9 Nonprofit Trends That Matter in 2023: Humanize the Digital Experience - Jon McCoy, CFRE, Becky Endicott CFRE and Nejeed Kassam

7:58PM Feb 22, 2023

Speakers:

Julie Confer

Becky Endicott

Jonathan McCoy

Nejeed Kassam

Keywords:

tech

humanizing

people

technology

data

human

becky

fundraisers

community

fundraising

world

instincts

create

engagement

donors

organization

easy

conversation

building

nonprofit

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Hey, I'm Jon.

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, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.

So let's get started. Becky, how are ya?

Can you believe that we are voluntarily talking about tech and data right now?

It's not so bad.

It's really not so bad friends. And if we can do it, you all can hang in here too. Because the reality is, if we're not leaning into how to humanize tech, we are going to be falling behind. So we are making this conversation gentle for you today.

Absolutely. So welcome back to our Friday series. Happy Friday to you. We are on week six, unpacking the trend of humanizing tech and the digital experience. I hope this series has really inspired you because we wanted to set out at the beginning of the year, and not be gloom and doom, we wanted to show you all the ways that there's so many assets around us that we can lock arms with and people that we can lock arms with and opportunities that we can look almost regardless of what's happening and all the noise and the chaos in the world. And so today is really one of those conversations. And I think we kind of got a tone set because I feel like chatGPT is like taken over our feeds in a lot of ways, right? And everywhere we turn if you haven't seen it's this AI tool that basically is smarter than any of us put together at any given time. Right? And I think there's been a lot of chatter of like, how is this going to change our industry? How is this going to change our jobs? How is this gonna unemploy all of us. But here's the deal. We always figure things out, right? And this is an opportunity for us to lean in and think about how can we use tech? And this is just one example of it. How can we use tech as a new asset to increase our ability to deliver our impact? And what an opportunity that we get to live through this transition. But we definitely have to go at it with an open hand and open heart and ready to evolve. And that evolve word is something that we've been talking about this entire series. And so I just wanted to tone set with that. But I know we've got a lot of voices, we want to lift in this conversation. So Becky, I know you wanted to lift some that from Mike, right?

Yeah, we love Mike Duerksen. If you have not gone over to the Build Good team, and listen to this incredible podcast, leaned into their work, we really just think they're on to something. And Mike has been on the podcasts in the past. And he says something that really struck us about how one to one engagement is the ultimate long game play. And we're going to talk about how humanizing your tech is going to massively amplify your ability to lean into that one in one engagement. And he says that the huge takeaway for him was realizing how we've been in this place before, where society seems more polarized than ever before, trust is down, everyone's feeling fairly tribal. But you embrace the idea that hearts change in community through this reciprocal influence by building one on one meaningful relationships, and elevating solutions that already exist in the community. There is power in what is already in your wheelhouse. And it's also a reminder of the power, that imbalance can stand in the way of our organizations actually achieving what they are set out to do. So as Jon's talking about, you know, what we're all feeling that's a lot of negativity and division in the country, or really around the world. We're saying that you're a light, you are one of the beacons in this moment. And if we can find a way to make sure that people can be a magnet to our organizations be a magnet to our needs, understand what they can do to ignite transformation. Really, the world is going to be your oyster.

Yeah. Oh my gosh, I love that. And Mike Duerksen, I mean, when he talks, he's one of those people that were like, Okay, let's pause and listen, such good tone setting. And the other one I would say is kind of we're building off what you said B is like, we get to bring this human angle we get to bring the storyline and the impact level that provides us deeper level engagement that's never going to be replaced by a bot or by AI because it's about this human experience. It's so much deeper. And that is our secret sauce. So it encourages us to lean in and bring that into the spaces of tech. And you know, for those of us that feel standoffish on tech and data a little bit Here's a place to start. Our friend Tim Lockie has done a lot of research in this with his start of The Human Stack, which is really flooding a lot of the values that we're going to talk about in this episode into his work. But he, you know, shared this data point that 90% of nonprofits collect data. Okay, that's probably most of us right, listening?

Congratulations.

But less than 40% use that data to make decisions. Anybody feeling guilty about right now?

hand raised, guilty hand raised.

Yeah, so part of this is open hand, right? We're going to learn, we're going to grow this year, how can we use data to do our work better, and not just an impact delivery, but just an everyday things that make our life easier that make showing up to work and doing our task easier? And that's what we want to talk about too, as we think about humanizing tech and the digital experience.

So we really want to unpack two aspects of humanizing tech that we think are keys for organizations to embrace this year. And the two components are what are you doing internally? And what are you doing externally? So I want to break down what we're doing inside our walls. And I want to ask just a question. How are you centering the human experience for those that are within your organization, those who are implementing, operating and using tech PS, that's everybody that works within your organization. But we want to look at everything we're doing with our internal systems, and how they reflect the values and the needs of our organization as we're pushing out. So now let's look at external. Ask yourself this question. How are we humanizing the aspects of where we're flexing the power of tech to improve the digital experience? And what do I mean by that? I mean, how do you humanize the external parts of your business, your donor journeys, your automations? How do you pull in your digital voice style guide that flows like right into your narratives, your digital narratives? And you know, to apply this to a nonprofit scenario, we think The Adventure Project does a great job. Jon, you talked about, you got a one minute loom video from them right after giving Tuesday, just saying thank you after you made a gift. It was nothing fancy, it was somebody sitting at their computer. But that ability to have someone stare directly at you and say, This is what your gift means to us. I'm looking at it right now. Here's the stuff we're facing. And here's how it's going to help game changing in the way that you can create an experience and it took one minute.

Yeah, I mean, I still have the warm fuzzies from that. So that's the power of really putting this into practice. So we talk about tech and digital tools, a ton on the podcast. And so we've even put together a little playlist of case studies and kind of interesting conversations that are all around this trend. And that's going to be linked up in the show note. But really pour into that conversation if you're wanting to go deeper. But before we bring in our special guests, you know, each of these weeks on Fridays, we're bringing in a special guest to really bring the heavy after Becky and I bring you some of the lightweight stuff on the front end. So we want to bring in somebody that can really speak to this, but we want to share a few of our favorite pro tips. And I'll jump in here first beat so humanizing our automations Becky lead into this really well of like, how do we change a normal, boring gift conformation with something that feels more human? Breakout, the human language, you know, what's an emotion? How can you thread that in? How can you add a gift? How can you add emoji? How can you add your own face of celebration or whatever it may be doing that is going to help disarm these different entry points. I've seen welcome series that have really humanizing gifts of someone that's welcome you to the community, and it just brings a smile, it's surprises. And in today's attention economy, that's what it's all about is cutting through the noise and doing something that people don't expect. Maybe that catches them and makes them reminded of Oh, it's another human on the end of this line. It's not just this random organization that didn't notice that I made this gift today,

I want to give another one that's kind of I would say off the beaten path. But I wanted everyone to take a pause and understand your barriers before you start replacing your tech tools. I think we see this a lot where people think, Oh, we're having tech stack issues. But then when you really dive into the guts of it, it's really about there's some limitations on your mindsets, on your skill sets. On the way you interact, maybe your executive director your board does not want you speaking in a I'm using quotes, unprofessional way using emojis. So understand those limitations before you just start going in and making large investments in tech or even small investments.

So good and I think this parlays into this one too is prioritize building your own literacy around whatever tool that you're learning like it's okay to say that I don't understand or it's okay to lean in and say hey, part of this is we need to fund and create space and budget to be educated on this and that can be done and it's best done in community because I can think of times when you bring in lunch and like all talk about it and look at a tech tool and understand it together and ask questions and create a place as leader that it's psychologically safe to show up and ask question shins and be the most uneducated person in the room about the tech tool like that helps make it more accessible for everybody. And so I think all these conversations are kind of stalking the the trends that we've already talked about, about creating belonging, creating a safe place to learn and grow. And we do that in our tech space, and it's even so much better.

Okay, the next one, I feel like is really basic. But I want to say it, Jon, because I want it to be prioritized. We want you to strive to create a personalized experience for your believers. And you can do this by collecting and analyzing data to better understand their needs and preferences. Who is opening up your email, who is, you know, clicking through who's visiting your website, or who's giving digitally, you know, there are ways that you can look at your tech and see who is playing in your sandbox, often, who is showing up and interacting who's sharing, that is such an easy way to see someone raising their hand for either better engagement, or putting them in a lane as a rabid fan. So if you can find a way to personalize that experience, use your data to make someone feel seen. I just think about Julian that shampoo. It's like she thought that was such a simple purchase. But yet, they really found a way to connect. And I think that is such an easy way with new donors, with loyal donors, repeat donors, there are ways that you can customize and automate that.

When we presented this workshop a few weeks ago, we invited the community to just share what are your favorite tools? I think we asked what tool tech tool gives you the most life which I love positioning it that way. So a few great tech tools that was lifted from the community were proof packed and memory Fox, those are both for storytelling and gathering social proof, and Zapier that connects all the tech dots on the back end. Yes, thank you is an awesome video stewardship tool Canva simple design tools. And did you know the pro account is free for nonprofits we love their pro account makes it super simple, good united, which is really epic and social media fundraising and really chatting using the messaging tool on Facebook and feather. They're one that we use ourselves to. I know we rep them a lot on the podcast because we really believe in what they do. But it's this ability to retarget the traffic that's coming to your site and find the people that care about your mission in a really like progressive tech friendly, humanizing way.

Okay, so if you're sitting there saying, but what if funding just isn't there for my organization, we just don't have the funding. We want to give you guys a couple of tools because technology grants for nonprofits exist. And they're available if you're looking to upgrade to new technology, or maybe add technology. So we're going to drop four in four of those grants in our show notes, grantwatch, the Foundation Centers, Cisco has some grant programs, please go check those out in our show notes. Because this is how important we think this is. We want you to be able to grab those tech tools to find your people further personalize those experiences and take all of those monkeys off your back of doing these individual personalizations one on one as a human, it's just not possible. So we got an incredible playlist that we put together for you. That's another little pro tip to get you started. So check out our playlist that will also be in the show notes. But Jon, we got to get to introducing our guests. We've talked way too much because we've got to get to an expert. You all are in for a treat today because we have brought one of our favorite human beings and experts back onto the podcast. He is the king of humanizing tech. And Ajit Kazaam is just such an incredible founder and nonprofit advocate. He's the founder of Keilah and the fundraising kit. He has a wealth of knowledge and how to humanize tech he is watching the trends. And honestly, he's pouring into it with his own resources with his own expertise of how to make reporting data tech work better for the nonprofit professional outside of his work. He's married to the most amazing woman in the world. That's

true that one I will all agree with. That one my wife Aisha and my son are the best people in the

world. I love that you brought Keon into this because he's such a light and we love your lifelong obsession for tennis. And the fact that you were once ranked 1746 in the world as a junior tennis player. And we've learned a former opera singer. So we have got just a renaissance man in the house and we're about to talk about how we're going to humanize this tech and Nietzsche just so happy you're back on the podcast welcome my friend.

It's a real pleasure honor to be here excited grateful to to share the space with with you folks and dig into some what I think are, you know, both exciting but also a little bit scary topics. There's I think, with the sort of seems like 2023 is brought all these interesting, exciting, you know, tech conversations, but I think I've also felt in in the conversations that I've been in a little bit of drawback a little I don't I wouldn't call it fear, but something before fear. And so I think the human element is what not only defines successful technology, but more importantly, defines our sector and so happy to kind of dig in and talk about.

Well, I mean, you are the one we wanted to talk to you about this, because I think you and I've sit kind of in the vortex of all this. And I think you've described that perfectly, because I think watching how AI specifically and this we're going to go first with this unfold in real time has been a fascinating case study to watch people's response to it. And honestly, my own like, insights being like, I don't know how I feel about this. But at the same time, maybe this is the coolest thing ever. So let's talk about this moment, where at this intersection of technology, AI and fundraising, how would you turn set for this conversation?

So I actually thought about, you know, you folks are great to send me some themes we wanted to talk about, obviously, I did a little prep, not too much, because I wanted it to be raw and real. I actually wanted to talk about like creativity, which is a strange thing to think about when you're talking about AI and technology. But I read recently that the chat GPT bot passed a medical exam, the bar exam, and an NBA. And NBA final Exactly. So as I started thinking to myself, like, What the heck are we going to do, I was a lawyer, I used to do the research that a robot can literally do now. And it's not just chapter GPT, there's a ton of companies that are using artificial intelligence, and all these different algorithms and the incredible amounts of data that exist in the kind of entire web in the universe, to do what like many people used to do. And then I got to thinking, well, what are two things that human beings can do that no machine can do? At least not yet. There are two, one was creativity. And the second one was empathy. And so I actually want to spend our conversation talking about AI, talking about what AI can't do, and why that's an opportunity for us, and not actually something we should be scared about. Okay. Oh, man,

I've given you the biggest fist bump from the states up to like, what a beautiful place to start. Because it's the opposite of scarcity. It's the opposite of fear. It's like, can we control you know, what can we wrap our arms around? So let's dive into this? I mean, talk us through this, what's some ways that you would lead take a leader at that that's kind of shepherding a team is conversation? How do you how do you start to unpack how do we be more creative, more empathetic, and what we're doing? So

I think the pandemic really kind of, I want to say, like, expedited this a little bit, but what became as we became a video culture. And that was really interesting. And there's a ton of research, and I don't have the source, but I remember reading it, where if you do back to back to back video calls, your brain actually gets essentially like mushy, I don't know what the, you know, like, your, your neurons, they fire and saying, What if I don't, I don't know. Google it, there's a, I read a study about it. It's really interesting. And we actually made a change at Keila, where we're trying to make the meetings, 45 minutes on an hour to get 15 minutes of recovery, we're limiting meetings to certain days, and you know, but that got me thinking, like, what's missing and all that, and this goes to AI. And I'll talk about why in a second. It's the time for creativity, right? Intellectual creativity, emotional creativity, human creativity. And in a world where we're always doing stuff, we type faster, we click faster, we, we report fast, everything is faster, everything is expedited, you know, I like to think of this as maybe if we take this as an opportunity to take pause. And instead of trying to race to be faster with the technology, like to keep up with the technology, or whatever you want to call it, will you use it as a mechanism to give us time and more importantly, brain space back? So let's use an example. Like, I'm going to use Chad GPT because it's really easy to do, right? If, and there's lots of risks, I'm thinking I'm sitting on a panel in a couple of weeks or whatever, whatever about this. But if you can say to somebody, like, give me that, you know, 10 you know, give me a write a memo about 10 ways I can increase fundraising, you know, use it for my major donors. Whatever it might be, I don't know what you know, pick up pick out like a research topic. Instead of having to actually do that work, which might take hours and hours, you can get a first draft or, you know, whatever it might be, and use the time to actually connect with people based on those things, to think about more, you know, ways that are different from what's out there. Because the The interesting thing about all this AI technology is it's taking what's out there, and it's processed. Seeing it and it's grabbing it and it's synthesizing it. There's no creativity. There's nothing new in that, right. And I think that space for creativity is super interesting. Because I think that's where great ideas are gonna come from, and new ways and new paradigms and new perspectives. And to me, that's the greatness of all this technology, it'll get all that crap, excuse my very technical term out of the way, I understand that we can actually do stuff, and that's actually going to move the needle. And that, to me is like the the creative space, I think, does that make any sense?

It makes total sense. And I love that you're talking about space. Thank you for talking about building and margin, to think, to be creative, to feel to wonder, to be curious, because we need that space. I mean, our number nine, our kids need that. That space, every human being needs that ability to sit in ease. Because if not, then you get the fogginess all the time, and I don't even think that's just on the computer, I think if you're firing every single minute of every single day, that's going to be fatiguing, and you keep talking about the space that we're creating. And I want to like double click on this space, because we want to know how to build systems of belonging. How do you use your tech? How can you take existing tech and, and amplify it in a way where someone feels seen and valued? Talk to us about that, and what you're seeing.

So there's a couple of challenges to do that first, and I want to put them out there, and I don't have all of them. You know, tech is not created equal. And I mean, even simple tech, like access to cell phones, or high speed internet, or there's a big URL and verb, or verb, urban and rural divide. And so and these are just some of the barriers that folks all across the United States, Canada, but also, of course, across the world face. And so, you know, it's strange that I start this answer with talking about privilege, because we're so privileged to even have the space to have this conversation. And so I think step one or step zero, maybe before we can answer this question, because it talks about you talking about community and belonging. And I don't want to forget, that is like making sure that whatever spaces and places that we build, we remember that not everyone has the same access to them, because that's going to affect who's in the room and what's set in the room. And I don't mean physical, although I like physical room too, and how their voices are contributed and amplified. So people of color people in rural areas, people in the Global South, they don't have the same access to technology. And so when we're building communities, we cannot forget that we need to work kind of on overdrive to be inclusive of those folks on because their voices are important. And they help us build that belonging. Right. And now, I think I said this on the last pod. But for us to make our democracy stronger, all those voices need a space and a place. And technology can both help us get there and create the divide and make the divide even bigger. And so that's that's the preamble as any lawyer does. I preamble Congress. But at the same time, there is an incredible opportunity to connect and be together and create, make spaces smaller and create diversity of voices because of technology. Right? In the past, we lived think about 75 years ago, our lives were so my myopic, we saw what we saw, we heard what we heard, the town we lived in the city, maybe the church or the mosque we went to those were mostly the voices that we even have access to. And now at least there's an opportunity to have more people and technology has done that. And and sometimes it's made it terrible, because it's gone back to myopia with like some social media and that kind of these, you know, seeing what you feel and seeing your own opinions and the algorithms doing that. And I'm not dismissing those challenges, but at least we have an opportunity to break that cycle in a way that 50 100 years ago we didn't even have, right, so how can this kind of technology? Well, what it can do in my opinion, is allow us to be more creative, allow us to send more kids from different kinds of communities to think at schools in different ways. You know, like it can help create abundance, whether it's through farming or manual, data entry, or whatever it might be. There's lots of ways that AI and technology can actually take the burden from humans and we can use those we should be using those resources to help stimulate creativity in a way that's more inclusive. So you know, abundance, if you can use this to create abundance and abundance to create opportunity and in that opportunity you create inclusivity that's to me how you create more includes but it's not easy and there's a lot of walls we've got to fight and there's a lot of selfish or self interested perspective. is that we need to fight in this process. But to me, that's the great opportunity, right? Everyone can be a philosopher, if you study to be clear, and you like work at it, but it's no longer going to necessarily need to be a luxury in the same way because technology will become a mechanism to support the parts of the human condition that are monotonous exclusive of lawyers, because they're the best, right?

I'm married to one. So I'll say yes. So my, I think about what you just said there. And I think about it through the lens of my very myopic viewpoint of the way I used to look at maybe stewarding or engaging with donors. And when you think about, think about if you ever had levels of giving, if you tethered to benefits, and the person at the top, always got way more engagement, got way more benefits got way more one on one personalization. And I think about this through the lens of tech now that if you can truly see someone, you can see the way that that's a great thing you can see you collaborate with everybody, right? In the way that they express themselves, where they show up, how they show up, how often they show up, is really going to inform the way you create belonging and the way you onboard them into your culture. And so I do think this whole concept of gathering this data, and looking at it and making a habit of looking at it, and having a creative space to say, You know what, I've seen this person show up in four different places on our email, they, you know, checked out our event video, I see they're following us on Instagram, I'm gonna send them a loom video and tell them thanks for this one minute, one minute, tell them what they mean, to me, it changes the game of engagement. It's super interesting. You said that

because so many fundraisers are so frustrated by process, right? How many and I've been an executive director. So I know that I've gotten grumpy with folks about not following process about not being diligent about doing the menial, monotonous things that every human in the world has to do data entry data, cleanliness notes, checking in on things, reporting all the crap that executive directors make people do because they need that things. Now let's use technology to do that. Instead of saying like, what data is off, let's say like, use a data cleanliness tool and say, These are the data fields that are missing. Instead of me having to search every data field to update something, let's just target the ones that are better. And that springs, or let's find out all the people who clicked on this video this week, because they're probably worth spending a little bit of time on and what if I'm in a city where I can quickly say they recently clicked on a video, they did X they did y and they're in Chicago, I always use Chicago for that is great. It's a great, the technology just gives you like, it's like a flashlight, right? It can do some of that monotonous stuff for you. And it can shine a light on like, where no human can possibly see. Right? I can't see that Jon did this, this and this. And this way, unless I look through, unless I'm lucky, which so much of the sector has relied on. And and I go digging, right. So now what does that do that unlocks the opportunity to create empathy and to be more creative. I'm gonna go back to those two themes. Right? That, you know, I think there's a data point that when someone gives a gifts, you should say thank you six times.

Yep. I've heard seven. Yeah.

Okay, great. GPT told us seven. So

seven is right. That doesn't have to be an automated BS email anymore. That can because you can actually create that space. You can. It can be multimedia, that can be an email, it can be a text message, it can be a video that you record. But instead of having to figure it spend all that manual time figuring out who's been thanked three times, who's been thanked twice, where are they on that sequence of gratitude. You can just No. And so that time that you just saved allows you to be more empathetic, more grateful steward them in the right way. But also think about more interesting ways to engage them. And that to me, is again, where that and that's all because the technology, it, pre scheduled it for you it reported on it for you, it dripped whatever, you know, whatever technology you're using, it did that it's also an opportunity to using this tech to go further Becky, is an opportunity for us to not miss opportunities. It's and that's really key. So what I just talked about was more like workflow time saving, and then what you can do with it, but there's so much you can do by not missing it. If if Jon clicks on the same link three times, you can probably figure that out relatively quickly. That that's a signal. It's a giving signal or it's an engagement signal. That's where AI technology can recognize us and be like, hey, Becky little here's a little poke. Jon did this. It probably means x or it probably means Y. And I think that again, speak creates that space, which is really important.

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I mean, this conversation is already like mind blowing. So I hope everybody listening is just so tuned in to what you're saying. Because I think I came into this, like, how do we humanize tech? And you've answered that in spades already. But I think there's also like, how do we not lose? What we're really fighting for, as we do this? You know, like, how do we not lose sight of that? Yeah, go for it.

There's one thing you know, people are like, Hey, I was gonna take my job. I'm like, firstly, it's not it's not that good. First, like, it's good, but it's not that good. And secondly, fundraising is about human relationships. It's about humanity. Ultimately, it's Becky, you asked about community, right? It's about community. And nobody can fake that. It's just not favorable. Because it's a feeling you can't code a feeling. I mean, if you can, then I'm in trouble.

But I know. We're all in trouble with you. Yeah,

that's the one thing that fundraisers especially good fundraisers are so good. They make the donors the people, the community that the constituents feel like a part of the organization and thus, something bigger. I don't think that that's what we should be spending our time and effort on. Not the annoying stuff that our executive directors make us do, which by the way they have to do because the board makes them do. And I totally appreciate that. But and I think that's where technology can like humanize, it's actually giving you human time back.

I just think about somebody listening to this, who's nodding and saying, This is what I believe. This is what I've seen happen, where the heck do I start machine. And so I want you to talk a little bit about goals that someone could set for themselves that they could activate this year to start humanizing the digital experience for their organization. And I'm gonna add a twofer on there. Because you said something that is just it's lodged in my brain. Now, you talked about engagement signals. And I would love for you to maybe even throw in, what are a couple of those engagement signals that we need to be looking for in our data that could pull in to this creativity and empathy that we could put on fire?

Good question, I want to start by the goals because I do something that I think is really important. I don't set goals for a year, I set things for three years, three things, things I have to do for three years, and I build like crazy amounts of habit around them. And I like make a commitment for 1000 days actually. And then I and one of my mentors, he's an incredible mentor said to me, the incremental value, it's like compounding interest actually is the value he used. So the incremental value that you're gonna get from doing something over three years is much more than doing it over a year. And that's a really cool concept. So every night before I go to bed, I fill out a little pad that has 10 questions on it. So South Asian men have heart conditions. It's like a genetic thing. So on mine, it's like eat less beef. I know it seems like there are a lot of other ones. Obviously, there's nine other ones, but eating less beef, and I give myself a score out of 10 every day, right? That's what happens. And so eat less beef. And it's like, does it mean I'm gonna stop eating beef? No. Is it better for the environment that I don't eat beef? Yes. Is it better for my health? I don't eat beef all the time. Yes. So what I do is every night I have to like, face myself face God, whatever you want to call it on this stupid little notepad that I've committed to doing for 1000 days. And when I eat beef, I have to put an X. And so that's like, the incremental benefit is like tomorrow or today or whatever it is. When I'm like, should I have the chicken? Should I have the veggie Should I have the beef? Whoo, I don't want to get a point on my beef. So I go to the chicken and that incremental change. It's not gonna happen every day. But the incremental change over a course of three years is going to have add real value. So to answer your question, what can we do as fundraisers to move towards humanizing our digital experiences? Like live in the incremental? Right? So set

of incremental I mean, I just want to sit with that. That's powerful.

It's, I want to not take credit for something that's not mine. Right? So I have I'm so blessed to have incredible mentors and brilliant people who who guide me push me, piss me off a lot. But who love and care about about my brain? And my, my potential? And miss is that is that wisdom? So how does that apply to fundraising? Like, that? Sounds like up to six, you know, but no, it's actually very real. So, first, you can't humanize the digital experience, until you actually learn what that means. So I think the first thing we can do is like every week, set aside 15 to 20 minutes to actually learn a little bit about digital, something in fundraising, it can be read two articles written on a blog, you really trust, it can be listen to a podcast like this one, or specific topics, it can be do a certification that's gonna get you CFRE credits, but commit to yourself that come hell or high water sitting on the toilet, or in the shower, or on your walk or the bus to work, do something that's going to give you the fluency to even think about digital experience, because so many fundraisers don't have that knowledge. And you can't do anything. Without that knowledge. That's the first thing. And I worked really hard. I think I talked about this on the last pod to build this certification program called the CDF the certified data driven fundraiser. And so this is one example of like, it's a, it's a group of stakeholders, doing this, with no profit to try to increase the fluency in the sector. It's like data driven fundraiser.com, I think, and that, so somebody asked me, How do I get fluent in digital digital fundraising, I said, start by learning the words like, you know, what is x, y? Or Zed? What is the difference between an algorithm and a machine learning algorithm? Or what's like, what are the what's the leading versus lagging indicator? And how do you see that in digital marketing for good, whatever they are, like, learn that. So that's the first thing. I think that's almost again, the precondition to humanizing the digital experience. The second thing is look at, set a goal to like look at a piece of data to try to understand it in the context of fundraising. So let's use an example. Let's use clicks, for example, just as an example, because it's a really easy, or taps, or Jon's right? Most of us. That's so 2012, right? So if somebody is engaged, like spend 15, or 20, or 30 minutes a week, saying, I'm just gonna go through who clicked on my email blasts by eblasts, to my newsletters, and see what happened after just to learn to get instinct, because instinct is built with knowledge and habit, right? It's and then you can, your brain can start to like, learn from it. So if I see that Becky clicked on something a couple of times, and then she donated recently, and then I like, just, I'm just like, looking for trends. Now computers can do this, but you're asking about goals and learning, right? So to me, you can't develop those instincts until you play. And it's like playing, it's like someone did this, what happened, someone did this what happened, and then you've done it for 20, or 50, or 100 donors. In week three be like, I bet you if he did this, this is what's going to happen. Or she did this, that's what's going to happen. So and then do it for a little while. So I like to call this like playing with your data, right? So see what happens start to build these like baby hypothesis is test your instinct. And because that's going to make you more fluid, you're gonna start to see signals, and you talked about signals, I'll talk about those in a second. The third thing is commit to cleaning your data. It is so important. It's a goal that I wish every fundraiser can have. every organization, every human actually can have it in their work, because clean data is going to spit out much better. Whatever predictions reporting, whatever you want, and it doesn't have to be scary. You don't the most common data cleanliness mistake is date. format. Really, the number

one hanging fruit? Yeah,

totally. Is it 31 819? Or is it 831 19? Because I don't mess your predictions up. It'll mess your reporting up, it'll mess your head up. Why we don't have a global standard. I don't know either totally different. You know, so commit to doing something, pick a field, right? Pick one field, you know, use a tool like that should exist in your in your data tool, your CRM or whatever, that's going to data clean. What's missing? And because missing data is often stuff that you've got, but you haven't recorded in the right way, or you've put it in the notes. So find something, it's a date, it's a missing field, it's whatever it might be, and like spend an hour a week on it. No fundraiser can tell me they don't have an hour a week. And again, incremental benefits, right? You do this by week 42, you've got 42 hours of data cleanliness, and it's not disrupted your life and freaked you out, guess what your predictions are going to be better, your reporting is going to be better, your instincts are going to get better because you've also been training on seeing this happen in this debit the right you're seeing the right validation of your hypothesis or wrong, but you're at least seeing it validated or not. Suddenly, your digital experience is becoming a lot more human because it's becoming part of what you feel and how you feel fundraisers operate on instincts and empathy. But data can inform that. And that's the connection that so many people miss, at least in my opinion.

I mean, we're back to the beginning of what what sets us apart is empathy. And I think with that data, you can be creative. Once you've had so much input like you're you're not starting with a completely blank page, you're like, you have the instincts to be able to come up with creative ideas for for what's kind of ahead of us,

you know, what's terrifying, a blank spreadsheet or blank piece of paper, you know, it's not finding the mistakes in that blank, in that filled in spreadsheet or filled in, you know, I'm writing a book right now. And Mike, first drafts are the worst 13th drafts are a lot easier, they're more frustrating, but they're a lot easier, right? And so this is how you do it, you get in you get your hands dirty, you put hands, you know, I like to think of it in the farming analogy, no farmer can find without getting dirt under their nails, no fundraiser, should they need to get their data under their nails. I know, it's a ridiculous analogy, but it really got us back to play with it.

There's just so many common themes and what you're saying and what we're talking about this season. I mean, we just got through last year with the habits of an impactful fundraiser, and you're talking about habits, because we want habits of learning to be a part of our culture. And that is literally our number one trend this year that we've already gone through, which is prioritizing self growth. This is such an easy hack, I think about how iterative it's going to be and how much you're going to learn and how much your insights are going to expand. And I would even just say, share that insight.

Oh, with your team, with your colleagues with your friends. Absolutely. I didn't answer your questions. Becky, by the way, you asked about engaged engagement signals, because you asked about it. And I don't I make a note because I'm not smart enough to remember, but I have a sticky. Okay, so what are some signals? Like, you know, there's a few communication is actually a precursor for generosity. And so organizations who send a single e blast, as you all know, and then expect to get a flooded donations don't. Right? So to me, a big engagement signal is how are they responding, engaging trip, participating in whatever communications you're at. So it can be their social media, although I think social media is a lazy one, to be honest, it's easy to click, and like, I think it's important to know have that data flow in, but I don't think it's like going to be as prescriptive or or as signal signifying or whatever the term might be, I really do look at like, did somebody pick up the phone and talk to you big signal there? Actually, you know, did they text you? Because it's actually there's incredible engagement metrics, and someone can cite the numbers about texting, and the ability to connect with donors via text? And then of course, did they not, the open rates have now changed with the different blockers on you know, on Apple and all these kinds of things? But did they click on something? And did they spend more than x seconds reading it, watching the video, whatever it might be? So I would go phone text and click in that order as like signals now. We've built some technology that actually does a bit of that work for you. So it says Becky's engaged, it pulls all the data, it sees all the sources from it, or as much as it gets. And it says, based on billions of points of data over the last 20 years, this signal is this signal this action rather is a signal for likely this so Becky's likely to engage back leads likely to give this is when you should be asking her for a donation, this is how much you should have. So we've actually taken it a step further and said said not only should you do the insert because it's not a replacement for fundraiser instincts. I want to be super clear about that. But all these kinds of things can help you tune that habit, that instinct and then you can use data to say, oh, and I was either right or it can give me a Head Start or can shine that flashlight. So that's the kind of short answer to an engagement signals question. Brilliant.

Okay, I mean, there's been a ton here I honestly can't wait to go back and just listen and soak this in because it's been a big conversation but a lot of practical wisdom too. So we want to round this out ask you your one good thing You know how we like to bring these conversations home? What's something that you would leave with our community today to kind of round this conversation out

that the digital experience is inherently human. And I know that's like a little bit of a mind trip. But every digital experience has to be built around, evaluated on and reevaluated on the human experience. So every action we take in the intro, inter internet, the metaphor, whatever it might be, has to be grounded in humanity, and especially for fundraisers, because tech is going to inform, it's going to empower, it's going to engage us as fundraisers, but the relationships and the way that our donors experience them, how they process them, how they feel, because of them is going to ultimately lead to more effective fundraising, but also more inclusive communities. And I know Becky really wanted to talk about that, because that tech can actually bring people into the fold. But we talked about some of the challenges today, and I don't want to mitigate those, or sorry, minimize them. But we can mitigate them by thinking about how we can overcome those hurdles. And then that's, you know, that tech then can bring the community and that's going to lead to stronger fundraising, stronger organizations, and ultimately, a stronger democracy.

I mean, I feel like this has just been a game changing conversation for me personally, and the way that I look at Tech, and our ability to have power in it and our ability to bring what is uniquely special in our gifts into it. So I hope you feel armed with your creativity with your empathy with this 1% shift and learning and I just want to thank you need so much for coming in here you have reinforced once again, my belief that Canadians are the nicest humans in the world, and smart, we're just really lucky to have you as a partner in this. So tell people how they can connect with you how they can connect with qila and the fundraising kid, I'm sure they're gonna want to learn more.

Yeah, I mean, the easiest place to start is LinkedIn for me, please reach out. I love to hear from people. I love them to tell me what they agree with what they didn't agree with. I'm always on that I'm also on that journey of learning every single day is really important. So and if you want to learn more about what we're doing in the tech, we're building Akela to empower fundraisers just go to keilah.com KEL a.com. And there's lots of resources there. And but but most importantly, like, I want to leave with this, like, fundraising is your fundraisers are warriors. And if we can empower them with technology and do it in a way that doesn't get scary, it'll help you all and it'll it'll get you excited, even more excited to come to work and do the important work you're doing.

And the world will be our oyster. That's the world

literally giving you my mic to drop my friend. This has been a challenging combo. Thank you. So in this house,

of course, always happy to share that stage with two wonderful people.

Are you my friend? Thank you.

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