Finish Strong: Simple strategies to maximize year-end giving

All right, okay, so good afternoon or good morning to those in other time zones. Welcome to today’s presentation. Finished strong, simple strategies to maximize year end giving. Presenting today is Floyd Jones. Floyd is a speaker, strategist and community builder, helping change makers Read More

All right, okay, so good afternoon or good morning to those in other time zones. Welcome to today’s presentation. Finished strong, simple strategies to maximize year end giving. Presenting today is Floyd Jones. Floyd is a speaker, strategist and community builder, helping change makers turn engagement into long term growth. With over $40 million raised for grassroots organizations, his work has been featured by ESPN, LinkedIn and the anthem awards. He’s also the founder and CEO of back black and global, Chair of black philanthropy. Month before I hand it over to Floyd, just a few housekeeping items. I need to mention the webinar is being recorded. That’s always a question that’s asked. It will be sent out in the next few days, and we have a lot of people expected today. So with that many people in the chat, questions can easily be missed, so please be sure to add them to the Q amp a section so that they can be answered at the end of the session. All right, so at this time, I’m going to hand it over to Floyd. The the audience is yours. Floyd,
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else we got in that your house today, we got o Dallas in the house. We got Gloria in the house. We got Therese from Philly in the house. Andrea is in the house, Carrie’s in the house, Christian’s in the house. Come on, people, let’s go. Y’all, I’m so excited. You see, I got, I got my money chain on, okay? Because we got my money train. Come on somebody. I got my money. Rings, come on somebody. I’m ready to go. Okay, come on the train. I love to see my good sister, Lori, is in the house. Hello, fam. Y’all, I’m so excited. Okay, and I got my little and I got my little thing because Kyle, New York City, we got central heat. Okay, we gonna be fine. We’re not gonna melt, though. Y’all, I am so excited. Okay, I cannot wait. Crystianna said, any clue what song it is? It’s called, come on ride the train. Y’all, come on now, come on the train. Alright, someone said, I’m in the Lori, you’re in LaGuardia right now. I love it. Y’all, I am so excited to get into all things finish strong before we start. Halloween. Was just around the corner. We just had Halloween, y’all, so I want to know if you or your kids dressed up. What did you dress up for Halloween? Y’all, this was me, okay, this was me. I had to bring come around the train to the party. Okay? I was given one DMC, realness. Come on, somebody I want to see Elphaba and Glenda. Who else we dress up as? Food? My brother, Marcus, hip hop breakdancer. We were twins. Someone said, SpongeBob, Wednesday, Cheech and Chong. I cat Mike and Sully from Monsters Inc, my three year, I love it. I love it. We got two Wednesday atoms. My grandson was Dumb and Dumber. I’m dead. I’m dead. Well, y’all, I’m so excited. Welcome to finish strong. We are getting into it, simple strategies to maximize year and giving too legit to quit. Come on, Juan, I know that’s right, y’all. My name is Floyd Jones. I am based out of New York City. That’s why whenever I see NYC in the house, I’m like, come on, fam, we gonna do this live one day. Okay? I’m a speaker, coach, community builder, and I feel so happy I see so many of my friends in the house. Mayor. Started. You were just there for the NYC marathon. Come on, somebody. I love it. If you’re in my newsletter, fam, I just told a story about when I read a 10k okay, and you couldn’t tell me that 6.2 wasn’t the whole 26 okay? I’m also the founder of back black. We support and we fund black LED nonprofits around the country, and y’all, I have worked with grassroots organizations my entire career. I love working with organizations and helping us understand that our people are our power. If you believe people are your power, that’s why you’re on this call. I know you on this call because you believe your people are your power and your community is your catalyst. Okay, that’s my little tag made my little tagline. Okay, so y’all we today, we have a couple icebreakers that we’re gonna get into. We’re gonna dive into how to finish strong. I hope you got your notebooks. Okay? Because usually you get fun, Floyd, I have to give you a little fun, Floyd, to get the party started. Okay? Because y’all also so many people are like non profits. I’m like non profits. Are not boring. You’re boring. Okay, I’m not boring. You’re boring. I’m a fun speaker. Okay, we gotta have some fun. Come on, somebody, right? Yo, we have to have a little fun. We had a little icebreaker, and we’re gonna talk about how to finish strong. Okay, I don’t want you to burn out. I want you to burn up. Come on, somebody. I want you to get excited. I want you to get fired for your mission, for your community, for your people. Okay, then we’re gonna do some teaching. Okay, I have teacher, Floyd is in the house today. All right, so I hope you brought your notebook, about your pen, your pencil, okay, and y’all, I’m telling you, we got a lot of info to get into today, okay, so just make sure you’re ready. I have a lot of downloads. I have a lot of workbooks for you. Okay, so I’m not gonna just teach to you. I’m gonna actually give you the lessons that you can leave with. Okay, come on, somebody. All right. But you know what we just talked about, Halloween. Halloween is scary, right? You know what else is scary? The fact that Giving Tuesday is like tomorrow. Because I was like, how did we get here? I woke up and it was like, Okay, it’s the end of the year. And also, is it me or this time this feel like it gets keeps getting faster and faster. I don’t know about y’all, but some days I’m like, what, what in the whole wide world? Okay, question, how much money put in the chat? Do you feel like? How much money was donated in the US on Giving Tuesday in 2024 Kelly said, 3.1 billion. Megan said, no idea. Three I’m seeing a lot of three billions. Denise said, 6,000,002 and a half, 3.1 billion. I’m Canadian. That’s real, actually, Megan, I’m sorry this isn’t supposed to say us is supposed to be the whole wide world. Okay, don’t worry. So the whole wide world, okay, don’t worry. All my friends, is ain’t here? 592 1.3 billion. Okay? Y’all on Giving Tuesday last year globally, not just in the US, to all my Canadian fam, okay, thank you. $3.6 billion $3.6 billion Catherine said, 3 trillion. I know right. I would, I know that’s right. $3.6 billion okay, what percent of annual giving happens in December, what percent of annual giving? 33% 31% someone says 75% someone just said, You’re not going, we don’t raise no money until December. Over 40% I love it. 30% y’all, 30% of giving happens in December, and this year might even be a more because Giving Tuesday falls in December. So much is happening, so much growth is happening at this time of year. Aaron said, mine is 60% so much growth is happening at this time of year. And you know what? Y’all we talked about the growth, but do we talk about the grind? Come on, somebody, we talk about the growth, but we’re not talking about the grind that happens to get to the growth. 95% of nonprofit leaders surveyed last year said it burnout as a top concern. And you know what? Y’all one thing I realized is that Kristen said grime is a year long. I know that’s right. One thing I realized is, if 95% of people are talking about that, it’s a concern, chances are that they already over that line. I know, for me, burnout was one of the main reasons why I said I didn’t take a step back. Okay, because I was doing everything. I was a chief fundraiser. I was a program officer. I was the head volunteer. I was the head caller and rally like I was doing it all. And I know all of y’all got the marketing and communications and volunteer coordinator. We love a good and in a comma. We love a good and a comma. But I want to see commas in my bank account, not in my title. Come on somebody. I want to see I want to see zeros in the bank account. Ain’t that the right Come on somebody. Here’s the truth. Y’all, we’re stretched too thin. We’re stretched too thin. We are doing all of the things. Us without all of the time or all of the money. Now, I’m getting a lot of amens, but hold your breath for a second, because one thing I was reflecting on, okay, listen, I think I’ve had a lot of therapy and self work. Okay, I kept realizing that I was like, you know, a lot of us are talking about burnout, but how many of us are lighting our own candles? How many of us are lighting our own candles? Right? Like, listen, I’m all for a good candle. Okay? Some of us are like, but it’s Bath and Body Works. Okay? It’s Sweet Pea scented. Don’t, don’t come for me, but someone we walk with our own match. Okay? We say it’s a shea butter formula, right? And we’re burning ourselves out. We want to do all the things. And sometimes you have to ask yourself, what role is being stretched too thin serving in my life? What role is this doing also, guess what? Y’all I always we just talked about how much money flows at the end of the month. We talk about how much money flows at the end of the year, right? What does that tell you? People want to be a blessing. So are you blocking someone’s blessing by doing all the things, by trying to be the number one fundraiser, by trying to rally everything on your own? Are you blocking someone’s blessing intentionally or unintentionally.
And I love that you asked that question, Betty. Betty said, but if you don’t have the funds in your in your organization, who else will do it? Well, we going to talk about it. We going to talk about it. Okay, let me get into it, y’all, because, you know, I could go forever. Chad, okay, two years ago, I was invited to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, okay? Because I want to talk about some of these things. Okay? And this was me at the beginning. I’m not gonna lie. Okay? When they said, come to the Bill and Melinda Gates, I said, hey, hey, Bill, let me, let me hold a couple. Let me hold a bill. Bill, I got things to do. Okay? I know you got it. I know I owe you, right? This was me, and y’all, I was so excited. I was in the room with some of the best people, okay, some of the leaders of some major foundations, major tech companies, major platforms. We were all major gaps. We were all in the room together, okay? And I was so excited. But then we started talking about equity, and we started saying, Okay, well, how do we make the sector more equitable? How do we get the dollars through that, where the people need to go? And I kept shaking my head, because I was like, I feel like we keep having these same conversations over and over and over again, but we’re not making a change. And I realized something. I said, You know what? Y’all in this room, we know what the stats are, right, especially for black led organizations. Right? Black LED nonprofits only receive one to 2% of funding. We also know 53% of black LED nonprofits rely on only one to two major donors and so on and so forth. So I just said, Hold on, let me just, let me just stand up, y’all. I said, Excuse little old me. I was a little nervous. I was a little nervous. I took it now, I’ll talk about it now, but you couldn’t see back then. I was shaking in my boots, okay? And I said, y’all, we represent billions of dollars in this room. If we want to do something, we can make a change. We have to put our money where our mouth is. You see so many people in our community say they want to change or they’re not willing to make a change, right? And so everyone was like, Okay, well listen, y’all black philanthropy month is coming up right around the corner, two months, two months from now at the time. She knows a few months from now at the time. And I was like, we can do something. We can use our marketing dollars, we can use our voices. We can use our platforms to platform other people who don’t have a voice. Can we talk about partnership? Can we talk about partnership? A lot of us are worried, okay, maybe that organization will take that funding, or that organization will take that no, but we’re stronger together. And so everyone said, Okay, well, how do we get involved? So before you know it, I’m not corralling all these CEOs. I said, How did I get here? I woke up that morning and I said, How did I get here now? But all of a sudden, I’m in a room with all these CEOs. Everybody’s ready to make a difference. And I said, Okay, well, I’ll figure it out. Five weeks later, I created something called back black. And on August 1, y’all, I reached out to all those CEOs, and I said, y’all, you said you wanted to do something, and now it’s time to do something. We’re going to mobilize all of our people. We’re going to get all of our people together, and we’re going to raise actual dollars for black led organizations. In five weeks, we had 14,000 website views. We had over 1 million unique impressions. We were the first ranking on Google. If you type in back, black people see ACDC and me at this point, okay, and I realized that the stat that mattered the most. We helped raise over $1.3 million for over 700 black led organizations. And I realized, y’all, when you’re trying to do important work in this world, it’s not just about me. I couldn’t do this on my own. There is no way I can do this by myself. It’s not about me. It’s about we. You have to build for belonging. You have to and you know what Betty asked the question, if you have no funds, how you going to do it? Let me tell you something this last campaign, because black back black this we just did our third black feather Month campaign this last August, believe it or not, the first campaign we did, and the second campaign we did Guess how much our budget was, zero, whole dollars. Zero whole dollars. I was working full time, actually, when I did our first two campaigns. So how we going? So, so you don’t need a budget, I always say the size of your belief has nothing to do with the size of your budget. The size of your budget has nothing to do with the size of your belief. What you need is to plant that seed. What you need is to plant that seed. What you need to do is start catalyzing other people. You have to build for belonging. You have to go from followers to fundraisers. Because guess what? Y’all, I say this all the time. You’re not just working for a donation. Look at this economy outside. We got SNAP benefits being cut. We got people can’t pay their rent. We got people stressed out and struggling. The economy is doing the Dougie. Okay, don’t even ask me about no eggs. Now, don’t even ask me about no eggs. Okay, if it’s just about a donation, guess what’s gonna go when the economy goes bad, that donation is gonna go. You’re not building for more donors. You’re building for believers, because believers are gonna take your organization to its breakthrough. Come on, somebody, someone said, how do we build for belonging. We about to get into it. And y’all, I’m about to give you a lot of details today, so make sure you use that Q A, okay, make sure you use that Q A, so I can, I can see it at the end. All right. All right. I start all of my sessions with these first two things, because I believe it’s so important. I’m going to go through them very, very quickly, because we have even more tips today. If you’ve been to any of my webinars, I have so many new content in this session today, okay, because I have seen a thing of two, all right, but the first two things I always talked about, because it’s so incredibly important, is your intention. Everything starts with intention. I always say you have to inspect what you expect. So if you’re asking for $50,000 Are you in a place to receive that? I’m gonna let that linger right there. Okay, intention. You have to confirm why you are doing something. Why before? What? Why before? What? I stood up and I had no idea that back Black was going to come from this conversation. I remember this day crystal clear like it was yesterday. All I did was stand up and to pick up a microphone because I saw a problem and I knew we could change it. I said, You know what? Let me just excuse me. And sometimes that’s another thing I’m gonna say a lot of people. I get a lot of emails all of the time from people who say, but I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to raise this money. You don’t need to believe that you can do something before you begin. Come on, somebody. You don’t have to you don’t have to believe that you can do something before you begin. Proof after often comes after you get started. Proof comes from when you practice success. Comes from after when you start. Come on, somebody. You have to just get started. You have to use your voice. You have to be a change maker, to seek change. Come on somebody, if you want me saying, money rings, come on somebody. Put it in the, in the, in the light. Okay, you gotta get started. So you set an intention, and then you set your goal. Here are my five seeds of goal setting. I gotta keep going through it because y’all, we got things to cover. It has to be clear. It has to be compelling. It has to be concise. You have to be rooted in context, and it has to gather community. Let me say it again. It has to be clear, no more one day in the future. Listen, I have a dream, and I get it, and it all starts with the dream. Come on, somebody Amen. But when you’re asking people to rally behind you got to give them a pathway to get there. I always say you are a bridge. You’re a bridge between where your people are and the change that they want to see in the world. You’re a bridge between where your people are and the impact that they want to have in the world. You are that bridge. And what does a bridge. To do it gets people from point A to point B. So it has to be clear. And y’all clear doesn’t just mean $50,000 it means $50,000 to help us do A, B, C, and D and E, is what the reality is going to be when we accomplish that. Compelling especially right now, you see so many things that’s fighting for your attention, your content, your goals, your campaigns, has to be compelling. It has to be concise and time bound. I need to get this thing done by XYZ day, because people need the context, and it needs to be concise, and it has to be rooted in community. Who is going with you?
If you’re asking yourself, okay, I’m gonna bring this matrix up a lot. It’s called the Eisenhower matrix. And you might be asking yourself, what do I focus on? This is for all the people who try to do 85 million things, I still do this today. I sit with board members, I sit with clients, I sit with my operations staff. I literally sit here, and we do the same thing all of the time, where, where does it fit within our goals? Urgency versus importance? Your organization is important. It is, but is it? Is this campaign urgent? A lot of us, people take action here in the do first category. This is where people are taking action in the do first category. But a lot of us are like, we asked one time, and we’re like, well, maybe help us get this 10k and then, amen, people are going to say, I’m not good. Where does your goals fit? Do they fit in here? Let me keep going. All right, this is where we’re going to put a majority of our time. Okay? On selecting your strategy. I This is a hill I will die on. Okay, you need a Saturday. Y’all. I believe in hope 100% but hope is not a strategy. Hoping that you’re going to reach your goal is not a strategy, and we need more than hope right now, because there are so many people and so many forces and so many institutions set up against us. How many organizations have lost funding out of nowhere this year, how many organizations are closing their doors out of nowhere this year, set up against us, but now is a time that we put our strategy into place, right? All right. I’m breaking your strategy into three parts. Get your pens and pencils ready. First is selecting your segment. I talk about this all the time. It all starts with segmentation. Segmentation. All right, you need it can’t be one size fits all. You need one clear call to action for your segments. Someone’s gonna ask, well, what’s a segment? Let’s break it down when you’re going into your database, when you’re going into your let’s see, I think I already see a couple of Q and A’s, hold on. Okay, I’m gonna get these all right segmentation. I literally will sit down with an organization and I will break it down as I will go into your CRM, into your donor database, and say, Listen, here are some things that you should choose from. One is recency. Maybe you’re going to look at how long have donors been giving. So that means maybe you go, you’re going to want to launch a campaign specifically for people who have been legacy donors, people who have given for the last three years. Maybe it’s frequency. You’re going to ask, okay, maybe we want to segment our donors, but how often donors are giving, and if you have questions, keep them in the Q and A. I see them coming through, fam, I see you putting the questions in here. Okay, so how often do donors give? Maybe you’re doing a campaign for monthly givers only. I just had a campaign. I just worked with an organization that went from zero monthly givers to over 33 monthly givers in one week. This, this is not fake news. Go to back black. Literally go to our back black. Social media. Okay, go to back black social media. And you’re going to see last week, we literally gave him a $5,000 grant. Thank you, grapevine. They were just our thank you to another partner who was a sponsor for that. Sponsor for that, but we went from zero to 33 monthly donors in a week. Why? Because we specifically focused on a monthly giving campaign. This is not fake news. Y’all. I don’t just say stats and exam. I give you examples that I worked on. I work with them for literally five weeks, and now that five weeks is turning to over $10,000 that they were able to, that they’re able to get, slowly but surely. Okay, next me. Benefit. How are donors giving? So maybe you want to build your campaign off of social media followers. Somebody emailed me today, and they were like, I want to we specifically focus on social media giving. And I said, Amen. And if you’re doing a campaign specifically focused on social media givers, that means you need to raise money specifically on social media. What does that mean? It means you’re updating your people on social media. You’re telling them how close you are to your goal over time, you’re you’re using social media based tools. So if your platform allows you to raise money directly on social media, you do that, you embed it on the social media platform of your of your choice, right? But you can’t just do everything. So many people I see spray and pray, child, they just, they just spray and pray. They said, there’s some, some won’t come back, some gonna come back. They just post a link, and they say, We hope it don’t work like that. Hope is not a strategy, right? So maybe, how are donors giving social media, email, text, digital campaign and check? Can y’all believe sidebar, I live in New York City, and I just move into my new apartment. And they were like, You got to pay your rent with check. And I was like, I can’t live here. Like, what? Huh? But anyway, yes, people still want a check. They want the paper child. They still want to write my check, but it’s okay. We’ll accept it all. We’ll accept it all, okay, but you have to meet your donors where they’re at next amount. How much are people giving? Right? Andrea said, We’ll take your chat. I know that’s right amount. How much are donors giving? So maybe you want to craft a campaign specifically on low, quote, unquote, low donors, middle donors, high donors. Now I don’t like a classification, because it’s all context, right, but you decide what that means. So maybe you want to do it’s 2026 give me $26 like, whatever, whatever, as long as it’s rooted in those 5c that we talked about before all of these things have to connect. Okay, a mouth next reason. Why are donors giving? Why are donors giving? Right? Maybe they’re given because you gave them a fundraiser prompt or a media prompt. Maybe this one thing that we do with back black, I just listen, y’all, I’m an open book. Ask me any question. One thing that we specifically do is we fund storytelling campaigns. I’m gonna talk about it in a second. We actually fund storytelling campaigns. So we’ll send a camera crew, we’ll send a creator, we’ll send all this different stuff to a nonprofit and get their story, and then help raise money on their behalf, and then they can we also give them all the content for free. So once it’s done, they can take that video and use it forever and ever. Amen, we just saw that our videos are actually compelling people on social media to go and make a different a donation to those nonprofits. So now they’re like, Okay, great. Storytelling is a method that we’re going to use. We’re going to lean in on that. But you have to know, right? You have to know, why is this donor giving next interest? What topics are donors most interested in? So maybe it’s a specific program, a campaign or initiative or type what type of donor is it? Fundraiser? A corporate a corporate donor, a recurring donor, all of these different things. I just listed 1234, I listened seven different things. All of those different things are a different campaign that you can do right when you’re making your goals, you now base your goals off of your segments that you are doing. So for example, I want to get four major donors to give $5,000 each at 20k That’s a segment off of donor amount. I want 15 past fundraisers to do $1,000 each. That’s Member Type. I want 50 past scholarship people to give $200 each. That’s $10,000 that’s member interest. I want 100 past one time donors to get $50 each. That’s $5,000 that’s donor frequency. You set your goal on your segment now, y’all, Imma hold your hand. When I say this, Imma hold your hand. Let me hold your hand. And that’s what they say, right? Pick one if you are just getting started. Pick one if you are just getting started, please. What does Sabrina carpenter say? Please, please, please, please. Pick one. Don’t do too much. What are we talking about? At the beginning, we are burnt out. We’re burnt out. No, right? So don’t add fuel to the fire by saying I’m gonna get my social I’m gonna do a tick tock dance, I’m gonna get my last notice. I’m gonna get
pick one. So I want to see some of you already did it. Alumni, thank you. Malia. Live. Months. Live. Months means last year, but unfortunately, not this year. Amen, come on. Malia, Kristen said, I’m gonna do lapse donors. Teresa, I’m gonna do laps. Frequency. I love it, I love it. I love it. I love it. What’s medium laps? Come on, Sherry, I don’t know what that is. Tell me that. Tell me what that is. I start with majors and come on. Lori, I start with major donors and use it as a match. I love that. Kristen said, side months, some some year, but unfortunately, not this year. That’s what side button and live button is between saw and Okay, okay, like that. I love it. Okay, yeah, see, I love it. Y’all. This is what the chat is about. Okay, we got to help each other. Okay, that was a good idea. Lori. Lori said, I’m going to work with major donors, use it as a match to get some smaller donors. Okay, how do you pick a segment? Because some of y’all sitting here in the chat, like, I know what you’re talking about, but you’re stressing me out. How do you pick a segment? How do you pick a segment? Look right here. So I just, instead of, instead of urgency and importance. I just switched it out to money and energy. This is also what I do when I’m literally when I am building my revenue goals for my organization. And I’m gonna give you all the slides of this. I don’t think DP does, but I’m gonna give you all the slides. This is literally how I do my revenue planning for my business, for my nonprofit, I sit down and I literally do this major I write down all the potential revenue streams, and I say, money versus energy. If it brings me a lot of money and energy, baby, this is how we do it. Come on. Now, this why we do it, if it gives you money and energy, period, this is what you do. If it’s if it’s giving you energy but not a lot of money, okay, we gonna do that one next. If it gives you a lot of money but it drains your energy. Okay? Who else who we going to contract out? Who are my team going to take care of this? And if it doesn’t give you money or energy, baby, why? Why? Some of y’all are trying to do individual donors, peer to peer, corporate y’all, I have something called the $100,000 rule. And I think some of y’all, I love it. Kristen said, I literally have something called the $100,000 rule. Y’all, I give you all my tips and tricks. Okay, $100,000 rule, I don’t go to another revenue stream unless that first revenue stream is bringing me at least $100,000 now, I know it’s controversial. I know some of y’all gonna be like, Huh? And it’s okay. You can do 50,000 you could do whatever it is, but my personal rule is we don’t jump to another revenue stream until this stream is bringing us at least $100,000 because guess what? I know what my strengths are. I know who I am. I actually the vision. Okay, I will I’m gonna get us started, and when I get to 100,000 at least, I can hire somebody, even if they’re part time, to take it to the next level. But I can’t, and I won’t do everything, because guess what? Boy has to go on vacation. I gotta sleep, okay? And you do too. So that’s my own personal thing that didn’t, I didn’t put that in didn’t put that in the slides. But come on now, $100,000 okay, all right. You want the slides. Take a take a little I got QR codes on QR codes. I also made a cute little Floyd jones.co/donorperfect, I came ready, y’all, I put all of the slides, all the downloads, all the workbooks, everything you possibly could need is on this QR code and at that and at that site. Don’t say it and do nothing for y’all, okay, all right, let me keep going, because Charlie got we got time. All right, step one. What was step one, our part one, sorry. Part one was select your segment. Part two is nurture that segment. So once you choose that one, come on, somebody. Once you choose that one, especially if you’re just getting started, then you nurture them. And nurture them. Doesn’t mean just get a higher gift. Dale Ann said, I need the QR code. It’s that go up. Floyd jones.co, backslash, DonorPerfect. I put it all there. Think, see, come on Kristen. Kristen’s for the people. Come on Kristen. All right, let’s keep going. It’s not about a higher gift. It. It’s about helping that segment become a higher version of themselves. It’s not about a higher gift. It’s about helping your people become a higher version of themselves. I know that’s right. Kristen, all right. How do you do this? So let’s example. Let’s say you’re choosing social media people, right? And you’re like, I want to, I want to nurture my list of social media donors. You got to take me to the 4c. Okay. Level one is catalyst. Level two is communicate. Level three is convert, and level four is catapult. All right, oh my gosh. Y’all I’m giving, I’m about to give you as examples from my most recent BPM campaign. I never, we haven’t really shared this, so, amen. Here you go. I’m excited. So level one, you have to share the spark, especially if you’re trying to reach them on a social media or something, right? But how are you going to capture the attention of that segment? How are you going to capture the attention of that segment? Whether it’s an event, experience, social media, video, a digital ad, whatever you do, you have to be asking yourself, How am I going to stay front front row center for these people? How am I going to stay front row center for these people? So I have something called our catalyst moments. This is literally my Google Analytics account. Like I said, I’m an open book, so ask me literally any question. This is my Google Analytics account. So I have, we have 41,000 active users to our website throughout August. Thank you, Marcus, I see it. We had 41,000 active and new users to our website in the month of August, and I know what my catalyst moments were. They were when we announced total funding, when we partner with a company called the gathering spot in Atlanta. That was a catalyst moment. I was featured on NBC. Come on, somebody okay, they had me on the whole news, right? We partnered with creators. We actually partnered with creators. Some of our most viral moments did not happen from our own account. They happen from the creators that we partnered with. And all of those moments drew my target audience to my website. This is why I say hope is not a strategy. Allow yourself to be amazed by the outcomes, but you can control the inputs. You can’t always control the outputs, but you can’t control the inputs. Come on somebody, all right, once you share the spark, that’s catalyst. Share the spark, then you have to communicate. And communicate is share the story. So once you get their attention, how are you going to keep their attention? How are you going to nurture that audience? Whether it’s through email, social, digital or other forms of engagement, right? This is our email analytics. Okay, this is actually a little bit higher, but we had about a 50% email open rate. Some of y’all gonna look at this, oh Lord, but you gotta have, y’all have 42 unsubscribes, and y’all gonna get stressed out, and you’re gonna say, Oh my God, not 42 y’all, we had almost 1800 brand new subscribers from our August campaign. Almost 1800 I know Jose. Y’all my personal anyway. I’m gonna tell you that later, but anyway, so don’t worry about the people who are not your people. Some of y’all are worried about donor fatigue. You’re worried about people running away. You’re worried. Oh, these are not don’t worry about that. 42 focus on the 1800 who are for you. And this is what is it about? What it’s about finding your people and your guess, what does it cost extra? Absolutely not. Karen, y’all, we paid zero whole dollars. I see you zero whole dollars for we didn’t pay creators, they volunteer. We didn’t pay, um, we didn’t pay any ads. This is all organic traffic, MailChimp Jose, we also told the story. Remember what I told you about us going out and collecting content. We literally went to organizations and got organic content. I know Terry, it’s a little expensive, but it’s, you know, we gonna figure that out. It’s a little expensive, not gonna lie, but we do what we gotta do. But we told the story. We actually got real, and we told the story over and over and over again to keep people in Okay. Okay, once you share the spark, then you share the story, then you share the opportunity,
then you share the opportunity. Thank you. Carolina. We paid a lot for it. Amen. So what do I mean by share the opportunity? So many of us, we reach out and we’re like, donate. And they were like, I just heard about you. You don’t even know who I am. Like, huh? I just donated a lot of money, like, almost, almost $1,000 to an organization. But I had been with that organization, watching that organization for months. I have been watching them for months, and then I decided, I said, You know what? I’m ready. On average, it’s going to take somebody seven to eight times before they take an action. So you have to keep being in front of them, and you have to keep giving them opportunities to get involved. So donate might not be the first option. Maybe it’s share a social media post or come to an event or virtually volunteer. Then they’ll donate, then they can become a peer to peer fundraiser. Then they can join your board. You don’t know how many people DM me every day. They’re like, can you join my board? I’m like, do you know my last name? Lord, if I could, I would. Y’all There are levels to it, and that’s why I say don’t do too much. That’s why I say, pick one segment and go deep. Okay, after you share the spark, then you share the story, then you share the opportunity, then you got to share the baton. And this is for time. This is the time for your members to take the lead. This is when they are opening up doors for you. This is when they are becoming ambassadors for you, right? And the bonus is CRM. You got to track it somewhere, and y’all the spreadsheet or the post it note on the side of your computer. Don’t count. The Notes app on your phone. Don’t count. You need to put it in a CRM. Thank you. DonorPerfect. Okay, put it somewhere where you can track this. Last August, like I mentioned, we got 41,000 website views, over 3 million impressions. We work with and targeted over 1.8 verified nonprofits, and we mobilize over 6000 individual donors. All right, after you pick your segment, then you nurture your segment, then you sequence that segment, which means make a timeline. So this is the actual timeline that I use. Okay, get ready. Get your pens and pencils out. October. Y’all are like, we’re in November, I know, but child, you can just, you can truncate a little bit if you need to, okay, this is when you’re doing your fall events. You announce your your end of your campaign. Okay? For those of people who are doing events, or you have other opportunities, happy hours and whatnot, this is an opportunity to bring your people together and start spreading the word, okay, and recruiting ambassadors, because remember, you can’t go by yourself. You got to go together, right? This is the time. Then I actually sent a save the date, November 1 was only a few days ago. So you still got time. I still do this. I still send a save the date. People like reminders. Literally, when we’re when we’re doing, like, a BPM campaign, we’re like, 60 days until August, people go up. They love it. People like reminders. Why? Because they like being a part of something. They don’t want to miss out. FOMO is real. So I send a save the date, then all throughout this month, all throughout this month. This is why I told y’all pick one segment. If there’s anything you leave this this session from is pick a segment. Please take a second, because all this month, you got four whole weeks, four whole weeks. Thank you, Christina, I wouldn’t have gotten on this webinar without two reminders. See, y’all, I’m not making this stuff up. Okay, you have four weeks to nurture your audience. You have four weeks to tell your story. You have four weeks to remind people why they believe in you in the first place. You have four weeks to let people know that they are about more than their money. You have four weeks to tell people about the dream and not just about the donation. You have four weeks to make a change. And my question to you, what are you going to do with these next four weeks? What are you going to do? Are you going to look at the the calendar, and the calendar going to look at you? Are you going to look at that fundraising goal and the fundraising goal going to look at you? And y’all don’t even just think about giving Tuesday. Think about how much money is donated on the last. Three days of the year alone. So say you don’t even want to do a Giving Tuesday campaign. That means you have almost eight weeks. What are you going to do with it? What are you going to do? And don’t, don’t think about, I don’t have the most elaborate campaign. I don’t have all the just get started. Just get started. Okay, next December 2 is giving Tuesday a major opportunity to bring in new donors, and then y’all, you better send those thank you messages, and I put a little star. I put a little star next to the key moments, because baby, if those thank you messages, and I’m not just talking about the auto message that goes out, you better, Juan, we might have to call you up if we don’t plan. Then we if you don’t fail, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Come on, somebody. I know that’s right. Juan, start now. You can do it. You can make a change. This year doesn’t have to be like last year. Thank you. Kenzie, I call every person. Guys. Guess what? This is also an opportunity to get your volunteers involved, or your program participants involved. They can call donors too. It doesn’t have to all be on you, right. All right. Here we go again. Because Don’t say I didn’t do nothing. All the slides. My the timeline. I co design a timeline with DonorPerfect. Okay, the workbook, the slides, everything child is all on this page all here.
Okay, it’s all on this page. Okay, scan the QR code. Go to the link that they just dropped. It’s all there. Okay, don’t say it and do nothing. Chad training and a show. You know, that’s right, it’s all here. Okay, so take advantage of it. Get the slides, get all the things. Okay, because we’re going fast, all right. Lastly, before we get into Q and A, oh, my God, we did it because I went, Oh, I see a lot of questions here. Share your story. What did I say the beginning if I would have known that this was going to turn to this, I would have said, Are you lying? I don’t believe it, but it starts with your story. It starts with getting out there and sharing your voice. It starts without getting out there and saying yes. You have to say, yes, y’all. You don’t know how many times I get messages from people in my LinkedIn, in my DMs, or I get an email of someone saying, Does this one message help me make this change? Because I said, Yes, you have no idea the amount of fear. This is a sidebar, but I had so much fear before I left my job a year and a half ago, but I felt something stirring within me to say, take a step. You are at your job right now. You are in your organization right now. You are in your in your place of work right now. You are in your community right now, because people told you you felt something deeper than you that said Say yes, say yes. And guess what? Communities change when you say yes, lives change when you say yes, movements change when you say yes, hearts change when you say yes. So my question is, are you gonna say yes? This Giving Tuesday, and I’m not just asking about saying making a fundraiser. I want to see yes in the chat. Thank you. Crystal says yes. Robin says yes. Peter says yes. Jenny said, Hell yes. I love that. Come on, somebody, if you want to say yes, I want to see in the chat, are you going to say yes? Yes to yourself, yes to your dreams, yes to your community, yes to your mission, yes to your impact, say yes. Come on, somebody, now is the time you’re if there’s ever a time to say yes, it is right now, it is right now, okay, but you’re going to tell a story that sticks, so how are you going to say yes and keep that yes going and flowing? Obviously, you gotta capture this. You gotta capture people’s attention. We talked about this before. You gotta start with The Spark. But then y’all point people to one CTA. One CTA. CTA means call to action. Call to Action. You gotta let people know, what do you want them to do? Where do you want them to go? Where do you want them to go? I see so many people who are like, can you get involved? And you’re like, okay, yeah, I want to get involved. And it’s like, okay, donate, and then go to my website and volunteer and sign my yearbook and give me your blood to. Yeah, we don’t need all that. Don’t do too much. Don’t do too much. Don’t do too much. I see you, Kristen, send people to one place, ask them to do and this is why I say one segment. One segment. You understand me and my operations manager, we sit down every week. I send emails right if you’re on my general mailing list, you’re going to get my weekly email, and we’re going to keep key and laugh. But I send specific messages based off of specific things you click on, right for back black. When we have to go to volunteer, we see what they’re clicking on, and we say, Hey, I noticed that you click the volunteer button. Here are the different ways that you can volunteer. Here are all the different ways that you can volunteer. Terry said, I scan the QR code and put it’s gonna come. It’s gonna come. Terry, and if not, y’all can email me or DM me, but it should come. We tested it. Chad, all right, let me keep going so I can get to your Q A consistency. Oh, my God, it went to my junk. Oh no, I hate that for me. Yes, check your spam and promotions. Oh Lord, I hate that for me. Yes, check your spam and move me to the real inbox. Oh, Lord, I hate spam. We don’t. We don’t love that. Yeah, check your junk. Check your spam. It’s all gonna be in there. And move me to the approved Lord, don’t keep me in the junk anyway. Let me keep going. But consistency. Make sure you’re reaching out consistently. How often y’all sometimes were like, oh, donor fatigue, I don’t want to email my people too much. Do you think Amazon and them care if they emailing you too much? Do you think Nike said, Oh, hold on, let me not. Let me not send them. Just do it. What if they said, just don’t. What if they thank you, or any political campaign I love for my Virginia folks, Abigail, who does one, y’all, I have been getting an email from Abigail for the last 18 months. Okay? Consistency, consistency, and she wanna her peep that. Okay? Y’all, let me keep going so I can get to these questions. Want the slides I already told you, scan the QR code, although some people are telling me I went to the junk and I hate that for me, so move me to the regular okay. And also, I am offering 10 spots, 10 end of year session, only 10 because I got to go on vacation. Y’all, I don’t like to be stressed. Okay, I’m only doing 10 sessions. Okay, so if you want to sit down and you want me to walk through your end of your campaign and help you build your segmentation strategy, go to my website. If you, if you scan the QR code, we’ll, we’re gonna follow up with you, but hopefully you make it to the in the regular inbox. Lord, I hate that for me. Okay, um, but we’ll also do this. Okay, all right, let me go through some of these questions. Also, was that good? Was this help? Did this help anybody? Y’all did we help anybody here today? I hope so. I really hope so before we get in here, then we’re helping everybody. Okay. Claire said yes. Richard said, Yes, I love that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, all right, let’s keep it going. Question. All right, I work for a small literary organization. This is from Bruce. I work for a small literary organization, and I have planned six to eight newsletters for our year end appeal. Okay, it starts before Thanksgiving. Start earlier, please, Bruce, start before Thanksgiving. You got four weeks. Please. Bruce, each of the newsletters are actually about different projects. We’re working on new website, new issue, each newsletter includes a call to action. Make a donation or subscribe. Give them one. CTA, how can I get our board to get these newsletters to their networks? They did not use the DonorPerfect, peer to peer crowdfunding pages. Okay, okay. So couple things. One. CTA, don’t say donate, subscribe, sign my yearbook, remember, keep it simple. Give us one main thing, your but your your board is a segment. Believe it or not, your board is their own segment. So your board, you have to work with your board differently than your book. What you’re working with, your entire mailing list, I would get your board, give your board a toolkit. And instead of saying, share this, say, Hey, here’s exactly what I need you to do. Here is simple copy that you can use, right. Here’s sample graphics that you can use, literally make it so they can copy and paste. Make it so they can copy and paste. Okay? Because right now, you got a lot going on, in my opinion, on here. Make it so easy for them that all they can do is, yep, make a toolkit. Thank you, Daisy. Um, alright. I hope I answered your question. Many of our local nonprofits have moved Giving Tuesday earlier. How do you do that? I don’t know, including us. Since it’s so close to end year giving push, I don’t know what that means. Many of our local nonprofits have moved Giving Tuesday earlier, including us. So did you like make a new Giving Tuesday? This is from anonymous attendee. Since it’s so close to end year giving push, I
don’t know that means. But what I would say is, yes, end of year and giving Tuesday, just make it one campaign. Let Giving Tuesday be a highlight for your whole end of your campaign. Don’t make them two separate things. Okay? I would say, bring them all together under one banner, but Giving Tuesday is the day that you’re gonna put the fire on the hose. Okay. Um, okay. Board wants us to reach out everyone sing every single I think I answered that. Do you segment by ethnicity, gender age? Interesting. Terry asked, Do you segment by ethnicity, gender age, if it matters to your organization. So, for example, my mom, my mom is not watching this, but shout out to my mom. She is in a alumni group. My family’s from Sierra Leone, West Africa, fun fact. And so her college alumni group, they send money back to build schools or No, I think it’s high school. They send money back to continue funding the High School in Sierra Leone. And I have been like telling them little tips and tricks y’all. Last year they raised over $100,000 these are not everyday. These are just these are not fundraisers. These are all volunteers. Okay? All volunteers raised over $100,000 and what they did was they have a Women’s Day event where they get all the women together and they give. So that’s an example where segmenting by you know, how you identify goes a long way. I know. Shout out to mama Jones. I know that’s right, right? So it really depends on your people. Okay, okay, so many questions, what if you are doing Giving Tuesday to create a donor base? What is the strategy if you’re starting from zero? I love this question. All right, Lauren, here we gonna go. If you are starting a donor base from scratch, and you’re like, I don’t know what to do if you’ve never been to one of my webinars. When I got started, one of my first Giving Tuesday came my first actually giving Tuesday campaign. I worked for a sports based nonprofit. Okay, we needed to get we didn’t have a donor base. We were literally getting started. I wanted to raise $5,000 I had no idea if we could even raise $500 okay? Because we had no donor list. We had none of those things. Our mission was to provide free sports for kids. Here’s what I did on Giving Tuesday, I said, I told the volunteers, I told parents, I told program partners, if you even knew how to say the word sport, I said, make your profile picture, a picture of you as a child playing a sport. Okay? Because we were providing free sports for kids. Are you tracking with me? So everybody we lit up social media. Okay? People started sharing. They commenting. I remember when I played a sport. My child used to play a sport. Oh, my God, I love lacrosse. It was, it was all over the place. We didn’t raise no $5,000 we ended up raising over $30,000 from that campaign. So remember four C’s. It starts with The Spark. You don’t have to have a donor base. Get everyone around you who believes in your mission to take an action with you. To take an action with you, okay? And if they take that action with you. You can bring more people in, and then you start going from there, and you go deeper from there. Does that help? I hope so. But it starts with The Spark. All right. Lori, feel free to cut me off anytime, because I know we are coming up on time.
Yep, we are. I feel like people already filtering out at this point. They’re running off to meetings and whatnot. So I you got through enough questions. I think that we’re, we’re pretty good.
Okay, well, y’all, you have all my codes. You have me on social media, follow me LinkedIn. Me do all the things, and I will respond to as many as I can, y’all, if nobody told you anything before, I believe in you. I love you. I am saying yes for you, and I hope you are saying yes to yourself. Okay? Because when you say yes, watch how the world says yes with you. Thank you. Y’all bless you, people.
You. I think I am not the only person here that is thinking that no matter how many times I see you present, you never disappoint. Thank you,
Lori, thank you for having me. Thank you DonorPerfect crew, and thank you to each and every one of you. Yep.
Thank you all for attending this afternoon, and we hope to see you in some future sessions. Thank you so much. Floyd, bye.