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Hey you, it's Rhea Wong. If you're listening to Nonprofit Load on, I'm pretty sure that you'd love my weekly newsletter. Every Tuesday morning you get updates on the newest podcast episodes and then interspersed, we have fun special invitations for newsletter subscribers only and fundraising inspo because I know what it feels like to be in the trenches alone. On top of that, you get cute dog photos. Best of all, it is free. So what are you waiting for? Head over to riawong.com now to sign up Foreign welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I'm your host, Rhea Wong.

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Thank you all for joining us. My name is Michaela Weisberg. I'm the director of operations at Nonprofit Connect. We are a nonprofit based in Mercer County, New Jersey and we're focused on building executive and board leaders. We do this through several programs including Board Connect, which is a program where we train individuals how to serve on nonprofit board and match them with local nonprofits and, and then we have board and executive director peer circles where nonprofit leaders meet and share resources, knowledge and can ask for advice. Our Leading from within program is an immersive nine month program where emerging leaders meet to to share information and hear from experts in the field. And then we have Leadership Connect, which is what we are all here for today. And we provide information to nonprofit leaders to stay ahead of emerging challenges. Thanks for joining us for today's session. Fundraising in Uncertain Times. Strategies for Stability and Growth with our speaker, Rhea Wong. Rhea helps nonprofits raise money with a focus on building strong individual giving programs. She has raised millions in private philanthropy and is passionate about developing the next generation of fundraising leaders. A recognized voice in the New York nonprofit sector, she has been honored with the Smart CEO Bravo Award in 2015 and the New York Nonprofit Media's 40 Under 40 in 2017. RIA is the host of the nonprofit Lowdown podcast and author of get that Money, Honey, I'm going to hand it over to you, Rhea.

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All right, thank you so much, Michaela. Okay, so in this session you'll learn how to spot the five leaks in your pipeline and five power moves that you can do right now to keep money flowing when the economy is down. Why you're here I'm going to assume you're here because you are interested in talking about tenacity in tough times. I think we always use a phrase unprecedented, but I do think we are living through some unprecedented times. Look, I think in the sector there's been a lot of anxiety about federal and state funding dwindling and I think if anything it's been a wake up call to a lot of us that we cannot rely on one source of revenue, that diversification is the thing that's going to keep you afloat. And I'll just give you one example. I have a client who, oh, bless their hearts. They're an international nonprofit and their budget got hacked by half. So they were 23 million, they're now 14 million because of cuts to international overseas humanitarian funding. So that's a little stressful. Okay, allow myself to introduce myself. As Austin Power says, I was an executive director here in New York City for 12 and a half years. I was a 26 year old Ed and like a lot of you, I was an accidental fundraiser. So actually, in retrospect, it seems a little nuts that someone allowed me to be an ED at 26. Aside from that, my first two Google searches on the job was what does an executive director do? And how do you fundraise? So, so clearly I was highly qualified for the job. Over the course of 12 years, I built up a portfolio of raising 3 million annually in private funds. So we never took federal or state funds. And so I know for some of you that's quite a small number. But when we step back and look at it, 70% of that portfolio were individuals. And then when I did a closer look, actually about 10% of the individuals were responsible for 90% of the funding. For that reason, I've become very bullish on teaching people how to do major gift fundraising. Because when we look at the overall pie, we know that especially with growing wealth disparities, a small number of wealthy donors are responsible for the bulk of philanthropic giving year to year. What I want to dispel for us a little bit is this myth that people stop donating during recessions and tough economic times. And I think what we need to do is to separate our anxiety about it with the reality of what actually happens. And it's not easy because I often think that the economy can run on vibes like we're the vibeconomy. But I think realistically, when we look at blips in the radar, we can see that philanthropic giving actually does not significantly diminish. So I've identified three key areas. So 2001, 2002, post 911 we saw a little bit of a dip, but then we saw a recovery. Then in 2008, the Great Recession, we saw a bit of a dip, but we saw recovery. And then 2020 in the pandemic, we actually saw increased giving. I say that all to say that I don't think that the moment that we're in now is so very different than crises or moments in the past where we felt a lot of anxiety. I hope that gives you some measure of comfort that we've been here before and actually it's been worse before. So let me pull some statistics for you. So after 9 11, $1.9 billion poured into the funds in just four months, the bulk of which were from large gifts and corporate matches. In 2009, post recession, 98.2% of high net worth households kept giving. The average gift size dropped, but participation did not. And by the way, from 2005 to 2025, the last 20 years we have increased the number of billionaire households by 820%. Where we see this coming up is a proliferation of donor advised funds. So I pulled this from Fidelity charitable. It rose 25% year over year to $9.1 billion. So I say that all to say that I think there's this perception like oh, the money is not out there and people are facing tough economic times and d and that while that largely might be true, there is a sector of our population for whom that is not true and the money is out there. The question is how are we in the rooms and sending out the messages that allow us to unlock that generosity? Okay, I'm going to talk about the brain for a second. I think when we are in a state of anxiety, when we're in a state of fear, we keep ourselves from experiencing the flow of energy. And if you'll allow me to get a little bit woo woo for a second, our brains. Actually this is not woo woo, it's neuroscience. Our brains are only ever in one of two modes, either survival mode or executive mode. And survival mode is when our amygdala is on high alert. Right? Our amygdala is the part of our brain that is responsible for fight, flight or freeze. It's very helpful when we are in a life threatening situation. It was helpful when we were cave people and saber toothed tigers were running after us. Right? When we are in executive mode, that is when we experience what we call flow state. Has anyone ever been in flow state? Do you know what the flow state is? It's like when you're engrossed in something like, I don't know, writing or painting or whatever else you might do and time just flies by and you look up, you're like, oh, I can't believe three hours has passed. So executive state is where we are able to experience creativity. It's where we're Experiencing generosity, it's where we're experiencing, seeing the possibilities. So when we are in our survival state, we see things very black or white, right? Because if a saber toothed tiger is coming after you, you're not like sitting and thinking about all of the different possibilities of the world. You're like, okay, I gotta run, I gotta run or I gotta fight or I gotta climb this tree or I gotta do something. And so I offer this up because I think as fundraisers, if we can get ourselves into the executive flow, we can be the guides that our donors need us to be to help them to see the possibilities. Part of it is our own self management. When we're freaked out, when we're in anxiety, when we're panting, we are keeping ourselves from being an executive state. What I want to share with you is recasting the role of fundraiser. We are not trying to extract resources from people. We're not trying to force anyone to do anything they don't want to do. We're not the mafia, right? What we are are philanthropic advisors. We are the Yodas to our donors. Luke Skywalker story. We are simply creating a pathway to help them do the thing that they want to achieve in the world, right? If I'm someone who donates, it's because I want something, it's because I want to see impact, it's because I want to do good, it's because I want to belong, it's because I want to tell myself a story about who I am. And so I think the role of a fundraiser is, it is a noble calling because we are helping people to achieve what they want to see in the world. And not everyone wants to be in our story, right? Not everyone is going to want to be on the path that we see for them. And that's okay because when we're living in abundance, when we're living in executive state, we know that there's more than enough out there. By the way, just fun fact, how much time do you think people on average spend in survival state? Just in like everyday life and actually I think in the last couple of months that number's probably skyrocketed. How much time do you think people spend survival state? People spend about 70% of their life in, in survival state, which is why when you meet people, have you ever met anyone who just feels like they react very dramatically to a somewhat small thing? You're like, whoa, that seemed like a very outsized reaction. It's because they're in survival state, because something in their brain is telling them like, this is a matter of life and death. I, like, I'm going to freak out because my coffee was cold or whatever it is because we're constantly walking around with this fear in this state. I say this all to say that, like, first, the first step is becoming aware, and the second step is being aware that other people are, most of them are operating in this survival state. And so when we are able to ground in ourselves to be the guides that they need to achieve the impact that they want. I'm not saying it's going to be 100% successful all the time, because of course, nothing is 100% successful all the time. But I think it starts with, how can I calm myself to get into my executive state? Is this making sense to folks? Yeah. Okay, so this leads me into my next point, which is fundraising is just a math problem. We get so emotional about fundraising, we get so emotional about money, but it's just a math problem. The more people know us, the more I convert, the more money I make, the longer I can hold onto them, the more sustainable will you become. That's it. It's literally just a math problem. And so when you're operating in an executive state, you can just pull back the emotion, right? Pull back the sense of survival, pull back on all of the emotion that I attach to money, and just say, okay, look, if it's a math problem, there is an answer here, right? People before you and people after you have been fundraising. This is not rocket science, even though sometimes it feels impossible, but it's just a math problem. All right, I'm going to give you the formula. Are you ready? So this. These are the four levers that every nonprofit needs to think about, every business needs to think about. It's simple but not easy, right? So these are the four things that you should consider. Lead generation. Lead generation means literally how many eyeballs are on you, how many people know about you, how many people are in your universe. Second is conversion of all these people that are in our universe. How many of them are we converting to donors? Just because you know about us doesn't mean that you're going to be a donor to us. Then the third is upgrade. Once we have you in our universe and we've converted you into being a donor, how many of them can we continuously upgrade over time? Because obviously it takes. It's much less expensive to upgrade someone who's already donated to you versus a brand new person. And then finally, retention. How long are we holding onto our donors for? Because the longer we hold onto them, the more we are going to make as an average over time from each of them. Fun fact. I learned this and it blew my mind. Anyone want to guess how much the average lifetime customer spends at Starbucks? $15,000. So every single person who walks into a Starbucks, on average over the lifetime of their affiliation with Starbucks, spends about $15,000, which means that Starbucks can spend up to $15,000 to acquire a new customer because they know over the lifetime you're going to spend more than it costs to acquire you. If they're spending more than $15,000 per customer, that means they're losing money. So how this is relevant to you is when we think about donor acquisition, when we think about how are we bringing new people into the fold, we want to think about how we decrease the amount of donor acquisition and how we increase the average donor value or upgrade them so that we make the most of every single person who donates. So every time someone donates once and then they ghost you, that means that you're probably losing money on having acquired them. Unless it's a very large gift, in which case, like, why are you not steering them? That's another issue. But is this making sense so far? Do you see how the math works together? Okay, there are a couple of different things. Red, yellow, green. So first, lead generation, how many eyeballs are on you? Your list growth should be growing on a month to month basis. Why? Because the more people who know about you, the more people you can convert. Now, I'll get into the details of what list conversion means, but anyone do social media out here? Okay, if y' all are doing social media, here's the thing I want you to understand, and I didn't really understand this when I was an ed, but I understand it now. I thought of social media as an interruption in my day. I was like, y' all, what are we even doing? Like, why are we wasting time on the TikTok and the LinkedIn and the Facebook? I. I ain't got time for that. I do not have time for all that nonsense, right? I was like, I gave it to some little intern. I was like, go figure it out, right? Little millennial person, digital native person, go figure this out. Here is the problem. Here is the problem. What I did not realize, and maybe you realize this, which makes you smarter than I, is we post on social media in order to grab people onto our email list. If you hear nothing from today, I. Other than this, if you are on social media, the call to action should always be join our email list. Join our Email list Join our email list. Why? Because here's the deal. Mark Zuckerberg owns that audience. If Zuck decided to turn off your access tomorrow, or Reid Hoffman or whoever, like whatever platform you're on, you have lost access to your lead generation. The asset that you own is your email list and that is the conversion mechanism. Right? People raise money on their emails, not on social media. I don't care what anyone is trying to tell you about the Ice Bucket challenge. That is an outlier. That is not a strategy, that is a blip. So everything you do on social leads to your email. All roads lead to your email list because your email list is where you're going to nurture the relationship. If you like money, you should be emailing once a week. Why? Because the once a week cadence keeps you top of mind. If you can do nothing else, please attempt to email your list. At least I'm going to say a couple times a month. Once a week is my preferred. But I understand that there might be some capacity issues. But the thing is, when we send an email, it doesn't have to be like this long digest it. It can be like short bites. In fact, it's better if it's short bites because people scan, right? If I open up my email on my mobile phone, I'm just scanning, I'm not reading it. So I know a lot of you are out here like creating beautiful emails with all of the graphics and like multiple links and da da, da da da. Please don't do that. Keep it simple. Plain text, quick bites, scannable. And actually if you are sending beautiful graphic things, it is likely that it will get caught in spam. It's more likely that it'll get caught in spam. So actually plain text is better if you can target based on audience. If you have your list segmented, absolutely. I would send targeted emails based on segmentation. However, if you're just struggling to even get something out once a week, start there. If the best you can do right now is just sending a general newsletter once a week, start there. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. Okay. Should it include an ask button, low key? Yes. However, I want you to think about 80 20. So 80% of the content that you send people should just be value giving, right? It's think about rocks and pebbles. So pebbles are the things that you throw into a pond to agitate the water. Rocks are solicitations. Rocks are when I sell something. Right. And so if all of the email that you got from me was hardcore Selling, what would you do? You'd probably unsubscribe, right? I'd unsubscribed. I can't, I can't with this person. But if all I ever did was just send value emails without asking for this sale, you'd probably be psyched. You'd be like, great, she's just giving me free stuff. I'd be out of business because I haven't sold anything. So I want you to think about 80, 20. So low key, if you want to send in your emails, like just a low key ask link, that's. I'm fine with that. But every email you send should not be a solicitation. Does that make sense? Okay, gosh, I'm getting into like email marketing rabbit holes. Okay, let's talk about conversion. If you are converting less than 10% of your prospects, and by prospects, literally anybody in your universe, that is something to consider. If you're in the yellow 10 to 25%, you're doing okay. And if you're converting more than 25% of your prospect pool, you're doing well. Upgrades. If we are. If less than 15% of our donors are increasing their gift year to year, we need to look at your upgrade Strategy. If it's 15 to 30%, you're doing well, we could be doing better. But if more than 30% of your donors are upgrading year over year, you're doing great. And then finally, and this is my, this is the thing that really gets a bug up my butt is retention. As a sector, we are generally not very good at retaining. So if you're looking at this and you're retaining at less than 40%, this is a hole you need to fill right now, 40 to 60, you're doing pretty well. And listen, I talked to a group yesterday, they're retaining at 78%. I love it. So here's the other point I want to make. And again, no judgment here, but if you don't know the answer to these questions, this is an opportunity to find out because this is going to be the scorecard, right? Like, these are the metrics that you need to keep track of on a daily basis or weekly basis on some regular basis to know are we going to be in business? Is this making sense so far? Let's talk about the problems. So I know some of you are saying that lead generation was your issue. So let's talk about that. So here are some of the most common problems I see. And here's what to do about it. Okay? If you are having problems with Lead generation. If you are not adding to your list month over month, here are some of the common problems I see. Org first stories. What I mean by that is anything you're putting in email newsletter content is. Meet our new staff members. Look at the new program that we start, right? It's very organization centric versus thinking about it from a donor first value perspective. Join our newsletter right? Here's the thing. Anyone here need more emails in their inbox? Yeah, I don't think so. We don't need more emails. We need high value emails. So join our newsletter is not a great call to action. You're not reaching out enough. So it goes back to my point about reaching out at least once a week. Out of sight, out of mind, right? If you are just emailing me like once a quarter or once a month, I've forgotten about you. Like I've forgotten that you exist. Because we're living in a world where we're inundated with information, right? Pretty post zero cta. What I mean by that is your interns or whoever are putting in like really cute stories on Instagram. You're getting some engagement, but you're not moving them from the platform onto your email list. And so it's maybe I've built up this. I should talk to a group yesterday. They have a 26,000-person Instagram account and they have 2,000people on their email list. I was like, your first order of business is to move people from that platform onto your email list. So here's what to do instead. So if you have organization first stories, I want you to do an assessment here. You can even put it in ChatGPT. How do you flip the stories to donor impact? How do you flip the stories to tell the people? They're kind of like three stories. I want you to tell the story of you belong with us. The story of you made this happen and the story of why now when we are saying like join our newsletter list, we want to create on ramps to the list, right? So it's exactly what I'm talking about. The CTA on any social media, if any of you do any talks or show up in any public way, all roads lead to the email list. But here's the thing. Join our newsletter list is not enough. So if anyone. Has anyone ever gone to a website and signed up for something in exchange for an email, like a coupon code or like a 10% off or like a. A checklist or anything like that, I know y' all have. Don't pretend like you haven't. That's what we call a lead magnet. So you want to think about how do I exchange something for value for an email address? Like any freebie, if you land on my website. Actually I don't have any freebies right now. But if you land on my website, you could potentially exchange something for an email address, a quiz, a free checklist. I don't know, what do I have? I had a PDF about how to activate your board members. Right. So think about from your perspective from the, from your nonprofits work, what can you exchange to get people on your list? So I'll give you an example. Like maybe I've worked with food justice organizations. Maybe a good freebie would be. Here's a list of our five favorite spring recipes. That's an interesting thing that your audience might like. I had another organization that did education. Here are 10 tips to help make sure your kids are college ready. Hey, if I'm a parent and I'm I've got a college age kid, I'd want that. So if you're having problems thinking about what could be a value, this is where our friend chatgpt comes into play. It's a good brainstorm. And then again, strive for once a week emails three times a week on social. Why? Because, let's be honest, not enough people know what you're doing and they won't know what you're doing unless you tell them what you're doing. So here's the thing. I used to think that I could just create what I was going to create in a vacuum. Like I was going to shine up my perfect diamond and then like everyone would know about it and beat a path to my door. And I didn't really have to tell anybody about that. Suffice it to say, that was not a good strategy. You need to tell people about what you're doing. You need to tell them often and you need to tell them loudly. Is this making sense so far? Okay, one quick thing. So I follow a lot of fun like marketing gurus online and there's one in particular that I follow quite a lot. And his, what was it? His audience building manager. I forget what their name was. Anyway, the person who was responsible for increasing this person's visibility said on an interview, oh yeah, he posts 300 times a week. My brain exploded a little bit. I was like 300 times a week. So I'm here doing my social post like 3 times a week thinking that it's going to make a difference. It's a volume game. I'M not saying that you should post 300 times a week, but I'm saying that even when you think you're posting a lot, your audience doesn't. The market doesn't. 300 times a week, which means that's 1200 posts per month. Mind blow. Okay, let's talk about conversion. What conversion means is how many people in the universe who know about us actually convert to being donors. Here are the biggest problems I see your first ask is a thousand dollar cliff. So what I mean by that is a lot of times what I will see is that people will attract folks to their audience and they think, oh gosh, this is like the big ask. This is the only conversation I'm ever going to have. And so they ask really big because someone told them to ask really big, right? When you ask really big. And I'm not saying always right, there are times in which it's appropriate, but people aren't ready to make that big commitment and so they back away. Let's use dating as an example. Anybody here who's in a long term relationship or a marriage, you know that your first date was not let's get married. Your first date was like, hey, let's see if we like each other, right? Let's go on a coffee date. Hey, if that goes well, maybe we go on a dinner date. If that goes well, maybe we do a weekend. Like you build over time. And so sometimes what I see, not all the time, but sometimes what I see when people are having conversion problems is that they're not tailoring the right ask to the to the relationship. Sometimes very wealthy people. And I'm willing to bet this is true, a lot of wealthy people will give you a test gift just to see what you do with it. And so I'd be willing to bet that all of you are sitting on gold mines that you have no idea about. Because these are people who've given you small gifts, who could be giving you big gifts, but you have not engaged them right. You haven't stewarded them properly. And so they're like, okay, look, if I gave $100, I'm able to give $100,000. But you didn't treat me right at $100. So what are the chances you're going to treat me right at $100,000? Conversion problems. You also have a clunky donation form. So how many of y' all have looked at your donation form recently? Most people donate on their mobile. Have you looked at it on your mobile? Your mobile experience? Okay, you need to think about it both from the website and the mobile experience. Because we have very little patience these days for bad user experiences. So is it easy to use? Is it clunky? Do you have 15 minute million click throughs? Like I was working with an organization where it's donate okay, click okay, donate again, click okay. Then I got to the donation page and then I had to fill a bunch of stuff and then I had to click again. It was just like, okay, this is too much, like the friction is too great here. So look at your donation page. And then silence after opt in. Here's what I mean by that. I give a gift. Maybe I get the gift acknowledgement, then I hear nothing and then all of a sudden I'm on your email list. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, what happened? So here's how to solve this. If you are asking people and the first ask is $1,000, Cliff, I want you to think about lower barriers to entry. Maybe it's a monthly giving, maybe it's a micro volunteer event. Maybe it's coming to an event low key, right? Maybe it's a $100 gift. Which is it? An on ramp to a bigger gift. I want you to look at your mobile and make sure it's a four field form. If it's longer than four fields, I'm probably not going to put in my info. And then when I join your list or when I make a donation, I want you to automate this important word. Automate A three email welcome Sprint. What does that mean? Anyone ever been to a cocktail party and you're like, I don't really know anybody here? I have. Okay, so you walk in the cocktail party, you're like, I don't really know anybody here. Now I have two choices. I know I have three. I have many choice, but I kind of have three choices. One, I leave because I'm like, I don't know anybody. Two, I do the uncomfortable thing and I go introduce myself, but that puts the burden on me. Or three, I really hope that someone comes up to me and hey, welcome, let me introduce you around. What's the thing that's going to make me feel the best? 1, 2 or 3? 3. So what you're doing with the 3 email welcome sprint is you are extending a warm hand. Hey, thank you so much for donating. We were really glad to have you. Here's what we do. Let me show you. Here's how often we're going to communicate with you. Here are the kind of emails that you can expect to get we'll also probably send you some invitations to in person events, right? 1, 2, 3. First email is welcome. Second email might be something like, hey, let's share a story with you about the work that we do. Third email might be, we want to invite you to a thing, or hey, this upcoming thing is happening, or hey, let me send you this resource, right? So statistically, if I can't remember the date off the top of my head, but like 80% of first time donors never donate again. So if you get someone giving a second time, the likelihood that they will donate over time is much higher. Like, how many of y' all have ever donated ones and just been like, all right, I'm done. That was just a one time thing. When we give one time and we don't give again, it's because I didn't feel welcomed. And it's just, it's a little thing. But if I can intercept you after that first gift, the feeling I will walk away with is, oh, they appreciate me. I feel welcomed. I'm gonna give again. I. I'm much more likely to give again. Does that make sense? Because in the mind of a human, it's about recency. I'm not going to remember three months from now exactly what you did. But Maya Angelou said, people will forget what you did, they'll forget what you said, but they will never forget the way you made them feel. And so what we want to do is get in there in the open phase of, oh, you're new, you're fresh, you're impressionable. Let me create a good first impression, which then creates that feeling of, oh, they made. That was really nice. They made me feel welcome. When we think about gifts, and this is in every hero's journey, whether it's Star wars or Game of Thrones or Hunger Games or Harry Potter, we see this time and time again where we have a protagonist who is the hero. They have some kind of idea that they might be special, right? Someone tells them they might be special, they then go on an adventure, they get a victory, and then they return to their normal lives as a changed person. In this journey, though, there is always a mentor. Whether it's a Yoda, whether it's Dumbledore, whether it's a Haymitch. If you're a Hunger Games fan, why is this relevant? This is relevant because we are the Yodas. We are the Hagrids or the Dumbledores. We are the Haymages. We are here to help our donors achieve the victory that they seek. And we are the Guides to give them the path forward. When you position yourself as a guide and the mentor, you have people join because everyone thinks of themselves as the hero of their own stories, right? What's the victory I want? The victory I want is I want clean oceans, or I want kids to go to college, or I want to feel like I made some big impact in the world. So if you are the guide who helps me to achieve the victory that I seek in my story, then I trust you. Then I am loyal to you because you give me the thing that I want. The mistake that we often make as fundraisers is that we talk about ourselves and the work of our organization as the heroes. Right? We did this, we did this. We accomplished this. If I'm looking to insert myself into a story, what do I say? If you're telling me how great you are, the only thing I can say is, good job. Keep going. Instead, how do you allow me to be the hero? Hey. With this ask, you can fund a semester. You can clean the oceans, you can feed hungry people. It helps me to step into the story that I want to be a part of, to allow me to tell myself the story I want to tell myself about who I am and the legacy that I have. All right, so your upgrades happen when you create an opportunity for your hero to get the victory that they desire in the world. And you are simply the guide. You are simply the Yoda creating the path for them to do. Okay, finally, retention. How do we hold on to all these people that we have tried so very hard to get into our world? Here's why I see retention stalling. Thanks equals mail merge. Robot impact equals dry annual report. And then your next ask is 12 months later. I'm going to get into this. So how many of y' all send a pretty robotic automated thank you note after donation? Yeah, okay, I do. I did. How many of you consider that automated note a touch point? Okay, here's the thing. A tax donation autumn acknowledgement letter is not a touch point. Hear this. It is not a touch point. Seven different touch points before you're allowed to ask someone for money again. And it can be automated. I'm not saying this has to be like, custom every time, but seven touch points. And in the seven touch points, I want you to answer three questions for me. One, what did you do with my money? This is my hard earned money. I want to know what did you do with it? Two, would I be better off giving to someone else? Like, why you and not someone else? And three, how did you make Me feel good or bad. I want you to think about those three questions for every single touch point. Because whether donors know it or not, those are the three questions they're asking themselves. Okay? Impact dry annual report. How many of y' all spend a lot of time creating beautiful annual reports with multiple graphics and all of the donor lists and all the things I did, I realized that again, no shame, but I'm going to just tell you right now, the amount of time that I put into these donor reports was not commensurate with the amount of impact it had. Nobody read my donor reports, my annual report, I put so much time and energy into it. I worked with the layout, graphics and da da, da, da. Nobody read. Nobody read them. So what I want to emphasize to you is how do you said take those big beautiful reports and make it snack size. We're all out here scrolling like no one is sitting and reading your 20 page annual report. Sorry. Not sorry, like I'm just here to keep it real. Instead, how do you put it in an email with one graphic and tell me what that graphic means and then with retention, you don't talk to me until 12 months later when you ask for a gift again. So here's what to do instead. Your thanks could be personalized, right? I want you to do a personal thank you in 48 hours. And it's very simple with technology now, like we all have these things in our pockets, right? Do a quick little 30 second video. Hey Rose, I saw your gift coming through. I just wanted to say thank you so much. Here's what your gift is gonna do. Boom. It's out there, right? If you use loom, you could do that. Like the world has made it easy for us to personalize. And also with calls, for example, like most people don't pick up their phone. So guess what? You get to leave a voicemail. By the way, I have to tell you, when I ran my nonprofit, I used to do a thing where I had my, my kids. So they were middle school and high school kids. They needed volunteer hours. So they would come in, I would buy them pizza and they would just make donor phone calls. They often didn't talk to anybody. People loved them. Like you get a cute little 12 year old voice on the phone like, thank you so much for your gift. Tell me you're not going to give again. Okay, so quarterly snack size. Look what you did. And then I want you to think about renewals. There's Nothing special about 12 months, right? What about a nine month renewal? What about thinking about summer bump ups for monthly donors. So just think about strategically. You could ask earlier. It does not have to be 12 months. All right, I'm going to transition a little bit. Let's talk about your score, your core. So who here knows your retention rate and your upgrade rate? I'm going to give you a gold star if you know that. Okay, so your first order of business is to look at your database and figure out your retention rate and your upgrade rate. So givers who have given three years in a row are going to be your most likely candidates for upgrades. In times of economic turbulence, our strategy needs to be focus on the people who are already in our universe versus spending a lot of time, energy and money chasing new people. Because often in times of tough economies, people aren't necessarily looking for new places to give their money. They're looking at what they already know. This is why, for example, have you guys noticed that legacy comfort snack foods are having a moment right now? It's because when people feel threatened, they go to the familiar. I want you to look at your upgrades and I want you to look at your retention. These are going to be your most likely prospects for how you get through this tough time. All right, so here are the five moves I want you to make. Are you ready? Move one. Anchor core believers. What I mean by that is I want you to go deep on the people who already love you. Let's stop focusing on donor acquisition for the moment and instead think about how to upgrade the people that we have. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that 20% of your donor base will make up 80% of your overall fund. Find those 20% and love them up. I want you to do a touch point, a call, video, letter, text to 10donors today. I want you to highlight the urgency of now. Right. I don't let any crisis pass. With every crisis is an opportunity. And I want you to answer three questions not explicitly, but in your communication. What did you do with the money? Would I be better off giving to someone else? How do you make me feel? Good or bad? This is how we build trust. Two, I want you to think about flexible ways to give. So are you offering on your donation page ways to Give stock, crypto, DAFs or credit cards? So remember, when we're talking about major gifts are often gifts of assets, not of income. And so if we're not clear on our page that we actually accept all of these different forms, how do people know that? Also when we're making asks, are we thinking about multi year asks versus a one time ask, right? If you ask me for a $10,000 gift like that feels like, oh, I don't know if I can do that. But if I ask for 5,000 over the next three years, that feels a little bit more doable. So I want you to be flexible in how you're thinking about structuring financing in consideration of your donor's particular issue. Move three, I want you to think about a 90 day impact package. So what I mean by that is oftentimes we have vague ask. We're like, help support whales today or your gift this year does da da da da. Instead, shorten the timeline and make it really tight. Help 50 women get legal aid by August 31st. Right? So instead of this longer timeline, crunch it down to 90 days. What impact can I have in 90 days? Because it helps me as a donor to understand what I'm funding. Matching gift is a great strategy. I would maybe start with your tried and true, your board members. Would you be able to match gifts up to a certain amount? Because somehow match gifts. It's a weird thing in human psychology, but we want to be part of something, right? We want to feel like we're not the first one in. It's like how no one wants to be the first one at a party. You're like, oh, go a little late. No one wants to be the first one at the fundraising parties. So if you can get a match, it just helps the psychology of unlocking generosity. And then finally, micro community touch points. How many of you are doing any kind of virtual or in person touch points? Okay, here's what I'm going to say. In times of trouble, I'll try not to sing the Beatles. In times of turmoil. In times of trouble, you need to lean into your community, right? So many of us are like, oh God, like I can't say anything. And they're going to think this about us or they're going to think that about us. These are your people. You have to bring them into the fold and make them feel like they're your people. And micro community touch points. It is a short 30 minute in, in person or virtual with your leadership. Right. I want to share a story about how the recent changes, tariffs, etcetera, are affecting our community. We're inviting our donors, we're doing live Q and A. We can do, we can hear from a donor about this is why this impacted me. This. I'm so excited about the impact I get to have. And then the five minute next step. Right? What's the Next thing that you're inviting me to, because what I'm trying to do is introduce a conversation. You're not closing a gift, you're opening a relationship. And so when I do these micro community touch points, I'm creating an on ramp for you to be more closely engaged. And I know a lot of you are being like, yeah, but we've done these, and no one will come to them. Okay? No one. Look, y' all remember 300 pieces of content. I do these webinars. I do webinars every month for my community. It doesn't matter if two people show up or 200 people show up, I'm going to do them. And so you must have a regular cadence to let people know, hey, we're having a community touch point. Here's what we're going to talk about. You are welcome to come. And there are people in your community who we think of as lurkers. I'm simply saying that a lot of people are watching and waiting to see what you do, and they will jump in when the timing is right for them. So just because you don't know that they're out there paying attention, they are actually out here paying attention. And if you create enough on ramps and touch points, when they feel ready, when they feel that they have enough trust, when they feel that they are certain in your leadership, that is when they'll jump in. So that's the annoying thing, is that you don't necessarily know where your message is going or who it's landing with or who needed to read it that day. But you just have to keep putting out there, whether five people show up or 500 people show up. I'll give you an example. So I have a podcast. Some of you may know it, others may not. I'm up to my 350th podcast. I've been doing it for seven years, right? I don't necessarily know who is out here listening because I don't get names of people. I can see downloads, but for all I know, the downloads are all my mother. Like, I don't know. But I talk to people every single day who are like, oh, I've been listening to your podcast for years. I'm like, cool, I didn't know that. I don't know who's listening, but I'm showing up every week and doing it anyway. When y' all are writing emails, when you're writing invitations, write it like you're writing to a friend, because these people are your friends. And so I think sometimes we get into like corporate speak. Because we think people will take us more seriously if we use big words and if we're like using jargon and like complicated sentences. People want simple, people want clear, people want friendly. So don't overthink it, don't overly polish it. Like, I think about the fact that on YouTube the best videos are the ones that look the most homemade, right? People don't want overproduce, they want authentic. Talk to them like you, you talk to a friend. Why am I doing this? Hey, I just want to let you know, here's what's happening with us. Here's what the recent changes in the policy is affecting our community. And we want to let you know, like, how we're doing and what we're doing with your money. And then these are the metrics I want you to track. So if you do these five or one or two of these micro things and you have to do consistently, you can't do it one time be like, all right, we tried it, done. If you do it consistently, what I want you to track is does that move the needle on either of these numbers, your upgrade numbers or your retention numbers? You got to do this thing for at least 90 days to see if it makes a difference. Okay, last move I want you to make. I'm calling it the Love Em up plan. What I want you to think about is to calendarize over the next 90 days three things that you can do to love up your donors. Right? Maybe it looks like May, we're going to do thank you calls and impact report. June, we're going to do a mission brief and we're going to poll people. July, we're going to invite them to a micro event and an invitation to a fall event. It's really simple. But if you don't calendarize it, it's not going to happen. So you got to put it down on paper with the goal of we're just loving them up. We're not necessarily asking for upgrades right now, we're not necessarily doing a solicitation right now, but we are stewarding. We're making them feel good about the investment that they made so that when it comes time for us to solicit, they already have what a positive feeling about it. Hey, fundraisers. Looking to nail those big fundraising asks? Check out my big ask gift program@riawong.com Bag say goodbye to uncertainty and hello to confidence with my program. Get expert strategies and personalized support to secure those game changing donations. Don't let fear hold you back. Join me and take your fundraising to new heights. We're enrolling now@riawong.com bag. That's riawong.com bag. So if you like big asks and you cannot lie, I'll see you in the program.