43 MINS
How to Remodel Your Prospect Marketing Strategy Using AI
DonorPerfect Community Conference session with speaker Sarah TeDesco with DonorSearch
Join us to learn: The changing landscape of major gift fundraising, the crucial factors that predict major gift donors, how emerging technologies like AI and machine learning are reshaping fundraising strategies, and actionable tips for leveraging these AI tools to optimize efforts.
Categories: DPCC
How to Remodel Your Prospect Marketing Strategy Using AI Transcript
Print TranscriptWe’re coming in on the homestretch here for the DonorPerfect conference in 2023. And Darryl Moser, I am the product manager of partnerships here at DonorPerfect. And with me here today is Sarah Tedesco. She is one of our favorite partners working for DonorSearch. And DonorSearch is a Read More
We’re coming in on the homestretch here for the DonorPerfect conference in 2023. And Darryl Moser, I am the product manager of partnerships here at DonorPerfect. And with me here today is Sarah Tedesco. She is one of our favorite partners working for DonorSearch. And DonorSearch is a company that actually provides wealth information for major gift programs, as well as a host of other products. And today Sarah is going to be talking a little bit about how major gift fundraising has evolved. So she serves as the Executive Vice President and co owner of DonorSearch a family owned and operated company serving over 10,000 nonprofit unity users. She helps direct operations client success and marketing. For the fast past 15 or more years, Sara has enjoyed working with organizations to create strategic plans, implement new products and systems and collaborate with clients and partners on new initiatives. Prior to working in DonorSearch, Sara worked as a prospect researcher for the Baltimore community foundation. She’s a graduate of the University of Maryland with a BA in English and psychology, and currently a graduate student working on her MBA at Smith School of Business. She enjoys time outside and lives on a lake with her husband and Labradoodle. Eliza, I pronounced that right. With that, Sarah, I will turn it over to you. And then we’ll get back together again at the end. And we’ll do some q&a with it with the folks here.
That sounds wonderful. Thank you so much, Darrell. And thanks so much for everyone joining today. I’m very excited to be here. And just like Darrell said, I love working with nonprofits for the past 15 years. It’s one of my favorite parts of my job. Because it’s people like you that are going to make the world a better place. So feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or email me or, you know, say hi to me at a conference next time. So today, we’re here to talk about how our industry has changed, as well as the shape of philanthropy and fundraising, we’ll discuss the emerging technologies such as AI and machine learning and how it impacts us and how we do our jobs. The nonprofit space has really seen a lot of adjustments, I would say probably in the past couple of years since COVID. And I’d love to hear your feedback and thoughts as we talk about these things and how we can use these new technologies to do our job better. So a quick look at the agenda today. First, I’m going to do just a little bit more of an overview of DonorSearch, a quick introduction, if you’re not familiar with who we are, if you are a current client, thanks so much for joining. And if you are looking you’re interested, we hope that you will partner with us. We are also going to talk about why major gifts are so important and why they are critical, especially during the times now and then look at some of the markers of philanthropy. So even if you’re not using AI or you’re not using some of these new technologies, what can you do to better identify those folks that can and will make a difference if they’re in your organization. And then finally, we’ll talk about how to maximize AI and how we have included that inside of the tools and what that really means for you. And then finally, just sort of wrap up with some questions and thoughts that you have, or that you may have during the presentation. So that’s a quick intro to DonorSearch. So just like Darrell said, We are family owned, I’ve known the CEO for about 37 years of time now that Tim and I actually at the AFP conference. Hopefully you were able to join us for the happy hour in New Orleans. It was beautiful. It was wonderful to be with the DonorPerfect folks. And we are a proud partner of DonorPerfect for the past eight years. They’ve do some really amazing and innovative things. So just like this conference, really glad to to be here with them. We have about 75 employees and 14 different states. And we were established in 2007. So we’ve actually seen two economic challenges within the US in those time periods. And each year we learned something new and different about how we can improve the fundraising space for nonprofits. Currently, we serve over 10,000 active clients and we have one of the best technology stacks in the industry, where we’re processing millions and millions of records for nonprofits. Just like Darrell said, we provide screening solutions, custom AI solutions, predictive analytics, relationship mapping tools, one by one lookups. And of course, a seamless integration with donor proof. so that way you can take your nonprofit fundraising to the next level. And another organization that we’re part of as well as DonorPerfect is the giving Institute. This is something that if you’re not familiar with is basically the industry standard for understanding charitable giving in our space, and how those trends and changes have affected fundraising. So we’re actually going to talk a little bit about some of those findings and how that influences the major gifts work as well as the technology that we’re using today. And then briefly, just to understand, you know, our values, our corporate values, were focused on excellence and quality. And without excellence and quality, you have to have innovation, right? If innovation is going to bring you to that level of standard. Collaboration is also key in developing these really innovative and excellent solutions that we’re providing to this space. And then when we look at our partners, and we look at our clients, and we look at the employees that we have a DonorSearch integrity is key to that. And with all of those different values, we achieve growth, as well as our clients and partners. And our debt, we are dedicated to providing this premier donor intelligence to organizations. So not only do they have financial capacity that strengthened but we also see sustainability. Because again, without nonprofits, we need to have a world in a better place. And this is just a quick look at some of the organizations that we work with. So organizations of all levels, all different types of nonprofits, that are using the DonorSearch tool in order to achieve that fundraising excellence. So before we get into the meat of the presentation, I wanted to kind of start with this, you know, mind frame of, you know, why do we do the work that we do, right? Why is this so important? Why are we here today, connecting with other wonderful, you know, thought leaders and nonprofit organizations? What we do, we’re here, right? We’re doing this because we want to change how the world is right, we can either choose to be affected by the world, or we can choose to affect the world. And that’s really what this is about, you know, we are changemakers, we are people that are thought leaders, we’re here to do better and not just sort of be blown with the wind, right? We want to take control of our destiny. So with that in mind, why major gifts. So since 2020, we’ve seen some things we never thought we would, and organizations have had to work harder than ever before to survive new environments and changes. We’ve seen organizations pivot and strengthen their infrastructure. And we’ve seen some organizations standstill and struggled to meet their goals. Maybe you’re somewhere in between there. But as a whole, we’ve all had to figure out how we can change not only to survive, but to thrive. And I know, so many of us have heard that right? We’ve heard it’s not only about survival, it’s about thriving, and we’ve heard the word pivot, and we’ve heard about, you know, how can we overcome these really great challenges. But that really is the truth of it. It’s not really a cliche anymore, right? That’s really what it’s all about. So, you know, thinking about all of these challenges, and all of these big questions, we come to this realization that we need to be more effective with the means that we have in the resources that we have. So this is where we think about major gifts, right? major gifts are the largest donations and organization receives it’s, you know, each major gift is going to look different for each nonprofit. So you may be in an organization where your nonprofit is just starting and $200 $500 is what you would consider a major gift. Or maybe you are in a large university or a healthcare organization or membership organization where major gifts really start at that $50,000 level or $100,000 level. When we think about major gifts, on an average, it’s typically around $5,000. That’s what we kind of see as that industry standard. However, the importance of this right is we want to make sure that we’re spending time on dollars in donations that are going to have the biggest impact. So major gifts as a whole have the highest ROI compared to any of the other types of donations that an organization is working on. So the big questions that we’ve heard since COVID In the past couple of years, how do nonprofits find donors who will give to their cars who are ready to give their cars so many people were impacted by the challenge? changes that we saw in 2020 and 2021. And even now still, you know, how do we make sure that we’re connecting with those, those people? So, one of the things that’s important first is to make sure that you have that definition of a major gift in your mindset. So, you know, thinking about your largest financial contributions, has that changed over the past few years? Or has that remained steady? Are you seeing that the pool of donors that can make a major gift has shrunk? Or are you seeing it grow? For the majority of what we’re seeing is that the number of donors that can make these major gifts is shrinking. And that’s really in alignment with what we’re seeing on a national basis to with the the wealth dynamic changing. So in the past, it was about 20% of people, you know, that was when we think about our gift pyramid, it was 20% of people could make a major gift. Well, now what we’re seeing is it’s about five or 10%, of donors. So and even in some cases, you’ll see that it’s only 2% of people that are making these really high level impact donations. So again, it’s coming back to this thing and thinking about, Okay, how are we considering major gifts? And what is that definition?
The other critical component to this when we think about major gifts is that it needs prospect research. If you’re not using prospect research to identify those people that can make those high impact. Yes, you’re selling yourself short. There was a study that we helped sponsor, where we took a look at different organizations and ask the question, you know, are you using prospect research? Or are you not using prospect research? And are you meeting your fundraising goal? Almost every year sometimes, or are you seldom or never meeting your fundraising goal. And what we found is those that were almost every year, sometimes meeting their fundraising goal, major gift fundraising goal, that we’re using prospect research, those 84% of them, those that did not use prospect research and still achieved their fundraising goals drops down to 65%. So when you think about, you know, a grading scale, or you know, if you think about a grade you might receive on a test 65% is not passing, right, that’s a D. When you think about or when you take a look at this, and you see those that did not use prospect research, and sell them or never met their goal, that’s about 35%. And those that used prospect research are seldom or never met, their goal was only 16%. So there’s these really drastic numbers that tell us that, you know, it’s really important what we are doing in order to focus on the right people. Again, you know, this study was done a couple of years ago, but even now, it’s more important than ever to be strategic and find the donors that can and will make a difference. So Giving USA publishes their annual report in every year, and actually, the next interim report will be coming out in just a few weeks. So it’ll be exciting to take a look at 2022. This is a snapshot of 2021. And what’s important about this is while the giving for the past few years has actually technically gone up. When you look at an absolute dollars, it’s actually remained flat due to inflation. We’ve also seen the number of people giving to charity is going down. So in the past, it used to be 70% of donations were made by individuals. Now it’s actually dropped down to 67%. We’ve also seen a shift in who are making those contributions, right, we’re going to see a change in focus on those that are ultra wealthy. We’ve seen a decline in those areas. We’ve also seen bequest increase, which may have to do some with a pandemic and some of those planned gifts being realized. And then also some corporations that have increased their giving. So really, the shape of philanthropy is changing and how we’re receiving those donations. Donor Advised Funds are also giving up as well. To put that out there. So when we take a look at the different types of nonprofits that are receiving these donations, there’s also some changes that are happening as well. Again, especially due to the pandemic and the areas that required more donations or areas that saw you know, an impact due to the economic changes that were going on. We see that environmental and Animals has actually increased over the years, we see that arts cultures and humanities is going up, education has decreased. But there was a switch to academic medicine, public society and benefit, also saw an increase where religion, while it remains a top category, it continues to decline. So, not only have we seen that the environmental changes have impacted where people are contributing, there’s also this generation effect of, you know, the younger generation or new families coming into wealth may have different priorities. So you have, again, another shift, if you’re in one of these different types of nonprofits thinking about, you know, how do you need to change your messaging potentially. So another big impact has been these mega donors. So mega donors in the past, only added up to 1.6% of the giving. But by 2020, they made up 3.1%. So we actually saw a double our 100% increase, in 2021 10 of the mega donors gave a total of $15 billion in donations, which accounted for 5% of overall individual giving across the US. So when you think about that, and you think about that major gift pyramid, and you think about, you know, how we’re seeing a little bit of a decline in the household giving and charitable giving. What does that mean? How does that impact you? And it also means that the distribution of wealth is really changing here. You know, again, like I said, we’re all anticipating that giving us a report that will come out in just a few weeks, it’ll be really interesting to see, you know, how is Mackenzie Scott’s, you know, new donations really impacted the individual giving that we’ve seen. And then the household decline. So in 2,066.2%, of American households gave charitable donations. By 2018, it’s been less than half. There’s actually a conversation if you haven’t joined it yet, with Nathan Chapelle and Brian Crimmins, talking about the generosity crisis, where you know, the priorities of people and the trust that they have in different nonprofits has really shifted and hasn’t been for positive, right, this is sort of a detrimental This is a big concern about how to build connections with the right people. So, you know, how do you take all of this information, you think about your nonprofits, struggles, your challenges, the areas are for opportunities, you think about the economical and environmental issues that are going on? You think about, you know, what is the priority for your donors, how they want to interact with your nonprofit? And then you think about, okay, what can technology do to help me get there? So the first part that we’re going to cover today is the markers of philanthropy. And you may have heard of this study before, but it is a DonorSearch study. And it’s actually really why we founded DonorSearch in the first place and brought in philanthropic information. What we did is we wanted to say, Okay, what factors are what are some of those key points that are important to understanding and realizing which donors are going to make a donation to my organization, not only just a donation, but which ones are going to be major gift prospects. So we looked at $5 billion worth of known charitable giving across 400 nonprofit organizations, the donors were then analyzed to determine which factors made someone more or less likely to make a donation. And this is actually before any sort of machine learning this is before any AI. And we actually did this a couple of times to ensure that we were focusing on the right people, and the right factors. So these are the markers for major gift donors. They hold true, they’re very steady when it comes to understanding where you should be focusing your time. So if you’re not ready for AI, or you haven’t, you know, you’re not quite there yet. And you’re, you’re in the works. This is a really good map to get you to the point where you need to get to. So the first and the most predictive marker is giving to your organization, right? So this is probably a given, you’re like, oh, yeah, it does, Sarah. Those that give to your organization are most likely to make a major gift to your organization. So looking at internal giving. There’s some challenges with this right when you think about how you’ve kept your internal giving transactions, how you’ve upheld that day. either have you had leadership change? You know, what are some of the things that may impact or influence that giving to your nonprofit? The second most predictive factor is giving to other nonprofits. In fact, if you find one of your donors that has made a gift of $5,000 or more to another organization, they are much more likely to give to your nonprofit. And this was actually a really large or really big aha moment for so many folks that had in the past dependent just on wealth factors alone, right. So in the past, before there was this Charitable Giving Database that we were able to deliver, it was just looking at real estate information, or just looking at stock information. That doesn’t tell you whether or not that person is philanthropic or not. And that’s really the key here is identifying people that have the behavior and the inclination to give to your organization.
The third most likely predictor are those that are the trustees of a foundation. So you know, the easiest way to understand this is thinking about, if you find one of your donors is the trustee of the foundation, you’ve basically identified two vehicles in order for them to make a gift to you, right? You have them as an individual. And then you have their foundation. So one of the ways that you describe it are one might describe it as if you were talking to me, Sarah, and you wanted a donation, and you said, Can you give me $5,000. And I said, No, not at this moment in time just came back from vacation, but I can give you $500. But if you talk to DonorSearch Foundation, which I sit on the board of, you know, we’re willing to give you that $5,000 donation. So you know, making those connections even being open up to more people that are at that same level. The fourth, most predictive level is the political gaming. So this is taking look at the FEC data, Federal Election Commission, it’s a very different scale. So you don’t have to make a gift of $5,000, in order to have one of these markers get raised. In fact, it’s a much lower level. So people that make a gift of $250 or more are in the top 6% of the population believe it is, and those that give a gift of $1,000 or more, here’s where you start to see this one to one correlation. So it’s really this political data that is more insight into how you connect with your donors. When you find people that have given $10,000 or more to the FEC or to do it for political contributions over their entire lifetime. That’s where you have a dead on marker for wealth. And then you also have this marker for major gift contribution contributions. And then our fifth factor here is real estate. So real estate, obviously is a, I guess, we could use the term volatile, although it’s kind of cooled down a little bit. Where it really has changed over the years is, again, especially due to pandemic, but this is your fifth most predictive factor. So it really is at the bottom of the food chain here. But it can be really insightful as to telling us, you know, what sort of area are they living in? What sort of wealth do they have? From a universal standpoint, or national standpoint, if you find people that are giving to or excuse me that have a real estate, property, a single property of $2 million or more, that’s typically where you have this level of, okay, it’s really wealthy, no matter what area that they live in, but each ZIP code will have their own averages and according to like, what is that highest level. And then your sixth highest marker here are business affiliation. So those that are policymaker policymaking level of a publicly traded company, those who have businesses, and that’s telling us again, you know, what sort of level of wealth do they have, which could be indicative to them making a major gift. So, this has been for the longest time, you know, the key to identifying people that can and will make an impact for you. You know, this is what comes from the typical screening, you’re getting information on all of these different data points. And then, of course, you know, it doesn’t necessarily tell us how engaged they are right? It doesn’t tell us, you know, what about their volunteer information doesn’t tell us well, we just had a homecoming event and we have information on people that purchase swag, right? It’s only looking at a pen to data and the giving to you are nonprofit. So the question is, can we do more? And the short answer is yes, of course we can. So we have better technology now, right than we have had in the past, you have more data, and then you have this charitable giving decline. So we can take this information and deliver back and be more powerful and effective than we have been in the past. So this is where we start talking about maximizing ay ay. And this is where we start getting into, you know, how we can take those markers of philanthropy and really take them to the next level. So the first question here is a couple for you. So how do you feel about AI? You know, there’s a lot of hesitation. There’s a lot of conversation about it right now, too, if you’ve seen some of those major headlines, some of it is really scary where it says, you know, humanity is going to end due to AI, if we don’t put some some boundaries around it. You also have chat GBT that’s out there. But how do you feel about it? You know, and do you interact with AI in your daily life? Do you use AI at work? Do you think artificial intelligence can help you and your nonprofit be more effective? You know, and I, you know, I challenge you to think about what your answer is today, versus what your answer was maybe in, you know, 2019, pre pre COVID pre pandemic. And I think a lot of those feelings have changed over the years. So the first thing that I want to do is bring up some stats for you. And this was actually done. This was a study that was done in 2019. And it surveyed a bunch of nonprofits and asked, you know, how do you interact with how do you how do Nonprofit Professionals interact with AI? What is their sort of feeling about it? At the point in time, 75% believed that AI makes their life easier. 73% of nonprofits believed that AI innovation aligned with their beliefs. 83% of people believe that there needs to be an ethical framework in place before wider adoption, this really comes into play, especially talking about biases and talking about, you know, how are we controlling or being responsible with this new technology. And then 52% of people said that they’re afraid of AI. So this study, again, was done right before COVID. And it’ll be really interesting to see, I know that the fundraising AI organization is looking at doing another one of these studies to see how that change. They think about your own answers, and how does that align with what you’re feeling?
So what exactly is it right? What exactly is this machine learning? What is exactly is AI? How does this play in the for profit world as well as the nonprofit world. So artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligent processes by misete by machines, especially computer systems. So AI imitates it automates and it optimizes the thought process of a human with no limit on the amount of data, right, and it’s 1000s of algorithms that go into it. And it’s this whole idea of, there’s no limit on what it can do, because it’s all processed. Machine learning is the data learning from data. It’s a subset of artificial intelligence. So machine learning is dynamic. It’s computer algorithms that are able to process and analyze large amounts of data to improve accuracy, performance and insights over time. machine learning algorithms work by discovering and making sense of patterns, the more data that is fed into machine learning, the smarter it will become, hence why it’s called machine learning. So when you think about AI, it can help nonprofits sift and sort through data much more quickly than staff members. So with so many records on file, like personal information, individual donation, amounts and patterns, event histories, and more, it’s helpful to have a system that can process and make sense of this data really quickly. So AI is not out to replace anybody’s job. It’s really there as a tool to help make you more effective and efficient by processing all of this information all in one. So just taking a look at this little graphic here. What it is, is it’s coming from the for profit side and how AI is being used, right. It’s being used for analytics and solutions, data collection services, data quality assessments and improvement, integration and visualization, policy analytics and decision support, as well as social media and and digital outreach. So it’s this whole idea of how can we take this technology to propel us moving forward, right. And when you think about, again, like over the years, if you think back 2030 years, you have technologies like Excel that comes out, right, Excel didn’t necessarily replace anybody’s job. But it made it easier for them to do calculations and have formulas included inside of these different worksheet sheets. So that way, you didn’t have to use a finance calculator, you didn’t have to do it by hand or double check. So it’s taking out some of those rooms for error, and making it much more effective and efficient for you. One of the other important pieces here is that when you think about the biases, and you think about the ethical responsibility that goes along with it, it’s really critical that the algorithms that are being used are not influencing the return. So there’s a lot of information and literature out there that talks about how some of the algorithms that are currently built, need to be readjusted because they were built from one perspective and that they can’t pick up on some of the nuances or some of the information that is out there that a human could pick up on right. So there’s there’s this whole conversation about how do we use this to move forward. When you think about the AI and machine learning in terms of the standard models that we’re using in machine learning modules, this is a way to sort of envision it in your mind. So you have your wealth data, your RFM score, you’re giving patterns, that’s sort of the traditional way of doing a screening, that’s the traditional way of understanding the research that you have. And then you add on on a manual process about different data points that are important, like engagement or attendance at events, or different types of connections. The path to acceleration or moving forward, machine learning modules are basically taking what is static and then turning it into dynamic. So you’re looking at giving patterns you’re looking experiences, you’re looking at the wealth indicators and demographic data. And what that means is, is that now you can have 1000s of different data points on one individual versus just a few. And that’s where you think about, okay, well, each person is kind of complicated, and each person is really, you know, their own, how do you make those personalized connections with people during these difficult times, when there really is a lot of stuff going on. So that’s where AI can help you sift through the noise and get to the point where you can focus on people that are most likely to make those gifts as well as those major gift contributions. So what major gifts and how AI works is it focuses on your giving level. So that takes a look at, you know what people fit into certain areas of levels forgiving, it breaks down silos of data. So if you have a ticketing platform over here, and you have your giving transaction over here, and you have your marketing database over here, what AI does is it brings it all together, so that way, you don’t have to look at it all siloed. And that really is the most effective way that you can fundraise is if you have the information together. So that way you can streamline your most valuable resource which is time, right we we never have enough of it. So breaking down the silos of data, aggregating that information, and then having the dynamic scoring. So when we talk about machine learning, right, it’s, it’s learning based off of new data. So that’s what dynamic means. Traditionally, the way that the information is delivered back to you is it’s a one time score. And people only do it, you know, once a year, maybe they’ll do it every five years. But that information gets stale, a lot of data can change. And a lot of things can happen, you know, within a year, within a month, within a couple of weeks. So that’s really what this is about. And then of course, bringing together the engagement, the experiential, philanthropic, and wealth data all in one place. So it does a lot of things to again, make you more effective, make you more efficient, as these challenges that we talked about in the beginning of the session, continue to be present. When we think about this, we call this an affinity GPS. And many of you are probably familiar with this matrix here. But the goal of it is to identify people that are in different categories, right? So who have your entire portfolio, our high affinity have high capacity. These are the people that you want to talk to right now on the phone, you’ll leave the session, you know, take the phone call Also that way you can, you know, continue to build that connection or get the major gift, right? Those are the creme de la creme, and then you have your low capacity and low affinity, these are people that, you know, maybe over time, they’ll get there or, you know, maybe they won’t, you know, you’ll put them on a nurture campaign, you’re not going to spend too much time with them. And then you have those folks that are low affinity and high capacity, low capacity and high affinity. So what we’re trying to do here is optimize, you know, all of this new information that you’re getting on a day to day basis, and make sure that people are in the right group. So the beauty of AI is that, you know, I might be in a high affinity, high capacity one day, but maybe something changes, or I have a maybe not a great experience. And all of a sudden, I moved to a low affinity and high capacity or low capacity and high affinity. And what it allows you to do is make sure that you’re constantly working with the people that are ready to do something now. So that way, you’re, again, truly optimizing your time and your resources. This is just a quick glance at some of the stats that we’ve looked at. And this is actually probably could be updated even more so. But basically, what it is highlighting here is that the number of events that are available for an individual R can be great, can be extremely high. Right. So the DSA AI team has looked at over 12 million constituents, 3 million of them have been donors, 40 million of them have made gifts. And then you see all of these different criteria that have occurred within that nonprofit organization. So with all of that said, what that means is that we’re averaging about 2741 models per DSCI client. So basically, there are so many different inputs that we can take a look at that make sure that you’re getting the most accurate information on each of your individual donors.
When we think about this, again, it’s this coming back to this whole concept that the landscape for philanthropy has changed and continues to change. So we need to, to improve our best practices, while bringing them to our smart technology. This is another way to look at it. So when we’re thinking about your donor, perfect database and the information that you have in there, how can we include that into your affinity to give So taking a look at for example, a graduation year, your degree type, you know, the wealth indicators, your total gift, amount, number of gifts, whether or not they were in Greek life, all of those different experiences and information to help you get to the point of saying, Okay, how are they going to impact my major gift program? And are they people that we should be focusing our time on. So there’s about 1000 different machine learning features, which means different factors that go into one person. I’m going to skip over this just for the sake of time. And when you think about how you can couple this AI technology with repeatable processes for maximizing major gifts, you can do this for portfolio reviews and refreshes. So making sure that you’ve optimized the people that you’re focused on, you can reprioritize, who you’re talking to, you can identify new prospects for major gift strategy, I think there’s a stat that says, by using the AI technology, you’re likely to increase your major gift identification from four to five times more than what you would do on a regular basis. You can bring in those key words and do all of these different sorts of segmentations. So that way, you know, you’re breaking down the silos and using the technology to propel you forward in order to make sure that you’re getting that ROI from the major gifts. And then, as we wrap up here, you know, I’m happy to answer any questions, put you in touch with the right people. But what it comes down to is that philanthropy has changed over the years. And, you know, we’ve seen this within the past few years. And that there is this need for smarter technology. And it’s, it’s here, right? There’s no turning back at this point. And that, you know, when we’re talking about how you use the technology, it’s also that we can build those really great relations chips and connections. So that way they can make these great impacts within your nonprofit. And with that, Daryl, I will pass it to you.
Okay, great. Great. Thank you so much, sir. This was this was really, really some good information in terms of how the major gift fundraising, it’s evolved over time. And hopefully our group here enjoyed the session. I didn’t see any questions pop into the q&a. But if any of you do have a question for Sarah, or anything about AI that you would like us to, to address, please go ahead and pop that in there. Also a reminder that if you would like more information on the DonorSearch API solutions that are out there, go ahead into the polls and just say yes, to request additional information, we’ll make sure that we can follow up with you. Right, looks like we do have a question. Are there AI tools apart from DonorSearch that you recommend? Does DonorSearch help us create an affinity GPS? Yeah,
yeah, great question, Julie. Um, one of the free ones that we use all the time is chat, GBT. Like it’s and I’m sure you’re hearing that from all different directions. But we definitely use that. You know, if you’re not using it for your day to day, you might be missing an opportunity on being more effective with your time. It’s really easy and free. And then the answer to your other question here, does DonorSearch help create an affinity? GPS? I would say yeah, for sure. Um, you know, that’s what this whole idea of bringing all the information together is about. It’s about focusing on people that not only have the capacity, and philanthropic nature, but also have an affinity towards your organization, and are likely to make a gift, you know, within the next 12 months, and that you’re spending time on the right folks.
Interesting, asked about affinity Sara, one of the one of the dreams I had from a data representation standpoint is if if nonprofit orgs could just know the kinds of likes that people are putting on Facebook to get an F score. I mean, we would just have so much information in terms of the types of things that really draw them in, we’d help us fundraise a ton. But I suppose we have to twist Mark’s arm on that one.
I fully agree with that sentiment. Darrell, I think there’s a lot of information on LinkedIn and like the different social medias and how people are engaging. So if you’re able to collect that on any level, yeah, I think you’ll you’ll get some really great insight.
Stuff, for sure, for sure. There was one other question about updating the handout, we’ll make sure that we get that done here, maybe after the session ends. And I guess that’s all that we have at this point for q&a. Hopefully, everybody saw Mallory, jumped into the chat, and share the just a reminder that we’re going to be having closing remarks in a community hour in the DEP room. So just click on the rooms icon at the top of the navigation bar, and you’ll be able to join in 20 minutes, but I guess we’re down to like seven minutes at this point. So thank you so much for joining our session today. And thank you, sir, this was this was fantastic.
Oh, you’re so welcome. And thank you and I just skimmed through the chat and it looks like a wonderful group. So appreciate all the comments and hope you guys have a great rest of the conference. You’re lucky that DonorPerfect is doing it’s an amazing, amazing thing that they’ve put on for everybody. All right,
thanks again and we’ll see you Alright, sounds good.
Okay, I think we’re out
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