← We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits
We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits
692. Working Session: How to Grow Your Online Giving - Josh Burns
00:35:43
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- [00:05]
Josh Burns
51% of donors research causes and charities online before making a donation. And yet, on the flip side of that, more than 50% of nonprofits actually don't have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy. We call that the digital donor gap.
- [00:21]
John
Welcome to Working Sessions on the We Are For Good podcast. In every session, we're tackling one essential topic and give you practical steps to take meaningful action within your mission. Today we're bringing you the experts and playbooks to help you move forward with clarity and confidence. Let's get to work. Hey friends. Welcome back to another working session. Becky, have we ever done one of these before together?
- [00:43]
Becky
I think we have only been solo on these. That makes this a really big deal and really big.
- [00:49]
John
Maybe a little bit off.
- [00:50]
Becky
So maybe we should celebrate by putting literally one of our favorite humans in the chair when we both do it. Yeah. Okay, great.
- [00:55]
John
I love when we stack the deck. I mean, we're so excited to have our friend Josh Burns from from Spark Collective with us today. And if you don't know Josh, he has been gathering community in Chicago with Impact up since the OG earliest of days with Impact up and has just been a consistent force and presence not only in the community, but for us as humans too. Josh is one of our FONA friends that he has channeled this amazing experience that he's had more than a decade helping nonprofits grow through digital marketing. And he's bringing that expertise today to something that we hear in our community all the time. And everyone is obsessed with how do we grow online giving. But Josh is going to come in not just with the tactics, but he's going to also walk us through the mindset, the strategy. We're going all today in this working session. We are so excited to dive in. Josh, good to see you my friend. Welcome.
- [01:43]
Josh Burns
It is so great to see you all. Thank you for having me. Y' all have gone from LinkedIn to now in real life friends. And that's. Those are some of my best relationships and I'm just so grateful. So thank you. Thanks, man.
- [01:58]
John
I agree. I think if I would have told like 20 year old John that some of his best friends would come to LinkedIn, I would have looked at you like cross eyed. But Josh, I mean, working sessions, we love to keep it tight, but Becky and I can't not start with the human behind the work. And we just want to give you a chance to tell a little bit about your story. What are some formative experiences in your life that led you into doing this work that you're doing? Today, before we hop into the. All the deets.
- [02:24]
Josh Burns
Yeah, well, I'll keep it brief, but you know, I think I, as I was actually reflecting on this late last week and you know, I've kind of been wired for nonprofit social impact work since early on. I saw it modeled in my, in my parents and my family and my community around me. And so I think that just instilled in me a lot of the values that just naturally come along with this type of work. Right. That we find ourselves in. Yeah. So I started out in in house roles in nonprofits, mostly doing digital marketing and communications and help organizations reach their intended audiences and tell their stories in order to inspire them to take action. So spent about 10 years in in house roles doing that and then shifted a little bit over to kind of the agency side of things and partnering with multiple organizations simultaneously to help bring kind of some of the learnings that I had learned over the years to more organizations about how to tell their story online. And then we're in our fourth year now. Three years ago, my business partner and I, we just decided like, hey, let's take some of these frameworks and strategies that we've really seen work to grow the missions of organizations and bring them to more amazing people doing what I believe, you know, is some of the most important work in the world. So that brings us to where we are today. Yeah, we're running Spark Collective and we love partnering with nonprofits and social impact organizations to help them tell their story online and reach more of their community to inspire them to take action. So that's me.
- [04:05]
Becky
Thank you for telling us some of that story. And I would like to go underneath the iceberg just a pinch before we get into this working session to share why I think Josh Burns is so uniquely good at this work. When you all think about great leaders in the impact world, I know many of us think about those leaders who are often so quiet, but they're so steady in the background. Their values are so secure and they have this ability to just make people feel seen. And the reason that that is Josh Burns is because he is the most authentic human on the planet, I'm pretty sure, other than maybe my 12 year old daughter. But she'll tell you whether you want her, whether you want to know or not, but you have this authenticity and realness about you that there is no performative anything in the way you show up in the world. And I have to say that Spark is an incredible organization. And so let's get into online giving because we poll our Community all the time, like, where are you stuck? Where. Where do you need some learning or some help around? And online giving keeps bubbling up. And I want to ask you, why are we talking about online giving today? And why are so many people talking about online giving right now?
- [05:25]
Josh Burns
Yeah, I mean, it may seem kind of obvious, but I'm rereading Simon Sinek's book, Start with why. Right. And so it's always good to like, you know, just lay the groundwork. Why. Why are we even talking about this? Because I think oftentimes it's easy for us to just see the bright, shiny thing and just like go do that. But I like to stay grounded in reality and in data. And so what we're seeing right now based on research, is that 51% of donors research causes and charities online before making a donation. And yet, on the flip side of that, more than 50% of nonprofits actually don't have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy. We call that the digital donor gap. So where you have the majority of donors who are looking for your organization online before they make a donation, and yet the majority of organizations actually aren't ready for. For those people, that's kind of the research that really grounds us in our why. And yet, you know, we'll talk about here in a few minutes, the human aspect of that. And our values are data driven and human centered. And so how do we bring the two of those together to make sure that we're. We're telling stories authentically and still rooting our, our strategies and our tactics in what we know to be true based on the data? So that's where I like to start, because there's also this intangible aspect to a nonprofit's digital presence that maybe we don't discuss as much because it's harder to wrap our heads around and measure. And that's the relationship side of it. So I always like to level set with people and say we get a lot of people coming to us with lots of urgency saying we need to do this, this, and this in digital tomorrow because we need to increase our revenue and bring in new donors. And I always just like to level set with people. This is not a silver bullet. This is all rooted in human relationship. At the end of the day, the
- [07:32]
John
juxtaposition of data in humanity. I love that we're landing there. Also the juxtaposition of building relationships and the reality that so much of that has to happen digitally nowadays. And this idea of digital storytelling, you know, is so maybe different from the storytelling that we all grew up with the stories that we connected. Where do you see that? Like, how do we bridge the gap between building relationships with donors and using the power of storytelling in these digital platforms? And like, where do you kind of, what does that lead you into and what do you start with that.
- [08:05]
Josh Burns
I love this question. Me too.
- [08:07]
Becky
I can't wait to hear what you're about to say.
- [08:10]
Josh Burns
Well, I would love to hear your all's thoughts too, but I mean, I'm a big believer that again, your digital presence should inspire human relationship and action in the real world. So I don't want to get too philosophical and high level here, but I believe one of the biggest, like, challenges our society is facing right now is that we're becoming less and less physically proximate to each other. And so Bryan Stevenson talks about how proximity breeds empathy. And so this is why everything that we do in the digital space ultimately should lead your community to take physical action in, in some way. And so our job is to remove the barriers online for your online community to, to do that.
- [08:56]
John
Can I just say what. You're awakening in my mind for a second and I don't, I don't want to cut you off, but I think this is interesting that it's like we put it in this digital box, but you're reminding us that unless the AI agents are coming for us, which I'm sure they are, we're still in the phase right now where anything that you're actually doing, it's taking the human on the other side to activate that the channel is digital, but the person we're tapping into is the distracted human that's listening right now that has a hundred other things to do. Their wallet's in the other room. All the factors to block you from making that gift in that moment. And I think that's a really salient point to bring it back to the. Yes, the channel is digital, but we're talking to humans that have human emotions, that have human processes and pains and all the things.
- [09:43]
Becky
And it goes back to your original point. Data driven, but still circling in on the human behavior of it, which that's where the storytelling gold is. If we try to get ChatGPT to tell us a story of a time someone was incredibly kind to us. Like, it would be the most watered down version without all the spicy details that make something human. So I'm, I'm really glad you put a pause on that, John, because not everything is automated. Not everything can be digital. We still need your human hand in this to mold It. So, yes, keep going.
- [10:19]
John
Yeah.
- [10:19]
Josh Burns
And I think this is somewhat of a secondary consequence of everything that's happening digitally. Right. Is that we look at this data that we now have access to more data than we've ever had. And it's so easy to forget that each piece of data that we're looking at is representative of a human being on the other side of that. Right, right. Like, I think a lot about, again, this proximity idea of like my next door neighbor being detained. Sorry, we're going to go there. Detained by ice. Right. Like, I. I feel that differently because it's the person that I've talked to that that is right next door to me than maybe I would If I was 100 miles away from, you know, this issue or whatever. Whatever issue it is that you want to take that to. So. All right, let's get practical because I know this is a working session. First thing I would like people to do. And I loved how you all said at the beginning that you all haven't done a working session together. I think you all have because I listened to it. But I loved on your. On your last working session, y' all kept referencing the person driving to just like, keep your eyes on the road. And that was me when I was listening to your episode. So, you know, if you're driving or washing the dishes, whatever it is, come back to this. Keep listening, but come back to this later and do this exercise. But I want you to take a pen and paper, write down the names of people that you're going to meet with over the next two weeks. So I'm assuming I'm talking to someone in a marketing role or marketing function or someone who is responsible for the marketing function, whether that's an executive director or someone in, you know, fundraising, whatever it is. Write down the name of the person in your primary programming role in your organization and the name of the person in your primary development or fundraising role in your organization. If you're in a smaller org and maybe you don't have people in those roles, maybe go talk to a recipient of your org services and then talk to a donor of your organization. Right. What I'm trying to get at here is like, marketing needs to get out of its silo and go talk to other people in your organization and understand what's happening both on the programming side. Right. Like, how are people experiencing the impact of your work and your organization? And then how are people experiencing the impact and what are they feeling as they're donating to your organization? And those are inputs for you as you're telling your story of your organization. And it will help you understand, here's how someone is receiving the work that we're doing, the impact of our work. Maybe we can work some of that into the way that we tell our story online. Here's how someone feels when they donate to our organization, here's why they're donating. This can inform how we talk about what it means to donate to our organization online. So that when it comes to practicalities here, right, like if you're not already meeting with those people on a regular basis or having those inputs, I would, I would highly encourage you to start a rhythm of, of those types of conversations. And this leads into your storytelling framework, right. That you all were sharing empathy, connection, action. I think if I'm getting that correct, Becky, you can, you can fact check me on that, but love it.
- [13:53]
Becky
Yeah. Why I like where you're going.
- [13:58]
Josh Burns
We connect some of those inputs into that storytelling framework, right? Like our framework that we give to organizations often is this feel, no do framework. Right? Like what do we want our audience to feel when they're connecting with us? What do they, what do we want them to know and what do we want them to do? And so I remember early on in my, in my nonprofit work, I was interviewing for a marketing role and I remember this conversation. The executive director told me, I'm fine with social media being a part of our digital strategy, but I just want you to know, like, we're never going to heavily invest there because that's not where our major donors spend time. There's probably a lot in that mindset that could be dissected. But I remember stepping into that role, running this organization's first kind of robust digital year end campaign. And our executive director comes into the office and you know, he sits down and says like, you know, Josh, I just want you to know I just had had a meeting with, with a major donor. They said they can't get away from us right now online. Like they're just seeing us everywhere. And he said, you know, he said, he said, good work. Thank you. And I use that example as a, as a picture to show like your digital strategy can complement and feed into the human relationships that we're cultivating in other areas. And this is, this is when people are inspired to take action. And so we talked about cross pollinating teams or meeting with frontlines, meeting with donors. The next place I want to go is to what we call the digital growth framework. So we've got our inputs and how we want to maybe shape the story through empathy, connection and action. But what does this look like online when we're talking about our online presence? And so the way that we've built this out and you can, you know, write this down if you're taking notes. The, the growth framework is awareness, consideration and action. So you can probably map the, the storytelling framework onto that as well. But there are specific channels within each of those sections of the framework. Awareness would be organic social media and paid advertising. Right. Consideration would be website conversion optimizations. And action would be like, once someone has taken a desired action online, what's your follow up? What's your nurture process with. With that person through email marketing and marketing automation. So we could spend all day talking about all of those channels. But I just like to kind of give people a framework for all right, this is how we should be viewing. It's if you view it as a funnel, right. This is how we should be looking at our growth framework online in terms of these different channels and then that then helps us to set goals for each of those channels as well. Does that make sense?
- [17:07]
John
It does, because I know we're going to talk about goals here in a second, but I think getting this framework helps to define that there's more going on than just the transaction, which if you hang around, we are for good. That's very core to our ethos that money is only one denominator of the whole equation. So I love that you're lifting that. There's just a lot more pieces, there's a lot more journeys happening and we need to have our eye on that. So maybe that's a future working session. I'm gonna go ahead and tease that out. But let's keep going into where you would guide us with goals. Josh, of if in thinking about this.
- [17:42]
Josh Burns
Yeah, well, I think the other question that I get often is where should I start if I'm either in this specific marketing role or maybe in a smaller org and you know, I'm juggling multiple things at once, wearing multiple hats. I always like to. And you know, this is another callback to, I think Julie Ordonez's episode earlier or late last year she talked about, right, like start with your warm prospects. When you think about that for your digital presence, most of the time that's going to mean starting with email. And one of the goals of your digital presence, especially nowadays, should be to gather what is called technically first party data. So that's name, email address, phone number, third party data would be cookies and we can track you around the Internet and see what the websites you're visiting, what interests you have. First party data is, right? Like, we know who you are and we are able to directly contact you. So that's where I typically recommend people start if they're thinking about, all right, how can we kickstart our. Our donor relationship or prospect relationship process in the most efficient way when I have limited time, if you're in a smaller org running programs, meeting with donors, I have to think about marketing all the things. So that's where I would start is with email and some of the goals you can kind of put around that are, first of all, just starting with frequency of outreach. Right. Even before we look at open rates and click through rates and things like that. I would just set yourself a goal, an attainable, realistic goal for how often you want to be in people's inboxes and for people to engage with you via email. Maybe that's once a month. If you have limited time, maybe it's once a week. Or if you are a little bit further along, maybe you're able to segment your database based on donor behavior or interests, and then you're able to send out tailored emails based on those segments. But I think, you know, setting yourself an attainable goal in terms of frequency would be the first place to start.
- [20:00]
Becky
I'm glad we teased that you're going to be talking about mindsets on the front of the podcast because here's the thing. If you think about online giving in a vacuum, you know, A plus B is going to equal C. It will never happen that way because people come to your organization in so many different ways. I think that's what's so helpful about this, Josh, is that marketers don't just play in marketing lanes. We, I know people in donor engagement and donor relations who are doing marketing. There's so much crossover here. And if we can think about it, like, how would I like to be courted? I mean, I think the Mystery shopper is so great in moments like this, especially when you're redoing online giving, it's like, send that link to five people and ask them how their experience is, what is page by page happening, what's happening in their email. All of that matters. Okay, I'm done emoting. Keep going, my friend.
- [20:52]
Josh Burns
That's good. Well, and I think you, you sparked something for me as well. It's funny because, you know, we're kind of circling around online giving, and yet I haven't even talked about one of the goals being right, like online giving. Powerful. It is intentional, right? Because we have an organization we're working with right now, and we started brainstorming the end of last year. All right, how can we bring people who are subscribed to our email list into deeper relationship with us and our organization? And one of the goals there is, you know, increasing online giving, but we can't work off of that first. Right? This is how relationships work. So I'll just give the quick example with them that we're actually implementing right now is we're taking the main call to action in their email newsletters right now is to actually become a we. We call them insiders, where they can get exclusive updates. We've actually hijacked this organization's base camp, and, you know, we have a project inside basecamp now. And so they've got 1800 people on their email list. We now have 180 people inside this basecamp project who are donors, email subscribers, partners of the organization in different ways, and they're actually talking to each other now in this basecamp chat. And the executive director of the organization is now giving exclusive updates in this basecamp project. And we're seeing so, like, the engagement just go through the roof with people, and we're just giving people access to community. You all know this, right? Like, you're giving people permission and space to be in community together, and the relationship with each other and with the organization is just growing stronger and stronger. I wanted to just, like, give that quick example that we're going to see the secondary and third effects of this strategy later in the year, right? Because we're starting to build this community and we're going to see the online giving, I'm convinced, increase from there as well.
- [23:11]
John
Play the long game. Yes, One of our values. This is trust building. This is what it looks like. And it's why, if you're listening, you're like, can we get to the online giving? Welcome to We Are for Good. We're going to challenge you to play the long game because that's what's at stake. So much more is on the table, and we're going to get you some online giving. So I want to. I want to just say, how. How are you seeing folks nurture donors that leads to them actioning, you know, when they get appeals? I mean, all this stuff is so great in warming and connecting and building community, but, like, what is that conversion piece look like in your world?
- [23:50]
Josh Burns
Yeah, it's a great question. So I would say, even for organizations that we're working with, again, to your point, you just made. We're playing the long game. They've played the long game. And we're seeing upwards of like 20, 30, 40% conversion rate on some of these email appeals that were. That we're making. Right. And again, it's because we kind of choose our, choose our moments. Right. Every single email is not like appealing for a donation.
- [24:23]
Becky
Thank you.
- [24:23]
Josh Burns
But everything is run through that grid, that storytelling framework, right. Of feel, know and do. And if we answer those questions for our audience, every single marketing strategy or marketing piece or channel that we're using run through that framework, then, you know, we choose our moments from. For online giving campaigns. So I would say probably 60 to 75% of our email appeals, and I'm focusing on email cause that's kind of where we, where we've landed right now. But our email appeals are just telling stories, just letting people know what's the impact of a gift in this organization. And then when it's the right moment, we're able to come in and say, will you be a part of this? Will you join this movement? Will you join this work in a deeper way? And you know, this looks like $50 to give a refugee meals for a month and you know, warm clothes. Like that's kind of our approach. So I would say, you know, from an email perspective, that's how I would look at it. And one of the things that, that I'll do is if I want to give away a couple resources just so that you don't have to write, write all of this down.
- [25:43]
John
We need freebie music. Where's our freebie music?
- [25:46]
Becky
We need, we need a button that's like mix bells or something. Yes, he can. And every time something free happens, just
- [25:53]
Josh Burns
email me joshparkcollective.net and you know, I want to give you a couple resources. One of those is like an email campaign calendar for the year so that you can map out. Here's where these campaigns can live, here's where we can choose our moments to make appeals. But also we need to work within this storytelling framework. So that's, I think, one thing that I want to get in your hands as, as well as we have a growth tracker, which is basically just a fancy spreadsheet, but it helps you kind of track your track, track certain key metrics that, that maybe you aren't tracking right now, and then help you set goals towards growth again, grounded in data there. And if we don't know where we are right now, we don't know where we can go from here. Right. So that's where we have to audit our data and then understand. All right. What goals can we set for the future? So, yeah, email me joshparkcollective.net and I want to get those resources off to y'. All. And I did tell John and Becky this before the episode, but I do want to give away a couple we are for Good pieces of merch as well. So a couple people are gonna are gonna get a few pieces of We Are for good merch because I just got my hoodie in the mail the other day. I should have worn it for this episode. I don't know what I was thinking.
- [27:18]
John
But we see spike of sales after wears it publicly.
- [27:22]
Becky
I mean, like Joshua Darrell Burns. I don't know what your middle name is, but you know that I do this. That is so kind. You could have just given these freebies away, but the fact that you would gift people with merch so they can like rep good is so, so kind. So than that, please go contact Josh. But I want to give two examples really, really quickly about how this has shown up for me. And actually, John and I were literally just talking about this this morning. And then I have an example at a higher ed institution. So I think what I love about what you're saying, Josh, is you're getting us out of this binary thinking of just like email has to operate in this way to get to online giving. And I think back when John and I were putting together this employee campaign at our health care organization, we did this really disruptive thing that we had to get special permission for. That's called sending an email every day of the campaign, which was like 15
- [28:19]
John
welcome to health care total.
- [28:20]
Becky
Oh, my gosh, that was so health care. To be like, no, you can't do that many rules. You cannot raise money on our behalf. Anyway, I digress. But what we did was we had a calendar put together for email. And day one was like, where we at, you know, fundraising wise. Day two was like, here's a project that we want to lift. That's really impactful. Day three, here's the leaderboard. And we had all these things and. But the whole campaign was built around people and their stories. And so we ended up curating a story for every single email. If you opened it up to see the leaderboard, you're also going to see Pam and accounting talking about what a transformational experience it was when she had hospice during her mother's end of life care, and she tells that story. So all of a sudden the email is not about the leaderboard. It's about, oh, I know Pam, and she sits in the cubicle next to me. And that's very human. Now, the other example I want to give is that Cornell has turned email engagement entirely on its head. We talked to them in 2022, and they had 270,000 people in their database, which I know many of us would salivate to have that many people in our database. They sent out 39 million emails in 2021, and only one of them a week was asking for anything. And it wasn't always asking for money, but it was about engagement. They were telling. They were lifting stories from the community. They were giving away. Here's a puzzle of something on our campus that you could do online with your kids. Here's. Here's. And so what they saw was that engagement drove and every part of their business. It drove events, it drove fundraising, it drove connectivity. And so this is not just a long game play. It's the everything play, in my opinion, in the way you choose to engage.
- [30:19]
John
Such good examples. B. I mean, Josh, thanks for the way you broke it down, the way that you're helping orgs, you know, we can't get out of here without a one good thing. And this could be, since it's a working session, it could be a piece of advice that you're leaving with folks today. Like, what's one good thing if someone wants to get started? Clearly those freebies may be a good, you know, starting place, too. But is there something that's bubbling up for you that you'd want to share?
- [30:42]
Josh Burns
I want to share a word of encouragement for everyone listening. But first, I'll share. I'll share one good thing. I think the thing I have to remind myself often. And, you know, Becky, I don't know how you have this just, like, natural gift of seeing people and knowing who they are without, like, we were joking beforehand. Like, you and I have never actually met in real life, just on Zoom and LinkedIn.
- [31:08]
Becky
We need to rectify that immediately.
- [31:11]
Josh Burns
But for you to understand, like, my nature is quiet, introverted, and just, like, show up and, you know, and put one foot in front of the other. And I think the thing that nonprofit marketing has cultivated and grown in me is this desire to get out of my comfort zone, to write, like, the things we talked about at the top of the episode where it's like, go talk to someone not in your orbit, right? And, like, have a conversation that maybe you might be uncomfortable with at first. Again, it's just flexing some of those muscles that then help you tell better stories and at the end of the day, right, like marketing is just telling stories and in connecting with people. And so I think that's my, I guess my one good thing I'm like telling people, telling people where to start is, you know, as just getting out of your comfort zone. And then the encouragement, the word of encouragement, I would just say for everyone listening is I have been and still am in your shoes in a lot of ways. I'm on the board of organizations and I volunteer with organizations and I remember back often in, in house days where I was pulling late nights and working long hours and oftentimes felt like I wasn't seeing the fruit of it. And so this somewhat ties back to my previous point. Right. Like just keep going and obviously take care of yourself. Make sure you're, you're caring for yourself because that's how you're going to continue the work. But keep going and go talk to people, see and see the fruit of your work because it is happening whether you see it or not. And so I always just like to encourage people with that because I know what that's like and so be encouraged with that.
- [33:08]
Becky
Today you are exactly on brand with yourself right now. You are quietly supportive. You put care into it. You have so much expertise. And and I also just want to say if you are feeling stuck and if this has overwhelmed you, please come into our community. We are for goodcommunity.com and we will troubleshoot it for you. We have something that we are launched, we launched just a couple weeks ago called Office Hours and we want people to come in once a month. Bring whatever your problem is. We're going to group troubleshoot it together. We're going to. I know Josh, you, you've come to one and so come in. We have experts who want to help you get unstuck. You are not alone in this. Get out of your comfort zone. Yes. But also know you don't have to do this alone.
- [34:02]
John
Yes. We think the world of you, my friend. Thanks for being here today.
- [34:05]
Josh Burns
Thank you friends. Appreciate you.