38 MINS
Nonprofit Expert Episode 22: How to Personalize Donor Journeys
Cherian Koshy on Enhancing Supporter Relationships with Psychological Strategies
Transform your engagement techniques with personalized donor journeys informed by behavioral science! Join us to learn how to improve donor retention, drive lifetime value, and create meaningful connections with Cherian Koshy, CFRE. Gain inspiration from Koshy’s 25+ years of experience, including his journey from door-to-door fundraising to leading nonprofit teams!
Categories: Nonprofit Expert Podcast
Nonprofit Expert Episode 22: How to Personalize Donor Journeys Transcript
Print TranscriptDonorPerfectAd00:03
Welcome to Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect.
Julia GachebachHost00:15
Welcome to Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect. My name is Julia Gachenbach and Read More
DonorPerfectAd00:03
Welcome to Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect.
Julia GachebachHost00:15
Welcome to Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect. My name is Julia Gachenbach and I am here with our guest, Cherian Koshy. Cherian, welcome.
Cherian KoshyGuest00:25
Thanks so much for having me, Julia. It’s great to see you.
Julia GachebachHost00:27
It’s great to see you too. We are truly excited to have you today. For those who do not know Cherian yet, you’re going to learn a lot about the work that he does in the nonprofit sector over the next couple of minutes, but for a little bit of an overview, Cherian is a transformative leader in the social impact sector, with over 25 years of experience driving change through innovation and strategy development. His credentials, including the CFRE and chartered advisor and philanthropy designations, illustrate a deep understanding of financial strategies and philanthropic efforts that resonate across various sectors. His approach translates complex ideas into practical solutions, proving valuable for professionals in social impact business and beyond, seeking to leverage technology and strategic insights for sustainable success. Chiran, you have obviously done so much for the nonprofit sector. Thank you for all that you have done, for taking the time today to chat with us and for all that you’re planning to do, coming up for nonprofits all over.
Cherian KoshyGuest01:33
Well, I’m excited and it really is an honor to be here. That’s a really kind introduction. I feel like now we just that’s a mic drop and we need to be done. End the recording.
Julia GachebachHost01:43
Great. Well, you have obviously taken a lot of swings in the nonprofit world. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about how you got to where you are in your career in the nonprofit sector? A lot of people kind of accidentally fall into nonprofits. Was that your story? How did you get here?
Cherian KoshyGuest02:01
Totally accidental fundraiser. I started out in 1996. I wanted like a part-time job and 96, 95, somewhere around there and wanted a part-time job and a friend of mine said hey, I’ve got a great opportunity for you. And it was fundraising on behalf of the Sierra Club and human rights campaign. And it was fundraising on behalf of the Sierra Club and Human Rights Campaign and you would go door to door talking to people and asking them to donate.
02:28
In the UK they call them chuggers and it’s a really hard job. You end up talking to probably 100, 150 homes, trying to talk to 150 homes in a night and you get the door slammed in front of your face quite a lot and it’s also really cold cold outside in Minnesota winters. So ever since then I’ve been fundraising for different organizations, sort of progressively figuring things out and and making my way and um I my last job was with a workforce development organization that operates across the country, and so I feel like resources like this podcast and some of the other things that we’re working on were really instrumental in helping me navigate the journey of moving from, you know, literally a frontline fundraiser on the doorstep of someone asking for a gift to leading large teams through a structured fundraising strategy.
Julia GachebachHost03:27
That is amazing. I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone who did door-to-door fundraising other than like eighth grade me who was fundraising out of you know those catalogs when you were fundraising for your school Sounds very familiar.
Cherian KoshyGuest03:40
Wow, to be fair, like I’m not going to get on this soapbox right now, but my kids do that kind of fundraising and I’m like that’s on this soapbox right now, but my kids do that kind of fundraising and I’m like that’s not fundraising. Let’s just be clear.
Julia GachebachHost03:50
That is shopping. That’s right. Well, it’s very interesting to hear about how you became a fundraiser. Can I ask you kind of a personal question what is it about nonprofits that draws you in? What do you like about the nonprofit sector?
Cherian KoshyGuest04:07
So part of it is I have been in it for so long. It’s home to me in a certain way, more than any other kind of sector. It’s a place where I kind of know and understand the landscape and obviously lots of my friends hang out here, so it’s that supportive environment. But ultimately it really is the impact that organizations have. There are so many people who are dedicated to making the world a better place, not just trying to figure out how to make a quick buck or get away from the realities that we face on the ground. They’re in the mud, trying to figure out how to make the life of other people better, and that is super inspiring to be part of. It’s encouraging every morning, I would imagine, for people who get stuck behind a desk dealing with, like, credit applications or you know, whatever. That, whatever soul sucking job that’s out there. They’re like I don’t want to. I don’t want to go to work and I feel like in this sector there’s always a reason to wake up and go to work.
Julia GachebachHost05:19
That is a great point and hopefully super encouraging to our listeners that there’s a reason you’re doing what you’re doing and we are all inspired by that. So good point. Well, I know we could talk about a million things today, but we are going to really focus today on donor journeys. This is something that actually you talked about at the DonorPerfect Conference in 2024, and something that we’re working on to create some materials around donor journeys. I know that it’s a mountain for a lot of nonprofits to climb and you have kind of this key into how to create these, so I want to pick your brain a little bit about donor journeys. My first question is where do you even start? How do you even start creating donor journeys and what even are they? What does a donor journey look like?
Cherian KoshyGuest06:11
That’s a great question and I mean I do love the opportunity to talk about this. I would say that this probably is now what I would consider as close as one could call it this my life’s work, as close as one could call it this my life’s work. As I started to lead organizations, one of the biggest questions that kept coming up for me was why do donors do what they do? And as I start to unpack that further around behavioral science and then ultimately how that lends itself into a donor journey, I appreciate you calling it out as a mountain. It is a mountain. It’s one that I don’t think anyone would ever be able to fully summit. But what I can do is say I’ve sort of blazed this particular trail. I don’t know that it’s completely right, but it’s one that I’ve worked on for a really long time. I’d say I’m on like year 20 of figuring this part out, and so I can at least say don’t go down that path. That path doesn’t get you where you want it to go. So what I would say first and foremost in terms of where do we start? You start with curiosity and empathy. You start with curiosity and empathy At its core. A donor journey starts from the perspective of saying I am curious about your experience, julia, in your engagement, your relationship with this cause. That then translates into your relationship with the organization. So I use those words very specifically because curiosity doesn’t make an assumption that you are beholden to a particular organization, nor does it assume that you have essentially like a lifelong dedication to a particular cause, but that there is something about what’s happening in your life that says I want to be part of this experience, this landscape-changing, impact-driven moment in time, and maybe that moment expands over several months or several years, or it could be your entire lifetime and past your lifetime. But when we have that level of curiosity, it enables those with true curiosity to then empathize with where you’re coming from and to build a relationship that honors that uniqueness that you have.
08:43
So what I mean by that? I know there’s a lot of big words, but it’s really understanding what motivates your donor and aligns their experience with your mission, based upon what motivates them, what they care about and truly, at its core, their identity. So it’s an extension of your understanding of their identity through the work that you’re doing. So we would start by asking the question what does our donor want to feel as part of their interaction with our organization, what do they want to know as part of their interaction with our organization and what do they want to achieve as part of their interaction with our organization and what do they want to achieve as part of their relationship with us?
09:27
And so a journey is nothing more than like that map up the mountain that says you’re going to start here or start in one of these different places and you’re going to go up the mountain, and everybody can go up the mountain in a different sort of way, but at each sort of milestone after base camp, into you know the first peak and wherever that next step is that there’s a part of that experience that aligns with what you want as a donor, what you are looking for as a donor.
10:00
And far too often we just sort of assume and I’ve actually seen consultants with this diagram of a stair step like everybody goes from one step to the next step and the next step.
10:10
And the reality is that every donor is going to have a slightly different perspective up the mountain and our goal is not necessarily to have individual you know, julia has one, terian has another but to have a sense of like, just the real, the reality that everyone is having their own experience.
10:30
So, when we think about that, how do they become aware that you know there’s a organization out there that does this thing? How do they think about participating in that work? How do they continue participating if they choose to do so? How do they then share that relationship with other people in their networks, in their family? What does that look like? And it’s all coming back to resonating with their values and emotion. And then, of course, part of that is understanding some of the data that goes alongside that and saying, well, there’s a quantitative and a qualitative aspect to it. So the qualitative piece the values, the emotions, the identity part are all things that might come out through, for example, interviews and focus groups. But the quantitative stuff are things like they showed up at an event, they made a donation, they made another donation, and all of these come together as part of an overarching donor journey.
Julia GachebachHost11:31
That is really helpful and that I feel like you opened so many doors for more questions. Because I was a fundraiser before I started working with DonorPerfect and I have to tell you I sat down to do donor journeys 10 times maybe, I mean, and every time I got so frustrated because I thought of okay, well, this doesn’t apply to my major donor, so-and-so, or whatever applies to that major donor is never going to apply to this two-time donor who only gives at our auction. I can’t treat them the same. So it got a little bit frustrating for me because I didn’t know how to personalize for those groups of people. Do you have any suggestions on how nonprofits can tailor their strategies for care like that?
Cherian KoshyGuest12:23
Yeah. So let me just start by validating your experience that a lot of organizations that I work with don’t necessarily think of the things that you thought of in that moment, in that experience, which is fundamentally not all donors are the same. They’re not going through the process the same way. They’re not. They don’t share the exact same values or the exact same kind of manifestations of those values. Their engagement with your organization changes and ultimately, every listener here, regardless of whether you are a really small organization or a really large organization, is going to have a different set of donor journeys. There’s no donor journey template, mapping, blah, blah, blah. That’s going to fit for every donor, for every organization all at once. So if we start with the level of curiosity that you had first, by saying we know that not all donors are the same, so we need to create segments, we need to create groups, and the larger your donor base, the more segments you have available to you, just by the nature of the fact that you have more people. So the example that I would give you is I have three kids. They all have slightly different relationships with their uncles, aunts, cousins, whatever, and so at birthdays, for example, when they’re writing thank you notes to say thank you for these birthday presents or whatnot. Their relationship with each of those different entities is going to dictate how they show gratitude, and so if they are writing a note or saying thank you to my sister, that’s going to look very different than their relationship with a very distant cousin that they don’t see very often and don’t know really well. The ability to engage based upon the depth of the relationship is what helps kind of create some of that personalization and segmentation approach. But you could have a segment of every single one, right Theoretically.
14:33
I had a teacher once, howard Moskowitz, that would say, like you could have an infinite number of segments, an infinite number of possible engagements, and then from that, an infinite number of journeys around, like how do they like? They went online, they go through direct mail, they went to an event, and so you end up with analysis, paralysis, and so the best thing that I would say is that you, as a fundraiser, need to start by approaching a donor journey with the fewest number of segments that you can possibly engage with that you can reasonably do given your time and resources, because what you are doing if you have three segments or five is better than one. So let’s start there and say if you don’t have one, if you don’t have any Jonah journey, start with one. It’s not going to be perfect. You know you’re ignoring people, that’s okay, it’s not ideal, but no version is people. That’s okay, it’s not ideal, but no version is.
15:39
So then, identifying what are the three to five, let’s take that next step and using some of the data that you have available to you. So if you have a CRM like DonorPerfect, you can identify, based upon the reporting, who your first time donors are Obviously someone who is given to your organization for the first time. Let’s go back for a moment. Someone who’s donated to your organization should absolutely be treated differently than someone who’s never donated to your organization. I know that you’re like wait, that’s like the most obvious thing ever, and of course it is. But how often do we just send an email to everyone? There’s very little reason in this day and age to send an email to everyone.
16:23
So if you just start today by separating out existing donors from non-donors, you’ve done a great job because you can talk to them differently. But then when you build on top of that and say, a first time donor is qualitatively different than someone who’s given to your organization multiple times. So if someone you know shows up at, this is way into the future. But if someone shows up to my kid’s graduation party and they have never interacted with my kid before, the ability to engage with them is going to be very limited based upon previous historical knowledge, versus someone who they’ve seen every day, like you know for a year or seen multiple times over multiple years. So think about that from your donor’s perspective.
17:13
Their expectation is that they be treated differently based upon their history with you, and so everybody’s going to appreciate a simple heartfelt thank you. But if you can say, Julia, you’ve just reached your 10th year of consecutively giving to our organization, we’re so inspired by your loyalty and the work that you’ve accomplished, that feels special, that’s different and demonstrates to the donor that you know them and you know their journey. So as much as possible, when you have more information, information, using that information to reflect back in an authentic way is helpful, and the segments allow you to do some of that work. So the more history you have, the more you can sort of personalize and engage. But at some level you just don’t have enough information but to say they’re a first time donor and we don’t know much more about them. So at least on that level, act on the information that you have.
Julia GachebachHost18:19
Yeah, that’s so good, and the idea that one is better than zero and five is better than three is really helpful. The other thing that you said that I feel like unlocked something in me is to organize them based on depth. I think that is a key here, because I think for me I thought okay, well, my monthly donor is really in depth involved, but so is my major donor. They’re giving a lot. Their depth may be the same, even if their activity is different. And so what if I clustered them by depth instead of activity? Because there are so many activities that these donors could be doing, but how involved are they or how much of an advocate are they for? My organization may have been a different way to group them. I hadn’t even thought about that.
Cherian KoshyGuest19:11
I love that and I love that you pulled that out, because I think sometimes we tend to place donors in a journey based upon irrelevant factors, and so what we need to do is really identify what is the relevant distinction, and so depth of relationship is a really good one. That probably means more than the monetary value that they’re giving, and often we pick easy things like how many don’t like a lot of organizations, and this isn’t wrong. I’ve worked I think every organization I’ve worked in had donor levels, much to my chagrin in some cases. But donors of $1,000 or donors of $500 don’t necessarily need to be treated differently because of their monetary giving if there’s another relevant characteristic that makes a bigger difference in terms of how they’re engaging with your organization. So one example of that is in one organization that I worked in.
20:13
We had a five segment group, and one of the segments was people who lived 90 miles away from our organization’s headquarters or more, and the reason why we segmented it that way was because we felt like, more often than not, they wouldn’t come to an event at our venue, they would be unlikely to attend, and so our segmentation allowed us to say, hey, here’s an event invitation, but we know you might not be able to attend, so we’ll send you a recording just in case, or we’ll send you something afterward, something like that, to say it’s the thought that counts. We want you to come if you’re able to, but we recognize that you probably aren’t gonna make it after work on a Tuesday for that distance. And I will tell you, it makes a huge difference in just knowing and seeing them for who they are.
Julia GachebachHost21:09
Yeah, that is incredibly valuable, and I think some of the issue with I don’t know if issue is too harsh of a word, but with donor journeys is it may at times feel like you’re filtering people into something as opposed to caring for them in one way or the other, but and I would expect you to agree with this I think if you take the time to put real thought into your donor journeys and real intention into your donor journeys, then it’s like they fit into that flow.
Cherian KoshyGuest21:46
It’s not they’re being shoved into something that they don’t fit into, but it was made for them yes, that’s exactly right, and I think the difference there is, um, when you don’t start with curiosity and empathy and you just say what is the fastest path for me to break down this into some kind of workflow, then it doesn’t it. It is like shoving a round peg in a square hole. But the idea is, if you do it intentionally and with curiosity and empathy, then it is such that it’s made for them. It makes sense because that’s part of what they’ve articulated to you, or what they’ve demonstrated to you through their actions.
Julia GachebachHost22:28
Well, I think those are all great points through their actions. Well, that’s, I think those are all great points and that really is breaking down some of my callous when it comes to donor journeys. Like I said, I sat down and got frustrated multiple times, but thinking about it this way feels a little more approachable than what I was doing, which was trying to figure out how to get everybody happy and all of the use cases and all of the actions and all of the things cases and all the actions and all the things which was too much for me.
Cherian KoshyGuest22:54
Yeah, absolutely no, and I think we all do that right. We all try and go at it and figuring out like, how do we be the most authentic relationship builder for every single donor? And it creates a spider web of different actions and then it is too much for anybody to manage, no matter how large the team.
Julia GachebachHost23:14
Well, and something else we’ve talked about is the idea of the psychology and philosophy behind donor actions. So you talked a little bit about this empathy and curiosity. How do we use that when it comes to why donors are doing what they’re doing, or is there a way to really dig into some of the reasons behind their actions?
Cherian KoshyGuest23:38
There is, and the science behind that is, you know, well past the time that we have here in this podcast, but what I will say is that there are some core psychological principles that drive everybody’s decisions, and no one should be surprised by the fact that we are motivated by concepts that are outside of ourselves, that we’re all sort of making somewhat biased decisions when we decide to engage particularly with giving behavior, when we decide to engage particularly with giving behavior. So all those behaviors that don’t require us to navigate like a basic need are subject to a bunch of what are called heuristics. They’re sort of categories in our brains that tell us it looks like this, so we should do that, and it’s a shortcut. It’s a mental shortcut, and that’s true of every one of us, including all of our donors. So one example of what that would look like is a donor who is, well, we’re all sort of influenced by social behavior, by what people around us are doing or what people like us are doing, and the key there is who we think is like us. So this is a concept that’s used a lot in whether it’s donor psychology or just behavior in general around social proof, and the assumption is we need to use testimonials to describe what’s happening.
25:08
If you have 400 people that bought airline insurance today, I’m going to be one of those people. That’s a part of the discussion, but most of us ignore that right. At least I do. I never buy insurance for my flights and I’m, you know, always pressing the red button, which is color-coded, because red is danger and that’s a piece of the psychology as well. But as you think about what that looks like for your donors, understanding their own experience would lend itself to saying, for example, there are people like me who do things like this. So demographically, positionally, geographically, these are things that other people in my self-defined community would do, and so a really specific example of that is when I was working at the Performing Arts Center, we had donors who would give to help elementary school kids go to arts programs cards to our prospective donors in those areas and said 3,000 donors just like you in these neighborhoods, like your literal neighbors, are giving to programs like this, and not the exact wording, but that geographic community people who live in your school district, people who live in your neighborhood is a natural constituency of people like me. We actually went a step further to say for season ticket holders who weren’t donors, people who have season tickets on the same day. You’re a Tuesday night subscriber. On Tuesday night, 900 people donate and it’s, you know, an average gift $125. Tuesday night 900 people donate and it’s, you know, an average gift $125. Would you join other Tuesday night ticket holders in giving a gift to the organization?
27:04
Those psychological principles are relevant because they create an emotional attachment to something pre-existing. My neighborhood is a pre-existing emotional attachment. My day of the week for we did this through research the day they go to performance is actually a really significant psychological emotional connection to people. That’s how they describe themselves. I’m a Tuesday night subscriber and that distinction makes a huge difference for people. So for each organization I mean obviously hundreds of organizations, thousands of organizations are listening to this Think about what those principles are that are that emotional resonance for your donors, that allow you to tap into something that they connect to beyond or before your organization. So if you’re an organization that the psychological principle at work is giving back, there’s some pre-existing relationship with the services that you offer that you want to tap into, to connect to that pre-existing donor identity and you want to strengthen that as much as possible because the donor will continue on the journey based upon that power of connection, and that’s an easy way to kind of push that forward.
Julia GachebachHost28:17
Well, and that also goes back to the depth, like the Tuesday night subscribers are the same depth of involved as the other people going on Tuesday nights. That’s right, that’s so good, okay. Now let’s say that we’re putting these people into on Tuesday nights. That’s right, that’s so good, okay. Now let’s say that we’re putting these people into their right journeys, we’re creating journeys that are inclusive for people. What kind of metrics should we look at in order to optimize these journeys? So are there certain key reports or key things that we should keep an eye on, on whether or not people are progressing.
Cherian KoshyGuest28:51
Yeah. So I mean, obviously they’re the ones that probably everyone in the audience that’s smart, capable and good at their jobs knows about in terms of metrics. So obviously things like donor retention rate is an easy way of seeing is this person giving? And what I would say is, in most cases retention rate is consecutive giving. So if you want like a little bit more insightful metric, I would say and I borrow this from Clay Buck the idea of consistent, not consecutive. So if someone skips a year, that doesn’t mean they’re not dedicated.
29:27
A lot of you know the reporting that you’ll get will be like how many people gave five years in a row and that’s a good one. You should use that. But I would go further. Do a little bit more digging in the reporting and see how many people have given three out of the last five years. That’s still a multiple gift scenario and a pretty good indication of loyalty. The other metric is around lifetime value of your donors and that is a calculation that includes the amount of giving that the person has given to your organization over a longer period of time. You can figure out, you can check out the calculation on that, but the lifetime value of your donor would be impacted by both the amount of their giving and the frequency of their giving. So if they’re giving more often and giving at larger amounts, that tends to indicate some growing affinity for your organization.
30:22
The one that I think is very difficult to capture in like a CRM report, but is probably the most valuable one from my perspective, is how often is your donor encouraging other people to donate or engage with the organization in any way? So things like M is my donor bringing people to an event? Is my donor talking to people about their involvement as a donor? Are they also volunteering and encouraging their friends to volunteer? These are all what I would say are sort of like squishy metrics. They are trackable. They’re not like you know, brand impressions in the world or something that’s like what did they actually say about our organization in the world? Or something that’s like what did they actually say about our organization, because you can say like, oh, we can see someone who has invited someone to come to an event. That level of engagement with your organization is irreplaceable and incredibly valuable, because a lot of people will think about a donor journey as summiting the mountain.
31:32
Coming back to that analogy that you gave us, and in a lot of the time. I mean I teach fundamentals of fundraising. I facilitate the CFRE refresher course. The pyramid structure in the mountaintop analogy is like they have made a major gift or they’ve made a planned gift. That’s what everybody points towards and what I would suggest to your audience is that we look beyond that to how many people are going back down the mountain and bringing somebody else up who’s going and saying I’ve done something, maybe not a major gift, maybe not a planned gift. I don’t even know that. That part is as relevant as how many people have had some sort of experience and they come back down and say y’all got to see what’s up here.
32:21
That metric is if you can track that and you can encourage more people to do that. It is absolutely let’s start with net beneficial to the bottom line. You will have more donors, you will have more revenue, for sure. But here’s the real important thing no fundraiser can do it on their own and having an army of people who are out there sharing your message and doing that fundraising on your behalf from, frankly, a more authentic perspective, because they are a volunteer donor is going to be much more persuasive and give you back a tremendous amount of time, so you don’t have to feel like you’re doing it all. You are empowering and enabling a lot of other people to do that work, and I think that would be one of the most important metrics that I would keep in mind as I was going through this work.
Julia GachebachHost33:22
That’s incredibly encouraging. The whole idea of not being alone is so important. I remember I often felt alone. I often felt like I was going through this work. That’s incredibly encouraging. The whole idea of not being alone is so important. I remember I often felt alone. I often felt like I was the only one thinking about how to raise money for our programs. And it’s not true. Your donors are in that with you, and how can you partner with them, like you said, to get more people up the mountain? I think that’s really valuable. Okay, my last question for you. We’re talking a lot about donor journeys. I mentioned that it was quite difficult for me. If you were to sit down with Julia from a couple years ago when I was doing donor journeys, and I was just done so with trying to figure it out what piece of encouragement would you give me to keep pursuing donor journeys? How would you help encourage me in the importance of this work?
Cherian KoshyGuest34:13
So what I would say is that, again, everybody listening to this is coming from a different place, and you may be. If you’re listening to this and you’re completely overwhelmed and you have 14,000 things that you need to do and you, you can’t, absolutely can’t do it, um, can’t do anything more. What I would say is start very, very small and do the small things as best you can in a way that you know. You know your donors, you know how they would want to be treated, treated, and so, if you can go from zero to one in the next year, don’t feel like you have um, have short changed your donors or you’ve done something wrong. It’s a. It’s important to have a starting point right and um, and that will be beneficial, it will have an impact.
35:03
Uh, I would say there are going to be times through the process especially if you get past one into thinking about multiple journeys, where every single one of us gets frustrated. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been doing this for two months or 20 years. You’re going to get frustrated because there’s so many variables and so much to think about, and each one of those is an opportunity to make a mistake. And if any seasoned fundraiser can say with honesty that they have not made a mistake. They are 100% lying to you. They’re 100% lying to you. There are only two types of fundraisers out there the fundraisers who have made mistakes and the fundraisers who are lying about the fact that they have not made mistakes. So know that you can do this, and everybody starts somewhere.
35:56
Some people inherit a system of donor journeys and pathways that they kind of navigate, and there’s plenty of room to optimize it.
36:04
So, even if you are looking at a system that is broken or a system that doesn’t serve your donors well, don’t feel like you’ve got to tear it all out and then rebuild it from scratch and invest a lot of time and resources.
36:19
Start by making one change, one change, and then take that element and, as we talked about before, use some pieces of the data to help you build truly authentic relationships with folks and enable them to help you along the journey. This is another place where donors can support to say, hey, you know we we talk about like ask for money and get advice. Ask for advice and get money. This is one of those places where you can actually bring donors in and say, hey, here’s what I think the pathway is and would you help with this process, and they’re the best people to help with something like that. So start small, start somewhere. Don’t create more work than is necessary for you because, um, at the end of the day, a donor, a perfect donor journey that you can’t actually implement or resource is not any more helpful than just one donor journey that everybody’s on, so be mindful of that as well.
Julia GachebachHost37:26
Great. Well, this is super helpful. I feel like a lot of my walls have been broken down from this conversation. I’m going to call my old org and be like let’s tackle donor journeys. So this is super helpful. Thank you so much, Cherian. For those who are still interested in more about donor journeys, Cherian has partnered with DonorPerfect to create an ebook, so if you’d like to check that out, go to DonorPerfectcom. We’re really excited about that content and we hope that it’ll help people really get started on their donor journey of donor journeys. Thank you so much, Cherian. We really appreciate having you today and it’s been a pleasure.
Cherian KoshyGuest38:00
Thanks so much. Great to be here.
DonorPerfectAd38:04Thank you for listening to Nonprofit Expert presented by Donor Perfect. For more information and a special offer, visit DonorPerfect.com/podcast.
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Your Donor Retention Toolkit
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