5 Tips to Make Fundraising Way Less Awkward

All right. Well, good afternoon, everybody. I’ll wait just a few more seconds until we get officially underway. But welcome. I know people always log into these webinars and wonder if the audio is working. So hopefully you can hear my voice. And Read More

All right. Well, good afternoon, everybody. I’ll wait just a few more seconds until we get officially underway. But welcome. I know people always log into these webinars and wonder if the audio is working. So hopefully you can hear my voice. And we’ll get started here in just a brief moment.

And Mallory, it looks like we have a good crowd showing up. So we’ll get started here.

And as people are hopping on again, we’re just doing the informal audio check to make sure that you can hear

all right, well, we’ll go ahead and officially get underway. Welcome to our webinar five tips to make fundraising way less awkward. My name is Kelly Ramage, and I have the opportunity of introducing our expert Mallory Erickson. And I will do that in just a moment. But just a couple of housekeeping items. To get them out of the way in case you are new to participating in webinars that we host. We are going to encourage questions, but we’re actually going to save those questions and conversations for the end of our formal presentation. And if you are new to GoToWebinar, you will find the control panel on the right hand side. And on that control panel, you’ll find it broken down into several different boxes or panes. And one of them is a questions pane. So that is where you can post your question. And we will try and answer as many of them as we can at the end as time allows. You will also see a handout section there is a handout it’s a PDF file of our presentation. And you can grab that if you would like. And probably the most important question and most common question that gets asked Is is this recorded and yes, it is going to be recorded. And you will receive actually two emails. So you’ll receive one almost about an hour to the dot after the webinar ends. And then you’ll receive a follow up email with a link to the recording included. And then if you navigate navigate to the DonorPerfect.com website about a week or so maybe a little later, since we have a holiday in the United States coming up to our expert webcast, you’ll find it there. So I know. I’m excited to be here to learn a little bit more about fundraising because there’s always something to learn. And I’m excited to introduce Mallory Erickson, I will let her do the formal introductions and tell us why she is here and her story and some of her successes, but then also sharing some tips and tricks so that we can all be successful. So Mallory, welcome and turn it over to you.

Thank you so much, Kelly, for the introduction. And hello, and welcome to everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today, we’re gonna have some fun, while we go through all of the different strategies that I’m gonna roll out for you today. And we’re also going to be referencing, you know, your work inside DonorPerfect and how those relate to the strategies. So let me give you just a little background about me to start. So my name is Mallory Erickson, my goal is to help nonprofits raise more money from the right funders without having to hound people for money. And I like many fundraisers and maybe you can relate to this became an accidental fundraiser, I started to get promoted up through the ranks in different nonprofits. And what I found myself in the managing director role first that came with multimillion dollar fundraising expectations, and then in an executive director role. And if you had asked me when I was an executive director, my least favorite part of my job, I would have, without a doubt, said fundraising. And that’s because I really didn’t understand the things that I’m going to go over with all of you today. And so it constantly felt awkward and cringy. And I was always wondering if I was doing it, right. And I was pretty sure that good fundraisers couldn’t possibly feel the way that I was feeling as a fundraiser. And I show this picture a lot because I think, you know, as nonprofit leaders, we have this belief that we need to be perfect in order to get funding and run our organization. And so I just tried to show that like, you know, and I’m sure there are some of you on here who can relate to this too, right? That we’re constantly having to put this appearance up everywhere, pretending like everything is great and easy and fluid, but the reality was when I was in this executive director role, I was working sometimes 70 hours a week, I was having to put you know, my family and my friends aside in order to make things work. It was a constant hustle and it honestly also led to chronic pain that I couldn’t manage right

I was doing everything I could to try to keep the organization afloat, there was no sort of sustainable, reliable revenue that I was experiencing or could figure out how to build inside my organization. And I often felt like this, right, I had way too many brain tabs and computer tabs open at the same time, I was really I call this my like scattered Sandy phase, right? I was just like spray fire system, hustle hamster wheel fundraising, it was really stressful. And I got to a moment in my career where I was like, You know what, I don’t know if I can do this. Like, if this is what it means to be the leader of a nonprofit or a fundraiser in a nonprofit, that’s always this like constant hustle, awkward situation, I’m not sure that this is for me. And I have this really unique sort of life experience where at the same time, I went through an executive coach certification program. At the same time, as I started to learn about habit building and behavior change, as I said, as I started to learn about design thinking, and all of these different frameworks kind of fused together in my mind at the same time, and I created what I now call the power partners formula. So this first started as a strategy and a system for fundraising. For me individually, I took an organization from a million to 3.6 Really quickly, but more importantly than the money was how differently I felt as a fundraiser. And then I rolled it out through one on one working with clients retainer work with clients. And then in January of this year, I launched my course where we have almost 100 Different organizations finding sustainable fundraising success through this formula. So today, I’m really excited to share with you five of the strategies or some of the learning from inside the power partners formula, this is what we’re going to talk about today. So five of my favorite fundraising hacks from power partners. And the goal is that it’s going to help you raise more money and feel way less awkward doing it right. Just the amount of turnout for this webinar, or the amount of signups for this webinar is a really clear indicator to me that we need space in the nonprofit world in the fundraising field, to be talking about these things to be talking about how we’re feeling to be talking about what’s working, what’s not working, right. And sometimes when I’ve said things like this before, like, oh, yeah, fundraising is really awkward. At first people are like, Are we allowed to admit that right? Like, are we allowed to say that sometimes we feel that way. And I certainly when I was an executive director, when I was a fundraiser, I did not feel like there was a space for me to talk about that. And so that’s one of the first things I just want to say is like, we are going to go over these strategies. And I just want to normalize for you that you’re coming to this webinar, because you’ve had those experiences before. And I want you to know that 99.9% of the fundraisers, I have met throughout my career have had them too. And I know it can be an isolating role and an isolating profession, and you are certainly not alone. So let’s dive in to the first to the first half, I’m going to drink some water, I’m going to try really hard to not speak too fast. Um, as you mentioned, as Kelly mentioned, you’re going to get a recording from this, you’re going to get the slides, but I get so excited about these concepts, that sometimes my speaking can get away from me a little bit. So I’m going to keep I’m gonna keep trying to reel it in. And so this is tip number one. And really, this is the foundational principle to everything that we’re going to talk about today. And really, everything that I do in my work comes back to this. So this tip number one is be aware of your thoughts and beliefs. Okay. So everything starts with awareness around our emotions. So you might be like, Oh, my God, is she going to talk about mindset? Like, I don’t want to hear about that, you know, I had a podcast host one time to like, you know, unless people are talking about mindset. But no, oftentimes, when thinking about mindset, people think that it’s all about actually just changing the way you think. Right? Like, Be positive, be confident, be brave, right? And this isn’t very helpful, right? So I’m like mantra on a mug is not actually helpful in making fundraising feel less awkward, right? Because that starts with the emotion, right? But what actually needs to happen is that you need to start with awareness around your emotion, but then you need to understand this. So this is called the cognitive behavior loop. Okay, this is the idea proven through a lot of science, that, that our feelings that what we feel is directly related to our thoughts and beliefs. Okay, so our thoughts and beliefs inform the way we feel, and then ultimately how we show up right, which directly then impacts our results. So let me give you an example of this that isn’t related to fundraising if you’re having trouble kind of tapping into this. So a few years

Years ago, I was speaking to a group of parents and students about test anxiety. And I said to the room, I said, you know, chemistry is not stressful. And they were like, what? Like, that’s why we’re here. And I said, you know, no, like chemistry is just chemistry, right? Some people love chemistry, some people hate chemistry. What’s stressful are the thoughts and the ideas that you have about chemistry, right? I’m bad at science. So I’m going to be bad at chemistry. I did poorly on the last test. So I’m going to do poorly on this test. The teacher doesn’t like me as much as she likes Johnny, right? Those thoughts, those beliefs are what make chemistry it’s stressful. And the same thing is true about fundraising. So fundraising is not awkward, and wait before you like click out of this. Just hear me out for a second. Fundraising itself is not inherently awkward. Fundraising is just fundraising. What makes us feel awkward and have those awkward interactions are the thoughts and the beliefs that we are holding about fundraising, that person is going to be mad at me for for inviting them to give a bigger gift this year, my friends aren’t going to like me as much anymore if I keep sending out an email about our annual campaign, right? This, this meeting, I can’t actually talk about money during this meeting. But the whole time, I’m going to think about how I can get this person to give us more money. That’s awkward, right? Those things are awkward because they are rooted in thoughts and beliefs that are not working for us. Okay. So everything that I’m going to talk about today is going to sort of cycle back to this initial principle, right, is that we need to be aware of okay, well, why are we doing that super awkward thing? What thought and belief? Is that tied to? And is it true? And do we want to change it, because it’s in our sort of like some of the old school mantras around fundraising that are oftentimes keeping us stuck in this cycle of awkward cringy, car salesman fundraising. And so that’s what I’m here to tell you that there is a totally different way where you can align your beliefs and your thoughts with your authentic role as a fundraiser as a leader of your nonprofit. And when you fundraise from that place, when you lead from that place, the awkwardness actually goes away, which is amazing. Um, okay, my notes just disappeared. So hold on one second, while I bring them back up. It looks like I got too excited.

Okay, so, um, uh, one of the things that I really learned when I started to do this work for myself, right, is that I’m one of the, like, foundational thoughts and beliefs that I had to change for myself, was the idea that fundraising was about asking for something, right? So my old set of beliefs, when I felt really awkward about fundraising, one of the old set of beliefs I had was that, okay, I was the nonprofit leader who needed money. And the person sitting across the table from me was the person with money. And I was there with something kind of begging them, maybe asking them to give me something they didn’t really want to give me, right. And that belief that fundraising was about asking, led to all of this awkwardness led to all of this discomfort. One of the fundamental beliefs that I changed when I started doing this work for myself, is that great fundraising is not an ask, it’s an offer. It’s about partnership and opportunity. It’s about vulnerability and connection. It’s about people coming together. Or sometimes it’s people with companies, but coming together to solve a problem that both parties want to see solved. It’s an offer, and it’s an offer opportunity, right? So when this thought when these thoughts and these beliefs change, all of my feelings about fundraising change. So one of the first things I want you to start doing is just kind of tracking how this comes up for you bringing some awareness to your own thoughts and beliefs. If you have that low cringy sensation in your belly, or you see yourself resisting sending out that donor email, ask yourself, Okay, what’s the thought? What’s the belief that’s leading me to feel this way? And is it true? Or where’s it coming from? And I’ll give you some links at the end if you want to learn more about how to kind of identify what some of those primary limiting beliefs are. But the very first step is just awareness. Okay. And then one of the things that this new framework leads to right that great fundraising is not an ask, it’s an offer, right and offer to solve a problem that both parties want to see solved. One of the ways to realize that is through tip number two. So tip number two is about aligning donors with their interest areas. So one of the things that I see a lot of the time in nonprofit is that a lot of the communications that go out fundraising or marketing communications are really general right about the whole mission or the whole vision of the

organization. But in order to really tap into that offer to the fact that you are really aligned with a donor trying to solve a problem together, you do need to be able to align your donors with their specific interest areas. Maybe it’s a particular program offering that you have. Or maybe it’s a particular asset that your organization holds. Maybe they’re really interested in the thought leadership of your board of directors, for example, right, I talk a lot about assets in some of my other work. And I’ll give you I’ll give you some links to find more about that, too. But aligning with donors with their interest areas, is really critical to feeling to knowing that the communications that you’re putting out that the invitations that you’re making, are tapping directly into the thing you know, they already care about, right? All of your donors are interested in different things, right. One of the reasons we feel so awkward right at the end, this goes back to tip number one is that we believe we’re asking for something, and that we’re in a position of being kind of powerless and needing something from the donor instead of giving them the opportunity, right. So this is really one of the tangible ways if you’re speaking to a donor in a specific interest area, it’s much more easy to get excited about the potential for winwin alignment. Okay. And I want to just take you one step further in this process, is that I want to bring up the idea of lenses, we’re not going to go into too much detail, but I talk about this a lot of a lot inside my course. So everyone is wearing lenses, right? The perceptions and beliefs through which they are viewing the world making decisions, right, we’re so let’s say we’re all wearing pink glasses. But our donors are wearing blue glasses. And maybe some of them are wearing green glasses, and some of them are wearing yellow glasses. But if we keep talking to them through our pink lenses, alignment is going to be much more challenging. And so what you need to be able to do is to put on your donor lenses to think about why did that person give to your organization for the first time? What was the campaign? What was the ask what brought them to that table, and then you need to speak to them and provide them with content or outreach or invitations that are aligned with what you know, they are seeing through their glasses, right. So you need to be constantly thinking about these things through the lenses of your partners, right. And that’s a little bit like lenses and other way to sort of like get inside their head. And you’re going to want to track these things, and really utilize your CRM to do this too. And we’re going to show you how to do that in a moment.

So one of the things that this tracks back to especially inside your CRM is identifying donor interest areas, right, so that you know how to best segment your list and design communications and engagement strategy strategies that are specific and targeted. Okay. Again, one of the biggest mistakes I see organizations make is that their messaging is too broad and too confusing. And so when you start to understand the specific interest areas of your donor groups, you can communicate much more specifically in a targeted way. And this pays off big time in fundraising and highlighting that Win Win relationship. So let me pass it to Kelly it for a moment here. So that she can talk to you a little bit about how you can specifically use DonorPerfect for this piece. All right, great. Thanks, Mallory. So I this is really super exciting for me to share. Because I’ve been doing training with a lot of nonprofits for years. And I know that many people do not take advantage of the ability to create

fields or places to track this information. So they may put it in the field called flags. And you can see that kind of represented and, but that’s really kind of where it stops, they don’t really track their interest. But you can you can create those custom fields. We have some suggested fields tucked on the bio screen, and you can certainly populate it with your donors or constituents or prospects interest, because certainly what might be an interest in one nonprofit is not going to be the same interest area and another nonprofit. The other thing that is really valuable is the donor profile. And you can see a couple of quick badges when you log into their record. So you can see if there are new donor if they’ve been giving for years, and all of those things I think tie into what Mallory was saying is so that you know a little bit more about your donor so that when you are doing those targeted communications, which you can then in turn, if you put it in pull it back out in those targeted segments. I think it’s going to align nicely with what Mallory is suggesting. And I think it does make it a little bit more meaningful from the donors perspective as well.

Awesome, thank you.

Kelly, and yeah, you know, I just want to say like old school fundraising strategies have us had us hyper focused on warm intros. And I’m not saying it’s not important to know who’s made an introduction to your organization, or that warm intros aren’t helpful. But when you can align based on interest area, cold introductions, or cold relationships, actually are much more effective as well. Right. So the reason that warm introductions used to be, you know, those sort of way to go is when you’re talking more generally, then you’re building know, like trust just by association, which I’ll talk about in a moment. But if you’re building communications, if you’re building strategies around alignment, then it doesn’t actually matter if the contact is warm or cold or knows a friend because you’re really speaking to them, and you’re really speaking to their interest area. So I love that DonorPerfect makes it easy for that to get tracked inside the system. Okay, so let’s go on to tip number three. Okay, so Tip three is about building trust through transparency. Oh, my gosh, I feel like we talk about trust in the nonprofit sector so much, but not necessarily in the right way. Okay, so. So you might have heard this one before, right. That about the know, like, trust factor, this is what I just referenced. And, and, and we hear all the time inside the sector that one of the biggest issues with giving and donor retention is a lack of trust, right. And I think a lot of people assume that the lack of trust comes from some of the stigma that surrounds the nonprofit profit sector, right. Okay, we heard this story once in a while about weird embezzlement. And that’s what’s leading to distrust. But actually, there is a way we can really address trust in our work that does not just make us sort of a victim to, to a lack of trust within the sector. Okay, so let’s talk about this know, like trust factor and what it means to actually take this a step further. So know, like, trust is talked about, particularly in marketing a lot, right? That in order for someone to buy something, or in our case, in order for someone to give, they need to know, like, and trust you, okay. But a lot of nonprofits focus their know, like, and trust just on talking about their nonprofit over and over again, right. And there’s actually multiple things for you to be thinking about when you’re thinking about how your organization builds, know, like, trust. Okay, so we get caught up in perfectionism inside the nonprofit sector. I’ve already referenced this, but it is, it is such a critical thing for us to acknowledge and look at, because we think right, and you know, what’s interesting about the title of this webinar, how to make fundraising way less awkward, it’s, I wonder how many people came here and thought I might tell you how to do things so perfectly, that they weren’t going to be awkward anymore. But the thing is, is that it’s part of the perfectionism that makes it awkward, right? We think that if we’re perfect, will feel less awkward, but it’s actually the opposite right of the truth. Because when we fall into the perfectionist bubble, we actually forget to do all of the actual things that build trust, which are telling stories, demonstrating vulnerability, and sharing real challenges. Right? When I talk about transparency, I don’t just mean like budget transparency, I mean, organizational transparency, how do you let donors in? How do you lift up the rug? Right? How do you let them feel like your inner circle? Do you have enough trust in them, to let them see behind the scenes, even the challenges, we often want our donors to trust us more, but we keep them at arm’s length, length, and we aren’t really trusting them. We aren’t really trusting them to stick by us when things get hard, or when we’ve had a big learning or we have a difficult staff transition. And so how can we think about any other relationship in your life where one person to trust the other or wants trust from the other but won’t let them in right relationships with your donors are just like any other relationship. If you want them to trust you, they need to feel like you trust them too. And when we stay in that perfectionist bubble, that sort of like show of our organization that isn’t built, and I want to say one of the things we saw during COVID. There’s a lot of different data coming out about what happened during during COVID In terms of giving and, and behavior and all of those things. But one of the things that we saw without a doubt was that organizations got were vulnerable with their donors.

In a way, they had never been vulnerable before. And their donors met them there, they stepped up, they dug in with them. And that is like when I think about what are some of the learnings from the pandemic that I really hope nonprofits take with them, this is a huge one, keep them there, keep them there with you. Let them build this with you. And it has to come back though, to those underlying foundational principles around your thoughts and beliefs, right? Because what are your thoughts and beliefs that are keeping them at arm’s length? And are those really true? Or is there another way to do this? Because it’s never going to feel organic or natural. If you’re constantly having to hide things from them, right? That just is awkward. How many conversations have we been in where we know the person across the table has something to say, but they are not saying that is so awkward. So if you’re doing that in your funder meetings, it’s going to be exactly the same. And so I really want you to think about building know like trust through sharing real stories, vulnerabilities of the organization, and sharing real challenges. These are actually the ways that donors learn to trust. And there’s a lot of data around this as well. So I want to one of the things I love about DonorPerfect is that they also allow you to share donor share information with donors in a variety of ways. So I’m gonna let Kelly talk about that for a moment.

All right, well, this is exciting. Because I think everybody knows communication and sending out messages that are real and genuine are important. And there’s a lot of tools that make it a little bit easier. So we don’t want to take away from the authenticity of your messages just make the delivery of the messages more within reach more personal. And so there’s a couple of items that I just want to highlight. One is we have an integration with constant contact. So taking advantage of the ease in which you can select a targeted group. So if they’re interested in refurbishing boats, well, then you can select them and then your message can be sent directly to them. But it’s personal, you’re you’re connecting with them on something that has meaning. If it’s tutoring, it is connecting with them. And one of the clarifying questions that I want to make this somebody had already asked is, So are you suggesting that you put everything in the flags field and DonorPerfect? No, you can. But I’m suggesting that you add additional fields, and then you use those fields to get segmented groups targeted groups. And then you can take it a step further and use the integrations like with constant contact to send out an e message or a save the date to a gathering that you’re organizing. I don’t know about you, but reading emails, you know, can be a little exhausting, because my inbox is always full. So honestly, videos, how do you connect with people when you can still quite see them face to face, although that’s opening up, we also have a tool called DP video, so gives you the a way to really communicate your gratitude for something, whether it is a gift or it’s time, or it’s just their expressed interest. And that is another option that’s in DonorPerfect. And then, you know, we realized that everybody is super busy. So sometimes coming up with words, if that is not your skill set is challenging. It’s exhausting. So our communications and marketing team and our content team has put their heads together and provided some great resources. Here’s just a couple of them the new donor welcome series. It’s a template kid or like basically from beginning to end. So somebody like myself, who’s not a wordsmith can feel pretty pleased and proud of the communication that I’m going to be sending to people because it looks good. It says what I want, and it’s me, it still has a flavor of me in there. And then we also have another example is the digital donor Thank you kit. So we’ve really tried to a DonorPerfect to give you a wonderfully easy to use CRM to track information, but then also reaching out to your constituents, your donors, your prospects, but do it in a meaningful way and do it in timely ways so that you are building the trust and the transparency that Mallory was referencing.

Awesome. Yeah, I feel like, you know, I’ve done as I mentioned, a lot of work in sort of behavior change and habit building. And one of the things we know from the science around behavior design, is that, you know, making an action easier to do is incredibly helpful, right? And so there is like sort of a scale around like, depending on how much motivation you have, how how, how easy is the action to do and you might be thinking what does she mean by motivation, of course leave motivation to fundraise but fear

There is a demotivator. Right? So fear is a demotivator. So even when we Yes, of course, we want to raise the budget for our organization. But if we’re feeling nervous about something, if we’re feeling anxious about something, then it’s so nice to have these tools that make the action. So easy to do. Right? So yeah, thank you for sharing all back, Kelly.

All right. Tip number four. So embrace the data you have. So first of all, CRM systems are so powerful DonorPerfect. In particular, such a powerful system. One of the things that I see though, is that CRM systems can trigger the perfectionist tendency, right? We’re like, Okay, we have this system, it’s so good, we could be able to do you know, all of these different things. And so my clients are folks who have come to me, I watch them hardly utilizing their CRM system, because they’re really caught in this sort of perfectionist trap. Sometimes that trap is about that. They don’t know yet how to use the system perfectly. Sometimes it’s that they’re still caught in a belief cycle about Well, yes. Okay, now we’re on, you know, DonorPerfect, we’re on this great system. But I know that that data from 1993 was wrong when we input it. And so I can’t have a meeting with the donor who gave the 9093, because I’m probably going to say something wrong about what they gave in that year. Okay, so this goes right back to tip number one, I want you to be able to embrace the data that you have, and also know that perfection cannot be the enemy of the good here, right? So don’t let the data you have be your enemy, because it’s not perfect for somewhere, okay, from you know, from some moment or some time or some silent auction didn’t like information didn’t get uploaded to your system. I’m calling this out, because I watched this become a barrier so frequently. And so this is something I really want you to pull into sort of that awareness, that cognitive behavior loop around, okay, how are we using our CRM system? How could we be using it better within whatever parameters we have? And where are we getting caught up in a belief system that is actually holding us back from from utilizing it for our benefit, because guess what you go, you have that meeting with that donor, you say something wrong about what happened in 1993, it is not actually the end of the world, right? We are creating catastrophic stories about things that are actually not that big of a deal. I’ve had that happen, even with donor data from two years prior, right? And you’re like, oh, my gosh, thank you so much for correcting me about that. I’m gonna go make sure that’s updated in our system. You know, we’re so grateful to have the support of technology to keep all of this sorted. But we know whenever there’s data migration, sometimes things happen. And it’s no big deal, right. And I know, like when I was helping an organization get onto a CRM platform, the amount of Excel spreadsheets we were sending over and all the different things, right there just there was so much human error on our organization side, that there was no way it was then perfect inside the system. And it really held us back from using it as well, as I know, we could have if we had just been aware of the way the cognitive behavior loop was getting in our way there. And then, you know, in DonorPerfect in particular, there are just some some amazing ways to turn your data into, you know, really powerful tools for your engagement. So I want to ask Kelly to share a little bit about that right now as well.

All right, well, this is super exciting. Truly, I am a trainer here. So I get excited about how we can turn data into gold, as it says here. And one of the things that

I think any CRM

should be able to do is to be able to tell you or at least present to you, like, here are your top donors, here are some of their interests. Here are your new donors. And here are ways that you can interact with them. And who are your major donors. That’s always a fun category. And you know, coming out of the pandemic, I there’s a lot of organizations, I have brand new donors. So how do you identify them? But then how do you convert them to giving a second gift because you want to build that relationship, but you’re you’re just getting to know them. So how do you do that? So you know, in terms of kind of using the CRM, sorry, my notes just all the way here. Using the CRM, you can generate reports. You can certainly send those email communications we have some really cool behaviors or tools, features, whatever

Word resonates with you called Smart Actions where you can build business rules. So you kind of set up your strategies. Okay, well, I have my new donor. So when a new donor gifts, their second gift, I would like the Director of Development to get an email to let that person know that donor X just gave their second gift so that you can send a thank you, whether that’s a video a call or a letter. So the smart action business rule is going to just deliver that email automatically. So that’s using the data that’s there, it’s not going to be perfect. If you know like Mallory said it, there might be a little typo here and there. But that’s okay, you’re gonna get the pertinent information, you might have major donors and your major gift officers needing to know when a donor just gave a gift of X amount of dollars. And again, you could have an email that’s delivered to them, it could be delivered to your board chair, we have online forms where you know, if a donor gives their gift, that information is going to come into DonorPerfect, dare I say automatically, which is a huge time saver. Now again, you have to rely on the donor knowing how to type and not having, you know, what did they call fat thumbs, and putting things in all caps, but the data is there, it’s coming in and you can use it, we have a mobile app, so that when you get back to truly on the go, you can you know, quickly dictate your notes and your conversations so that you can create the next actions that we have some home, like dashboards that are going to show you what you have coming up in the next seven days that can be per user, I’m, there’s oh my goodness, I’m trying to quickly highlight things here. But this is kind of

I don’t want to say the bread and butter of DonorPerfect because I think the data is it’s kind of all wrapped up into one. But I think what I liked the most about DonorPerfect is the potential that it represents. And

you can kind of identify what is a good fit for you. Because in any one nonprofit, you all wear different hats, and you wear more than one of them. So you could have your own report your favorite reports, and you could have them scheduled to you so that you can stay on top of the activity. So there’s a lot of ways that when the data goes in, you can use it exactly the way that it is. If you find things that need to be corrected, there’s great tools that can help you quickly fix it and correct it.

And as you can see, just from this little snapshot of a picture, we have amazing dashboards and KPIs that are more about the overall organization behavior and trends and things that will help you make informed decisions for the future.

Awesome. And one other thing I just want to say about that is that you know what Kelly shared about automation, right? And okay, automation works great, until someone puts in their name in all caps or does some other thing. But you know what, that’s okay, the opportunities that you’re missing by avoiding using tools like that, because of the one or two people who have done it wrong, so it looks weird on their end, it’s not worth like that is a really important piece of the cognitive behavior loop to make sure that it’s not fears around those tiny little outlier situations that are holding you back from using a system and using a process that’s going to save you a lot of time and help you with your engagement with 1000s of people, right? Oftentimes, I watch fundraisers and nonprofit leaders think about but what about this one very specific example that that would have then led to an email with them getting that said, Hello, D, capital D, right? Because they didn’t put in their full name. Not a big deal. Really, really, really not a big deal. The reason that feels so awkward. And the reason that feels like such a big deal is because of your beliefs about perfection related to that competent behavior loop, not because that is actually a catastrophic thing, right? That email just went out to 3000 people and so many people felt a personal touch with their name on it or through that automation. So make sure that your behavior isn’t being driven by your fears around these sort of like outlier situations that are not as big of a deal as our self credit critic makes us feel like they are because it means we’re not, you know, quote unquote, perfect. Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox here. But as someone who is very much a recovering perfectionist, I know what it’s like to have this drive your behavior and how much it really holds us back from authentic fundraising, that’s more sustainable and way less awkward. So Okay, tip number five, show up embodied and authentic. So if you follow tips one through four, you’re going to be able to break the car salesperson habit, okay? So a lot of times fundraisers feel like they are a car salesperson, right? And so what

Is the car salesperson habit like one of the main reason? Why is it that that car salespeople make us feel uncomfortable? So one of the reasons why we feel so awkward in those interactions is because we feel like the car salesperson

wants to sell us the car, no matter what, right? No matter whether or not the car is the right fit for us. And so we avoid going car shopping without knowing exactly what we want, because car salespeople make us uncomfortable. And we have been taught to do a lot of similar things in our fundraising, right? Okay, go to this listening tour meeting, but the whole time have the secondary goal in mind that you’re not really allowed to talk about, but make sure you’re listening for all the cues about how much they might be able to give and how you can sort of slip that in there, right. And so then this makes us like the car salesperson just focused on what they want selling the car, or what we want getting the person to get to give more. And that is ultimately what feels pushy and uncomfortable or awkward, like if we’re not talking about the money piece yet. But it’s feeling so awkward, because ultimately, that’s driving our behavior that’s driving our listening that’s driving our questions, instead of really being able to authentically show up to conversations more transparently about the desire to build something together to do something together to solve a problem we both want to see solved together, but also truly listening, right truly listening, truly engaging, truly seeing is there something here that has that achieves our shared goals that has a win win, that is mutual benefit for what the donor is trying to do and what our organization is trying to do. Right. So the opposite of the car salesperson is what I call the fearless fundraiser. And the way to show up as the fearless fundraiser is a bit of what I just outlined, right finding that win win. And that comes from tracking their interest areas, right? Well, we already talked about tracking their interest areas. Because when you do that your mindset is going to keep shifting from this is about making an ask to this is about making an offer, right one of those really key mindset shifts, that you are going to be transparent about why you’re wanting to meet people, but you’re doing it from that Win Win perspective, right? So it’s not like I want to meet you because we really need x. And so I want to have meeting with you to see if you will ever give us x like no like I would love to have meeting with you because it is so clear to us that you care deeply about solving AIX, and over here at our organization, we are fiercely committed to solving that problem too. And I’m wondering if there’s a way for us to come together and be able to solve that problem, you know, via X, Y and Z, right? And then you’re there you’re in that conversation really with that level of curiosity, really seeing if there is that alignment, if there is something you can do together. And then number three on here is just being authentic and how you show up, right, which requires you to address the barriers that are coming up around the negative self talk, self doubt, impostor syndrome, right? All of that that goes back to the cognitive behavior loop in my program is called the power partners formula. And people immediately assume that the power partner is the funder, but it’s actually both you are a power partner, for your funders, your funders or power partners for you. What does it mean for us to actually pursue find initiate sustain relationships that are mutual of mutual interest and for mutual benefit, but benefit because we both want to solve the same problem together, right. So let me go through a quick recap. And then I want to make sure we leave plenty of time for questions. I’m gonna do a quick recap, I’m gonna tell you how you can get in touch with me if you want to learn more about my work. But first, let’s just go through these things. So these are the five tips that we discussed today. Awareness of your thoughts and beliefs that is critical if you literally take anything away from here, it’s this I want to maybe put a post it on your computer or something, you know, what are my thoughts and beliefs today? And anytime you’re getting that hit of awkwardness of discomfort, that emotion I want you to start to ask those questions. What’s the thought? What’s the belief that’s leading to that feeling of awkwardness number two, alignment around interest areas that’s what’s going to allow you to really feel like you’re making that offer and to actually be making that offer because you’re coming at things from a win win perspective. Three is building trust through transparency. Remember the bait the surface level know like trust is not cutting it right you need to you need to pull back the the carpet you know you need to let your

for donors and you need to trust you need to know like and trust them to write, you need to for embrace the data that you have, and then five, utilizing all of these things to show up embodied and authentic. So before we move into questions, if you want to find out more about my work, I offer this free webinar, it’s called how to raise more by getting in front of the right vendors without obnoxiously hounding them, you can just go to Mallory erickson.com/free. And then here is my other contact information if you want to get in touch as well. The one social media platform I kind of hang out on or whatever that means is Instagram. So if you want to get in touch with me quickly, that’s the easiest way to do it. And before we go to questions, I just want to say like, I love the nonprofit sector, I’ve spent my entire career here. And and I love fundraisers. And I really see fundraisers as like the unsung heroes moving money into their organizations to solve these problems that we do all want to see solved. And they’re often positions that feel isolated, or that you don’t feel like you have a space to talk about all of the challenges that are coming up for you without feeling like you’re doing it wrong. You’re not doing it wrong, right, talking about money, moving money, making invitations, hearing no all the time, you are in an incredibly vulnerable and an incredibly powerful position. So I just want you to know how many people be everyone at DonorPerfect are cheering you on and want your success. And just to thank you for the incredible work that you’re doing to really make a difference in this world. So all sort of wrap up my portion then, and we’ll and we’ll move into questions. Thank you for spending this time with me today.

Thanks, Mallory. It’s been great. And I think just great reminders, looking at a couple of the comments coming in, people are really feeling refreshed and excited that there is a voice I think to some of the thoughts and feelings that everybody encounters at one point in their career as a nonprofit fundraiser, but specific, some specific questions is, Su is asking how do you recommend we find out donors interests in the first place? We tend to have a lot of donors $100 or less, and I can’t imagine actually meeting with all 3000 of them. But then again, I’m an IT person by history and accidental fundraiser.

So it’s a great question. Thank you, Sue, for asking it, there are a number of different ways to do it. You know, some one, some organizations utilize surveys to sort of figure out what initially brought donors into their frameworks, some do it by tracking donation, landing pages. So if you ran a campaign around a certain part of your program, a certain a certain like program element of your nonprofit that gives you some information about their interest area, like if they gave to that campaign, specifically, it gives you some information around their interest area, then as well, or they came to a specific event related to a specific program that also gives you some information. And then moving forward, the thing I want to say is like, again, so we don’t get caught up in the perfect data piece. If you’re like, oh, my gosh, we haven’t been tracking this at all. Okay, so moving forward, let’s start to track it, right, let’s make sure that your campaign then around a certain program area has its own landing page or is tracking it inside DonorPerfect, in whatever way makes sense to really associate their giving with the message or the program that has gone out that has gone out and solicited those funds that time. Okay.

It is and I just want to echo and let everybody know that you know, Mallory was suggesting surveys and some of the survey templates that excuse me, the online form templates that we provide, one of them is a survey. And so you could place that link on a social site. And you could certainly embed it in an email if you wanted to communicate and reach out to the people in the folks that you have already in DonorPerfect. Now speaking of social sites, there was a question, just give me a moment here.

The one thing about the little boxes, it moves pretty quickly, one more question comes in, it shifts everything around. Okay, so we get a lot of donations from social media, Facebook and Instagram. And one of our challenges is that typically, we only get the donors name, no contact information, etc. As that isn’t captured, what’s the best way to handle that so we can keep communicating with them?

Okay, so it’s such a good question. So essentially, what you’re asking right now is how do you get a donor off of social media onto your email list, right, because that’s how well I’ll be honest, if there are software’s out there that

can help you take a social media profile and convert it into having their email address that very well might exist. And I might not know about it. But so I’ll speak just from what I know. And Kelly, if you know, you know, on the technology side of things I don’t, but one thing and one thing that I do help organizations with a lot is figuring out how to get donors off of social media and onto their email lists. Because typically, email converts at a much higher rate for donations than social media, although it sounds like you’re having amazing success on social media, which is awesome. But for most organizations, you know, they want to get their email address. And so, so one of the ways to do that is to sort of figure out, okay, what campaigns have really attracted them to you, is there a kind of an education material you could provide related to that campaign or a little 30 minute webinar, maybe with the folks who are running the program that people have expressed a lot of interest in through their funding, and then in their sign up to either get the material or to get the, or to come to that webinar, you’re going to be collecting other data about them, you’re going to be collecting their name, you’re going to be collecting their email address, and then you can often sync those things together. The other thing I have had some organizations do and this comes to capacity, right, is that they do store the giving data on the social media platforms, and then DM people, or tag them in post the next time that they are posting around a similar initiative. Mode. Yeah, so maybe I’ll stop there. And let Kelly if she has anything to add to this one. In terms of the social sites, I mean, if it’s truly just posted at social that is, you know, you get what you get, and you can work with it. I think one of the things is if you place a link to a form, you can, if you have Google Analytics, I know this is getting really technical, but you could place that in the form. And then you could track a little bit more about their activity with our online forms you, you’re gonna see a little bit of like a conversion rate, which doesn’t give you the information that you’re specifically asking about. But the good news is, I think if you’re getting at least name and email, you can at least start start a relationship, you can take that and you can convert that into an email, and you can start slowly building that relationship. But I don’t have anything spectacular, I’m sure. I don’t know of anything that I can name off. But I am sure there are applications and tools out there that can do a lot of that conversion, and data mining for you. But I don’t know of anything that I can mention at all. Great question, though. Another question, though. That’s kind of big Mallory, is how do you focus on focus on donor interests when most of the giving is unrestricted, which for some nonprofits, that is something they wish they had more of those unrestricted donations, but now we’re kind of on the other side of that. So what do you what do you say to that? Okay, I am so glad this question got asked because and I wish I had said this earlier in the webinar. So understanding their interest area doesn’t mean restricting their funding, right. So something so something I really recommend in campaigns, for example, and also, again, none of this stuff is perfect, right? So you might, but basically, one of the things that I recommend in campaigns, for example, is that there’s diversity in the types of stories that you’re telling, or elements of your program that you’re highlighting. So let’s say you’re running an end of your campaign for general operating money for your organization, right? But you’re going to be sharing different stories about the work that you do throughout that campaign, right. So you’re gonna have an email that really focuses, let’s say, on your seventh grade STEM program, and then you’re going to have, you’re going to have another email that really focused on making this up, of course, but like, you know, that focuses on your eighth grade getting ready for high school program or something like that. So when people give via that email, okay, it is indicating to you that they were particularly moved by the mention of that program. Now, it doesn’t mean that they’re, that they’re like restricting their gift to that program. But again, when we talk about the donor lenses, right, so you want to think about okay, well, that story about the seventh grade STEM program is what got them to give up and, and so that is starting to let you know, now not all donors will be interested in one thing, right? They might be interested in, in many things throughout, like they might be interested in all the different programs that you do. But using these different data points, watching your donors behavior across these different data points, then gives you a better inclination of what it is that they’re really passionate about that you do. So for example, one there’s the segmenting of the list like we talked about and

Kelly Kelly talked about, but there’s also then when you’re personally outreaching, to have a one on one meeting with someone, right? Let’s say that you’ve noticed that this person always gives to your back to school fundraiser every year. So in that outreach email that you’re sending to them to have a one on one meeting to them. When you’re talking about the Win Win, or you’re talking about alignment, you really want to reference back to school, right? So instead of just saying something like, you know, it’s so clear that you care about what we do bla bla bla bla bla, like, I would have that email, say, you know, Hi, Jennifer, I, you know, I really want to reach out to you today. And thank you for your tremendous commitment to our organization. It is not lost on me that every September, you give a gift of blank, it is so clear to me that you care deeply about the hurdle that our students are facing when they go back to school every year. That’s something we’re thinking really critically about over here at blank two, would you be open to having a meeting to talk about how we might be able to address that challenge together? Right, see how different that is just by paying attention to the prompt that got her to take that action?

I hope that’s helpful. Yep. Thank you.

Two more questions, if time permits here is we have a lot of Mr. And Mrs. In our database, but only one email address what is the best practice about the salutation? Is it okay to say Dear Mary, and John, if it’s just John’s email address?

So what are your thoughts about that? Mallory? I mean, that’s a little bit of dealing with, you know, how the data is in DonorPerfect. So I can certainly speak to that. But I think the question was more around, you know, dealing with that perfectionist.

So is it okay, that’s what you have. And you want to send something out? Is it okay to do?

Yeah, I mean, yes, yes, I think it is no problem to send to one email address a notation to all of the people in the household. Not at all, we do that all the time in our personal life, right. Like, if I just sent out birthday invitations to my daughter’s two year old thing, I sent it to one person in each household, but it was addressed to all of them, right. So sometimes it’s just pulling ourselves out of the like fundraising perfection and be like, is it a normal thing to do this? Okay. Yeah, it is. So I think it’s okay. Right. So however, you determined to organize that data, that’s one thing, but as you’re not breaking some cardinal rule by by sending out an email address to both people via one email address. All right. Another question or more of a comment? Maybe it’s you have some suggestion is one thing that holds me back is thinking if I say the wrong thing, will I alienate the donor?

So I mean, I think I think, you know, gosh, this is a big, this is a big one, right? Because what’s the wrong thing? What’s the wrong thing? Is the wrong thing that you, you know, spoke up about something that you deeply believe in, and it wasn’t aligned with the donor? Well, is that really the wrong thing? Right. And so I think, look, I think this is what comes back to the like, how important it is that we’re being authentic? Because when we think about communication in general, right, there’s all that research about how verbal communication is actually only 9%. And you know, some people think maybe it’s a little bit higher, but the verbal communication, that the words that come out of our mouth, are actually a very small percentage, about what the person experiences when they’re listening to us. So we put so much behind the words that come out of my mouth, what if What if I say the wrong thing, that’s actually a very small piece of the pie. And so the reason why it’s so important to show up as authentic and embodied and lean in and have the energy that you want and get rid of all those limiting beliefs is because that’s what they actually feel, right? And so focusing on those saying of the wrong thing is actually just corrupting your energy so that you’re not showing up with energy that they’re that they want to engage in, right? You’re so worried about saying the wrong thing. I have never heard in all my entire career. I have never heard that there was a sentence that was said that stopped a donor from giving never right and so and like maybe that’s true in politics, or maybe we see those one specific stories, you know, on the news, but that’s not really what it is. And if you want to build power partnerships, which are sustainable, reliable donors for your organization, then if you are just authentically you, you’re gonna be able to do that without worrying about every word that’s coming out of your mouth.

Great.

It is time so I’m wondering though, Mallory, there were a couple people that were wondering if you could show

and speak to just additional workshops. Could you pull up the last slide? I think it was where you listed where the resources were at. Yes. Okay. So if you so this is my this is my primary workshop, although if you go to my website and you go to Mallory erickson.com You’ll see up in the right hand like in the tabs at the top, there’s a resources section. There’s a number of free trainings there if you’re interested, this is my webinar where I go over the entire blueprint of the power partners formula, I bust a lot of myths about like warm and cold introductions and and I talk about the car salesperson in more detail and and how long it should take to cultivate a major gift. So it’s really fun. So if you liked today’s you’ll love this one. But you can also go on my website, find other free resources that I have. And then here are the ways that all the different ways to get in touch with me and if you can’t find what you’re looking for DM me on Instagram send me an email I would love to be in touch with you I’m so again grateful for what you do and for spending all this time with me today. Great. Well thank you everybody. We are at the top of the hour and I just want to thank you for joining as a reminder the recording will be emailed to you in a variety of ways one is going to be an almost an immediate email about an hour or so after this ends and then in a follow up email probably next week and then it will also be found at the DonorPerfect.com expert webcast page and is as always, if there’s anything they you need help with, don’t hesitate to reach out. We are thrilled to partner with you and thank you Mallory. This has been fantastic. Thank you for having me. I’m so grateful for the opportunity. All right. Have a great Day. Bye Bye