The Truth About Low Donor Retention and What You Can Do About It

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About load donor retention and what you can do about it. Before we get started, I have just a few housekeeping items. There is a link in to the slide presentation that can be found in the chat section. And Read More

0:01  

About load donor retention and what you can do about it. Before we get started, I have just a few housekeeping items. There is a link in to the slide presentation that can be found in the chat section. And our webinar today is going to include a presentation as well as q&a. Our q&a will be held at the end of the session, so please feel free to add your questions to the questions area of your control panel during the presentation, and then we’ll get to what we can at the end. For a presentation today, I’d like to welcome Mallory Erickson. Mallory’s an executive coach, fundraising consultant and host of the podcast, what the fundraising aimed at supporting nonprofit leaders to fundamentally change the way they lead, and fundraising. Mallory, welcome. And the floor is all yours.

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Thank you so much glory. And everyone had done a perfect for having me. I am so excited about this webinar today. And so I’m gonna actually just dive right in. So I wanted to show you this image and I want you to think for a second or drop it in the chat, like, what do you see, because if you haven’t done this before, you probably are seeing a bunch of black and white blobs. And that’s because of something called experiential blindness. Experiential blindness is the inability to perceive what you don’t already have a concept for. So let me cure you of experiential blindness for a second second. It’s a snake right? But let’s look at the best part.

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Let us know in the chat, like who on here can still see the snake? Maybe I didn’t let you look at it for long enough, you can always go back in the slides. But so why is this happening? And what on earth does this have to do with donor retention? The short answer for why you can still see the snake is that we don’t experience the world directly, we experience our mental simulation of it. And without a concept or context for something, we can’t actually incorporate it into our simulation. But once we do have content context or belief, our brains start to actually predict that concept everywhere, you’ve probably experienced this where you hear about something for the first time, and then all of a sudden, you start to notice it everywhere, right? That’s another example of experiential blindness or being cured of experiential blindness. Right? Our brain is an incredibly powerful tool in terms of the way it helps us quickly process things. But what it also means is that it has these programs shortcuts that are rooted in prediction and not reality. And when we let the prediction drive our decision making or how we show up as fundraisers, we cannot fundamentally see different results, right, because without realizing it, we create the world to verify our thoughts and beliefs. And this has huge implications for donor retention. So if we have not already met, my name is Mallory Erickson, it is so nice to meet you. I want you to let me know in the chat who on here considers themselves an accidental fundraiser. I know I accidentally became a fundraiser and I’m sure I’m not alone. I started working my way up and nonprofit and before I knew it, found myself in a managing director role and an executive director role and had a massive fundraising expectations in my work. And if you know my story, then you know that my least favorite part of my job was fundraising. And as I was building my nonprofit, you guys, I could have disappearance everywhere. Like I had it all together. I don’t know if you’ve been there. But this is proof that I was there. I was pretending like everything was running perfectly. But in reality, the nonprofit was a constant hustle. I didn’t have a donor pipeline I trusted. I was working 12 to 15 hour days, sometimes I was choosing my organization over my family, friends health, I even developed chronic pain, I was really miserable, and it wasn’t sustainable. So I got to a breaking point where I thought about leaving the nonprofit sector but I loved it so much. So first, I went down a research rabbit hole for like three months, testing all these different fundraising strategies, and iterating. On the old school ways, we’ve been taught to fundraise with what I learned in executive coach certification, and habit and behavior design. And it finally clicked and I was able to combine the science and the art of fundraising. That’s what led me to my signature program, the power partners formula. And that is the framework that we are diving into today, specifically around changing your donor retention results. So I know I showed you that image of a steak because I wanted to demonstrate to you that sometimes things that we believe to be objective information are actually subjective. And the subjectiveness of it and the way that interacts with our brain has huge implications on our ability to digest to remember and utilize information. So there’s a lot of retention advice out there, right tons. But as information about donor retention goes up, donor retention numbers across the sector are actually going down. And the reason for this is because we’re trying to learn about donor retention in a vacuum focus just on strategy and tasks. But the tasks involved in donor retention are highly vulnerable, emotional, provoke a ton of fear. And when we don’t acknowledge that and have strategies to work through those emotions, we don’t optimize our donor retention, I really strongly believe I hear a lot that the challenges around donor retention are a time management issue. I actually do not believe that I believe that the biggest barriers to better donor retention are an emotional management issue. And so in the next 45 minutes, I am going to be bringing some awareness to the emotional management needs that are involved in donor retention, I’m going to be providing donor retention strategies through a totally new lens, I’m going to cure you of some experiential blindness. And I’m going to be connecting every strategy that I give you to a habit that’s designed to help you and your team get over the action line consistently and actually implement that strategy into your work. So I know that’s a lot, I’m going to give you as much as I can in our time together today. So I always start with a slide like this, saying that everything really starts with our emotions. And this is because we have so many narratives in our head as fundraisers, that fundraising is really stressful. Fundraising is really hard fundraising is really stressful. And I am not in any way saying that fundraising does not feel hard, and does not feel stressful. But what that actually comes from is not just fundraising, like fundraising is just fundraising. What’s stressful are the thoughts and the beliefs that we have about fundraising. I’m not going to be able to hit my annual budget, that donor said no, and I was really expecting them to say yes, so I have no idea how we’re going to hit that campaign goal. Those donors are always mad at me when I email them twice about a campaign, oh, my gosh, five people unsubscribe, I should not be emailing my community every week, right? Those thoughts, those beliefs, that’s actually what makes fundraising stressful. And that directly then impacts our results and the way that we show up as a fundraiser, right? So whenever I have a client come to me, who’s not seeing results in a certain area, the first thing I want to understand is how they feel like what actions are they taking or oftentimes not taking? How do they feel when they’re taking those actions? Usually, like cringy, or uncomfortable, right? Or they don’t even really want to do it. And then we have to unwind to like, what are the thoughts and the beliefs making them feel cringy and uncomfortable, and like that car salesperson, right, that I’ve talked about on other DonorPerfect webinars. So this is really critical, because I want you to think about this for a second. So let’s imagine that you email a major donor, and they don’t get back to you. It’s been 72 hours, they don’t get back to you. And the thoughts and the beliefs that are coming up for you is oh my gosh, they’re so mad at me for asking for another meeting, because they just gave three months ago. And they feel like it was way too early for me to be asking again. It was totally inappropriate. And I’m a bad fundraiser. Okay. So imagine if those are all the thoughts and beliefs. And some of you probably are like, Oh, my God, I like feel that in my belly right now. Right? Imagine how that then impacts the way that you feel emotionally. And then imagine how that narrative is going to impact whether or not you reach out to other major donors who gave three months ago, you probably won’t, right? Because you have this entire narrative around why that donor hadn’t responded. But what if the donor hasn’t responded in 72 hours? And you’re like, yeah, like, I know how busy Karen is, this time of year, she’s always doing a lot of volunteer work around her daughter’s school. And so probably she’ll get back to me in like a week or two, or maybe on a Sunday or something like that. If those are your thoughts and beliefs related to not hearing back in Sunday, two hours, think about the difference that will have on the act on the future actions that you take and on your results. So this is why it is so critical that we are constantly aware of our thoughts and our beliefs. And I’m going to be sharing with you this is the first time I’ve ever done this on a free webinar. But I’m gonna be sharing with you the four primary types of beliefs that actually hold us back from being effective at donor retention or taking action when we need to take action and how to actually overcome them. But I want to share that when I really started to do this work on myself first, when I started to look at my own, like thoughts and beliefs related to fundraising. There was a really core one and this is like my mantra that shifted that fundamentally changed the way that I felt and I showed up as a fundraiser. And that was that great fundraising is not an ask. It’s an offer. Right? I believed before that fun phrasing was about begging people to give you something that they didn’t really want to give you. Right? I was like, Oh, I’m like asking people to give me their like hard earned money that they don’t really want to give away. But like, I’m kind of guilting them because they’re my friends and family, and they want to help me out. Those were all my old beliefs. And I started to really realize, like when I took a step back, and I was like, What is like giving about what is philanthropy about what does it provide for donors in terms of their identity and belonging, and experience, and connection. And I realized that really good fundraising, it’s actually about making consistent offers inviting people into your organization, vulnerability and connection, partnership, right, giving people an opportunity. And I think in the nonprofit sector, we often take this for granted because we get to live these really like mission driven lives every single day. And what we don’t recognize is that there’s so many people around us who are not living and breathing, you know, nonprofits and giving and investing, donating is their way to connect to their values. And it is an incredible gift. And when that started to really shift as my underlying thoughts and beliefs, everything changed in terms of how I felt and how I showed up consistently as a fundraiser. So what actually gets in our way of retaining our donors. So whenever we’re dealing with a challenge, there are two different kinds of blocks or barriers, their outer blocks, and their inner blocks. Outer blocks are things like there are only 24 hours in a day, or you only have three board members, or you don’t have an amazing CRM system like DonorPerfect, right? Those are examples of outer blocks. But we also all carry inner blocks. And inner blocks are barriers that exist within us, due to stories, reasons, mindset narratives, that have gone unaddressed, and so they are unconscious in our day to day, but they are holding us back. I am not the type of coach who is like everything is in your head. No, there are real systematic barriers and structural barriers to things that exist in the world around us. And all of us have inner barriers that we have the capacity and ability to remove right now, there is a way that every single one of you can grow the capacity of your organization today without an additional dollar. And that involves growing the capacity within you, as a leader and as a fundraiser, and everyone has access to this. So I want you to just take a quick moment and reflect for yourself on one of these two questions or both of these questions, right? Why don’t you want to call donors to thank them. And you can say, I don’t not want to call donors to thank them. But I want you to be super honest with yourself. Maybe that’s true for some of you. But when I really dig in with most of my clients, and I really ask them, Why haven’t you been calling your donors to thank them? They have a lot of stories there. So I want you to hear what yours are. Ask yourself, why don’t you want to call donors to thank them? Or if you’re like, No, that’s definitely not me. Why might you not want to call a donor on their birthday? Now I want you to just hear what you say to yourself. When you ask yourself that question. I really encourage you, I know these are scary questions to ask. They actually do really trigger a lot of vulnerability and emotion. And so if you don’t feel ready to do that right now on this webinar, or maybe hold this question, ask yourself later, but being honest about what comes up for you when you ask those questions is actually super important. So because those questions, those questions are tied to these inner blocks. So there are four primary types of inner blocks. They’re called the gales in my life coaching terminology, which is an acronym for Gremlin assumption, interpretation and limiting belief. And I’m going to actually go in order and explain how each of these show up in fundraising and donor retention, and some strategies you can use to overcome them personally take a sip of water.

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Okay, and we’re gonna go in order of like weakness to the strongest ones, although they’re all pretty strong if you ask me. So, limiting beliefs are something that you accept about life or about yourself. And it limits you in some way. Right? So limiting beliefs in society are things like I grew up hearing like girls are not as good at math and science right now that I know about limiting beliefs. I’m like, Oh my gosh, like would I have just done better in math? If I was told that like, girls like you are really good at math, right? We know there’s a lot of data to support that like structural and societal beliefs like that really hold people back. And there’s a story around this that I really love related to people running under four A minute and under a four minute mile, just to show you the strength of limiting beliefs. So until like sometime in the 1950s, please do not quote me on this date, I always mess up the story. But I think it was around the 1950s. People just assumed that human bodies could not run a mile faster than four minutes, it was like this assumption everyone was made, it was just like, it’s physically biologically impossible for people to run a mile faster than four minutes. And in the 50s, someone broke that record, they ran a mile in like three minutes and 56 seconds. And then the most amazing thing happened, person after person after person started to run the mile faster than four minutes. This is how strong our beliefs are. And there are a lot of societal stigmas around money, women were told for generations that it was inappropriate for them to talk about money. And then I have female fundraisers, women fundraiser, women identifying fundraisers coming to me telling me how uncomfortable they are asking for money. I’m like, Yeah, makes total sense. Biologically, we have been wired to keep the peace to not create any conflict to not disrupt harmony in any way. And there’s this societal limiting belief around how appropriate it is for women to talk about money, sure that many of people nowadays are trying to bust but it still is rooted in there in certain ways. So of course, we feel uncomfortable, but that’s actually super normal. And it’s about how are we going to actually manage that to continually get over the action line to be able to raise the money that we want to raise. So for limiting beliefs, my recommendation for you is just to start having some awareness around what are some of the beliefs that you hold, and that you believe society holds about money, philanthropy investment, just start to bring some awareness and to challenge yourself? Like, do I really believe that? Does that belief align with my values? Does that belief align with my fundraising just start to like, bring some curiosity into that. The second type of belief are interpretations. So interpretations are the opinions or the judgment that we create about an event, or a person or an experience that we believe to be true. And sometimes we hold on to these so tightly, right? Like I gave you that example before about the donor not responding in 72 hours. That is a complete interpretation. That is a narrative I have made up in my brain that I am staying really committed to, but there is no data to support it. Right. The other story that I presented about the woman being really busy and volunteering at her daughter’s school, we actually that’s actually just as likely, if not way more likely, than the first narrative that I created. But our brains are programmed right to to focus on these sort of like, potentially false narratives. So interpretations are the stories that we’re telling ourselves that ultimately hold us back from taking the next most aligned right action. So here are some strategies to deal with interpretations. One thing to do when you’re really spiraling, and I’ve never met a fundraiser who doesn’t spiral a little bit. So when you’re really spiraling in some of those interpretations, something you can do as a strategy called distance self talk, where you actually use your first name, and something quick and motivational to get you over the action line. So you’re thinking about sending that email to the donor, and you’re starting to hear all those narratives Oh, but last year, they said, or like, oh, maybe it would be better today, or Oh, I definitely shouldn’t email today because this other thing happened. Right, all those things to say Mallory, you know how to write a warm and engaging email to this donor. So using your own name, and then a positive statement after it’s called distant self talk, and it has been scientifically proven to help pull you out of some of that tunnel vision ruminating chatter we call it that is keeping you stuck to other really quick strategies around interpretations, because this is the one I see the most well, and the next one. But I see this a lot when it comes to donor retention and fundraising in general. So another strategy is, what would I say to a friend right now who is dealing with this challenge? Or what would I say to my colleague right now who is dealing who is dealing with this challenge? We are so much more capable of giving good advice, rational advice to other people than we are to ourselves. Right? So if you’re having trouble motivating yourself, okay, what would you say to some someone else? Then another thing I do with my clients a lot when they are very committed to the narrative that they have created around something is that we’ll have them write down the whole story. And then on the other side of the paper, I have them write down the complete opposite story. Just like what’s the complete opposite story about what happened there? And what’s happening when you do that? Is your opening up the possibility that maybe just maybe the story that you’ve created isn’t 100% True? And again, we are talking about this in relation to fundraising because the stock Often the beliefs that we hold, impact how we feel, and then ultimately how we act and how we show up and how we actually implement these donor retention strategies. If we do not have a way to manage our emotions that are going to naturally be provoked, when we implement this strategy, then the strategy is just this nice pitch deck that I’ve sent you, you know, or this nice PowerPoint that I sent you. That’s all it is. And it’s going to be saved on the desktop of your computer, what I want is for you to actually be able to get over the action line and implement the strategies, I go over with you. And so in order to do that, you have to have these emotional management tools. Okay, so the third one, the third one, the third type of belief that we deal with a ton as fundraisers are assumptions. Assumption is something that it’s an expectation that because something has happened in the past, it’s going to happen again, right? Or we believe something is true because of the thoughts or perceptions or beliefs about something that happened before. So a great example of this is a funder who said no to a title sponsorship in the past, right? And then we get to the next year to the gala. And we’re like, oh, no, no, well, they said no to the title sponsorship last year, and we keep moving down the list. And I’m always like, wait, what? Like a year ago, all the data was different. A year ago, everything about the world was different a year ago, how on earth do we know that? Because it wasn’t the right fit for them a year ago, it isn’t the right fit for them. Right now. We don’t that’s our brain making an assumption to keep us pretend safe, right? And these are just like biological programming so that at one point humans needed and are now misfiring all over our fundraising, and they’re not actually helping us out. Right? So a way to deal with an assumption when you find yourself making one is to say something like, Okay, what data has changed between when this happened last time? And now? Or just because this happened before? Why must it happen? Again? Why does it have to happen again? Because what’s super interesting when we I just met with this scientist, and I was learning a little bit about donors who said, No, the study that she did were donors who said, No, we’re actually more likely this is personal asks, were more likely to say yes, the next time they were asked, then folks who said yes, the first time. So what does that mean for fundraise? So that means lapsed donors? People who said no, the last time, we’re more likely to say yes. When asked again, percentage wise than people who said yes, the last time. Think about what that means and how different how we really haven’t been implementing that into our fundraising, because we’re making so many assumptions about why people said no, and oftentimes, we’re also really taking those personally. And as someone who, like grew a nonprofit for five years, that was like my whole life, I totally get that. But I think we have to be aware of how that’s actually implementing the way that we’re taking action, the way that we’re doing the things that are going to be the most effective in our fundraising. Okay, sorry.

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I’m apologizing for needing water. Because we’re so conditioned. Okay. So the fourth type of thought or belief is the Gremlin self critic. I am not going to go over this in great detail on this webinar. It is not an appropriate subject for a group webinar. But I do want you to have some awareness around it. So we all have a self critic inside us. We do like every person has a self critic that has a story that’s somewhat around, I am not blank enough. I am not smart enough. I am not a good enough fundraiser. I am not pretty enough. I am not what I’m not enough. We all have this. And again, like some people call this ego. Again, this is designed to keep us safe, to keep us from taking risk from keep us from potentially experiencing any rejection ever. But think about that. Everything about fundraising involves risk opens up the potential for rejection, I don’t consider it rejection, I consider it just not being aligned. Right. But it’s that same feeling of and so we can’t just let our bodies go on autopilot. We can’t just let these narratives in our head go on autopilot. Because the autopilot version of our brains will have us do everything that is the opposite of what we need to be doing in order to be implementing effective fundraising strategy. So for the Gremlin for the self critic, here’s the most important thing for you to do. The most important thing for you to do is when you hear that super mean voice in your head is to just acknowledge it and validate it to say, Yeah, gosh, it is super scary. Going into major donor meetings. It feels really vulnerable. Sometimes I’m worried that people aren’t going to like me. And that scares me. And it’s totally appropriate that that feels scary. If you can acknowledge and validate your feelings instead of like the tough loving ourselves into like, oh my god, like you’ve been fundraising for 10 years, why can’t you just like walk in there? Now, that actually doesn’t work with the Gremlin. Right? What actually works is like, acknowledging, validating, and then motivating yourself forward, like I hear you is totally scary. And I’ve taken a lot of scary actions in my life as a fundraiser. And I know I can do this, right, thank you Gremlin self credit for trying to keep me safe from trying to protect me from some form of rejection, but actually don’t need you because I can do this. I’ve done this before. I’ve done this so many, so many times. Okay, I won’t go too too deep down there. Because now we’re going to transition to the donor retention strategy component. Okay. And again, I just want to say like, sometimes I feel like with, like coaching work, people are like, Oh, just like, give me the strategy, or I get outreach from folks all the time. Now, will you just write us a fundraising strategy around this, the strategy is just the strategy unless we have the skills and tools and awareness to implement the strategy. So I’m going to be giving you three retention strategies, I’m going to be curing, you have some experiential blindness related to those retention strategies. So you might have heard one of the strategies before, but you have not heard it in this way, or with some of the data that I’m going to present with you, for you. So we’re gonna be talking about the retention strategy, we’re going to talk about the sort of emotional management around that strategy and the habit to implement the strategy with, okay, and I want to just give you, I’m not going to give you sort of a crash course in habit building at the moment, but I do want to bring an awareness to you that any in order for any action to take place, and this includes, in order for your donors to take an action, or for your fundraising staff to take an action or for you to take an action. In order for any action to take place. Three things need to come together, motivation, ability, and a prompt, motivation, ability and a prompt. And this is actually on a graph, right? So the higher motivation you have for something, the harder it can be to do the thing, the lower your motivation is, the easier the thing needs to be to do. And we’ll talk about that. And always, there needs to be a prompt. So when I hear from board members or fundraisers, oh, well, they would give if they really, you know, still cared about our organization, we don’t have to email them again, they would give if they wanted to, incorrect, incorrect, people need to be prompted in order to take any action. And let me tell you, even if you’re if you’re like, well, sometimes we get gifts, and we didn’t send out a prom. That is true. But that’s actually because something else had has prompted them, they have been prompted set by something else. This is like the science of behavior. And if you want to learn more about it, I have a podcast interview with Dr. BJ Fogg. That’s all about building habits, designing behaviors, all of that he’s one of the leading scientists over at Stanford on this. So I want you to just sort of have that context as we dive into this. So this is probably one that you have heard before. But I really want you to stick with me for a second. The importance of personalized and warm thank you calls within 48 hours of a gift. So we are talking about retention here. So why does this actually matter? So we know that when somebody gives a donation dopamine is released in the brain. But dopamine alone is not actually enough to keep a donor engaged in your work, or to give them a sense of belonging and identity with your organization. We make an assumption that after the first gift, they are sort of like our donor and I was interviewing someone the other day, he was like I don’t actually even consider someone my donor until the second gift. Whoa, total shift in how we think about this. So the reality is, is that what you want to do as an organization is be able to convert that dopamine experience, which is just this immediate feel good chemical release in our brain with a serotonin based experience because serotonin which is also a feel good hormone, is linked to memory, identity belonging. How do you do that? What’s one way to do that? A warm and personalized connection? I will tell you, I fundraise for 13 years. I always heard this make Thank you calls within 48 hours and I was like, Why is this so important? I’m just going to make them on Friday or make them once a month. I never did. This is one of the biggest mistakes I made as a fundraiser. I didn’t do it because nobody ever explained to me that it was actually like science backed as to why making those phone calls within a certain amount of time because of the relationship between those chemicals in your brain actually makes a huge huge huge difference when I heard this and I learned this I was like whoa, okay, so how do you deal with this you’re like okay, matter well, we have set that goal many times to make those Thank you calls, and it never happens. So here is my suggestion. My recommendation is that you actually schedule call times for Thank you calls with your team. They can be 10 minutes long on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, right. But I want you to get your entire team, or anyone who’s participating in these Thank you calls on Zoom or in person, I’m gonna show you how I’m doing this in terms of why this is designed appropriately. So I want you to get your entire team on Zoom or in person. Before you start, I want you to do a quick breathing exercise just to ground people down. It can even just be like five deep breaths, something, I want you to provide a script for the thank you calls, I want you to publicly tally and celebrate the calls being made. And I’ll talk more about this later. And I want you to record it right and DonorPerfect. So let me explain why those things lead to a well designed habit. Getting the entire team on Zoom or in person that’s accountability. Doing a quick breathing exercise before you start. That’s emotional management. Providing a script is making the action easier to do member getting over the action line, making the action easier to do ability, improving ability, and publicly tallying and celebrating that’s something called showing shine. And I’ll talk more about this later of why it’s so important to be celebrating like that in the moment, and then recording it right and DonorPerfect. You know, I heard this, I heard this quote once it was like, Don’t tell me what you care about. Show me your budget. You know, it was like, Don’t tell me what you care about as an organization, show me how you spend your money. And I feel like that with data too. I always say to people, like, don’t tell me what you care about. Show me what you track. Right. So if all you’re doing is tracking money, and not these other things, then I think there you need to look at like what you really care about and are invested in as an organization. So DonorPerfect makes this so incredibly easy. Like right within the contact log, you can schedule when you’re going to make the call and you can pick certain times. So like as donations are coming in, you could kick them to the next group call time. And the thing that I want to say here is that, you know, in political fundraising, I did this series on political fundraising on the podcast, one of the things that blew my mind is that phone calls for political fundraising all all happen with a coach next to the fundraiser. That is how much they know that phone calls, thank you calls or ask calls are so emotionally vulnerable, that they schedule call times for those to happen, because they know it’s going to be a really hard action line for someone to get over alone. So that is number one, take some more water.

32:50  

So number two, is review segment and tailor your language and there are going to be some probably brand new takeaways that you hear in this one. Some of it might be repetitive, but there’s some new ways of thinking about this. Okay, so in order, like you’ve probably heard till you’re blue in the face that you need to segment your donors, right, and tailor your language. But we aren’t able to really do that as well as we need to if we’re not regularly looking at our retention data, right to really understand where our donors are at and how they’ve been showing up or how they’ve been participating. So the first, the very first thing is to get into a habit around looking at retention data. And the way to really help with that is around group accountability. So have a set time every week. Or maybe it’s a part of your staff meeting to look at your donor data together. And something that’s super important about how you do this is that you want to set a group expectation that you’re approaching this exercise with curiosity, not with judgment, we avoid a ton of data when we are scared of the data. And we are scared of the narratives, the gales that are going to come up from the data, but give you a non fundraising example to like drive this point home, right? Like when it comes to weight loss. There’s so much research to show that the more frequently you weigh yourself, the better or the more weight you’ll lose, right. But weighing yourself is something that most people really avoid doing. Because what they are having trouble controlling are the narratives and like beating themselves up that they’re going to hear when they look at that number on the scale, right? So the reason I’m saying this together is because one I want you to have a group accountability structure around looking at your data. And I want you to know how critical it is that you create a space when looking at that data that’s super curious and not judgmental, and that you’re really watching language and holding each other accountable to positive curious language around it because the moment it gets into something where we’re beating our stuck around it, we’re not going to, we’re not going to keep doing it, the habits going to fall off the habits and fall off because it feels really bad. Okay. And then once you have the state and you’re aware of this data, I want you to start testing language with different segments to see what works from an engagement and participation perspective, because this is one of the biggest missed opportunities when it comes to donor retention, testing language and understanding your audience by testing language. This is where you can try serving. We talked about this a lot in the podcast series on donor retention from last week. And I want to share two really interesting language trends that we learned in that interview with Ayelet Fishbach, who studies the science of motivation. So she studied a lot of fundraising around the science of motivation. And she found that when organizations used the term show your support, more people participated, but at lower levels, when they use the term make a difference, people participated, less people participated. But they gave a bigger amount. So let’s look at that for a second. So when the term show your support was used, more people participated at a lower amount. When they were asked to make a difference. People clearly interpreted that to mean, they really, if they were going to make a difference, they had to give a bigger donation, they had to be more committed to the organization that needed to be one of their bigger priorities in terms of giving, right so they give bigger amounts, but way less people participated. So if you’re trying to reengagement strategy for lapsed donors, or donor retention, I want I want you to test this and my recommendation is to try it with show your support, right to really incentivize to just see and test. Okay, who’s engaged, but maybe they thought that being involved in our organization was a big lift, or they had to be a big dollar donor to really have an impact here, right. So that’s one one language strategy to think about. The other thing she found in her data as it relates to donor retention is around how you use the language of where you are at in relationship to your goal. So let’s say you have a campaign going out to lapsed donors, or you’re looking at the folks who haven’t given to a cat to a campaign yet, you’re thinking about the language to really engage them. So folks who are closer to an organization, they like to hear data around the gap to reach the goal, right? So let’s say you’ve had someone gift your organization every year for the last five years, but they just haven’t participated in this campaign, yet, we really don’t think they’re going to last they’ve been so involved, they’re probably going to get a lot more motivated around hearing, we only have, you know, a we have 30% left to be able to do blank, can you help us reach our goal, right, because they’re already bought into your organization. To a certain extent, they’ve demonstrated a lot of repetition in their giving, they demonstrated that they’re really a part of your community, they feel this sense of belonging. But let’s say you have people you’re reaching out to for that same campaign, and they lapsed three years ago, and you’re like, should we even engage them? Totally, why not? Right, but with a low lift, low expectations and language that’s tailored to them. So that would sound something like sharing with them, who has how much has already been raised? Right? We’ve already raised 70% of our goal to be able to do blank. So they want to hear people who are more distanced from the organization, they actually want to hear how much has been raised so far, because what they’re trying to identify, like, is this a group that already has a lot of people involved, even though they’ve given to you before, right, but it was a long time ago, they’ve lost that identity piece, they probably don’t even remember that they gave to that many years ago, right? We always view things through our lens. And we’re like, oh, well, you know, they very intentionally not given through 2000 Since 2016, actually, probably not at all, they probably have no awareness that they gave in 2016. And so you want to treat them almost like a new donor, right, and to sort of bring them back in by showing them how much support you already have towards a goal. So the data there is the same, right? It’s the same, you’re at the 70% of the goal mark, but you’re using the gap that needs to close for the folks who are closer to your organization. And you’re using how much has been raised to the folks who are newer or longer term lapse. Okay, so those are two like very specific takeaways, but will have huge impact on your retention numbers. And if you’re like okay, Mallory, those are helpful takeaways, but how do I sort of think about that in a bigger way, like when I’m segmenting my list, and I’m trying to identify like, who might be interested in what the one thing I’ll say? Is that DonorPerfect has a great resource on segmentation a donor personas, I’m actually going to copy I think I can do this while I’m talking to you guys. I’m going to throw that in the chat right now. So that’s another great research on segmentation and donor personas. But the other thing is, there’s this Seth Godin quote that I think about a lot when it comes to donor retention and that peace around identity and belonging. And that’s this, quote, people like us do things like this. People like us do things like this, this is really at the core of donor engagement and participation. Do they see themselves in your donor base? Do they say, Okay, people like me, are giving to a cause like this, right. So this is something that I really keep fresh when I’m thinking about that language, and what type of language might lead to the best retention. And then again, I really want you to test and survey and have some fun with it. And I’ll explain in a moment why also testing and survey is, is super important. So donor, perfect, makes it so easy to track retention, right? This is like on your home screen, you’re looking at your retention numbers all the time, that is so wonderful. And I want to make sure that just because it is on your home screen, you that does not mean that you should not have intentional time that you’re looking at that data together as a team. Because if you’re looking at at it on your dashboard everyday, but you’re getting off that page kind of quickly, because you’re nervous to look at that number, those numbers, or maybe something’s in the red, right, then it’s not serving the purpose that it’s intended. So they make it so easy to pull this data so easy to look at this data. So even you know, this isn’t like you have to pull some massive report before you have that staff meeting. They make it super, super easy. But I really want to make sure from a habit perspective that you are building in that group accountability and talking about it together as a team. Okay. Number three.

42:03  

Celebrate the action, not just the result. So what do I mean? I said before that piece around, like, don’t tell me what you care about. Show me what you track. Right. One of the biggest problems in the interview with Ayelet Fishbach. On the science of motivation, she talks about something called the middle problem, what happens in the middle of anything, right? We have campaigns where we have a ton of energy, and we’re seeing quick acquisition of new donors. And so yes, we want to focus on more campaigns, we see events and we see event signups. And then we have the event. And all these things are giving us a dopamine hits, even major donor meetings, we’re raising money, the feedback loop, the success loop is much shorter. donor retention lives in the middle. It lives in the moments where you need to be taking consistent action over and over and over again. And you might not get a lot of external validation for a lot of those actions. But those actions are critically critically important. And so what do you do about this, you as the fundraiser or the executive director of the fundraising team, you really need to build in celebration into the actions that you want your fundraising team or yourself to be taking. And we talked about this in terms of behavior change is something called shine, you need to show yourself shine, right? So you need to show yourself and your staff shine for taking the action you wanted them to take, right? So here’s how you do this. You identify the actions that you want your team to be taking, right? What are the behaviors that you want them to be taking on a daily basis, you might have like 45, I want you to prioritize the top three, because we are making the action easier to do we are prioritizing the top three. And then I want you to decide how you’re going to celebrate each time someone does that action, right. And it can be just something motivational that you share with each other. It doesn’t have to be like some big thing. I mean, you think about even on Zoom, like the ability to clap for people, right? Those are different ways of just taking that moment to celebrate the action being taken. And then I would also suggest that use three minutes in your team meeting two minutes to check in about the action totals or confirm that shine was given or like do a round up on all the shine from the week, because that’s a group accountability component to really make sure that this gets built in to your work. Okay, do a quick recap, then we have time for questions. So here’s some of the top takeaways. One is like when we start to ignore prompts to do things this is that one of the other big problems with donor retention is that maybe we were prompted around the donor retention behavior a lot. But once we start to ignore that prompt, it becomes harder and harder to get over the action line in the future. So this is actually why it’s so cool. for that call to change our perspective to re motivate, right. That’s why it was so important to me to give you a new way to look at donor retention. Maybe some of the strategies are similar, but my hope is that you’re looking at them and how to implement them in a totally different way. Right. The second is that the gales often hold us back from implementing the most effective donor retention strategies, because we create false narratives. I want you to be ready for the gales like when you hear the Gremlin you hear that assumption, or you be like, Oh, yep, I knew you were coming. I knew you were coming, because I’m taking a risk, because I’m going out of my comfort. So I want you to expect those narratives. And now you have some tools for addressing them. And then we have a donor retention strategy on tailoring language and how data is used and reviewing our retention data together as a group. The other strategy being Thank you calls within 48 hours using call times, right, so not just thank you calls within 48 hours, thank you calls within 48 hours using call times. And then celebrating the completion of a donor retention action, because it actually might be months or years before you see the results, right. So you have to remember that like, these are long tail behaviors that you’re taking as a fundraiser. So since you’re not going to get that external validation, you have to be tracking and celebrating behaviors earlier. Okay, I have one more thing before we go into questions, which is just that DonorPerfect. You guys is just such an insanely generous company. And they are giving away 10 $250 scholarships to power partners formulas, my signature course, all of this, this sort of gives you a sense of like what we do inside power partners. This is specifically tailored to donor retention. But if you want to learn more about that program, and then just write down DonorPerfect is the is the code All right, that you just put the code on the checkout page as DonorPerfect, and it’s just the first 10 Get the scholarships and then and so if you don’t get it, it means that 10 have already been claimed. Okay. That is that. So now time for questions. And let me figure out. Hi.

47:16  

Hi. Before we get into any of the questions, I want to make a comment because one of the things that I didn’t realize is those that were logging in via the web did not have the chat unless we chat them first, we put something into the chat before we started the webinar, so that it was there. So you did not have the chat. So it caused a slew of messages. Since since then, I have chatted, Mallory has chatted. So you should have a chat section now. So if there’s anything you want to go grab, I would suggest you get to that before the end of the webinar. And any questions make sure that you put them into the Questions pane you should have that. We do have a question from Mary. And what she asked was all the fundraising experts say thank you calls, but I think millennials and younger want thank you text, or is there any science to that?

48:14  

Yes, so the science of influence and like the identity piece, the most important thing, honestly, well, what I’ll say is that the science demonstrates that the most impactful thing is in person. Next is video, actually. And it can be asynchronous video. So even like if you did a selfie video on your phone and texted that to someone, or like use loom or thank you or something like that. So videos next, then a phone call, then text, then an email. So that’s sort of the order of like the impact that it actually makes. So I but the most important thing is that the message is warm and authentic and personalized. So I would say it’s from a capacity issue. And because you and maybe the other thing I would say is survey your donors, ask them or see and do some testing, right? Like do the videos with a subset, do text with a subset and then see what happens at end of year, right? Like every community is a little bit different. But the science does demonstrate that sort of order of impact when looked at a more like, you know, from a macro level. But again, this is a great place to get curious. And I think the most important thing is to recognize that what’s the most important, it’s not sort of paralyzed about there being like one perfect solution and to be taking that action and making sure that you’re thinking folks within 48 hours.

49:42  

That’s helpful. I think so. Okay, so we did have someone else Valerie is asking, and I’m not quite sure if it was completely well, it’s probably completely explained, but how did they get the scholarship From DonorPerfect, yes,

50:00  

yes. So if you already know that you want the scholarship, you can just go to Mallory erickson.com/invited. And then in the in the like coupon code, you can put DonorPerfect, and then it will automatically apply to your checkout. And if you don’t know what power partners is all about, you want to learn more, that’s when you should go to Mallory erickson.com/power partners, and that you’ll, you’ll be led to a checkout page, if you do want to join us inside the formula. It’s a 12 month program, we have monthly group coaching and guest coaching calls and a hot seat call one on one coaching with me. So you can learn more about that on that page. And then once you get to the checkout, put in DonorPerfect into the coupon code, you get 10% off if you do the monthly payment plan. And if you do pay in full, you get the $250 Scholarship, which is just amazing.

50:53  

Okay, as I wait for questions, I do have a comment come in? Well, first off, I’ve had a number of comments come in saying that the information is amazing. Someone commented about the language that you use. It’s it’s it’s new to them. But Mary mentioned, she says what you were talking about. Let me see here. She says this is so relevant for me right now I was recently sort of rejected by colleagues who feel heavy and hopeless around the mission we serve mental health and its mental health and they feel frustrated when when she tells them hope filled stories. And she says I get that they are constantly up against lots of external barriers. So we’re talking about your inbox, your barriers, and all of that. And I want to be mindful of that. And I also think that everything you’re talking about is a very different mindset that many people have. And it takes a reeducating for all of us to recognize and and with, well, I lost my place here. I apologize to recognize what internal and emotional barriers we are unintentionally carrying. So she really picked up on what you were talking about there. Hmm.

52:11  

Yeah, I mean, first of all, I just want to say like, times are hard for a lot of different reasons. And particularly in the mental health space, in relation to the pandemic. There is so much and I would just say in general, like fundraisers, nonprofit leaders, like you’re often hearing traumatic stories, you know, daily and you’re up against a lot of like negative narratives sometimes. So the one thing I would say it’s like, if you’ve I talked about this, inside the course a lot, this idea of catabolic energy and anabolic energy, catabolic energy being this very, like depleting exhausting energy, it’s filled with a lot of judgment, black and white thinking, Dread, victimhood, which we see in the sector a lot, too. And anabolic energy is more like fueling joy filled, connected energy. It’s where like, Win Win mutual benefit. And there’s a spectrum, there’s seven levels of leadership or energy, and I turn them into the seven styles of fundraising. But the thing that I would say is like, when somebody is experiencing a ton of catabolic energy, which is what you’re describing here, one of the things that you can do first is to really acknowledge and validate how they’re feeling. And you saw me bring that strategy into when I talked about the gales, right? When I when I talked about the Gremlin, I said, if you’re really feeling a strong, strong Gremlin, acknowledging and validating how you feel is really, really important. One of the hard things about sort of how we show up is like when some people are feeling that super low catabolic energy and other people are feeling this super high anabolic energy, there can be a little bit of like a mismatch, which sounds like is happening here, right? So energy is contagious in both directions. So one of the things that’s really important about acknowledging and validating is just that like, if I’m showing up with like, level six energy and you’re in level one catabolic energy, you’re gonna be like, that’s probably the people who left right. It’s like, okay, like, I’m actually not ready for this right now. I like can’t access that energy right now. That’s okay. So I think like meeting people where they’re at and acknowledging and validating and then giving them an opportunity to get curious, like, I’m just curious, like, what has been the most inspiring thing that you’ve seen in the last week? Or I’m curious, like, you know, I can’t imagine what it’s like to feel that way every single day, like, what makes you feel hopeful and committed to this work? So doing some of that, like Curiosity shift with them that I was doing with all of you around the gales to help them start to access higher levels of anabolic energy and recognize that they’re not necessarily going to feel exactly as you do, but it’s sort of like little glimpses of light start to peek through And I think the more you can also create, you know, cultures around that can be really helpful. You know, when I talked about every action takes place because of the relationship between motivation ability, and the prompt motivation is the relationship between hope and fear. So the more hopeful we are, the more it drives motivation up, the more fearful we are, the more it drives motivation down. So even if it’s helpful for them to understand, you know, BJ Foggs, work around habits like, Hey, we’re all trying to stay more motivated around blank. And so we know from the science of motivation, that’s something that would be helpful would be to be tapping into more hopeful stories or something like that. If that’s an angle that works. That was a lot of different ideas, but I hope that’s helpful.

55:44  

I’m thinking it was, we do have a question from Meg. She says, Is there any rule of thumb for choosing what can what constitutes a lapsed donor? Or is purely subjective for each organization? Hmm,

55:58  

yeah. So I do think it’s a little bit subjective. I think I mean, I think most people are like, I don’t know exactly how DonorPerfect like Countess or like how you pull your live budget report, right, which is like, last year, but not this year writing. And all of you have different years, right. So your your years are different in terms of your start and end dates, your calendar and accounting years. So I mean, I would say like, I have worked with organizations that don’t really consider someone lapsed until they haven’t given in two years. But I think and I would really suggest you listen to the what the fundraising episode with Lindsey Simon’s from last week, she’s a capital campaign fundraiser. But one of the things we talked about is kind of the spheres of influence that happened within within organizations, because I think one of the challenges with donor retention is sometimes how hard it can be to compare your numbers to someone else, right for so for, like example, if you’re an organization that has like walks, and let’s say you have a walk in a community every two years, you’re not then I wouldn’t like and you do peer to peer fundraising, then I would not consider the people who give to their friends walk lapsed, if they didn’t give in that year in between walks, right. Does that make sense? So it because they haven’t been prompted again, right? That walk didn’t happen in that community. It happens every other year. So I really do think this is organization specific. And I think that episode on what the fundraising will be really helpful in thinking about like, how does your fundraising model? How does your organization’s kind of business model impact how you might think about lapse donors and retention specifically for you?

57:53  

I have Denise she says curious how you would celebrate if you’re a one person office. Oh,

58:00  

I love that you asked that Denise with yourself. So okay, you guys, we are we like do not think it’s appropriate to celebrate ourselves. So Denise, every time you take an action that you are proud of, I want you to cheer for yourself. And if that feels super uncomfortable, right now, then what I want you to do is I want you to find an alarm sound that you like, or a button that you can put on an app on your phone and every time like maybe it’s people clapping like you’re you get some gift that you love? And is that gif, GIF, whatever. And, you know, I want you to look at that every time you take the action shine, it’s something we should be showing ourselves constantly. It makes us so uncomfortable. We don’t believe we deserve it. I could do a whole other webinar on that. But 100% You should be celebrating yourself taking those actions. Thanks for asking that.

58:52  

I love that question. I was wondering that. As soon as I saw it, I thought that’s not a question I would know how to answer. So I thought what you just provided was perfect. She said I love it. Yeah. Okay, so we’re heading into the top of the hour. So we’re gonna be finishing up. I do appreciate you all joining us this afternoon. And thank you Mallory for being here and providing such great information.

59:27  

My pleasure, thank you for having me. And um, find me on like Instagram or LinkedIn if you are still processing what we talked about, and it’s a few hours later and you’re like, but what about blank, shoot me a message. I’m a human, and I’m happy to answer your questions later. So yeah, please feel free to reach out.

59:47  

Okay. All right. I’m going to we have a bunch of thank yous coming in. All right, so I’m going to be closing out the webinar. Again. Thank you so much for joining US and Mallory you have a great afternoon

1:00:03  

thank you you too thank you to DonorPerfect so appreciate you guys