Ep 76: Behind the Scenes: What Your Ideal Supporter Really Thinks About Giving

EPISODE 76

Cultivating Enduring Donor Relationships

 
 
 

The last 2 months of the year are the most revenue-generating of the year… but you’ve also trained your donors to show up those last 2 months of the year. What if you created a more sustainable revenue stream year-round?  

In this episode, I'll cover:

  • Direct Mail: We'll discuss why it's still a vital tool.

  • Online Fundraising: We'll explore why it's a must, but often not done well.

  • Unique Voice: How to speak to your ideal donors authentically and with authority.

  • Humanizing Your Organization: Strategies to introduce your supporters to the people behind your nonprofit.

  • Year-round Revenue: Discover the power of recurring giving and digital ambassadors for sustainable income.

  • Existing Supporters: Learn how to double your revenue without adding new donors by tapping into your current audience.  


Imagine doubling your nonprofit's revenue without adding a single new donor – sounds like a dream? It's not. In this power-packed episode, you'll hear how to cultivate your existing supporter base, armed with the Purpose and Profit Club's dynamic tracker tool (available for members of our group coaching program) to turn possibilities into realities.  

The Profit & Growth Flywheel for Nonprofits - (replay available): Save your free spot here

Think you’ve reached out to “everyone” in your network? Out of ideas to get noticed and get funded?  Generate leads for your nonprofit or social impact business: https://www.splendidcourses.com/prospect

Steal my Prospect List! Lead Gen just got a lot easier!

Resources mentioned:

 
 
 

Links may be affiliate links which means I may earn a commission at no cost to you.

TRANSCRIPT:

Christina 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. I've been in San Diego for the past few days and I'm sitting out in this beautiful park having coffee and we're going to give recording an episode. Out here there are some crows in the background saying hi and we're just going to give it a shot.

 I've been out here for a business planning retreat and in my mastermind group and it's actually been a really wonderful weekend for business planning. But one of the things that I really wanted to dig into today I think will be really helpful for you was I spent the past four days with a group of professionals, a group of entrepreneurs that are not in our sector you know work with nonprofits, they don't work in social impact and they were from all across the United States, canada, uk. It was so fun to meet and talk with them and, in particular, I want to talk about some of the things I heard from them about us, about nonprofits, about our industry, about the messaging, the storytelling, the positioning, the fundraising and how you can approach it in a way that would attract more of them, would attract more prospects. The other piece is I started to review haven't completely dug into the report a report that came out about 2023 donor data, so it was like digging into everything from digital fundraising, marketing, individual donors, major donors, direct mail. I mean all of it. And you know the headline of it is it's giving us down right, and underneath the headline are some really interesting and valuable pieces for you to consider, which is direct mail.

02:44

Y'all is still really, really essential, and I want to give a caveat that it's like direct mail not maybe the direct mail that you think of but it needs to be innovative. It needs to stand out in inboxes If you're sending like a postcard, if you're sending a mailed piece like a letter. Just sending a boring letter is not what I'm talking about. There's one client I've been working with for many, many years that has such a strong direct mail program and it's such a reliable source of revenue and now that we've worked together to really like turn up the volume on the content and the design of the direct pieces, it's just like this is not a big organization, so this organization is about a million annually, so it's not like they have, you know, an entire marketing department or they have a huge graphic design team, like you could do this with a small budget. So direct mail was one piece. The other piece was online fundraising and this just being you know, online fundraising is not a nice to have, it's a need to have and it's not often not executed in the right way.

 And I'll kind of jump back now and say this is what I heard from, you know, the group that I was with this past weekend, which is like, yeah, it's, it's a couple of things I heard from the folks that that aren't involved in the nonprofit world, sort of they don't know what they don't know of, just like, yeah, the stories are pretty generic, or yeah, everything felt very homogenous to them. And so I wondered, maybe you could ask yourself this If my ideal person, I know who they are, how am I speaking to them in a way that's homogenous, generic and sort of like assimilating with just our industry or your sector, your niche, your area that you serve, and how could I? What would it look like to do it differently? What would it look like to step into our own authority or expertise or voice? That's another thing. I can think of a few organizations that do this. Well, really honing in on a couple of different people within the organization who email the show up. Maybe even they do some like videos where I get to see their face like staff members.

05:36

It doesn't matter who, it matters that we're breaking what is it called in movies. You're like breaking the fourth wall or something right. You're really getting to know the people behind the brand instead of the brand. I think what a lot of organizations do is they just give us the brand clunk and they give us a couple and they give us the standard fundraising plan, calendar of outreach and all that. And then they come to me and they say this isn't working and instead let's break that wall. Let's let you, as the executive director, tell me about you. I wanna know about you within the organization. I wanna know about the people behind your organization. I wanna know about the people you serve and also be willing to break up and create a campaign calendar that makes sense for you and not a campaign calendar that you like heard was Air Quotes, best fundraising practices.

 Do you see the difference? So a lot of times it's like this huge, huge, just sprint at the end of the year. So it's like November and December are the most important, the most hands-on fundraising, revenue generating months of the year. And, if you think about it, they're the most hands-on revenue generating months of the year because they're also what you plan the most for. They're also the ones that you've trained your audience and now is when you show up. They're also the ones where you and your board and everybody staffs up behind these two months of the year and it's like is it the donors who only donated at the end of the year, or is it because that's when you are most active and engaging to them?

07:36

What would it look like if you actually created a strategy? I'm not saying that's wrong or bad, but I'm saying, instead of waiting for the last two months of the year to like really make shit happen, what if you created a strategy that was more sustainable? What if you created a strategy that was more innovative? Again, innovative does not have to mean you need to hire a video crew and whatever. It just means that it's just stepping into your own voice of authority, right, your own voice of expertise, in a way that would attract your ideal person. What if you did that a couple of times a year? And what if you said this year what are some sustainable ways that we can increase our revenue? What does that look like? I'll give you some examples. So that might be a recurring giving program. Right, so you can have a group of people. You may already have this, but really elevating what it looks like for people to join that meaning to be part of your community, to really feel seen and heard and like a member of it so like a recurring giving program is one.

 Another one that you can do that brings in revenue year-round is creating a digital ambassador program. I teach this. It's called a social street team. The way I teach this. This is working with digital ambassadors and influencers to use their platforms for good, to use their platforms to lift you up. Okay, that would be another way to do it. You'd ask yourself, like what are some other ways to do it? If you have a signature event, a signature thing, a signature campaign that is responsible for just a lot of your revenue, what are some ways that you could do it, that you could not be so reliant on that, like one day a year or one week a year to bring it in, to bring it in this bring-up, opening up the Purpose and Profit Club. It's going to be a group program for leaders who want help with us, who want a community, who want a collective, who want support to create a high-growth year and work on. Okay, but how do we do this? What do we say? What does it look like to really hone in our voice? Does it make sense for us to go all in with a monthly giving program or should we focus over here? And for me, a lot of what I've seen with my clients and students is having the accountability and support of a group, of a coach to say I got you do this, not that Feedback, high-touch feedback that can just keep you moving forward, getting you motivated.

10:34

The other piece I haven't talked about here. That is a huge part of growing your revenue. Let's make a quick detour on growing your revenue. You could probably find 12 reports right now that say like 2023, giving it down, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then also an offer. I was on a call last week with an organization that I want to say is like a million and a half, something like that, and it's like how's your revenue year over year? They're like awesome, oh, we grew last year. I'm like tell me more, tell me more. You know, and I'm thinking of another organization I work with. They're about at 750, same thing they grew.

 So be very, very careful, like what lens, what glasses you put on when you move into this year. What you decide is a trend, what you decide to believe is just true, in fact, because you could tell a story that has that has one lens of saying giving down, and it is what it is, and donors are more strapped, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you can find another story that says, actually, organizations like mine, organizations who serve this population, or organizations who are at this level right of revenue, actually grew last year. And I would encourage you to remind yourself of that, because both are true, right, both are true, but one is going to be motivating for you and one is going to be really, really helpful for you as you move into the year, and the other is going to feel like a ball and chain. It's going to feel really, really happy. Okay, sidebar back.

12:31

So now we're going to talk about growth and one of my favorite ways to grow without adding a single new donor. Okay, so many times when I like peek behind the hood of an organization, even if you're at $200,000 in revenue, it doesn't matter. What I see is you have an existing audience of supporters and donors and subscribers. I'm going to lump them all together. Okay, so you have people in your ecosystem that either, like you, subscribe to one of your marketing channels your email, something like that have made a gift or have not made a gift, but they're still in your ecosystem. Okay, maybe attended an event, and that pool of people could double your revenue.

 Just pause, think about that, like, go to bat and think about it on how that could be true. How could it be true that your existing group of email subscribers, facebook followers, instagram followers, major donors, individual donors, anything else how could it be true that just that existing pool of people have the capacity to bring in twice as much revenue? Because it's true, it's 100% true. It's 100% true. Many times, the reason why it hasn't proved true before, or why you feel like there's no way it could be true, is simply this you haven't asked, you haven't had the conversation. That does feel hard, right. That does feel uncomfortable, right, especially with those major donors, to ask for more, and I don't mean like a notch more, I mean more.

14:33

So, inside the Purpose and Profit Club, the group coaching program that's coming soon. I'm gonna give you what I only give my private coaching clients. You're gonna get access to this dynamic tracker Okay, it's this dynamic calculator would be a better word for it and we look at those people, we look at all of them. You can decide I'm just gonna focus on people who have given a gift of $5,000 or more a year. You can say I'm gonna look at people who have given $250, it doesn't matter to me, okay. And in there we identify a couple of key things. And then it is dynamic. So we have a multiplier in it and you can see very quickly how this is possible from a very black and white sense, which I find really, really helpful and helps to slow me down, because I think it can feel very daunting to say I've got to, if I wanna grow 30% this year, where am I gonna find the people? Where are they? Versus, holy crap. What if they're already here? What if they're already here Now? From there, when you plug in that tracker, we plug in some things about them.

 Okay, from there, the next layer is now what you know? What, christina? What do I do? What do I say? What's the strategy, how often, and that's what we're gonna go into for the club. So if it's major gifts, amazing I can help you with that. If it's not amazing, I can help you with that, because I've been doing this for two decades. I've got it.

16:04

It doesn't matter to me tactically if it is about booking more meetings and prospecting if it is about closing more meetings. It doesn't matter to me if it's about email or social or grassroots in person. Well y'all, I've done it all. But in this case, the next, like the strongest, easiest path is going to be going to some of those high net worth individuals and saying booking the meeting and courageously asking for more. And before you do that, I do have a process to walk you through what to say, how to prepare yourself, Right, how to prepare yourself, what to say in the meeting, how to handle it after the meeting, and Maybe even for folks who are Not at the level where you would be booking meetings with them, how do we do this?

 Like in a scaled way, what does it look like to find those people, to plug them in to this tracker and say, all right, this chunk of people that is like to add a maybe small to mid level of giving. These are not people that I'm in a book, face one-to-one meetings with. What does it look like to ask for more from them? What's a compelling way to do that? And I'm smiling right now because I'm like, ooh, that sounds fun. And I'm smiling because I, for me, I get to say how fun is it that you could do this in a way that is so scalable, because you don't have to do all those phone calls, you don't have to book all these meetings, right, and we do this using email. How do we do this using some other communication platform? And it goes way back to where I started in the beginning, which is Stepping in to your authority, ditching the vague, vanilla, ominous nonprofit brand, right, and instead really having a deep connection and Connecting with people because you're much more transparent, because you're much more real, because you're much more you and you're letting people in. And again, this can be you, the listener, today, you this can be Kind of ping-ponging and letting another staffer Participate in this as well, like there's so many ways that you can do this and there's so many ways in the group that I was with this weekend. We want you to do this. We don't want your emails to sound Boring. We don't want your emails to blend in with everybody else.

18:45

I sat across dinner last night With somebody who had been. He was like he was the boyfriend of One of my masterminders and he had been in kind of let's say, the civic, kind of social policy, nonprofit government world for a while and like he has a deep, deep Desire for changemaking huge and I can tell oh Wants to be somebody who feels like he's making a difference in the world, in his community, and doesn't have a desire to be a staff member. Right, if there was an organization that said, I got you, look at what we're doing, can you imagine what we could do with your support? Can you imagine what we could do if you would tell five friends about it? Like that would be. That is actually what he was looking for, that is actually what he's looking for and I can tell he hasn't found it yet. He hasn't found an organization that is Doing that. He hasn't found an organization that is Showing him. He was very much saying I want, like he was thinking through a business lens. So he was thinking like I want to make a fucking change, like I want Children, in particular for him, who are Experiencing such trauma. I want it. I want the change to be upstream, top-down, right policy change. Change so that not just one child, but that that many children are Benefited from this program, from this organization.

 I could tell he hadn't connected with an organization that's doing that and I'm sitting here going, I think, of a few you know. So it's like why hasn't he? What have you not said online? Who have you not connected with? That has a Platform and a channel, right, this is the social street team piece. You may be like Christina, we're posting all the time about things like this, right, but he doesn't follow you. Who does he follow that? He trope trust that he has loyalty to, that he admires that does speak on this. That would endorse you in a way that he would be like this is it, this is it. How do I help? I want to help.

21:18

Okay, so there's so many different. It's almost like when you Punch your Destination, like when it's, you know, traffic time and you punch your destination into ways or whatever you use, you know they show you the different routes you can take. You Like you take this route, take this route, and sometimes one of the routes is 40 minutes and the other one's 20 minutes, and so it's very clear which route you wanna take. And other times it's like 38 minutes, 40 minutes, 42 minutes, right, and there in our world are a lot of routes like that, where it's like the fastest route to get you to funding fast is gonna be a major difference, okay. And then there are other ones that are more nuanced, other ones that have a nuance to who you serve, what you do, how much staff you do or do not have right your positioning, your messaging, your scalability, what it is you're trying to achieve. And that's when it's like boom, there's your route, there's your route.

 And then the next layer of that, after you figure out, is all of the anxiety, worry, just I don't know right. So maybe imposter syndrome, so maybe just like frazzled energy, all of the things that come up. And that's how I can support you and that's what's gonna happen in the club. So I hope this was helpful. If you haven't already, I would love to see your review and I will be shouting out sub reviews in the episodes to come and I'll see you next time. If you ask me, everyone should have a coach, especially you. I wanna 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