Reimagining Recurring Giving: Tips that Deepen Connection

Fundraising efforts and become more efficient in your operations. To help you accomplish both goals, you’ll want a solution that integrates with your online donation forms, email and accounting solutions, donor, demographic, data and other top tier Read More

Fundraising efforts and become more efficient in your operations. To help you accomplish both goals, you’ll want a solution that integrates with your online donation forms, email and accounting solutions, donor, demographic, data and other top tier solutions. To make more time for your expansion efforts, you need to automate fundraising tasks, such as creating personalized thank you letters and receipts.

To expand your fundraising, you need tools to help target the right owner with the right message, whether they’re major donors or monthly givers, from events to Moves Management having a solution that can offer these capabilities means you can increase fundraising capacity without having to switch systems to make better decisions. You need a solution with the analysis tools and reporting your team needs to understand where you’re being successful, as well as areas for improvement in a time of frequent staff turnover, you’ll also want access to onboarding, training and support specialists whenever you need them, like members of your staff that will always be there to help you. DonorPerfect checks all of these boxes and perhaps others you didn’t know you needed. Get answers to your questions and learn more about how DonorPerfect can meet your unique needs by speaking with Your Account Manager or attending a product demonstration webinar.

You when it comes to your fundraising journey, you don’t have to do it alone. At DonorPerfect, our team has stood by nonprofits as trusted partners for more than 40 years. We’re not just great software, we’re the team behind it. DonorPerfect offers personalized onboarding and ongoing support to ensure you get the most out of your system. We’re beside you every step of the way. With DonorPerfect, our people make the difference In your success. Schedule a demo today. You

as your organization grows, you’re probably ready to expand your fundraising efforts. And

hey, I’m Josh CEO at Givecloud, and if this is the first time you’re hearing the words give and cloud together, let me tell you what we’re all about. If you’re a nonprofit, we’re the bubble to your gum, the peanut butter to your fundraising jelly. We’re a digital fundraising platform proven to be the fastest way to more donations, guaranteed, just like the website says accepting donations online, everybody’s doing it. Do you fundraise online? Yeah, do you I’m trying exactly that’s the unique power of Givecloud. Ask Jackie, one of our customers, Jackie, what do you think

the problem is the donation form you’re using today lacks that human connection. Now, imagine an online experience that makes your donors feel like they’re making an impact, rather than a donation. That’s what your successful and sustainable fundraising deserves. So if you’re ready to increase your average donation, reward and captivate your donors and reach your fundraising you

owe it to your mission, to your purpose. Join The fundraising revolution today. You

Sean, hello, everybody. My name is Sean McClellan, and I’m a senior Training Specialist at DonorPerfect. I.

Welcome to Josh’s session, reimagining recurring giving tips that deepen connection. Before we start the session, let me introduce Josh Bloomfield, who is the founder of givecloud and a mission driven innovator with 20 plus years in technology, design and donor engagement, a self taught coder and award winning leader. He holds multiple patents in digital giving and impact stewardship. Josh began his career building tech solutions for government and under resourced entrepreneurs motivated by personal adversity. He launched Givecloud in 2010 to help nonprofits build deeper digital connections with donors today, his 35 plus person team supports nonprofits globally. He is also a designer, musician, advisor, organ donor, husband and proud father of two. Before we get started, I want to cover a few housekeeping items. You can download today’s presentation from the details section to the right of the presenters window. Any questions that you’d like to submit, please place in the Q and A tab so we can address them during the session. And as a reminder, all sessions are being recorded and will be available on the DonorPerfect website after the conference. All right, let’s get started.

All right, hopefully you can all see my screen. Okay. Thank you everyone for joining today, and thank you for the introduction. I don’t have a ton of time today, and I want to squeeze in as much of my best content as possible just for this group. So let’s jump right in

this photo represents the biggest commitment I’ve ever made in my life.

Well, perhaps the second biggest, this would probably be the biggest commitment I’ve made in my life. That’s my incredible wife, Chelsea, who inspires me, encourages me, and is the reason I started Givecloud, and those are my two outrageous daughters, Poppy and Penny Lane, and our overly pampered golden doodle, sonny.

But this photo represents probably the second biggest commitment, but definitely the biggest gift I’ve ever given as a donor. See, I donated 70% of my liver to my dad when I was 25 years old.

This is a photo of my dad and I back in 2008 a couple of weeks after the transplant,

my dad was on death’s door, battling hepatitis C for most of his life. He contracted it during his wild years as a teenager in the 70s, doing who knows what with his friends.

My dad didn’t live a perfect life,

and it jeopardized his opportunity to receive a liver transplant.

And so I started the journey of organ donation and the battery of tests and assessments to determine whether or not I was a viable donor. After all, this was my dad. We’re talking about.

Part of that experience was a series of psychological assessments, and I remember one session vividly where I was asked, What if your dad starts using drugs again after the transplant, or worse, what if he dies?

The message was clear for me,

I’m giving a gift, and a gift must be given, expecting nothing in return, no strings attached, no expectations. A gift freely given. Wild story. What’s all this have to do with recurring giving? Well,

this experience taught me more about commitment and giving

than any other gift I’ve given or any other experience I’ve had fundraising.

What is it that drives us to give?

What motivates the most devoted donors? What moves people from disinterest to deep conviction?

What motivates donors to make a selfless commitment and see that commitment through

these questions helped me surface some of the very underlying principles that I believe fuel the strongest ongoing commitments that drive successful monthly recurring donation programs.

It’s how we take that relatively on the fence donor and convert them to a devoted donor.

Her. It’s how we move people from disinterested to passionate commitment. After all, shouldn’t giving feel great? Okay, let’s jump in.

I’ve distilled my experience into three key principles.

The first is how it starts matters. What do I mean by this?

A donor’s very first experience, their very first impression, will dictate their mood, their sentiment, and ultimately their likelihood to make a recurring commitment to your organization.

I mean, think about the first time you heard your favorite band,

or the first time you laid eyes on your spouse,

or that first cuddle you had with your now pet dog or cat. It was that impression that set the tone for those long term relationships.

The most effective first impressions lay the emotional groundwork necessary for your donors to make a commitment to support your mission. I mean, in my case, I had 25 years of emotional groundwork before making the commitment to donate a vital organ.

But you don’t have 25 years to do that work.

You’ve got a couple of seconds at best, as your potential donor views your email, your letter or your website, how can you possibly short circuit 25 years of emotional groundwork?

How do you create that great start a sticky and deep first impression.

What do we want to do with that first impression?

One of the most effective ways to accomplish both depth and connection in a very short moment is to force your donor somehow or other to face what’s at stake,

what’s the

or else

your donors will make their strongest commitments when the stakes are high, when that or else is real, believable and meaningful to them.

Is it hunger?

Is it vulnerability?

Is it lack? Will someone go without? Might someone be less advantaged? What is your or else?

The stakes in my case were clear, if I didn’t take action, my dad was going to die.

If your donors don’t commit, what’s the or else? This is how your most committed donors justify their decision to give on a recurring basis, they deeply understand that, or else, clearly and deeply,

that’s what great first impressions have the power to do.

How it starts matters.

But what else motivates the most devoted donors?

After donating 70% of my liver, I was left with just 30% of my original liver. But after just five weeks, and this still blows my mind. My liver regenerated itself back to its original size, its original mass, and the same thing happened inside my dad, that 70% portion he received grew to 100%

and that gift didn’t just grow. It multiplied itself in 15 years of extended life for my dad, my dad got to meet my daughters, Poppy and Penny Lane, who called him Big Data.

He had many more years of laughter and memories. My gift didn’t just grow, it multiplied,

and with each reminder of that multiplication, I grew in my gratitude for the gift I gave and the commitment I made, which leads me to my second point,

the most committed donors know the.

Gift is growing that it’s exponential. They understand it intuitively, and they are reminded regularly,

you cannot over communicate with a devoted donor.

Write this down.

You cannot over communicate with a devoted donor.

You can’t over communicate with a devoted donor. A devoted donor is warmed and delighted when they see the work that’s being done, especially when those updates are frequent, brief and candid,

they may not engage or interact directly, but that drip in their inbox every week should be short, candid and believable reminder of the exponential nature of their gift. After all, that’s why they’ve given.

Tell them about how their $25 a month gift has transformed into hundreds of dollars of meals. Share about that $50 a month donation to sponsor a child that has exploded into entrepreneurship and a transforming village,

your most devoted donors will be energized. Which leads me to my third point.

There was no guarantee that my dad would survive this transplant, or for how long.

I didn’t give for the guarantee he would be safe or Okay. Of course that mattered to me personally,

but it didn’t impact my decision to give or my decision to commit.

I gave for the hope my dad would be okay.

You are not selling guarantees. You are selling hope.

The most devoted donors aren’t swayed by the economic ups and downs.

They aren’t moved in their conviction because of a societal shift. They aren’t dissuaded when the odds are against them. They believe in the hope of your mission,

they’re committing to possibility, to second chances, to true hope. This is the deepest, most devoted commitment you can inspire in your recurring donors, a strong beginning,

gratitude for the growth

and the hope of future growth.

Okay, now it’s time to get into the real juice. Who wants to get practical here I want to share a framework you can use to apply all of these principles, and I’m going to do some live examples for you as we go along. Sound good.

All right, the team and I at Givecloud have pioneered this framework in order to nurture the most delighted and devoted donors for our nonprofit customers, we call this framework of thinking, not fundraising,

but trust raising

and it requires you to prioritize your the heart of the donor over the wallet. You pursue the heart motivation and emotion of the donor, rather than just their money. This is the emotional groundwork necessary for lasting relationships. It requires you to prioritize connection before conversion, bonding with the donor over what’s at stake, the or else, in a way that feels human and real,

and it requires you to prioritize donor delight over data, moving from what do I need from my donor to how can I make giving feel great for my donor, selling the hope of tomorrow.

Let me show you how all this stacks up.

All of you here, your mission deserves sustainable, devoted support

as fundraisers, this is what we are all after. We’re looking for sustaining and committed support for our missions so we can reliably drive the impact our communities are depending on us for, while also ensuring our donors feel great giving to our cause and feel connected to that impact. Well, what does that committed support look like? How would you describe it?

It looks like donors who give more. It

looks like donors who give.

Faster without hesitation, donors who give more frequently

and donors who spread the word about your mission, who wouldn’t love, donors who give more without hesitation, give frequently and advocate for your mission.

What kind of donor engages with you in this manner, a devoted donor would a donor convinced of what’s at stake and convicted of their deep obligation to give.

But these donors are so, so rare, they’re nearly impossible to attract. However, you can do even better, you can create those donors. How

you need to delight your donors. You delight donors through a first experience, an unforgettable first impression that grips the donors hearts and steers their motivation, their motivation to take the actions they desire

and the actions your nonprofit deserves.

It’s tough to impact these bottom levers directly. What I mean is that all of these characteristics I’ve highlighted are what we call lag measures. These characteristics are measured after the donation has taken place. By the time you measure the frequency of your donations, there’s nothing you can do to change it. By the time you measure the size of your donations, it’s too late. The donations have been made. There’s nothing to be done in order to affect the kind of change we want to see in our recurring giving programs, we need to stop focusing our energy on those lag measures, and we need to move towards lead measures. Lead measures allow us to shape our donors motivations in order to create the kind of outcomes your donors desire, and your and your mission deserves

delightful experiences where we need to focus our efforts that enduring first impression. That’s why how it starts matters,

because a delighted donor is a more devoted donor, and a devoted donor gives more, they give faster, they give more frequently, and they’re more likely to tell their friends and family.

So how do we create these delightful experiences, these wonderful, deep first impressions that set the emotional groundwork or the or else stakes? How do we craft high impact moments that leave people with an overwhelming sense of purpose and desire to commit to a monthly donation.

Well, people connect with stories, and you need to tell yours.

Now, doing this when you are not face to face with your donor is tricky business, many times all you have is your website, your social media posts or a letter, and we so rarely do a great job of connecting with others on these surfaces.

Too often I see fundraisers appeal to the logical mind. We never want to try to appeal to people’s logic

on paper, there was nothing logical about giving 70% of my vital organ to a diseased drug user,

but that man was my dad.

I had an emotional investment in his survival. The stakes were high.

This isn’t some extreme, isolated example, either.

Anyone here heard of the Pepsi Challenge

that blindfolded taste tests, where people were shown to prefer Pepsi,

unless they were told which brand was which then most preferred coke.

That’s because coke isn’t just caramel bubbles, it’s memories, it’s Christmas ads, it’s nostalgia. Apparently, we don’t taste with our tongue.

We taste with our hearts, not our logical mind.

But what’s this look like?

Like in the experiences we craft for our donors. Well,

here’s a sample headline.

Would you consider giving $30 a month?

We provide 12 programs across three regions with a 97.2%

efficiency rating. Wow. This is an efficient and effective organization worth investing in an appeal to the logical mind. Let’s contrast this with

$30 a month gives one child safety food and someone who finally calls them by name.

It’s not about statistics, it’s about being remembered,

an appeal to the emotional mind.

Now imagine you landed on a donation page with either of these headlines. Which headline are you most likely to donate towards? Let’s get interactive here using the live chat. Let’s see which one you all believe would be most effective as a headline on your giving page. Hit a in the live chat, if you’d prefer that first logical headline

or hit B to vote for that second emotional headline, and let’s see those responses

roll in.

Logic fails, and that’s because we are not logical thinkers.

Countless studies have proven this.

The uncomfortable reality is, our mind operates less like a judge, synthesizing data from the world around us and guiding us towards wisdom.

Instead, it behaves more like a lawyer defending a predetermined gut response to our world and our surroundings. In fact, this is why it can be so difficult to change people’s minds around politics, faith or social perspectives we aren’t seeking truth or logic.

We’re seeking to validate our deeply held convictions, which are based almost entirely on how those beliefs make us feel. And

we all desire to feel fulfilled,

to feel like we matter, to feel like we’ve made a notable difference. We want to move others forward while feeling moved ourselves.

Do not appeal to the logical mind.

Another reason I see us failing to create incredible first impressions is our often Cavalier approach to design.

Do not discount the power of design.

Design shouldn’t ever be underestimated or an afterthought, especially in a digital world, design is the conduit through which your story is delivered to your donor. That’s another great point. Write that down.

Design is the conduit which your story is delivered to your donor. Do

you want that conduit to be leaky, clogged and ineffective. No, of course, you don’t. You want to conduit for your message. It’s clear, smooth and unencumbered, right? Let’s get practical again and experiment with that winning headline from earlier.

$30 a month gives one child safety food and someone who finally calls them by name. It’s not about statistics, it’s about being remembered. We’ve got an image of a child,

we’ve got the organization’s logo, and we’ve got a call to action. Now let’s explore how we can use these same elements, these same assets, in different ways to improve the experience.

So first up, there’s very little differentiation between the text, the logo and the call to action.

They all share similar font weights and sizes.

This leaves your donor’s brain incapable of distinguishing between any of the elements, and the result is that your message gets lost,

one of my favorite design principles.

Is when everything is bold, nothing is bold.

Let’s reduce the font weight of the lead out text in the headline.

Let’s reduce the size of the logo, and let’s encapsulate the call to action in a button using the brand color. Now by cropping the image, we add some interest, and there’s less competition for my attention. The headline and the child balance out

same elements,

completely different experience.

But I think we can do even better.

There’s so much emotion locked up in the eyes of that child.

She encompasses the or else the stakes. Let’s pull that out more.

Let’s fill the experience with the image so the donor is face to face with their impact.

Now, with so much connection to that face, we can simplify that headline. It’s about being remembered. We can tuck the brand away in the bottom right corner under my head here, maintaining the brand equity and trust without making the brand the focus.

Same elements,

completely different experience.

Design matters. Can you feel that do not discount the power of design and layout. We’ve seen design make a world of difference in donation form, conversion rates up to 150%

difference in some extreme cases. Remember, design is the conduit for your message of hope.

It’s how you effectively set the stakes for your donor, creating that emotional groundwork for a long term committed relationship. I’d be remiss if I didn’t get even more practical and try this methodology out on a live website. Here’s our sample organization, landing page. Great first impressions so far, let’s click this donate now button.

Suddenly now a leaky conduit.

Where’s the connection?

This feels more akin to a formal legal document than the start of a devoted, committed relationship. Let’s contrast this. I’ve set up Giveclouds, giving experiences which are available to all Donor Perfect customers, by the way, especially those on this call, to show you something that feels like the beginning of something truly great.

The transitions, the animations, the thoughtfulness, the clarity,

the blend of both the high stakes emotion and addressing logical fears.

It doesn’t overwhelm it inspires. It doesn’t over inform. It invites you in.

If I leave the face of that wonderful child, will follow me throughout the website,

and if I click back into the experience I can

I can see the community of people that I’m missing out on, and feel that FOMO for not helping out

if I donate, even if I don’t become a monthly donor,

I’m reminded about The opportunity and nudged to become that monthly donor, being reminded that even a little goes a long way,

delightful, right?

That’s it for me, everyone, thank you for joining the session today. I’d love to hear directly from you. My contact info is here. I’m going to give it back over to our hosts and my team to answer questions for you live. Thank you everyone.

All right, thank you for attending Josh’s session. Next up on stage one is clay buck with values over valuables.

Or Sarah Tedesco from DonorSearch with bridging tech eras. No matter which session you choose, you will not miss any content, since all sessions are recorded and found on our DonorPerfect site after the conference. I hope you enjoyed this presentation, and we’ll see you in a few Bye. You.