How many times have you asked where to find new donors?
Maybe that’s the wrong question.
Today, Andrew Olsen joins us to discuss acquiring donors through inbound strategies. Did you know your potential donor’s attention span is only 8 seconds? Let’s make those seconds count!
🎯 Inbound Strategies: Create valuable content, optimize your website, and engage on social media to attract donors organically.
⚡ The 8-Second Challenge: Capture attention with captivating headlines, visuals, and concise messaging.
💡 Crafting Irresistible Content: Use storytelling to connect with donors’ emotions and motivations.
🌐 Optimizing Your Online Presence: Optimize your website and ensure it’s mobile-friendly.
📣 Social Media Magic: Leverage social media platforms for authentic connections and storytelling.
For more insights, connect with Andrew Olsen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewolsen/
“If we don’t have thoughtful experiences for our supporters that mirror the way that they like to buy in the rest of their lives, we are going to end up losing out” – Andrew
Episode Transcript
Rhea 0:05
Welcome to nonprofit lowdown. I’m your host, Rhea Wong. Hey, if I guess listeners real long with you once again, today I am going to speak with my guests Andrew Olson, who is the Senior Vice President at Dickerson Baker about the perennial question, how do I get more donors? So today we’re going to talk to Andrew about his favorite strategies for getting more folks in the pipeline. Welcome, Andrew.
Andrew 0:30
Hey, thanks for having me. I’m really excited to have this conversation with you today.
Rhea 0:34
Same here, and you’re not just an SVP, you’re also an author, fellow podcaster, and advisor and you run the Rainmaker fundraising podcast, so always so fun to talk to a fellow podcaster?
Andrew 0:45
It is, I feel like it’s a small but mighty cohort. I’m excited to do this.
Rhea 0:50
Excellent. Okay, let’s just jump right into it. Friend. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your start in the nonprofit world.
Andrew 0:58
Yeah, so like everybody else, I went to school for nonprofit fundraising. I’m just kidding. Like all of us, right, I stumbled into this. I was 2223, I was selling commercial real estate in Los Angeles and hated it. And my father in law actually introduced me to a friend of his a guy that he was in a men’s church group with. And that gentleman happened to be the son of a guy named Russ Reed. And for many of your listeners, they might know that name as one of the formerly largest agencies serve nonprofits, for their marketing needs. So I just stumbled into a role at Russ reed in Southern California, and started working on direct marketing programs, gosh, almost 25 years ago now, and doing it ever since.
Rhea 1:41
All right, Andrew, let’s talk about this. The reason I got connected with you is I was seeing your posts on LinkedIn about marketing and inbound marketing strategies and your average nonprofit executive a doesn’t have a marketing background and be tend to think of marketing and communications and branding and all that sort of stuff as a interruption to their day, let’s say right, because they’re here to do the important work, when they might think of fundraising as the less important, but also important work. But talk to me about why every nonprofit executive should be thinking about a marketing strategy.
Andrew 2:14
Yeah, so very simply put, there is no mission without money. And the money is not going to come to you organically. I talk to organizations every day who are trying to stop a global sex trafficking who are trying to feed the homeless in their community who are trying to get people off of illicit drugs, we’re trying to rescue animals trying to save the planet, all sorts of really important mission work.
And the one thing they all say is some variation of if we just had more money, we could do so much more. And so the C suite executive in every organization needs to be the organization’s chief evangelist, and chief fundraiser. And for many executives, right now, they’re cringing, and they’re going like, No, I hired so that I didn’t have to do that. And I’m not suggesting that they have to be the person literally out asking for the money. But they have to own the success of the organization’s marketing and fundraising operation, because that’s the only way that most nonprofits probably 98% generate revenue. And that’s what fuels Ignition.
Rhea 3:25
I’m so glad you said that. In fact, I will go one step further. I tell EDS, that 65 to 80% of their time should be spent on fundraising, because they are uniquely qualified to represent the work the mission and the brand. And if you’re not doing that, then I don’t know what you’re doing. And they’ll talk to me. I do strategy. I’m like, I literally don’t know what that means. Like, you need to be bringing money in the door, So.
Andrew 3:46
That’s queued for i in my office and think about stuff. And yeah,. In fact, I was on a call this morning with a nonprofit leader. And I said something similar to him. And really what it came down to was, like, look, if you think for a minute, that donors are just sitting computers next to their phones, thinking to themselves, wow, I can’t wait for a fundraiser to call me. You’re insane. I remember I was at a case conference. So council for advancement in education. I forget what the S stands for. It was a long time ago. And I remember they had published a survey at the time probably a decade ago. And they one of the findings with a survey donors was donors said, we will tolerate a call or a meeting with a fundraiser.
We want to talk to someone that runs programs. And that’s only amplified if there’s an opportunity to meet with a C suite executive, whether you’re a chief philanthropy officer, a CEO, a chief operating officer, chief program officer, whatever it is, we need to change the perspective because the missing link is that your best supporters want to engage directly with your leadership, not because they want to take over your organization. They want to tell you what to do, but most of the time because they want to They want accountability for where their giving is going to go. And they want to connect with someone who can speak to the vision of the future of the organization. And that’s often not your fundraiser.
Rhea 5:12
Yeah, that’s such a good point. And ultimately, especially when we’re talking about the really significant givers, they’re used to having access. So if you as the top executive are not out there, meeting your donors talking with your donors, and I don’t know what you’re doing. Let’s switch tacks a little bit, because in the last, since you started in this, since I started in this, the world has only become louder, more complex. people’s attention spans have gotten shorter. We’re inundated every which way with ads and calls to action and emails, and so on and so forth. How do we as nonprofits cut to the noise to find the people who are going to be our people?
Andrew 5:55
Yeah, that’s a great question. I was a couple of weeks ago, I was down in Dallas with my good friend Eric Tomales, who works at virtuoso I don’t know if Eric or not, but he was doing a presentation. And one of the things scary thing that he shared was that when we think about capturing attention span of the average American, let’s say, the comparison that he gave was a goldfish. His attention span is nine seconds. And the average human in the US has an attention span of eight seconds. So I think about that, I think, Okay, so I’ve got less attention span than a goldfish. That’s what I’ve got to act within in order to capture someone’s attention and get them to care at all about my cause.
And we have to think first about what are the interruptive experiences that we can create. And I use that term purposefully, right? We don’t ever want to be a burden to people. So many times, I’ve talked to nonprofit leaders who were like, No, I don’t want to do anything that causes us to be a burden, or makes people feel like we’re annoying them or anything like that. But to your point, this has become such a noisy world, that if you don’t take a page out of the commercial marketing playbook, and find ways to interrupt someone’s day, I don’t mean that in the annoying. Hey, I’m a telemarketer. I’m calling you at 5:45 pm When your family’s sitting down to dinner, although I bet that still works in some cases.
But if we’re not doing things that cause people to stop in their tracks, and go, oh, I need to pay attention to this. This is interesting, this is I’m curious about this, if we’re not doing that and doing it well, then the marketing spend that we’re putting out is not going to generate a positive return for us, it’s not going to help us acquire a new supporter, acquire a new volunteer or advocate, it’s just going to be money poorly spent if we’re not actually causing people to stop in their tracks, and make a decision of whether or not to interact with us. And so I think that’s one key point. I think the other key point is understanding who your audience really is. I am bothered by organizations that say no, everybody should
Rhea 8:00
Oh my God, that’s good. Everybody is your donor, nobody is your donor.
Andrew 8:06
Exactly right. There are so many sort of micro audiences these days. And if you’re to your point, if you think everybody is your donor, you’re going to spend a whole lot of money and have nobody engaging with you. So before you even get down to what channels should I be in? What should my message be all that kind of stuff, you really have to understand? Who is it that cares about what we do? And then we can decide where do we reach them? And what’s the message that’s most likely to compel them?
Rhea 8:35
So good. Okay, so many things I want to touch on. So what are some examples of interruptive things that we can think about that are not annoying, because I do think that there is a tendency to be very conservative on the communications front, but to your point, we need to pay attention to stuff and I only pay attention to stuff that actually like grabs my attention. So some fun examples that you can think of.
Andrew 8:58
Yeah, so one example that’s fairly recent, when everything complex started in Ukraine, right? Save the Children went up on connected television was some advertising, right. And it was very bold, very engaging. And for those of you that don’t, aren’t familiar with connected television, that’s basically delivering TV ads, not through broadcast, but to your set top display. So whether that’s Hulu or Paramount plus, right, any of those sort of subscribed channels, right? So it the reason I use this one is one it’s highly effective two it is interruptive. Right? You’re sitting there watching your favorite show, and all of a sudden, you’ve got an advertising experience that you can’t get out of right, because it’s not something you can scroll past.
You can swipe it away or anything like that. It’s you’re there. And if you want that content that follows it, you’ve got to experience that commercial. They actually raised a ton of money and built a pretty significant following off of that kind of advertising. I think the same thing, when we think about some of the sort of more traditional channels Right, think about if you’ve ever been on the street in New York, or DC, or Philadelphia, or some of these bigger markets, and someone’s walked up to you, and they’ve been wearing a vest that’s either, again, either Save the Children or Greenpeace or UNICEF or an any number of different organizations, and they’re going to literally intercept you on the street and make an impassioned plea for you to support the organization and the cause. That’s a really interruptive experience, right? Yeah,
Rhea 10:27
I would argue, not in a positive way. But please continue.
Andrew 10:31
It can be right. If it’s done. Well, it can be. But I would agree with you that in many cases, it’s not. So those are some of the sort of easier to understand ways. But I think a lot of it comes down to what’s the message, and what’s the creative that you’re putting behind it, right? Because all of anything that’s interruptive is going to be in a mass media channel, for the most part, it’s not going to be you showing up on my doorstep to bring me coffee, and say, Hey, let’s chat about this new opportunity, that’s financial, just don’t support that. So when we talk about more interruptive things, they all have to either be broadcast or digital marketing, direct mail driven those kinds of channels.
And I think even in the traditional marketing spend that organizations might already have, right, and let’s say you got an organization that’s doing direct mail, donor acquisition, and maybe they’re doing some digital marketing to support that as well. There are ways to be interruptive, with those mediums, that maybe are not things that you’ve thought of before. So for example, I have seen organizations in their digital marketing, have video engagement, and that video might be an engaging 32nd or 15 second video about what’s going on in in their in a cause it’s not about their organization, it’s not about somebody getting promoted, or anything like that it is a deeply felt emotional, story driven 32nd experience of the cause those kinds of things can be very interruptive.
And can cause someone to say, oh, I need to know more about this, right? I’m going to click on this ad, I’m going to hit this QR code, whatever, and get deeper into that cause and that mission, because that’s really what you’re looking for, you’re essentially looking to say, how do I cause someone to give a rip about what we are doing and what we’re talking about? If they’ve never heard of us before? If they don’t know us if we’ve not if we don’t have the trust of brand loyalty. And so it’s got to be something that stops them in their tracks and causes them to pay attention for an extra 10 seconds.
Rhea 12:35
Andrew, I love that. You said that? Can we just dispel a myth right now, the myth being that the minute people hear about us, they’re gonna want to give us money?
Andrew 12:43
For sure. In the advertising world, we often would say it takes seven to 10 touches before someone’s ready to buy. And when you think about the fact that from a fundraising perspective, you’re not selling a tangible product, right? Someone like, whatever your cause is, you’re not sending somebody home with a product when they give you a contribution. So you actually have to jump an even bigger hurdle, which is build the trust that I will give you my money, and not see anything back immediately.
Like I would if I’m going to a grocery store to buy something if I’m going to Trader Joe’s or going to target to get a product. But you’ve got to build enough credibility and trust that I can say, Here’s my money, go away with it. And sometime in the future. Tell me that it’s done. Good. So yeah, you’re right, the idea that someone’s immediately going to say, oh, yeah, here, take my money. I just met you. Let’s do this deal. That’s few and far between Sure. There are going to be some people who are going to say that there’s two things that I know about those people to be true, largely based on almost 25 years of doing this work.
The people who say yes immediately, often say yes to everyone. And so they’re what I would call a tipper, you’re gonna get a 5, 10 an email gift from them, and so are nine other organizations. And they’re never going to build a meaningful relationship with you, because it’s just not who they are. Or they’re going to check you out with a quick gift. And if you don’t deliver massive value after that, they’re going to move on. Beyond that. The opportunity really is how do I build awareness and preference in the marketplace, so that when someone’s ready to make a significant gift, they’re going to look at me as the primary organization that’s most trusted in that space, whatever that cause might be. But otherwise, you know, the idea that you’re just going to immediately get revenue because you showed up and had a sign. It’s not true.
Rhea 14:47
Yeah, I’m so glad you use that. And you keep using this word trust. And I really want to underscore here because basically, what we’re doing with our marketing is that we are increasing trust and without trust you have we don’t do business there is no donation to Talk to me a little bit about the givers today. Because I think about my own buying behavior, my own consumer behavior. I don’t need to talk to anyone, like I go to the website, I click around, and maybe look at some testimonials. And then I buy or I don’t buy similarly with philanthropic initiatives like either will donate because someone I love has asked me to donate, or it’s something that I’m already connected to. But by and large, like, I don’t want to talk to anybody. And I feel like a lot of the let’s say fundraising, traditional fundraising advice that we’ve all come up with was like, there’s a process and then meet them for coffee, and then you take them on the site visit and but why, is that so true?
Andrew 15:42
Great question. So in some instances, that is true. There are some donors who want to be engaged that way. But I wrote a little bit about this couple days ago. Donors are not monolithic and their behavior. And so we have to be prepared, if we want to be successful, to engage donors, and to meet them where they are. Is there a small percentage of donors that want to go to coffee want to be taken on a tour, all that kind of stuff? Sure. Not anywhere near the number of donors who were willing to do that before? And if you ask them, particularly high net worth donors, they will say, No, we didn’t ask for those things. Those were the things that the charity suggested to us.
Oftentimes, when we didn’t have something valuable to say, We trotted out an experience that we thought would replace our lack of having value to share. So come visit for a tour was an easy way to get 30 minutes with somebody or an hour with somebody, if you didn’t have the ability to say, here’s the four things that are most valuable, you need to know today about this and why you should engage. But to your earlier point, like today’s donors are also today’s buyers, there’s a lot of talk about in our industry about whether fundraising and marketing and sales are the same thing. There’s different camps. And all I will tell you is the same kind of behaviors on both sides of the aisle, the seller, and the fundraiser, and the buyer and the donor, there’s a ton of crossover in those behaviors.
And so if we don’t have thoughtful experiences, for our supporters that mirror the way that they like to buy in the rest of their lives, we’re going to end up losing out. So what does that mean? It means that we have to have a really great web experience, because you mentioned this, the first place someone’s going to go to check you out, they’re not going to walk into your organization through your front door and say, Hey, I’d like to talk with somebody about giving, they’re gonna go to your website, they’re gonna go to your Facebook account, they’re gonna go to your Instagram, or your social platforms that are available are. And if they can’t get the information they want, in a quick few seconds, they’re just going to abandon your brand.
And they’re going to say, You know what, there’s somebody else out there, that’s going to make it easier and more enjoyable for me to engage in this topic, because you’re probably not the only one that does the work that you do. So first things first, you’ve got to have a great web presence, you’ve got to have, you’ve got to invest in user experience. So it’s not good enough to just say, I have a website, you have to have a website, that’s not painful for someone to navigate. And you got to have a website that’s not painful for someone to navigate.
And that they can say, You know what, in just a few clicks, and maybe two or three minutes on your site, I can get all the information I want to know, to make a decision of either I’m going to give a gift today, or I want to interact with a human being what you’re saying is so important. And my experience has been so good, that it’s worth me giving you my email address, my phone number, whatever, so that I can have a two way exchange with you to get the information that I want to make a further decision. If you don’t have one of those two things, and you don’t have the value proposition that nails those things, then people are just gonna go away.
Rhea 19:04
Yeah, and I just want to underscore this so strongly, because I just did a website review with my students sign up for our newsletter is not a compelling call to action. So oftentimes, I see the only two calls to action on a website, sign up for the newsletter or donate I’m I’m not I don’t want to do either of those. Let’s talk about something you said value exchange. And I think that something that we as a nonprofit felt really need to think about in a for profit, commercial sense, like the value exchange is I give you X number of dollars for this product. That’s very clear. What is the value exchange that we should be thinking about in a nonprofit charitable context, when we don’t have the product that I’m going to give you to take home? What’s the value in the mind of my donor?
Andrew 19:50
I think it’s probably a couple of different things, right. So if someone doesn’t know you at all yet, then the value exchange is different than if they’re on Boyd supporter. So to use your example about the either donate or sign up for our newsletter, like, newsletter sounds really boring to me, right? But let’s say you’re an animal rescue organization, and you want to get people to subscribe to your content, you want to be able to communicate with them on an ongoing basis via email, you might spin up something like Oh, this nine tips to to make sure that your home is safe for your pets, or download this document check sheet that has seen tips to safe travel or healthy travel with your dog or cat or something like that.
Obviously, I’m, I’m spitballing here, but things like that, where someone would say, You know what, yeah, I take my dog on road trips all the time. I wonder what that’s for? Gosh, I don’t my neighbor just had a house fire. And they were distraught over the fact that it took so long to get their cat to safety, I want to make sure that my animals are safe in my home too. And it could be any number of things like that. In other places, it could be if you’re a, you’re an organization that’s focused on, say, teen homelessness, it could be this tip sheet to spot the signs of teens in crisis in your child’s school, anything like that.
Those are the kind of things that that a random person who’s landed on your site, because they searched for a key keyword term, or they pick your advertising somewhere else and are just wanting to learn more. Those are the kinds of things that create enough value or perceived value in their mind for them to say, I’m willing to part with my email and address something that I hold valuable wants to be spammed I don’t want 47 Different organizations sending me crap tomorrow. But it’s important enough for me that the content that you’re offering is valuable enough that I’m going to part with that information. And I’m going to share that with you in order to get the content that you have. So that’s in my mind, the hurdle we have to overcome, just to get someone to take a first action to give us their contact information so that we can then start having a conversation.
Rhea 22:06
I wanna underscore this point so strongly, because there is nothing worse than getting spammed, right like I give to political causes. And I’m like, don’t want to anymore because you know, what I get from my political contribution is I get 10 more emails asking me for money. And I’m like, I didn’t sign up for any of this. I don’t know how well I know how you got my email address. But I just really want to underscore that we have to ask people for permission to contact, don’t abuse, the contact information is all I’m trying to say.
Andrew 22:38
Yeah, absolutely. permission based marketing is so much more effective than a spray and pray approach. And once someone has said, Yes, I am willing to share this information with you. Because what you’re offering is so valuable that I want it, you have a completely different conversation. But then beyond that, there’s really the value proposition for a philanthropic engagement, right, and that is telling the donor or potential donor, if you invest X, we will use it to do Y so that we can achieve a joint outcome of Z.
And so it might be if you give $50 Today, we will be able to send out a rescue van tonight and get one teen off the street so that he or she is not made fault does not fall prey to sex traffickers does not have to sell their body in order to eat tomorrow for will have a safe place to sleep, where they’re not going to be attacked by someone on the street. It’s something like that, right. And often I do a website review. And I get to a donation page. And it says, Give $50 today to provide hope to teens on the street. I’m sorry to everyone who wants to provide hope. But I have no idea what $50 Of Hope actually gets me
Rhea 24:01
Or support our cause or our impact. I’m like, I don’t know what that means.
Andrew 24:06
No one cares about that. People who are charitable want to solve problems. And so tell me how an investment in your cause solves a problem, and how you’re going to use those dollars to tangibly make a difference tomorrow, and then I might consider giving.
Rhea 24:25
Let’s talk about email addresses or email lists. Rather, the mistake that I often see with nonprofits is that they think of their email list. First of all, they usually don’t think of their email list, but if they do think of their email, as they think of it as an ATM, all they do is send out solicitations. Talk to me about what does it mean to nurture your list and how often should you be setting up solicitations or what should you be doing in the meantime?
Andrew 24:51
Yes, this is such a big topic and it’s so important. I have worked with organizations that send 80 to 100 emails a year. and all of them are solicitations. And it just makes me cringe. Our world, we’ve actually been having a lot of conversations with our partners about the need for relationship cultivation company. And the specific number is going to be probably different for every organization because the overall communication cadence is different for everybody. But I once heard someone say to me, I don’t know how many emails is too many. But if all I get are asks, too, are too many, as I think we need to balance that and think about, and I, when I come in and help an organization build out their email calendar, I want to see a robust number of cultivation emails, and when I say cultivation emails, I’m talking about an email without a financial mask.
So it’s not to say there’s not an ask in it, because I want to cultivate a behavior of two way communication. But I definitely don’t want to just be asking for money every time. So if I’m going to have, let’s say, I’m gonna have 12 asks a year, in my email, well, fundraising asks, I want to have at least 24 other emails that are not asking for money. So some of those are going to be reporting back Impact Reporting, could be that newsletter that you’re so keen to ask everybody to sign up for, I hope that it’s you’ve got some video content, where you’re saying, hey, check out this video, you gave us a gift two months ago, and I want to show you how we use that to build this new adaptive Park in our community to serve families with kids who have disabilities, or whatever it might be.
But I also want it to be, hey, let me tell you the story of Sarah is one of the kids in our program that your support has helped. And she’s got something she wants to tell. Right. And so it’s a meaningful story that tells her life story, how she got connected to the organization, how you’re giving intersected with the work that we’re doing with Sarah, and in her words, talking to you about why it’s important to be a part of this cause. So things like that, and it’s against gonna be different for every organization based on the assets they have the stories they’re able or not able to tell, and the ways in which they can engage their community.
But I think it’s really critical to have at least a couple of touches that are nonfinancial for every time you solicit, and some of the ways that you can ask people to still have a sort of engaging communication with you a two way communication would be things like a donor survey, signing something and sending it back, shooting you a quick note to tell you what’s the one thing that’s most important about the work that you’re doing is any number of different ways that you can ask people to engage that don’t have to be financially motivated.
Rhea 27:49
Yeah, you’ve said so much that I just want to unpack here. So talk about this. Similarly, I call it pebbles and rocks. The pebbles are the things that agitate the water, like the newsletters, the impact reports, the videos, the social media posts, right? The rocks are the solicitations, you really need to think about, are you throwing out all rocks? Are you throwing out all pebbles? Most organizations tend to throw out all rocks, something that you said that I think is really important is the idea of closing the loop for our donors, right? Because we automation, like you get sent a thank you letter that thank you email. But that’s not enough.
And I think when I think about the experience of the donor, they’re on a story like they’re on a journey with you. And if you don’t close the loop, ie, what did you do with my money, you’ve left an open story. And that doesn’t feel great. But I want to talk about storytelling, because I’ve been out in the field. And I’ve been doing a lot of training. And I think there’s been some pushback around the use of story in fundraising. And I think part of it is that all of us have been exposed to really bad storytelling called poverty porn, like the poor kids with like flies in their face or like the sad dog, right? How do we use story in a way that doesn’t feel exploitative?
Andrew 29:08
Yeah. So I think there’s a number of different things related to that we have to address. First is the permission side of things. Right. So I think one of the big risks that organizations run is telling stories without actually inviting the person who, whose story it is to actively speak in it. And I think that’s really dangerous. So when we are working with organizations and doing storytelling work, the first thing that we’re doing is sitting down with those people who are in their programs, receiving support, you know, whatever.
And we’re actually we’re not gonna just jump straight into interview, but we’re talking about, here’s why. Here’s why do we tell these stories? Here’s what they help us accomplish, and then inviting them and asking their permission to be a part of that. So that’s one thing. Second is we’re telling When, oftentimes really difficult stories, right? In my work, I’ve been doing this for a long time, and much of my work has been with the hunger and poverty. So I’m talking to people who are living on the streets, who are living in their cars, who have to go and stand in line at a food shelf three times a week in order to feed their kids.
It’s really emotional, and often stigmatized kind of conversation. And when you get into things like teens living on the street, and you get into sex trafficking, and prostitution and things of that nature, that’s even more complicated and harder stories to tell. And I don’t think that it’s wrong to tell those stories. In fact, I reject the idea that it’s wrong to tell those stories. And often what you’ll hear me say is, if our comfort as marketers and fundraisers is more important than raising the money to actually help get someone off the street, that’s when I say it’s your time to quit your job and go do something else.
But it doesn’t mean that we need to exploit people. Right. So I think part of that is letting the person about whom we’re telling the story, have ownership of that story, right? And making sure that we tell the full story. It’s not just Sarah’s on the street, right? It’s, here’s what’s going on in her life today. And here’s how she’s empowered because of what’s going on. So I think we need to, it needs to be much more complex and nuanced storytelling than what we’re used to. I think one of the biggest culprits in this is the direct marketing agencies who say, yeah, we’ve got this letter written, we need two lines of copy, that are going to be about the story. All you can do then is say, Sally’s poor and homeless and needs your help. That’s not the entirety of who she is.
Rhea 31:47
I am reminded of Erica Carly, who was on the podcast, who talked about constructing stories as a gift back to the person.
Andrew 31:56
Yep. Yeah, I agree with that. And I think the, what we need to think through that is, what are the formats that we are using, and mediums that we’re using to tell these stories that allow us to actually have a more rich experience and tell more of that story than two lines of coffee? And I agree with Erica’s perspective, I think there’s another perspective though, and I’ve heard people say this. And in fact, I, you and I haven’t talked about several things. But I actually my family lost everything we owned when I was 15. And we ended up homeless. So I tell this, I tell you this partly as someone who’s lived this life as well, the reality is, it is often empowering to the individual who’s had that experience to be able to tell their story.
So I think one of the biggest risks that I see is nonprofit do gooders who say, wait a minute, we can’t tell that person story because we have to protect them. And I flatly reject that. I think that’s BS. And if you ask the people who are have lived through that, they will often say, I may not be able to give financially today. But telling my story in this way to help the organization that helped my family, be able to help more people is my ability to give back. And I think we need to put that in context and not just have a protectionist mentality. But the idea of being able to tell that story as a way to give that person that gift back, I think it’s fantastic.
Rhea 33:17
Yeah, and I actually just want to think about this as well, which is, when we think about telling people stories, it can be hard to tell the story of someone that’s still in the middle of it. Right? If and so I think we also need to think about the arc of the story such that say someone’s going through a difficult experience. Can they talk about it on the other side of it emotionally? Like it’s really hard to talk about it? Like when you’re in it? Yeah. Okay, let’s like back out
A little bit, because I think this has been fantastic. And Dr. Byrne and Tammy can’t believe we’ve been going for 40 minutes. What is the total newbie? What’s outbound versus inbound marketing?
Andrew 33:58
Yeah, probably the easiest way to think about that is if you find yourself using any term that has a blast at the end of it, that’s outbound, right? We’re gonna do an email blast, we’re gonna do a we’re gonna blast this, we’re gonna blast that. That’s outbound, that’s pushing a message out to a, whether it’s your active or your house file, people that are already supporting you, or new constituents outbound is sending things to them inbound, think of that as pulling people in when we talk about creating offers that people can subscribe to to get more information. So you’re you are creating an inbound, oftentimes, it’s referred to as a funnel, right?
So you’re creating a content piece, whether it’s something that’s printed, whether it’s video content, whether it’s audio content, any kind of content where you’re saying to someone, hey, come engage with us, trade us your email address, in exchange for This piece of value this piece of content that’s valuable, that is the inbound side. And it’s not to say that you don’t have some typically digital marketing spend that supports driving traffic to your content. But you’re not, say sending out a direct mail acquisition piece or sending out an email blast to people, you’re actually pulling them in the high value content offers. And then once they’ve given you their email address, then you’re remarketing to them through outbound channels, typically, again, email content, where you’re then building that relationship that leads to a fundraising asked something.
Rhea 35:39
So it sounds like we should be thinking about using both of these strategies for different parts of what we’ll call the funnel. Right?
Andrew 35:46
Yes, there’s still definitely viability in outbound, whether it’s outbound digital marketing, or even direct mail, there are plenty of people who say direct mail is dying or dead. The financial metrics don’t support that it still works within reason. But yes, I would say you should be using both. And so the biggest challenge that I see organizations face is they think about Inbound in the same context in which they think about outbound. And the problem with that is that inbound, often doesn’t come with an immediate financial transaction. So you know, we might have someone say, wait a minute, we got 500 leads, but nobody’s given a gift yet.
That’s a failure. And it’s only a failure, if you’re thinking about it through the lens of direct response fundraising, where you’re saying, Well, wait a minute, if I spent dollar, yesterday, in direct mail acquisition, or an email acquisition, I should have dollar, in commensurate value coming back to me. And that’s how that those channels work. But on the inbound side, the real value is building up a constituent base that will deliver value to your organization in your cause over time, but you have to nurture that, that constituent base differently. Sometimes, it’s a two to four week cycle before you can start asking, sometimes it might be a longer tail, depending on the kind of organization and the interaction that you have with that constituency. And you just have to test it. But what we often find is that the people that come in off of content offers on the inbound side, they tend to be more valuable over time, because you’ve built a deeper relationship with them on the front end.
Rhea 37:27
Okay, so let’s get back to the original question. If I’m listening to you, and I’m like, okay, cool, Andrew, like I’m hearing all the things that you’re saying. But let’s get back to the question. How do we find more prospects? How do I find more donors? twofold question here. In my mind, I think that we under capitalized on our existing list, right? I think we just haven’t steward them properly. But what if I actually am looking to bring more people into the fold top like three strategies I can think about right now?
Andrew 37:58
Yes. So first, I need to echo what you just said. If you have something below 70% retention, the first place that you should invest is retention. nag me on that, because I know some people just won’t take that advice.
Rhea 38:11
I talked about the leaky bucket all the time, and it drives me crazy. I’m like, why are you pouring water into the bucket? You’re just gonna have to solve the same problem over and over again, anyway, the leaky bucket? Yes, I’m with you.
Andrew 38:24
If we put that aside, and we say, where should we acquire new donors? I think there’s a couple of different answers to that. So when I think about the donors that are providing the greatest level of financial investment to organizations, right now, the way that you acquire those people, is going most likely going to be through referrals from the people who are already giving you those biggest, right? So it’s not how do I acquire a list? It’s not how do I go out and get a bunch of emails? It’s, I’m going to go talk to my major donors, and one of the things I’m going to ask them next month is, can they introduce me to three people like them? Who might be interested in our cause as well. So that’s a very different acquisition strategy.
That’s where you’re going after ones and twos, but the checks that are gonna come from those ones and twos are gonna have way more zeros on them than going out and getting a bunch of smaller donors.
Rhea 39:20
Double clicking on all the things yes, totally agree.
Andrew 39:24
Then beyond that, when we think about the quote, unquote, mass donor audience, right, so the $25 transactional donor, depending on your cause, and depending on whether or not you can build a mass following for it, I say whether or not because there are just some causes that are really difficult to do. So when I think of domestic violence, it’s really difficult to find an audience a broad audience that where the financial metrics make sense for high volume acquisition on that call. So they’re an organization that’s doing that kind of work or doing so systems change work in a community that’s really tough to quote unquote sell in direct marketing, that those organizations are going to have a tougher time doing broad acquisition.
Other organizations should be looking at things like direct mail acquisition, they should be looking at things like paid search and display and paid social marketing, to drive traffic to their site, that they can convert new donors out, right? That those things are going to probably be the highest and best return. But I would say the way that you need to think about this is not what’s the channel I’m going to use. But what’s the financial structure that I need to live with? And what I mean by that is, if my long term donor value is $300, then where can I spend the least amount of money to get more donors that look like that, that are going to give me $300, over a five year time horizon, or more, and I’m going to allocate the investment dollars that I have for marketing, to the channels and the activities that are going to get me the highest long term return.
So that’s a lot different than saying, Where do I go get donors, right. But if we don’t understand those underlying metrics, first, we’re going to go seek out supporters in places where we might get a lot of donors, but they might be really low value and not give me the kind of return. And they might come with a higher cost. So I would say don’t chase the channel as much as chasing the investment strategy first, and then retrofit, where to get them based on what my numbers.
Rhea 41:41
Andrew we can have a whole other podcast, probably just a whole series of podcasts around metrics and building a funnel and conversion rates and pixels and all of the retargeting and look alike audiences and so on. So that’s when we get very into the weeds of digital marketing, and all those sorts of strategies. We don’t have time for that. But I’d love to have you back on. And we can get a little nerdy about digital marketing.
Andrew 42:07
Yeah, to bottom line it for everyone, because I don’t want people to walk away. But gosh, I didn’t hear anything about where to get new donors, the places where you’re most likely to get new donors, direct mail acquisition, paid search. So keyword search, Google, Bing, things like that, but not the Google grant, because it pretty much sucks for new donor acquisition, paying for display marketing, paying for social media advertising. And the reason I say paying is because the ability to target the right audiences often comes with a gated payment offering versus just using Facebook for free. There are some things you can do for free, they’ll still work, but not everything. So those are the places where you’re most likely to get the highest volume of new donors. But again, you have to understand the math behind it, to know that where you want to be is actually the place that’s gonna get you the best.
Rhea 43:02
And to underscore all of that, to bring it all the way back to the beginning. You need to understand who your donor is, who they are, what they care about where they hang out, before you even start to think about things like ad spend, because it’s not going to be effective if you don’t actually understand the mindset and motivations of your audience. Totally agree. Yay, we’ve brought it back to the beginning. Andrew, this has been really helpful. Certainly a lot for folks to think about. I’ll make sure to put all of your information in the show notes for folks who want to learn more about you who want to hear your excellent podcast and to get in touch with you. So thanks so much.
Andrew 43:36
Thank you. Good to be with you.
Rhea 43:38
All right, everyone. Take care. Have a good week.
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