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So let's get started. Hey, John, hey, Becky. I mean, what a good day to talk about modern donor journeys, right? I mean, this is the summer. It's a time to kind of look at our playbooks, dust them off, figure out what's working. And this is on the top of a lot of people's minds, like we're looking for a way to fundraise more by creating journeys that really guide donors from their first interaction to becoming lifelong advocates. And so the answer to this is not a complicated one. It's threaded through an intentional donor journey, and today, we are so excited to have a conversation with a lot of experts pouring in to this of what it looks like to do this in a modern way with organizations that are winning today, because at the end of the day, donor journey is about is each person's path to evolve from the stranger to your organization to maybe a recurring donor or maybe a loyal, Planned Giving donor. It's just this complex web of personalized engagement and responses that ultimately is building repeatable and scalable actions. I mean, we're all here for this, right? I
am 100% here for this. So this conversation went down at the responsive nonprofit Summit hosted by virtuous, and we wanted to have an enriched panel, many voices, many conversations from several different lenses and so on today's panel, we have dalari Gandhi with dhandi Communications, Brady Josephson, VP of Marketing and growth at Charity Water, and Tiffany Allen. She's the CEO and founder of boss on a budget. And if you are ready to dive into a modern donor journey, this is the conversation where you need to start Godspeed and enjoy friends. Okay, so we want to dive straight into this. We want to talk about donor behavior in this modern, sort of digital age. And I want to cast this out to the group, Brady. I'm going to start with you, like talk to us about some of the trends you're seeing right now. What are you seeing in terms of donor behavior that's really starting to shift? And how do our nonprofits meet these moments and start to look for these sort of nuanced, nuanced engagement signals that I was talking about early on. What have you got
cool big question? I'll just take a snippet of that question. But we look a lot at consumer behavior outside of the nonprofit space. You know, as much as we'd love to think that nonprofits are part of everyone's everyday lives, the reality is we're not at the same level as consumer products and experiences. So that's really what shapes a lot of people's expectations over what they get and how they interact. And so we look a lot at how are people viewing subscription purchasing or subscription experiences, because we're so focused on monthly giving, and so when we see people canceling or pausing their subscriptions, whether it's for entertainment or clothing or food, that's a bit of a bellwether worry sign for us, because we're so focused on subscription and we have seen a decline in the number of people choosing to give through a subscription or through the spring for us over the past two years, and that's correlated to the economy. And so that's a big thing that I know we've all wrestled with over the past few years. But when economy is a little fluctuating, people are less likely to make a long term commitment, like a monthly gift or a subscription gift. So that's like one thing that's kind of consumer behavior, nonprofit behavior, macro factor that we're trying to assess and parse out, and how do we react and interact with folks in that world? And
we're talking about a very big community with the spring that's last I heard 74,000 monthly donors to that community. We have met several of them who met in the spring community, and it is such a dynamic place. Thank you for those insights. Tiffany, what are you seeing? What's rising up in your world?
Sure. So for context, I deal a lot with people who are thinking about starting a nonprofit, who are doing the work kind of in an informal way, and what I'm observing is that people are more willing to be a part and they want to be in community with the nonprofit. So they're being moved by stories from people who look like them, who have similar experiences with them, and they're willing, they're giving smaller amounts, but they're willing to kind of put their dollars where their values are. So I'm seeing a lot of people just being moved by stories from regular people, not necessarily from organizations. And I'm also kind of curious about underground giving. I don't think it's underground, but I think it just isn't captured a lot in data and research, where people are giving through cash app and Venmo and all those different mediums that aren't actually captured, and there's a lot of stuff happening that we just don't see and people still are giving. They may not be giving as much, but they still are giving. I
love that you lifted that. I mean, I think we see that in our work, especially when new reports come out talking about the decline of generosity, it's like it definitely looks a lot different. It's a lot harder to track because it's coming in so many different formats. So I'm really glad that you lifted that point. Delari, what are you seeing as you. Kind of look at, you know, donor behavior, digital age. What are you paying attention
to? Yeah, so I think cosign both to what Brady and Tiffany mentioned. There's a lot of, you know, changes in the way folks are giving that may not show up. To Tiffany's point, you know, more what we call, like informal giving. But I think one thing that has been really interesting is that I think donors have, you know, we've sort of seen like a back and forth, I think, to Brady's point, around the economy having some fluctuations. I think folks are really interested in seeing and hearing from from the organization, exactly what their donations are powering. And that may look like. I think, you know, we're moving away from some of these overhead conversations and okay, you know, your money supports the organization as a whole, but I think folks want to see a much faster return in terms of their investment, of the feeling of what their impact is with their donation. And so that speed in terms of time, I think, like all of our attention spans, has also reduced in terms of, you know, how quickly donors want to see where their money is going and how it's working.
Okay, I knew I was going to love the lenses you are bringing to this conversation, but it's already going in a direction that I'm really excited about. So I want to start jumping into this idea of a donor journey. And Brady, I want to kick it to you on this how can a nonprofit really map out, you know, from a first time gift to ultimately a legacy lever or an advocate that's really taken a bigger step down the line? What does that look like, and what are you thinking about whenever you're creating that donor journey,
can, can I be a little glass half empty, just for a little bit, and then I'll,
yeah, we allow small doses of that. Yeah, a little bit. Okay, okay.
You know, I think some of the hardest things for all of us, making decisions leading organizations are concepts like opportunity costs. What else should we be doing with our time and diminishing returns. When are we investing in something that's not producing the same level of return as it used to? And from my experience and from what I've seen or on the discourse around donor journeys, I think that's a real potential downside of donor journeys to be over indexing our time and thinking we're going to get more and more benefit and spending our time and other things. So it's not to say it's not valuable or important, but we often think about donor journeys like it's chess or checkers. You know, I'll make this move, and then this move, it's more like snakes and ladders, like it's it's more chaotic than we like that analogy. No. So I just think, knowing that coming in, yes, we should do them. We'll talk about it. But I just, I've seen so much over emphasis almost on our ability to control and that maybe segues into the half full side of things keep going. It has to start with a combination of, what do people want to do with your organization, and what do you want them to do? And if you skew too far one way or the other, then you're the map that you're creating won't be a good one. You know, too often nonprofits have said, Oh, you're a one time donor. We want you to be a major donor. Maybe they don't want to be. Maybe they don't have capacity, maybe they don't have ability. Maybe they gave to a friend and have zero interest in your organization. Flip Side is a lot of people honestly want to give and just kind of move on with their lives, and they don't necessarily. A lot of folks don't want to, like, get super plugged in. So it's our job to kind of meet in the middle. And so I think that's what a good map starts from is knowing what are the valuable actions that people can take to support our causes. So for us, it's often monthly giving, peer to peer fundraising, major giving that's kind of like the ladder or progression, but just trying to identify the timeline. People are more likely to become a monthly donor within three months, but two and a half years to become major donor and then start to build out some experiences based off those things, instead of trying to overly dictate what we want or only succumb to what people want.
Such a solid point, I did not think that was half empty at all. I think that that was some serious real talk there. Because one, I don't want anyone in the community right now to feel overwhelmed that that now we have to put in for 14 different funnels and put all of these automations in with each of these different segmentations of audiences. That's not what we're talking about today. We're talking about, how do we intuitively listen to community? Because I think Brady's right, we cannot over prescribe these things, because community is iterating and building and changing all the time. And I want to pivot into that story just a little bit, because delari, I know you're such an expert on this. And Tiffany already mentioned that people are attracted to your mission when they feel like they can see themselves in your stories, in your content, in your values, and the way that you show up. And so I delary, kind of set the tone for storytelling, because this is truly one of the great tools that nonprofits have in their arsenal, is the ability to bring real life, human, lived experience and story and put that onto the mission. So talk to us about how storytelling can really connect. It gives us that scroll stopping content that we're all looking for, and it gives the entry point in for someone to come in. So talk to us about storytelling and how someone can really elevate that into the journey.
Yeah, I think a lot of this is about operationally, inside of your organization. How does your fundraising team work with everybody else? Right? So, how does your fundraising team work with your programs team? With your communications team, so that we're all sort of, you know, not to use that overplayed analogy, like singing from the same song sheet, right? And so where you're seeing donors come in and what they're gravitating towards, let's say, on a communications team that manages social media channels, you've got a great story out that maybe just got published on the blog about how somebody's benefited from the work the programs are doing. You see that your audience is engaging with that story. How do you communicate that over to your fundraising and development team and to your program? Leads to say, hey, is there something else we can take advantage of here? What are other stories like this? I want to test to see if, in six months, folks are still interested in this the way they're interested in it. Now. Is this a point in time? Thing is this about that program? Did something happen in the news that's making this more relevant to our audiences? I think having that genuine curiosity and coordinating across teams makes your storytelling that much more powerful, and it also gives you a chance to sort of dig in on that story and use it to, you know, squeeze every bit of worth out of it. And so I think a lot of times in our organizations where, you know, we're putting out blogs and we're trying to get information out in our annual report and our social media posts. But are we tying these things back together to what the entire organization is doing, and are we doubling down on the things that are working to use it for donor journey and to use it for leadership communications and to make sure that our board knows and to make sure that our volunteers know, and really squeezing as much worth out of each of those stories as possible.
You know, you're getting the love in the chat over here, over that. And I think we believe the same way, like, how do we syndicate that beautiful content and use it to really get leverage for some of the things, some of our goals that we're shooting for? So Tiffany, you work with a lot of startups, a lot of budgets that probably have a zero next to them. So talk to us about getting started when you really have really little in terms of resources. Where do you start? Do you even start with the donor journey? Like, where would you go with that?
So I think when you're new, you know you're still testing, so it's hard to understand what your donor profiles are like. Who's most attracted to your organization. So I like to tell people to focus on what your key message is. So what is your unique factor? What is the unique perspective you bring to the table? Is there a story that you're telling? Is there a population that's being ignored? Their voice needs to be lifted up? What is that key story that you need to tell? And focus on that so people who are aligned with you can see themselves in it. I like to tell the founders especially, have an opinion about something, share something, educate people, be a thought leader in your space, because you see something out of perspective and at a certain level that other people aren't seeing. So you want to attract the people who resonate with the message that you put out. But I also think like if you need donors, the best place to start is peer to peer fundraising. That is the best way to build a donor base, literally from scratch, where people who are on your initial board or people who are excited about your mission are going out doing that work for you, being an advocate for your organization, and raising money for you, so you can get that initial set of donors, and then you can start to cultivate the relationship with those people who initially give. So it gives you the opportunity to learn more about who they are, why they gave, why they're interested in your organization. But I also just like to tell people, don't be afraid to open your mouth, right? You don't know who wants to help you and you you can't afford to make assumptions, especially when you're new. So start with your social circles, start with your personal family connection, start with your professional connections and things like that. Move outward that way and just start telling your story to see who would be aligned with your mission.
Okay, so good. Tiffany is talking about finding your believers, and when you and I think that that was such a brilliant way to start, when you think about the core of your nonprofit, who are those rabid fans, those individuals who show up for you, and I'm not talking about giving the most money, you know who they are. They like every one of their your social posts, they open your emails, they show up for events. They raise your hand, their hand when you need a volunteer. If you can understand how to unlock those individuals, their behaviors, their desires, to be amplifiers for your organization. The world is your oyster. And I gotta connect this back to something that dilari said when we think about traditional storytelling, and I have to say, I'm guilty of this, John, we think about how we're going to push story out, how we're going to control that narrative, and that is a 1.0 way of thinking about community, because if you can let go of control and source your stories directly from community, you get different Voices. You get different lived experience in there, you PS, it's not the same voice that everybody's hearing, because we're writing the stories as the organization. So I think this is such a brilliant way to start. I want to give delari or Brady if you want to jump in here, I want to give you the chance to jump back in and add any more comments. Yeah, I
was just going to add that. You know, I think that there's a real difference between. Thinking about storytelling for the sake of storytelling, which is, I think we all get caught in that trap, right? Where, like, you know, once content became a verb and a noun and some entire job descriptions, right, we've sort of, but I think really being intentional, which is what I think we're all sort of circling around this idea of being intentional, around the type of story you want to tell, why you're telling it, and who you're telling it to but then also widening that lens, because the type of story you want to tell Becky, to your point, can be told by a number of different perspectives, and it gives you a different flavor of story each time. And so when we're talking about really appealing to, you know, to Tiffany's point, a wide variety of folks are we also presenting a wide variety of story types and storytellers in the intention of creating that story for your organization. I think is a really important point. Really
important point. Okay, I'm loving the discussion in the chat. I love this conversation around story. I see Natalie Monroe in the chat, who has an excellent storytelling platform. Memory Fox is a great one. I think proof packed is another one. There's lots of tools out here that you can use to curate story in a very human way. But I want to get the chat going just a little bit. I want I want you all to go back into the recesses of your mind, and I want you to think about a time that you felt really seen by an organization that you love, like, where you made a gift and you felt like they really saw you. The stewardship was on point. Like, drop that in the chat, and I got to give you one that happened to me, like, two weeks ago. So my alma mater called me as a calling program, which they're still around, and they still have residents, folks, and I'm talking to this incredible student, Adam. I'm learning all about his engineering degree. I'm learning about where he grew up. Of course, I end up talking to him forever. We have this great conversation about very specific things. I make a donation right after I hang up, about a minute and a half later, I get a text from Adam that says, not a can text Becky, thank you for talking to me about X, Y and Z. I got so much out of that phone call, but thank you for giving to this mental health fund for students at our university. I have anxiety and you didn't know, but you're giving it to me. Can you imagine how good I felt about my gift to my alma mater like drop those stories in the chat, because those are beacons for us again, those are beacons that tell us this is what matters. And guess what? It's usually the personalization. It's not something flashy, it's not a high tech video, it's being seen as a human being. And so I want to kick this to Tiffany. You know, in our podcast, we talk about, don't start with the numbers, like start with your goals. And I know you've built an entire brilliant business around this. Walk us through, how would we start to set up goals when we're setting our and creating these donor journeys? Where do we start? What is the impetus?
So the interesting thing about that, especially when you're new, it's it's hard to find your place, it's hard to figure out, because you don't understand your donors or what their motivations are, where to go. So I like to tell people ask yourself questions first, like, what kind of organization are we? What are our values? What do we want people to know about us? Like, what is our core mission? Because sometimes people don't even have that straight about what is the mission? Why do we even exist? I think you need to understand, like, what's the unique perspective we bring to the space that we want to share with others? You can ask yourself, like, how can we capture people's attention? How can we capture their hearts? How do we want people to feel. And I think if you answer those questions, that can give you a guide with how you want to approach the donor journey, or how you want to engage your donors. But I also just think that you need to keep it simple when you're new, I like to say three things every time I educate people, just focus on three things. Think about how you want to thank people and how you want to make that thinking process genuine. Focus on how you want to share impact. How are you sharing the work, the transformation that you're bringing about, or that you hope to bring about, if you're super new, and then how are you inviting people, inviting people to know more, to experience more, all those things. So I would say, focus on those three areas and build activities around that, once you ask yourself those core questions about who you are and how you want people to feel, incredible.
I love the shower breaking this down for all of us. I mean, we, you know, with having Brady on the call representing Charity Water today, I love the juxtaposition of just getting started to you stewarding, you know, 10s of 1000s of subscriber donors and Charity Water, y'all have had to figure out the playbook of, how do I listen to community, how do I adjust and see what's resonating, what's not? What does that look like today? I mean, could you give us a lens Brady into what is a donor journey like? Take us behind the curtain. What does it look like in terms of the touch points and the follow ups?
Yeah, I can try. I think you know, the points Tiffany made are fantastic. Doesn't matter if you're just starting up where you've been around for 17 years, and have the privilege to have 1000s of supporters giving every month like we do, in some ways, I think we fight really hard to just say, what is it that we did years ago, and how do we still do that with some element of scale? Because you often lose a lot of that secret. Sauce of why people wanted to give to you in the first place as you grow. And so it's really hard to keep, keep that. And so we fight really, really hard for that. So a journey that maybe I'll walk through a little bit is the spring maybe a monthly donor program, which, again, we focus a lot of time. And then two years ago, we kind of rebuilt the first 90 days of that experience. That's not the end of their journey, but that's a really critical window. You know, the most likely someone is to leave a monthly giving program is basically the day after they gave, and then it goes down after that. It's, it's the majority of people that leave a program do so in the first three months. And the main reason that people do is often payment related, credit card failure, credit card expiry, things like that. And so we try to establish really, really quickly, how special they are and how they're part of a community, really quick. So not even about impact, just about who you are as a generous person. Thank you so much. Special note from the founder. Note from community, our support Experience Team person reaches out. Hey, we're here for you. There's humans behind the scene, so we try to establish a human connection very, very quick. Then we try to establish what our values are as an organization, we value storytelling in the people and communities that we serve. We're innovative and tech forward. So we try to communicate and share those in ways that people can identify. And both Tiffany and dilari mentioned this, see themselves in it. You know, it's not just someone who looks just like me, but someone who believes the same things as me. So we try to communicate that often through through stories, and then we try to give people something to do. Because even if you have the best content in the world, it's just it's one way content. You know, one way to keep people engaged is give them something to do or suggest things for them to even say no to, is still an active way to participate, instead of just content, content, content with nothing for me to do. So it can be little things like update your profile, share this with friends and family, or a key action that we suggest people take who are giving a credit card is to switch over and give through bank strategically. We know that reduces churn and increases lifetime value, but it's also a relatively simple thing for someone to do that's not asking them to give more money, we're just asking them to change the method by which they pay. So it's a little bit of a proxy of commitment, and it can happen kind of early on. So that's an oversimplification of what we do in the first 90 days, but it really is a bit of a bit of a progression.
And I will say you're having such tremendous efficacy right now, because we've got Misty in the chat. So sweet. Thank you for telling us that you're a spring member, giving these compliments. I mean, this is happening in real time. And when you feel seen, the community grows, and people bring their friends, and then believers beget more believers, and it's such a beautiful sort of ripple that can transpire. And so I want to get into the heart of donor journeys, which is really two core components, which is personalization and segmentation. And so I want to dive a little bit more deeply into that. And I want to get thoughts from the group on here. And delari, let's I want to start with you. When you think about these different personas, and all of us are going to have a lot of different avatars and people that we're trying to speak to, talk to us about where to start, talk about the importance of personalization segmentation, and how do we really suggest those connection points that will connect with somebody to the next thing in our org and to the next thing and to keep coming back?
Yeah, I think one of the biggest challenges in donor segmentation is figuring out how your organization works for others, right? So sometimes we're so mired in the work of what our organization does, of the story we're telling, and the spreadsheets and all the things that we don't often take the time to ask, you know, some of those rabid fans you mentioned earlier, Becky might be like great points of contact for you to say, Well, how did you come into this organization? What is it about our work that makes you excited about it? How do you know, I think one of the things that is really interesting is that the way in which you segment your donors right now, if you haven't revisited that in some time, may have changed. Lots of things have changed. You know, maybe you see that email is doing well social, not so much. Have we tried text for example, you know, Becky, to your point around, you know, receiving that great text message. You know, I think that being curious about how people come into your organization and why they stay is the first sort of stepping off point to asking those questions that you can get that information. You may think that folks are interested in certain parts of your programming, but you may find that some of your most effective donors are interested in a cross section of the work and are more interested in you know, what the overall organization's impact is. And so I think one of the best ways to segment any donor population for any organization is to really ask those questions to folks who you trust, folks who are new to Tiffany's point. You know, where you first have your your first interactions with people, what's standing out to them? And I think a lot of folks are really much more giving in terms of reflecting that back to us than we think they are. Right? It just requires the questions to get them started on what they think about their their own donor journey, to help you inform other donor journeys and segments.
Tiffany, what about you? What are you seeing in personalization and segmentation?
Well, you know, I'm going to always talk about the new perspective of new founders. It's so. Early. People don't even segment yet, right? Like they don't even know that. They barely have their data together. They barely have their list together. So I do try to tell people, think about your new donors, like the time when someone first gives. What is that conversation with them? How are you welcome? Welcoming them. That's why I'm so glad Brady, you talked about that 90 day experience with charity water. But how are you informing the work of the organization? How are you welcoming in them into your community? I tell people to think about those repeat donors. How are you going to customize an experience for them, those people who either give monthly or those you want to, who give like on an annual basis, and then also those major donors, people who give sizable gifts. Though, I do believe you can connect with any size donors, but you may want to customize experience, experiences based on the gift. The only thing I'll say, though is think about the top of the donor journey, because there are so many people who have the potential to give, who have not given yet, and how can you connect with them? Even if they're on your email list and they've never given $1 there's still a level of communication you can have with them. You can still ask them questions. You can still involve them. So just don't forget about the very top of that journey,
Tiffany's talking lurkers right there. And I want to say at some point there was like a 60% of your website traffic is lurkers, people waiting to see what is that little connection point that makes me want to click on this? So thank you for bringing that up. Brady, what about you? I
think there's a couple of things that we can do to get at personalization without necessarily going into the depths that maybe even delary was talking about or that we aspire to, and one of them is just comms that feel personal. So even limiting the design and having it come from a human and making it written and sound like a human, as opposed to marketing or branding, speak that feels more personal, even though it's not, the content isn't necessarily personalized. And then another thing I would use word transactional but virtuous language is responsive, but you just provide content based off what people say or do, right? Someone downloads an ebook on how their kids can be more generous. We send them content on how their kids can be more generous. Like, it's it's in that same vein of like, the more that we guess and try to project what people are interested in, the bigger chance we have to get it wrong and waste time and energy. And so, you know, the more that we can create little, little personalized journeys based off actions. They visited a site, they downloaded something, they clicked something. You don't need a 90 day journey now, but you just need a couple comms to say, Hey, you're interested in kids. Awesome. Here's something you can do to get your kids involved. It feels very personal, but it's based off something that they did. So creating a series of those, again, can create more feelings of personalization without them necessarily needing to say, I really care about children who lack access to water in Malawi because of this. Like you don't even necessarily need to go that route to still get some element of personalization that's probably easier to implement.
I love that you're going there, because I think it's So traditionally, we're even calling it a donor journey is assuming that they've made a gift. And there's so many signals that we can track now of someone showing interest or showing that they just clicked on an article or wanted to read more, that that could be a better informer than some kind of dollar amount that we would traditionally sort by delari, did I catch you off? Were you about to get in here? Not
at all. I just love so much of what Brady said, because I think one of the things that we think about a lot in comms and fundraising, and again, this is us, sort of, you know, with our blinders on, trying to do our jobs every day is, how do we separate folks right into these buckets that we can appeal to when we forget that thing that all of our donors have in common all of our potential donors have in common is that they're people, right? They're human beings who understand when they're being spoken to from another human being, and what that looks like. And so I just wanted to super plus star that, because I think it's something that we forget, that human to human connection can sometimes be very simple. It doesn't need to be as complex as sometimes we make it.
Yeah, okay, if you were listening in on our former conversation, we were just talking about all these AI tools that certainly are helping people with content with creating a lot of different pieces that take a lot of time, but it's it's incumbent on us to bring the humanity back into that and so like not losing that connection, realizing we are relational, that is so core to our ability to do our missions, that we need to not lose our humanity in the process of this. I love that you went there. So Tiffany, I got to kick it to you looking at just like, what organizations can do that have limited budget with their digital marketing framework. Like, what would you advise them? How do they kind of start to implement some of these personalizations and categorizations of people?
So I would say, don't try to be and do everything. So it's really easy to want to compare yourself in the phaser into another organization, but get good at what you can get good at in the beginning. For lack of better words, I can't say it any better than that, but try to find one or two platforms that you can do reasonably well, like with social media and where your audience. Where you think your audience is, or the people who want to hear the stories you have to tell, do that and get really good and consistent at showing up and start to tailor your message and like, test it out, see how people respond, see how people engage, so you can learn your audience better. I also think using video is just amazing, and you can just get on your phone, and there's just a connection you can make, and you can have that personal connection with people. And there may be 30 people on your live that you do, but you're having a connection with each one of them because the words you're using, the stories you're telling, are hitting them right here, and it's an emotional connection. So that happens with me all the time on that platform. I haven't met many of the people that I talk to, but they feel a personal connection to me, and they root for me. And you can do the same thing. But I also just want to say, use your donors, like, at some point you don't have the staff yet, you don't have the money yet, to use, like, really technical tools, but use your donors to be your advocates, to be your cheerleaders. Give them the messaging that they can use to shout out your work on social media and just to share your mission and to make you more visible. I think that could be really, really powerful. Oh,
so good. And she's brought us back to humanity and just remembering that it is a human being at the other end. It's not a segmented avatar, it's a human being with a unique lived experience, unique needs, unique feelings, unique behaviors. And I think just the more we dive into this and get to know each other and get to know our cause, get in the DMS of your socials, as somebody has said something really incredible on your social go in there and thank them. Start a conversation. And I want to, I want to get to who's doing it well. And I want to pitch this just right into the middle of the group. I want each of you to talk about, who have you seen, who's really built an evolved donor journey or a process to really help people be seen? Delaria, I think I want to start with you. Is there anybody that sort of lives to the top that you've worked with, that, that you've seen in your work?
Yes, and maybe not, for reasons that you know what we're talking about here. And so I work with an organization, with an organization called American Youth Works here in Austin, Texas, and a lot of what I think makes their donor journey exciting is that they really look at their donors as as parts of their team. And the way in which you would work with someone is the way in which you work with your donors, which I find really interesting. And they stay pretty steadfastly curious about what people are interested in, how they show up, how they come to their events, whether they come, if they came to the event, then what happened? What did you think about it? Would you do it again this way? Would you do it differently? What do you suggest? I think that that sort of, that sort of curiosity, but also not because I want to get more out of you, but I'm curious because we work together towards this mission. How would you make this work together towards our mission more fruitful and more interesting to others? And I think to Tiffany's point, that helps a lot with you know, it's probably not that often that often that a brand convinces you to do something. It's probably much more often that a friend or a family member or somebody in the community recommends something to you, and when you bring your donors in as part of your team, they now become these great ambassadors out in the community for you. Like, hey, I volunteer here every week, and I give money here once a year. And do you want to join me sometime? And that might be just what you need to get the next donor in your door at any level of your organization. So I just wanted to shout out American Youth Works, because they do a really good job of staying curious and working with their donors towards a shared mission, versus seeing their donors as the money that comes in to fund the mission,
the great amplifiers, the rabid fans. I'm here for it, and seeing nonprofits is not these sort of monolithic structures. We are movements, we are labs, we are working scientifically to figure out and solve the world's most systemic problems. So I love that tone. Set. Brady, what about you? Who have you seen that's doing a really great job? Feel free to put yourself on that list.
I will not. I think we actually have a lot of lot of room to improve. I think one that I really enjoy is DonorsChoose. They're kind of like a really tech forward nonprofit. And their personalization based to fund teachers and their projects based off where you live, is really cool. People like to give local I think, a for profit example, Spotify their their personalization is pretty, pretty off the charts. Now, different scale, for sure, but you know, whether it's the rapt experience or suggested artists or concerts coming near you, if you look at what I think is good personalization at scale, I think Spotify is a good one. And then Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation is really interesting. How they do their fundraising, and it's really, really data and supporter centric. They really listen to their supporters. In the data in terms of, we ask three times a year how they use communication. They're really interesting. In terms of, obviously, they have one of the most top 10 visited websites in the world, which we don't all have, but how they fundraise is really, really unique. So I learned a lot from
them. So good. And I love when we bring. In examples that are not in the nonprofit space, because I think we can live in our silos too much. So why not put Spotify on your dream board of man, I want that type of personalization. We figure out a way to break that down. We can all build playlists too. So okay, Tiffany, who would you like to spotlight in terms of an organization that's doing this?
Well, that's what I have to say. Do you want my playlist or you want the person actually I so it's very random, let me just say, but an organization that I would love to shout out is an organization called Mission fulfilled 2030 and the name of the founder is Gerald Moore, and he's on a mission to teach 100,000 black boys, stem and tech and entrepreneurship, and he started in 2019, and what stands out for me is he's not afraid to tell his story, and he's not afraid to bring us along on his journey. So his platform of choice is LinkedIn, and so he regularly posts and tags people on his journey. Hey, I just went to this I just got into this fellowship, or, Hey, we just did this awesome session with the boys, and you'll see their faces, and you'll see, like, the presentations they do because they have, like, the entrepreneurship camp and things like that. And it's just amazing process to see how he has grown. And he's gotten to the point where he started in 2019 and he just secured a building in Rochester, New York, and he's just growing and growing. You're just rooting for him along the way. And I know he's also using email, and he's keeping in touch with email, but he's he's really good at using LinkedIn and keeping people up to date with his journey. So I would like to shout him out.
Would you drop his profile in the chat? And I just want to, like, surprise him with like, 100 new followers right now on LinkedIn, it'd be so cheer him on his journey. Go through, click through,
oh my gosh, that's so good. Because I feel like there's so many people out there right now that are probably saying I'm Gerald. That's what I'm trying to do with my organization and my community. And so I want to give a shout out to everybody in the community. If you're doing great things and you want to connect, we believe community is everything. Drop your LinkedIn and pro LinkedIn profile, Julie, drop in the we are for good community. If you don't have community ongoing every single day, come hang out in ours. Go hang out in places with people who want to support you. Support your values, uplift your work. We all need community. And shout out to the geralds of the world who are out there on the front lines making it happen. So okay, we're wrapping up. We have three podcast alums here who know the drill that we finish all of our conversations with a one good thing. And so I want you to sort of round out this conversation with us today and tell us, like Brady, I want to start with you what's one good thing that someone could take away from this conversation today that you want to make sure is heard. I did
this to you on the podcast where I said I'm going to answer differently and with three things. So I'm going to do it again here for consistency. Very on brand. Three, very on brand, right? So three quick things. One, reuse old stuff. I think when you're rebuilding journeys or creating there is so much good content you've done in the past that there's no reason why that shouldn't be built into a new journey. They haven't seen it, and even if they have, it's still good. Reuse it. Delari alluded to this, and I think this is a key thing, your supporters are way more alike than they are different, and so a lot of the nuances we make on segments are like pretty arbitrary, instead of really understanding what really unites these folks and hammer that home, as opposed to the things that they might be different. And then the last one is just, don't overcomplicate it. You know, like, we have really, really smart people with really, really good tools. We can't manage to create eight different, personalized, hyper, automated, like, we can't do it. So I bet you can't. Either, don't overthink it, Don't over complicate it. Get something good. Make it better.
Charity. Water told us to just keep it simple and to make it something that's human. Thank you, Brady, for that gift. Okay, Tiffany, what about you? Going good thing.
So I just want to share a real quick a story of a person I spoke with yesterday, and it wasn't about nonprofits, but she was sharing why she liked this organization and why she supported the organization, and she said that she got a personal email from the CEO when her dad passed, and she got some flowers from people working on the project with her. And that got me thinking of how people really care about how you make them feel right? And so the one thing I just want to leave everybody with is, what is the experience that you want your donors to have? How do you want them to feel when they engage with your organization and design your processes around that the end goal is not the gift, the end goal is the relationship, because that relationship will take you way farther than the gift that you're seeking in the moment. So just think about how you can go deeper and develop true relationships with the people who have shown interest in your organization. Okay, I
got the heart emojis. We're elevating this conversation. Thank you. I mean, I think Tiffany that we're all cheering in our sections right now, wherever we. Are because we want to work and live in a world like that. We want to be seen as donors to the causes we care about and that exact same way. So thank you for bringing that back home. Delauri, round us out what you got.
We should have ended with Tiffany, because I'm going to tell her I want to take a hard left turn into like, what is my Just My Type A way of being, and just offering to all of us that to carve out some time, once a month, once a quarter, a couple of times a year, to plan for your future self and help your future self do this job better. Whatever that looks like for you, if it's reviewing the data, if it's reviewing the journey, if it's testing some stuff, planning to test some stuff, why is this working and that not working, but just giving your future self the gift of that type of planning and review that takes you out of your day to day and really looks at things at a higher level and across how everything is performing. I think that is we don't often do that for ourselves. And so I would offer that that is something that can be really helpful. It's not as much
my dang heart so full from this. I hope you came looking for the donor journey, and then Brady tipped over the glass and told you it's not going to be all what you expect. We got so much more. I feel like this conversation. I love all the feedback that we're seeing in the chat of just what we're really fighting for is that connection, feeling, creating belonging, creating these kind of experiences that people want to come back to. And that's what this is about so thank you for being here. There's more conversations to come. Follow these amazing thought leaders on LinkedIn. They have incredible brands too that are sharing content. But yeah, I appreciate you being here and
guys just start Do something. Do a 1% shift, try one pilot, try one AB testing. Try one tiny little thing, analyze it. Come back, iterate it, make it better. You can do this. We believe in you. You've got an entire community wrapped around you. Let's go into this brave new world strong. Let's see people and heck, let's go raise some money and do some good.
