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 rabbit fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
So let's get started. Hey, Becky, whatcha thinking?
I am thinking about recurring giving and the moment that it is having right now in our sector. So want to bring this conversation to you that we had at the Responsive Nonprofit Summit, a couple months ago, and it's a dynamic conversation. Our panelists, our seasoned leaders in the nonprofit and fundraising fields are sharing these actionable insights, best practices and innovative approaches to cultivating and maintaining a successful, recurring Giving Program. Is this been on your bucket list or on your KPIs for this year? This is the time to dive in.
And I mean, the panel around this conversation today is actually doing the work and coaching and advising so many others to do this too. So it's a huge honor to introduce to you Vik Harrison. She's the co-creator of charity:water. She's also a nonprofit coach and founder of Mission Critical, also joined by Nhu Te. She is this nonprofit brand strategist that we love to tap for her wisdom. And Miry Whitehil, the founder and executive director of Miry's List, and y'all go find and follow this organization, such a beautiful mission based in California. And Kyle Roosen, the Senior Marketing Communications Director at Tim Tebow foundation that we featured on the How It's Built series earlier this season. So thanks for being here. I think this is going to be such a rich combo.
Let's dive into goals, mindsets, core beliefs, because we got to look beyond these cookie cutter programs to really talk about building something that's lasting. So Vik, I want you. I want to start with you, because you're going to ground us, and I know you are. You understand the beliefs and the branding and all the things that really go into building the system, and you understand that this is not something that's just a rubric that you implement. You don't take somebody else's giving program, giving program, and slap your logo on it. So really talk to us about some of those grounding goals and beliefs that you lifted not only into charity:water, but what you're doing with all of your clients over at Mission Critical and talk about like, what thriving programs have. I want to know all the details.
Alright. Well, I would like to start with this concept that I teach whenever I'm working with nonprofits who want to start a monthly giving program or have one that's kind of chugging along a little bit, and that is that you have to look at your monthly giving program not like a program, but in two specific ways, one, like a campaign, and two, like a product. And basically both both of these concepts, right? Whenever we're building a campaign, we know what that means. We are creating content. We are creating buzz, we are mobilizing partners and co-branding, and it just making a lot of noise. So that's campaign, and then product is really working on the tech part of it working on your processes. How do you build in processes to think donors continually and improve things and tweak things and make sure that your retention is good, that people aren't churning out of your program. So so when you think of your monthly giving product as a product and a campaign, and you kind of oscillate between those two things throughout any given annual year, that really forces you to put that program front and center, and that's the only way a monthly giving program can grow, is it's not something you put on the back burner. It's not like a thing you turn on and then have in your myriad of options for how to donate if you really want this thing to be successful, and you've got to put it front and center, just like a mid sized company would present their flagship product, right? They would constantly talk about it, and they would run campaigns throughout the year to feature it, to give it a boost every single time. And then when those campaigns finish, they would work on the back end to improve the actual product itself throughout the year. So product, campaign, product, campaign.
I love that because I remember going to charity:water site probably a decade ago, when we used to hide monthly giving as you have to toggle it on page number four of your website, charity water, put it on the homepage like as the first call to action. And it's like that kind of attention to the campaign makes so much sense. So okay, I want to kick it to you, Miry, because you've got this beautiful program called Welcomer Circle, which I love the title. How does your program really wrap around your commitment to being a great neighbor and how it serves the people that you work with.
Yeah, so Miry's list is all about creating community support systems for families as they are acclimating to a big move of coming to a new country, specifically after fleeing violence and persecution and. And our belief is that everybody needs a friend. And through that lens, we are focusing on that community building around not only each family, but also around each person who is participating in the welcoming of the families in Miry's List. And we look at our monthly giving program as a piece of volunteerism with Miry's List. And there are so many ways that people can support the mission of Miry's List and to be part of mission delivery, and that is through the direct service, meaning, you know, getting involved with directly with our families. Maybe you're tutoring a family in English over the summer. Maybe you are helping a family set up their first home. That volunteerism is partnered with the investment in Miry's List, which is about sustainability and making sure that there continues to be more Miry's List in the future so we can help more families. And I think that sometimes nonprofits, especially more grassroots and direct service organizations, will compartmentalize between: this is our volunteers, these are our donors. And what we have seen is that instead of separating those actually looking at how those two groups are are touching, and it's actually two parts of a very critical piece that ensures that we can continue to deliver this mission.
Okay, such wisdom right there. It makes me want to join Miry's List, and I just want to thank you so much for your heart for refugees and what you're doing to build community. It's our eighth core value is that community is everything. And I want to kick it to Kyle, because Tim Tebow Foundation, we have a podcast episode that's dropping pretty soon with Tim, because there's about three or four different recurring giving programs within the Tim Tebow Foundation. And when we visited with you on the podcast Kyle. You said something really interesting to us, and you said, we don't target donor demographics, we target values. Talk to us a little bit about that, and what's your guiding ethos on that, as you integrate that thinking into your giving campaign?
Yeah, such a good question. Thanks for teeing it up what our guiding ethos is for it, because I think that that's really critical in it, is that our heart at TTF is for all people. One of our non negotiables is that we are all image bearers, and that means that we love all people. And so when we're trying to build a recurring donor community or monthly giving community, it's we really believe that there's power when we come together. And we want to do our best in not just communicating to a certain sect of people, but we want to do our best in communicating our heart for people, and that if you share our heart for loving and serving people, we really want you to be a part of our team, because we believe in that a recurring donor community is really built by 1000s of people coming together for one mission. And so how that kind of boils down for us in content creation and storytelling is that we are always asking ourselves, how do we effectively communicate who we are, what we value, what our heart beats for, so that people, when they hear our storytelling or see our content, they can align their heartbeat with ours, and they feel compelled to join our mission. So like, I like to say, like, whether you're 15 or 75 if you have a heart for serving people, we we really believe that TTF is a place that you can do that. And we don't target a wealth score. We don't target an age or a gender, you know, and I'm not, you know, diminishing that for a lot of other marketing teams, but I think for us, it's if we can communicate our heart posture. We believe that that will compel other people who share that same love for people to join our monthly giving communities.
I mean, I love that we started here at a place of values, at a place of community. I'm seeing the claps and the hearts emerge from from y'all in the chat. So let's start talking about, like, wrapping around this. We've got a good, solid base of support. Let's talk about, how do we innovate? How do we elevate the monthly giving experience? Nhu you work with a lot of different organizations. I feel like you also have a bird's eye view of what's happening across the sector. I mean, talk to us about the importance of branding and storytelling and some hot takes on what you're seeing that's really working in the space.
Yeah, absolutely. I think this is kind of a loaded question. I could talk forever about this, but branding and storytelling and fundraising and marketing without content, you really have nothing that you're sharing with people. So branding plays a critical role in that. You know, at the very baseline as you're building out your nonprofit, you should be creating a brand story, and that brand story is, you know, your mission, what your work is doing, what the support? Support of the people who are giving to you, who are supporting you, what their impact, what impact they're creating with that that generosity and that support. And so I like to think of that on a very micro level, when we do it with monthly giving programs as well. And the thing is, with monthly donors, they are not your your everyday donors who just want to give to a good cause, and you know, kind of move move along with their day. These people are have the potential to give for you for a very long time if you continue to nurture that relationship. And so the stories you tell, it's more than the broad scope or a regurgitation of what you're doing with your mission. It's Who are they, what is the impact of their monthly support? I love it when nonprofits show the faces and tell individual stories of people who have benefited from from their work. I mean, I have been a charity:water spring donor for a few years now. And I think they
We didn't plan this, this is how this works exactly.
Exactly, I am, like, side story. I worked on Nonprofit Pro for a few years, and I actually Scott Harrison was the first big nonprofit that I interviewed. So after I heard his story, read the book. I was like, Oh my God, love this mission. Have to support it. But as you're thinking through these you have to, like, figure out what stories you want to tell and what will compel people to support your cause. And your data plays a critical role in your storytelling, and it's more than just big numbers of how many people you served, or like, how many lives you've changed. It's really like, for example, for a woman at charity:water, you're supporting her in going back to school. She's no longer spending hours going back and forth, trekking dirty water back to her home. Now she has the freedom to have one, have clean water, be healthier, and be able to go to school and build a future for ourselves. So thinking it more granular like that, I think is just going to help you and your nonprofit in so many ways.
So good Nhu. And I just think that when you can see someone, when you can connect. I think something happens to us emotionally when we can actually see that woman as you were talking. I was picturing her. I was picturing her as an entrepreneur. Now. I was picturing her not just looking so drawn, because she has to do this. And I think that when we see humans like that, and we want to connect, Miry, I think you guys do a great job of this too. There's this impulse and this emotion, and that's what we want to do with our recurring giving programs, is we want to create this emotion and this connection that keeps that connective tissue back to the organization. And so Vik, you just have this formula. I just think you guys are the GOATs of recurring giving. You really set this new model in motion. And as we're talking about innovation, I want you to talk about, what are some of those non negotiables that we cannot forget as we're building these programs. And Julie's going to drop a link to our conversation with Vik about monthly giving and recurring giving if you want to go deeper into this. But I really want people to get some sense about where do I need to start. What do I need? I mean, what do I need to bake specifically into this to really have a thriving program.
You can go as far with this as obviously you want. You can build so many features, so many bells and whistles. We have done that so like, if you log into your monthly giving profile now as a charity:water donor, there's a lot of stuff there. We're trying so many different things. That's what I suppose. That's kind of what I mean when I was talking about building the product. We have a big team of engineers, and that's not always possible for every nonprofit, so we didn't start that way, either. And if you're a small nonprofit out there listening right now, there are some really simple, basic things you can do that doesn't require a lot of tech support, etc. So there's some somewhere I read a long time ago that the definition we're talking about building community, the definition of a community at its core, if you think about like an African village as a community, what character, what characterizes the community? And there's two things very basic. When someone new enters a community, they are greeted, they have someone comes over your house and drops cookies off at your door when you move into a new neighborhood, right? So greeting the person coming into a community a new person, and then there's a celebration when someone leaves that community. So those two very basic things just kind of as bookends, if we can think about okay, a new donor is coming into our community of monthly givers. What is their experience like on day one, and then if someone leaves your monthly giving program? So for example, and I love talking about this, Scott, my husband, founder of charity:water, every day the team compiles a list of people who have left the 60,000 member spring community that we have. So every day, somebody is leaving right for some reason, and he has, he gets a list every morning, and he emails personally every single person that has left that day, thanking them for their contribution for however long they've been giving to the spring, and asking them if they would say, Hey, why? You know, just curious, like, why did you leave? And we've had amazing stories. We've heard crazy stories of people who have said, you know, I am paying for private school tuition for my kids and I'm going through a divorce and I can't afford the $15 a month anymore. We had old ladies who've said, you know, I'm going on Medicaid because I can't afford food, you know, my food grocery bill anymore, and, like, we've had employees at charity:water band together and send people money. I remember one time Scott literally said, Hey, Vic, this, this, this email back, like, really rocked me. Do you think we can just personally give 500 bucks to this woman? And we did that, and so that's as big, you know, as big as our monthly giving program is the fact that we not only are building in small gestures like this that are personal touches, but also we're building in we're using technology to actually, you know, automate so much of this now, and that's where you know you want to get your monthly giving program is a lot of this stuff can be handled with tech, Things like reporting back things like telling you your entire giving history over time. Obviously, we're not gonna be able to do that to every person individually, but when you can include this personal touches, when you can remember people's birthdays or ask for their birthday somewhere in that first month of signing up, and then remember and then build some sort of tech piece around that, a product feature around that, where every single member of your monthly giving program gets celebrated on their birthday. Small touches like that, just kind of simulating as much as possible a real community in real life.
Vik, I love that so much like Get ready, because we're going to be dropping this example forever on the podcast now, but that is playing the long game, is realizing that feedback is probably more valuable than anything else. And secondly, that kind of care and concern is what people talk about over a dinner table, because it's so unexpected. I love starting with the beginning and end points. So Miry, I want to kick it to you, because you've also built tech into the Welcomer Circle. We want to hear about this, which is really cool, real time, progress of donations. You can, you know, hear stories that are embedded, which we're super impressed with, talk about what that's looked like, and how you've unlocked that, you know, and what that's meant for your community.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as Miry's List has grown, you know, we have faced, you know, how do we continue to maintain that core of the grassroots connections, friend to friend, family to family, even as we grow and we're touching more people and we're involving a lot more helpers and Miry's List partners with Pledge to facilitate our monthly giving program and our welcomer circle. And there are many benefits of working with Pledge, including that they actually reimburse Miry's List for the credit card fees. We they basically charge no fees. It's incredible. But also, the environment where people are going to sign up for our welcomer circle is really representative of what Miry's List is all about. And it's more than just buttons and tech, but it's really creating a container where someone can visit there. And even if they've never heard anything about Miry's List, they are really quickly getting a complete understanding of what this organization is all about. And, you know, we're working in refugee resettlement. This is an issue that is impacting hundreds of millions of people around the world. And so with issues so big, like that of charity:water as well, and so many of our organizations are working with global challenges that are really, you know, in many people's minds, this is so big, it's unsolvable, and that's where the power of grassroots organizations like Miry's List comes in, because we're actually taking things that are so big and we're boiling it down to personal connections. And so when you visit our welcomer circle page, you see a video from Marzia, who moved to Los Angeles with her husband and three children, and she has been able to learn English through the Miry's List English program with a volunteer tutor, and she's been able to sign up for a local her local community college to continue those studies, and she's now getting a business degree. You know, these are ways that we can recognize that, oh, this is a big global issue, and it is affecting so many people, but when it comes down to it, I can impact the experience of somebody who's moving into my community. And that's what Miry's List is. All about. And I just want to communicate the value of having tech to support the authentic, the authenticity of the vision and the lens through which our organization is doing this work.
Okay, you got to do a TED Talk on that, Miry, because that was so impactful, because I think you took the macro and the fear of I can't do anything about 100 million people, you know, in resettlement, down to the one and what I can do with my one gift to help this one human. And I think that is the power of recurring giving is the collective action that we can inspire. And so I want to move into this topic of sort of engagement 2.0 so we call it stoking in the We Are For Good community. It's like, how do we just keep stoking the conversation, stoking activity and engagement? And I Kyle, I want to come to you first, because I think what Tim Tebow Foundation is doing is really, really extraordinary. I know you've put a ton of research into this, but to really get that 2.0 of engagement, you got to diversify the way that we connect, because people do not all hang out in the same space. They don't all consume their content in the same way. So I would love for you to kind of talk and get real granular into the tactics about some of the tools that TTF uses, because you have this broad range of Facebook ads and email and targeted DMs and these kinds of things. Talk about what you all do and what you would suggest as a starting place for a lot of the people who are listening right now.
Yeah, for sure. Before I get into the tactics, I think it's it's important to understand why the tactics were launched. Recently, I read a statistic that 20% of people have a high level of distrust for nonprofits, and only 46% of people have a high level of trust for nonprofits, and then another stat that said 60% of people, on a monthly basis, are asking themselves, how they can have more meaning in their lives. And it just, I think it really touched my heart that I think as storytellers and in our monthly giving communities, we have the opportunity to help our communities experience their impact. You know, something that I like to share with the team is that I really believe that every member of the giving community deserves to know and experience their impact. And I was just talking with with Timmy yesterday about this topic, and just how grateful he is and we are for the person who gives $5 or the person who gives $500 back to my first point, you know, we don't really segment based on amount. We are just so grateful that people join us and we want to do our best job in delivering them the joy and the thankfulness that they get. I actually, I just read a comment that one of our giving families members left when they gave, and they said, I will pray for your mission, and now mine, and I just love that they said, and now theirs, because now as storytellers, it's our responsibility to bring our best to the table, to give them the opportunity to experience that impact. They can't always control whether they see their emails or not. You know, sometimes it goes to spam and promotions they don't always get to see the new video that we shared on social media, because the platform just doesn't put it in their in their feed. And so we try to build our systems around how can we understand who is of our giving community, who is seeing stuff, and if they're not, how can we get it to them? You know, maybe through implementing HubSpot and Meta to be able to share our latest video that goes over a year worth of impact specifically with them, or giving them a piece of mail that just recognizes that you know you might not be seeing some of our stuff. And here's how to make sure that you re engage with us so you can see your impact. But while we have you, here's your impact, or launching a text community, because obviously we know the open rates on text messages are very high, so it's this relentless pursuit and this championing of the giving community internally, to make sure that our marketing strategies, our storytelling is all based around trying to be good stewards of the stories that God's creating through our ministry, and then packaging those and delivering them to our giving community so they get the blessing of experiencing the joy of what they're giving is enabling around the world. So that's just tactically how we do it. You know, just becoming that, that internal champion for them, and really believing that they deserve to experience what the ministry is doing.
Clearly, y'all are doing that. I love that quote. I mean, that's when you know you're on the right track, that people feel that ownership of mission. And we think that there's just this this moment of, how do we use community to further amplify our work? How do you create spaces of belonging? Vik, y'all. The foresight to do this before everybody was talking about it with The Spring. So I want to kick it to you of just, how do you kind of build that core engagement at the core of your monthly giving program, and how do you turn those people that are passionate into amplifiers outside in the world?
Yeah, well, for us, we really have used content a lot, and Nhu you talked about it, you kicked it off right content is what builds the perception of your brand out there. So we started with a very big piece of content that we still see as the kind of the core video for The Spring.
It's so good.
It's a 30minute long video, very unconventional, very different than what you know had been working out there at the time that it was released. And it worked. It really told the entire story of the organization and and it had only one asked at the very end, which was to join The Spring. And I don't not saying that, to say that that's necessarily going to work for everyone. It was our it was the match that lit the flame that really lit the bonfire of attention for The Spring. For many, many years, I think the first 4, 3-4, years, that video carried us through and just continue to deliver results. Every time people watch that video, they were compelled to sign up. So it really worked. And then I did, I do think we actually, like completely saturated the market at one point where, like, everybody had seen the video, and it stopped working for us as much, and we had to innovate and try different things and continue to innovate now. And think of other ways to get get attention and momentum back to The Spring, running different campaigns throughout the year to get attention back to it. But yeah, for us, that one piece of content really lit that flame and at the very core, at the very beginning, was a huge blessing for us.
I remember watching that video on my
You walked down the office to show me this.
I did, we, we, I was just so compelled by it. And I want to give a plug for the next panel, because I think that that is exactly what we're talking about, which is how to flex modern media to help build your movement. But I want to talk about like, how we go beyond tactics, because you can have such an integrated marketing plan, and you can have all of these funnels, but how do you make somebody feel seen and feel connected and so Nhu, kind of take us through, how do we go beyond all of these different tactics that we've talked about to really create that sense of belonging, you know, to where there's such a great example that Kyle gave of somebody having ownership that this is mine, this is something that I'm proud to be a part of. How do you build that connectivity? What are the secret sauces that we need to bake in?
Yeah, absolutely, Kyle. I love what you said that you know your supporters deserve to know what you guys are doing. And I mean, it's true, but the reality is that our the way we live, the way we consume information. It's so congested. There's just so much information, there's so much communication that being sent to you, whether it's email or your social feeds or as you're, you know, browsing the web and you're seeing digital ads everywhere, and so finding ways to content like be relevant for your supporters is crucial, especially as you're kind of growing your monthly giving program, because you want people who are monthly givers to see their supportership as a part of their identity, something that they're super proud of. And so in a lot of ways, when you send in, you might spend time to create a beautifully crafted email, right? But there's a chance it's probably going to get missed in like, the sea of spam that we get and all of the promotional emails that we get from for profit brands and so, you know, finding other ways to get them on the platforms that they're using, whether it's social ads or just organic social the digital ads that I previously talked about, but also making sure they're working together in a way that's one cohesive story. I'm a firm believer that content should be specific based on the channel that you're on. So on an email, you can write a longer story about someone and really build it up, right? But on social, you have a very limited time. So what is a sentence or two that is really going to spark them? What is a 20 second video that could that's going to get their attention and really engage them? Thinking it in those ways, I think is really important and but also leveraging. Different forms of storytelling. Storytelling isn't just words on paper or on your screen. It's it's a swipe file, right? It's like, I think charity:water does it a lot, where you have a running story and you have to swipe to finish the story. And I think that's such a great idea. Videos are becoming more prevalent because people are getting tired of reading and they just want to watch. I know I am after a long day, and if you log on to Tim Tebow's website, the first thing you see is a very compelling video. And so finding ways to connect with people and tell your story that is different and diverse, because people are going to have their preferences, right? Someone might want to read a long story that is about someone that you serve, or someone's going to want just a quick summary, a video snip, and so, thinking of it in that way, and making sure they're they're all telling the same story, and they're not kind of broken up, I think is, is going to be really important for growing okay,
I love it so much. We're seeing some questions pop up through the Q and A panel. So if you want to upvote those, act fast, because I'm about to ask one of them. I love seeing the engagement, and there's such a brain trust of people that are doing the work right here. I want to definitely lift here's from Noah out there. Can you share a few insights on how to scale a monthly giving program? So who wants to take that one?
I can take, I can take that one.
Hop in there Kyle.
I commented on Noah saying maybe my one good thing was to answer that question and pivot. But, I think, I think Vik can pivot off of me. But I'm gonna go back to what she said earlier, and I'll phrase it in just a slightly different way. But same heart is that I think that to scale a monthly program, you have to be really attuned into your strategy, balancing acquisition and retention. And I'm going to throw those words out, but that's how everyone knows them. And I'm going to say balancing inviting and balancing experience. And so if you're inviting more and more people, like Vik said, through continuous campaigns throughout the year, through consistency in your content, through you know your most of your ad budget going towards trying to build your program, you're going to be continuously inviting more people, building your audience. You have more people to speak to. So larger number of invitations going out to new people, and then the experience you're going to get them to be able to have a if you focus on the experience, they will stay with you longer, as long as they can. And the program is going to scale. If you're not inviting people, people are going to drop off. It's going to have a slow decline. If you're not focusing on the experience, your invitations, your acquisition, is not going to mean as much because people are just dropping off at a rapid rate. So that's very quickly. The strategy throughout the year has to be focused on on both of those two things.
Anyone else want to jump in?
I'll jump in from a slightly different angle. I'll tell you the story of my nine year old who is like he's the epitome of the most raw version of why we jump on trends. He is jumping on every single trend in third grade. He's collecting baseball cards because all of his friends are collecting baseball cards. He wants Nike Air Jordans because he saw the cool kids in class wearing them. He just started watching Percy Jackson, and everyone is loving this new show who's a nine year old, and as I think about, you know, his brain, it's very similar to how we act in crowds and and why certain things take off, right? So as a marketer, that's what I'm always looking for, is like, what are those nuggets? How do you transcend or penetrate through all that noise that Nhu was talking about in our, you know, media oversaturated world to galvanize something within a certain group of people that would make them just say, like, yes, we're the people that are going to take this cause on. Were they? And you know what Seth Godin likes to say is, people like us do things like this. So I believe that the reason people give to The Spring when they see that video, they see something in Scott's story that's very similar to what they feel in themselves. They want to take radical action towards a specific world problem, right? They see that in Scott's story, in that video, and it makes them want to be like that. And so they give. And so when you think about your brand, your storytelling, I still, I think brand is everything. And if you can build a brand like think about, why do people buy Nike Air Jordans? Well, what can you learn from that for your nonprofit? How can you choose the the right specific language in your communication and make content that really galvanizes that community aspect where people just have to get involved, because it's not even so much, maybe about the cause, but it's it's more about, what does it tell? What does it say? About the kind of person that they are, that they give to your cause and to your recurring giving program. So if you can make that happen, I think that's that's the key that unlocks massive growth. And of course, then you want to optimize. You want to make sure more people go in and come out, etc, and all that matters as well. But at the very top, I do think it is that, my gosh, you just have to be part of it, because, like everyone, like me, is doing it.
Okay. Vik just hit on a trend that we had last year that is just booming right now, which is giving his identity and people want to be connected to causes that they care about. I have an exact similar example with my 13 year old who said, Mom, don't buy me any more New Balance or Under Armor sweatshirts. I want the One Tree Planted sweatshirt. I want the Arbor Foundation. I want people to ask me about the environment. And so I do think that there is a mindset shift here that can be galvanized to your point Vik, that recurring giving can be your movement. It is your closest followers. It is your rabid fans, your believers, and if you can give them the agency to be super fans of your mission, guess what? You just got hundreds 1000s to charity:waters point 10s of 1000s of people amplifying your mission, and all of a sudden you've activated the one and created a movement which is a trend for this year. So we're kind of wrapping up. I want to encourage all of our panelists to drop your LinkedIn profiles or Instagram or wherever you hang out into the chat, because if you have specific questions for them, we're not going to be able to get to everyone, but we want you to be able to connect with these individuals. But you all know We Are For Good so well up here on the panel, and we always end a conversation with a one good thing, and Miry, I want to kick it to you first. What's something that you can leave with the audience today that is really going to get them fired up and ready to take on the world and maybe this project?
Yeah. Well, Miry's List began with meeting one family from Syria. I met them in 2016 and it began this domino effect that turned into our organization, Miry's List, and we're really focused on the connections between one family and another family. And the one good thing I want to share is actually, you know, just taking a step back and looking at what we have actually been able to accomplish in the last seven years since meeting that first family, I'm very happy to share that this past week, we enrolled family number 1262
Celebrate that.
Yeah, and actually, our last enrollment period included 50 new families, bringing us up to over 1200 and also bringing the number of individuals that we've helped to over 6000 and we are nowhere near done. We have so much more to do. We are so motivated to keep going, because we believe that there is such a fulfilling and wonderful experience of jumping in to welcome our new neighbors, but this is such a moment where we can look back and recognize, wow, we have really been able to impact the lives of so many, and we want to keep going.
Indeed, Nhu, what have you got?
Yeah, so, I mean, I think this conversation has been amazing and hopefully inspiring for the people listening in, but it can also be overwhelming for a nonprofit who might not have a monthly giving or they're just getting started. And so, you know, whatever you do, I think taking small steps to be to do more than what you did yesterday is important, whether it's, you know, just embedding a monthly option onto your donation form, or the next step is that creating a name for your monthly giving program and then creating right, and then building from that, and then maybe, when you get a good grip on, you know, setting all the logistics of your landing page and your program up, you know, build that journey, right? What does that monthly donor journey look like? Making sure you're nurturing people from either being a one time donor to a monthly supporter. And know that like when they become a monthly supporter, that doesn't mean the engagement stops. You have to continue to, you know, keep that relationship with them, bond with them, share stories, so they continue be long term supporters for your cause.
I'm going to continue to hit on what I what I just did before, and just try and leave everyone with, like, one super practical thing, maybe more than one. But our defender community, which is a monthly giving community that fights human trafficking and child exploitation. I'd say that one of the best ways that we've scaled our defender community is just trying to reach people through Meta ads. So if you're intimidated by them, learn them. If you don't have a large budget, start with 50, 100 dollars a month. The beauty of recurring giving is that you will bring people in, and then the return grows and you'll have more to invest back into meta ads. And then another thing is lead generation. You know, I think that a really hard thing in our world is to continue to bring more people in and lead generation. I'm not going to go into all the details, but just learning lead generation and how to build your audience on email and text message and website traffic, and then also leaning into Meta ads and learning how to reach people and set up the data and the metrics to be able to read where people are coming from and how you can scale that testing different pieces of content. Don't be intimidated by it. I would say that it's the best way that we've been able to invite more and more people and continue to scale, especially over the last year, where I think that we've almost tripled our monthly giving community, mainly through those two avenues.
Almost 20,000 right? You're probably past it since we talked to you last. So brilliant.
This came up in prior so you have to invest where you want to see growth, you know. So I love that you're just calling out. I mean, you're spending money there to actually grow your leads. So I think that we got to normalize this in the sector too. Vik, close us out with your one good thing, my friend.
I just first want to totally echo Kyle's good thing, because yes to Meta ads, Facebook ads for charity:water were the bread and butter of growing monthly giving in the first five years. Still are kind of petered out a little bit recently, just because of how expensive they are for us. But if you are someone new, like that is what you should be doing, is investing into lead generation, for sure, but my one good thing is something along Nhu's line as well, is that it's very intimidating and it can seem scary to start, and it can also feel like when you're starting your own monthly giving program, like, Oh my gosh. You look at these big programs out there, and you think these people, they they figured some they figured out some secret, like, there's some quick fix, there's some type of tactic that I don't know about that if I just knew that all of a sudden, my thing would take off. I'm here to tell you that doesn't exist, that there is just a lot of action, a lot of activity that got our monthly giving program to 21 million a year right now at charity:water, and I teach this. I have a monthly giving course on my website. I teach our strategy for how we got there, and it is so much more like hand to hand combat boots on the ground in the beginning than anything else. There is no quick fix. There is no strategy that will magically grow your program. It's a lot of hard work, setting small milestones, achieving them, and then setting the next one and the next one, and you just it's over it's time and effort and love and care.
Y'all. This panel has blown my mind. Thank you for your transparency, your care, your brilliant wisdom. I feel like we can do this work. We can pour in day after day in the power of community, and you've got friends here in the chat, so don't be afraid to reach out to these brilliant thought leaders. They're real humans. Join Miry's list if you can follow find that link in the chat. But really appreciate you. Leaned in and grateful for everyone's participation today. See you all soon.
