Ep 82: [Open Coaching Replay] Where Mission Meets Measurable Success
EPISODE 82
The Nonprofit Growth Blueprint
Listen to this Open Coaching Call where nonprofit leaders, marketers, and fundraisers asked for support with:
LYBUNT/Lapsed regangment emails
Impactful storytelling when there isn't
Engaging board members who aren't natural fundraisers
The power of a digital toolkit to boost visibility and impact
If now is the right time to focus on grant writing and other slow ROI activities
Investing in skill building and guidance to upgrade donors, mobilize supporters online, and increase funding drastically year over year
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:
Easy Emails: My email marketing course for nonprofits, consultants, and social impact businesses. Learn more here: www.splendidcourses.com/easyemails
Amplify Social Impact: My signature digital marketing and online fundraising course. If you’re ready to start a profitable digital ambassador program or influencer marketing program, this course is for you! Sign up for my free masterclass and get $200 off the course here.
Private coaching: This is the fastest way to kickstart your growth and have support, strategy, and momentum to grow sustainably without burning out. Start by scheduling a discovery call here.
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.
00:20
Today I hosted a live, open coaching call for anyone in my world to come join. We dug into re-engaging live events, major gifts, influencer marketing, email marketing, storytelling. I mean it was one of those calls where I was like, oh, this is going on the podcast immediately. We had some really great questions come in from organizations that would love to join the club, purpose and Profit Club but approval and funding and really not having a budget are quotes for professional development. So we talked about that as well, one of the things that I want you to consider as and there's like so many actionable strategies you can take from today, so please enjoy and go forth, put it into action. We talked about some creative ways that you can get approval, get funding to join us in the club. In my group coaching program doors closed. Very, very soon. We have a template I'm going to drop into the show notes. You can grab a template and a brochure if you want to share that with leadership. I think of this program as getting in the car, plugging in your GPS and getting you to exactly where you want to be and then building upon that and doing it faster and better and more efficient. This does not take a lot of time out of your schedule in the club. You have support, you have extra video, trainings and templates and tools and all of that so you can continue to watch those trainings and things like that if you need them, but it is not required.
01:45
I will be running Outreach Genius, which is my prospecting and outreach program. It's a sprint, so we do this in a very short amount of time and I will be running that inside the club very soon. That is the quickest, fastest way to make your money back and just like boom right out of the gate. This is not where you invest $5,000, and it takes you months and months and months to make it back. That's never my goal for you. I would love for you to make it back right out of the gate with one simple strategy. You could definitely do that without Reach Genius. We've had people come in and say I upgraded one donor from $25,000 to $125,000. I've had one donor that led to five new donors because of that one donor. I teach you that entire process just in that one sprint. That is just a little tiny appetizer of what we're going to be doing in the club.
So if you have questions, if you're like, okay, but is it right for me, or here's some resistance that I'm getting to joining, or I'm just not sure, reach out to me, send me a message on Instagram at Splendid Consulting, or you can send me an email and just let me know about your organization and I will be honest with you. If it's not a fit, I'm going to tell you. If there's somebody else who can better help you, I'm going to refer you to them. I want to make sure that your organization succeeds and is around in 10 years and not around in 10 years doing the same, having the same impact that you're having today, but around in 10 years an whole boy. Has your impact grown? Has your donor pull grown? Has your services and programs grown? That's what we want to see. We want to see that close quantum leaps throughout the year. All right, here we go.
03:18
One of the things that I went over on on what day was it Tuesday? Was this 510-15 method Type a one in the chat. If you were on that training or if you watched the replay and heard the 510-15 method, give me a one in the chat and a two if you did not. If you missed it, okay, all right, cool. All right, we see some ones. So the 510-15 method okay, cool.
Was basically this idea of like, if I had to, if I had to make another 100K this year or another way to do it, depending on your organization size sort of tap into another 100K in your funding. How would I do it? And for those of you that were on the call, what came up for you? What resonated with you the most? Do you guys and anyone can just unmute too. So what I said was what I would do is I would send out five emails to your livens, five emails automated to your livens. I would do a quick short series getting them to re-engage with you. Okay, that's what I would do. Then I would send and I would or rather than I would, book 10 meetings with mid to high level donors. Okay, that's the next thing I would do.
04:35
And then the last thing was 15. I would assemble 15 social street teamers to join your social street team for a specific campaign or challenge. So I teach this concept inside the program. This is a digital ambassador program and influencer marketing so you can get people who are just vocal advocates and volunteers and then also influencers online who have an alignment with your cause and also have a already have a place where you know they've built trust with their own audience, so it's a great way to get in front of a new audience that has a natural alignment. So that's 15 street teamers.
I do like to have this, though I like to have this with a specific campaign. So right now, we're in March now, so I would say, all right for April. There's two weeks. In April we're going to do a social street team campaign. So there's a clear start and finish date for them, right, and there's a clear campaign goal. It works like a charm every single time. It's also a great way to actually break in new donors. All right, erin says five drip sounds like a lot to me, but maybe that's why my five drips last fall didn't work. Erin, will you unmute? Let's talk about it.
Speaker 2 05:43
Wonderful database of lapsed donors and I'm just really struggling with how to get them back. So last fall we it was late, maybe it was the timing, but it was late so, like November and December, we did a series of three drips from our, from our board chair, who had just narrowly lost our mayor's race so he's a little bit of a celebrity Got it so so. So he has the name recognition. So we're like, okay, it'll, they'll open it because it's from Mike. And they were just, were miserably unsuccessful.
Christina 06:22
Okay, if you were going to like, triage that and guess why do you think it was and what is? What does miserably unsuccessful look like Like? What does that look like?
Speaker 2 06:33
Well, our goal was to win back donors and we had no zero donations from, okay, from the whole drip campaign, and then the ask and nobody. So then he, you know. So then I had to go back to the board, the board president, and say, well, thanks for thanks for signing this, but nobody gay you know. But it wasn't successful, and I think you know the more I think about it. I think it's that our lapsed donors didn't give, for they weren't mission aligned in the first place, and so winning them back is difficult. Like they, I work at, you know, editing in a way, so maybe they gave before because their bot encouraged them too much, or to make some work thing easier, or I don't know. Like there could be a lot of reasons that people give and it's not necessarily mission aligned, and so getting them back seems really challenging. But it also seems like this this wonderfully, this wonderful available, untapped market. And now they did not unsubscribe, they just did not give.
Christina 07:40
Do you know, with your email marketing tool, what the open rates and click through rates were like Like? What did those look like?
Speaker 2 07:48
It's constant contact and I don't remember, but they weren't. They weren't horrible. It was, like you know, in the 30% open rate. Okay.
Christina 07:56
So that's interesting. They opened and maybe some people clicked and zero. How big of an audience was this?
Speaker 2 08:05
About like a few hundred Okay.
Christina 08:12
And yeah, okay. So here's the thing At being in a united way yeah, you're going to get, I would say, more one off donors than a smaller, more community driven organization that doesn't have different chapters. Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Okay, so it's like we can account for that. But that I don't think is true that they were all like sweepingly not mission aligned. There's probably true for some people that they were going to be a little bit more one offs, higher than some other types of organizations, but I would say there's more to it. Did they know the board chair? I know you said he had some like name recognition, but had he emailed them before? Had they received any emails from him, like in his voice or anything like that?
Speaker 2 08:57
Probably not. Okay, I mean, some of them were probably on his fund. You know they were probably part of his fundraising asks in his mayoral campaign, I would assume. Because it's not. Our town is not humongous. There's only like a hundred thousand people that live here, so there's a lot of overlap and how it was.
Christina 09:22
Three emails over the course of what period?
Speaker 2 09:26
About a month before we about four weeks Okay.
Christina 09:32
Were they all just like story based emails with a call to action? Were there any social proof videos Like what was the content?
Speaker 2 09:41
No, no videos, just all all emails, mostly like programmatic updates. This is what we've been doing. We struggle with on the story side because of the partnership and collaborative nature of our work. It's not the actual individual person, more as much as let me tell you that Right now we have a really great story because last year we had a 73 percent success rate in our homeless program that serves the hardest to reach people, which is super humongous and just unheard of. But we didn't have those numbers in our drips. We would talk about the updates to the program but not the actual number impact success.
Christina 10:34
Okay, yeah, you're talking about more features and not benefits If we want our lapsed or disengaged donor to take another action. We got to talk about benefits, we got to talk about wins, we got to talk about specificity when we can and slash, or we have to talk from the first person and tell our flavor of our version. If we don't have that Because what you just said was really important, which is we didn't really have one or two really great stories to tell for that, given the sort of structure, right, so how could we tell a first person story from the person sending it or another staffer or something like that that has that heart and soul into it? You know that does describe some challenges, some problems and some solutions that your organization does help seek to address and that it works and that a constant challenge for funding is right, or a constant challenge for meeting the demand that you have is funding, and that's where they can step in. So we do have to become better storytellers, and this is often what you're outlining is a really common version that I see, which is we tried that and it didn't work. And when we peek under the hood of how you tried it, I see a couple of different things. One, we talked way too much about features and not enough about benefits and outcomes and results, right. And two, it just felt like an ominous brand writing sometimes, so it didn't have that heart from the actual person. So that can be another thing. The other thing is I probably would suggest trying it with some video, and I don't mean like hire a videographer video, I mean grab the iPhone, grab the first person and 60 seconds, 30 seconds, a short little video.
12:30
And really, and one of the ways that I like to create all of this content is say to myself, I pull that list and certainly there must be one name that you know on there, right? Or at least to drill into. All right, let's think about Christina. Christina, let me look at her. Giving history. She gave once or twice, she gave it this level. Let me look at that. Let me have a sense of who she is. Does who I think she is align nicely with the content I'm about to share for these three drips? Do you know what I mean? Why, or why not, would this get her up off the couch to go dig out her credit card if she needed to?
Speaker 2 13:07
Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense and I just don't want to give up. But like, it just seems like there's there's enough potential there that I just don't want to give up. But I don't want to just keep banging my head against the wall and sending them more emails that they're not going to respond to.
Christina 13:23
Well, here's what's here's what's interesting about doing a liban series like this. What you're also doing at the exact same time is you actually have two goals. Your first goal is to reengage them with a gift. Right, that's goal one. Your second goal is list cleaning. So what we do with this, when we have a short period of time with a with a ask, is we're list cleaning, meaning we want people to unsubscribe. I want them to hop off the ride if they no longer want to be on the ride and stay on the ride if they are going to be on the ride. And what's really interesting is you had a lot of people it sounds like, stay on the ride. They said no, no, no, no. We're not going to give again, but we are going to keep reading your emails like they didn't all sweepingly unsubscribe, correct.
Speaker 2 14:05
Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was surprised, like I thought they would choose one or the other and they didn't. So yeah, I don't know if that was just meant. It wasn't interesting, like maybe they opened it and they were just like OK, whatever, boring.
Christina 14:19
Not even OK, so it'll be interesting for you to go back and listen to it. You're making really sweeping judgments on the negative. It might not be whatever boring. It might be like my kid walked into the room and I forgot.
It might be like, oh interesting, and then didn't. I wasn't really motivated to like click Right. It may not just be this is a big, miserable failure. It may be Huh, ok, maybe you warmed them back up. The fact that they opened it is really, really great. I think there's a lot of opportunity to not just say we're done and to actually try it again. I would even do it maybe in a shorter container of time, so like three weeks, four emails, five emails and turn up the volume a little more on friction. And did you call out in your messaging hey, we noticed you didn't give, or we missed you last year?
Speaker 2 15:07
Did you say that? I'm not sure Now I can't remember. That's OK. I mean, I'm totally Thank you for doing this. What made it into the final draft?
Christina 15:13
Yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you for going through this with me. I mean, I think it's so helpful to everyone. But I would call them out Like I, if I'm in this list. I want to know like hey, christina, we miss you. We noticed that you didn't give last year. Give me the benefit of the doubt Listen.
I may not even realize I didn't do. I may have thought I did Right, right, right. My husband and I were just talking about a concert I went to and I was like that's so funny. She hasn't been that long since this musician toured. And she he was like Christina, it's been seven years, seven years. And I was like, was it seven years? And she goes yeah, we're figuring out by my son's age. He was a baby when we went and saw her. I was like oh my God, ok, noted.
So, we want to come from. We're. It's an invitation. We want to give people lots and lots of grace and love, and we also want to have the specificity in that email that it should say in it this is a targeted group of people. Like the context, the way that you're writing. It is written in a way that it's like we missed you last year, we missed you Right, so that it's not if it landed in the inbox of somebody who donated last week, it wouldn't make sense. All right, I'm going to go through the Thank you. No, this is so helpful, erin. Also like this is the stuff we do in the club. I'm curious are you thinking about joining the club?
Speaker 2 16:34
I'm thinking about it. It's the, it's a budget challenge where we're not in a we're not in a positive budget year.
Christina 16:40
Yeah, that is the point of the club. We get you in a positive budget year fast. What is your role in for your organization Development and marketing? Oh my God, you're perfect for it. Are you kidding me? Let's do a couple of social fundraisers. Let's do a couple of big asks. It's very and one of the ways that I like to think about organizations who are in positions like yours is who can you tap into to basically help fund this support? Hey, I'd like, can you help, you know, fund me joining the club so that I can do this? We have a template for that. If you need to get permission, if you want to go to a particular donor and ask them to sponsor you, I think that's a great way to do it of like this is the skill development, this is the accountability, this is. Those are the years oftentimes when you need the support to turn up the volume on your funding. So I'll leave you with that and we can talk more about it.
Speaker 2 17:38
Thank you.
Christina 17:39
You got it, Erin. Okay, so let's see. Could you go deeper on what makes a good liban reengagement campaign message? Yeah, let's talk more about it, Carolyn. So let's unmute if you can.
Speaker 5 18:00
I'm really glad, erin, you jumped in and shared that, because that was heavy on my mind and without any like predisposition. I'm only six months into my position with a new organization. I've been in marketing and development for oh my gosh 20 years.
But, this is my first time working with a small local nonprofit rather than one that is a national with local impact, and we have a very messy database. It's the best way to describe it. It's kind of the patchwork results of lots of starts and stops, and just recently a big win for us was when I started we had less than 200 good notices or looks on Facebook and Instagram, and we're up to 1700 now.
Christina 19:12
Amazing. So, we've like turned the lights back on and got more of the outreach.
Speaker 5 19:18
Yes, people realize we exist still. Yeah, obviously, please send out the template because, yes, I'm very interested in your club. I just have to find funding because I've been told anything like that. I have to fund it. But the message is really challenging to come up with to our live months, because some of them came to us and someone else mentioned this in the chat Jamie did. Some of them came to us because we held a auction once. Some came because we, the organization, held a raffle ticket sale once. Some came because a board member invited them to give once. So does that make sense?
Christina 20:19
Yeah, it's almost like what brought them into your world is very varying and their motivation is different. No consistency.
Speaker 5 20:28
No consistency in messaging, no consistency in heart head connection and I'm like how do I, how do I start creating that message to live months besides, we miss you. And the story about Leonard who moved from being homeless for seven years to now being employed and buying his first car. I can tell that story but I'm not sure how to tie it all together, based on people who came to us through so many different avenues.
Christina 21:07
Well, let's talk about Leonard for a second and let's, we're gonna. I'm gonna use a bit of Donald Miller's work. He does story brand and he talks sometimes about this idea of negative stakes. So negative stakes is a great way to to put to explain to potential donors and lapsed donors of what happens when we don't have enough funding or we don't grow our funding. What are some of the negative stakes of not being able to help the future Leonard's of the world? Does that make sense? Like talk to me about that.
Speaker 5 21:40
Okay, so brilliant. I did not think of that, and that just got my brain where it needed to go, because we're local. Without us, other people like Leonard would still be living on the streets, would still be struggling to find food, housing, daily life needs. Without your funding, the next Leonard is not going to have a safe place to start rebuilding his life. Is that kind of the appeal you're saying to go for Exactly? You're amazing.
Christina 22:22
So what we did here is we just called out the pain point that your organization seeks to solve, and the other thing that you did really well is it sounds to me like in your community there aren't a bunch of other options.
Speaker 5 22:35
No, there's three of us that all do. I'm in Tucson, Arizona. We're the big little town of the Southwest I love.
Christina 22:46
Arizona. I love it.
Speaker 5 22:48
I love my state and I love my city. We're in the top 10 cities in the US not something to be proud of that has the highest poverty level for families. How?
Speaker 6 23:05
often do you say that.
Speaker 5 23:08
I have started saying it quite often in my narratives for grants it was not something, it was considered something to be like hidden.
Christina 23:18
You and I could have been on this call and you could have said to me, christina, name the top 10 cities, and we would be on here an hour before. I thought of Tucson to be in this list. Right, especially for the people who are elapsed, who are brought in by a friend, by this one-off event, by a right, we need to educate them. We need to not assume that they already know that this is a serious, wide problem in your community, right, I would say that often I almost think an email that's like we're not proud to be on this top 10 list, or like this is not the top 10 list we want to stay on, or some sort of hook like that would be really, really interesting and would speak to the education of, like, the problem we seek to solve.
Speaker 5 24:01
So can I take that one step deeper without hogging your time with everyone? You're not, thank you. Thank you everyone for your grace. If we started with that, did you know? This is the top 10 list. Like something like two sounds top 10, no, nothing to be proud of or some little thing that gets them to read further, to then be like lead into the. We miss you and you are the reason we can change the lives for the next Leonard typing. Is that how you see that? Okay?
Christina 24:42
It's donors like you who help us get off this list one level at a time. We are like chipping away. This is not the list we want to be on. We want to be on the top 10 list and now let's move it from kind of more pain point, negative stakes to aspirational. What top 10 list do you want to be on? Maybe the top 10,? You tell me what would be a great top 10 list to be on?
Speaker 5 25:03
Honestly, I think it'd be great. If you know we're we just on the opposite end. Tucson was recognized as the top gastro hub city in the US, so how cool would it be that we were also the top in the top 10 for fair employment, earning wages, working, working, and earning wages and unemployment.
Christina 25:31
So, yes, yes, painting that picture. And then it's like again, we can't do it without you. We simply can't get on that list. We can't even start to move the needle without ongoing, continued support. And the other piece on these, these laps, donor emails is we want to make sure that call to action for them to donate again, to step up again, is not at the bottom of the email. We want it there, but we also want it higher up in the email. We want it multiple times Because, again, I always use my lovely kids as an example.
If I only get to read a couple seconds of that email, I want to make sure I got it quickly and that you didn't bury the call to action at the very end. They walked in the room to distract me, make sense. Yeah, ok, cool, yeah, so, carolyn, think about that. I would also think about running this again. You've had enough time now between when you last ran it and you could absolutely run another lap donor series. I'd probably go for email, something like that and a short clip like three weeks. We want to add a little friction, make sense 100%.
26:45
Thank you. Okay, you should absolutely come in the club. You need to join. It would be so good. I hear you on.
We don't have a professional development budget. This isn't in the budget. What is it Chicken or the egg that keeps organizations stuck? That is the exact mentality is, if you can't invest in your people, it's very hard to grow. If you can't invest yeah, you're agreed. Yeah, if you can't invest and support, it's hard to do anything different with like a small up level year over year.
And that is exactly what I'd call one single donor and say listen, this is the cost of the program, this is how much I, these are the results I'll create with it. It is very hard for me to do this, like flying by the seat of my pants, hopping into a couple of free things here and there, yeah, yeah. And I would just say can you help support me and maybe go to two donors and say that, or two board members, or something like that? I would absolutely. We've had people join who have said that. We have people join who have said this was a hard ask for my board, but I said this is what I'm committed to doing. I'm committed to showing up for this. I'm committed to making it happen. And they said yes.
27:57
So it's that personal up level too. I think that helps get you the support and traction you need. Yeah, and I will make sure that I drop in that template too one more time. And we have a brochure. So if you're somebody who likes a template, like a written template, or if you're somebody like me who just wants like a quick PDF to send to somebody, you could do that too. It's on the template. You can grab that brochure. Ok, yeah, all right, going through the chat, anyone else want to just unmute and ask a question? I'm going to just breeze through the chat here and make sure there's nothing else that I missed.
Speaker 4 28:32
Thank you, Christina Hi.
Christina 28:34
Yes, how are you?
Speaker 4 28:35
I feel guilty jumping in because we had such a good coaching session yesterday.
Christina 28:39
You are welcome to jump in. I was happy to see you.
Speaker 4 28:41
Thanks. Something occurred to me just now with our live months. I was looking at what that list is. It's like 200 people OK Last year, but not this Just that small group and they are about to get a spring appeal letter. You know they got to be Sember appeal letter. They're going to get a March appeal letter because I would keep asking them the traditional way Is it OK to send them the drip series?
Christina 29:08
Yes, yes, doubling down, is it? No, we're just Like I love the way that you phrase this question that's not doubling down, that's not too much, is it? Those are all questions that for-profit businesses who make billions of dollars each year and literally never ask, if anything. They're like how do we double down more? They're going to their ad agency, they're going in their marketing team and they're like how do we get in front of Christina's eyeballs more? Do you know what it is Like?
Speaker 4 29:35
the exact opposite question. Well, that's my mo, you know that so that's everybody's know, everybody.
Christina 29:41
I mean like you have a human brain. We all do, especially in the sector. It's the opposite. We're thinking I don't want to bother people, I don't want to turn them off, yeah, yeah, what I'm hearing is Not the flavor of Christina. I'm going to send them an email a day until they give OK. That might be peppering them a little too much.
Speaker 4 30:02
Right, but if they're getting the line there, huh.
Christina 30:05
Yeah, if they're getting a direct male piece from you this spring, beautiful. And then they get put on a three to five email drip series, specifically using language that highlights to them who they are, which is an amazing generous person, who we missed last year, who didn't give last year. You know positioning it like that, right, I would probably say we miss you, or some flavor of that that is written for them. I think that's fine. Now I would go ahead and expect some people are going to fall off and unsubscribe, and that's normal. That's a list cleaning opportunity. That's great. And some people are going to go oh crap, I thought I did. Oh, wow, well, I didn't think my gift mattered that much. Some flavor of that. Or maybe just damn, they're doing a lot. I want to give again some flavor of motivation for them to take action, but we really have to get in front of them Often and quickly.
31:00
And this is this is also for, I think, erin, who said she already did her. I think she sent three emails in the year end. Let's also remember and this is, this is probably why I say five is let's also remember that people didn't open and read all three emails. Some people did. 30 percent of your list did that. You sent it to. But what about Christina? What about Julie, who read one of the three emails that you didn't? That's not enough, right. So five emails gives people more opportunity to like for you to land the plane of your mission, some negative stakes, some aspirational pieces, and really and really add in those calls to action, because most people in this laps, donor segment, are not going to sit there and read all of the emails you send.
Speaker 4 31:51
Well, that's so true. And you think about? You know how we manage our own inboxes? Same thing, yeah, I mean like, like the reminders that you gave us for today's coaching call. Yeah, I really appreciated that because it totally slipped my mind and when you sent this morning I was like, oh yeah, I should jump in.
Christina 32:09
One of our, one of my favorites, that comes to a lot of our calls. He's in Uganda and he is. He was one of the reasons why I send more reminders. Like can you please send me? He loves that we are live now reminders. And it's like I get it because the because the time zone change is banana and are we on standard time or not? And I'm like you know what same I get it Send people reminders. Oftentimes we're doing a just them a disservice by not. And I will also share personally. Like we just got an email that said it's time for spring photos for my kids school and my first thought was, huh, I didn't order the fall photos. So like, yeah, this is why we need reminders. We are a distracted society and so having a short period of time is a great, is a great service to give to your mission and to the people who actually at some point said yes, I want to give, yes, I want to support it, I want to support you, so like giving them another opportunity. I think it's really important.
Speaker 4 33:07
One last quick thing that seven years ago, the concert was seven years ago story. I mean, yeah, that happens to all of us and I'm sitting there thinking about my lapsed donors who are still subscribed in May, yeah, and I thought I need to grab that list again. I looked at it. I ran it January 2023. It has been sitting on my computer for more than a year and I haven't done anything with it and I could have sworn it was six weeks ago. Yes, yes.
Christina 33:36
Exactly, exactly. Time is a weird thing, and one of the other things for these lapsed donor pieces is If you can get specific and figure out who are my VIPs on there, who are the people that consistently gave multiple years at a mid to higher level, that are my VIP lapsed donors, and what do I want to do for them. It may likely be beyond that series, right. It may be picking up the phone and just saying here's what we're up to and I thought of you today, and it may be sending a personal video, a personalized short video. Hey, christina, thought of you today. Da, da, da da. So who are my VIPs? You can even think of your lapsed donors. You can even think of your lapsed donors that way of just, who are the people, even if they're not as high in capacity, but wow, they kind of I could count on them to get for the last five years and then they just kind of fell off. Let's see. Let's see if we can get them back because they were highly engaged for a longer period of time.
Speaker 4 34:33
That's a great idea.
Christina 34:34
Yeah, yeah, awesome. Yeah. Let's see, ginger. How can I help you? Karen is here as well. Any questions?
Speaker 3 34:48
I am here just to kind of listen and see what everyone else has going on. Like Jamie was saying, you know a lot of the people. We have a lot of one-timers who gave for an event and we also have a board that is not fundraisers. Okay, they're not very active. So any tips on how to get them more engaged?
Christina 35:23
Is there a part of your board that is open to fundraising, or they adverse to fundraising, or they just don't have a playbook.
Speaker 3 35:34
I think we have, like one, our board president, who has done fundraising in the past. Okay, who is up for it? But yeah, so we're an affordable housing nonprofit and we have a couple of our low-income residents on the board and then a couple others who are on like multiple boards, and I think you know kind of a spread fit, and my boss and I talk about this all the time. I mean, how do we get them engaged more? So I'm actually compiling a list for her to give to them, just to make personal phone calls to our donors from last year, just to kind of get that ball rolling.
Christina 36:31
How big is your board?
Speaker 3 36:34
We have 10. Oh, that's good. Okay, so we have, and we go up to 12.
Christina 36:40
So we probably have some budding fundraisers on there. That it just haven't kind of not put me in, coach, hasn't happened yet, right, they haven't been pushed in just yet, yeah.
Speaker 3 36:52
And a couple of them are pretty young. So you know there's hopes there.
Christina 36:57
And you say pretty young, what does that mean? 20s? Oh, okay, cool, yeah, all right, I have lots of thoughts. First, is isn't it funny how pretty young is subjective, by the way.
Speaker 3 37:13
Well, I'm 60, so I'm like we're all pretty young, yeah, yeah, okay.
Christina 37:20
So with boards, I like to think of it as not everybody on the board is going to be a rock star fundraiser, and that's okay. They will have different skill sets. I do think they all should be responsible for bringing in some revenue, but in different ways, if that makes sense. It's like not everybody is going to want to present on a stage, right? Some people are like I'd rather die. That sounds horrible, but they are great at other things that I don't want to do, right? So we want to lean in and find people's own preferences and then figure out how does that preference help them, inform them to some ways that they can help fundraise. So I care less about I need all 10 to do the exact same thing, and more about how do I activate all 10 to become fundraisers, and maybe like two or three different ways. So the thank you notes is a really great one because it's such passive, like it requires. If you're shy or feel icky about asking for money, great, go ahead and warm up. Everybody is going to do some handwritten notes, but it is, and it's also like getting them into action, which is this is what it's like to be on a board. Dear board member yeah, jamie says and get them to send thank you texts. That's the meet them where they are. So, for the people who are in their 20s or even 30s, most of them are probably online. Most of them probably have Instagram, linkedin, tiktok, whatever the things are. So meeting those people where they are on social media and letting them fundraise on social media, I think is really, really important. I have a template. I created that. This is in the club to where we create a peer fundraiser. Now you can use this for your board and you give them a digital toolkit, because one of the reasons why peer fundraisers don't work ambassador, influencer programs don't work is because you're relying on them to create the pitch, create the appeal, create the graphic, create the LinkedIn. Yeah, I don't want to do that either, but when you have cut and paste prewritten copy, it's so easy for board members, for influencers and ambassadors to run with it. We give them a digital toolkit to run with. So we definitely want to do that for our 20s and 30 something board members, although I want to give you the caveat that many of my clients do this for their entire board, who are all the way up to retired age, and they rock it. The difference is for somebody who may be in their 60s or 70s, although I hate making generalizations like, oh, they're not on social media, because many times they are on Facebook especially. But let's just go ahead and say we have board members who are not on social media, totally fine.
40:04
Some of the best fundraisers, using this digital toolkit, which is a social street team that's what I call it they send emails. They just email good old fashioned email their friends, family, old coworkers and I love it because they will sometimes do it as a mini mass email. So they would just put four or five, 10 people in an email that all have a common thing in common. Maybe they all used to play tennis together, maybe they all were former coworkers or colleagues together. So yeah, or they will do individual. Well, they'll just bust through their contact list and send 10 emails to 10 of their closest friends, family, wherever. It works so well.
And then the other thing is you said you're your board member. It's like you kind of have one who I think is a little more engaged right For fundraising. This is that like we just need one and we just need the endorsement to get a little traction. So one of my clients did this last fall and then all it took. So we had, like, they had the board member email in the toolkit and you know, the ED said here's the plan, here's what it is. And then you know the reminder now is the time again.
41:18
Here we go, and it just took one board member hitting reply, going hey, you guys, I just did this, I already doubled our, my own goal. It was so easy, I just sent emails out, and for that one board member to say I did it, it wasn't painful and I already hit my goal, was like and guess what happens in me and it probably will happen in a lot of people? If I was on that email I'll be like well, I want to double my goal. My like competitive piece starts to come out and suddenly my motivation is way higher than it was. You know, right, exactly. So that is another piece we can do to get some traction with board members. But we've got to make it easy and we've got to meet them where they are.
So when you hear the objection oh Ginger, I 'm not on social media, you go no, no problem, not a problem, jim, here's how we're doing it. Do you have an email? Do you have a phone? Do you want to text the people Like do you have a community group you go to? Like we literally can use this for anything If this person is a member. Let's say they go to an art class, like I do they go to? They go to their ceramics class, hey would you talk?
42:27
about it and your art class Like they. We meet them where they are. I don't want your board member to go to start a TikTok, because that's what you know what I mean, Like that's so like, I don't want to do that either.
You know, we just want to meet them where they are. And then this becomes a scalable piece where we start to actually bring in social street teamers who do have vocal platforms, for example, on Instagram or on TikTok or wherever the people are. Youtube's another great one who are naturally like I love being on this platform. Let me actually use it for good. We see that with Gen Z all the time. It's so good, they want to use their platform for good.
43:06
One of my other clients is doing this right now. Her first street team had over 10 people on it. She hit 50K very, very fast. Yeah, so we just have to find that alignment and then it becomes like this very scalable process. Okay, Jamie says that peer pressure is great. I plant a couple of board members to reply all yes, and so, honestly, this is the same piece If you've ever planned a campaign and you secure a donor match ahead of time and then you say you know, in the middle of the campaign you announce the donor match, you're just seeding your own success with that. It's sort of that same philosophy of like hey Julie, could you respond to this email and let everybody know that not only was it not painful, it was fun, it was fulfilling, it was easy. So, Ginger, what comes up to all that? Like? What do you? What do you feel like? Because your initial question was just like how do I engage my board members?
Speaker 3 44:00
Yes, I mean, the next step will be creating that toolkit.
Christina 44:05
Well, come in the club, Come get the template, come get the support.
Speaker 3 44:10
Well, like some others on here, we're very small, small but mighty team. Yep, yep, and I don't like to spend money that I don't have to. Do you know what I mean? Like I do a lot of these free webinars and things to you know stay up to date. But you said you would put in that the template of how to ask, so I will be giving that a look.
Christina 44:43
Okay. So I just want to highlight I don't like to spend money where I don't have to is a great philosophy to keep your revenue exactly the same. I'm a perfect example of this. So when I owned my marketing agency, I had a business partner who also subscribed to that very same philosophy and we were really good at year over year rinse and repeat same old, same old. And when I ultimately closed that agency and launched a, so my solo shop and I could make my own decisions very quickly on where I wanted to invest my brain, my skillset, my support, my accountability.
Those leaps, by the way, are never easy. It's never easy to be like here's $10,000, right, here's $5,000. They are leaps. They do feel expansive and I always get I always five X, if not 10 X my own investments that's kind of how I look into it is how do I 10 X this, how do I 10 X this and it all? I always do because you are where you are.
45:43
I like to think of money as a lagging indicator. Right, revenue is a lab lagging indicator of everything you've been doing in the past six months, the past 12 months. So if you want your revenue to increase many, many times, it does require an investment upfront before we have proof, right, yeah, of what's to come. Right, it's really, really part of the deal. And again, I'm going to go back to the for profits. They know this, they know this.
You know, on Tuesday's workshop I had mentioned a bit about Charity Water, which I blew my mind just looking at the numbers $100 million organization, but I loved seeing in their 990, they're spending almost $200,000 a year on coaching their consultants who tons, way higher on consultants, their marketing support huge. And I know they have in house and out and outside support with agencies. And it's like they have thrown out the old rulebook of I don't like to spend a lot of money and said how do I invest in our people, how do I invest in our capacity building, how do I invest in support and accountability so that we can get here at $100 million? And then somebody said in the chat on that they were like, yeah, and they haven't even hit their goal yet.
Speaker 2 46:53
Yeah, they're not even done at $100 million, they're like no, that's not it, we're not done Right.
Christina 46:57
So it's like it does require a different philosophy, a different way of thinking to invest in yourself, in your organization, upfront. But in my opinion and so many of my other clients, that's how we get from A to Z, like that's the next layer of those, those revenue leaps and also the visibility. To me, the two go hand in hand, as how do we get our organization more visible? Some more people know about us, some more people want to participate in our social street team, in our volunteer, in our you know, young advisory board. How do we do all that? Well, the two go hand in hand, yeah.
Speaker 3 47:31
Thank you.
Christina 47:32
Yeah, you got it. Ginger, you got it. I know that was just a little loving push right, all right. Carolyn says this is our CEO's philosophy and why she hired a development director to increase funding without changing the way we fundraise. Say more, yeah. Say more Carolyn.
Speaker 5 47:54
I was actually just commiserating with Ginger because, again, coming from the world of the nonprofit, that is the more established national nonprofit that understands you get what you put into your people. Coming to a local nonprofit, that's like but this works. But then you look at the numbers and you're like, but wait, there's more. Because the numbers are telling me a story that we put X effort in and we're getting a reduced return on our investment year after year because we're not increasing our effort. So the yeah, that was it. It was just your. The whole idea of a coaching opportunity to invest in ourselves is huge. It's, for the first time in my life, something I've had. I'm now going to have to convince people that this is worth the investment. And it has nothing to do with me, it has to do with the organization.
Christina 49:11
I'm thinking of another organization I work with and just the cost for them to do business, for them to their programs, to execute the programs the exact same year over year now costs so much more because of shipping, transportation, supply chain, things like that. So it's like we got to hit the gas.
We got to hit the gas on our revenue just to serve the exact same number of people, which, by the way, is in our goal. Our goal is actually to serve way more people. So, if we're going to make that leap, how do we do it? How do we make that leap? And it cannot be tactically exactly what we did last year. It cannot be thinking the exact same way I thought last year, because that's going to get me, as we know, at least the same results, if not like a little bit of a dip. So it does, it does cost, it does take, mean taking the leap in the investment, but it's like you're investing in. I would say this to your, to your you know CEO or your board you're investing in us right now. You're paying us right, so you're already investing in us.
50:11
I want to be more time efficient, I want to be more focused, I want to have a bigger, a bigger impact, and this is the support I need to do it, and what we'll do inside the club is not like endless video trainings and things like that. It's this, it's live coaching to go. What do I focus on this week? Because what I don't want you to focus on is, you know, shopping out your CRM for the 10th time. I don't want you to focus on hours and hours and hours to write one single email. It is about decisive action. It is about courageous action to get us forward faster. Yeah.
Okay, I see some yeses. Erin says yeah, it's similar to the I must have. Low overhead equals scarcity of mentality and working in fear all the time. I went on a whole rant. I think it's for a. It'll be an upcoming podcast interview. I'll share it with you.
51:05
But low overhead is not something that should be a badge of honor for your organization. Low overhead is something where an organization said good news, we have we have low overhead, which means we pay our staff barely a living wage. Good news, the food pantry that we have our own staff sometimes needs to use it. Right Like that is not a badge of honor, but it does take the leap of educating our donors that paying people well, investing in professional development which again my husband last year said I have a $2,000 budget for professional development, it's user to lose it. Where do I go? What should I do? And it was so expansive and capacity building for him to go. What would make the most sense? What's the best use of this that will help my output for the company I work for? Why aren't we doing that in the nonprofit sector? We have to educate our donors that not only that skill building helps increase their bottom line, but it also helps decrease churn, and the cost of churn is way, way higher than any savings that we would we would get off of, like a lower wage employee or something like that. So I'm all about paying people well and having that translate to higher funding, higher impact. So, yeah, let's see what Jamie said.
52:21
Okay, jamie says I've been asking my board members to find $5,000 and $10,000 donors and it's not doing great. So my new approach is simpler. I asked one of them to ask 20 people to give a $50 gift. Yeah, so that's really interesting because it's like everybody got locked up, probably in their head, about like I don't know who could give 10K, right, it just made them go freeze. But, yeah, do I know 20 people who could give $50? Yes, and then, jamie, like you already have this skill set, so then it's, I'll start to get to know them. I can start to cultivate them that way. Yeah, that's so good. And that speaks to like when people this is kind of the board piece of like I can't, I can't seem to get them into action Well, what would be the first step that I could get them to take today?
Because a $5,000 donor, a $5,000 donor intro, seems to be too hard for them. It's too looming. So what step could I ask them to take today? Hmm, could you text three people you know? You know who could give $50? Oh, I love that. That's so good. All right, I see Elaine joined. Elaine, if you want to unmute and ask any questions. We've been talking about last donors. We've been talking about board member engagement, we've been talking about influencer marketing, everything. But you're welcome to unmute and ask a question.
Speaker 6 53:44
It's actually been good to listen to what people are sharing. Totally, as a new ED every year and a half, you know I never had an issue asking for money in previous positions, but this whole thing being ED and fundraising is very interesting. It's challenging, you know, especially writing grants, and you know I thought everybody said yes and I found that they don't when it comes to grants. So, you know, I just feel like it's got to be a better way for donors to create that space where we could be at the table with them, because one of the challenges I find is like there's a middle person Right. It's like how do we get? One of the things I've asked our foundation local foundation is how do we, how do we get to have lunch with the funders versus someone else sharing my passion with a funder, right? Because me sharing my passion versus someone else sharing my passion are very different and so it's tricky.
Christina 54:46
It's like a game of telephone, yeah.
Speaker 2 54:48
I don't want it.
Christina 54:49
You're like I get me in the room, get me in the room and I can do this. So what? What was the answer to that question when you asked it?
Speaker 6 54:57
A lot of funders want to remain anonymous. Is it true? I don't know, I'm still learning. I have no idea. It's like I said, it's so it's hard to navigate.
Christina 55:12
So tell me about your organization, give me some more context.
Speaker 6 55:15
We're a housing advocacy organization. Yeah, we educate and advocate for affordable housing throughout Santa Cruz County.
Christina 55:23
Okay. Yeah, how old is your organization.
Speaker 6 55:27
Three.
Christina 55:28
Okay.
Speaker 6 55:29
Yeah.
Christina 55:30
What's your donor pool? Look like now.
Speaker 6 55:34
A largest funder is Lucille Packard. Yeah, but a lot of local community board organizations we do. We see some grand funding from our foundation, community foundation, and you know which is which is building. Like my, my time, a lot of my time is spent finding out. Where do you get grants right?
Christina 55:57
Oh, okay, I'm so glad you said this.
Speaker 6 55:59
That's so key to me. No, stop it.
Christina 56:00
Stop. No, no, no, no more. I would not spend a lot of time figuring out where do you get grants? I don't think that is a good use of your time. Okay, so from where you presented, it sounds like you're saying put me in, coach. Let me talk to a funder. Yes.
Speaker 6 56:13
You can talk to somebody.
Christina 56:15
So then that says to me let me go have some major gifts conversations, let me start to cultivate some individual giving, versus trying to Google grants and then apply for the grants and then wait and then may or may not be awarded the grants and then we got a report back to the grants. I love grants, that's fine, but I love it over here Once we've got a nice base level of revenue.
Speaker 6 56:39
That makes sense.
Christina 56:40
I also love sort of what Erin's saying, which is I love grants to be a fractioned off to a consultant who is an expert and already knows your sector or what she just said was a board member. Like who can we get but for you? I wrote an email a few days ago about like you need a bigger shovel. We need a bigger shovel. We need more revenue. So I want you to go one to one, face to face and cultivate some major donors or mid level donors and grants are taking too much time.
Speaker 6 57:11
Yes.
Christina 57:12
Because I'm an individual donor is booking a meeting, having the meeting right, starting that cultivation process. I like that cultivation process to go fast. I don't like it to go years, you know six months to a year. I don't like that and making an ask and hearing no. I want you to hear lots of no's so you can hear lots of yeses.
Speaker 6 57:34
Oh, okay.
Christina 57:34
Really rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat that process. Okay, how?
Speaker 6 57:40
does that resonate? Love it. So I'm glad you said this helps, because we're going to be running a housing bond for November ballot and I shared with my new coach vice board chair. I says I need a grant writer, yep, and the board fund, right. Can y'all do that over there? Do that, yeah, fundraise for that person so that I could freeze me up.
Christina 58:04
So I'm glad I'm on the right because that's like having your CEO be the grant writer. I want your CEO to be the grant writer. You know what I mean and it's like I don't want your CEO to be. You know reconciling the books. Get the bookkeeper to do that. That's like a low or one of my.
Speaker 6 58:26
That's my I like that too.
Christina 58:29
I love him. But he's like Christina, I'm like booking flights to get like he was doing admin. I'm like can we please get you a virtual assistant? That's like $25, $30 an hour. You should be doing hundreds of dollars of an hour of being your activities. Should ROI you Do not do $25 an hour work. I love my, I love hiring contractors, I love hiring assistants. Right, it's a great use of my time, it's a great use of their time, and so it's like how do we free up your time? So I don't think grant writing is it. I love grant writing. I think it's an excellent revenue source. I just think it's not a great revenue source for you to focus on. Okay, thank you. Just like bookkeeping, I mean I can reconcile my books, I guess, and that's what David and Heather do for me. It's a great use of their time.
Speaker 6 59:27
Yes, yes.
Christina 59:27
Yeah, I don't know and it's like you know figuring out how do I create a new category and send. I'll just dump something, say ask my accountant, y'all figure it out.
And they know, take some two seconds I have to go watch a tutorial on how to create a new category in QuickBooks when they can just do it in two clicks? Let them. That's their zone of genius. Let's let them do that. It sounds like you know how to connect with people very well. Your zone of genius is going to be connecting with people, so, like, let's get you in the room.
59:55
Connecting with people, we are running in the club we're running outreach genius, which is my prospecting and outreach program. We do it like a sprint where we figure out who's in our network, who's outside of our network. Let's book some meetings with them and I, like I said, I want you to get in the zone of booking meetings. Making the ask hearing knows having a soft place to land when you hear no, so it's not catastrophic. Hearing hearing yeses, and then we go, and then we go, and then we go, and that's how we build out that funding fast to help pay for the assistant. The grant rating yes, yeah.
Speaker 6 01:00:37
So do you cheat sheet of something for what you just said? Because that's it. That's like the plan right there. That's the plan, that's the plan.
Christina 01:00:47
Is there a cheat sheet for what I said I?
Speaker 6 01:00:49
got a lot of my questions answered. Like I just even made a note, you know, because like every month, I'm scrambling with the numbers and just what you said I said to the accountant. I said, aaron, I spent all weekend with this, can you do some of this? And he sent it back in five minutes.
I was not happy. I was like how did you do that? He said, elaine, this is what I do, and so I wanted a question. I'm going to ask him is you know going forward? Why don't you just present, just give me the numbers so I can present them at the board meeting. Why am I struggling?
Christina 01:01:14
with. Yes, I use Asana, which is a project management system, in my own business. Listen, I'm like a C plus in Asana, maybe a C minus, okay. And just last night my assistant said you know, if you just make me an admin on that board, all and I'm like done, you're an admin. Now make it better. She's like you'll be able to find things better. I don't want to watch a training on how to. She already that's her zone of genius. It's a beautiful thing. She works asynchronously. I'm happy to pay her. She's happy to get paid. It's great.
And so we can find some of those places in your own business, in your own organization, so that you can free up some time to go over here and like I said take big chunks out of those revenue goals, you know, and the other pieces meeting more donors, who you probably have some right now who are in your, in your, in your organization, supporting your organization, but we need to find more like them, right? So it's like that ripple effect. Yes, yeah, you can't do that when we're figuring out how to make a category in QuickBooks and how to figure out how to drag and drop my Asana board. I don't know.
Speaker 6 01:02:22
Agreed. Thank you so much.
Christina 01:02:25
I just dropped in the link to the club, I dropped in the link to the brochure, and then you can for everyone, and then you can make a copy of the template. We closed doors on Thursday. There is a payment plan, so you can do it that way too, but I highly recommend. Everyone that was on this call is ready. Everyone on this call is ready for the support. We're going to have focus time, we're going to have a skill building, we're going to have live coaching. Just like today, we'll have a Facebook group. So if you ever want to drop in a page and you're like, hey, take a look at this email, I'm writing, take a look at this board email. I just drift draft.
Can you look at our fundraising page and give me feedback that all of that is what is the high touch support you'll get the club.
Speaker 6 01:03:07
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 01:03:08
I need to jump on another ball, you're right, I heard you a few weeks ago.
Speaker 6 01:03:12
You're hyped up. You're ready. Yeah, you got, you hyped me up two weeks ago. Okay, thank you so much.
Christina 01:03:18
I'm going to follow up with you.
Speaker 6 01:03:20
Okay, cool, take care. Bye everybody, have a great weekend.
Christina 01:03:23
Anyone else have any questions before we're at top of the hour. Thank you all so much for coming. This was great and, like I said, I'm going to stick this on the podcast. So, if you, we got through a lot today. So if you want to grab any takeaways or like listen to a part of it, you can catch the replay on the podcast. Yeah, you're welcome. Y'all send me an email if you have questions about the club and yes, I will see many of you inside Bye, like what you're hearing and want to take this to the next level. I want to invite you to go to purpose and profit dot club to watch my free class in there. I will tell you the number one thing, that's keeping your nonprofit or social impact business stuck, and what to do instead. Go to purpose and profit dot club.