← We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits
We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits
649. Retention Is a Love Language: Using AI to Communicate With More Care (Not Just More Often) - Crystal Clark, Amina Mohamed + Michael Mitchell
00:44:16
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Hey, friends. Impact Up Pause is coming back on October 9, 2025. It's a worldwide gathering of change makers to restore energy, set boundaries that stick, and deepen the connections that fuel both our missions and our well being. You can join us in more than 25 cities, at meetups and online to reframe your relationship with work and perfection, to build wellness into your life and organization, and simply to pause, reflect, and take intentional action. Sign up for free today@weareforgood.com ImpactUp. We can't wait to see you there. Hey, I'm John.
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And I'm Becky.
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And this is the We Are For Good podcast.
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Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more, and be more for the causes that improve our world.
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We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
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So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers, and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
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A
So let's get started. Hey, so we're doing something a little bit different today. A couple weeks back, I was at the Fundraising AI Summit with some of our most amazing community members talking about retention in the age of AI. And we, we had this really interesting conversation that I wanted to bring to the podcast. And so I'm so excited for you to tune in. Here we go. Y' all are in to meet some of our dearest friends at We Are for Good because we wanted to bring the heart into the AI Summit. And I know there's probably been heart in every one of these sessions today, but we really want to talk about the heartbeat of building a movement comes to creating these moments of interaction, of connection with our donors. And we're going to talk about how do we do that in practice to grow retention, but to do it in a way that we feel good about, that reflects our values. That's done ethically. And we have created a powerhouse panel that is here to share all of their wisdom with you. So it is a huge honor to introduce them. Crystal Clark. She is the National Director of Donor Relations for Stop Soldier Suicide. Crystal is one of the OGs of the We Are For Good community. She has got this amazing background in both teaching and philanthropy leadership, including prior roles in healthcare fundraising and nonprofit development. But now she is the powerhouse leader of the national donor engagement team that is reducing veteran suicide. We lean on her in this community and she Is an organizer. I'm talking about loves people, loves humans, love connecting passions and ideas. Ideas. And she is a powerhouse. Good to see you, my friend.
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C
Good to see you too. Thanks for having me.
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A
Oh, my gosh, such an honor. And next up is Amina Mohammed. She is the founder and executive director of Cameras for Girls. She's based just outside of Toronto. Before starting this amazing organization, she spent this incredible career as a photographer and filmmaker in Canada's film and television industry. So she's got amazing stories, let's be clear. But her passion for using film to really empower. And she uses the word empower because it's already within us, women and girls in Africa. With photography, with ethical storytelling skills, with business skills, she is helping not only upskill a generation, but she's helping them secure jobs and economic independence. She's just casually doing this from her remodeled church that she lives in up in Toronto, which is so amazing. It is good to have you on this panel, my friend. Good to see you.
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D
I'm so honored you asked me. Thank you so much.
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A
And Michael Mitchell, one of my friends from Oklahoma City. He's not only a friend, but also a mentor. He has been in the nonprofit fundraising international relief space for more than 20 years. Holy cow. He is really focused on building donor relationships that last. He's helping eradicate child hunger, specifically his role as vice president of advancement at Feed the Children. And he holds a master's degree, so he's not just talking shop. He also has the educational chops to back this up. He has a master's in education from the University of Oklahoma and a BBA in marketing. Blending that strategic insight with his commitment for social impact. Michael, I always love hanging out with you. Good to see you, friend. What's up?
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Thanks for having me today. I appreciate it.
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Okay, y', all, we could just do this all day. I'm picturing us having coffee. And the title of this session is a little disruptive, I think, for the AI space because we had this idea of talking about retention as a love language. And I want to share a couple of the stats if I can find my place in my script here because this is always coming out. And Kelsey could probably confirm this from the data they see at Giving Tuesday. But only 19% of first time donors are going to give again next year. Like that's painful to think about. And virtuous. Did this study recently that shared that Even if a 5% lift in retention happened in your donor group right now, that could turn into 20% revenue growth in just five years. So the small shifts that we can make in focusing on the people that are already giving to us is where it's at. And so this session's all about this. And as we think about it as a love language, I want to start off by anchoring this, by asking each of y', all, what. What does that mean to you in practice? So if retention is a love language, what does it look like in your organization? Krystal, I'm going to start with you, my friend.
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C
Absolutely. Well, I. I then aied. I read a book a long time ago for my. My relationship with my husband, and it worked with my children. I don't know if you guys read the five love languages.
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A
I remember this. Yeah.
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C
And I asked it to put it in donor language versus relationship. So for us, there's two that are really ringing true for us at Stop Soldier Suicide. So one is the words of affirmation. So it's really talking about what does that donor recognition look like right out of the gate, like we were talking about before? Like, we are sending those personalized messages, making sure our donors feel loved, and we're doing that out of the gate. And then my love language is quality time, and that is really building the relationship. So it's the first piece of engagement of getting it right. And then also to following our fearless leader. Kathy always says, follow the cookie crumble trail and making sure that you are building those warm relationships. So that's what I would say that we are doing here at Stop Soldier Suicide.
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It really does track. I feel like we could make a fundraising edition of that book, bring it back to the Amazon list. How do we get the licensing rights for that? Yeah, Michael, what you got for me? What is this lifting for you?
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E
Yeah, I mean, so it's the standard stuff, right? It's making sure people are thanked quickly and that they feel seen and heard. And when they give, we show up and we say, hey, we noticed. We noticed that you did this. That's the standard stuff. And then I think it's also about really trying to center people at the center of the story. And there's a lot of pushback in the sector right now about who's the hero. And for us, it's about remembering that the donor is the hero of their story and putting them right there in the center of the communications and talking them up over and above the organization. The people we serve have dignity and strength, and they're the heroes of their story, but a donor is the hero of their story as well. And just trying to make sure that shows up in our communication. So it's not about us, about what we did, but about what they helped accomplish.
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It's like personalization at scale. Obviously there's not one size fits all for everybody. Mina, what is lifting for you?
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Well, I'm one person. I'm trying to do it all. But the one thing I, the one thing I really focus on is building relationships. Right? So I, I automated the donor journey. Yoo hoo. But so they get an automatic thank you, but you have to go further than that. And I'm going to speak further about this later on another question, but our donors are part of the community that's helping our young women get jobs in male dominated media. If we don't appreciate them where they're at, not for just their donation, but what they are actually supporting and teaching them about the challenges that these women are going through and the struggles that they have, but not focusing on, you know, the difficulty or the hardships, but focusing on what is possible bringing them into the journey. They don't care. They're not going to care. And so it's about showing them that the impact that they're creating. And when you show them the impact that they're helping create, not you because you're the executive director or the founder or the one who's leading the programming or the one who's developing everything, it's them. Without them, none of this is possible. And you need to start there. It's less about thank you for giving and more about look what you made possible. And I think that shift for us at least changes everything.
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I think back to when I had the aha moment in my nonprofit career was when I saw that the, when the impact was connected to the gift. I saw that someone physically shifted to becoming a believer. What I would call them a believer. In like, wow, what I did actually mattered. They cared enough to tell me what mattered, that it happened. And like that translates. And that means they're going to be more connected or more responsive next time. So. Okay. I love this idea. We've already talked about the power of like relationship building. I mean, that's kind of the core of this. What do you think is the barrier right now to building lasting relationships? Michael, we'll start with you.
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Noise. There's, There is so. There's so much noise, so little signal out there right now. And AI has made that problem worse because now anyone can just generate a bunch of stuff to throw out there. And so noise has gone up and it's beige goo is what Kevin Schulman refers to it as over at Donor Voice. It does so much beige goo. It's just noise. And so that's a barrier. And then just the thing that's always been a barrier is the lack of trust. People have had so many bad experiences with nonprofits, with fundraisers. Their guard is up when we come to interact with them, and you have to make it through that barrier before you ever have any shot at beginning to demonstrate trust and relationship.
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A
This is making me want to jump because you. You've already kind of led me to hear that. Noise is one of our biggest barriers right now. And I'm curious, when does communication feel like care versus when does it feel like noise? Because we all have our chat GP. I won't say everybody, most of us have a chatGPT or something similar open to help us throughout the day, whether it's a brainstorming partner or mine's usually. Please edit this email. Please make me not sound, like, completely crazy over here. How do we separate the noise to actually feel like care, but not like robotic care? Do y' all have thoughts about that? I'll start with you, Crystal.
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C
Yeah, I'll use a real example. We actually just deployed a white paper where we have this really amazing project called the Black Box project. And, you know, you get this new. I'm going to call. It's not a shiny object, but in our world of, like, being able to share something with donors, we get excited and I think organically, everybody's like, oh, my gosh, like, what is the. The blanket thing that we're all going to say to all of our donors? And I was, like, telling my team, and actually they came to me too, like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, you know, this. This project is very heavy in lost survivor space. So we. We can't send an email to our lost survivors sharing the data findings that we have. So we picked up the phone, we called those donors, we let them know we have this white paper. Do you actually want to read it? Because some people, they may not be ready, and for others, we can use, you know, like, we might be having one on one interaction, and we tell them about it and then we can follow up. But I think too often we get like, you know, use that word, care. We have to have intentionality about how we're sharing our information versus, I call it the peanut butter smear, which we've all been probably very guilty of. But it's really thinking about, like, okay, what is it that we have in our lap to share with our donor? What Is the appropriate way to share it? And how do we cascade that information in a meaningful way?
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What is it stirring up for y'?
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All?
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I mean, Michael, on Care vs. Noise, what does that look like for y' all in practice?
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Yeah, I'll say. It feels like care when we make it about them. Their impact, their values. Are they aligned with ours? Are we aligning with theirs, their story in this bigger mission? But it becomes noise when we reduce donors to transactions or push content that doesn't connect back to what we've invested in emotionally. Right. I learned very early on to use donor centric language. Right. You versus we. But it also has to be authentic. Just because you wrote you instead of we does not make it donor centric. It's just noise. So it has to align back to all those things that I already mentioned.
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We think there's this magic cadence that we have to follow. We've got to communicate this. And so we can fall into those, like, communication calendars. We make marketing calendars. We have plans. And so then we end up forcing things out the door. And I'm pushing on our team to say, let's be more organic by that. I would rather 45 days go between a contact and you send something that you are really excited about. Then you try to force it at, okay, it's been 30 days. The plan says you communicate every 30 days. Get something out the door. We were sitting in that space recently and it was like, I don't know. It's been a long time since we've communicated with people. We get this 37 page program report on one of our programs. We're a feeding organization. And there's this like, obscure quote in there about this girl who got to go to prom because of some of the things that she received through one of our partners. We're a feeding organization. It's. It's not about kids going to prom, but it is about kids going to prom. And I remember reading that and I just got like, I got giddy. And so immediately that was the like, okay, I'm sending out an email to people and I'm just gonna sit here, fire it off at my desk. And as a feeding organization, tell them, hey, you help kids go to promote last year. And I think the not noise is like, if I'm excited about it, let's tell that story. Let's not just force it either.
- [14:08]
A
I love that. I mean, especially if it can come from your voice. I mean, I mean, you've already said you're a one person organization right now, except for your amazing believers and volunteers around you. But it's like to hear directly from your voice, this is what excited me or this is what cut through for me, like matters. And I think that's a principle we can really apply because it makes people lean in and not tune us out. We were talking about trust, so I want to kind of double click on trust a little bit too. How can we use AI even though we're kind of overwhelmed with all the things that are on our plates? How can we use AI to actually help build trust with the donor rather than just like speeding up all of our tasks? Do you all have thoughts on that? Michael, I can start with you on this one.
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Yeah, I mean it's hard. It's very, very hard. I want to acknowledge that. I mean I'll just share one. I'm one person too. We're all one. One sample size of one. I'm a big note taker and so when I'm, when I'm talking to donors I always hey, is it okay if I take notes? And I do that when I'm on the phone. And one of the ways I think you build trust is by remembering what you tell someone you're going to do in a conversation or remembering something that they share. And I'm a forgetful guy. Like I, I have to remind myself every Monday to get my boys to piano practice by 6 o' clock or I forget and it's been that way for months and months, months. And I forget. And so I'm using AI When I finish a conversation, I'm immediately recording all of my notes into a voice memo and having it transcribe it so I can drop it into some large language model and have it tell me, you know, hey, what did we talk about? What did I promise? What's something I should remember from this call and then using that. And there's nothing fancy that's getting that into our CRM. Like that's still manual. Although I'm sure there's tools of sponsors here of this summit who could help with all that. But I'm trying to use AI just to help me remember things. And when I remember things, that generates trust. I think foreign.
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Hey friends, here's a bit of real talk. This movement doesn't happen without community and that includes our incredible ecosystem partners, Big.
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Gratitude to give Butter RKD Group, donor doc feather whiteboard and so on. These aren't just sponsors, they're mission driven allies showing up to fuel change alongside us.
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A
They're still support helps bring you the Free tools, education, keynotes and summits, because they believe, like we do, that investing in people is what powers real impact.
- [16:44]
B
So if you're searching for a new CRM tech tool, maybe a brand partner, direct mail partner, or even an impact strategist, we'd love for you to start with our trusted Rex. We vetted them so you don't have to.
- [16:56]
A
You want to learn more, head over to weareforgood.com Rex. That's we are for. For VIP access to orgs and amazing humans doing really great work. Boom. I've been the recipient of that. I mean, Michael, text me something that I'm like, how do you remember that's happening in my life? And it's because you're probably taking notes on some level, you know, that you're like, I want to check in with my friend in a couple of weeks on this. So y' all also want to jump in on this? I think it's so powerful.
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D
I mean, yeah, I'll just say, I don't rely on AI to build trust. I lean into being human. So to give you an example, after I returned from this past trip to Uganda in April, I spent five straight days with I literally cramped hands. And my handwriting is. Excuse my language shit, because now I've got arthritis and all that. But I wrote them thank you cards to every single one of our donors, whether they were one time a camera donor or a monthly donor. And inside each card, I added a photo that was recently taken by a student who'd only been learning with us for two months. But this photo, as a photographer, it was incredible. And I had to share it. Not on social media, not in a newsletter, but with our donors. And one of our newest corporate sponsors wrote back after he got my card, and he showed took a photo of his wall, and he had framed this five 4 by 6 photo in a frame and hung it on a wall. And he said, that wall is now reserved for all the photos you're going to continue to send me. And that built trust because he was new in this sponsorship role. Like, we've had this sponsor for a couple of years giving us lens pens. Shout out to lens pen for each student. And he came on and he was like, who's this? Cameras for girls? And I wrote to him and I told him what the girl before him who was fired had been doing. And he said, well, we'll see. I sent him that. I built trust. And now he's like, I'm with you guys for the long haul. And that's how you Build trust, right? And I might have just used AI to make my sounds myself sound better when I wrote something. But every single note that I wrote was not a copy of the other. It was something personal to the person who I wrote it to. And so that's how I used it.
- [19:28]
A
Can we please check out the chat that there is a recipient of one of your notes? This is the power of the handwritten note. I mean that's what stands out. That's what we remember. That's what cuts through crystal. You're a master of stewardship, my friend. Is something lifting for you in this trust building kind of question?
- [19:48]
C
I mean I think they both slam dunked it to be honest. I think the one thing that I will say that I use, I'm, I'm more warm in tone and I know I have some donors that like very direct, right? Like they want it very concise. And that is not my strength, friends. So I may write it in crystal language and ask, you know, AI to help me to be a little bit more formatted. That's going to fit the need of my donor because I'm still. That's not my strength. So I, I will lean on, you know. And again I think it's to trust as, as far as me under. I think from the human side it's about me knowing what my donor likes, the community, the style of communication. But me knowing that's not my strength and being able to use AI to kind of help me format in a way that speaks his love language. Because I work with a lot of military and they want to know straight to the point, let's get to it. All right, let's 800.
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A
Yes. Whatever the time, format all the things.
- [20:48]
C
So I have used that many times to help me streamline some, some communication that I know is an area of weakness for myself.
- [20:56]
A
Oh my gosh. I am just obsessed that this session we can say yes, use AI and it comes down to like the handwritten notes, the simple gestures, the remembering milestones, the printing of pictures that someone can use as part of their identity or they're what makes their life or their home more, more meaningful in connection to your cause. It's coming back to some of the basics and not losing that with all of the amazing tech that's going on. So I want to like spend some time camping out and this is the. Sorry, not sorry you came to this session. We're going to talk about the ethics of this because we feel like it is so important when we're storytelling, when we are dealing with some of the most difficult stories to tell. And I think the organizations represented here intersect that in a lot of different ways. But we want to talk about that as how we storytell in an ethical way. And so I'm going to kickstart us by saying this storytelling is central to retention. We've already heard this sharing the stories of one so we can understand what the problem or the pain. But how do you ensure that AI doesn't start to distort or oversimplify or whitewash the real stories of the people that we're serving? So I want to start with you, Amina, on this topic.
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D
So we work in Africa and I am from Uganda, I'm a refugee to Canada from Uganda. But when I started this growing up in Canada, I could not go back and tell them what they needed. I had to ask them what they needed to succeed and then build my programming around it. So so many of us go in with well meaning intentions into a community or a country thinking that we have the answers and we don't. Right? We need to be asking the right questions. We need to be involving that community in what we build. So at the end of the day, it has real impact. And furthermore, when we're sharing stories about the people that we work with, I don't say serve, I don't say empower, I say in power. When we work with these communities of people. And for me it's young women who've been marginalized, who've been, you know, traumatized through trying to get into male dominated media. I have to be so careful about what I share and how I share it. So I might write it in my words, but I'll go back to them and say, what about this? Is this a fit? Help me amend it, help me tell it in your own words. Or I'll ask them for their words, their videos, their voices, and I'll share it. And if I find that they've written something that could harm them in terms of getting their voice out or a job or further marginalized in a patriarchal society, I will not share it. I will say to them, look, I'm not going to share this because it's going to harm you. This, this, this. You know, you got to stop the colonial narratives. You got to stop that storytelling where you are further marginalizing those communities with stories you think that people or your donors want to hear. They don't want to see it anymore, they don't care for it. They don't. It's not impactful, it's not real. Storytelling. So really understand the nuance between storytelling and ethical and it'll go a long way to serving your cause. And I'm happy to hear to support you if you ever need that.
- [24:15]
A
Well, okay. Homework for everybody. A go make a monthly gift to cameras for girls. And you get to see this in your inbox or any of the amazing organizations here. Cause you can see this in action, but you lead with joy. We, we call it marketing as mission. It's like the actual. The way we storytell is how we live our values. It's how we actually demonstrate our values in real life. So I want to open it up to both Michael and Crystal. If this is stirring within you, something you want to share.
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E
Crystal, we were talking about this backstage. I want, I want you to go.
- [24:44]
C
Yeah, I was just gonna pop in here because obviously our organization talks about a very tough topic. It's suicide. We actually did a blog a little while ago. Like you can't even say the word suicide on TikTok. Like we, we just shared this. But that in the taboo it's like we have to be talking about these things. So in the ethics of like I think we're still figuring out our voice to be very honest with you in this space. But I think what it always narrows down for us is we know that we have AI in itself. It's a helpful thing, but it's always keeping it very authentic because the journey that our veterans and service members go through that gets them to that point is real. And we have to make sure that we are being ethic, being ethical in telling those stories. But also on the other side, we work most of the stories. If you go to our website or if you receive any of our communications, we talk a lot about our lost survivors because we're still fine tuning the people that we have the privilege to care for on a day to day basis. But we are always constantly, like even today actually we have an opportunity to share a story. But in a family that shared their story years ago, but we're still going back and making sure that they're okay because we don't know where they are on their journey of grief. So making sure that we're still able to tell their story with the right integrity in the right space. So that's just a little bit of, of that piece.
- [26:13]
A
I love that you lifted that. But it's not like a forever consent that I shared my story. Like things change, people change, Technology obviously has changed. Do we want that to be forever documented and retold into perpetuity? So I love that you lifted.
- [26:26]
C
That traumatized these fans. You know, they may have been in, you know, it could be re. Traumatizing for them as well. And I think that's where from a. Although we have these incredible, you know, the people that we care for on a day to day incredible stories of hope for a lot of our veterans and service members, but we haven't, we haven't found that ethical way. So we're not ready to do it yet. So we paused it. You know, it. We're not ready and we're not just going to do it. To do it.
- [26:51]
A
Michael, you want to add anything?
- [26:54]
E
I mean, yes, but it's going to sound so absurdly simple after that. I mean the red, the red line is AI hallucinates and so we have to be the backstop.
- [27:07]
A
Double click on that for a second.
- [27:09]
E
Yeah, we cannot tell stories that are not true. I mean we, we get these great interview transcripts that our team goes out and captures and these stories and, and, and I have seen in, in sort of the editing process, like things get added into a story and then I'm like, I don't remember that. I've read the transcript. It's not there. And so I'm going to go back to it and okay, you have to be that backstop. You can't send things out. That's common sense. We know we can't send things out the door without a human looking at them. But you really, really have to. Anytime you're using anything like a tool like that to take a story, to make sure and occasionally you've got to tell a composite story. I get that. We've all told composite stories. And just being really clear when you're telling a composite story, put that in there, put it in the footer of the letter, put an asterisk there and put it. And these are, these are just, these are ethical storytelling ideas. And the challenge, we're just applying them to AI we're not going to use AI to sensationalize. We're going to make sure that this story presents a person in a position of strength and dignity in their own story. And even doing some work to create custom GPTs and things like evaluate this story for how well it's going to follow our internal principles of ethical storytelling. And letting AI even self police itself is another way to do that.
- [28:34]
A
So good. And I love the comments that are coming through too. Melissa. I got a lift. We need a Hippocratic oath for philanthropy. Do no harm. I mean, how powerful of a statement is that and so true. I want to talk about impact reporting for just a split second. How do you guard against kind of what you're describing here, AI wanting to create this shiny but let's call it shallow update instead of authentic trust building reality, you know, and sometimes that's, that's a difficult, maybe the perception that you need to present in a certain way to secure funding. How do you walk that line? If y' all have kind of gone into that crystal, I'll lead in with you on that.
- [29:15]
C
Yeah, we actually, our impact report, we've been very data driven at Stop Soldier suicide, but we've missed the, I shouldn't say miss. We have been a work in progress in telling the story behind the numbers because there's some numbers that the layman person, they might be reading and it may not make complete sense, like why this statistic is significantly important in the suicide space. One of them is rallied around, you know, reduction of suicidality and it seems like, well, what it's, you know, 46%. But what about those other people? But we're not, we're not telling that full story completely. So I think from an etho, like an ethical standpoint and looking at our impact report, I think it's our responsibility too that again we talked about earlier, we're not just dispersing everything to the masses. We're actually doing things with intentionality, with the right audience and, and you know, whether it's segmentation or pulling out certain pieces of it. I think again, not to use the peanut butter schmear, but too often we're doing it that way and it's not helping to fine tune what we're trying to say, what our true impact is. And Amina, you said it too. Like, what is it that they were vested in earlier? Was it, was it the program or was it our innovation? Like we have to make sure that we're kind of looking at both of those pieces. So I would say that's kind of the, the big piece there that we've been doing and working on a work in progress.
- [30:41]
A
I want to ask y', all, is there an ethical red line that you will not cross? Is there something out there that you're like, okay, this is the limit when thinking about using AI with donor comms like that. Just nail it on the head of what that is for you. Amina, do you want to go?
- [30:54]
D
We will never manipulate donor emotions for conversion or for donations. So I see a lot of. Okay, I said I wasn't going to talk about it, but I'm Going to. Lately, I've seen some big organizations. I'll leave them unnamed for now, going back to poverty porn to try and get donations. And I literally, when I saw it was at a restaurant and my mouth hung open, it was back to, you know, the times of the 90s and the early 2000s when you saw, you know, children with flies buzzing naked. And I was, I was just wondering, why are they going backwards to convert donors rather than moving forward? There was nothing ethical about it. I don't know if they talked to AI and said, oh, this is the way to go, but we don't do that. It's a hard line for us. And as I mentioned before, colonial narratives are still a thing. And so for me, as an ethical storytelling practitioner, I'm always fighting this. I'm always trying to teach AI what is not right, what is okay. But also we teach it in our curriculum with our girls in Africa. Because if I'm going to be talking about it outside, I have to be talking about it inside. It has to be on both sides. So, you know, that's where I'm. It's always about respecting the dignity and the autonomy of the person, but also the dignity and the autonomy of our donors too. Right. And the people who support us because it's a full circle thing.
- [32:32]
A
I'm so glad you went there and shared that. Thank you for, for that piece. I mean, I want to get practical because we've shared a lot of things that I know there's a lot in the room here that are getting so much from this. But it comes down to, okay, let's. How do we apply this in the work? And I know all of us have a long list of things in front of us that we want to do and want to do them with the honoring the ethics that we're talking about. I think it starts with a culture, fostering this culture of having the ability to try things. We call it try stuff around. We are for good just experiments. And we're going to test new things and we're going to test new strategies. So I want to kick it to y'.
- [33:08]
C
All.
- [33:08]
A
Is there like an experiment that you've run to. To improve retention? Maybe you used AI a little bit more than in the past, what worked and what didn't. And I'd love to hear about the flops, if you're willing to share. But Crystal, I'll start with you.
- [33:21]
C
Sure. We're actually in the middle of something, so I don't know outcomes yet. I'm very excited. So how we Grew as an organization was actually through Facebook donations. We did a lot of Facebook challenges. So you might have seen like 100 mile challenge or do this many push ups in a month. And it's this amazing group of humans that raised 25$50 and it's been this huge collective and they've been sitting in the space of challenges. But you know, if you ran 100 miles, you may never want to do that ever again. Right. So we are right now in the midst of doing what we're. We're doing journeys with them in Facebook messenger. And before we even start talking to them about do you want to become a monthly donor? Do you want to do another challenge before we're asking that we're actually collecting really good stories. We're understanding why did they come into this space in the first place. And we're now segmenting them and talking to them. Because this is at mass, right? So we can't do like I can't do that many handwritten notes, Amina. I might not have a hand afterwards, but really trying to tailoring our conversation with these people. And I'm really excited because since I've been here, it's been something that I've been wanting to uncover and engage because they've been this amazing champion for our mission and excited to see what comes out because, you know, there's, there's some. The collection of stories, one has been really inspiring and then the other pieces, you know, how else do they want to stay engaged with them and that we can provide them that outlet to stay with us?
- [34:59]
A
Okay. I love the chill are doing this. I love that we're flipping the pyramid and talking about the small donors too on this. This is our love language right here. Building movements one donor at a time. Okay, I really want to hear what's working for y' all right now in your organizations. And I'm gonna start by asking what's a tool or workflow that's actually made donor retention easier for you or your team? Krystal, I'll. I was gonna go back to you, but Michael, let's start with you on this one. What's a workflow or a tool that's worked in your operation right now?
- [35:29]
E
Yeah, so. So my team is largely frontline fundraisers. There are people going out, so they're. They're having a lot of one to one conversations. And what we realize is that such a big organization, so much programmatically happening and the data was everywhere. And so there's a bottleneck. You're always having to Go to program people and ask questions, which is good. We want those relationships internally. We have this large monitoring and evaluation program that's getting just pages and pages and pages of not just outputs, but outcomes data. And we have been feeding it into an agent in Copilot that is now something that we can go and we can chat with. Hey, how many, how many people did we serve at this particular location last year? And if it was in the monitoring evaluation report that was done for that program, it spits it out. Oh, what's the cost of this program to do this? Put it in and it is. And it's citing it. That's the great thing about Copilot. It's showing you exactly where in the PDFs that you've uploaded and the reports and things like that. And that is making us. Making it much faster. When a donor has a conversation that we don't know the answer to that we can go and, hey, what is the answer to this? Maybe run it by a colleague and program and say, hey, I was asked this. This is what I found. Is that accurate? Sometimes there's a bit of nuance, but that is helping us in huge ways.
- [36:57]
A
Okay, loving that example. And I'm sure everyone would love to see the behind the scenes. So ping Michael after this if you want to see how that works and any other tools or, you know, kind of things that y' all are leaning into for your workflows. Crystal or Amina.
- [37:11]
D
More on the donation side, I've had, I switched everything to Raisli, which talks to my CRM.
- [37:18]
A
So it's for the CRM.
- [37:21]
D
So good automatic, you know, receipting. It does it all. And the thank you and the whole thing. But then back to the retention. Can't forget those personal thank yous. So I don't care if you're a $5 donor, a $100 donor, or more. You get the same thank you from me every month. But not. But it's always about an update over on top of our newsletter, which goes out bi weekly for our donors. And so it's. It's keeping them pulled in, it's keeping them up to date. And they love it because they get an inside view of what's happening. And you know, I screw up, I screw up a lot. I'm sure we all do. I'll share a really brief story. So about two months ago, I sent out an email to my home newsletter says, guided by somebody who told me to do this. Are you still aligned with us? And I got so many donors peed off with me. Like so many. I was not like, I was just like, what? And, and I went back onto my newsletter and I did an apology, like a human to human apology and said, look, I'm still learning. I screwed up. Was guided on to do this because you know, to bring the newsletter numbers like tighter. So I hope you don't leave me because I'm still learning. And the same people who got pissed off responded and said, thank you, I'm still here with you. Right. So I could have done a, AI generated, what do I do? Right. But instead I just decided, screw the AI, screw everything else, just be human, be yourself. That's what they fell in love with in the first place. And be human. At the end of the day, you.
- [39:04]
A
You'Ve said it a couple times now that you don't build trust with AI. You build trust by being human. And I think the oops email and owning always tracks like the most opened email. Yeah, exactly.
- [39:15]
D
Yeah.
- [39:16]
A
It's so good. And it's honestly like relieving too, you know.
- [39:19]
D
Yeah.
- [39:19]
A
That's how we can reposition it to our boards. You know, it's actually a strategy to be a little bit more human and not be so polished all the time.
- [39:25]
D
Exactly.
- [39:27]
A
You know, when you hang in we are for goods world, we always want to ask for one good thing. But I just want to invite you if you've been in the chat, I know we've not been able to get too many or any Q&As yet. Bring those to the lounge and we would love to just jam with you for a few minutes on that side of it. But as we round out, you know, we've talked about retention is love in action. I would love to get your reflection of what is a one good thing from either this conversation or maybe just something that's sticking out to you that you want to share with this community of change makers listening today. What's lifting for you? And I'll start with Michael.
- [39:57]
E
Yeah, we talked about this a bit backstage. It's just the paradox of the things that scale are actually the things that don't scale just continue to do the things that don't scale that you can't ask an AI to do do and just be absurdly human in that way. And I think that is a great, great backstop against a lot of the ethics that we're talking about. A lot of the like misuses for AI just to continue to say, okay, what can I as a human do? And how can I be absurdly human Messy? How can I make mistakes like Amina said and just own them and send that oops email out and just continually looking for, okay, how do I, how do I show up as, as an authentic human, human being in this relationship?
- [40:39]
A
So good. And I want to say the book Masters of Scale, Reid Hoffman, that's one of his 10 points of like do the things that don't scale to scale. Which is bizarre and kind of flips the script but has made me rethink about it too. It uncovers new ideas. You can kind of stay in touch with your community really closely when you do the one on one engagement at all times. Amina, let's go to you next.
- [41:02]
D
I think donor retention, because that's where we started with is love in action. So looks like slowing down to listen. And I love Michael's point about making notes, which I'm going to get better at making our donors feel their impact and only using AI as a super tool, not a substitute for human connection. So I see so many people posting AI generated stuff out there and there's no, nothing human about it left. Like there's no feeling, there's no connection, there's no communication. One of my donors and I have been trying to meet up for since I came back in March because he's got a, a check for me and I said to him, don't mail it. I want to be able to drive to get it. His wife ended up in hospital with sepsis. I've been keeping in touch with him daily because I wanted to go and see her and it's not the right time. And he said, no, I'll just put the check in the mail. I said, no, it's going to have to wait until she's better and you're better and I can come for it and visit. I can't do that. Build those connections, build those values and keep your. Always remember when you're writing with AI, what are your values? Because you have to be able to make that connection based on values. If you lose that, if you lose what makes you human and you react only to what AI is able to do because you're a stressful time or you're trying to get something out the door or whatever it is you, you've lost the battle. So AI for us, I call it my best friend because it's helped me be much more productive but not a substitute for that humanity that we also need to keep that top of mind, especially in the world we're living in today.
- [42:49]
A
Oh my Gosh, that's a TED Talk I feel like you've just framed on a TED Talk. Let's talk about that 10 minute flow. It's so good. Crystal, the human that knows how to make people feel loved and seen. I've gotten to experience in how she's organized our impact up gatherings in Washington D.C. and makes everybody in the room feel like special and being there. I'm excited to close with you with your one good thing today.
- [43:11]
C
To be honest, I think they both did an amazing job. Like I, I think my word, I said this before, is being authentic. I think wherever you are, whether it's with your colleagues or you're with a donor or you're in this space that we're in right now, people feel that. And I think when you are using those AI tools like I always like, again, you're talking to it and training it to be like you. Like, I don't want to sound. I mean, I love you John. I love you Amina, I love you Michael and. But I don't want to sound like you guys. I want to sound like me. And that donor is going to know that doesn't sound like her. So like, just keep on tapping into and don't lose that value that you know that you bring in that connection. So keep on tapping into you.
- [43:57]
A
Okay. What a way to go out. Friends, such an honor, such a joy to share this space. Thank you to everybody that joined us and for the kind words coming in. Please connect with everybody on LinkedIn. I think it's a great way to stay in touch and share ideas. FAI team, thank you for the platform to have this conversation today. We are dang grateful. See y' all soon.