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Hey.
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Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. Today's presenting sponsor is Zefie.com Zefie is an all in one online donation platform with no platform fees and no credit card fees ever. I've been in your shoes and what I'm not trying to do is spend extra money on platform fees. I don't like it and my donors don't either. We're about to head into year end when 30% of your money comes in. You want every dollar going where it's needed most. Your mission, not lining the pockets of a payment processor. Am I right? So check out zefy.com register. That's Z-E-F-F-Y.com register. Make sure to let them know that you got sent from Nonprofit Lowdown. All right, let's get into today's episode. Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I'm your host, host Rhea Wong. Hey, Nonprofit Lowdown listeners, it's Ria Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. Today I am talking about tech tools, y'. All. And so for those of you who are techies, you're going to love it. And for those of you who are scared of tech, we're going to easy win, nice and easy. Today my guest is my friend and colleague Rachel Barebauer. She is the founder of the nonprofit automation agency and she's just my go to tech guru. So today we're going to talk about YouTube, your tech tools, how much it's costing you and how to weigh whether or not it is worth the squeeze. Rachel, welcome to the show.
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A
Hi, my friend. It's great to be here. I love that we get to talk about this. And I know like we've got opinions.
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I've got opinions, you've got opinions. And it's honestly, it's a hot button issue because people are really like the tech that they have to use or they have to like jerry rig up to make things work. And the amount of money they're spending on it is just such a huge pain point for everybody. I don't know a single nonprofit executive director out here say, I got my tech unlock. Literally, I'm answering questions every day about what CRM are using. I don't even give opinions anymore because it's like I did assert like an analysis of go forth. I cannot answer this question for you. But then you're jerry rigging up your CRM and your email server and maybe you have some automations and zaps and it is just a mess out here. So let us ground in this. Rachel Baer Bauer is Somebody who works with people on their tech stack. What are you seeing in the world?
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A
Just what you said. Like, it's a hot mess out there. One thing that I'll just, like, state my caveat over everything is there is no perfect CRM. There is no perfect platform. And literally everyone has a different opinion about every single platform, what your approach to tech is. And I actually think that is okay. That is okay. There are some ways that it's expensive and it can be hard and frustrating. It can also be like a puzzle, which is, I think, why I like it, because how can we make pieces fit together? It's a little bit of. A lot of less. Okay. We're business owners, right. So we also have tech, like, within our businesses, and we talk about that. And the biggest difference that I see is our tech works together. It's integrated. Like, you don't have to have a lot of. You can just hook things up easily. That is not really the case with nonprofit tech, and that's a big issue.
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B
Yeah, that is such a good point, because prior to becoming a business owner, I didn't even know what webhooks were. Like, I didn't even know what APIs were because I didn't have tech that actually allowed me to do the thing. So that's that, like, in for profit, I think they understand that you're going to Lego a lot of this tech together. Whereas nonprofit, for whatever reason, is designed to be its own entity without thinking about how it links up into different platforms that you may use.
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Yeah, like, platforms have really tried to silo themselves and be like, no, we're all things. We're going to be all the things to you. And maybe way back when that was the case, but there was still, I mean, there was a ton of, like, manual work that went along with that. I'm thinking of back when, like, you had platforms that, like, lived on your desktop.
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B
I'm thinking about public enemy number one. I'm not going to name. We all know who it is. It's like the old school OG on the block.
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Yeah.
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And I'm like, it is. It just does not work, folks. It is clunky. It is. The UX sucks. Maybe they've upgraded it, but come on.
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Yeah. And now we have platforms that specialize in really specific things. And I think sometimes you compromise with, okay, I. I want to have all of my. All my platforms and. Or all my stuff in one place. So I'm going to have this one. I'm going to try to make this one platform do all of the things. And that's just not the case. And I'm very much.
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Let's.
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I like what you just said. Lego. Let's build some Legos. Legos can go together. Tech can go together. It's like building that tech stack in a way that. Okay, I'm okay compromising with a calendar scheduling tool, but I don't want to compromise with the ease of making monthly donors, recurring donors, being able to upgrade their own gifts. Okay. Yeah. It's all a game of either or. So.
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Yeah, I think what you said is really important, which is, like, there is no one killer app. But the question is, how are you using the different tools such that they complement each other? And what I've been noticing, and Rachel, I'd be curious about your perspective, is I feel like people that I encounter tend to fall into one of two camps. It's either give me all of the different things, right? I'm going to throw 15 million things and I'm on appsumo and I'm buying all the things, or the people who are like, I need my Excel spreadsheet and leave me alone. I'm going to do everything manually. I'm scared of tech. I'm not going there. And so I'm curious, has that been your perspective and how might we meet more in the middle?
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A
Yeah. Yeah. I think the. I think that was. Those were the two camps, and I think those lines are getting blurred because we have to, right? I mean, we've got like the apps on our phones. We've got you add your nest thing to your house so that you can turn up the heat. Automation, adding apps and tech and things like that to our everyday lives are happening every day. And then you've got your nonprofit, your organization, and there's this part of me of just like the tech industry within nonprofit. I'm like, why haven't we evolved? That's one thing. Because I think the spreadsheet people wouldn't be so overwhelmed and exhausted and frustrated if the tech for nonprofits didn't suck. Right. And that's. That's a blanket statement. Like, I actually think there are some really cool nonprofit tools. But yeah. And then there's the people who love all the tech and have 50 different types of tech in their organization. And I'm definitely a tech person. Love all love of experimenting. But I'm also like, is it worth it for me to always chasing the shiny new thing? No, it's not.
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B
And I have to say, too, let's just give ourselves some grace because really the world has changed so much in the last decade. Even so, I remember when I first started my career, I was on filemaker. Okay. I was like creating, you remember file, where I was like creating little apps to get people to upload things on FileMaker. And since then, the iPhone has been introduced. The Internet really is taking off, like the way that we market, the way that we put ourselves out in the world, the way that we do tech. The cloud has been introduced now. AI right. So like it's been a very intense. And I wasn't using filemaker like so very long ago. So it's been a lot of change in a very short amount of time. So I do want to acknowledge that it's been a while time. And if you don't feel like you're up on the tech, it's not because you're deficient, like you haven't done anything wrong. It's just that this world is moving very quickly, fast.
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Can I tell you? Okay, baby? Ed. Rachel. I might have told this story before. Like, I still get sweaty thinking about this.
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I.
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So I ran a youth organization. We would go to schools and we'd have signup forms and so people would come, they'd sign up. I want to be a volunteer. I want to. Whatever. Okay, so I had this gold, right? We know this now, we know this now of all these people's emails and. But they were all like written down on paper and so I just like put them in a pile.
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Oh, no.
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I, I still get sweaty thinking about, like I never put those emails into our email platform. I wasn't really emailing, so there's also that. But I think about that now. I had thousands of emails, thousands that are just like hanging out on this piece of paper.
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Actually, that was better because I thought you were going to say you accidentally threw it away because that would have been way worse. But no, they just.
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I don't know. Look, I should have just thrown them away so then I wasn't looking at them. But no, I just felt guilty about them.
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Ok.
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So bad, so bad.
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Now you can take pictures of them and have it auto uploaded. How things have changed. All right, let's switch gears because we're using all this tech or maybe we're not using the tech, but hey, at least it's expensive, right? So I want to break down the cost of your tech stack and not just in how much am I paying in subscriptions, but how much am I paying in staff time, in training time, in maintenance time. When you really think about the cost of Tech, it gets. It adds up very quickly. So talk to me about what are the hidden costs that we should be considering when we're looking at new technology?
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Okay, the number one thing that I said at the top was that tech isn't integrating. If you have. And what do I mean by that? That means that you have a platform. And I'll just give you, like, obviously, I spend a lot of time building tech stacks for organizations. Here's my philosophy. You have your donor CRM, okay? Donor CRM is your source of truth. So that is, you know that all the information in your CRM is good, clean data. Okay? That is the next podcast we need to record. Everything comes into. So you online fundraising goes in. You're filtering it into your CRM. Email marketing. Emails are going into your. Your CRM, your checks, any everything. Source of truth is your CRM. Once it's in there, then it goes out. Okay, so it goes in and then it goes out. A donor comes in, they donate through the online fundraising platform, they get logged into your CRM, and then from there it goes to your email marketing. Okay, so that's like the path, but the CRM is always the center of it. And so the main thing that you. That I always consider is, does it integrate? Because if it doesn't integrate, then are you having to upload and download spreadsheets? That takes a lot of time. Like, the hidden cost of time wasted with platforms is huge. So that's my number one. That's always what I look for. If I'm looking for tech. Does it do something automatically? And if it doesn't, could I use something like Zapier to make it easier for myself?
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Okay, so, Rachel, when we're looking at tech products, so what are the hidden costs? Because we know the subscription fee, right? That's very clear. It's the thing that you pay annually or monthly or whatever. We don't often account for things like staff time to train or data cleanup, which is a whole other thing. It's not. That's not tech specific because you should be doing that anyway. But there is a cost associated with it. What other costs do you see when we're thinking about integrating new tech into our organizations?
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Yeah, so there's the platform fee, there's the credit card processing fees, there's maybe a fee that sometimes the platform might charge. Like you mentioned, the staff time is a big one. Sometimes you're charged per transaction. The manual work, I think that goes along with it. And I guess what, I mean, training, great example. What do you have to do on a regular weekly basis to maintain that. All of the tech making sure that it works. As we've evolved, as tech has moved, I think organizations, they aren't thinking of their tech stack as like a living, breathing thing within their organization. So then they forget about it. And then all of a sudden they're like log in three months later and they're like, oh, nobody's getting the acknowledgement receipt because that wasn't turned on. So it has to be part of that daily or weekly cadence of caring for it. That takes time and. But if you aren't doing like a whole bunch of manual uploading and downloading, then going in and checking is that's not that hard or it doesn't take up that much time.
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It's so funny you say that as you're talking about it being a living, breathing thing. I just think about this sourdough starter I had during the pandemic that I killed in the back of my fridge. So RIP Joe the sourdough starter. But don't let this happen to your tech. You said something I just want to double click on freaking credit card fees. So the thing that always drove me nuts was when we got online donations, the amount of money that went to credit card processing or to the platform fees drove me crazy. Incidentally, today's sponsor, Zephy is 100% free. This is not necessarily a plug, but I say that to say that there are now options out there that alleviate some of the pain of credit card fees. So talk to me about processing fees because I, I just like it. Really chat my hide. And I worked so hard to get this donor in the door and I like 10% of that went straight out the door to someone else.
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Yeah. If we come it come down to it like paper check, you're still getting like the most bang for your buck. Right.
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You do have to or ech is often echo totally.
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But there's the manual part of entering it into your CRM or classifying it, like going and finding it in your bank account, making sure it's recorded correctly so there's still like labor involved. It's not like a yes, you get all of the money. But fees, they're so annoying. And I don't want to say arbitrary because I'm sure someone somewhere in some laboratory was like, here's the perfect formula for what we should charge to whatever. It's a cost of doing business. We used to have to pay for shipping. If you ordered something, you have to pay for shipping. Like that you just had if it, if you couldn't go to the store you had to pay for shipping but if you drove the store you had to pay for gas. So money you're paying one way or another and you have to decide does it bother me more having the fees that I would rather do additional work so that I don't have that platform or the ease of. Yeah, there are, yeah, there's lots of platforms that have different options and stuff but it's a trade off, right? So like a platform that might have higher fees has more, maybe more options or more capabilities for you to manage, I don't know, manage your generators or manage information or analytics or whatever they are offering. Or are you like, you're like no, I don't want fees. So I'm going to compromise and take this route.
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B
I think what's interesting is it used to be an either or but so I think with platforms like Zefie and other organ. I don't know if there are any other fee free ones out there but the point is that it is free for the nonprofit. Now the way it is paid for is that your donors can add an optional tip to help the operations of the company that's running. Because as you say nothing in life is free, right? We do have we got to pay for the business that supports the platform. You and I had differing opinions on this one and I think we should delve into this because the. Your. Why don't you share your perspective and I'll share my perspective on it.
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The way I stated it was that I'm pro fee that I feel like Rachel Barry Barrel. I know that, that it's. That's not totally representative. Let me give you, just let me.
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Give you an example. Okay.
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My partner went to another state where they have toll fees. He rented a car and part of the rental car thing was like hey, you can get this like toll pass and it was $25 and then you didn't have to pay for any of the fees. Okay, great. So he is anti fee. He will go out of his way in every way to avoid a fee. And so he did not pay for that. He almost missed his flight back home because he was taking the non toll roads that didn't actually lead him to the airport because he wouldn't pay the 25 DOL. Probably wasted three extra hours. I would have not batted an eye at paying that $25 because of the convenience of not having to worry about what roads I'm going to be on. I don't know. Is it because of Our upbringing. Is it because of our relationship with money? Is it because of. Because you're, like, a couple years older than me, so we're slightly in different generations. I don't know, like, why I am.
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Not a couple years older than you. I am 27 years old, thank you very much.
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You are so much younger than me.
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It'S amazing. Look, here's my perspective on it, which is when we have a Free for nonprofits platform, let's say a Zephy. The point is, the cost has shifted to the donors. And as a donor, and I will always do this. So this is not carte blanche for all of the processing companies to come for me. But if I'm donating $50, I will cover the fee, because in my mind, I would prefer that the nonprofit gets the full amount of what I donated versus having to take out fees. Because I remember being an ED and looking at the amount coming in and how much I was paying in fees, and it was just freaking painful. My point here, though, is that it's all about consent for me. If I have the option to not pay the fee. Right. There's no obligation. It's just, hey, do you want to cover this? Cool. I'm fine with it. I can say yes. I can say no. But regardless of whether I say yes or no, I like the fact that the nonprofits don't therefore have to carry the burden of the fee.
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A
Yeah. And I think I'm with you. I also don't think that we're a good case study because we are in it. Because I'm with you. Like, I cover the fees every time. Because I also was at ED that I was like, how much is being taken out? Are you kidding me? Which sucks. It's also a cost of doing business, which, for better, for worse. Like, for worse. That's annoying. What I will say, I do like that there are software platforms, tech platforms, that are trying to think outside of the box. And I appreciate that. I really do. I guess it goes for me. It goes back to, what is the donor experience and is it causing friction? I think credit card processing fees have become less of a battle. I remember getting some serious, like, irate donors calling me when I was working with an organization, and they were irate that they had to pay a fee. And I was like, credit cards, man. We're all paying fees. And I like what you said about consent. I think there are some platforms that it feels a little sneaky. And there's some platforms. Here's how we make our money. So that 100% of the donation can go back to the organization. But these are like just tactics and it's all a compromise. It's all what you value or what is important to you and what's worth it to you.
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B
On that note, we're going to take a break to hear from our sponsor. Quick break. Today's episode is brought to you by zefy.com if you're running a nonprofit, you already know year end is when 30% of your revenue is you want every dollar going to the mission, not bleeding out to platform or credit card fees. That's why I love Zefie Z E F F Y. It's an all in one online platform with no platform fees and no credit card fees ever. I've been in your shoes and paying fees on donations felt like lighting money on fire. My donors didn't like it either. So do yourself a favor, head to zephy.com register again. That's Z-E-F-F-Y.com register and keep every cent working for your cause. Be sure to tell them that you heard about it from non profit Lowdown. All right, back to the show. All right, Rachel, let's get into it because I want to think about tools and roi because I ultimately, you use a tool because it helps you to be more operationally efficient. And so my question to you is, how do we measure that? Because to your point, if we're using a tool and we're spending a bunch of time like downloading and uploading or whatever, the efficiency may be like 1 1/2 x versus another tool which is a little bit more seamless, that may increase your efficiency 10x. And I know that in the nonprofit field we're not often thinking about that through the lens because we're just like in it. We're putting out fires as they come. But help us think about how do I assess, assess the ROI of a tool.
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A
That is such a good question, I think. Okay, so I like to evaluate going back to the donor experience, is the tech that I'm using something that is easy for the donor to use, meaning it makes it easy for them to give and give quickly. There's a lot of platforms out there that are using different AI or whatever that your address is saved in there.
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B
Or it knows the dynamic pricing.
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A
Thank you.
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Yes.
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Dynamic, like that kind of stuff is cool. Because if you're just a flat $25, $50, $100 where you know, I might actually give $125 and you might give $135 if we just had those basic levels. You don't really know the donors. So I think the ROI of how much can you personalize the experience for the donor is a big one for me. So I think recurring giving is a really important space to talk about, like the tech around that. Because recurring giving is a thing. And we all know that recurring donors, they give more over time. They're loyal, they stay longer. What if a monthly donor wants to upgrade their gift? Do they have to call you and be like, hey, I want to upgrade? No, they're just going to keep, keep with the same old. Or they're going to maybe cancel. How easy can we make it for? Or an opposite. If like maybe a donor needs to reduce their gift. That's a little embarrassing to call and be like, hey, I need to like, Instead of giving $50, I need to give $25. You can't. If you have a platform that allows the donor to just go in and do that themselves, then you maybe reduced that monthly gift by $25, but you didn't reduce it by $50 because they just canceled.
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B
So let's take a step back. When I think bigger picture of all the tech that we're using in our organizations. Actually I did this exercise for myself. I was like, what is, what are all the tech tools that I'm actually using? Right? Because I think we don't even realize how much tech we have. And frankly, we don't even realize how much we're paying for all the tech. Like X, the amount of time X, like all of the soft costs, like hard cost subscription. How much am I paying for the tech? So one thing that I would recommend that you do is literally just make a list of all of the different tech that you're using, including like your computers, including your Internet access, including if you have a ChatGPT subscription, including how much are you paying Google, if that's what your platform is or Outlook or whatever, whatever you're using to communicate. Then we talk about your CRM, Then we talk about your email platform, if you're using it. Then we talk about if you're using a social media scheduler. Am I missing anything? Maybe your canvas subscription. If you're doing logos and graphics, maybe you're using cap cut, if you're doing video. I don't know what else is there?
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Yeah, your scheduler. Maybe it's calendly your website or domain.
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B
Oh, yep.
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Pay for that. True.
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B
Yeah, the list goes on. But I think it's. And I think also, and this has happened to me too. I Forget that I have bought subscriptions to things. I'm like, oh, yeah, I signed up for that thing is like a trial period. And like, I forgot to cancel. And they're charging me $20 a month for a thing that I'm not even using. So I think it's worth doing a little audit of what is all the tech? What does the tech do? And is it worth it? And I'm. Yeah, and I'm just, like, struggling. Like, how do you quantify, is it worth it? Like, I guess it would be. Do we use it? Is it easy to use? And does it make our lives better? And does it actually solve a real problem? I think that's the other thing too. As someone who gets into shiny objects, sometimes I'll see a new tool. I'm like, oh, this is really cool. Not actually realizing that I don't have that particular problem, but I just think the tool is cool, which is my own weird little tech hoarding problem. When I look at all of the different tech tools and I put a price on how much I'm paying for it, how do I assess whether or not it's worth paying for?
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A
Yeah, what you just said about solving a problem, is it a real problem that you have? I also think, are you able to access the information? I actually just. Our friend Jess emailed me and was like, hey, I'm trying to get the specific, like the page views on a fundraising page. And I went into the software and I was like, oh, that is a metric that you can't pull for some organizations. She wanted to pull the metric of page views versus donations so that she know the conversion rate for her email marketing. Like, that's important. That might not be important to you. You might want some other metrics. So, like, within your organization, what are the metrics? What are the KPIs that are important to you? And are you able to access that information quickly and in a way that you can then use it? So are you able to access, like, within your program platform, are you able to quickly access, like, the demographics of your participants so that when you go to apply for a grant, you aren't having to do a whole bunch of guessing and combining spreadsheets? That's maybe accurate, maybe not. So can you get the information? When I first started my business, I got mailchimp because that's what everyone was like, yeah, go get on that one. I was great. I hated it. I hated it with every fiber of my being. It did not work with my. With my brain. So then I switched to Another one. And I was like, okay, these make really pretty emails and they're cute, but like, they're not offering me like the. All the capabilities that like the automation stuff that I want. So then I switched to kit, which is what I use now. And no joke, I told myself, you're not switching again, you're not switching again. Make this work for you. Because the cost and the time and the energy of switching platforms, I was wasting so much time instead of making the platform work for me. Thankfully. I love kit. I'm obsessed with it. I want everybody in the world to be on kit. But I think for organizations, you. Sometimes we jump from platform to platform trying to find the perfect one and sometimes we really just have to work within the tools that we have.
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B
Yeah. And I think that's such an interesting tension too, right? Because on the one hand, tools should make your life easier and on the other hand, there is such a thing as user error. Right. So some of the times when people complain like, oh my God, thing doesn't do whatever, my first question is, are you sure that it doesn't? Or maybe it's you, like, maybe you just haven't been trained properly. Maybe it's not as intuitive as you think it is. Don't be so quick to say, oh, it's a software problem, or software a tech problem. And what is also true is there are tech products out there that really don't have the functionality that you need. Right. So I do think it's worth really digging down is it is a me problem or is it a tech? It's a product problem.
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A
I do a lot of CRM migrations and the only time that I do a CRM migration is if the organization is using a platform that doesn't allow for it to be integrated with other things. Right. Because that's typically they're like, I can't do anything with the software because I can't or I can't automate anything. That. That's when people usually come to me and I'm like, yep, that is the only time that I will recommend a migration. Because otherwise, is it worth your time and your energy and everything? Sometimes it is, but we really have to think hard about that. Or could we work within our platform and find other solutions that maybe, you know, maybe you hate the email marketing so it would be worth it for you. So instead of using the internal email marketing within a platform, maybe you have an additional piece of tech that does all the things that you want to do and then you figure out how to connect it in a way that makes sense. So again, it comes back to what do you want to compromise on? What give and take makes sense. And that also changes as you get bigger. Or if you're a super small organization, sometimes a spreadsheet does work.
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B
Don't over over index on tech that you don't need.
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Yeah. If you are a super small organization with 100 donors, like, maybe you do hang out on a spreadsheet for a couple of years and you don't invest in a big old CRM that has way more capabilities than you're able to deal with.
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B
Yeah, I call it driving the Ferrari at 30 miles an hour. I'm like, sure, you can buy all of the fancy Ferrari things, but if you're only going 30 miles an hour, like, that's a lot more car than you need. All right, last two questions, because we could go on forever. So, Rachel, what is it that you do? Because you're talking about CRMs, you're talking about platforms, like, what is your special superhero power that people should reach out to you for?
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A
So I help nonprofits automate their donor stewardship. I believe that donor retention is down because we don't have the time to really care for our donors and with some simple automations to just relieve some of that, like, mental labor of, oh my gosh, a donation came in. Did they get synced? Like, I need to call them. Let's automate some of those. Whether they're the tasks or the actual emails or whatever, let's automate some of those things so that at least the first hundred days of a donor's experience is going to be remarkable. It's going to be great. And then you're also not worried about the more like admin stuff. You can actually pick up the phone and give them a call and have a real conversation instead of that going on the back burner. But in order to do that, you have to have the right tech in place to be able to do that. So a lot of times organizations come to me and they're like, I want to do all this automation. I'm like, that's awesome. Your tech is not. It is not going to allow for that. So here are the options. And so I will walk organizations through tech stack, audit what our recommendations are, and then we will actually go and implement and create. And then we will make sure all your tech's all set up so that we can set up the automations. And then we also do all of the writing that goes along with all the content, all the emails that Go along with those welcome series like that. It's like everybody needs a welcome series. Cool. Have you written yours? Probably not. Great, we'll write it for you.
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B
So Rachel, I'm going to put your info in the show notes for folks who want to get in touch with you to automate their donorship. And by the way, I am out here like banging that drum of donor retention. If you do nothing else this year, just retain. And you're in a much better place than you would have been if you did not focus on that last thing. You created a really cool spreadsheet for us. So can you walk us through what the spreadsheet is? And I will make sure to link it in the show notes for people who want to get their hands on this very sexy tool that Rachel Barabauer put together for you.
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A
Thank you very much. Do you want me to actually show it or should I?
- [33:09]
B
Yeah, you can show it for folks who are listening. You can go to YouTube and describe it.
- [33:14]
A
Yeah, go follow Ria on YouTube.
- [33:17]
B
Follow me on the YouTubes. This is a new thing for me. Follow me on YouTube. But go ahead and share your screen because this is so.
- [33:24]
A
I think I have like seven whole followers on YouTube. So I'm very proud of that. I think one of them is my mom, but that's okay. So I made a cost and time calculator. Obviously I'm not going to go through the whole thing, but step one is you are going to enter all of your tools.
- [33:44]
B
Holy moly, look at this. This is crazy.
- [33:46]
A
I know this, this is the hard part or like the more tactical part. So basically you want to like Ray, what you were just saying, list out all the different tools. I've got six different slots for tools. So you list the tool name how you are charged. So are you charged annually? Annually, Monthly. Is it a fee based charge? Is it a fee plus transaction way you're paying and so then you enter the amount that you're paying. You also enter the amount that you raise. So you might have, you might be using one platform platform for all of your. All your events and another one for your recurring giving. So how much are you raising within that platform then if there is a transaction fee, the number of transactions and then do you have any work and. Yes. And then how much per week? Because that piece, how much manual work is a piece that we just totally don't think about. So then, so true.
- [34:44]
B
So true.
- [34:44]
A
Go over to update the settings. So we have the labor costs. So if you have a team or if it's just this is what you.
- [34:51]
B
Produce at 2 o' clock in the morning. Holy moly.
- [34:53]
A
Yeah, I know you guys, I really was working on that. So don't judge me if like certain things don't work because I did make this last night because I thought it would be fun and I knew Rhea would be disappointed to me. But because sleep, sleep is important.
- [35:07]
B
Because I prioritize sleep above all other things, including all, like hanging out with friends. Not as important as sleep. Hanging out with my husband. Not as important as sleep. Hanging out with my dog gets up there. But still not as important as sleep.
- [35:20]
A
Sleep is important. I did not prioritize last night. So then you update your labor costs. Like how much per hour are you paying somebody to do a thing? Then you can go over to this snapshot. And so then this is the snapshot of your organizations I put together is so you raise 350 per year. Your platform fees are 4,000. This is based on just like random numbers. Like I feel like 4,000 for 350 might be a little ridiculous, but whatever.
- [35:49]
B
The thing is, it's important to look at your numbers. I did a workshop yesterday and like, I wasn't shocked. That would be a strong word. But I was a little bummed that so many people didn't know their basic KPIs. Or they did and they were scared. I'm like, you know what? You can't fix a problem if you don't know that it's a problem.
- [36:09]
A
And you have to base your problems and how you're going to fix it based on facts, not feelings.
- [36:15]
B
Say that again.
- [36:16]
A
Yeah, facts not feelings, man. Because if you're going off of vibes, you're going to make poor decisions or you're not going to, maybe not poor decisions, but you're not going to make informed decisions.
- [36:26]
B
You'll make ill informed decisions.
- [36:29]
A
Right. Okay, so you have the metric of where you're at with like the platform fees, like the average percent rate that you're spending, the amount that you're spending on software per year, the manual hours, which like when you, if we go back here real quick and we like I put in say for our CRM that it was five hours of manual work per week. You add that up per year and that's 260 hours. So then you're back at your spreadsheet and you've got almost 500 hours of manual work. Then you use what that manual or what that you know what your hourly rate is. That's almost $18,000 in manual work. So when you start thinking about it that way.
- [37:20]
B
So then this is crazy. Yeah, this is a dead sexy spreadsheet, friend.
- [37:26]
A
Yeah, it's. It is dense and it's a lot. But this is important to think about because when we talk about hidden costs like that, manual labor cost is it's more than your platform fees, and it's more than your subscription fees put together.
- [37:42]
B
And look, the truth is we undervalue staff time, right, because the nonprofit thing is just grind harder. You can put in 50, 60, 70 hours a week. Let's just do it. Yet we don't actually recognize the cost of doing that or the potential burnout of relying on staff labor to fix what could be a tech solution.
- [38:07]
A
And so then look at the status down here, and it like, I do it for you. So 70% of my manual, the main manual labor cost is I need to start saving more time because I'm in the red. I'm spending way too much manual time. So, yeah, so I have a couple of little metrics that you can look at, and then I have the last tab I'll talk about. Are the fees you're paying worth it? And that's talking about here. So you've got what your current situation is, what your costs with your platforms are. And then what if you took all your software away, right? So, like, you didn't have any of the platforms, so you might be saving $10,000 in platform fees and subscription costs and stuff. Could you raise the same amount? Maybe not. How much additional manual labor would that create? How. What are the other costs that you might have to incur? A printing house, a mailing house, replacement parts, like, all of that stuff. And then breaks it down even further to let you know, like, in conclusion, yes, the fees are worth it, or no, they're not worth it. So you can play with this. Just figure out. So it's.
- [39:16]
B
And even if it's not exact, it's really good to have a ballpark idea of what your tech is truly costing you. So, Rachel, we're going to make sure that those go in the show notes, because if you're listening to this, you want this spreadsheet. It is hot. In fact, I'm going to do it for myself, for my own business, because now I'm like, oh, God.
- [39:34]
A
Oh, gosh.
- [39:35]
B
I didn't. Scared to see my business. Oh, my God. I know. I'm, like, a little scared, but I think it's worth doing. All right, friend. Thank you so much. I 100% got the right lady on the pod. To talk about this issue. And folks, if you need your life automated, if you need to hang on to more donors and you don't need to spend more staff time on it, call Rachel. She's the girl for you.
- [39:56]
A
Thank you, my friend. It's great to be here. And let's just remember there's a solution out there for everyone. And one size fits all does not exist. So take the pressure off, have some grace with yourself. It's cool.
- [40:10]
B
Yeah. And one silver bullet doesn't exist. There's no killer app to kill them all. Like that just is not a thing. So thank you friends. Appreciate you. 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.