Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 130. How to Launch a Digital Fundraising Program in 21 Days - Jeremy Haselwood

Transcript

130. How to Launch a Digital Fundraising Program in 21 Days - Jeremy Haselwood · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Jonathan McCoy: Hey, I'm john.
• 0:02
  Becky Endicott: And I'm Becky.
• 0:03
  Jonathan McCoy: And this is the we are for good podcast.
• 0:06
  Becky Endicott: nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:15
  Becky Endicott: We're here
• 0:15
  Jonathan McCoy: to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:23
  Becky Endicott: So welcome to the good community, where nonprofit professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:34
  Jonathan McCoy: So let's get started. Hey, Becky,
• 0:37
  Becky Endicott: welcome, everybody. It's such a great day. The world is so small. We live in Oklahoma. And I'm always shocked when people know someone from Oklahoma. And then we're speaking with our Atlanta guest today who's going to bring some serious hype to digital fundraising, and we're just visiting with them. We went to high school together. He was a senior when I was a freshman, and I mean, and then he's visiting with Julie and we find out that his son plays on the football team. That's how good of an athlete his son is. So I am so delighted to welcome someone that I probably walked past in the lunchroom many times. That's a 15 year old Jeremy Hazelwood to the we're for good podcast, he's with fundraisers unite, just an incredible digital marketing consultant. And so he's got over 20 years of experience in the digital marketing and fundraising space. And I love that his bio says that his journey has equipped him with the successes, failures and perspectives to connect with an array of people in a really authentic and relatable way. So that really drives with our ethos as well. So I think we're gonna have a great conversation today. But Jeremy has also led some digital strategy at multiple fundraising agencies that have in his programs have helped generate over $100 million in online revenue for nonprofits. And so he's just recently jumped to building his own consultancy to help nonprofits in the digital fundraising space. So I think we're about to have an incredible conversation, we're going to be talking about launching a digital fundraising program in 21 days. So for anyone who's like, how in the heck do I do this? How do I leverage this incredible moment?
• 2:20
  Becky Endicott: That is everybody being online working remotely? How can we create a to sustainable program?
• 2:24
  Becky Endicott: This is your day. So Jeremy, welcome to the we're for good podcasts. We're so glad you're here.
• 2:31
  Unknown: Oh, thank you all very much. I'm so happy to be here.
• 2:35
  Unknown: And to just make a note about what you just said, Becky, living in Atlanta, I can't tell you how many times a year people say I've never met anyone from Oklahoma.
• 2:46
  Becky Endicott: I'm just really curious about your journey, especially when you talk about, you know, these different perspectives and successes and failures. Can you give us a little bit of background on your career history and how you got to the place you are today?
• 2:59
  Unknown: Sure. It's actually really interesting. I moved to I went to LSU for three years. And at the time, I was doing music so I was in a little group, little rap group. So my partner and I that I did music with we've decided that we've got to get out of Oklahoma, it's not really a hotbed for hip hop. So we looked at going to Atlantic's I have family out here. So moved out here. We did like a talent show. And we won like the whole talent show. So we said we're gonna stay here. So finish school. Unfortunately, I'm not an alum of Oh, you but they do have most of my money from education. But so that's kind of how I started as a musician, recording artists, writing, producing marketing my music from the work that I did. There were other local and independent artists that wanted me to work with them and help to market them. And then I went back to grad school, worked in the, for a community telecommunications company for several years, when I decided to leave the music industry, I was kind of at a loss, like what do I do now?
• 4:05
  Unknown: Because, you know, I had a lot of passion, like the music industry, you're working with a lot of passionate people, like they care so much about their craft, their music, their lyrics, the way that they're presented. But I wanted to do something that was more involved with some good in the world. You know, I always had a heart for like, helping people. And so I was able to take everything that I learned from the music industry, from academia from, you know, my masters, and just like, let's take businesses take marketing, let's combine it for good and I started looking for jobs with nonprofit agencies that did fundraising. And I was able to get on, worked with my largest client that I worked with was Salvation Army, but also worked with some rescue missions and health care, nonprofits, Animal Care nonprofits. So and with that role, I was head of digital strategy, so really creating strategies and tactics to connect donors with their causes. is online, I did that for a couple years at one agency went to another agency did very similar work. And then it got to a point where it's like, I want to, I want to do this on my own.
• 5:11
  Unknown: So when I left, the second agency that I did this work for, and I will probably talk more about this later, but just uncovering that need with nonprofits. A lot of them were really good at direct mail. It's kind of a proven system. It's reliable system, it's predictable, to some degree, but digital is so instill is so new to a lot of nonprofits, that they're, they're scared to do it because they don't want to risk money, or they don't know how to do it, or they don't have the staff to do it. And sitting in meetings with some of the clients and talking digital, you know, recognize that there's such a gap in the information that they should know, in my opinion, like how to send an email, what makes a good fundraising email? People say, social media, I want to do social media, what do you mean, I want to do social media. So really helping them understand how we can capitalize on digital and breaking it down into a way that it's understandable and actionable. So I'll pause there because I could go on and on.
• 6:12
  Becky Endicott: Is this the most fascinating to nonprofits?
• 6:18
  Jonathan McCoy: And I feel like you get to get on YouTube, because I feel like the way you talk, I can almost see you wrapping this to I feel like you get the hand motion
• 6:24
  Becky Endicott: of the hand.
• 6:25
  Jonathan McCoy: really feeling this? Yeah. So along the way, you wrote this best selling book on Amazon, the digital fundraising blueprint. And I know, you know, part of that has got to be your framework that you teach. I'd love for you to kind of give us an overview of that book and kind of what led you to writing that I'm sure it is based on what you're saying is that we just as nonprofits feel unsure of where to start, but I'm going to kick it to you for that.
• 6:46
  Unknown: Yeah, no. And that's exactly when I left the last fundraising agency that I worked for. And you know, I was really part of me was just, it kind of hurt my heart a little bit because there's so much that nonprofits can do with digital.
• 7:01
  Unknown: And, and I know I recognize and I fully admit, like direct mail is where it's at right now for nonprofits. And I believe that even being a digital guy, like that's where it's at, but digital is like, that is where it's going to go. And I believe that 100% as well. So when I was looking at how can I use my background in marketing and digital marketing, and my just my heart for working with nonprofits, and arm nonprofits with just the basics like because one of the things that I encounter with nonprofits is that when I would go with other, you know, either co workers or people that know digital marketing, a lot of times they'd be talking over the nonprofit set. And the nonprofits would not sit in a whole hour meeting or two hour meeting, and the nonprofit's would not be any further along than they were because they don't have any idea what you're talking about. So I was like, let me write a book.
• 7:50
  Unknown: Well, first, I looked to see if there was a book that I could point people to resources, I looked on Amazon, looked on Google. And I'm like, there's not a book about non like digital fundraising, that I could find. There's some about social media, some about email, but nothing about like, all digital fundraising, all these different channels. So I'm like, I'm gonna write the book, you know. So I took this Yeah, basically, outline each different piece of digital fundraising, email, CRM, SMS, website content, like all these different pieces. It's like the digital fundraising ecosystem.
• 8:25
  Unknown: And I'm broken down chapter by chapter. And I tried to make it like very simple, like, if someone just picked this up for the first time, would they be able to understand it? And I feel like they could. And feedbacks been really great about the book. So I took that and I also created an online course for that for CFR as they want, if they need credits, they can take the online course. But that was it like it was, there was a need for it. And like it wasn't there. So I just created it.
• 8:51
  Becky Endicott: I feel like that just resonates so much with our story. I mean, we're for good was born out of the idea of looking around and saying, Why does a platform like this exist?
• 9:01
  Becky Endicott: Why are we not creating community to share what we know, lift each other up. And I just think your path to where you are right now is so fascinating. And the winding road of it is is very intriguing. And I think you're right. And now that you've said this, I've been kind of thinking about it and stewing on it the last five minutes. But we've had quite a few artists who had been on the podcast who started out as singers or performers, and they took that passion that they had for the arts and performance. And they poured it into nonprofit. And I just think that this is such a gift to our industry to have people who are so passionate about doing good, and pouring that passion into something and I love that you found a blueprint and a way to infuse that. So I thank you for writing this book and even creating classes that teach others. I want to get into this launching a digital fundraising program in 21 days. I mean, now more than ever, digital fundraising is just critical for advancing our mission, can you kind of walk through our listeners through some of the key steps for how they can launch a digital fundraising program? in three weeks? It sounds Yeah, overwhelming, but I think you're gonna break it down and make it palatable for us.
• 10:49
  Unknown: Yeah, certainly. And the i, this is something that I thought about for a while after the book and some of my initial courses, and I was thinking about, you know, what is a way?
• 11:01
  Unknown: You know, things that I keep hearing from nonprofits are, I don't know where to start, like, there's so much to digital, I have no idea where to start. And it's kind of that whole thing like, you know, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time.
• 11:12
  Unknown: So that's, let me tell you, where to start with the elephant, here's what you need to bite first. So basically, the way that I break it down, and you can do it in 21 days, this is whether you're starting from scratch, or if you're very early in the game, not you're not at a mature level of your digital fundraising, even going back and looking day by day, how can we tweak this. So number one, it's like looking where you are right now, like taking inventory. And I would say doing an audit on your social media, your email your website. And if you don't have a website, I mean, most nonprofits at this point, have a website, and the majority of them have Google Analytics. So I kind of start with that as a baseline, if you don't have those, these are things that you need to get as part of the audit. But even then you don't audit your email and your website, and your social media all in one day. It's like, let's start. And let's do one thing one day at a time. And these are things that you can dedicate, you know, a few hours into an hour into, it's not that it has to be 21 days straight, because some people might need a weekend off. But you know, in 21 days, there's a way that you can go from zero to making money for your nonprofit and generating revenue for your nonprofit. So taking inventory of where you are. And then like defining, like where you want to go. I think a lot of people make the mistake of kind of doing this tactics over strategy. It's like, you know, we need to start with social media, we need to create content we made we need to do ads, and it's like, pump the brakes. Like what? What is important? Why are you doing this? First of all, I'm not saying you don't need to do social media. And when people say do social media, let's identify what that means. Like when in your mind. Yeah, it's like, we need to do social media. Cool. Well, what do you mean by that? mega all the time, we need to do social media, we need to be on social media.
• 13:00
  Unknown: Well, Cal, there's so much to that. You're talking about posts, videos, stories. What are you talking about what channels so. And what I find is a lot of newer nonprofits do start with social media as their first choice, probably because it's low cost to no cost, and it's easiest. So once you identify where you're going, this means setting a goal of writing a vision, documenting a vision, not just having one in your mind, because that vision is going to guide everything that you do so and the way that identify how to go about a vision because people struggle with that. I would say imagine like you're at the Olympics, and you're on the winner's podium.
• 13:39
  Unknown: And you've you've secured the medal, like, what is everything that you're What did you accomplish to get there, and that is your vision, like your view from the podium. So the vision is the ideal state of where you want to be. And that is always going to guide how you execute not only your digital fundraising, but your direct mail, it'll, it'll dictate how you run your nonprofit as a whole, whether or not we're working towards that vision or not. So these are like the things we haven't even gotten to the marketing piece yet. A lot of is just taking inventory.
• 14:13
  Jonathan McCoy: But Jeremy, you were speaking our language so much, because everybody starts at step three, mostly, you know, they just start activating and tactics and all these things.
• 14:23
  Jonathan McCoy: But I think that the way that you described casting a vision for this is so powerful, even personally. And for organizationally, I mean, if you can do that in your own life and the life of your organization, you will transform what you're capable of achieving, for sure.
• 14:36
  Jonathan McCoy: I love that.
• 14:39
  Becky Endicott: And I would also say go back to your goal, go back to your mission, go back to your values, that should inform your vision, your digital campaign should be an extension of who you are what you represent. And think about your end user. And how do we make this process frictionless? So talk through the tactics a little bit with us? I mean, we've done our audit, we've gone through creating vision, which is so critical. Where do you go after that?
• 15:07
  Unknown: Yeah, from there, I would look at our audience. And again, part of this you have to keep in mind where you are as an organization. Some organizations know who their audiences, others think they know or haven't really thought about it. They just want to raise money from anybody. And through some of this, I think you all have had some podcasts and guests on there. They've talked about personas and creating personas and that's something that I'm a proponent of because once we know who we are and that we need to know who we're going after So crafting, you create personas give these people a name. This is Angela, this is David, this is whoever they're 62 years old, he's 57 years old. Here's what his life looks like. Here's what he's interested in. Here's the TV shows that he watches here are the magazines that he reads, here's the websites he goes to, here are the kinds of philanthropy that he's involved with, or she's involved with. So really create that because knowing your audience will help you craft not only what you say, your communication, but also the kind of images that you're going to show. So that's like the next phase. Again, we haven't even started with the execution of the marketing, there's so like, to me, it's like, almost like 80% planning and 20% execution.
• 16:18
  Jonathan McCoy: I love it. How many personas Do you would you recommend an organization come up with because I know this could be a block to have like, well, there, you know, all of our donors are different, and they're all unique, that help kind of guide us in that
• 16:29
  Unknown: there's a couple ways to go about this. Unless you have a really tremendous budget, and can really dive deep into analytics to know who your audience is, a lot of it is just kind of who we think our audiences. And that's kind of the unfortunate piece about it, and people can debate me on that. But I'm not trying to win that battle. I'm just, this is what I see from working with nonprofits. So but I would say if you're, if you're five personas, that's too many like you really need to key in on almost like, you're probably one to two, that would be your primary donor. And that's where most of your money is going to come from, and then look at kind of the tertiary workout from there. So I would say hone in on one to two, maybe three to four maximum, because if you go more than that, you're diluting your focus, and you're gonna be wasting ad dollars and time and resources into going after a market that is not going to be one that is going to sustain your organization.
• 17:28
  Jonathan McCoy: I love this advice, too, because it really does pair with the other ways that we talk about, you know, the brand story, which like we just talked through on the podcast recently, is and you're talking to an individual at that point, it's no longer just like this microphone to no one, it's like you can hone in on what are their values? What do they like to do? What are the type of person, it just changes your whole dynamic of how you market to them and talk to them.
• 17:50
  Becky Endicott: And it feels so much more human, because it feels like you're speaking to the one rather than speaking to everyone. And when you feel seen, and when you feel like someone understands you and they're having a one on one conversation with you, you lean in more, you're more curious.
• 18:07
  Becky Endicott: You You want to like click on whatever the link is you want to you want to learn more. So once you've kind of defined that audience, you know, what do you think is the next step? Because Are we still in the 8080 rule of planning? Are we to the 20%?
• 18:22
  Becky Endicott: yet?
• 18:23
  Unknown: No, we're still in the 80. So once you know that, then you actually would want to document a plan. And you really need to look at what can we do versus what would we like to do?
• 18:33
  Unknown: It's kind of like a need to have bags to have kind of situation.
• 18:36
  Unknown: So when I say what can we do like, if we're a nonprofit. We can brainstorm or we can say okay, if we're doing digital, and not necessarily an integrated campaign with direct mail, which is 100. Very, extremely important. But let's just talk about digital. You know, one of the things that we have the competencies to do in the house, is it? Can we do email? Do we have someone that knows social media? Do we have someone that understands online ads? Do we have someone that understands peer to peer, so kind of taking inventory? And what I would do is I would pull it out all these different things, all these different channels? Do we have someone that can update our website? I mean, you all probably seen this. There's a lot of nonprofits that don't even know how to update their website. And so their websites haven't been updated in years, because they have to pay someone to do it.
• 19:22
  Unknown: And it's not the priority. So we're still at 80%, document all that. And then we're going to start working on what our messaging would be creating campaigns create a campaign calendar, starting out simple, what's one campaign each month that we can run and it doesn't have to be a fundraising campaign, it could be an email acquisition campaign, it can be a volunteer campaign, when I'm talking about digital fundraising, for the sake of this conversation, it's also like digital marketing, like no, you don't have to have a fundraiser every single month.
• 19:51
  Unknown: Although like, that's what I would recommend. If you're Mormon, in a more mature state of digital, you'll these things once you get them up and running, they will get to a point where it's organized, and it will start to run itself. But if you don't do this legwork up front, you're always going to be trying to catch up.
• 20:09
  Jonathan McCoy: I think that is really, really sound advice. And I'll just piggyback on that, too. So much. And I just had this conversation with a client in the last couple of weeks is that so much of the power of just being in communication on a consistent schedule is just reminding people that you're there to just an awareness piece, because we all know we get so many messages a day from all Different things, there's personal life, there's marketing messages, there's everything that's in our life. So we need to be consistent, because otherwise, we're just not gonna be top of mind. I love that advice.
• 20:44
  Becky Endicott: And I would also say that, you know, to your point about people who are organizations that are not updating their website, that is such a simple one good thing you could do today. Because if you're not creating new content, new reasons for people to come to your website and see what's going on to look around your home, I say home, you know, with air quotes, you know, because it really is the front porch, the digital front porch of your organization, we want it to seem relevant, we want them to stay curious and to stay engaged. And if you are not routinely updating your website, and connecting those updates to your social channels, then you're not really driving that traffic back home, that could be one simple thing that you could do today.
• 21:26
  Becky Endicott: So I guess I just picked out one good thing in there. Sorry, john, it was a little earlier episode.
• 21:33
  Unknown: to piggyback on that, it's like also, by updating your site, you're helping to enhance the SEO, the search engine optimization for your site. So if your site hasn't been updated, and you're concerned about your site showing up on Google on the first page, like you have to update it, just add a blog to it, you know, find something to talk about each month, because those signals of updating your site, lets Google know that okay, this is still an active site. So this is still probably a relevant site like let's continue to show this site higher in the search rankings.
• 22:04
  Jonathan McCoy: Taking a quick pause from today's episode to thank our sponsor, who happens to be one of our favorite companies virtuous, you know, we believe everyone matters. And we've witnessed the greatest philanthropic movements happen when you see an activate donors at every level. And virtuous is the platform to help you do just that. It's so much more than a nonprofit CRM, virtuous helps charities reimagine generosity through responsive fundraising.
• 22:24
  Jonathan McCoy: And we love it because this approach builds trust and loyalty through personalized donor engagement. Sound like virtuous may be a fit for your organization, learn more today@virtuous.org, follow the link in our show notes. Really, really powerful. And I want to go back to something that you said really early on, if you don't have a website that you can update, and you don't have Google Analytics, get that on the roadmap, you know, the Google Analytics just shouldn't be a huge lift, it's free, it's available, you just need to probably talk to your domain administrator to be able to get into the settings to do that.
• 22:56
  Jonathan McCoy: But make a long term plan to get on a website that your team can update. You know, I do websites, I, I am just trying to empower the community to say, move to something that you can own because it is your hub. I mean, it is the literal central point of your front door, it's your home, you want to be able to access it. So if it's not budget for it, friends and move in that direction.
• 23:20
  Unknown: Yeah, it doesn't matter if it's a Wix or Squarespace, just something that you have access to that you can update, those are relatively easy to update.
• 23:28
  Becky Endicott: So we've built our plans, we've started building out our campaign. What is that sort of next step? Once we've built our plan, and I'm wondering if we're getting into implementation?
• 23:39
  Unknown: Yeah, we're getting very close, you know, I feel like this is I don't know how much y'all watch football. So forgive me if I'm saying too much here. But you know, you see some coaches that are always trying to run onto the field, they actually have someone assigned to them to like, holds their pants and keeps them from going on the field, so that they don't get a penalty. So I feel like that's what I'm doing that people are ready to get started.
• 23:58
  Unknown: But it's like, hold up, hold up.
• 24:00
  Unknown: Not yet. Not yet. Yeah. But we're almost there. So it's like you have like, your campaign, like, let's just say we have a campaign, we have one campaign.
• 24:07
  Unknown: And let's just say it's a fundraising campaign. Let's say it's for a homeless shelter. And as part of this, we've identified, we're going to send two emails, we're going to do four social media posts, we're going to change the hero image of our website, on the Thank you, we're going to have a donation page allocated specifically for this campaign.
• 24:26
  Unknown: Once they donate, we're gonna have a thank you page specific to this campaign that might have another action maybe that don't that thank you pages, saying thank you for your donation. We appreciate it. Did you know if you help us out monthly, we can have X impact, and then maybe that takes them to another. So we have all that mapped out. And so now it's go time. And this is where within an organization roles and responsibilities are very important. You need to know who is going to be responsible for what, who's creating the content, who is executing the content, who's monitoring the comment, or content, and who's reporting back on the content.
• 25:07
  Unknown: So that would be more the execution pieces of it. I mean, there's that's simplifying it, but that's in essence, how you would go from planning to full execution.
• 25:16
  Becky Endicott: Oh, my gosh, you said something that I think is so critical. I don't even know that we've heard it on the podcast and over 100 episodes, but defining roles internally has got to be something that's done in the planning phase because you could have the most beautiful, digital fundraise campaign ever with the most thoughtful, you know, messaging and multimedia focus. But if you don't have somebody on the back end, that's responding to comments that's directing traffic that's thinking appropriately, then it's all for not, in my opinion. So I think that was a really good hack that you gave everybody. And I think it gets to the heart of so many organizations, if
• 25:58
  Jonathan McCoy: you're getting started with this, that means you probably don't have a dedicated person. So it helps you ease into this and not overcommit, which I think you've kind of you said that in, threaded that throughout. So what about, you know, how do you assess things after you go? I mean, one of our core values of our company is grow, adapt, disrupt, repeat, because we just feel like it's so healthy to try things and just know that it's gonna just be an iteration. And, you know, it's not gonna be perfect before you send something out every time you want to be able to have room to make it better and better.
• 26:27
  Jonathan McCoy: what's what's that step look like for you?
• 26:30
  Unknown: Yeah, I think one piece to that is from the execution or even from the planning, because you want to be able to learn with every single campaign you do. And if you're betting the house on every campaign, then you'll learn a little bit.
• 26:45
  Unknown: However, if we can tweak a couple of things within the campaign that we can learn a lot more. So for example, if you're sending an email, and let's say, it doesn't matter, if you have 500 people on your list, or 50,000, people don't send like one email, like, do an A B version of it, you know, change a headline, or a subject line rather. And let that and learn from that, Senator at the same time, same content of the email, same everything, except the subject line is different. So at least now we learned something, do they respond to the openness email to this kind of subject line, or this one, a Facebook ad, like, I would normally run no less than three Facebook ads so that I can learn. And again, you're tweaking small things, you don't want three totally different Facebook ads, you want maybe three different images, and everything else is the same three different calls to action and everything else, you're just changing one thing. And that way you can learn how people respond to different pieces of your marketing and fundraising. So that's one thing that a lot of nonprofits don't do, they'll just send out the email, they'll do the ad. And you again, you can learn that way. But you have to wait for the next campaign to learn. But even then the next campaign has different messaging, a different image. So you have to kind of figure out what did we learn. Now, if you have if you're running the same campaign, this year that you ran the exact same campaign last year, then you have historical data, but if you don't have historical data, you have to do some testing within each of your campaigns. And that's how you would learn along the way.
• 28:17
  Becky Endicott: Okay, that was so smart. I don't want anyone to miss the fact that after we hit the play button, and we actually launch and go into implementation, we don't just sit back, I mean, those three weeks that you were in your 21 day digital fundraising campaign have got to be about monitoring and pivoting. I mean, I think this is such a great thing that a lot of people miss me included, I think that we've done this in the past that for more organizations that you've got to try stuff, we can't assume that we know what message is going to have resonance, or what image is going to connect with someone, we've got to keep pivoting, this is the time for you to really be creative. And it's like it's a time where we're strengthening our messaging, and our marketing.
• 29:04
  Becky Endicott: And it really will make you look like an expert, because you could go back to your leadership and say, you know, this didn't really work. And so we pivoted this way. And we realized, you know, we learned this from the first iteration. And in, the more that we learn and lean into what's working and what's not working. Again, we're defining who that audience is, again, we're defining what they want, how they want us to show up the messages that resonate with him.
• 29:31
  Becky Endicott: And so it's kind of like a little self exploration, social experiment. And so please do not forget about testing and continuing to pivot and listen, listen very well.
• 29:44
  Jonathan McCoy: And I think it's like you can just adopt, because that's how direct mail was. It's so slow. I mean, like the cycle of trying to change something in a direct mail campaign. Like it's new, a new playbook. It's a new rulebook of what's possible.
• 29:56
  Jonathan McCoy: So I think throwing out that mindset is helpful.
• 29:59
  Unknown: Yeah, well, I'm glad you brought direct mail up, because as y'all were both talking, I was thinking about, you know, direct mail me a lot of people watching this or listening to this are probably involved with direct mail. So they're just listening for new information on digital. But don't think that because we're talking about digital, we're not also talking about direct mail.
• 30:15
  Unknown: Because what you learn in digital, you now have new content, you can test in direct mail, and you can do it quickly.
• 30:21
  Unknown: And you know, the smart organizations are testing direct now, but they don't know the results of that for months, and maybe they have this winner that every year. This is the one and they're scared. Test anything?
• 30:35
  Unknown: Well, now you've actually tested a message in digital. And you know what this is actually working. So let's test this indirect mail, you can be carve out a little bit of your direct mail and then test that because we might be onto something over here that can actually help you raise even more money in direct mail.
• 30:50
  Becky Endicott: Oh, I love just the cross connectivity of it, because one could definitely inform and help the other. So I'm curious if you have some examples of successful nonprofit digital fundraising campaigns that you've seen and what sets them apart?
• 31:05
  Unknown: Yeah. So the examples that I would give, and these are, in a sense, they're kind of unfair examples. But there's a thread amongst these examples.
• 31:12
  Unknown: That is really important. And one is disaster response, fundraising, and Giving Tuesday.
• 31:20
  Unknown: So these campaigns, like, let me just what do you think the thread is between those? I'll ask you, well,
• 31:27
  Jonathan McCoy: can we get some Jeopardy music?
• 31:28
  Unknown: urgency? Yeah. Yes, there we go. urgency. When a disaster strikes, we don't have time for direct mail. If you have your Disaster Response Program, cued and ready to go, the moment that disaster hits, you can deploy that campaign and start making money the same day, direct mail, you can't do that you have to wait for printing and board to get mailed out. So urgency, they're Giving Tuesday, urgency. Similar with like urine, there's urgency. So that's always going to be how your direct for your digital is going to perform the best. So those would be like examples.
• 32:03
  Unknown: But that doesn't mean don't do digital fundraising outside of those. What I've found, not necessarily campaign specific, but what works the most with digital fundraising outside of those very urgent times, is integration, integrate it with your direct mail pieces, and create what I call this digital fundraising ecosystem, your direct mail and your email and your website and social media, like it's all fundraising. So like, let's not do a direct mail campaign, let's do a fundraising campaign. And an interesting stat that I saw the new m&r benchmark report that came out was that 24% of digital revenue came from view through revenue.
• 32:48
  Unknown: Once I've never seen that stat reported before, meaning that if someone sees a Facebook ad, or someone clicks on an email, and they don't give on that donation page, and they end up at another time giving through the main homepage donation page, like it's almost like digital white male. So one of the ways that nonprofits can think about this, they're not seeing the correlation of we spent all this and Facebook ads, but we're not seeing the revenue. It's like, hold up like, people are still giving because you can't track it doesn't mean that gift isn't coming. This report says 24% of people will see that but they won't give right then in there.
• 33:25
  Unknown: And it won't be attributed to social media email, but you will still get that gifts through digital through the home, the homepage, donate button. So those would be like examples of how to do digital. Do digital fuel. So yeah, so I'll pause there. Yeah, yeah, since we're doing social media, we're doing digital,
• 33:49
  Jonathan McCoy: so much to do. I mean, you know, decisions have to be driven by information. And I think just knowing that is power, because you could immediately say, well, we're going to not advertise on Facebook anymore, or whatever it may be, when you're not really looking at the full picture of it is awareness, it's a touch point in the journey, even if they're not directly converting on that ad. So I think that's really fascinating stuff that you bring up.
• 34:11
  Becky Endicott: And I would also say that the thing that it told me is, our donors need to be warmed to our messages, they need to hear these messages multiple times before they're going to be, again warmed to activation. And it's like we don't know what the trigger is.
• 34:28
  Becky Endicott: And honestly, it doesn't matter what the trigger is, it just matters that we have a variety of opportunities for them to plug into a boomer may want to respond to that direct mail. But you know, Gen X or like myself is probably going to respond better to a Facebook ads. So the the this just supports the theory of you really have to be in many different places. And if you're not connecting your campaigns I love that you're not talking in silos about it has to be a digital marketing campaign.
• 34:59
  Becky Endicott: It really is just one campaign, and we're leveraging so many different mediums to get there and get the result.
• 35:07
  Unknown: Yeah, and there's plenty of studies that have been done that show the value of someone that gives in multiple channels far exceeds someone giving him one channel. And there's not like a digital donor or a direct mail donor. They're all just donors, and it's depending on how they give that particular gift. Like I don't like I don't know less than I've written a check to a nonprofit.
• 35:28
  Unknown: So in theory, I could be a digital donor. However, If I get a direct mail piece from a nonprofit that reminds me of my brain to Oh, I need to make a gift. So maybe the direct mail piece triggered my mind to make the gift. But I chose to respond through digital and vice versa.
• 35:47
  Unknown: You know, people have that mail piece sitting there on their counter, but they won't write a check. People might get an email, say, Oh, yeah, I have this mail piece, let me write a check. So it's a very fluid situation. But if you're, if you're only on one channel, like you're you're cutting off your opportunities to, to generate revenue for your nonprofit, it's it's kind of unfair to your organization, and you're limiting the power of why you exist in the first place.
• 36:10
  Jonathan McCoy: This has been really, really, really great.
• 36:13
  Jonathan McCoy: Jeremy, we'd love on this podcast to connect everything back to the reason that we got into philanthropy and the stories that really draw us in, I wonder if there's a moment for you, or a story that sticks out of getting to work with so many cool missions, that's really stuck or changed you in some way.
• 36:30
  Unknown: Certainly several, however, a story of philanthropy that I would share really came from my grandfather, and it was when I first started working with one of the agencies that was direct response fundraising.
• 36:42
  Unknown: And so Joe were one of my clients with Salvation Army, and he was a donor of the Salvation Army. And he was around 90 at the time. And I'd asked him, I'm like, you know, cuz I'm trying to understand the mind of the donor. He's 90, and he's still I'm like, you still make writing a check to the Salvation Army.
• 36:59
  Unknown: So I asked them, so why do you give to the Salvation Army after all these years? And he said, Well, he's like, every year around Christmas, like, all right, Salvation Army a check, because I was in World War Two, and they were there for me.
• 37:15
  Unknown: Like, there were other nonprofits that were there. It's like, but they were there. They gave me coffee, they gave me doughnuts. And other organizations did that too. But they never charged us for other organizations when the charges she's like, and that meant everything to me to be able to have someone that cared, and that went anything in return.
• 37:35
  Unknown: And that was like, you know, even me telling it like, I get a little misty eyed because it's like, how are nonprofits creating these experiences with their donors right now. And that's, you know, we're talking about World War Two in a whole different world. And the impact that had on my grandfather is probably not going to be the normal impact that nonprofits can make, but maybe it can. So it's like, how can you connect in your donor with your donors, and create an experience where you just latch on to them for the rest of your life? And that's kind of the challenge. I don't know what the answer is.
• 38:09
  Unknown: It's different for every nonprofit. But that was one story that really resonated with me.
• 38:15
  Becky Endicott: Okay, I have to share this exact same story. But my great grandfather was in World War One. And my grandmother, who is 94, she'll be 94. This year. She also gives to the Salvation Army every year because her father who was in a world war one talked about being in the trenches, literally being in the trenches, they were filled with water, they and they were living in there as soldiers in the worst war. And her dad said, again, I will not name the other nonprofit. But there was a nonprofit who would come in and charge them for bread for coffee for all of these things in the Salvation Army gave it freely.
• 38:57
  Becky Endicott: And so she over 90 years later, is still giving to the Salvation Army every single year because of how much it touched her father in a time when she was not even born yet. So I wonder how much of this generation is giving to that organization because of that. And it also tells me that what we are doing wherever we are in the way that we are showing up to simply serve is having impact. It's having resonance, and what a legacy for your family. What a legacy for my family, that we are connected to this nonprofit simply by virtue of them showing up in the worst spaces in the world. To love on people. Thank you for bringing that up. It honestly, I haven't thought about that in a couple years.
• 39:46
  Unknown: Yeah. No, thank you for sharing. That's great.
• 39:49
  Becky Endicott: So we asked all of our guests last question.
• 39:52
  Becky Endicott: What's your one? Good thing?
• 39:52
  Becky Endicott: Jeremy. piece of advice. Hack?
• 39:57
  Unknown: Yeah. Well, I'll give two because they're both pretty short. One is to never forget why you're doing this work. You know, the work is not easy.
• 40:06
  Unknown: It's, it's filled with challenges. We can get caught up in the organization of the organization. And it can be really difficult at times, but just remember, like every single day that you show up, like what you're doing matters, it makes a difference. Even if the day is hard. The week is hard. The month is hard, man keep moving forward. Because what you're doing is having an impact in the world. Like that's, that's kind of like and that's for real.
• 40:31
  Unknown: Like that's my feel good speech, but Like it's real, I feel that my heart, people that are in this work, like I have a lot of just love in my heart for them in the work that they do. The second piece is more a different kind of tip, which is to have some money in your budget for innovation, you know, how can you expand? If you're doing direct mail and you haven't explored digital. And when you finally get to digital, and it's taking you this long to get into digital, it's going to take you even longer to continue to innovate. So figure out what percentage of a fundraising budget that you can dedicate to innovation, and try different things, try new things and learn. Some are going to be successful, some are going to fail, but you won't know. Unless you plan for it. If you don't plan for it. You're going to stay within the box that you read.
• 41:16
  Becky Endicott: Jeremy just gave us one good thing for the head and one good thing for the heart. I like better,
• 41:22
  Jonathan McCoy: and they're both so good. Okay, Jeremy, how can how can folks find you digitally? And how can they get your book? We love to connect them to you?
• 41:31
  Unknown: Yeah, I got so many ways so you can go to fundraisers unite calm. Find out information about me also, Instagram as fundraisers, unite.
• 41:38
  Unknown: LinkedIn fundraisers unite, I'm connected to all those so be easy to find clubhouse. If y'all are on clubhouse, we're doing talks each week, fundraisers unite, and you can get my book, the digital fundraising blueprint. It's on Amazon. It's ebook, audio book, whatever, I practice what I preach, I try to make it easy depending on how you like to consume information.
• 42:04
  Becky Endicott: And he is such a great content creator, Jeremy's got a great blog, there are a ton of tips on there. So I mean, one of the ones that stuck out to me was seven free ways to promote Facebook fundraisers. I mean, there there's some really great step by step instructions on his blog. I really encourage everyone go follow Jeremy, check him out. He's an awesome human.
• 42:25
  Unknown: Thank you. I'm appreciate the time. Thanks for letting me be on your show and talk about digital fundraising.
• 42:30
  Unknown: I love this. We appreciate
• 42:32
  Becky Endicott: the light that you are putting into the nonprofit space and just really appreciate what you've done to lift up everybody. Today. We're rooting for you.
• 42:39
  Jonathan McCoy: And honestly taking some notes for ourselves too. So we've
• 42:41
  Unknown: got some work to do.
• 42:48
  Julie Confer: Thanks for listening to today's conversation with Jeremy diving into building a powerful digital fundraising campaign. As we learned here, it's 80% planning and 20% implementation. You probably hear it in our voices, but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before. We'd love for you to join the good community. It's free. And you can think of it as the after party to each podcast episode.
• 43:10
  Julie Confer: You can join today we're for good comm backslash Hello. One more thing if you loved what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating and review? It means the world to us and Your support helps more people find our community.
• 43:21
  Julie Confer: Thanks friends. I'm our producer Julie Confer and our theme song is sunreef by Remy Boris boom thanks for being here.