Ep 64: Cracking the Code of Motivation: Cultivating Donor and Volunteer Loyalty

EPISODE 64

Harnessing the Power of Trust and Loyalty

 
 
 

Ever wondered what separates successful nonprofits from the rest when it comes to retaining volunteers and donors? Join me as we unravel the secrets behind their success in the world of nonprofits.

In this candid conversation, we delve deep into the motivations that drive volunteers, donors, clients, customers, and members to take action, renew their commitments, and become enthusiastic supporters. We reveal the art of understanding their 'why,' nurturing trust, fostering loyalty, and creating positive experiences that keep them engaged.

Moving beyond motivation, we also explore its role in fundraising and marketing. Discover how to resonate with your audience by crafting messages tailored to their unique motivations. Learn how to adapt to feedback, create targeted messages, and make the most of your email lists for maximum impact. In the digital age, we discuss the power of online connections in building trust and loyalty.


Lastly, we explore why having a coach can be a game-changer for your nonprofit journey, along with the initial steps to scheduling a discovery call. This episode is packed with valuable insights, practical tips, and actionable advice to help your nonprofit thrive. Tune in and strengthen your mission!

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TRANSCRIPT:

00:02

Welcome to the Purpose and Profit Club podcast for nonprofit leaders, mission-driven creatives and social entrepreneurs. Get ready to stop dreaming and start doing. Here, ideas become action. We prioritize purpose and profit. You ready, let's go. It's Christina Edwards, your favorite coach, cheering you on to get your mission noticed and funded.

00:26

Today we're going to talk all about motivation, but first I want to share that a couple of minutes ago, in advance I have my notes here I know what I'm talking about and I feel like I was just like pinged and tinged and I got all of the notifications from all of the people and I got super grumpy. So I wanted to offer that. If that's you, if you're suddenly your phone's ringing text messages, all of the things in your world, all the emails, and you're like, ah, this is too much, this is overwhelming, this is too much, and you feel a little grumpy, or maybe you feel a little grumpy from something else I want to kind of invite you to do two things. One is I just said you know what I'm grumpy, that's okay, and didn't try to talk myself out of being grumpy, and I also acknowledged that a lot of what I was feeling grumpy about is some personal responsibility. I wanted to put some boundaries around and not really anything too much to do with words and actions from other people, but rather, ooh, I need to be a little firmer over here, or I need to be a little clearer over here, and I haven't been, because maybe I have been trying to avoid that slightly wobbly, uncomfortable piece. So if that's you, you're not alone. I feel it too. The second piece is I have a trampoline in my office. Do you know this? It is a little, you know, one person trampoline and I looked at it and I was like all right, let's bounce. So I just bounced for like a minute or two and it was very hard to be grumpy and be an adult bouncing on a trampoline. So that totally helped and I'm smiling and just feel very silly now and not so grumpy. So we're going to talk about motivation today.

02:13

I earlier this week spoke to a group membership of let's see, I'm going to the Council of Volunteers of America. So they all work in volunteer engagement for nonprofits and this was the Atlanta chapter. It's an amazing group of people and we were talking about two things. We were talking about retention. So volunteer retention, volunteer engagement Like how do we get more people? How do we retain them? Which, by the way, like as I was developing the notes for that and the content for that, it's so fascinating how much you really can swap out the world.

02:48

So we're talking about the word donor, client, volunteer, customer, person. So what are we trying to get volunteers to do? We're trying to get more of them, just like we're trying to get more donors or clients or customers. What are we trying to do? We're trying to get them to take action, and then take action more than one time. And so I just want to remind you that if you are in fundraising or if you are a small business owner or if you are in volunteer management, right, a lot of what I say in the previous episodes. I may hone in on a specific thing, like donors, right, but if you swap out that word for client, if you swap out that word for customer, if you swap out that word for volunteer, you're going to be like whoa, right, it's the same thing. I see that again and again, and I don't think the rest of us see that. Very often we're like no, no, no, my problem is different. What we're dealing with is different and, yeah, the words you would use to entice, attract, engage a volunteer is different, potentially, than the words you would use to attract a customer right, but the motivation, like the methodology behind it, has a lot of commonality.

04:00

So one of the questions that we really or several of the questions that we dug into so many, use volunteerism as our prompts today is what motivates a volunteer to show up and serve in the first place? What keeps them coming back and pause and ask yourself that question? Pause and ask yourself that question and be like ooh huh, answer it. What motivates a second gift or a third? Okay, how is that different than the motivation for a first single, individual, one-off gift? What motivates a member to renew year after year? So, if you have some sort of membership, some sort of annual something, even quarterly something, what gets them coming back and renewing you after a year? What motivates a supporter to become a raving fan? You know those followers, you know those fans, you know the people online. What motivates them to like, really be highly engaged? You need to know the answers for yourself, for your organization, for your small business. Okay, you should know, because the answer necessarily isn't one size fits all, but I want you to figure out what are the top three answers for our organization. Okay, getting into their shoes, getting into their, why not your? Why? Because if I ask you, like you know what motivates you know your campaigns, you're like, well, we gotta get this thing funded. Well, we got it. We need volunteers. Well, we need this. Right, let's get into their shoes, their experience, their why.

05:31

One of the things that I see is the initial why. The initial motivation behind doing a something once buying a product, once, signing up for a membership, once donating, once volunteering once is different than the motivation to return. Okay, it is rooted in developing trust. It is rooted in developing loyalty and this one may be like the hardest one, I don't know A positive experience, right. If I have a positive experience, right, and I have a good outcome from whatever that was maybe coming back, I'm more likely to come back, right, I also need a need. I need to have a why for it. So let's this just popped in my head light bulbs, right? Like, if I have a positive experience with a light bulb and I'm like, all right, this is a good brand, that's yes, that's yes, but I still need to have like a need. So many, many light bulbs now last years and years and years, right, so I'm not gonna go back and be like this was a great, trusting, loyal brand with a positive experience and I'm gonna go buy light bulbs once a month. I don't have a need, right. I don't have a why that is deep enough right To serve keeping to come back. So you wanna think about that too, of like, yeah, they may have had a good experience, they may have, you know, feel trust and loyalty within our organization, but why? How can I motivate them to come back? Okay, so you wanna take some time and answer that question for your specific audience? Again, that's gonna be different depending on what the ask is. The action is, okay, the best way to answer this question.

07:09

I saw a lot of people write this down when I shared this in person this week which is, if you don't know the answer to the question, if you're like Christina, I have some guesses, or I know why people give sometimes, or I just really don't know. I feel confused, or I don't really feel like my answer is is like juicy or significant or deep enough then I actually wanna give you some homework. You have two things I want you to do. Number one I want you to survey your audience. So go, survey those donors or those volunteers or those clients or those members whoever that segment of your audience is and ask them. Ask them in just a few questions. Make it very, very easy to an online survey and ask them.

07:52

Okay, go back and listen to Emily's episode. Hang on, I'm gonna find it of the podcast so you can listen to how she talks about surveying and how she talks about the interview process. Pulling it up now. Okay, episode number 34, understanding motivation what makes your supporters take action? With Emily Taylor, episode 34?. Go back and listen to that. She goes into that in depth. It's a great episode.

08:18

The second thing that I want you to do is I want you to pick five of that audience and get on the phone with them. Make 15 minute calls, make an appointment to hop on the phone with them for 15 minutes and just ask them. Hey, I noticed you volunteered with us. Tell me about that and this isn't a error, your grievances, this is just what brought you to our organization. What did you think about it? Would you volunteer with us again? Or hey, I noticed you come back. You know, event after event. Tell me why. I want you to listen, ask a few questions, but mainly I want you to listen. That's how you're going to inform the why behind their motivation.

08:57

Okay, just do five of them, try and pick, like five of the people who you feel like are either highly engaged or people that dropped off, so you get a nice mix of responses that becomes, as you go through this process, that actually becomes your roadmap to your messaging. Okay, so your copy, your fundraising pages, your email marketing, your social media marketing, your graphics? Okay, you want to pull in their motivation, their why, into their experience of your brand, of your mission? Okay, because, remember, if we're vague, if we're just like volunteers needed, support our cause, donate today, buy now, sign up that is throwing spaghetti at the wall. But when you use the words that they use, when you tap into their why, their own motivation, suddenly you're ringing those bells. Right, they're like, ooh, that hits, that hits, okay.

09:55

So let's give a personal example. This morning I posted on my personal networks a link for people to it's with every town. So they are just an amazing organization that is trying to get more gun laws in the United States Because we see mass shooting after mass shooting, and I posted a link where people can easily. It's like an auto. What am I trying to say? It's like a form. It will text your local congressperson saying that you want the assault rifle ban back, okay. And it's basically saying, yes, I'm a member of this district and I, christina Edwards, want the assault rifle ban back, and it's doing it for you, okay. So I posted that on my social networks.

10:40

Why did I do that? What was my motivation? The motivation is there is yet another recent shooting in the States that was just completely preventable. I'm pissed off, okay, I'm pissed off. So there's sweet motivation for me. I have kids who do active shooter drills. I'm pissed off, mad about that. I'm mad about having to explain to a four-year-old, trying to downplay it, trying to make them not scared about that. So that's motivating. Nothing has changed. That's motivating.

11:15

And they made it very easy. That was friction. Right, they were removing friction because it was basically this landing page. All I had to do was type in my own information and it automatically found my congressperson and did it for me. So they took away friction. It was mobile friendly, it was very, very easy. And then on the thank you page, they basically said do you want to share this on Facebook? I said, absa, luttly, let's do this, okay.

11:38

Now, what would keep me coming back? What would make me take another action with this organization? Maybe it would be an email that said hey, christina, here's something you didn't know about your Congressperson and what you know what they're lobbying for or not, I don't know. Or maybe it would say hey, here's something that's happening in your community. Do you want to join? Here's our Facebook community group for for moms in Atlanta. Do you want to learn more about this? What would keep me coming back? Right, you want to know the answer to that, right? And those are some things that would keep me coming back.

12:10

So, getting into their. Why now? Getting into, excuse me in this, in my why of like, why I'm motivated to take action versus the organization saying, okay, how do we get more people to donate today? How do we get more people to fill out this petition? Right? Instead, stepping into my shoes Okay, what is going to keep Christina from posting about this on Facebook? Or why would she post about this on Facebook? Okay, let's create a simple landing page that has one, two and three pre-package ready to go for her.

12:41

Okay, so you want to get into that piece? And if their goal was volunteerism, then they need to tap in and figure out who I am a little bit more, what I care about a little bit more. How will they do that? They will do that simply by surveying and interviewing their current audience to have a sense of okay, these tend to be moms, or these tend to be folks living in this area, or these tend to be people who are passionate about these causes, or who like to have a forum, who like to have a place online to discuss, or who really want a toolkit to help them talk about this topic online. I don't know you know the answer to that more than I would know the answer to that Okay, for your unique cause and purpose, and as we recap, as you think about your ideal, prospects, motivation, and as you get clearer on that, and as you start to put that into the language of your stories and the language of your email subject lines and the language of your fundraising pages and website right, be willing to not just go this is the one way we have to say it and that's it Like be willing to test and try and adapt and be nimble.

13:54

So I do this all of the time in my own business of ooh, what's a you know, I think something's very, very clear and I think, ooh, that'll entice people, that will be motivating, that will be something that they are very interested in or that you are very interested in. And then I'm like, huh, I don't think it was, or I see that it's not engaging as well as I thought it would be. What's a better way, a new way, a clearer way that I can say that? And if I don't know the answer, sometimes I will ask a colleague hey, what do you think of this? Or I will go to chat GBT and say chat GBT helped me come up with some other headlines for this or some other, some other ways that I could say this more effectively.

14:39

Okay, so, being willing to hear feedback, of course, we don't want to go through feedback city with a bunch of you know different people and we're trying to use everybody's advice and lump it all together. Another thing that you could do is go how could I be more specific here? So many, many of you have audiences that are broader than just you know, moms who live in Atlanta. Okay, that's fine. But for some of your stories, for some of your emails, for some of your social posts, for some of your appeals. Talk to moms who live in Atlanta, talk to that audience. It's like audience one go talk to them, okay, and then for other times you can talk to audience two, which may be across the country, right, which may be a different audience, which may be retired folks who knows be willing. Though if you want to talk to all of them all at once, then what does it end up sounding like? It ends up sounding like just this broad vague. You know we need your help, so don't do that. If you need help with either of these things, I talked a lot today about messaging, about social media, about marketing.

15:42

That is, amplify Social Impact. Click the link in the show notes and it will take you to a webinar which will teach you about that program, how to get your mission noticed and funded online. It talks about ambassador programs. If you want help with your email marketing strategy, then go to splendidcoursescom. Forward slash email. That's where we're sort of distilling.

16:05

Okay, this is the stories we've got. These are the things that we know our audience, our volunteers, our donors, our clients, our customers, our members care about. But how do I package these stories in a way that actually sounds compelling, that sounds captivating, that gets people to open, read, click and take action. That's what we do in that course. Many, many of you are sitting on email lists that are completely untapped. Okay, they're completely untapped. You've got, you're using your email list in a way that you just thought okay, I'm just going to, you know, open, I'm just going to update my folks about some our different programs and we're going to do it once a quarter or once a year and then we're going to do, you know, the big fundraising push at the end of the year. There's a better way, a more profitable way, a more successful way to do it. That's what we go into in easy emails. Okay, that's what I've got for you today.

17:01

Think about where to? This would be a good prompt where, when rather when are you motivated to take action? Okay, when are you motivated to give? When are you motivated to give a second time? Why did you renew I don't even it doesn't matter what kind of membership it was why did you renew your gym membership? Why didn't you? Why did you renew your other professional designation membership? Why didn't you Think about some of the actions you personally have taken right and ask yourself why, why didn't I buy that product Again?

17:38

Have you ever bought something before online with a new brand and you never really went back? Why Did you forget about them? This happens commonly. It actually wasn't a bad experience. I do this a lot with restaurants. I eat there once and then I am like, oh, I totally forgot about them. I just forgot, they did not stay top of mind. How do they stay top of mind? You've got to start building that connection, that trust piece, right away and you've got to connect with them online, period, full stop. Okay, I'll see you next time Cheering you on. You got this. If you ask me, everyone should have a coach, especially you. I want to invite you to schedule a free discovery call with me. Go to splendidatlcom, forward, slash contact. You'll see my calendar there. Book a call with me. You'll learn about my smart growth method, where we can grow your business or organization sustainably with ease and massive impact.

You Get To Have Purpose And Profit. I’ll Show You How.

 
 
PodcastChristina Edwardspurpose and profit, marketing, entrepreneurship, purpose driven, nonprofit, social impact, mindset, productivityComment