← What the Fundraising
What the Fundraising
305: Turning Online Communities into Powerful Fundraisers with Michael Wasserman
00:31:14
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- [00:00]
A
One of the things that I used to ask my clients a lot when they used to say that I would ask them, is it a matter of that they feel that the younger generation, which at the time were millennials, that the younger generation was not interested or that you were not allowing the opportunity to happen. And my theory hypothesis at the time was that the technology being used and the way that they were marketing was not allowing for that to.
- [00:36]
B
Hey, my name is Mallory and I'm obsessed with helping leaders in the nonprofit space raise money and run their organizations differently. What the Fundraising is a space for real and raw conversations to both challenge and inspire you. Not too long ago, I was in your shoes, uncomfortable with fundraising and unsure of my place in this sector. It wasn't until I started to listen to other experts outside of the fundraising space that I was able to shift my mindset and ultimately shift the way I show up as a leader. This podcast is my way of blending professional and personal development so we as a collective inside the nonprofit sector can feel good about the work we are doing. Join me every week as I interview some of the brightest minds in the personal and professional development space to help you fundamentally change the way you lead and fundraise. I hope you enjoy this episode. So let's dive in. Welcome everyone. I am so excited to be here today with Michael Wasserman. Michael, welcome to what the fundraising.
- [01:37]
A
Hey, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
- [01:40]
B
I'm super excited for this conversation. Let's start with you just giving a little introduction to you, telling folks about your work and what brings you to our conversation, and then we'll dive in.
- [01:50]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Michael Wasserman. I'm the CEO and co founder of of a fundraising platform called Tiltify that originally came was sort of born out of looking for new ways to engage a younger audience and was fortunate to kind of grow with what is now sort of the creator economy and people fundraising on platforms like YouTube and Twitch and TikTok and Reddit and all the fun stuff that now everyone communicates in in their digital communities.
- [02:16]
B
Yeah. Okay, so tell me a little bit more about how Tiltify came to be sort of in that economy and the gap that it fills in terms of how people want to show up and maybe what's previously been available to allow them to express their values in that way.
- [02:36]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So prior to starting Tiltify, the few years leading up to it, I was a consultant for Chair for Charities, and the thing that I heard over and over and over again was, how do I get younger donors? How do I get younger fundraisers? It was just kind of a recurring theme. So a lot of my clients that I work with, I kind of came from the sort of celebrity side of bringing celebrities to events and getting them to kind of do unique things, which would often engage sort of some younger audience members. But one of the things that I used to ask my clients a lot when they used to say that, I would ask them, is it a matter of that they feel that the younger generation, which at the time were millennials, that the younger generation was not interested or that you are not allowing the opportunity to happen. And my theory hypothesis at the time was that the technology being used and the way that they were marketing was not allowing for that to happen. And that was sort of the issue. So that got me thinking, and that's sort of where tiltify was born, that I said, I'm going to talk to a lot of fundraisers. At the time. I used to watch platform called Twitch, which at the time used to be people just doing video game streams. And we spoke to a lot of people that use the platform and that were just in their sort of twenties and talked to them specifically about, you know, how they would fundraise, how they engage with their audience and realize that the tools that are available, that were available don't do any of that, and that there needed to be something new in place. And then in 2014, we launched Tiltify, and fortunately, Amazon then bought Twitch for a billion dollars. And sort of the sprint of not just live streaming, but the push of content and digital communities, and everything accelerated. And then obviously during COVID that accelerated to a whole new level, bringing us to now where, you know, TikTok became big and everything sort of happened. And we just realized that, you know, the way that people wanted to engage was very difficult with still most of the platforms that are available and the tech technology that's available.
- [04:48]
B
Okay, so there's a few things that are coming to mind as you're sharing that one is that I feel like there's a lot of content right now coming out around how to attract a younger generation of donors and the great wealth transfer. And, you know, people will say things like, you know, we're having a hard time attracting younger donors. And probably what they're doing is taking the way that they typically talk to donors and trying to mold that into how they talk to, quote, unquote, younger donors. What you did was understand where folks were. You started with the population who wanted to do something and focused on where they are, where they already connecting, where they already engaging and then built around that. Am I like hearing that right?
- [05:40]
A
Yes, exactly right. We sort of built our platform backwards from what most people do. Most people that have built platforms look at what the charity's needs are and build something that fits the charity's needs and then how the fundraisers can come to them. We built it for what a fundraiser needs and actually didn't really think about what the charity wants until a couple years later.
- [05:58]
B
Okay, so tell me how that impacts then adoption because I feel like getting younger people to fundraise for your organization. I mean, I don't know, I feel like everybody would kill for that. Right. And what we hear from most folks is they're feel like they're pulling teeth to engage peer to peer fundraisers or new team leaders or getting people to come back and engage their community in the work. And what I am hearing from you is like, well, yeah, if it's top down from the organization, that might be hard, but actually if it's bottom up from the fundraiser, that is adopted in a totally different way for different reasons. So talk to me a little bit about that.
- [06:46]
A
Of course. So I joke all the time that we have about 8,000 charities that use Tilt by now. And I joke all the time that 7,999 of those were forced to join us because a fundraiser came to them and said, I'm only going to raise money for you on Tiltify, which is a wonderful and unique position for us. We were really built from community demand. At least the only platform that I'm aware of that fundraisers go to the charity and says, I'm going to raise money for you, but I'm going to do it here. And if you don't want to do it here, I'm going to pick another charity that's kind of like you and do it for them. Because I think that's telling of how different the technology is and how different the way they want to engage is. So an example is if you're a traditional, if you're reaching out in traditional ways, a lot of discussions I've had with organizations over the years is that let's say they'll say, okay, we've been sending out these emails. We're not getting good responses from young millennials or Gen Z. We need to change our language. Right. The language of those emails is not working. The language of those emails is not the problem. The problem is that you're using email no matter what language you put in the email, it's not going to matter because you're reaching out over email. You know, typically what we're seeing now is tuitional emails are going to maybe get 3%. Whereas we already know from all the research that happened in our own research, that if you hear something from a friend or now a digital community or influencer that you follow, you're now 17% likely to engage. So now we're talking about A. It's 5.6% increase in opportunity. So from a charity standpoint, you can test different email language all day long. The problem is that you're still using email and it's that type of a switch that I think a lot of organizations have a hard time adjusting to. Because then the question becomes, well, if I'm not using email, then what am I using? And that brings you into a whole bunch of new technologies, right? How do you get more people to reach out through word of mouth? How do you get content creators and digital communities to talk about you? Where are you talking to your communities? Are they able to come and talk to you on like a discord or something? So it's all those things. One of the examples that I've used recently, the example is that in a lot of the data that we're seeing where people are sort of ringing the bell, that we're in crisis, especially that small dollar donors are disappearing, which I generally think is not necessarily true. It's if you were looking at CD sales and you said, well, no one's buying CDs or vinyl anymore or whatever medium they're thinking of that people would go to the store. By the way the data is being looked at, you would say, well, people clearly aren't into music anymore, but if you go look at streaming services like Spotify, you see the exact opposite. It's just where you're looking is not the way that people are engaging anymore. And I think that is the. It's a very big change, similar to where we first started doing Digital fundraising about 20 years ago in this sort of fashion that is now the next phase of change. And I think a lot of organizations from the top down just have difficulty taking what they perceive as the risk and making that adjustment. And it is really a. Not necessarily very different than the general strategies about talking about your mission, but the mediums and processes that you're using to do that technologies has completely changed.
- [10:34]
B
That's such a good example. Around the music industry or like, you know, people not caring about music. And you think about, okay, if that's the type of belief that would stem from the that data, all of the other changes you would make as a result. Right. And so, and the danger in that, and I know something you and I both really care about is that relationship between like leading indicators and lagging indicators and ensuring that, you know, we aren't taking this sort of like correlated data and then making a lot of decisions about people that further just create essentially like self fulfilling prophecies. Right. It's like if you believe that younger donors aren't going to want to give to your organization, you're going to be right. Like congratulations, right? You're going to be right because you're going to do a lot of things that continue that self fulfilling prophecy instead of saying, okay, we are noticing that younger donors are not as engaged in the ways that we've facilitated peer to peer in the past. What are other ways that we're seeing the, you know, younger generations engage in community or show up for each other or connect digitally. And if we're asking those questions, that leads us to fundamentally different answers that then open up pathways for us to drive different outcomes for our organization. But it takes us not sort of jumping to a conclusion, just rooted in how we've always done things exactly the
- [12:09]
A
way that things have been done for a long time is very transactional. So you, for example, you go to 99% of charity's website, top right donate button, 4 to 7 clicks average at best, to get to actually creating a fundraising page. So it's designed to be transactional, not participatory. And what we've seen in the market is we've moved from I am fundraising to we are fundraising as a community. And this is the big difference. Most of the features that we built early on, like when we first even launched the site, and that we've doubled and tripled down on, is features that are interactive and engaging with your audience. So I always describe the typical donation experience as quietly dropping off a check in the mailbox. Go to the page by yourself, there's not much going on, you drop off your money and you go on your way. Now what we're seeing is that people are looking for more of a participatory and community oriented experience where you're looking at social proof that other people are participating, you're looking at real time data, you're looking at engagements like incentives that people are creating or polls or different ways of engaging, where you're coming back to check on things, you're coming back to see how the community's doing, you're Coming back to get involved and tell your friends about it and talk about it on social media. That's a huge difference between the way it is now. So until to buy on average we say that people donate more than once, it's actually 1.3% I think the last time we checked. So it's very atypical for someone to donate more than once to a, especially a peer to peer fundraiser on Tiltify. That's becoming more common because it's something again that people are involved in with their community and you are fundraising together, not individually and in a relatively static, asymmetric, asynchronous environment. It's more of a synchronous experience.
- [14:19]
B
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Can we talk a little bit about the friction, the sort of like organizational friction? Because I think one of the things that's interesting to me is like the cost and like how we aren't quantifying the cost of inaction here. Right. Like we've seen in the peer to peer space some really massive declines in the way that peer to peer used to support some organizations and what's happened over the last five, 10 years. And it's like kind of striking to me that even with so many of those examples, there's still so much resistance and friction around change. I'm curious what you're seeing, what you're seeing there and what you think like some of the causes and like ways to overcome it might be.
- [15:08]
A
Yeah, I think there's some interesting things that have been happening that are making people potentially afraid of making the decision to change. And I think that comes from the top down. Right. People are using antiquated systems with antiquated technologies, with antiquated ways of asking. And I think they're holding on so tightly to the high net worth individuals that they're completely missing the boat on the people that are going to be their future high net worth individuals and are their current small dollar donors. You know, I think at the peer to peer forum, I think I remember that the participation numbers in peer to peer are still half of what they were in 2019. Right. So. And I think the total is still below what it was in 2013. So we're still kind of in that case, they're still running a standstill and discuss without sort of naming names. But you know, we all know the programs that have been gone from hundreds of millions to tens of millions. I mean, how much is it worth it to you before you've lost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars by not taking action? And I understand that action can be difficult. And I forget what the theory is called. I think it's called like the baby duckling syndrome or something like that. When you're sort of first imprint on like the first thing you learn, it's really hard to change something else. So I use a PC. If you put a Mac in front of me, I am completely lost. I don't understand how this works. I don't understand how people function on it. In my opinion, it's a very difficult tool to use. As someone who uses Mac, it's the easiest tool to use and they don't understand how I use a PC. And I think that's a really good example of how difficult it sometimes becomes for people to change where they automatically think the other thing must be as difficult to everybody else as it is to them. And they then like we hear often even on Tiltify because we have a lot of different tools. I think that's more complicated than our system or I think our older fundraisers or donors won't understand how to use these features. You know, my parents who are in their 70s and 80s have iPhones use the Internet. It's not like older people are using VCRs. Everybody is using new technology. Go on TikTok. I mean you scroll through TikTok, it's not a bunch of 20 somethings. There's Gen X on there, there's baby boomers on there, there's all sorts of people using social media and making content. I just think that it's a translation of somebody else's difficulty. Whereas to go back to the example, if I was to try and explain to people how to use a Mac, I would feel really lost. And I think that's one of the things that we're encountering now is people, you know, a little bit nervous to take the plunge because they don't understand it that well and are not investing in the time to understand the technology enough themselves and realize what the market is telling them that people want to change.
- [18:25]
B
Yeah. And you know, it's interesting though because I keep thinking about hard, like that question around hard. And we hear this a lot in fundraising, making things like easier versus simpler. And I think about how much hard stuff people are doing when they don't have a tech platform that's working for them very well when it comes to peer to peer. Right. It's like in like maybe it is hard to switch some people onto a different technology platform. Maybe it is hard to get your team acquainted with a new technology platform. It is Also very hard to follow up with peer to peer fundraisers 40,000 times and get nobody to take action. That is also quite hard, in my opinion. And so it's just so interesting to me, like, how we choose what hard thing we're willing to do and what we avoid. Maybe, you know, it's like the, the devil that you know or whatever that saying is. But it's so interesting to me because the stakes are truly tremendous around, like meeting folks where they're at. I'm curious, you know, you've been really like fundraiser led in terms of the platform, so I'm getting really like tactical here. But I'm just curious for like a really large institution, like, maybe they can't adopt this in full right away, but what is there like an entry point or a way that they could start to sort of see, see some of this difference in results through a part of a campaign or a certain team? Or like, do you have any recommendations there for like, how folks who are like, okay, like, I'm in, I hear you. I want to prove some of this to my leadership, like, where they could begin.
- [20:11]
A
Yeah, absolutely. There's definitely a few things that I think are sort of easy adjustments that people could make. One, first and foremost, go to your website and figure out how many steps and how hard it is to fundraise and fix that. In my opinion, it should say donate. It should say fundraise top right of your website. Because at the end of the day, if we know that so many more people are involved in supporting your organization from word of mouth, then we need to make it easier for people to fundraise and be that megaphone, because the institutional emails are not working anymore. So first and foremost, we need to boost up our peer to peer fundraising because that's going to tell people about us and spread the word faster. So, one, I would make fundraising easier. Two, I would do a full review of just the language that we have on the page. You have everybody pretty much that's on the Internet at this point does one of two things. They create content or they consume content. Pretty much everybody. So do your supporters, do your fundraisers know that they can utilize their social communities, their digital communities, their social platforms to support you? Do they know that they could use certain technology to support you with their podcast, to support you with their short form and long form video, that they could do live streams? Did they know that they could do this? A lot of times if people aren't told that they could utilize these things in different ways, they don't Think about it. Either they just think about what they've done before, not that, oh yeah, I have a TikTok channel now, or I have a YouTube or I have a twitch. I can do that. And I'd say three is think about how fundraisers are contacting you, right? Do you have a discord channel? Do you have a way that people are communicating with you? Because people now have this sense of community. So are they able to go. I know a lot of organizations like St. Jude Children's Resource Hospital, like Save the Children, like Make a Wish, where you can now go and communicate with them inside a community Discord channel where you can ask immediate questions. People that are now engaging aren't interested in sending you an email and waiting a couple weeks. I remember just anecdotally talking to an organization many, many years ago, like 2018 or 2019 at the latest, I think 2018, actually. And larger influencer that happened to know me sent me a DM on Twitter and said, oh, it's Earth Day. I want to fundraise for this organization. But they're not on Tiltify. Do you mind? Me can't. I reached out to the organization. I said, this person wants to fundraise for you. They're quite large. They'll probably do a couple hundred thousand dollars in a single day through a live stream and tell all their followers about you. They had, I think, 20 million subscribers on their YouTube channel. So in unusual circumstance. And they said, well, it'll take about six weeks to approve use of another platform. So I said, well, that's a problem because today is Tuesday and this person is fundraising on Saturday. That is sort of the most people going on impulse or grief cycle or a moment that happened in their life. And if they're motivated now, they're not going to wait six weeks to decide if they're going to fundraise for you. So what happened is I went back and I told this person that, you know, they use XYZ platform. He can do that. And his response was, well, who else do you have that's similar? And I gave this person another organization and he raised about $220,000 for that organization on Saturday. And this is the kind of friction that I'm talking about. That is something that people want to engage and they're trying to engage, but organizations need to update their opportunity. If there was a way maybe for this person to contact that organization more directly, maybe they would have, you know, instead of reaching out to me, perhaps. But again, even that story, that person reached out to me through a DM on Twitter saying they want to fundraise right away. These are things that are easy. The other thing that I think is important, that I think has changed is structurally we work in silos on platforms. So I mean, in charities, right? So you've got your, you know, your run, walk team, your digital team, maybe you have some other, you know, irl, gala team, et cetera. So there's two things that happen with that. One is when people come in the door, if they don't come in through a particular program that they know about, they're typically forced to choose and learn about the program they want before they create a fundraising page. So first you have to decide. It's like going in, going to buy a ticket at Disneyland, and them saying, before you come in, you have to tell me what rides you want to go on. Let them buy a ticket first and go inside. So, for example, until you can list all your programs, but you can allow them to make a fundraising page first on impulse, and they could link it to a program after, because at the end of the day they're fundraising the same, right? They're still fundraising online. So let them create their page. Two, it's very common at organizations that if someone has run your marathon five years in a row, year six, they sprain, they sprain their ankle. How are you dressing that person? Are you offering them another program that they could do? Well, if they do, they're not tracking that. I've asked many organizations what happens if someone does your walk for five years and then year six, let's say you have some sort of virtual program or whatever, some board game thing or something else that's different, and they go and do that. On paper, you've lost that. So now you have a negative in your peer to peer column when that's not actually true. You're not tracking them. You're also typically not stewarding them to other programs. One of the things that we're seeing is that people like to fundraise in different things that interest them, especially people that make content. So they may do this one day or this one year, they want to do something else now. So we need to give them choice options. They want to diversify what they're doing, they want to continue to have fun, they want to do stuff that's fresh and exciting. Having them do the same thing year in and year out in the same way is not necessarily as attractive as it used to be. So I think those are a bunch of things that could be done immediately in how you structure simple pathways on your website. Different changes in messaging, different changes in technology to a certain extent. But that, to me, starts opening you up to letting things start to happen.
- [26:38]
B
Okay, there's so much wisdom in there. And we're going to have to do a part two at some point. I mean, I know we're going to do a webinar and everybody will make sure to put, like, tiltify's information below. If there's anywhere in particular you want to send folks, Is there anywhere in particular? If they're like, okay, tell me more. How do I learn more about what you're offering here? Where should they go?
- [26:58]
A
Tiltify catalyst.com is where you can go to see, like, our features and chat with somebody. If you want to see the community fundraising generally go to tiltify.com so our platform is also like a community into itself in a way where you can see all the fundraising from all the charities just going on to see examples. But tiltify Catalyst is where you'll be able to actually see the product in the options that it has.
- [27:25]
B
Okay, perfect. And I just want to double click on everything you just said there because we hear so often, like, how do I work with a famous person? Or how do I work with a creator? And I just think I love the angle that you're coming into this, which is like, hey, folks like this want to work with you. Are you making it easy for them to do so? And everything that I teach around BJ Fogg's behavior model, which is all about how we drive action by presenting people with opportunities when they have the right motivation and ability and prompt to take action. That story that you gave around the person who wanted to fundraise on Saturday, it's like his motivation was at that level in that moment. And to not give him the ability in that moment, you don't get that motivation level again, right? It's not like, oh, we can give him the ability. In six weeks, it's over. So I so appreciate everything you shared. Thank you for everything you're building for this space and for joining me for this conversation.
- [28:23]
A
My pleasure. I look forward to part two.
- [28:33]
B
I hope today's episode inspired or challenged you to think differently. For additional takeaways, tips, show notes, and more about our amazing guest and sponsors, head on over to Malloryerickson.com podcast. And if you didn't know, hosting this podcast isn't the only thing I do every day. I coach, guide and help fundraisers and leaders just like you inside of my program, the Power Partners Formula Collective inside the program. I share my methods, tools, and experiences that have helped me find, raise millions of dollars and feel good about myself in the process. To learn more about how I can help you, visit MalloryErickson.com PowerPartners Last but not least, if you enjoyed this episode, I'd love to encourage you to share it with a friend you know would benefit or leave a review. I'm so grateful for all of you and the good, hard work you're doing to make our world a better place. I can't wait to see you in the next episode.