That was really interesting. It was different than being solicited for my cash only. How else can I help? And instantly, you have a way and I Well, we're trying to raise $10,000 in this neck of the woods, is that something that you'd be able to help us achieve? More than likely, Penny's already bought into the fact that you're already going down the road? You've brainstormed with her? You've understood that she's maybe a partner or a door opener or an influencer in her community. And of course, she's going to say yes to something might not be the full 10 grand and that's okay. She's giving you such a valuable advice to take. And you learn something about that. She's a helper. She's She's a creative helper. That's it's such an interesting piece of this whole, like asking better questions bit here. Sammy,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 11:28
I can ask you a question about this. Yeah, please, as we're in your end, and we're feeling that desperation to get all of the dollars we possibly can, how do we, like stop ourselves from going into that space and still approaching conversations from a value lead ask questions situation, because right now is when we're trying to close all of the deal.

Patrick Kirby 11:51
Right? Well, this is this is what makes now talking about this now and planning for 2024. So important is that you, you the seasons of giving are really critical to under understanding your own organizational seasons of giving is super important. So if everything comes in in November, December, you probably don't have a lot of time now, to sort of like, let's pause and build some relationships with our donors already. They know that this is the time that they give, so you can go and activate them. But if you're looking at February, you know, March, April, May, you're looking at this dry time at your organization where there's not a lot of money coming in, well, what are you doing to set the table for the next gift? Well, that's your going out mode. That is your that is your time in which you go out Mary is a really good question. I know we'll get to this in the second half as well, which is how do you keep the communication flowing with potential donors and supporters? It's that it is, hey, I got an update for you. Hey, I've got an impact story for you. Hey, I've got a success that you helped make with your gift story. I wanted to reach out because you're one of the people that helped make this happen. Mary, you're a rock star, because you were one of the 50 donors that made this scholarship happen. You made this program happen to help spay and neuter animals that for free, so that we could take the pet population down it wouldn't collapse. You know financially the pound here in town, you were part of this, look at look at what you've done and made these individuals a success. And in between your asks that rhythm of trying to figure out when's the last time you talked with them? And and I'll actually pose this question to you say me too, is that we all have a bunch of friends who we can pick up the phone and have a conversation as if we've never stopped talking to each other. It might be three or four or five months around, right? But if you pick up the phone constantly, and you get a call from let's just say, I don't know, Scott. And every time Scott calls you, they ask you for something right? Hey, do you have this? Can I borrow this? Do you have money do you have? Like they're always going to constantly ask if you're going to stop answering Scott's phone call. The reason that it's okay to pick up Scott's phone because giving an update. Hey, how are you? How's the family? How's this? How's that? Hey, did you catch this? Hey, did you see this? Hey, love your thoughts on this? Hey, it's good to catch up. So when you're thinking about the rhythm of your potential donors and your current donors, it is how you like to be communicated at think of it from a how do you like to be asked? Is it every single time you pick up the phone? No. How do you like to tell a story? Is it just leading with and always talking about money? No. So we know intuitively as human beings that we need to be bought in. We need to have a concept of of inclusive. I'm a partner. I'm making this happen with everybody sort of mentality. That's the same is true with donors. Well, yeah,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 14:52
I'm gonna pop in and highlight something you said earlier because you kind of said it quick and it's really important is that as we're having these conversations and asking these questions, making sure or that that information goes into your CRM and it goes somewhere. So that's when you're like, Okay, well, I don't really know what to call somebody about, like, maybe you know that they it's their wedding anniversary, and then you can just call them up and just say, hey, we just wanted to say we happy anniversary, we hope you guys are having a great year and celebrating or even if it's something, you know, less happy, even just to call and say, Hey, we know that this time of year is really tough for you. We just wanted to call and let you know, we're thinking about you, you know, if there's anything you need, let us know. Because having that information, there's not a lot of organizations that are taking that extra step for that personalized communication, and it just builds that trust and increases your chances of you getting that bigger gift out of the charities that they're choosing to support.

Patrick Kirby 15:49
You know, one of the things that I really like, and I'm going to be like a super champion of it in 2024 is a making a big deal about a donor Versary. So if you know exactly when somebody donated, and Mary, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you an example, because you're the one that asked the question, which is, you know, how do you keep the communication flowing? You know, there are a lot of people who think birthdays are a big deal. I know, I know a handful people who just birthday, that's their thing. Mike, my coworker, Leah, if you don't remember her birthday, you're kind of dead to her, because that's her thing. That's what she loves. So if you could make a big deal about a donor Versary, or that kind of thing, and just say, Hey, I've been thinking about you, because next month is your anniversary, it's a really big deal to us, because you've made a difference here in the whatever I go, I'm pumped, I can't wait to celebrate with you FYI. It's a free nugget of communication that you get to pass along to your donor without asking them for money, you're reminded them that they donated money. So that's kind of like a little nugget in their brain. But you don't ask for anything. And then a week before Hey, next week's your donor Versary. And then on their anniversary, you know, when they gave last you know what they gave? And why don't you just go say, Hey, listen, happy anniversary. In the last year with your gift, we've done this, this, this and this, this is just an amazing feat. Thank you so much. You're amazing. You're a rock star, I'm having a cupcake for you, I hope you have one too. Happy anniversary, send them a donor Versary card, the same way that you would have a birthday card, because you have those two intimate things together that gave to you the gift to your organization. And this is the bond that you have between them, you might not know that their birthday is it doesn't really matter, you know what their anniversary is. And people make a big deal about it. So that's a unique communication thing that you can do. And you know, based on everything that you've got some information of when the gift came in, you know exactly when they gave, you could put together a donor Versary plan for everybody who gave to you at a certain significant level or a certain level or above. And you could have an entire communication plan built along that alone. And then your post birth, and then go hey, afterwards, let's just say they don't give on their don't anniversary again. Let's just say they forget, Hey, I didn't forget about your anniversary, I just wanted to remind you that we just still have a party here, here's what you've done, and you refer back to that date all the time. That's a really good way to reach out to people who may have not given in a while, who maybe you've forgotten to communicate with. But it's super important to go back to the same in the CRM pieces that to remind yourself of what you talked about. To remind yourself about what conversations you had. It's okay, our superpower we think as fundraisers and as nonprofit tears is that we remember everything. We don't we talk to a whole bunch of people. Nobody remembers all those kinds of things. Right? So it's it's it to note, note those things. You just got a mental note. I talked to Sandy about Chicago dogs. I don't know why we're talking about Chicago dogs. But I like Chicago. And I'm hungry already. Apparently, I would try to Chicago dogs, right. And one of the things we like we like the we had a weird conversation about the neon green relish on our Chicago dogs. small detail like Sandy put in the chat, right? No details too small. If I have a callback, and this is what if we watch a movie or you watch a movie series or you watch a show series. And in like season four, they have a callback for some line or some reference ahead in season one. You're like, oh, good writing. Right. You know, it's purposeful. They're drawing you back to what got you into the show in the first place. Oh, good callback. It's conversational callbacks. That's by the way, actually a whole series of a webinars conversational callbacks. I think it's a good bit. But like your my reference to like, Hey, I saw in a jar on or you walking down a grocery store aisle and you see neon colored relish. You take a photo and you email them you like hey, thought of you today in the grocery store. I found our relish. I go see I told you it was available. You didn't ask him for money. All you did was have a conversation and send them a note saying that as you're thinking about them, be your callback to that piece of it. information that was a random factor, random thing that you chatted about during your donor bid. And that's a bit. It's so I think it's such a cool way to, to do something unique and interesting. For all those penny for Chamber members gonna go start celebrating 510 1520. Yes, make a big deal about it. You know, again, you don't have to hit what would be very funny. Penny two is showing up with a very small cake with 20 candles on it. That's, that's just the just the funny things are the flaming cupcake. You're like, listen, we're getting too big, we need a sheet cake next time for your 25th anniversary or something like that. Like, it doesn't have to cost a lot. It doesn't have to be a thing. You can talk and make fun of how making fun of people How about how old they are, is hilarious bit if you have a good relationship with them. Like I don't have enough candles for all of the things and all the time that you've been a member, it's a great bit. So again, the whole purpose of this is trying to figure out unique ways to continue the conversation and ask unique questions to jot down the answers. So you can have a call that in future conversations, not necessarily just the immediate ones, it is the end of the year, we are all scrambling for gifts. But what you can't do is let your sense of urgency for funding negate the fact that you have a long term relationship with these people. And that if you only think about it in terms of in the next 48 hours I need rather than in the next 48 months I want or I would love to vision with I think you're making a very bad mistake. And even though that your brain is thinking about budget, budget, budget budget budget, your brain should also be thinking about relationship building relationship building relationship building. And that's being unique in the way that you approach things. And the unique way that you can use either technology or a rhythmic communication plan to continue that conversation going forward. Which is I think, a very nice transition to you, Sammy, in so much that well. That's what you're going to be talking about next. But you're muted.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 22:11
No, that was fantastic. And I think really good. And I think yes, keyed up perfectly, because my jam is really helping you use digital tools to still keep that personalized experience. But to fill your pipeline. So I just want you to take a moment with me because we are going to talk very in a corporate salesy way to a certain extent about filling your pipeline, and how do you bring in more people that are the right people, so that you can do all the amazing things that Patrick just said, and you know, who you should be having conversations with. And you can start the conversation already knowing something about them without having to be like, tell me a little bit about yourself, right? Like you can already kind of know some of the things that they're interested in with your organization. So you can come in and get prepped. So I'm going to show you three tools that I am loving right now. They are not nonprofit focus. So that's what I said, I want you to just like, go with me here. But they can totally be used in the nonprofit space and I think will really help you streamline not something you necessarily have to do right now. But just something to really think about as you're going into 24 for how it can support your overall fundraising efforts. They are free tools but have a lot more options if you pay for them. I'm not sponsored or endorsed by any of these platforms, I just love them. And so take a look at that. I will also give you the caveat of always ask for nonprofit pricing, always ask for a discount and their paid versions are not crazy expensive, otherwise I wouldn't share these tools with you. Um, but I'm gonna share my screen. So the first one is video ask and I will say you guys will probably start seeing some of these in the nonprofit boot camp marketing funnels as well just FYI because we are building these out for our own company as we speak. But the first one is video ask and it does a lot of things. I've typically used it in the past to get testimonials from clients because you can have direct video or text but they have this new kind of lead generation so they have different things here. But I love it because it's kind of like a choose your own adventure. So and I have these templates so we're just going to use this template slowly Can you see my screen the Yeah. So now you see we have this like Choose Your Own Adventure workflow. Okay, so I'm just going to show you real quick. It starts with like a video and then you click they get to choose kind of what they're excited about. And so I'm just going to play this literally eight seconds.

Speaker 2 24:54
Hi, my name is Joanna and I help people in businesses with their Facebook ad campaigns. What can I help you with?

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 25:01
So imagine your potential donor. And we're going to talk about how you might use this in a second. But imagine your potential donor gets here or somebody that's interested in your your organization, and they see your executive directors face your program directors face somebody that's personal, saying, Hey, we're the Boys and Girls Club. I'm the executive director. And we have amazing, a lot of amazing programs for youth in our community, which one is most exciting to you. And these options are arts, arts and crafts, or sports, athletics, or youth development or leadership development, right, so they can immediately click through. So if I click here, then I go to the next video, where they're saying, okay, they're saying, Get the guide, or book a coaching session here, it could be another quick video that tells them a little bit about the arts and crafts program that you have at the Boys and Girls Club, then it would go immediately to do you want to learn more, or let's chat about how you know what our needs are, or the impact how you can kind of impact our organization, this can then go straight to getting them on the email list, it can go straight to get out of here, it can go straight to your calendar, where they can book time with you right away. Calendly is a free tool you can use for this, we use acuity, but there's free options here, they can automatically just book time with you. And it can go also to your website where they can learn more information about what's going on. So it's a great way to capture information, get people on your email list, get people booking time with you getting people to your website. And when it's live, you get the data. So you get to see how people are coming through. So it'll also give you information of like, these are the programs that people seem to be most excited about. So or these are the programs that we're having more conversations with people about. So now we know kind of how to tweak some of our communications or how to tweak some of the things on the website to be able to engage with where our audience is finding more interest in excitement. So again, this is free, there's a lot more options you can add into it. If you need to have more than three steps. And you do have to pay for it. I just want to be fully transparent there. But I just love quick short videos that allow people to make their own decision and kind of engage with you before it's frictionless, right? You don't have to call somebody up and make put them on the on the spot and say, Hey, can we chat, they get to have the opportunity to kind of control their own destiny without having to talk to somebody I mean, like that's why we all love what I do anyway, when we can do chat support instead of having to get on the phone. Sometimes that's easier. Like we're kind of moving in that direction. So this is a great tool for that. But are there any questions, I don't have my chat open, or anything that I should clarify with regards to that before we move on to how to use it.

Patrick Kirby 27:58
Nothing in the chat. But this is so brilliant for against specific campaigns as well. So if you if you, when you have somebody come into your email system, you could send them on this little journey and just have them fill out a form. Or you can watch what they like to click. I mean, this is essentially what social media does all the time, right? They see you pausing on a video, or they see you clicking on something you're using now the tools that social media does exactly for you, and it's gonna be great.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 28:34
Video, it's a video app, that will I'll put the URL for all of these in here married before we leave, I can't talk and type at the same time. It's not it's not a skill I possess. But we'll make sure you have all the links. So anyway, this is video asked. So one of the other ways that I love using this because Patrick you're spot on is in a cold email campaign. So I know we all hate cold email, but I think done correctly can be really, really cool. And so this is a tool called Apollo. And it's very much linked to LinkedIn. But what's really cool about this is we can create they just moved this all around. We can prospect on Apollo and find who we want to talk to so that who's our target audience so that we can send them specific messages that we want to just start the conversation. So again, in this email, you could link to video ask you could have your first email say hey, we you know we we've been in this community for 20 years. We just wanted to know if you've heard of us what you think about us. If you're curious about learning more about our organization. Check out this quick short video right or you could even have fun with it and say, You remember those choose your own adventure books like we created our own Little fun adventure for you to go on, it would only take five minutes, we'd love for you to check it out something like that not pitchy, not salesy. Not asking for money, but just inquiring if people you know, really know about who you are. But what I love about this is we can really figure out who we want to target and generate lists based off of our ideal donor. So I'm just going to close out these filters. I was just kind of playing with it today. It does run a little slow sometimes. So just be aware. But basically, we can start by saying, okay, maybe we know that we want people I live in Minneapolis. So we want businesses that are in the greater Minneapolis, St. Paul, area organizations, right. And it's, it's spin in its thinking, and I know that my target is usually because that's a lot, right, that's more than we need. So we want 50 employees or less, that's kind of who we think is going to be right for us. And we know that we want people that are in the do. Oops, I apologize for how slow this is. Sorry, we want people that are in the banking industry, because that's kind of what we know, is kind of our sweet spot right now. So now we, let's see what the list. So that's still 188,000 people, that's way too much, we don't need that much. So you can kind of keep filtering with it and playing with it. This is not pulling in the right information. Clearly. This isn't, this is why I don't like live demos.

Patrick Kirby 31:58
Hey, it just means that we all get to work on this together. This is a this is good. Your real interest. Well, I'm part but part of this too, is that the intuitive training that you've got on this kind of thing, too is, is it is. And here's where I love watching this is that taking the time to clarify who you're actually going to talk with about specific things, especially towards the end of the year. Super important.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 32:22
Yeah, and I think sometimes this is a little glitchy, but I'm gonna go back to like, you have to reset it sometimes. But I'm gonna go back to this one. So we can look at an actual list. But you know, this was we have a faith based organization that is targeting churches to share their programs and services that they have to, you know, eventually it's going to turn into an ask, but they're going to start with free resources. So here you can see this one is working. It's sorted. I got us down to 3.3 1000. targets. Yeah, so that's a lot better. So now we can look at it. And we can see, okay, well, based off titles, you know, I don't think the music and piano teacher is somebody that we want to target. So I'm not going to put them on the list. But I'm going to put the director of ops, I like that one, you know, I can put all these ones that are in here, I can see the organization. So you can sort by company, if you want to make sure that you only have one person from the company things like that, right? What it's going to do then is put them into a list. And then you write your sequence. So you would write you would write your email sequence. And they have pre formatted ones. But I'm telling you, this is very much sales language. So you're going to want to rewrite it for sure. But you put in your sequence, and it's going to send an email about every three days, and you've gotten these emails in your inbox. I know. So make it personal, don't be gross. But you can customize it so that it says, you know, whatever you want their company name, their first name, you can put in different information here. But it links to your email. So you This is coming. This is my signature that's in my regular email. So this is going out from your email, it's they'll all show up in your Sent folder, right? And they'll reply directly to your email. So now you have people connecting with you on a personal level, but this is handling sending them all out and mass and following up with them. If somebody replies to the email, they automatically get pulled out. You know, you'll get all the this person is no longer at this company. You can follow up with that company. You'll get all this information. And it's just a great way to start to prospect with a target audience. But yes, to reiterate, what Patrick said is like really honing in on who is it that you want to target and then using a tool like this to make it super personal to get the information that you need from them. This is just going to kind of start to build that base of people because Patrick mentioned this earlier. We are seeing people give but there's less donors retention rates are getting worse and There's less donors out there. So we need to have new tools and ways of reaching out to the right people so that we can kind of fill that pipeline. And then to your point, Mary, once we have them in our email list, we're engaging with them having regular communication, that sharing impact all the time to stay top of mind, whether that's a monthly newsletter, you know, having that communication plan for different tiers of donors, so you know, who you're calling who you're sending handwritten notes to all of that stuff becomes critically important.

Patrick Kirby 35:33
You know, the other thing, the other thing Tuesday was just a really quick thing, going back to the video, ask is, once you know what they're interested in, because they've already told you that, so let's just say they go through this whole thing, and they don't give to you, or they don't donate to you right away, right, they do get to the end screen, and they just maybe sign up for your website, you now know that they're really interested in x, y, and z, what are your programs are, so you can actually then do a follow up segment of videos exactly like this in your communication plan that says, Hey, I know that you're a big fan of child art. And here's what we've got here. And you feature this and do whatever, like, Hey, do you want to see more, whatever, and you can also then track them. So you are actually being so purposeful with what that solicitation process is. It's unbelievable. Yeah, I

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 36:16
had a email just this morning from a colleague of mine, and it literally the subject line was like, I just made you a video. And her email was, I didn't feel like typing all this out. So I just sent you a video and the video is it's just in lieu, it's recorded, just direct to camera just like this. And she's just, you know, checking in and just saying, Hey, I, you know, she has something she needs my help with, and something that she has as an opportunity for me, but she just did it in a quick loom video is faster for her than to type Plus, she also gets notifications that the video has been watched. So then, you know, okay, well, I know you watch the video, but you haven't followed up with me yet. So then a few days later, you know, to write that person and say, Hey, did you have a chance to watch the video yet? Any questions that I can answer? So I think video is really critical. And it just is so personal. So even in these situations where you're like, I have donors all over the country, or I can't possibly have that many one to one calls. There's lots of little things like that, that you can use the digital space to make things really personal. And they don't take a lot of time. And loom is also a free app. Um, okay, so the last one that I wanted to kind of share with you is, is quizzes. So this is a quiz we have on our website culture, should you DIY your website, and you couldn't do, you could make quizzes out of anything. And again, have fun with it, get creative. But what this does is it takes people through just some fun quiz, who doesn't love to do a quiz takes you through some questions. And then at the end it will give you your you it'll click take you here to see your results. And what the results are for this particular quiz is three different ones. Are you a DI wire? Are you done with you? Or are you a do what you're done for you? Like what are you prepared to do? So you'll get the results, it sends you to a thank you page with where I have other free resources. So you could send people to an impact page where they can really see some more information. But more importantly, it takes you to an email sequence where you learn more about what it takes to build your own website. So if that whatever category you're in, you get additional resources and information for that particular thing. So like let's say, your nonprofit is a you're trying to help with environmental causes and recycling, right. So your quiz could be like, what, what level of recycler Are you? And you could ask them all these questions about can this be recycled? Can that be recycled? Where did things go? Like how does this all work XYZ. And at the end, maybe they get a grade, like you're a gold star recycler, you're a Silver Star, you have no idea what you're doing, right. But they get all of those resources that are attached to your organization, educating them on what you do and how you do it. But you also get all the data of what they clicked on. So you know more about what they know, or what they're engaged with what they need, what they care about, so that when they get the results, they're getting a ton of value, add they're getting fun engagement with your organization, but you also get information that you can use aggregate for how you want to portray what you're doing overall, but individually so that you can have conversations with those potential folks and already start to build them in your CRM with some baseline information. So it's fun, it's engaging, they're not that hard to put together. And I think you know, you and your team I bet Patrick could give you all like 10 million ideas for fun quizzes, you could do

Patrick Kirby 39:59
the quiz Just the quizzes are interesting because you could send a quiz anybody or you could send a survey to anybody. Nobody wants to take a survey. And they'll take a quiz. Right? And I mean that like in, I'm not being flippant with our donor bases, because the idea of like, kind of take a short survey, I know how this goes, or I gotta take a quiz. Yeah, I take a quiz, right? And so it's a lot of this is just genuinely trying to figure out what the best route is to engage your audience and be purposeful with the communication. That's the absolute key to all of this.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 40:34
Yep, you got to keep talking, because I'm going to type these in the chat.

Patrick Kirby 40:37
Oh, good. I like it. So what I what I like about this, too, is that you even if you don't have, even if you don't have any clue on who the heck is clicking on your website, right now, you will after this. And here's the other thing, too, is the problem that a lot of people have is that they don't know who their donors are, they don't even know who their potential donors are, they're just guessing you no longer have to guess with the type of information that you want to send your group. And it's, this is so much more fun to do is so much more brilliant to have. And it's just such an easy way to do it. And it's creative, and nobody else is doing this either. So if your organization and again, part of the reason why we talk about this kind of thing is super important, because we want to know how to rise above the very crowded space that is the nonprofit realm or the or your for business, whatever that is, we want to go be somebody that's different. This is gonna differentiate you from everybody else, because nobody else is doing a blanket email, they don't have the luxury or the time or the you get this doesn't take any more time. But all of a sudden, you're more purposeful with it. And that's so important. It will take time on the

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 41:43
front end, but then it runs in the background. And also then you're more freed up to focus on the one on one relationship building that you need to do with people because you know, you know, once you've okay, I've got this one I'm ready for I'm ready to start really working on someone else, you've got this whole pool of people that you have to pull from where and you're not just starting from scratch. And I also think it just really is important to include more video and include more engaging things. And these things help you stay top of mind, I want to make sure to that I drive home for you, Mary, how to get people started with all of these yes to your website. You can have your quiz or your your video ask be like a button that's like get to know us or learn more you contact us like you can have different buttons on your website that send people to like watch the short, just short 10 second video, I mean, that's where they're going. And then you can send them there. I think having it in your footer and your email having in your email signature, you can always have it there. Putting it again in these cold email solicitations. If you choose to go that route. You know, create QR codes that you can share with your board. Arm your board members with this like this is a fantastic thing for board members. If they have their own business cards, put a QR code on those business cards that leads straight to your video ask so that they can just send people directly to something that's going to capture information. Yes, you could have it in your your social media descriptions, all all the places.

Patrick Kirby 43:19
Last year questions make sense does it make sense to you is it's kind of something that's of interest. And again, it's it's really practical, easy tools, that if combined with purposeful conversation of the things that you just really want to talk to your donors about your dear supporters about your community about, you get to actually put what they care about in front of them regularly, rather than just guessing what they want, because they're going to tell you, and you're asking the questions that are going to allow you to do that particular answer to

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 43:48
well, I'm Kenny, since you're here, I'm actually running a campaign for my local chamber for their membership drive. We're running it through Apollo. So they have a whole welcome sequence group sending cold emails out to a, I think we did like 327 different contacts, all value add all just asking for questions. And she's getting pretty good response rates, I think I mean, we're a smaller chamber. And I think she's already gotten off the first couple of emails, like four or five calls booked right away just from the first one. So it's also a great thing you can use for membership drives, and things like that. But I think the key here is getting to know your donors and targeting the right people. So when you're having those one on one conversations, it's easier.

Patrick Kirby 44:34
Yeah, for sure. I love it. This is one of my favorite This is seriously this is one of my favorite ones because it's again, you take these like things and concepts that we all know. But like now, how are we going to do it a little bit differently that doesn't take, you know, a rocket science to figure out but done in a way that's completely unique and different than anybody else is doing. And everybody's talking about AI and everybody's talking about these kinds of things because they're spending a lot of time doing these See, this is the hard work, the things that computers in the robots aren't going to figure out as asking this particular thing. And then using the robot abilities to actually do the work for you. This is the this is the future of have a lot of solicitation, more communication than ever, when you're doing an in a rhythm on a topic that people really care about. And I think it's brilliant. Yeah, Mark, chef's kiss to this. So well done.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 45:25
I can't believe we got through all that in 45 minutes.

Patrick Kirby 45:28
It's, hey, listen, I don't want to be cliche. Giving people back some time is a delightful thing. And again, I love the fact that you can do this. And so quickly, you can just get this this information, you here's some solutions and move on and go. So here's the other thing too, as you as you interact with this, let us know how let us know how it works, or let us know what some big wins are for you. And we'll probably end up featuring you and either video, follow up to one of these things in it right. So I think be creative. You know, send some solutions and talk about this amongst your your colleagues on how you can leverage it to it's really good. Well,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 46:05
this and all of the links will also be available in your student dashboard by tomorrow. So you can come back and rewatch it or share it with anybody else on your team that needs to hear it and watch it. But yeah, definitely share what you do. And as we get ours built out, we'll share them as well. Yeah, and I hope everybody has a great holiday season because we're in urine giving season because we won't be back live until January.

Patrick Kirby 46:33
Ah. Also, hey, again, this was super fun. Thanks for sticking around, go back and watch the ones you didn't get to beforehand. We'll see you in January. Again, if you've got some other ideas, send them our way. We'd love to know we'd love to know what you're thinking as well. So Sandy, have a great Thanksgiving. I get to talk to you on a fairly regular basis. Everybody else. I hope I get to chat with you on a regular basis to have a happy holiday season. Good luck. You got this.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 46:58
Hi everybody.

How to Communicate the Variety of Services You Provide

How to Communicate the Variety of Services You Provide

Presented by:

How to Communicate the Variety of Services You Provide

Get on the Waitlist

You have Successfully Subscribed!