Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 297. How Smart Tech is Changing Fundraising + How to Harness Its Power for Your Mission - Nejeed Kassam

Transcript

297. How Smart Tech is Changing Fundraising + How to Harness Its Power for Your Mission - Nejeed Kassam · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:00
  Jonathan McCoy: Today's episode is sponsored by our friends at Feathr. Feathr helps nonprofits of all shapes and sizes build powerful campaigns that help you reach new fans and find new donors, wherever and whenever they're online. We love them because their tech makes creating and optimizing your paid ad strategy. Super simple.
• 0:14
  Jonathan McCoy: And no, yeah, they just happen to be amazing humans too. Sound like Feathr might be a fit for your organization? Learn more today at feathr.co That's feather without the last e dot co. Follow the link in our show notes.
• 0:31
  Jonathan McCoy: Hey, I'm Jon.
• 0:32
  Becky Endicott: And I'm Becky.
• 0:33
  Jonathan McCoy: And this is the We Are For Good podcast.
• 0:36
  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.
• 0:45
  Nejeed Kassam: 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.
• 0:53
  Becky Endicott: So welcome to the good community, we're nonprofit professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are strivng to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 1:04
  Jonathan McCoy: So let's get started. Yo, Becky, what's up?
• 1:08
  Becky Endicott: Hey, Jon, you know, it is the greatest days when we get to go to Canada, you all of our listeners know how much we love our Canadian friends. They are the kindest, most humane, good people and we got somebody from Vancouver in the house today. I'm so excited to introduce the community to Nejeed Kasam today, he is the CEO of Keela. He is an attorney, a change maker and but he's the founder of the FundraisingKIT.
• 1:37
  Becky Endicott: And today we're going to be talking about how smart technology is really transforming the fundraising landscape. And if you're somebody like us who completely geeks out on AI, and how AI power technology can highlight positive impacts in the world, you are gonna love this conversation. But I want to get a little bit of background into Nejeed, he is a global innovator with experience working for the United Nations, the Senate of Canada. He's just one of these progressive impact leaders who's spent time on a number of corporate education and nonprofit boards. And he really just had a heart for serving the nonprofit sector. So he took that incredible JD. And he took all of this public policy information and learning that he got, and he started pouring it into the FundraisingKIT. And we just really geeked out about this organization because it saw how artificial intelligence was transforming how the world works. And they wanted to know how we could create solutions that enable nonprofits to unlock their potential through data, through better understanding their donors, and just making a better impact for their cause.
• 2:47
  Becky Endicott: So somebody who dives into something like that is somebody we want to know. And we want to get their tools and into your hands. And besides having all of that passion and drive, he's a dad is an entrepreneur. And he's just a good dude. Nejeed get in this house. We're so excited you're here.
• 3:05
  Nejeed Kassam: Becky, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for having me. I think the most firstly, that a bio is incredibly embarrassing, and I apologize.
• 3:12
  Becky Endicott: Don't you love on other people write your bios?
• 3:14
  Nejeed Kassam: No, I absolutely hate it. But I think the most thing I'm most proud about and all that is being a father being a husband, and having an opportunity and responsibility to serve what my kids will inherit, I think, as in this world, and our beautiful global community. And so real pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
• 3:35
  Becky Endicott: We really want to know about you. We want to know about where you grew up. We want to know about little Nejeed and how he came to do this work.
• 3:40
  Becky Endicott: Tell us all about your origin story.
• 3:46
  Nejeed Kassam: Yeah, thanks.
• 3:46
  Nejeed Kassam: That's a good question. And my origin story isn't always as happy as I'd like it to be. Mine is happy. I've had a great life.
• 3:52
  Nejeed Kassam: And I'll get to that. But I want to start by talking about, you know, a couple of generations ago, my family's lived in four continents over the last four generations, not always by choice. So I'm in a South Asian, I'm Muslim. I'm from what is the border of now between India and Pakistan. Most of us have run our history not always been a peaceful, wonderful place.
• 4:17
  Nejeed Kassam: Family members for fear, for economic opportunity, to get out of potentially dangerous situations. They fled both sides of my family down the coast, to East Africa, where they built a good life. My mom's parents moved there from India after partition. My dad's family was a couple generations there. And then of course, the 60s and 70s happened in East Africa. With in Uganda. Obviously, with Idi Amin, my father in law was a refugee to Canada. My mum and dad's parents in Tanzania. I didn't have it so bad, but there was nationalization. There was fear of persecution. And so they kind of moved as kids my mom and dad to England. They saw firsthand generationally we saw firsthand a couple times the danger sometimes our humanities can run into, the unfortunate circumstances and but it also opened our eyes to something like so incredible when my parents got to they weren't, they didn't know each other.
• 5:12
  Nejeed Kassam: They met in England, of course.
• 5:13
  Nejeed Kassam: But when they got to London, they like began at what is an incredible life, the supportive community of religious institutions, of scholarships, you know, civil society as a whole kind of gave them this opportunity to be the wonderful boring people that they are today. They're, you know, they're both dentists and they, and they gave us as kids a life that we couldn't imagine, especially generationally. And so my parents moved to Canada, it's a funny story, because they broke up when they were dating, and my dad was so heartbroken, he couldn't manage staying in the country. And eventually, of course, they got back together.
• 5:47
  Nejeed Kassam: So no problems on the moving from England to Canada. But I was born in Vancouver, and in the kind of mid 80s, and I had a great life, I had a great life, I've never had to worry about persecution, or fear, or school or anything like that. I just got to be a kid. But my parents taught us a couple of things, they taught us one, get as much education as you can, because nobody can take that from you.
• 6:13
  Nejeed Kassam: And number two, don't forget about serving the community that you live in, or the communities that we live in. And so I have been working, volunteering, engaging in the nonprofit sector since I was three years old. So 30 something years, I have this like really early my my parents live kind of on a cul de sac, up top, there's this uphill block.
• 6:30
  Nejeed Kassam: And this memory of this, you know, there's some of the older houses like those bungalow styles, walking up and knocking on the door asking for donations at three, like my mom's standing at, you know, like, at the edge of the lawn. And, and it was, and I think it was a love affair. It was a responsibility.
• 6:46
  Nejeed Kassam: And 34 years later, I'm 33 years later, I'm still at it so.
• 6:52
  Jonathan McCoy: Oh my gosh, I just love your story. Thank you for taking us back. I mean, your parents are heroes, they're fighters, and what beautiful values they've instilled in you.
• 7:01
  Jonathan McCoy: And I can see just in a little bit of time we've gotten to spend with you today. I've just how, like you just are living your values like deeply in your work. And it's really guided you to this next step. I mean, catch us up. I mean, what happened when you went to school and started to figure out your passion purpose. Take us to that part of your story.
• 7:17
  Nejeed Kassam: Yeah, great question. So obviously, like, I started my first business when I was 13. So I've been an entrepreneur for a long time.
• 7:26
  Nejeed Kassam: And it was kind of, I think it skipped a generation with my parents. My grandfather was an entrepreneur he built he was, he worked on a farm. He was born in a farm town, you don't work on a farm, but he was like, you know, kind of a family with like laborers or something. And he at 16, he moved to Dar Salam, which is the capital of Tanzania. And he like, started by being a shop boy, like the sweepers and all that. And he convinced his the owner to let him sleep in the shop for security reasons. No, no rent is really the reality of that. But he ended up buying the shop, buying the building, growing it. And then when all the nationalization happened, it was taken for him. So he had to start as an entrepreneur all over again in London. And so he did it a couple of times, he got pretty good at it, ultimately.
• 8:09
  Nejeed Kassam: And I think some a little bit of that was passed in my DNA. So I started as 13. But my first business like we did met, we built menus and business cards.
• 8:20
  Nejeed Kassam: For people like graphics, I guess it would be called Marketing. Back then it was just
• 8:23
  Becky Endicott: Jon this is speaking to you.
• 8:25
  Jonathan McCoy: This is me at 13.
• 8:27
  Nejeed Kassam: Like early Photoshop, like the whole deal.
• 8:30
  Nejeed Kassam: We did it. And then kind of I kind of was entrepreneurial when we built our first nonprofit project when I was 17. And I built my first national nonprofit when I was 20. And so that was the beginning. I've always had a passion for law since I was a kid, that incredible societal transformational power of public policy and law. And so I kind of always knew I wanted to be a lawyer, and it's a big part of my identity but kind of went to school, lived all around the world was posted with the UN started my legal practice, in refugee law couldn't handle it emotionally. So moved to corporate law. And it was at that time that I, you know, been started being I'd been a national executive director, I was sitting on some boards, I've kind of gotten a flavor of the of the sector, I saw an opportunity to like build a different kind of technology organization. And that's where Keela started. And that was about 5, 5-6 years ago. And our thesis Keela was like, let's build technology that nonprofits actually want to use. And as opposed to like have to us and then from that, it was our customer bases and the incredible organizations that we have using our tech that I was like there's opportunity here, we should give nonprofits the same opportunity and give them technology that's going to be transformative instead of it coming in 15 years. And so that's kind of how it was born.
• 9:51
  Nejeed Kassam: And it's really this passion and deep belief that nonprofits should have the best tech in the world because our work is maybe the most important.
• 10:02
  Becky Endicott: I agree.
• 10:03
  Jonathan McCoy: Yeah, you're among similar minds here that I think that passion that you just really want to give the best back to the sector, we feel that and just the way that we want to show up because it's, you know, the cultural norms. Maybe it's like sloppy seconds, almost where it's like, no, let's tell you, let's make the best possible thing for the sector that we love that's really perpetuating.
• 10:20
  Jonathan McCoy: Let's make salespeople jealous of our fundraising technology, not the other way around.
• 10:24
  Jonathan McCoy: Please, I'm working on it. I'm working on it. And that was the beginning of a journey took a few years, like we did a ton of research I like, you know, was able to convince some people to let me use the money to do it.
• 10:37
  Jonathan McCoy: And now we've, we lead the world in predictive analytics for giving. And, you know, my mission is to like, we have a hoodie that says, it's a KIT hoodie that says, like, talk data to me, on the back, like the idea that there's power, there's opportunity in our data, and that with the right tools that can like phenomenally, transform how fundraisers work, and give them a chance to be healthier, to raise more money, to feel less stressed, there's so many positive upsides and ultimately unlock the most amount of generosity from our communities. There's two data points that I want to share. The first one is less than one in six people who lands on a donation form makes a donation online.
• 11:23
  Jonathan McCoy: Interesting,
• 11:24
  Becky Endicott: I believe it.
• 11:24
  Nejeed Kassam: And AI can help you change that if, God if Amazon and God knows who else is using it to get you to make your purchases, why the heck can't we use it in the giving world? And the second one is less than 30% of people who make a second gift to an organization. So like, our conversion is bad, and our retention is bad. Tech, data can actually fix that. Maybe not fix it, but Empower fundraisers to fix that problem. And that's what I spend my life doing.
• 11:49
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, I love that you're plowing in there, because I mean, smart technology is transforming the fundraising landscape. And I feel like we're all old enough to know we're talking about the future of fundraising is coming. The reality is the future of fundraising is like, right, this moment is happening right now.
• 12:02
  Jonathan McCoy: It's playing out in real time. I mean, talk to us about the landscape in the sector, where are you seeing the greatest innovation happening right now?
• 12:12
  Nejeed Kassam: Yeah, good question. But I want to go back to like, there's a fear in the sector that I think we need to be like really honest about, excuse the press, the professorial and me, but like, fundraising is the same as it's been for 100 years, you know, it started at our churches and our synagogues, in our temples, and mosques, and then moved to our community centers in the United Way's of the world. And then it came through corporate giving, and then a little bit online, but like 80% of gifts are still made offline checks and cash still represent a significant portion of giving, it's the same. The way our grandparents gave is essentially the same that we're giving, or were giving, that's starting to change. And the problem that I feel is so prevalent, and people in the sector are so scared to talk about is our technology reflects the problems of the past and the fundraising of the past, not of the future, right.
• 12:56
  Nejeed Kassam: And so, we all have Netflix or Spotify, or God knows what accounts DoorDash, your, you know, whatever it might be.
• 13:03
  Nejeed Kassam: Nonprofits should be capitalizing on our willingness to spend to spend recurring revenue or recurring costs, you know, be consumers. But let's do it instead of forgetting, I don't know, music, which is great and important, let's do it for giving to and let's not focus our entire fundraising efforts only on major donors who are by the way, dying and giving their wealth to people who don't give in the same way at a rate that's unheard off. And so like, as a sector, we need to stop being so entrenched and what we thought worked, and it didn't work for so long, because when it's changing and two there are better ways to do it. And technology can unlock that. The second thing I want to say, just off my chest is like tech isn't coming for your jobs. Tech shouldn't be scary to the sector, it should be an opportunity to do your jobs better. It's not the Terminator, it's not going to fire people, it's going to empower fundraisers who our data shows exhausted, right? You know, we're asking for more and more from our fundraisers without raising their salaries too much and without raising their budgets so they can hire more people. The answer to that problem is technology not anger, right. And so to me, being smart now engaging in that like being open and excited and like progressive and I don't mean that in the like liberal conservative way. I mean, that in the how we operate our workplaces way, is going to solve so many of the things that we're so frustrated by in our work, and that's why smart tech is so important. The second thing I guess it's third that I'll say is like there's so much opportunity in our data. And right now we do two things bad we silo our data, so many orgs and we don't use its aggregated opportunity. So whether it's products like us or like really dorky people on spreadsheets, I don't care. Get that data in one place and start to analyze it right. You know, bring your email marketing data, and your online forms data, and your campaign data, and your phone log data into one place your CRM, or whatever it is, and then get to work on it, That data is telling you a story. And it isn't prescriptive, it's guiding, right. So like, if Jon opens the same fundraising email three times and attends an event in the same two month period, data shows that that's giving signal. But if you don't have the right technology to actually tell you any of that stuff, there's no way you're ever going to know that. And that's both a missed opportunity for you as an organization, but also a missed opportunity for Jon to like, exercise and empower that generosity that he clearly felt in by doing those things and his action signals. And so using data excited, being excited by it is, is really what smart, smart nonprofits are really all about.
• 15:56
  Becky Endicott: Holy crap. Yeah.
• 15:57
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, there's, there's so much there to unpack, but I just want to lift I mean, this thread of data, it's always like someone else's job, you know, I think it's the fundraiser. It's like, I'm the frontman, I'm gonna go build these relationships. And you're saying, this, this is for everybody. We got to make it consumable. We got to get it into a place where you can actually read the story that it's trying to tell us, I mean, real practically give us some examples of what are some of the storylines that you can see through data.
• 16:25
  Nejeed Kassam: So I want to do two things. Firstly, I think every fundraiser should be a data driven fundraiser, I think it doesn't matter if you're 77 years old, or you're 17 years old. As you get into the space, like data has to be something you learn, like, how to tie your shoes in the sector, whatever the equivalent of that is, like, how you know how to solicit a donation, how to like, say, thank you like, These are core things that every fundraiser needs to know, data needs to be part of that. So I very stupidly, but very thankfully, worked on building a program.
• 16:51
  Nejeed Kassam: It's a it's a CFRE, certified 15 hour course, called the Data Driven Fundraiser. It's a, it's a fundraising program, it's 15 hours, anybody can do it, you get your CFRE credits. And what it does is it kind of gives you that baseline of fundamentals.
• 17:06
  Nejeed Kassam: It says like, how can you use data? What does it mean? What are predictive analytics? What's a KPI? How do I measure stuff?
• 17:12
  Nejeed Kassam: And we partnered with the incredible instructors from the sector. And if you go to like datadrivenfundraiser.com, you can sign up and like, it's launching next month. It's like, that's really exciting. So Jon, you asked a question like how, start by starting to learn, like make that part of your work as a fundraiser, it's all it's one weekend worth of work, or two days of professional development, or whatever you can do. Like, that's really important. The second thing is like, let's use some examples.
• 17:40
  Nejeed Kassam: Like, we hear a lot about these, like this term, and in the consumer world, like buying signals. You know, we've heard about that everyone talks about that in the sales world. And while fundraising is different, and what is a giving signal may be different in what it is that concept of a giving signal is like very much the same, right?
• 17:57
  Nejeed Kassam: It's like, what are the preconditions, the actions, the thoughts, the emotions that are going to be felt by a potential donor or an existing donor for a repeat donor, before they actually make the action of making a gift? Right? So Jon you asked for some examples like opening the same fundraising appeal email multiple times, the correlation between that and likelihood to give is like, phenomenal, right? Like, it's incredible. And like, but if you're unless you're tracking that stuff, and you know that stuff, you're probably not going to know that, right? Like, you don't have if you have 25,000 people on your on your subscriber list or your donor list, how will you, you're gonna scroll through Jon's email and check? No, you got to have the right tech to do that, right.
• 18:41
  Nejeed Kassam: Or, you know, things like second gift conversion, there's a lot of people in the in the fundraising space that you basically have a three month window to, like, capture the heart of somebody for a second time. Now, there's ways to do it in longer time. But how do you know that? How do you know who gave How do you know what engagement they're doing in the interim? Are they reading your stewardship emails? Again, data will tell you that story. You know, there is data on like, what time of day people are most likely to give, what day of the week, what part of the month, what cycle in the year, you know, there's so much there that we have to think about thinking about to actually action on, but the problem is for so many of us, it's like spray and pray, I'm going to email everyone and ask them the same thing and hope to Good Lord, that they're gonna do it. Probably not the best approach like I'm a precision guy, right? You know, you want it you want to get at the people most likely to give it the time.
• 19:38
  Nejeed Kassam: And how do you segment? You use technology to do that you use machine learning and artificial intelligence to do that. And you bring all that data into your database or whatever, so that these kinds of tools can actually get to work. And then most importantly, you can actually leverage relationships by knowing those things like it's not dehumanizing fundraising. It's actually rehumanizing funding.
• 20:01
  Becky Endicott: It's like empowering fundraising.
• 20:03
  Nejeed Kassam: Exactly, exactly.
• 20:05
  Jonathan McCoy: It's like art and science. It's like, because you got to have the science piece. So you can overlay this relationships. And that's your interpretation of it.
• 20:12
  Becky Endicott: I think something that's striking me, and I'm just gonna take the shame out of it for everybody that's listening is I don't think anywhere in my two decade fundraising career, did I ever have anybody tell me about why data is so important. And I worked at at one point, you know, a very large, you know, foundation in higher ed, where we had, you know, 250,000 records, you know, of alums are 350,000 records. And I don't think that any of us have thought about having a data mindset to go into our work and how, again, empowering that would be freeing it would be.
• 20:51
  Nejeed Kassam: Absolutely, it's like, well, I don't know what your donors thinking, well, actually, you do know what you don't think and you just don't know, you know, what your daughter's thinking, right?
• 20:57
  Nejeed Kassam: That's a really important distinction. But it's not just the tech Becky, it's also the human side of it too, right? You have to believe that you have to want it because I can build you the fastest car in the world. It can go so fast that even my two year old son would go zoom run around the house, which is by the way, what he does, but if you don't know how to drive, that doesn't matter. You can put all the horsepower in there. And so to me, you know, humanizing this technology, making it feel less scary to your point, there's no shame in not knowing how to nobody's ever said anything about data before. Like it's not been the lexicon, the narrative of our sector. I've spent 30 years in the sector. I know I was the problem. I fundraise by calling all the rich people I know, and asking them to make big gifts, that doesn't work. And so to me, shedding light, opening the door, insert claim, you know, metaphor here is actually the opportunity. And I don't think fundraisers even if you're four years, or you're 40 years in your career, need to be scared of this and I think they should be excited.
• 22:07
  Jonathan McCoy: Taking a quick pause from today's episode to thank our sponsor, Slingshot Group, our friends over at Slingshot Group, partner with nonprofits to recruit and hire great leaders, build remarkable teams, and unleash your missions potential. You know, we talk often about how much your organization's culture matters, especially today. And not just being a place that attracts talent, but also becomes a magnet to connecting donors to your mission. Slingshot Group is the organization we trust to help you do just that. It's so much more than a staffing and executive search firm. Slingshot Group goes deep and gets to know your culture so they can help you find the leaders and staff who will take your mission to the next level. Sound like Slingshot Group might be a fit for your organization? Learn more today at slingshotgroup.org, or follow the link in our show notes.
• 22:51
  Becky Endicott: I'm jazzed about it. And I want you to kind of throw out some examples to us like what it what are some best practices that are entirely outdated? What do we need to get rid of? And what are some things that we could take in that would be really simple, modern day best practices?
• 23:10
  Nejeed Kassam: Good question.
• 23:10
  Nejeed Kassam: Wow, great question. So I want to start by talking about the importance of saying thank you.
• 23:17
  Nejeed Kassam: Because it's something that our organizations do not do well enough on, you know, we'll do it for a $15 gift, somebody like makes a $15 gift. Firstly, you have none of us know how that might be huge for somebody or might be nothing. We don't know that and it doesn't matter.
• 23:31
  Nejeed Kassam: There is a data point, I gave a lecture. It's a few years old, and I don't remember where it's from. I wish I could say that.
• 23:36
  Nejeed Kassam: But it's like you should thank your donor in some form or another six times over the course of you think it's a year or something like that, like somebody that has seven. Exactly great, so so like seven six, I maybe I'm misremembering, but like the point is, that's a lot before you even broach the subject of another draft, right?
• 23:56
  Nejeed Kassam: But what happens, I make a donation online, I get an automated IRS compliant receipt that says Dear Nejeed, our work is so important to x community, your we wouldn't be able to do it without you. Thank you. Fake signature person. Great. And then I'm going to be added to a mailing list. And every month you're going to ask me for more money irregardless, that's on a word, regardless of whether you I like a specific campaign or a specific issue area or impact area or whatever it is.
• 24:29
  Nejeed Kassam: Technology can change that. We have, like incredible automation technology. Let me let me paint you what I think you should do instead, Becky makes a donation.
• 24:37
  Nejeed Kassam: It's $25. And it's about mosquito nets in Botswana. Okay, great. So now what do I know by that donation? I know that $25 was the amount they gave they, Becky, you selected a one time gift that you picked either a specific country or a specific problem like mosquito nets. I know the time of day The week, the month, I know that it was an online donation. All of those things came from a six field form. I also know your address.
• 25:07
  Nejeed Kassam: So I probably can very easily know the demographics of your neighborhood, likely what your projected income is, like the size of your family. Now think about that. What I just said, Nobody thinks about, let me build an automation sequence, which has both email marketing, text messaging, a fundraiser phone call that specific is specific to that great Becky gave mosquito nests. For all people who choose mosquito nets, send them this thank you with this story with this image.
• 25:36
  Nejeed Kassam: Great. If Becky opens it, do this. If Becky doesn't open it, do that, send a thank you text message, automate that from a piece of technology, then send three more follow ups about the impact they made, and then phone them after six weeks. That's super easy. Like no, that's really impossible for almost everybody, except if you're using the right technology. So let's not say Oh, I don't have time for that $25 donation, you can turn Becky's $25 Gold donation into a $20 monthly gift that could last 10 years, I promise you, you both have time and need for that. And 98% of this can be pre done and all automated and it feels inherently personal. Hey, Becks, thanks so much for the donation, like little squiggle automated text with like nickname. And you know, like there's so much we can do. Using this kind of tech, this smart tech, that's going to make Becky feel heard, that's going to make Becky feel like the center of your attention and offer a 25th $25 gift that's going to it's the right thing to do. It's it's financially possible, and it's going to significantly increase your likelihood to recur. That's what I see the future of giving
• 26:51
  Becky Endicott: Becks would totally give another recurring gift for something like that.
• 26:57
  Jonathan McCoy: Because you would give the signals because Becky's going to eat up that story. And you would have the data to know that she read that you clicked on that link she watched on that video she exactly because she's gonna behave in that way because she truly deeply cares, which is why she made the gift, which is gonna separate Beck's from
• 27:13
  Nejeed Kassam: And that's one of million examples we could do like, or we could know using, you know, kind of technology like ours, Becky made a gift.
• 27:20
  Nejeed Kassam: She's already given at least$500 for the organization in their history, automate this email as opposed to that email.
• 27:28
  Nejeed Kassam: Now, nobody can do that, our tech can do that. Technology does that for you, or Becky was LYBUNG she gave last year but not this year, she stopped being a LYBUNT do this, thank you, it's two years in a row, you know, 10 points to Gryffindor or whatever. But again, you know that because you're using data, both the past and the current new data, to help to begin new ways of thinking and ultimately new post gift stewardship practices.
• 28:00
  Becky Endicott: There are ways to humanize tech. And I think about what you've just explained there. And if I were to get that so breezily on text, or if I was going to get that video, there is so much humanity that can be put there. And I think that is something that we're so resistant about. We don't want something that's very buttoned up. You know, we don't want a corporate robot talking to us.
• 28:22
  Becky Endicott: But this feels human. I would love to like transition into the AI component. Because is this?
• 28:30
  Becky Endicott: Is this what you're seeing what is the future of AI and fundraising? And is this a component of it?
• 28:36
  Nejeed Kassam: So Becky, let's go back 15 years when there was like significant pushback to online donation forms, remember, like there was like, you're in the thick of it. But you were this is when you were in the heart of your career and fundraising,
• 28:49
  Jonathan McCoy: I remember that we were seriously talking about like, can we give up two and a half percent to process this card?
• 28:54
  Nejeed Kassam: Well, let's let's flip that. And this is like a big thing. You know, I have a whole rant I can give on the like way administration is tracked in the sector, but doesn't matter. Let's talk about how much it takes to process a check at the bank. But anyway, let's go let's get past that and go to 15 years ago when we didn't forget about you know, will people give online? Do we need that? Isn't it? Like? Yes, those who said yes, scaled, ultimately, that was the reality right. And so, you know, I think AI is that is the equivalent, that's the best equivalent I can draw in the space if your fundraising without an online donation form. But you either had to get it late or you felt you fell away into the abyss and you know, the organization struggled significantly. To me AI we're about five years from that, for orders who are not being powered by things like automation, artificial intelligence, smart nonprofits, all the stuff that no Beth and Alison wrote in their new book.
• 29:50
  Nejeed Kassam: We're in big trouble as a sector and so embracing this technology isn't a nice to have, it's a need to have whether it's going to be now we're in five years, depends on how much you want to struggle for five years. And I don't say that in a salesy kind of way, doesn't have to be expensive or complicated, doesn't have enough to be mine.
• 30:08
  Nejeed Kassam: It just has to be a mindset that's open to that, because it's the donation form of 2009, or whatever the year was. Right?
• 30:17
  Nejeed Kassam: And I think that's, that, to me, is the the really simple answer to your question?
• 30:21
  Jonathan McCoy: Thank you for always taking it back to mindset, you consistently, like recalibrate, because I do think that's where the conversations need to go. Because any limitations at the end of the day, it's so much easier once you get over the hurdle of thinking that it's gonna be really hard, you realize, like, Oh, this is gonna make my life a lot better and make my team more activated and working on meaningful work.
• 30:42
  Nejeed Kassam: There's so much fear. And like my dad, always, my dad has a lot of like aphorisms. One of them is fear stands for false evidence appearing real. And I like I never forgot that, because it's like, there's really nothing scary about artificial intelligence or automation. It's scary. If you don't look, it's like, maybe it looks scary, because you don't know what it is. But if you actually learn about you're like, oh, this doesn't mean it. Like it's just a tool. It's like, it's like trying to dig, dig a big hole with your hands like use the spade. It's pointy, so scary.
• 31:13
  Nejeed Kassam: But just it's easier.
• 31:15
  Becky Endicott: You know, for anyone that's listening right now and is just nodding your head, like a bobble head and saying, Yes, I want to do this.
• 31:19
  Becky Endicott: Yes, I'm ready to dive into it.
• 31:24
  Becky Endicott: I mean, what sort of counsel would you give them about where to start? And does The FundraisingKIT have some tools?
• 31:32
  Becky Endicott: You know, and of course, we love freebies, and we definitely want to know about that. But let us know where a good starting place would be specifically even for, like the tiny nonprofit who's got you know, like, one to three people trying to do all the things.
• 31:45
  Nejeed Kassam: And part of me says like, those are the people who need this the most. It's like, Man, I can get a whole nother person. That's a robot.
• 31:50
  Nejeed Kassam: Now that's not how it works.
• 31:53
  Nejeed Kassam: Relax, everyone. Don't it's not an actual robot. But it's like the capacity is humongous, right? So first, I always start every good, important decision with a cup of coffee. So let's start there. Make yourself have a good cup of coffee.
• 32:07
  Nejeed Kassam: Or cold brew.
• 32:08
  Nejeed Kassam: Or cold brew if you're bougie, like Jon, and then start by asking yourself like, what are the biggest problems I face today? Are my forms converting?
• 32:15
  Nejeed Kassam: Do I even know if my forms are converting? Am I retaining my donors? What's my second gift, like, track your organizational KPIs is what we would call them, figure out where there are opportunities and where there are areas that you need, you need to be better. And then we as fundraisers have to be honest with ourselves and be like, my second gift conversion sucks.
• 32:35
  Nejeed Kassam: The benchmark is x and y. You know, let's be honest. Okay, great. What do I now need to do?
• 32:42
  Nejeed Kassam: So now let's go to solution finding. So, Becky, to me, the first tool or spreadsheet that everyone needs is what's the benchmark? And what am I doing to be empowered by data, you have to be data driven. And it goes back to Jon's mindset comment, I gotta be like, I'm going to at least look at that.
• 33:00
  Nejeed Kassam: And I'm not going to be defensive. There's a sticky on my desk, it says, work to Yes, my second gift conversion rate could and should be better, don't viscerally respond to that nobody's threatening your job or your competence, or whatever it's like, this needs to be better. Or I have a disproportionate amount of my donations that are one time versus recurring, great, let's take a sober coffee inspired, look at this and be like, I can be better, we can be better. So and to have these conversations, we got to track them. So get your data and learn about them use either a tool or a spreadsheet, it really doesn't matter to get there. But the truth is, for not that much money, you can get a tool that plugs right into your CRM, like Fundraising KIT, which we just call KIT. And, and like do all the work for you. It'll tell you it'll you can toggle between like smart benchmarks, m&r benchmarks, Fundraising Effectiveness, projects, benchmarks and be like, ooh, how's that? How am I doing? You can do it by your org size, or your N T code, bucket or whatever. And so it doesn't have to be scary. And then you can take a next step, you can like set a goal, you can track your efficacy over time. And I know that sounds like I'm actually being 100% like being holding yourself accountable. And it's like, not in the dark with a little flashlight under the bed like it's been like yo, I can be better. And I will and here's what I'm going to set it at. And this is how it's going to change. Great. Now that I'm tracking all that what can I do?
• 34:32
  Nejeed Kassam: Well now let's get into the fun stuff. using a tool like KIT plugging your Salesforce or your Raiser's Edge or your Neon or your Keela or whatever you want to use plug in your MailChimp or your Constant Contact or you know whatever, plugin your wealth screening tools. Now I'm starting to aggregate now I'm starting to build that pile of data without having to stress about it. These are all like plugin API's. 10 minute kind of things. Great. Now let's put this thing to work. I can track giving journeys I can track personas, I can get zipcode data I can imagine now now we're finally getting to AI. Now I can let the technology say like, Becky is likely to give in February, but also possibly in November. That doesn't mean Becky is gonna give in October or whatever I said it means propensity, the model, the the AI, the machine learning says this is likely what's going to happen. So make that a reality call her. I can't believe I'm using two Harry Potter references in one podcast, but like, it's a sorting hat, right?
• 35:32
  Nejeed Kassam: Becky's likely to give in November, Jon is likely to become a recurring, so things like likely they'll come a recurring donor, likely to make a gift in a certain month, likely to give in the next two weeks. Smart ask how much we should be should we be asking for, there's a ton of data that shows that if you ask for too much, they're gonna give nothing. If you ask for too little, they're gonna give what you ask. Neither of those things is optimal. Using something like a smart ask will tell you, you know, Becky is likely to give x and you don't need a ton of donation history. If you've got it, it'll be built on Becky, if you don't have it, it'll be built on Becky's zip code, or her engagement history or people that you know, in your organization that look like her in terms of like, demographics, or giving history or engagement history, like this is the true power of artificial intelligence. It's that, it's that lamppost it's the guide.
• 36:21
  Jonathan McCoy: Okay, I mean, just totally here for all of this. Because I know tech can feel overwhelming, the future can kind of feel overwhelming.
• 36:25
  Jonathan McCoy: But this is just so good. Like, it's so reorients us to knowing our donors better understanding more their motivation. So it frees us up to do the stuff that really matters. You know,
• 36:37
  Nejeed Kassam: You can never replace the human side of fundraising. I don't want to what I want to is the annoying guesswork, the frustrating administration, the
• 36:46
  Becky Endicott: Yeah, the grind the grind. And I'll just say it reminds me so much of this conversation, if you want to go deeper that we have with Lynne Wester about stop looking at your financial data as the indicator of where to jump next, watch your donor behavior. If you look at your behavior, we're looking at the wrong KPIs. And we're spending our time spinning our wheels, looking at gift amounts, when actually the behavior of the donor is going to be driving a more succinct to your point smart ask which is not at all what I thought you said the first time you said it so.
• 37:23
  Jonathan McCoy: So okay, I mean, you've been a fundraiser since three, I'm just picturing you on the porch like ringing the doorbell. And I just wonder if there's a story you would take us back to when philanthropy just really took you back and was like, man, this is what it's all about. What's what's one you'd share with us?
• 37:37
  Nejeed Kassam: So I'll tell you one, so when I was young 20 or something, I founded this nonprofit End Poverty Now. Okay, it was a spin off of the Make Poverty History campaign that was doing grassroots work. And I remember like, so we partnered so the whole model of the organization was we find local organizations that are doing capacity building work, that generally it's like income generating for marginalized folks. And we'd like fund them to expand their work, right. So there was a program in Rwanda.
• 38:05
  Nejeed Kassam: It was like doing beekeeping for widows, okay. And what I didn't know about Rwandan culture, or that and not the whole culture, every culture, but like that specific area, was there was a lot of marginalization of widows, and it really affect did their ability to generate income. And that meant that widows disproportionately lived in poverty in that community relative to non widowed people.
• 38:28
  Nejeed Kassam: And we funded this project, we got the photos, Jon, of these of these amazing women. God too many of whom were young, like in their 30s and 40s. And they were widowed. And like, the median income grew by some crazy number, you know, like, and they were just making honey and I was like, I'd buy that honey. But like, that's not the point. The point is, for we raised 30, grand or what I don't know what the number was, but it was so small for us in terms of the way we think. And it literally lifted a whole cohort of people out of poverty. And I remember thinking myself, like, this is something I can give, like, I work 80 hours a week, I was 20.
• 39:02
  Nejeed Kassam: So I was still at school, running a national like, you know, national organization playing tennis on the varsity team at McGill, exhausted all the time. And, but I was like this is worth it. Like the grind, Becky to use your term that we all have to do to like give our organizations the juice, they need to do great work and to support great work is actually worth it. Because the reality is, whether it's my family or my my history, or those women in Rwanda, or people off the street in our own communities. So many folks rely on this important work and I wish they didn't have to, but I don't see a world where it's going to be the case that they don't. So if we're doing all this, if we want to unlock generosity, if people want to do that, let's make it easy for them to give. Let's make it easy for people to unlock that kind of generosity so that they can feel the way that I felt about that.
• 40:00
  Becky Endicott: And I got to put a book in to that beautiful story and just say, How good would it feel if we could leverage what we've talked about here today, with smart tech, with data driven decisions that feel good to the donor, and to us, and we could replicate that feeling of what happened with those women and Rwanda without the grind. And so that's what we're here for friends is like, we want you to work so much smarter, and not harder, because we want to keep that fire in your belly of whatever it is that you have for your mission.
• 40:39
  Nejeed Kassam: Becky, did you just say fire in my belly?
• 40:41
  Becky Endicott: I did say fire.
• 40:42
  Nejeed Kassam: So it's like a crazy thing in the 90s is the Canadian Prime Minister was Jean Chrétien, who was like that's like the president equivalent in Canada. And I wrote my first book book on youth social change when I was 22. And he wrote the foreword. And in that forward, I swear to God, he said, the words fire in my belly.
• 40:59
  Becky Endicott: I mean, we were just meant to talk today, we end all of our conversations with a one good thing Nejeed, this could be a life hack a piece of advice for what one good thing would you offer up to our community? And by the way, I can't wait.
• 41:14
  Nejeed Kassam: I think one good thing is like human beings have phenomenal capacity. Capacity that we as people can't even imagine we have. You know, you hear these crazy stories of people like mothers, firstly, moms are badass. Let's start with that. And secondly, like, you know, the incredible capacity of like, mothers defending their babies in front of bears. And while that seems like a hyperbole I like really, firstly, it does happen, which is nuts but secondly, I like I truly and deeply believe in, like, the incredible potential of humans and that unlocking that possibility. And it's like, one good thing is like, I really believe that everyone has that six, seven gear, whatever, you know, given them and, and that, that we should we should all spend our lives searching to find it. Because when we do, it's pretty special.
• 42:01
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, what a beautiful way around this conversation out.
• 42:04
  Nejeed Kassam: How can How can everyone connect with you The Fundraising KIT Keela, give us all the things. It's really easy like fundraisingkit.com, like toolkit, K it fundraising kit, is really simple. And there's like lots of and then I really want to encourage people to do this course, like we, you know, datadrivenfundraiser.com. It's awesome. It's super accessible.
• 42:28
  Nejeed Kassam: It's all done online at your own speed. And we'll make sure we put a really great discount code in there, like 50% off or something. And so we can, you know, every fundraiser should be a fundraiser that's powered by data, Becky, to your point and happy anyway, and in my journey that to support all of you listening in getting to that.
• 42:48
  Becky Endicott: Well, thank you so much for that I'm, we're looking at your course right now online. And it just looks really exciting. And we're going to drop that code into the show notes. Well, so put it in email.
• 42:56
  Becky Endicott: Thank you for offering that and being so generous with that, with your time. And I just have to say like, I want to extend this rose to you this, you know, fictional rose to be our friend for ever Nejeed. You have got a mindset and, and an enthusiasm and charisma. We need more of it.
• 43:19
  Nejeed Kassam: I don't know about any of those things. But I'll happily take that invitation to geek out on this stuff because not only is it important, but it's also a lot of fun.
• 43:27
  Becky Endicott: Amen. Preach.
• 43:27
  Becky Endicott: Well, we'll be rooting for you.
• 43:29
  Becky Endicott: Definitely. And so glad that we're connected.
• 43:31
  Jonathan McCoy: Thanks so much.
• 43:32
  Nejeed Kassam: Thanks, folks.
• 43:32
  Nejeed Kassam: Really appreciate your time.
• 43:35
  Julie Confer: Hey, friends, thanks so much for being here.
• 43:37
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• 44:08
  Julie Confer: Thanks friends. I'm our producer Julie Confer and our theme song is Sunray by Remy Borsboom.