technology alone can't solve the challenges nonprofits face. And that's why neon one provides software that empowers you to manage constituents all while giving you the resources and support you need to connect to what matters most your people and their passions. Learn more about how neon one is helping nonprofits create stronger connections by visiting neon one.com/we are for good. Hey, I'm John.
And I'm Becky.
And this is the We Are For Good podcast.
Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
So let's get started. Becky, our friend Mike's in the house, I mean,
can we just be completely candid here and say that the reason we love having guests on the Friday series is just so we can hang out with our favorite people are so excited that Mike came back,
you don't know Mike Dirksen go back and you just need to follow him. Let me just put that out there. He's the founder and CEO of build good. So we have a similar last name with over built get over there. But they're a direct response fundraising agency that helps nonprofits grow their revenue from individual donors. That's the textbook definition of what you get. But when you talk to Mike, when you get to know Mike Holies, he is about building community around giving. He is about getting us oriented around really doing this really ethically and threading really brilliant storytelling, because we understand like there's a greater mission behind this. And he shows up and shares his wisdom on LinkedIn, nearly on a daily basis. He has an incredible podcast, the build good fundraising podcast, add that to your cue, subscribe to that. But he also launched another podcast called The donor growth podcast with her good buddy Louis ds. So we just got to give him a shout out to us, but they're just unpacking like they love this space. There's similar kindred spirits in this they just love getting more people involved in philanthropy and talking about what are the trends and strategies to really meet this moment. And so his personal mission is to help fundraisers build a career in life that they love. And but his most important job is raising his two spirited kiddos with his wife Janelle and the Canadian Prairies he's one of our Canadian friends might get back in this house. So good to see you.
Thanks for having me back on. And I just want to say I just want to say something I was on here not that long ago. And since then, you guys have blown up. And like from where I sit, the studio you just launched like the scaling for good your studio project. Seeing you keynote for the first time, I just feel like you guys are at the top of your game and you don't even know it. You're just like, like for people out there who are following you, and who are in this community. We're just watching you. And just like in awe and just cheering you on. So kudos to you guys for everything you're doing to the
waterworks. Like you deserve that. Thank you so much.
I mean, I hope you know we feel that way about you. We love just tracking with you, and just supporting everything that you're doing. And when we started, you know, mapping out this series, so we asked Mike to come back to the habits of an impactful fundraiser series. Truly, you were one of those names, it's like, let's just figure out a place to put Mike because he's got to come teach this stuff, you're so good at distilling down, like the habits that really matter and the tools that we can kind of use for our best ability to like, do our jobs better and love our jobs. And so that's the tenor of this conversation. We asked Mike specifically today, because you can talk about a lot of things, but the habits of an impactful annual giving officer and so let's just lead straight in there, because we don't even know if that's the right title. But we know Annual Giving is a component that every evolve development shops going to have its people that are chasing a base, you know. And so let's we like to kick off this conversation asking the right bigger questions. So if you're, you know, and you're giving us in your purview, getting not getting into the tactics, what's the bigger right question to ask about how you show up to do your job in a really impactful way?
Yeah. So the way that I would like to frame this conversation is looking at it through the lens of of the two most important things that matter that will make the biggest difference in your annual giving. Number one, it's the the quality of your business decisions. So business decisions are how are we gonna find new donors? How are we going to keep those new donors? How are we going to lead those donors toward greater generosity? How are we going to lead those donors to greater involvement? And how are we going to fund the entire pipeline from first time giver to legacy lever? Right? Because oftentimes, we just split that out. We're like, how can we get the next event to be more successful than the last? How can we get more major donors? How can we optimize our subject line? Some more people open our emails, by the way, I love that stuff I love like the optimizing left. But it's just this this small piece of this larger strategy, which is like how are we going to, like resource our shop to actually look at the entire pipeline, and funded from first time giver to legacy lever, right. And that's the quality of our business decisions. And then number two, the second thing that will make the greatest difference in your fundraising, and this is a point of view, it's the strength of our relationships with our donors. And now we all talk about like fundraising is a relationship business, right? But like, what does a relationship look like? It's not 12 months, like good relationships are three for 10 years, right? And good relationships ebb and flow. Good relationships are stronger at times, they're weaker at times. But that's like, take the 10 year view of the relationship, don't take the view of acquiring a donor today. If they don't make a second gift, within 18 months, I'm getting back on the acquisition hamster wheel. And I'm and I'm, I'm just gonna keep doing that, right. And there's both of those things like the quality of our business decisions, and investing in the strength of a relationship with our donors. That is very, very hard to do for leadership. Because those are tomorrow things. And the day after tomorrow things, right. And leaders are getting judged on today, things. So good luck walking into a board meeting and saying check this out. We're gonna start prioritizing donor lifetime value or donor lifetime love, as I call it, like we're gonna start prioritizing that, right? And the board goes, Well, okay, well, how are you gonna make budget this year. And that's totally understandable. You got to balance the two. But it's harder to make the decisions that lead to long term success, because you might not even be around to reap the rewards of that success. So quite frankly, you're gonna build something that somebody else gets to reward from. Right. Okay, and be your success on the job is also dependent on what happens today.
Holy smokes. I mean, we joked before we started, this could be like a different podcast episode, I'm like, just your answer could be two to two to three different ones. I mean, what a brilliant way to start this conversation
right out of the chute, Mike Dirksen, you can see why you have a different conversation and a different lens when you work with Mike or when you hang out with Mike because Mike, you have to recovering annual giving directors here directors of annual giving here. And I can assure you, I'm not gonna speak for job, but I can speak for myself. I never had that mindset when I walked into annual giving. But if I had, I think I would have looked at everything differently. That donor lifetime love is such a powerful concept. And it really gets back to what we call in our second core value of our company, which is playing the long game. And when you play the long game, I can assure you a board member is going to understand long term vision and how we have to plant seeds that may not yield much fruit at the beginning. But oh my gosh, if we really dig in to the intentionality of how we move our donors through this journey, is going to change everything. It's not just going to change the giving, it's going to change engagement, it's going to change the way that they talk about us, it's going to elevate the way that they look at the brand and the way that everyone else looks at the brand. So Mike Dirksen, you are truly our annual giving whisperer. So I cannot wait to ask you the second question here, which is talk to us about habits. You know, we would love to hear about three maybe daily habits or actions that someone in the annual giving department could utilize to find success in their roll. What would you say to that?
Got it? All right. Some of this is going to be like highly tactical, and some of it might be a little bit more strategic, whatever you want to call it. But in terms of a daily habit, look, it's always good to look for who came in, like who made the first gift in the last week or last few days. Right? And prioritize a phone call. That's that's just a really good habit to have. It's it's this isn't maybe a daily habit, but but a habit that I think a team needs to set is to create a retention day. Because there's all these things we should be doing. You need a system for congratulating donor on the anniversary of their gift, you need a system for acknowledging donors when they hit three years of giving five years of giving whatever you need a system for, and it feels so overwhelming. Just create a retention date every first Monday of the month, every last Friday of the month. The entire fundraising team doesn't get to set meetings. It's retention day. Here's what we do on retention day. We pull a list of everybody who had an anniversary this month and we call them and we send them a handwritten card or we make them a video when we do something meaningful. We look at all new donors, and we do something meaningful for them. We look at whose credit card is about to lapse, and we call them and we're going to get ahead of that, right, we're not going to wait for the notification that somebody's credit card has lapsed. Now we chase them around for the next three months trying to get them signed up for their monthly gift, right. So that's, that's a habit of, there's all these things that you can just pull into one retention day. And it sends an internal signal to your team, that retention matters at this shop and matters so much that every single month, we're going to be intentional about it. And we're not going to book meetings, and nobody can get on your calendar that day, its retention day, right, and you start building a culture around donor retention. Now, that's not a daily habit. It's a monthly habit. But that's one of the things can
I jump in there, because as a former annual giving director for a long time, at the end of the day, it feels like it always came down to like money, you know, and looking back now, and especially seeing the movements that have like turned into massive uprisings in our industry. It's like, they're relentless in their retention. And it's like, how is that not our main focus in this effort? So I love that you've centered that and making it a team wide thing is gonna start breaking down the walls that it's like, it's not just about money. It's also about like, are we keeping people in the fold, and playing the long game? Like, it's gonna take a long time of shifting that mindset?
Yeah, and PS, it's super expensive. To acquire a new donor, it's so much cheaper to retain one. So there is like, I think, a business case to this. And it also just makes sense, as a human being like when you walk in to a store that you love, or you're buying something for the first time, the experience that you have there is going to inform your next move. And so we know this, I'm like, I just want to hype up nonprofit right now. We know how to make someone feel seen. Welcome. We get hospitality, why are we not pouring more into this? And that's just a rhetorical question, because I just think what you're dropping here is gold, Mike.
Yeah, kind of on the same level in having, having somebody be heard and seen is something that annual giving doesn't do enough, is actually gathering qualitative feedback. So for the most part, I think most people are getting good at looking at data. Or at least collecting for the most part, people are on CRMs, at the very, at the very least, are capturing gifts. Somebody can come in and help you create a dashboard or analyze that whatever. But the qualitative data, here's what happens is a board member or the CEOs spouse says I don't like this campaign. I didn't like this at the event. In the meetings, like we got to change that next time. Right. And you as the annual giving officer, you need to come prepared with the donors voice. Not just one donors voice. But what sort of a majority sentiment, right? We're all different. Not everybody's going to like everything we do. Let's just agree to that. But what are your true believers think what do the people think that show up for you consistently the people who have been given to you for three 510 years? What do they think? And so the way you do that is you have a bit of a standard set of questions that you ask on donor calls, if the door is open, and you'll log those answers in over time, you're going to have a bit of a pattern recognition thing going on, right, you're going to be able to identify some sentiments that are coming through, you're going to begin to sort of see what the majority sentiment is, on some issues. The important thing is that you ask roughly the same question every time. And not just like different leading questions that you feel like asking the moment, so you need to create yourself a bit of a framework, here's three to five questions, I'm going to ask him to log the answers. And then you know, six months in, I'm going to have a very good idea of what the donors voice is. And that's going to influence how do I go about my fundraising and how I represent the donor at the team meeting. Because I'm going to put an empty chair on that board table, I'm going to say like, that's the supporter sitting there, right, like, we're going to respect that they're in here too. We can also put a chair for the people who are serving, like put these like the people who need to be at the table, but who aren't. At the very least if they can't be there, put an empty chair there and reference to that chair and be like they're in the room. So we need to talk about their voice as well.
The inclusive approach of that the visual of doing something like that, John, can you even imagine how that would shift viewpoints and culture to approach it that way?
I love it. So because it's the next question is why are they not here? Like why do we not prioritize that but drawing attention to it? Yes. To
I'll add one more more habit. You know, it can be daily, it can be weekly, whatever. But you got to be this is an ongoing thing. You got to be a student of the game. John, you talk about this about how you and Becky builds. We Are For Good on every some podcasts, right, you got to be a student of the game. And the game has been afoot for a very long time. So you've got a few tools that you can use when you work in individual giving, not just for fundraising, but also, again, to have the donor voice present. And, and the greatest tool, you're gonna have storytelling all around. Yeah, right preaching that that game's been going on since 300 years before Christ, like Aristotle wrote poetics, 300 years before Christ. And it's basically about how to tell a good story. And we still use those same concepts today. There's, we're sitting on a body of knowledge that has been very well researched, tested, proven, it is changing, I am not one to say, you know, we should do the way things have always been done. But one thing that doesn't change as fast as human psychology. And so persuasion and storytelling, your tools are going to change, your approach is going to change, thank goodness, we're more honest and ethical and transparent about the way we tell stories. But the way the human brain gets sucked into a story, and the way the human brain can start to relate a lot better with a point of view, if it's told through a story, that hasn't changed in forever, so be a student of that game and learn it, well. It's going to serve you, you know what, even if you don't work in fundraising a few years from now, hopefully you do, it's a noble and beautiful profession. But even if you have other plans, that's one skill that you can't ever be good enough at, it's going to serve you well, in every single job in life,
I couldn't agree more with you. And I just have to add on to that. If you can tell the story of the base, well, not just your top of your pyramid, then people are going to see themselves in the base, it serves not only the person who's being profiled and will always throw in there, you tell that story with dignity, ethical storytelling approach is always going to serve everyone best. But it's going to allow other people to see themselves through the struggle in the uplift of the person that you are profiling. So start with the stories of the base. And if you're going in and asking these questions, you're going to get those stories already. So be a keen listener, and use it just keep recycling it in those stories in it's going to help you your content creator or your marketer is going to love you. Yes, eating up every bit of this mic, you just get us thank you for just being so evolved, you
also give me validation for you know, sometimes we go this way instead of data, you know, when we can we can hang in the storytelling really easily, that we have to get pulled around in the data. And sometimes we talk about that as like we love data. But we also love trusting our gut of like seeing what people are saying. And I think like the culture aspect of getting people to talk and pulling out the why and getting to be part of that conversation. Also, like, what kind of uplift does that give your team? I think is they get to be experiencing that. And they can come armed with this like head and heart case for why we need to do something which is just so much more powerful than just numbers, you know?
Yeah, absolutely. And I argue that you should start with the heart. Start with your with whatever you want to call it your gut your intuition what the donors are telling you, that's gonna give you a hypothesis. Go with that, test it. The data is going to tell you whether you're right or not, right? Yeah. Yes, search for the data alone is a bit of a low resolution picture. The feedback from donors alone, the qualitative stuff is a bit of a low resolution picture. But if you merge them you get a very high definition. Like if you do a good job, right, like you got a high definition picture of what's kind of going on here.
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Okay, as we start to think about this next aspect of the conversation is how do we start prioritizing our time? And there's a lot of relationships, if you're shepherding the bass, there's potentially 1000s of people, you know, that you could spend time with? How do you advise people to prioritize relationships in this annual giving role?
Yeah, the reality is you're going to have to prioritize some relationships. Yeah, I wish you didn't, but you're going to have to right so. And the relationships that you can prioritize on a more high touch point, you're going to do everything you can to still make that communication. As thoughtful and human and loving as possible, you're going to put craft and care into it. The relationships that you are going to prioritize. Peer to Peer is a good example of getting 1000s of donors into your system, or hundreds at one time. And then like, what do I do? The people organizing that event, they're your true believer, they're the ones who rallied their friends and family around you. So that's, you can turn that person into a super fan. Right? That's, that's the person that you prioritize long term donors and loyal donors, you always prioritize if if if somebody's been giving to you for three consecutive years, that is a person who is a superfan. They're a true believer, you, you, you treat everyone well, but you start but you, like intentionally you connect with that person as much as you can. donors who upgrade right and like somebody gives you gifts is like 50 bucks, all sudden, next one's 100 bucks, or next was 200 bucks, it's like, well, it's like falling in love, right? Like this is this is moving forward, at sometimes quickly, right? Like, you can also look at the velocity of that. And so so those are, those are good people to prioritize getting away from money, donors who keep showing up, events, volunteering, engaging with you online, replying to emails, there's some people who are just opt for it. And they might not be like really big money donors. But that's, that's okay. It's not necessarily about getting that big check, right, it's first time giver to legacy lever, that's what we're talking about. So we prioritize that relationship. And then another one is internal relationships. Because as of this as a fundraiser, specifically individual giving direct response, communications, marketing, some of that, you're going to have to go you're going to have to go gather stories, gather information, gather facts, gathered data, you need to gather relationships first, before you can do that, you need to write, so I used to work in this place, which was a homeless service provider. And the person running the actual overnight shelter was like the most protective dad ever, right? Like, nobody came between him and the people in that shelter at night. But but we every now and again, I was also in charge of PR I needed stories, I needed somebody to talk to the to the to the cameras. So I became really good friends with that guy. And, and nobody else could sort of get in there, except the people who had actually done the work of becoming his friend. And now you've built up trust. And yeah, you're going to chip in some of that, right? You're gonna, you're gonna be like, Hey, can you do me a solid, I really need this story. Here's why it matters. Here's what's important. Here's how it helps the overall place. And by the way, I know that this is out of your wheelhouse. But if a friend's asking that of you, it's a lot harder to say no, it's a lot easier to say yes. Then if just a colleague is asking you who hasn't invested in that relationship, right? So you need to become a relationship player internally. Oftentimes, when you work in annual giving your technical player, you're a good writer, you're a good marketer. You know, sometimes you're good designer, photographer, whatever it is. It's great to be a technical player, but you need to become a relationship player. That is what will serve you the most both to be successful in your career, but also in your role in that nonprofit.
The reason I love this response so much is that you've thrown out relationships that are both powered by the head and the heart. And I think that that's a really important point to make here. Because we can be trained up on all the things to find, you know, doublers, and people who are, you know, you call it velocity, people that are moving at a very fast pace, there are data points and ways that we can put triggers into the database for that. But the human part, the soft stuff, I mean, people call them soft skills, which I think just kind of minimizes, you know, what the power of what that is, in the human to human connection and our work because you're right, sometimes the gatekeeper is that executive assistant, sometimes it's the guy that staying at that homeless shelter. And if you don't have relationship equity, with everybody, and this goes back again, to you know, the thing we hate about power dynamics, if you're only prioritizing the person with power, then you're not going to be able to have a full relationship and get exactly what you want MPs be a kind human being and see that person, see the person at the end of that it's going to make everybody feel better. And then talk about the impact while you're there. Hey, John, at the homeless shelter, I'm choosing your name, John, you know, look at the story. Thank you for helping me bring this to bear. I mean, what an incredible internal stewardship that's going to help you get more down the line, because they see the impact of how opening that door really didn't impact the mission. That's so fantastic, Mike, okay, want to move into one of my favorite segments called do this not that, and I'm really excited about it, I'm rubbing my hands together, because I am excited for you to sunset, some of these long held traditions of lapel pins and donor recognition societies or whatever you're gonna throw out? Or maybe you're not, yeah, maybe there's maybe the lapel pin is the thing that will change the world, and I'm just not aware of it. So talk to us a little bit about, you know, some of those habits in the do this do not vain that are gonna really make an impactful annual giving officer.
Okay, I mean, we can we can spend a lot of time here. So let me let me quickly in my mind, sort some of these, but I think store stories, right, like we talked about this stories is, is a very powerful tool, the stories of the people you help, but also the stories of the people who are supporting you. Because good fundraising kind of holds up a mirror and says, I'm like you, you're like me, we're different than other people. But we're different than other people together. Right? So that's, that's the your value of community is everything. Right? Community is all of us doing this one thing together. And it kind of separates us from some other people. Because we we believe this, we are for this, We Are For Good. Right? versus, you know, I don't know if there's a way or for evil out there, but you're like clearly. So don't just maybe tell a story of somebody once in an appeal or in an email, do tell it many different ways. And in many different channels, and through too many different people. Right? So a story well told, you can repurpose that in many, many different ways. Do record a lot of stuff that you do, like we're recording video right now, right? Do record conversations with donors if they're okay with it. Oftentimes, I don't recommend that every now and again, some donors are going to be okay with it. So hey, we're interviewing you for the newsletter. Great. Can I jump on a zoom call? And can we record that fantastic if they're okay with it? They already agreed to have the story to newsletter ask them if you can also share it online. That becomes what five 610 different clips for Instagram for Facebook, whatever your strategy is. Right? Like that's, that's, that's an asset. Your stories are assets that you can use in many different ways. And not enough nonprofits are are doing this and they're sitting on this goldmine of stuff that people would love to watch and see in little snippets. And they're just kind of use it for one appeal, right? And they sent the entire team off somewhere to gather the story, and then it gets used for one appeal. That may or may not bomb. So that's that's a big one, like a big opportunity. I would say. Don't I was gonna say don't send annual reports. I know you kind of have to, like, you know, like, legal Twitter's gonna get mad at me here and like it's a requirement for you to have an annual report for the Annual General Meeting. Yes, it is, like make an annual report for the for the Annual General Meeting. Absolutely. But man, I hope you're updating your donors more than once a year. Like that. You know that like do send ad hoc updates as things are happening. You've got, you've got your, your values that We Are For Good. I'm working on a, on giving our point of view, but of shape and writing a manifesto and number one is we will treat donors like they're an important part of the team. So if donors are an important part of the team, why would you just send them an update once a year, like send them stuff as it's happened, it can be a quick plain text email, if something just happened, it can be as simple as that. Right? Like, sometimes brand isn't the logo and the colors or whatever it is, sometimes brand is, I thought you were important enough to know this as it happened, because I valued that more than saving it for a shiny story in a newsletter three months from now. So those those little moments can be can be very powerful. Don't take attribution too seriously. Now I I'm I'm saying, I know. I know, all the other direct response marketers are going to call me right now. But here's what I mean. Just hear me you're safe. Here,
you're safe here, say it.
attribution is often wrong. And it's not always the correct story. And we can put too much stock into attribution. Now there is some people measure last step attribution how the gift came in. Some people measure multi step attribution, which is a little bit harder. That's a better way of doing it, you should definitely measure attribution. But weigh that with what you know about your donors weighed out what the qualitative stuff, this is what we're talking about, like, like data and gut, right? I give you an example of this. We used to write a weekly column in the newspaper about homelessness. And we wrote it for the CEO, it ran every single week and ran for three years, there was a person in a community whose husband had a big business, he had sold the business, he passed away. Every fundraiser in town, like, you know, this, like everybody knows when these things happen, right? So of course, she's getting all these calls from fundraisers, and our major gift fundraiser was prospecting. He gets a call, he gets a meeting. In the meeting, she tells him Oh, I know who you are. I've been reading your CEOs column for years. So he gets the meeting, the meeting goes well. So he gets a second meeting this time brings the CEO with him, the CEO closes a $1 million gift. So who gets the attribution, the CEO thinks he got it, like I closed that gift. In that meeting, I got the million dollars, the major gifts officer thinks it's his I prospected. I knew when to ask at the right time. And me writing the column, I think, Oh, that was mine. She told you that she'd been reading the column for three years. And that's why you got the meeting. Now, of course, the answer is all three sort of get the attribution, right. It's hard to be like this, you know, write more columns, it's working. Yes. And get more meetings with people. It's working. Yes. And involve the CEO in the meetings, because clearly people like him, right? Like, it's, it's all three of those that are working in concert. And it's every note that kind of gets hit at the different time at the right time, sometimes at the wrong time, it creates a symphony, and then it works. And attribution isn't always good at telling the full story. And so you might over invest in something that that isn't actually driving the behavior. Or in you might under invest in something that is contributing to the behavior, right. So it's, it's like the like the phone calls, we talked about, like donor lifetime love, how do you quantify that a phone call is actually going to make a difference? Do you think it will, it's the right thing to do? Certainly, you would treat a good friend that way. But it's going to be hard for you to show that an attribution, that every single phone call made a certain difference together, it all adds up. Yeah,
this is great. I mean, because in the old days, we call like, multi channel and then I remember there was like this omni channel and it's like, everything is Omni now because you're getting all these influences. And all that same time. So I just think this idea of like development is a team sport. This is clearly a team sport. How do we raise that banner and celebrate together? It's much more inclusive way to go about it, too. So okay, I think this is a great lead into talking specifically about KPIs. And there's a lot of metrics and Lord knows y'all love to break these down and talk about them, which I'm glad because we are doing
that. Thank you for on our vs. Yes.
What are the KPIs that really matter? And maybe give us a couple that we can cleanse and release you blessing or a snack cleansing? Sure,
like retention matters. But overall retention doesn't matter as much as you think it does. Because different buckets of donors have have different retention rates. If I have 1000 donors, and my retention rate is 50% goes down to 500 The next year it goes down to 250. Next, right and wheeling down. But after five years I'm at, I'm at, I don't know what it is maybe 100 donors, right. But if I start with with 10 donors and have a 80% retention rate, you're too I'm on eight. And then like, it goes down quicker, like the retention rate looks like it's high. But I don't have that many doors to begin with, right? And so when you're acquiring a lot of donors, your overall retention is going to look bad, because you're dumping a lot of people into your system. And we know, we know that not everyone is a true believer, and that's okay. Right? Not everyone is going to make that second gift. And so on its own overall retention doesn't, doesn't tell the full story. So measure the retention of first time donors separately, measure your retention of monthly donors separately, create these buckets that you're measuring separately, and comparing year over year, not the entire file year, over a year, because it's not going to be that great of a representation of what's actually going on in your file. And you might make the wrong decisions.
Mike, how do you as you start to look at that data? Do you find it helpful to look at some of the national reports that go into the Fundraising Effectiveness aspect? Or is it really matter just like your particular file? And just like how it's either going? And how do you kind of balance the two, so many voices in our heads?
I I love those reports, right? I love the Fundraising Effectiveness Project. I like everything that a lot of CRMs are doing great reports, I am skeptical that we should be using those reports as internal benchmarks and saying we're doing good or we're doing bad, I think we should look at them to have to round out the picture to have an idea what's going on. But they're an aggregate of a lot of different types of nonprofits. It's not a peer to peer comparison. If you're a university, it's going to be very different than social services. If you are a dog shelter down the street, it's going to be very different than UNICEF. So it's hard to look at those reports and I think actually make meaningful decisions about your fundraising. I think that should be part of the of your analysis, I would put a lot more weight on your own data, like It's you versus you out here. How did you do last year and try to improve on that. And you do that enough times, and you're going to end up on the positive end of all those benchmarks, you're going to end up beating them, right. But that's that's the way that we see it at least, thank you for
saying that. And I also think it's just like what you're saying has such resonance and like, you cannot compare apples to oranges. And I think it's so smart to even break out the metrics of your annual giving donors because if you lump them all in, it's going to have a mishmash approach to it. And I think this is why data is so important. And we just do not put enough emphasis on it. Because if we're watching how people move, we know that first time donors might be a little slower, you know, to come along because they're not as familiar with us as somebody who's been giving to us for 30 years. And so I think what that tells me is telling the story of the data becomes exponentially more important than any report that you can throw down because it's like, this is what our new donors are saying, and this is why that's important. monthly donors is doing this. And here's how we're going to shift and all of a sudden, you look like a badass, because you totally know what your data is doing and how your donors are moving. And if you can point to the engagement part of it. In addition to the financial part, that is how you change the way that volunteers, board members, execs, bean counters, the whole group, look at the way that we're fostering these relationships. So Excellent, great point,
the last metric I want to throw out there, it's a little bit, it doesn't often get measured. And it's the reply rate to your emails. So I think if you're doing email, well, you are soliciting replies. Email doesn't have to be the newsletter II type of email all the time, you should be doing a lot of like I said, ad hoc updates, little things here and there short emails, get donors used to opening your email, it's going to be three to four sentences, it's going to be a short little update for me, right? And every now and again, you should be asking, Hey, what do you think? Or, Hey, I've got some more pictures. Do you want to see them? Or hey, would you like me to send you an update when this thing actually happens? And then just look at the reply rate because you want to generate a conversation. I really want like the community building thing you want to get people engaged. So I actually look at how many people are hitting reply on that email, rather than how many people are opening it or clicking through which is great, like measure that stuff. But I love looking at the reply rate of an email.
That is so so March in, can I just like make a correlation to social media here? If somebody's replying in your email, if they're replying on your social channels, if they're DMing, you, that's just a higher level of engaged human being than somebody who's scanning and deleting. So definitely use that as a red flag and a marker and little pro tip from me to you be human, when you reply, don't sound like a robot. Be so gracious in your response and see that person, ask them a question, get another reply. We're building deep and deepening these relationships. Okay, so we're gonna move into our mental health minute here, because you know, Mike, we prioritize the human and the worker, that is in nonprofit. And when you think about annual giving, and we've all lived in this, including Julie, who is producing this incredible podcast, there is a lot of stuff going into annual giving. I mean, when we were running that shop, we had events, donor relations was plopped into annual giving for no good reason, you know, and you just have a bunch of tactics thrown at you. How can we stay centered? How can we create a sustainable sort of culture where we're still feeling vibrant, and fueled by this work without getting burnt out?
Yeah, I don't know that I can give a I'm learning how to do this. Because I'm, you did the Enneagram series, right? I'm an Enneagram. Three, that means that I could get up at six in the morning and work till till midnight,
I could No,
I don't. But like, you know, the work life balance is hard to find a few things that I would start with my Calendly is set to 50 minute meetings, not 60 minute meetings, right. So you know, book a meeting, it's going to be 15 minutes, or 45. That gives you 10 minute buffer between calls. Going for a walk before work or after work and the work from home economy. That is kind of important. You used to have a commute where you could like get ready or decompress. You no longer have that right. So like going for a walk before and after. Even if it's 10 minutes, that gives you the transition. Amish hour, this is like an hour before you go to bed. Oh, like no screens in the bedroom. Just an hour before you go to bed. It's on the shower, turn off the TV, you turn off the I'm not great at that, by the way. But but it's an aspirational thing to have Amish hour. We we do summer Fridays. I know not everybody can do that. Giving your staff off on Fridays. But in this when it's not the summer, like right now we try to do no meeting Fridays. So at least there's one day a week where there's no meetings. Those are some little tactical ways. It's easy for me to see goes go see a therapist, I realize not everybody has the means to do that. Our daughter's in therapy so I get the benefit of going to therapy with her. And it's also a therapy session for me. So I doubled up a little bit but that if you're able to do that, if we can normalize that, Hey, it's okay. Talking to another caring human who can help you work through some stuff
I Dirksen. We're so glad you came over to our house to hang
out. Yes, you have a permanent bedroom over here just hanging out at our house. I am sitting here marveling at the fact that you're like I don't really know what to do. And those were four incredible examples. And I have literally never thought in the two years I've been doing We Are For Good that I need some decompression time before and after we start because that's a really, really great centering tactic. Thank you, Mike. That's shout out to
our team member Caitlin who came up with that. So
keep bringing those great ideas up to the fray.
You can have your team let's round out by connecting all the ways that y'all show up. You personally show up but also your team at build good shows up. Just kind of point us to all the ways people can find you.
Yeah, probably the easiest way is to just go to LinkedIn and look up Mike Dirksen, you could look up build good on LinkedIn. But we haven't really invested in the corporate page too much just a matter of focus again. But that's an that's an easy way to get connected. There's a build good fundraising podcast, it's sort of an entryway into everything we do. And of course, build good.com that's those are sort of the three ways the easiest ways to find us.
And when you reach out to Mike on LinkedIn, like tell them in the messages, you know, like what this conversation meant, because I think all of us just love whenever we can connect on what's the kind of common thread that brought us together. So do that.
And I'll just throw into that we're gonna put into the show notes Mike's episode on the We Are For Good podcast a couple months ago. It's episode 253. And I will tell you, if you love this conversation, you will love Mike's conversation. I want to say it was John's favorite of that season that we've noted and it It changed everything about the way we looked at direct mail. So please come find Mike. He's so knowledgeable and add on that he's like one of the greatest humans and fathers ever. Just a great person. So follow his thought thought leadership and thanks for coming on and just once again blowing our minds my
mind. That's too kind. Thank you. deserve that? Good to see you, my friend. Take care.
Hey, friends. Thanks so much for being here. Did you know we create a landing page for each podcast episode with helpful links, freebies and even shareable graphics. Be sure to check it out at the link in this episode's description. You probably hear it in our voices but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before. We'd love for you to join our good community. It's free. And you can think of it as the after party to each podcast episode. You can sign up today at we are for good.com backslash Hello. One more thing If you loved what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating and review? It means the world to us and your support helps more people find our community. Thanks friends. I'm our producer Julie confer and our theme song is Sunray by Remy Borsboom
