Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 531. The Art + Science of Donor Cultivation - Ronen Tal, The Nature Conservancy of Canada

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531. The Art + Science of Donor Cultivation - Ronen Tal, The Nature Conservancy of Canada · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm John.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: And I'm Becky.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: And this is the we Are For Good podcast.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: 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
  Speaker 1: We're here 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
  Speaker 2: So welcome to the good community.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: So let's get started.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Yo, Becky, what's happening?
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: I think we just found another fundraiser disguised as a marketer.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Wait, marketer disguised as a fundraiser.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: One of those, basically, I think we found another us, we did oh my gosh and I'm so excited about it today because we're going to be talking about our favorite things.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: We're going to be talking about integrated marketing, we're going to be talking about the environment, we're going to be talking about the art and the science of donor cultivation and we cannot wait to introduce you to our new friend, ronan Tull.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: He is the Director Integrated Marketing and Fundraising at the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: We are huge fans of the environment here and we're going to be diving into that mission.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: But Ronan has a really interesting backstory because when you have someone who is a deeply passionate marketer and fundraiser but they focus in on the donor experience Right now we've been talking so much about what is the experience that people are seeking?
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Not the solicitation that they're experiencing, but how do you create them and move them into your movement, not just into your solicitation.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: So excited to learn from Ronan today.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: But a little bit of background about him.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: In his role, he oversees the donor journey from awareness through conversion and retention, and he's working with this team of channel experts and the selection of external partners and they're just constantly optimizing the donor's lifetime value to this incredible organization at the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: And so I mean Ronan's got more than a decade in fundraising, working on both sides of the charity and agency table.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: We're just so excited to meet you, and I have to say this last part of your bio because it makes me think we would be the best of friends.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Outside of fundraising, you're likely to find Ronan throwing his body across the baseball diamond or tennis court or, just as likely, at home developing board games and cooking up a storm.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: He has a new daughter, chloe.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: We want to shout out to Ronan welcome to the podcast.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: We are so excited you're here.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, becky, thanks for having me, john, and yes, I am just likely to be playing ball or being a huge nerd in my basement, making board games or cooking up something delicious.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: That's what I like to do when I'm not fundraising.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: It's like a donor journey board game.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Can you make this like a development board game and teach some of these things?
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: I did try and model it.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: It got way too nerdy, way too quick.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: John's like I'm not sure if I have to do this funnel over here with baseball and tennis, but I will totally cook and do art with you.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: You've got to roll a dice to optimize the lifetime value in that game.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: Yes, oh, it's so good.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Well, you have such an interesting background.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: We're so excited to get to know you and to dive into this topic.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: But first we want to get to know Ronan.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: So take us back.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Take us back to little Ronan growing up.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: How did he get this heart for justice and for doing good?
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Tell us about your journey a little bit.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: Well, little Ronan got to go across an ocean and a whole other continent because I didn't grow up in Canada.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: Actually I grew up near Tel Aviv in Israel, spent my whole childhood there before I came back to Canada.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: And I mean, if you've ever grown up in a different climate than where you are right now, especially in that part of the world, you see how fragile everything is, how dry it is, how rain is really the giver of life in that part of the world.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: Uh, then you come to Canada and there's just forests everywhere and wetlands, which kind of blew my mind the first time I went backwards camping in Algonquin, just how much nature there is here.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: But after I graduated with my commerce degree I started off actually as a management consultant in my first phase of my career doing succession plans and strategic plans for creative firms like architecture firms and design firms, just getting involved with how to optimize founders value when they were leaving their creative firms behind.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: And that kind of led nicely into my next job, which was in fundraising, working at an outbound telemarketing agency which is all about optimizing donors' lifetime value to their organization that they were supporting.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: And so this whole career journey of mine really started with making sure that somebody maximizes their return, whether it's on the business they started or the organization that they are supporting with their cash gift, their monthly gift, their bequest gift and will.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: And after serving time in a couple of different agencies, working with a couple of other organizations, I found myself at the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: They were one of my clients at a previous stop.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, I love it, when that happens.
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: And I just thought the world of the team, thought the world of the work that they were doing and saw some opportunities to really drive it to the next level.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: So I hopped over to the other side of the table, came over to Nature Conservancy of Canada and we made this new role of integrated marketing and fundraising, which did not previously exist.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: It was a vision that we crafted as I joined to unite the two arms of marketing and fundraising and make a full funnel approach to donor acquisition, optimization and cultivation.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: That's the short, 30-second version of it all.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Ronan, I'm obsessed with your story.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Thanks, Becky, I mean yeah, I just love like your progression in the career of, like how you're honing in what you know well, what you love doing.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: At the same time, you find that passion piece.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: You find this nature realization coming to Canada, how those all converge into a team that you want to pour into.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: That's magic and I'm just love that you came in.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: You've brought innovative ideas.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: We got to talk about this job title.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: I wish this job title was around because I would have loved this job title when I was looking for a career.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: I know, and we're not big job title people I would say, but this was pretty cool.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: No, exactly, but this is cool.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: So, director of integrated marketing and fundraising, I mean, what is that unlocked by bringing those two just in the space together to recognize the power of working together, because we want more organizations to embrace that.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: It's um, I mean it's again a major reason why I came here, because we were able to meld those two worlds.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: The biggest thing that it's unlocked is the ability to really think of a donor from snout to tail.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: Nobody makes a gift to an organization the first time they hear of it, just the same way that you don't buy an iPhone or a cup of coffee at Starbucks the very first time you see that logo or walk by the Apple store.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: You got to have multiple experiences, multiple impressions of a brand before you finally convert.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: And what we're saying with that joint role of marketing and fundraising is that, yes, we're trying to solicit donors, we're trying to fundraise and get cash in year to support our conservation operations, but we also need to first market to make that a reality.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: We need to give these potential donors lots of experiences with our brand, understand what we're all about, before they decide of their own volition to make that switch from oh yeah, that's nice.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: I like the environment to, I care about the environment and I'm going to put my own money into unlocking nature's power to Basically save us all.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: So that's how we think of it the marketing of what NCC stands for and the fundraising to put opportunities in front of donors to do something about it.
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: Those constantly go hand in hand.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: A hundred percent.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like a bobblehead because it's like yes, yes and do this.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Yes, because it seems so intuitive to us as marketers that this is the way that you connect, this is the way that you engage.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: But the way that you have seamlessly poured the fundraising experience into it at a human level, I think ratchets it up just a bit, because we talk often about I forget exactly what the numbers are, but it's somewhere in the 60% of your audience is lurkers, and it's like people are just watching.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: They're watching and they're waiting on the periphery.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: They may follow you on a social media channel, they may be on your newsletter and they may never.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: You know, have not given for a very long time, but you're tapping into the way that you transition them from lurker to just getting their toe in the door in some possible way, and I think it's just a really brilliant way, because once you get them in the door, everything can cascade from there, because they've already opted in, and so my hat's off to you the way that you've ignited this.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, take it so on that front, though it's interesting, you've got my role.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: But then we also have a full digital marketing team and we are two sides of the same coin.
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: Through those two lenses we have the full funnel, the digital marketing team.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: I've got the goal of raising X dollars of revenue and Y number of donors.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: They have the goal of getting a community of size Z, and the reason those two go hand in hand is that again I'm going to come back to this full funnel approach.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: We are working with the assumption, the hypothesis rather, that people are going to become donors to us if they're exposed to NCC, that's the acronym for Nature Conservancy of Canada.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: They're going to become donors if they see us more and more.
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: And how can you possibly refute that?
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: What we're doing is not amazing if you care all about the environment or the future?
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: So that digital marketing team is just trying to get you know like a million Canadians to be part of our community.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: Maybe that's through email subscription, but maybe it's just lurking.
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: Get you know like a million Canadians to be part of our community.
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: Maybe that's through email subscription, but maybe it's just lurking, like you said, becky, on our social media channels and just seeing the organic social that we're posting and they're choosing when to get that bite size of info coming out of us, seeing what we're putting out there at various points of the year, and then when they're ready to take that next step, that's when my team is putting in front of them lots of opportunities for them to invest, for them to make a donation and take that next step with us.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: You know what I think is so brilliant about this, and I know we're totally off script and I love this, but it's like I just think we've spent over 20 years in the nonprofit development world and I just think you get so complacent with these buckets, like where people started annual giving and then you move them up to mid-level and then you do major gifts and then you get into planned gift and to me I think, john, we have seen in the last three years that we are missing the cultivation before annual giving.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Where is step zero?
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Where is the group that's warming all of that 60% of lurkers?
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: And it's like there is so much we're leaving on the table there and I feel like you're tapping into it right now.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: So I'm so excited our audience is hearing this.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: We're trying to.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: I mean we've got ways to go still on this.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: And by the way, becky, the term annual giving not allowed on my team.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Okay, why Talk about that yeah?
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: One gift per year per donor is insufficient.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: If we're trying to solve real problems environmental conservation, world hunger, diseases it's not enough to just say oh John, you gave us $40 here.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: Thanks so much.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: You won't hear from us until next year.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: The fact that you did donate once to me means that you care about this enough to use your disposable income Instead of going to see a movie or buying some special steak or whatever, or a board game if you hear me or doing whatever it is that tickles your brain you are choosing to give that money to an organization.
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: The reason why you do that is because you clearly care about the change that the organization represents.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: If you care about that change, I don't want you to just give once.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: I want to give you lots of opportunities to give.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: That way, you can realize that change with us as your partner or as your vehicle.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Ronan, that is your TikTok clip.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: This is like your.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: TEDx moment.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: I just see it and we'll give you not allowed.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: I love it because it just connects the dots of building a movement asking a better question.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Thank you for doing that.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: I think that's so brilliant.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: So why don't you walk us through?
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: You know what are some common challenges you you face with donor acquisition and retention today, and so also what on the flip side of that, what are the opportunities?
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: You know, I feel like just what you canvassed here.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: All of us could shift a mindset of like we're not looking for $40 a year.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: How do we build a program that like builds this idea of repeatability and part of our budget and all those sorts of things?
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: So hop in here, tell me what there is.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: So the biggest challenge is.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: I mean, things are more expensive than they've ever been to acquire new donors.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: Part of that is noise we are being bombarded with more messaging from more brands and, honestly, money is tight across the board for everybody.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: In Canada and the US, europe, everywhere, really, people feel the effects of the current economic situation and we have so many people screaming for your attention, it's tough to stand out.
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: You combine that, at least in Canada, with some changes in privacy legislation that are happening in some provinces and that are coming down the pipe, and some of the tactics that we have relied on for decades now as marketers are going away.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: For example, we are shifting away from list trades as of our next fiscal in response to some of these privacy changes.
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: So how do we get new donors if we can't trade for names from other organizations who also have donors?
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: What means that?
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: We need to shift our model of what proportion of new donors come in from direct mail to other channels.
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: And, as my digital marketing expert loves to always tell me, and as my digital marketing expert loves to always tell me, the days of $50 cost acquisition on Facebook is gone by the wayside.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: You just can't do that anymore, and so if we're spending more because we're losing list trades, spending more because Facebook is much more challenging to acquire new donors.
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: Everything's getting more expensive.
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: Then the onus really falls on acquiring quality donors, acquiring donors that are going to have a higher second gift rate or, even better yet, going to convert to monthly and be with you for the long term.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: So that creates new opportunities, john.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: It creates the opportunity to start talking about monthly at the very start, to talk about the long journey that you're going to take with a new donor when they decide to join you, and why they shouldn't be thinking about their gift today, but what their gift is going to achieve years from now.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: Because they made that decision today, we drop in monthly giving, made that decision today, we drop in monthly giving.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: This you know a little tidbit of it at every opportunity, because it's just so dang hard sometimes to acquire these donors at scale and then keep them on file.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: If we can get them to take that next step, they are far more likely to stay on file and active with us.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: I mean you're speaking values to this community right here, because playing a long game is the only way you know, and even having a conversation of a lifetime value of a donor I feel like doesn't happen in most shops.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: So I really appreciate this lens that you're bringing to this conversation.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: It's so good.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: But on the time value front, we're able to focus on it because we looked at our database and we quantified the case for it.
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: So about two and a half years ago we looked at all of our major and planned gift donors over a 10-year period of time.
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: And then we looked at all those donors.
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: How did they start with us?
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: About two thirds of them had a first gift of less than $1,000 or a monthly gift.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: So, that means that two thirds of your future major gift donors or a planned gift which is a gift in will.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: It's a huge revenue stream in Canada especially.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: I know it's a bit different in the States, but all those high value gifts are coming down the road.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: They didn't start that way.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: You didn't meet them at a gala and schmooze them and just eventually give them a chance to give you a $100,000 check.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: They start off giving $500.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: We just had a million dollar bequest come through from somebody whose first lifetime gift was a $10 donation like 15 years ago.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: That's beautiful yeah.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: So we've got the math that proves that big gifts start small.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: And if you focus on the lifetime, on the long-term game with them, just keep them engaged with what's happening, you are going to have opportunities to get those larger donations down the road happening, you are going to have opportunities to get those larger donations down the road.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: It's so smart and it's so true.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: I can think about a situation where John and I are in our first foundation.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: We had a donor that was giving us $100 million gifts in a major capital campaign and his very first gift was $50, 40 years and he and then he didn't even give for like eight years or something.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: And it's like those are the people that are sitting out there that are waiting to be awakened within your movement.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: And I want to transition just a little bit because I think the sustainer piece is such an important component of this.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: It's when you have worked so hard to get someone in the door, you've gotten them to take that first action.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: It becomes critical and we all know this as fundraisers it's so much cheaper to retain a donor than to acquire one.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: So one of the key trends that we're lifting this year is how activating the one can grow a movement, and so we want to be growing believers in our mission, not just donors.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: People are going to give way more than just a financial gift, and we want to grow more than just a one-time donation.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: So love to hear your insights into some of the innovations that you've seen in donor loyalty.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: How can we turn those like one-time contributors into sustained supporters?
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: What have you seen?
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: So for us.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: I mean there's lots of very novel approaches across the world, even things like the TAP, to give opportunities.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: Another big one is in Europe.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: That's an amazing new opportunity For us.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: Our shift has been less about technology and more about just how we speak.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: If you look back at any of our marketing materials from about 10 years ago, there's a lot of NCC in there.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: Look how good we are.
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: We are out there protecting big swaths of land and we shifted that to you.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: You are unlocking nature's power because nature needs to be protected.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: Nature needs to be unlocked.
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: It's already powerful and with nature we're going to thrive If it is basically left to do what it does best sequester carbon, protect us from floods, protect us from massive fires.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: But it's about you as the person and your relationship with nature.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: Your relationship is not with NCC.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: We're just the conduit for you and that's been an intentional shift.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: That's so good.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, wait, say that again, it's identity.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Yes, go back.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: You're talking about identity here, the relationship that you have when you make a monthly gift, especially any kind of donation.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: It's not within you and the organization.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: The organization is the vehicle by which you make the change that you want to see in the world, and that's what we're trying to do here.
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: That's the big change we've done, and we've seen our monthly donor group explode because of it.
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: We were very static for a long time and we started going up by thousands per year.
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: There's been some tactical adjustments as well.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: It's not purity messaging, I mean we reinvested in some channels like face to face, but the messaging has been a critical component here about talking to the donor, about them and what a monthly gift from them means for nature.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: I mean y'all this is stacking, all the conversations and kind of trends that we're seeing at the high level.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Ronan is playing this out.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: This is not just talking points.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: This is like giving his identity in real life, like people have this connection with nature and that's what they want to give to.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: I love this, this visual you're building for us and just the success y'all are having.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Like I'm just doing some fist pumps over here saying like keep going, my friends.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: But I want to talk about this multi-channel marketing campaigns.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you know it's the age of omni-channel.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: We are getting so many things coming at us at any point in time.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: What are some of the best practices you've had with really creating successful multi-channel campaigns to reach and attract new donors?
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: Get real tactical, if you would Sure.
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: So we want to get real tactical with it.
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: Every one of our campaigns starts with a very thorough brief, every single one.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: And if you are a fundraiser trying to do multi-channel or omni-channel campaigns, if your briefs are not right, you're dead in the water.
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: So start with that.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: We've been outlined exactly who you're going to be speaking to, in what channel and then what.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: Register your hypotheses.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: Write down what you think is going to happen, especially if you're testing, because if you don't do that, our brains are sometimes dumb and we get results and then we will make the end results fit a narrative that makes sense to us.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: And if you write down what you think is going to happen before the results, you're forced to make sense of it, and I'll come back to this later on a couple of testing.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: But real tactical, get that brief, talk of the audiences, the channels, and write down the expected results and why.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: Then, when it comes time to actually running a multi-channel campaign, it again comes down to are you saying the same thing across the different channels?
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: Are you being consistent in how you talk about nature, in our case, or education, or cancer?
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: It could be anything, but is it the same message in your print piece.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: Is it the same thing that you're saying on the phone in your emails?
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: Is your social capturing that?
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: Are your canvassers going door to door speaking that same language?
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: You've got to be consistent that way, wherever a prospective donor sees your message, they know it's you and they're not getting confused and by the time that message is sunk in, they know exactly how they want to give.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: People are going to give by the chance that they want to give.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: You can't push them into any one channel.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: You just got to make sure that they're kind of surrounded by it and it's consistent that when they decide to make that gift they already know where to go and they know why.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: Okay, is that?
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: detailed enough for you.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: Ronan NCC, in the words of Rod Stewart, have I told you lately that I love you?
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: And I mean that completely platonically.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: This is the way.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: This is the way and it also is so human, it's so measured.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: It's so measured it's not forced.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: It takes absolutely all of the myths and fears people have about asking for money out of it, because it's not a solicitation.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: This way is an invitation, and it's an invitation to come however you want to come, wherever you want to come, with whatever you have to give and to show up when you're ready to pour in.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: And if there's not affinity and I think this is actually a really smart point especially and you're saying this as a brand like amplifier, is saying yes, we're trying to connect them to the overall idea and the mission, not our mission in CC.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: We want them connected to nature.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: But because you're doing that as your goal, to me they have brand equity to in CC, because the intention is very pure and I think just I want to tell you that that would resonate with me as someone who's a purist and somebody who wants to really dive into my missions.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: That is the way.
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: So something that we've done here to really drive it home, we want to make authentic.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: We identified that our target audience.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: We did our rebrand positioning.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: We are trying to group people that are very authentic and genuine and who care about their chosen family more than their nuclear family and they want those kinds of meaningful experiences to create a better world.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: So we realized that if we're going to be targeting people that are genuine, every interaction needs to be genuine.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: I talked before about face-to-face.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: How do you make a genuine interaction with canvassers who don't work for you, who maybe there's a lot of turnover sometimes on these agencies?
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: Our solution was to force every one of the teams working on our campaign to go to a training at one of our properties.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: That way they have to see where donor dollars go and they get to experience it.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: They breathe the air around all these trees, and when then they're talking to prospective donors on the street or at the door, they're able to say, oh yeah, I was at Happy Valley just last week.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: Let me tell you it is stunning.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: You can go walk there.
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: It's a stone's throw away, don't you want to protect that?
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: And the canvassers then make their own genuine experience with our work and then they're having a conversation with the donor about what they care about, what they love.
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: It's not hitting the same kind of key message that can grow tired or feels forced, but it's just a conversation about the environment and what it means to the prospective donor and that flows.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: That's why retention is so good.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, Ronan, your life, your career, this work that you're pouring into has put you right alongside philanthropy and doing magical things.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: But we'd like to ask all of our guests to take us back to a moment that has stuck with them.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: I know you see this on the daily, but what is a moment that's kind of sucker punched you along the way.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: That'll stay with you.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: It's not so much a moment of philanthropy, but there's a moment from when I was a kid that stuck with me Even as I went through university and my first career before fundraising.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: I was like eight years old and I was playing baseball with my team across town, like on the far side of town, and I'm taking the bus there to get there, but it was pouring rain and I basically was just there by myself waiting for a bus and one of the random dads was there.
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: He said, hey, do you need a ride?
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: So he drove me home, but then later I found out that he lived a half hour the opposite way, so he took two hours out of his day to drive some eight-year-old kid in the rain to his home, just so he didn't have to lug his baseball gear with him on the bus.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: And that sucks me, because there's lots of things that we have to do in our life, we're all super busy and there's lots of people who need help and we can't do everything for ourselves for other people.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: But every now and again it's okay to inconvenience yourself just a little bit to help somebody you need.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: Can't be all the time, but we can all do it sometimes.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: And that stuck with me I love that you shared that story and I love that at eight years old, you had the awareness of what a sacrifice and what a gift that was, and I just think these little moments of generosity.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: I didn't say I knew that at eight years old.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Years later, you became enlightened, and that's really the important thing is that we realize when generosity shows up in our lives and we carry it on and pass it on.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, you have this your first time, dad, and you have this beautiful new little girl, and it's like those are the moments you want her to recognize and share.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: And so, as we're kind of putting a bow on this, ronan, we end all of our conversations with a one good thing, and so, um, so I have a one good thing I want to add after yours, but let's kick it to you and hear what you have to say.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: I'm going to go back to what I already said, because I really do believe it, and that's write down your hypotheses.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: What do you think is going to happen?
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: I wasn't making a joke when I said that our brains trick us.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: I said that our brains trick us, and if we do not especially when you're running a test in a campaign if you do not write down why you're running that test, what you expect to happen, and then measure the results against that, you are doomed to make a bad conclusion.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: We did this test a few years ago where we changed how much we asked for of donors on our direct mail coupons, because we thought that we were asking for too much, maybe, and so we changed the values to be lower, expecting that a higher percentage of people would respond, because lower gift values means more people can afford the gift.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: So hoping for a higher response rate.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: The complete opposite happened.
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: We got a lower response rate, slightly lower, but much higher average gift.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: Shocking stuff, I know, john, yeah, yeah, I wouldn't guess that what does that math equal out to?
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: I'm like we had to rerun the test a couple of times to figure out what's going on.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: But had we not written out that we expected it to do well because of a high response rate, we would have looked at the result and said, oh look, the test package did way better.
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: It got way more money.
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: Clearly this is working.
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: But we would not have known to look under the hood and see that it's working for a weird reason.
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: Then we get into discussion about what's more important a lower cost of acquisition or a higher return on investment.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: It opens up new questions, new pathways.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: So always when you're trying something new, write down why you're trying it and what you expect to happen.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: Whether you're right or wrong doesn't matter, because the results then will create a meaningful takeaway for you.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: That's my one thing.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: PS.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Go, take those findings to your leadership, to your board.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Put them in your communications or, like, do something with them and inform them so people understand that you are invested in this board.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Put them in your communications or, like, do something with them and inform them so people understand that you are invested in this.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: One good thing so much and the one I was going to add is I want to give a thank you to someone.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: I want to give a shout out to Tasha Van Flack, who is such an amazing we are for good community member.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: She is one of the co-founders of the Hive nonprofit Hive.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: If you're not following the Nonprofit Hive, please go and find that community.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: But she introduced us to Ronan Tall and I just have enjoyed this conversation so much.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: So my one good thing is Tasha, you're amazing.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: Thanks for pouring into this community and introducing us to a new friend I've really enjoyed meeting both of you today.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: Ah, so good.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Oh man, this has been so good and I mean everyone listening is going to be like I need more Ronan in my life.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: How can people find you?
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: I know you're on LinkedIn.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Is there any other places they should find you online?
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: And then, how about the Nature Conservancy of Canada, Like?
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: What's the best place to get connected there?
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, linkedin is absolutely the best way to find me.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: It's Ronan Tull, so that's R-O-N-E-N-T-A-L.
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: There aren't a ton of us in Canada, so you should be able to find me pretty easily.
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: You can also email me at ronantull at thenatureconservancyca.
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: Sorry, at natureconservancyca Becky, you're in my head here, sorry, ronantall at natureconservancyca, and I'm happy to chat with anybody fundraisers, marketers, anyone who's interested in talking about testing multi-channel campaigns, how they can support NCC.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: I'm here for all of that.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Bring your monthly gifts.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: That's it Come with a monthly gift.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: We know that's most valuable.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: I just, I love the full nature circle of this I mean it's totally circle of life of you from Tel Aviv like to literally to this incredible forest land of the beautiful Canada, and the fact that what you're doing right now is pouring back into the sustainability of the environment, giving your little girl a space to run and play, you know, with clean air.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: So thank you for doing all of that.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: Thank you for sharing your insights.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: So glad to know you and rooting for you and all your work, ronan.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: It's nice to be both of you.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Thank you, such a pleasure, thanks.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: You too Take care.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for being here.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Friends, and 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.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: We'd love for you to come join our good community.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: It's free and you can think of it as the after party to each podcast episode.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Sign up today at weareforgoodcom.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: Backslash hello.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: And one more thing If you love what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating interview?
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: It means the world to us and your support helps more people find this community.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much, friends.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: Can't wait to our next conversation.