C (3:15)

Yes. Our goal is actionable insights for the social sector and to provide a holistic view of how people give and how they contribute to their communities in many ways to help give those people agency over how they solve those problems and to help nonprofits and others in the social sector understand how to engage for support effectively.

A (3:37)

So I just had on the podcast, Wendy McGrady, who's the chair of the Giving USA Foundation. And we, so many of us in the sector, we know what the research coming out of like fap, you know, the Fundraising Effectiveness Project and Giving Pulse reports. We know what that data says. But what I think is so interesting is, you know, that data reports on what happened in the past, you know, like total dollars given are up, but total numbers of donors are down and so forth. But the research by your group is looking towards the future, which I think is really interesting. And the latest research that you came out with models an additional $52 billion in potential giving annually. And that's just, that's crazy. I know it's out there. I talk about scarcity, the scarcity mindset constantly. Nonprofits are saying, oh, there's no money out there and a little piece of the pie and we're competing with everyone. But $52 billion, can you, can you walk us through, like, how you arrived at that number and sort of why this matters?

C (4:43)

For sure. So you and I have spoken about this. Yeah, at length, including on your podcast. And for years we've been seeing this disconnect between how people give in the every day in many ways and their willingness to give and this decline in participation in nonprofit fundraising. And as we started to observe that gap, it became increasingly clear that the problem here is not situated with the giver. Not only are they giving, but their prolific and diverse giving is an asset to be leveraged and not a threat to nonprofit fundraising. So that became really clear early on what we want, what we set out to do with this recent analysis is to quantify that gap. So we want to do two things. And we use the Fundraising Effectiveness Project data. That's if folks aren't familiar. Fpreports.org that's our quarterly reporting that we do with the association of Fundraising Professionals on the the state of nonprofit fundraising in the Us.

A (5:48)

And.

C (5:49)

And to your point, it's a look back in the rearview mirror, but it's also, I think, often misunderstood as what happened to us instead of what we accomplished.

A (5:58)

Yes.

C (5:58)

And it's really important to understand it's a performance review. It is, absolutely. It's our report card, not a weather report, and we have agency to shift that. So we looked at that data, and we looked at consumer spend data, and we looked at our Giving Pulse data where we're asking Americans every week about their previous weeks giving, behavior, attitudes, values, how, whether they've been asked to give a real depth of understanding of the complete environment around generosity, not just donations, but including donations to nonprofits. And so with that analysis, we are able to identify what are the big missed opportunities and quantify how big are these opportunities to be leveraged by nonprofits for fundraising. And, yeah, we think at a minimum, we left $52 billion undonated in 2023, and we could be seeing that on an annual basis if we address these gaps with better fundraising practices.

A (7:04)

I want to really pull out something that you just said where it's important to look at, like the Fundraising Effectiveness Project reports or the Giving USA report, any data that is coming out. Not like a weather report. It's not like, okay, this was the weather yesterday, and this happened. And it's sort of like if my. Yeah. If my daughter showed me her report card and said, oh, I don't know, the economy's bad, or something like that, I'm like, no, that's not what happened. Like, there's. There's a lot of factors that might have gone into why you received these grades. But the point is, we need to not just accept it and be like, all right, well, you got a bunch of Fs. There's nothing we can do, you know, throw up our hands and say, oh, there's nothing we can do. Oh, what was us? I think that's so important. It's something where we need to look at it and realize that we do have agency over it and what can we do next? And I think another question I have in the 52 billion. Is that money? That is. Where is that money coming from? It's kind of from all sectors, like corporate foundations, individuals.

C (8:09)

Yeah. So this is. That's a great question. And you're right. First of all, you know, it is fair to acknowledge there are many externalities, Right? There are.

A (8:16)

Yes.

C (8:17)

There are challenges that face us. Economic, social, structural. I don't think our incentives in the nonprofit sector are well aligned with addressing these. These issues. But we have a lot more agency than. Than we might think, and we have a lot more elasticity in the donor marketplace than I think a lot of folks realize. So this is what we're trying to do is not say it's all your fault, but say that despite these various headwinds and challenges, there's untapped market, and this is where to find it. And to be clear, to answer your question, what we're talking about is donations from individuals to nonprofit organizations. And broadly speaking, the biggest opportunities are with what you would call kind of everyday givers.

A (9:05)

Oh, that's really cool. So let's so it breaks it down. What I think is so great about this research and this report, you actually break it down into different buckets of opportunity. So there's a mention of $23 billion opportunity and d seasonalized giving. So let's talk about D seasonalize DC It's a hard way to say D seasonalizing giving. And this is coming from me, who I do a lot of work around fundraising, especially on Giving Tuesday and year end. And I know it's so predominant, but talk more about that opportunity and what that means, how we can capitalize on it.

C (9:46)

First of all, I think for some folks, it might sound odd for us Giving Tuesday to be saying, look, we got to look outside of this seasonal structure. But interestingly, when I started in this work, I really didn't have much background in the nonprofit. Giving was actually more seasonalized even than it is, more concentrated even than it is now. The last two weeks in December was really what we saw was the peak Giving Tuesday shifted, that it has moved and expanded the, quote, giving season to be more than twice as long. What's clear, though, is that there's more opportunity to look outside of that. And it doesn't mean shifting our focus, it means adding. And essentially what it comes down to is we see nonprofits become less active, particularly in the middle of the year, but response to solicitation remains stable. So people are just as likely to give in response to an ask in the middle of the year as they are at the end of the year, but we're asking less. So it's just as simple as that. And we looked at this a number of ways, and one of the most conservative ways to look at this was just comparing consumer spend trends, where we still have a very seasonal structure. We see a lot of consumer spend at the end of the year, but it is less volatile and commercial interests are more active, more consistently active throughout the year. So we just wanted to Analyze what do we think that gap looks like if we were to close it? If we saw a pattern in nonprofit fundraising that looked more like consumer spending and organizations were more consistently active through the year, what would that be worth? And we think it's at least $23 billion a year. Just because we take our foot off the gas in the middle of the.

A (11:40)

Year, how can we shift this culture? I'm thinking of the fundraisers that might be listening, the nonprofit leaders saying, oh, our board would never agree to do this, or the executive director thinks we ask too much. And how do we get out of this imposter syndrome mindset where we think we're annoying donors when in actual. When in actuality we're not giving them enough opportunity to participate?

C (12:06)

Yeah. So you have actually. That you've identified, I think, the two main factors here that matter. One is thinking about leadership and governance. So one of the things that we're hoping that this research does is give ammunition to fundraisers and development directors to go to leadership. Talk to your CFO.

A (12:28)

Right.

C (12:28)

And have EDs and CEOs go to the board and explain why this is important. We have. We have research that demonstrates that we should expect people to be just as responsive in the middle of the year as they are at the end of the year. So. So our being less active is leaving money on the table. Now, the second part of that is, how do you do that? That's what you're getting at. The, that fear of donor fatigue is. Is an issue, and donor fatigue is a myth. Not that. That's not the same thing as saying people aren't tired of your message. They might be tired of your message. And if you think your message is an unwelcome, intrusive solicitation, you might be right. But the answer isn't do less of it. The answer is get better. And I'll talk in a minute about how we can do that. But the other factor is we need to think about what metrics we're tracking within organizations. Because if we're going to get a different result, we're going to have to look at different things. We're gonna have to different outcomes and different metrics. So a classic example is an over focus on average donation. Average donation is going up in the US because we're getting more money from fewer people. Is that what we want in our organizations? More money from fewer people? I don't think it is. And I can get your average donation up tomorrow. Just drop the bottom half of your file. Just stop asking. Just stop engaging the bottom half of your file, you'll have less money, but your average donation will go up. How is that helpful? It's just the wrong metric. That's how we can think about how we engage our leadership, how we think differently about our outcomes. But then we need a different message. And I think one of the things that's really clear is people give all the time in lots of ways. This is a clue to how we should be engaging them better. It means more ways for them to participate and more engagement. Not less, but more diverse, more of a dialogue, more of recognizing people as already generous contributors in their community. And our job is to give them multiple opportunities to leverage that generosity. It's not about an ask. It's more about an invitation.

A (14:42)

I think that makes. That makes so much sense. Donors are not fatigued. They might be fatigued of the same old message. They might be fatigued of boring, listless, not compelling communication. But instead of, yeah, just saying, okay, well, we're just not going to ask as much. I also love that point you made about the metrics, because in my work in digital fundraising, people get so hung up on, like, unsubscribes and open rates. And it's just like you said, if you want to increase your open rate, just delete, like, half your list. Like, go in and be like, who hasn't opened it in a month? You don't want to do that. So, I mean, you should be cleaning your list. That's beside the point. But there are ways that you can manipulate the data to do what you want it to do and to get it to move in the direction you think you want to move it to. But are we really measuring things that are going to affect our mission and affect our fundraising results? That kind of remains to be seen. And I also love the point you made about using these reports as sort of, you know, backup data for when you're meeting with your supervisor or the board. Like, do a presentation on this report, you know, pull out some bullet points and say, you know, not only are we leaving this money on the table, here are three things I think we could do to really put our foot back on the gas in July or in the spring. So not rather than just saying, oh, my gosh, like, ringing your hands, there's so much money out there, how are we going to get our hands on it? Trying to come up with some kind of baby steps for how things are going to change. And another. I think another way to do this is talked about in the report, is optimizing recurring Donor acquisition that could potentially get us 10 to $20 billion more. So what are we getting wrong when it comes to like building and sustaining our recurring donor programs?

C (16:38)

So I think it mostly comes down to not making it a priority strategy, not making it the default first engagement. More often. You know, it's interesting to see givingtuesdays an interesting opportunity and moment. There's more recurrent, more new recurring gifts on Giving Tuesday than on typical days. And that's an indication that we can actually shift to recurring when we just choose to. We see organizations doing this, we see it happening with door to door fundraising. So we can do more recurring and there's, there is more opportunity there. There's about 2% of new gifts are recurring donations. So and that we think, and this is where that 10 to 20 billion comes up, we think 5% more is minimally available. And really a 10% increase or 10 point increase to 12% of new gifts being recurring is absolutely possible. And that would 10 to 20 billion dollars more the first year we achieve that because then those donors are retained at a higher level. It's one of the reasons why we see higher retention rate from Giving Tuesday acquired donors is more of them are recurring givers. It's not the only reason that that's working, but it is a factor that we're building on a higher base every year if we make recurring a higher priority. And as I said, more, more often the first engagement as opposed to thinking about it as just we are kind of leveling up one time givers.

A (18:11)

Well, I know that nonprofits, at least in a report that I read that was in conjunction with Neon1, that Giving Tuesday is a great opportunity for nonprofits to experiment and try something new. So I think asking, saying we, our goal for GivingTuesday is to get 100 recurring donors, you know, rather than setting a dollar amount, set that kind of goal because that is a metric that is, is easily, you know, that's a really powerful data point and powerful metric. I mean, we just have to think about the world we're living in right now with subscription economy, where I mean, my entire credit card bill is just subscription things I don't even know. So I think that's the way consumers act and that's consumer behavior. And so that's the way nonprofits should.

C (18:58)

Be, which is also, I mean, it's one of the reasons why this is such a huge opportunity is we've got an entire marketplace that's being trained by commercial, by the commercial sector to adopt these models and they Are have a huge value to us. Those recurring donors have a higher lifetime value. And it also, I think it puts us in a really has the potential to put us in a healthier relationship with our donors. Because instead of thinking about now, every communication I have with somebody has to be I have to ask them for money. Right now I have a subscriber stewardship, right?

A (19:32)

Yeah, subscriber.

C (19:33)

And what have they subscribed to? They've subscribed to feeling good about their impact in the world on a monthly basis. So deliver on that. And it's not to say that it's independent of one time gifts. That same NEON report showed that recurring givers are likely to give a separate one time gift that they and we have seen that Giving Tuesday donors just in general are likely to give again before the end of the year. These recurring givers are now in an ongoing relationship with you. And that's sort of the table stakes now. So not only is it better financially and more predictable and more stable, we also have an opportunity for a better, more diverse and inclusive relationship with these donors.

A (20:15)

This brings me to one of my favorite pieces of the report, focusing on reaching people who aren't being asked. So the idea that tens of billions of dollars could come from people who simply just haven't been invited to give I think is incredibly powerful. So what does your data tell us about this group and how can we reach these people?

C (20:39)

I think this is the most important factor.

A (20:42)

Yes.

C (20:42)

And to be fair, it's also the most complex. Right. It's a lot simpler to say be more active in the middle of the year. It's more straightforward to say, make recurring giving a default behavior more often. Those are very straightforward strategies, but this one is more important. It's more important. First of all, it's a huge opportunity. Secondly, because I think it more directly speaks to the problem that we're facing as a sector, maybe now more than ever. Government funding is certainly less secure than it used to be. Organizations are under extraordinary pressure. The entire funding landscape is shifting. Large donors who are more responsive to economic shifts are going to be facing uncertainty and we are over reliant on those major givers. So all of these things point to we need a more diversified fundraising and donor pool. This is what this analysis showed. So first of all, what did we do? Well, we looked at the people who are responding to nonprofit solicitations and we looked at that same profile of person. So people who have the same values, same attitudes about giving, same views on the nonprofit sector, and looked at the Factors that are most correlated with responding to a donation appeal. But just comparing the people who are the same but aren't asked to, the people who are asked. So this is just people who are likely, the data show, are likely to respond with a donation who are not being asked to give. And that trend is really troubling because we're seeing a growing population who are just not being included. And I think ultimately what it comes down to is a hyper focus on large donor stewardship and wealth screening at the expense of broad engagement. They have organizations and I think, you know, our own reporting has contributed to this, frankly, like the Fundraising Effectiveness Project reports. If you look at that as the weather report, well, it looks like all the money is coming from the large donors, because it is. And that that sometimes then drives organizations to focus on that at the expense of the broader engagement. And of course, what does that do? It just reinforces that that outcome and we get more money from the larger donors because that's where we're focusing. So if you look at that data and think what this is telling me is those smaller givers are less inclined to give, we're getting it all wrong. The fact is this is an indication that they're being engaged less. That still didn't tell us what it was worth. So we use consumer spend analysis, the Fundraising Effectiveness Project data, our Giving Pulse data, to estimate what is the value of that missing invitation. And at the low end, we think we're leaving $19 billion a year on the table. $19 billion from people who would give to your organization if you invited them to do so, and they're just not being asked. It could be as high as $46 billion.

A (23:48)

I'm just thinking now of all of the different places that could and probably should have asked me for money throughout the years. I'm thinking you know, specifically of like arts organizations like and membership organizations or non profits that are afraid to ask volunteers for money. So I don't think you're talking about like complete strangers necessarily. It's just more looking at who is in the community, who are, you know, even, you know, your clients. They really just depend on your organization. But thinking of an animal shelter like you absolutely should be asking the people that foster dogs for a donation, people that are connected. Do you think that peer to peer fundraising could play a part in this? Like people asking their networks for money?

C (24:41)

Yeah, of course. I mean anything that helps get us out to a broader cross section of people. What we really hope people take away from this finding is that there are many Many people who are eager, ready, willing, able to give, who are just not being invited. And again, it's about shifting our mindset from solicitation to engagement and recognizing that people want to make change. They want to have agency, and your job is to provide them with that opportunity. This is the evidence that it's worth your while to do so. It's now not even optional. We're in a bit of a crisis situation here, and if we don't do this, it used to be we should do this because we don't. We don't like this decline in participation, and now it's an existential threat. And these are people who want to support your mission. So how are you going to enable that?

A (25:40)

100%. I love what you said about communication, where communication. We're not talking about more solicitation necessarily. We're talking about more engagement, and we're talking about getting people involved, interested, aware. I think what happens often when fundraisers, marketers, they think about engagement. They want to draw that red line from, oh, this Facebook post raised us this amount of money, or, you know, we wrote this blog post, so therefore it should be worth this much. But engagement comes in so many forms, and there's so many different ways to get a feel for the pulse of the people in your community and to reach out to more people and then, you know, sort of earn that right to ask them, and then ask them probably more than more than you think is comfortable. So it's really like a fine. It's a balancing act.

C (26:31)

It is. And we don't. We know advocates and volunteers give. We know that the more opportunities you give someone to engage and support your organization, including things like volunteer opportunities, the more likely they're to be retained as a donor. So when we see the way people give, it doesn't reflect how we're inviting them to give. That's a problem. It's interesting to look at Giving Tuesday as a day. So here we have, by far the biggest day for donor acquisition in the US every year by a huge margin, way above December 31st. And what we see is that although on the one hand, the most common way people participate in Giving Tuesday is by donating money to a nonprofit. But only donating money is the least common behavior. Most people are doing more than one thing, and the vast majority of donors are also taking some other kind of action. So this is an indication of how we should be engaging. We should be giving people a broader set of opportunities, more on ramps onto our mission, more engagement, more ways that they can be part of this and not because. Well, specifically because it's not an either or. It's either that or. It's the money. It's literally. That's how you get the money is by having a more meaningful, relevant relationship with givers.

A (27:50)

100%. We don't want things to be transactional now. And especially with. I think I wanted this to be the first podcast where we. I didn't talk about AI, but there we go. I had to bring it up. I was just realizing that I talk about it. But I think in an age where a lot of the communication we're receiving feels robotic and generic, that's the way nonprofits can stand out. I always say, you know, storytelling is kind of like our last, best competitive advantage. Like this is how we can do it. This is the meaningful relationships we have with people. The meaning that's behind giving and participating and volunteering and advocating that special, you know, that emotional connection that's so much more than just a simple purchase. That's what's really going to help us stand out. And I think we need to be really trying to figure out what's our, for our organization, what's our, you know, what's our unique purpose? Like what can we tell our donors that we do better than anyone else and bring them along and show them the vision of the world that we want to create and invite them to be a part of it in any way they can. I think those are the organizations that are going to really succeed rather than ones like you're saying that are just operating like donors are just a data point on a spreadsheet.

C (29:04)

100%. And I, you know, okay, so we're going to talk about AI, I think, you know, my hope is that we don't just use AI to do this poor job faster.

A (29:16)

Right, exactly, exactly.

C (29:18)

Because AI can be very helpful at. Yes, of course, at well, screening. Right. Like if we only apply it to accelerating our current outcomes, then that's going to mean just more money from fewer people, faster. And that's not an outcome we actually want. And we also know that when we're hyper reliant, when we're over reliant on large donors, that actually is has real economic resilience impact in that those larger donors are more responsive to market shifts and economic uncertainty and they're more likely. We saw, in 2023, we saw people down grading their donations and if you're overly reliant on those groups, then we're at risk. So how else can we deploy AI? And one of the opportunities is what we're talking about here is a genuine personal connection at scale. And that can be challenging to do, but there are tools that can help us to find those people and help them find us. And my hope is that we see more applications of new AI technology to help us do that job and diversify our message on our donor base and help them find us and help our invitation find them and diversify that not just the people that we're reaching, but the type of engagement that we're having and not instead of large donor stewardship, but in addition to that.

A (30:42)

So there just seems like an insurmountable amount of risks, of challenges, of obstacles that the entire sector is facing in this moment. What gives you hope right now?

C (30:57)

Well, I mean, it's very easy to see all of the problems that we're facing, all the externalities, right? That those exogenous problems that we don't have control over. And up till now, our. Our message has been, look there, there's another option. And what's different now is we know very clearly what the big opportunities are specifically, and we know how big they are. And so we. We hope that. That this being able to put a number to it helps organizations to forge a new strategy, because these are very doable, very addressable opportunities. And although at a minimum, they indicate $52 billion more for the nonprofit sector in the US every year, it's actually much more than that. First, because we've estimated at the bottom end of all of our estimates, but more importantly, because this is $23 billion a year if we're more active in the middle of the year, but we still don't invite Everybody. And it's $19 billion if we invite more broadly, but not in the middle of the year. So these strategies are actually more than additive if we combine them. And that's absolutely doable.

A (32:15)

Oh, I know. I love that. And I think that really, that also gives me hope. So what's next for the data commons? What's on the horizon? And where can people follow the research?

C (32:25)

So we are looking ahead at giving. Tuesday. We'll be releasing some new research. We already have our report, Generosity as Resilience was looking back at 2024, in the beginning of 2025 opportunities and the state of generosity around the world. Our Fundraising Effectiveness Project reports will continue to come out. I hope that people will use that to set their strategies and benchmark giving Tuesdays is interesting and important this year. What we're seeing is so many challenges in the media landscape and for nonprofits But a couple of things to note. One is organizations are seeing the need for broader individual outreach everyday. Giving is a higher priority right now for organizations. The shift in the tax legislation is a really good indicator of the direction we need to go. I think a lot of the issues there are going to be suppressive on the sort of higher end of the donation scale. All the more reasons to start building a broader base right now. Giving Tuesdays, the single biggest day for donor acquisition. We have to come out strong on Giving Tuesday and then use that to stay active throughout the year. The Data Commons. You can follow our reporting@givingtuesday.org data for all of these reports, and we'll be looking very closely at what's happening on the day this year as an indicator of how the end of the year is going to fare. And my hope is that what we're going to see is a resurgence, and that will be tapping into the individual giver, who, by the way, despite the fact that nonprofits have, in fact been less active, not than normal, but cyclically less active, response to solicitation is actually up. And so people in communities are concerned about lots of things and giving them agency over anything that they any problem that they can help solve is very welcome right now. So we'll be tracking all of that. Our Giving Pulse reports will give some insight into how that relates to people's civic engagement and how they're supporting communities in a variety of ways. And all of that will be released. And as I said, Giving Tuesday this year is coming up and is, I think, probably one of the more critically important moments that we've faced.

A (34:54)

Wow. That's wonderful. So givingtuesday.org/data I'll put all those links in the report. This has been wonderful. It's so good to see you. It's so good to hear from you. And I just my favorite topics are giving in generosity and how we can increase and how we can get more people involved because it's so important. Like you said, we can keep doing the same things and going after the major donors, and we should be doing that. But in addition, we need to be diversifying and making our giving and generosity efforts more inclusive and available to everyone. And that's really the way the sector is going to thrive and not just survive. So thanks so much for being here. Woodrow thanks for having me.

C (35:36)

Julia.

A (35:43)

Well, hey there.

B (35:45)

I wanted to say thank you for tuning into my show and for listening.

A (35:48)

All the way to the end.

B (35:50)

If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or a review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to and then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode, but until then you can find me on Instagram. Juliacampbell77 Keep changing the world, you non profit unicorn.