Hi everyone, welcome. Real quick before we get started, I just want to take one quick second to do a little bit of housekeeping. This webinar is being recorded. We will upload that recording and provide it to all of you guys afterwards, probably this afternoon or by tomorrow. The slides will also be uploaded alongside that recording for you guys to access those. And you can use the Q&A box and the chat to send your questions and your commentary and throughout. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to our presenters. Well, thank you so much, Chrissy, for that and super excited to be here. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and kind of get us started as people are still flowing in a bit. If you all want to make sure the chat works or if you'd like to say where you're from or your organization, feel free to throw that in the chat. And then we will use the Q&A and chat and we'll try to answer questions along the way versus we'll save some for the end. But Christine and I will try to answer them as they come up because we always find it's pertinent to answer them right there in the moment and it won't make anyone anxious that they're not going to get their question answered. But we go ahead and share my screen and there we have it. So today we're going to be talking about the power of appreciation to increase donor retention. And we'll do intros here in a second. But it was funny in preparation for this, I jumped on good old chat TPT and asked, you know, the question, what are university and case affiliated organizations facing right now in fundraising? It gave me a bunch of different ideas. I was like, OK, let's see if this is true or not. And some of you in the chat, if you want to say if this is true or not, feel free to disprove chat TPT. But one of the things it talked about was donor fatigue. The second one was AI data and personalization pressure to use AI to look at data models. Another one was changing student demographics. Another one it talked about was endowment scrutiny and calls for transparency. Collaboration. That was the fifth one between advancement and enrollment marketing. So I'll have something exciting to be said about that. Digital first stewardship and engagement was number six. Number seven was corporate and foundation partnerships are expanding. And then the eighth one was shrinking fundraising teams and higher expectations. Those good old KPIs. With that, today we're going to start off with introductions. Maybe know or don't know who we are. And we're going to talk about a donor engagement report. We're going to talk about how we can show impact not only to our donors, to our alums, to our prospects. Key solutions. And then we'll wrap it up. But once again, feel free to use both the chats to just have any commentary. I always love seeing the chat. I do monitor it. And I know Christine does as well. And then any Q&A that you do have, throw in the Q&A. But with that, I'm going to stop talking and hand it over to Christine. All right. Thanks, Frank. And hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining. I was actually just at KC1 in Boston. So great to see folks joining today as well. I'm Christine Derrickson. I'm a senior customer success manager at Gravity. Been here about three years. And in my role, I get to work with a ton of amazing higher ed institutions on their day-to-day strategy, using technology to better engage with their donors. And before that, I was in higher ed for a while. I worked at Boston College. And most of my career has been prospect management and strategy. So coming in and trying to use that in the day-to-day to also pair that with being effective with technology. Go ahead, Frank. I love it. Hi, everyone. I am Frank Mumford, also from Gravity. Background, same thing as Christine, was a fundraiser for a decade. I actually got my start a lot longer ago than that as a university telethon fundraiser. And I did that at Northern Michigan University, where I was one of the top callers in program history. And then they disbanded the calling. So I think that record still holds. So yay me. And then I'm seeing some people on here as well. It looks like we have some current clients. So thank you all for coming and jumping on this. And my background, I started an annual fund at North Dakota State University as I got back into fundraising. And I live in Minnesota, worked for the University of Minnesota, and then was a major gift officer both in university as well as nonprofits. That's some of the background that I bring in. I've been with Gravity for over four years now, using technology, and have the lovely opportunity to not only work with people like Christine, but to work with a ton of organizations just like you all on this call, who are looking to either make their life a little easier, share impact, or share appreciation. And that's what we'll get to talk about today. So I mentioned breaking down the silos between enrollment to the other side of the house and advancement. And so we had an exciting announcement here this last month. We merged in together with two amazing companies called Ivy AI and Ocelot. Both provide services and solutions for enrollment management, outreach, admissions, both through texting and AI virtual assistant chat bot. And so if you want to learn more, feel free to go to our website or ping us or whatnot. But just wanted to put that out there. And there's a lot going on in the space. There's a lot of questions people have and a lot of support people need. And when you look at the enrollment side as well, that is another area. There's so much information on our websites. How do you get and extrapolate all that data? And that's what we help with. And then what Gravity is overall is we are all the way from alumni and community engagement to fundraising, enablement, from giving days, crowdfunding, to AI news management, and video stewardship and engagement as well. And so we're a full service solution where we help pretty much with anything and everything under the sun with your organization. Awesome. Okay. All right. And I'll jump in here. Just wanted to give you all an overview, just kind of bring it back to the fact that what we're really looking to talk about today is appreciating your donors so that you can ultimately retain them. Right? And so Gravity launched a survey this year to measure engagement and essentially hear from all of our partners on what they're finding in this space, what they need, what they're focusing on. And I just wanted to give you a quick overview of the breakdown of that survey. So we work with partners in higher education, K through 12, and NTOs. And the results of the survey were pretty evenly split between NTOs and higher ed for who participated. And then we also had some K through 12s responding to that as well. So over 140 total responses. And then some of the things that we saw as major themes, some of these are familiar, but Frank shared with what we're all trying to think about in our day to day, shifts in donor preference, how do you meet those, the rise of AI and automation, and then donor pipeline development. So those are all themes we'll talk through today as well. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And as far as the survey goes, we'll go through some of the other stats within there, but if you do want it, we will provide that opportunity after the fact. And we did just launch another survey as well that will be going out. And so if you want to participate in that, we will have someone drop it in the chat, but it's around just kind of the state of what is happening, kind of similar to what I asked chat TPT. But one of the big things that we wanted to start with is not being problem oriented, but talking about the problem in some potential solutions. So one of the big things that we all continue to face is how can fundraisers successively show impact to drive retention, getting student stories, getting outcomes, research, having faculty, having deans, having all these people come to the table to not only share what is going on, but doing it in a very personalized manner. And so one of the other issues that we continue to see is disjointed systems. So stuff's all over the place, multiple CRMs, email systems, all of that. There's so many manual things happening when you're trying to reach out and engage with donors. And one of the biggest things that we look at is reducing manual and admin tasks allows time for more personalization, stewardship, and appreciation. And according to McKinsey Global Institute, a study they did, if you're able to automate repetitive tasks like logging your activities that we don't always like doing in the data base, it can save you six plus hours a week. So if your CRM does provide your ability to track some of your activities or you have a solution, continue to use that. It is such an amazing add-on to anything we do because if it's not in the CRM, did it happen? I don't know. People used to say that to me, but there's a lot of stuff that still didn't end up in the data base. And as far as what that looked like, when we looked at the survey, one of the biggest things that came out of it, and it's something that has been happening in the for-profit space for a very, very long time, is personalization. It is the most effective strategy that was implemented. And what we see when it comes to personalization is Penelope Burke, what she says is 93% of donors would give again if they received a prompt and personal. Thank you. I think that's stats somewhere within here, but I have another one. And that just, for me, speaks so much to what this is looking at, is how can we not only personalize when it's an individual donor, but how do we personalize overall to the entirety of your base? And so here's a lovely stat that I'm glad I didn't quote and I got to show it to you, but 44% of donors would actually give 10% more, and 66% of millennials would give more money if their communication was personalized. And the millennial thing, it is a little triggering for me because I kid you not, I was at a conference back in 2011, 2012, and it was people talking about the millennials and what are we going to do about them and all that. And personalization, not the silver bullet here, magic bullet, but it is very, very useful to think about that. And then another great stat that I always like to share is 78% of people who go to write their first email or go to write outreach or a letter or anything face writer's block. And I know I remember not only reaching out to donors, but going to write a direct mail piece and I'm like, oh, what am I going to say on this or how are we going to put this together? And for us, that is a key that AI and large language model learnings and all of this can actually start to help with. And so I'm going to kick this over to Christine for having her talk a little bit more. Yeah. And just kind of thinking about that concept of writer's block, right? It can be so hard to start with what you're going to say to a donor, especially if you're in a role where maybe you're a digital experience officer, you're tasked with reaching out to thousands of donors and trying to engage them. So one thing I would encourage you all to start thinking about as you tackle that challenge of how do we personalize and how do we do it at scale is first looking at technology as a potential resource and also really developing a team atmosphere where you're sharing resources internally. So I've just included here some snapshots of what an example of technology to enable that personalization can look like. So these are both screenshots of the Rays from Gravity product, which essentially serves up a daily recommendation to a fundraiser of a donor to reach out to. That recommendation based on AI, we have an algorithm that looks at a ton of different data points to serve up the right donor at the right time, hopefully with the right message as well. So on the left, we've got an example of what that draft message that the Rays tool writes for the fundraiser can look like. And one thing that can be really helpful here is we always try to suggest the location that would work well for the donor. So we're going to look at where is that donor living, where are they located, and let's find a great place for a fundraiser to suggest connecting. That's one of those administrative tasks that when we're thinking through how do we chop out six hours of extra work a week, we want to hopefully take the guesswork out of stuff like where do I meet up with my donor? Where can I suggest a good location? And then we also want to be able to address their past giving, their past engagement with our organization. I think one of the worst things we can do is reach out to a donor with the exact same message that they may have received from their former primary contact a few months ago. So it's super important to have a snapshot of your donor's information to understand what their history is with your organization, and then give them a personalized message. So that's what we've got as an example up here on the right side, where the Rays tool is going to give you a quick snapshot of that donor's contact info, giving history, most recent engagement. And as you all are thinking through how to do this on your own, certainly there's the Rays from Gravity tool. I would also encourage you to think about if you're struggling with messaging and what to say, ChatGPT is a great resource. I would not put any personal donor data in there, but if you're just looking for basic language about what can I say to maybe a brand new alum who only gave for senior gift and now I'm trying to figure out how to get them back to campus. So that's a great resource to use. I've also heard about folks using MagicRate. And then the other thing I would encourage you all to think through is if you're on a team and you're lucky enough to have some other folks doing similar work to you, is maybe make a database, a library internally of different types of email templates you all can use and share with each other to be more efficient and more customized. I love that. I love that idea. I used to do that when I do outreach as a major gift officer, I do a lot of testing. And that's like the fun thing is when we do outreach is to test different subject lines to test different messages and what seems to work or resonate. Typically, it's the personalized messaging, but then beyond that is how are we getting good responses or people saying, yeah, absolutely, I'd love to take a tour or come to campus or grab lunch with you when you're in town. And when those work, those are things to share. And I remember one of the first times I shared it out, people are like, what is this guy doing? Why is he sharing these with the team? Is he trying to have an ego of like, oh, look how good I am. But for me, it was always to help others. And I think sometimes we get stuck in our own ways and sharing is caring. I was always saying people would laugh. And I think the other thing, too, is when we start to look at how we do outreach, it is the personalization is we're almost playing Sherlock Holmes. If you don't know who they are very well, there's certain key indicators within their record in the database or in your CRM that you could absolutely utilize. And I was going to kind of copy and share everything. I love it. Thank you, Christy. And I was going to say another thing, too, is like, if you want to throw in the chat, how many of you are using Excel spreadsheets to track your data or to look at either your top donors or your portfolio? Yeah, I'm going to take a pause here. We're going to see how many people are using spreadsheets right now because I love and they're OK. I mean, they've been around since like the 80s. So it's funny. Yeah, I did use spreadsheets as well. I love that Excel and RENXT. Beautiful. And the best part is like any advice I could give is if you are using spreadsheets, make sure you include their CRM ID and you could always import with headers back in. That's what I used to do. And so, yeah, and then Bella just dropped in the donor engagement pipeline report that we're referencing. So thank you for that. OK, I'm going to keep us moving along, though, and back to Christy. All right, so I love the slide because it's really speaking to the importance of when we're personalizing, we also want to be telling a story. So we always want to be helping our donors understand how they're giving makes a difference. And we've got this lovely stat over here. Fifty nine percent of our fundraisers who took the survey said that impact stories are what drove the most engagement. And I'll just throw a personal story in here. So I subscribe to the Boston Ballet. I go to every single show that I've been doing this for years. I'm a huge fan girl. And I'd never actually been a donor. And I got an email from Boston Ballet that thanked me for being a subscriber. And it shared a video of my favorite ballerina. And she was sharing how she's reached her 20 year anniversary with the Boston Ballet. And my support as a subscriber helps to keep her career going. And now she's a choreographer. And I was just blown away by that level of actually understanding the impact. And so I made a gift. I made my first ever gift. And it's just a great example of how that can really make a difference going the extra mile to share with your donors. How are you actually impacting our day-to-day? That is both what's going to help retain your donors and also what can help you attain brand new donors. So really important concept and I'll hand it back to Frank here to talk a little bit more about some examples of what that can look like. Yeah and I love the storytelling aspect as well and you know even when I was like thinking about how can we talk about our own stories and why we're involved in this field and I know for me I grew up watching my parents give and support other people and for me the storytelling goes back to like why I like to give back and help others is it was something I emulated and valued and my parents did as well. I remember driving down the road it was raining and and we're driving through a neighborhood someone was walking getting poured on my dad pulled over and said hey where are you going do you need a ride it's it's pouring rain I see you don't have an umbrella and we gave him a ride two miles down the road and and that's like for me where giving back and supporting others is so important and it's really beyond just being a student caller it's what got me excited about being part of this industry as well and you know the other things I know video has been something that has been a part of our space for a while now and it continues to to outperform anything and everything so I was a huge user and proponent of utilizing video. Okay I'm gonna change that because the screen's throwing me off a bit but if you didn't know people retain 95% of what they watch versus 10% of what they read and then the other fun stat I always love to share is that one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words and so what you're able to do in one minute is more impactful than no offense to anyone the stewardship letter you wrote or the email you sent that video has the greatest amount of opportunity to have legs and to inspire impact and and for me it was something that I've used my goodness since like 2016 I remember making my first video with my executive director and my unit at University of Minnesota and doing a stewardship campaign with it and people watched it it was very poorly put together but it worked and that's where like I discovered the other tools that are out there and there's there's a vast amount of tools we also offer one but today's not a sales pitch I meant to share that at the beginning and and if there's anything you can take away beyond just trying to automate put things back in the into your database and sharing appreciation is to utilize video and then Chris no wait this is sorry this is you Christine yeah I will hop back in here so wanted to also bring up we've talked a lot about personalization we've talked about video impact I hinted at this earlier and it is something that I am very passionate about as a former prospect manager really being thoughtful about how we are handling our donors over their entire lifetime as a donor with our organization right so we certainly want to personalize we want to engage them in a way that tells them the story of their own relationship and support of our organization and we also want to make sure that is done the whole time they have a relationship with us so this is where I want to bring up thoughtful retention-minded portfolio handoffs so this is something we saw as a concern from folks who did fill out that survey I can say just from my anecdotal experience in the day-to-day working with NTOs higher ed who are trying to figure out how do I retain my donors for the long term it is such an important piece of the equation so we saw 1 in 10 respondents say their portfolio handoff process is smooth so that means 9 out of 10 say it's not smooth so it's a big area of opportunity to improve right and then we had a whopping 42% say there is no formal process at all I even work with some organizations who haven't had portfolios before because they're in the early stages of developing their strategy and how they're going to engage with donors so I want to just kind of make a plug here for wherever you're at in terms of what your portfolio structure might look like really start to think about actually putting in place some formalized structure for a lot of you who are coming from some pretty large universities you may have entire teams that are there to support you with this but we really just want to make sure that if a donor goes to a new fundraiser maybe somebody's left we know retention is a in terms of our actual staff is a really big challenge we all face in the higher ed space we want to make sure that we're never saying the exact same thing to somebody or that we're not acknowledging their past with our organization so start to think about how can you capture those notes a fundraiser has hopefully recorded in the database of their history with a fundraiser if you are using spreadsheets I would encourage you all to think about let's try to get that action history you may be recording in a spreadsheet into your crm even if it's just once every six months once a year that is better than nothing so try to think about how you can make sure you have that history captured in your database and then also how you might be upgrading or downgrading folks so if you're looking at maybe you've got young alumni portfolio you've got folks you want to work up that pipeline and eventually have your future major donors you want to be really thoughtful in potentially handing them off to a major gift fundraiser from more of a leadership or annual place we always want to make that feel for the donor like they are being appreciated the entire time so i know frank's got some good stories here i'm gonna call on you frank to tell us about what you've seen here i i do i have uh two that kind of come to mind but i want to throw throw this out there to everyone to kind of make sure i know for some of us it's either lunchtime or post lunch so i want to make sure you're awake uh put in the chat if you don't have a formal portfolio handoff and um while you do that i am going to share two stories so well maybe three i don't know we'll see but uh one of the stories that reminds me is i had a conversation with a donor um i'll share the one with a donor who asked me what the heck is going on in your industry i'll start with that one and so i had a donor i've left an organization typical major gift officers christine was uh alluding to um i left an organization and when i went from one to the next i had a donor who kind of he didn't stick with me per se but he wanted to grab lunch so he reached out he said hey can we can we get lunch i said absolutely i'd love to have lunch with you and so during our lunch um he shared a story with me about an organization he had been giving to for for a while and was giving about seven thousand dollars a year some give or take and he shared with me he said all right so i have a question he said i have had this organization i was giving to and someone reached out very similar to what you did at your previous organization to you know ask me why i give how i'm involved get me more engaged stuff like that and he said i had him reach out and they asked me you know oh why do you give why are you a part of this why do you continue to give like the standard templated questions we all have in our mind when we're reaching out to donors and he shared you know my uncle passed away we we do like your organization and we gave in memory of him because that was his his wishes is in lieu of flowers and so he made a significant gift and then just continued to give and mind you this was a young couple they're probably in their late 30s giving somewhere around a hundred thousand dollars a year to different charities like just crazy as far as philanthropy goes for that age and he said so someone reached out asked all these questions and not a year goes by and he gets another phone call and it's another person from that organization basically saying the exact same thing same questions same why are you involved how are you engaged and asked him out for coffee so he's like okay i get it and within six months a third person so over the span of about two years ish a third person reaches out and said hey i want to know why you give all the exact same questions the first two people i asked him and so he looked at me and he goes frank don't any of you all take notes about the conversations we have and what like you're learning from others i stopped giving and that was his exact statement i stopped giving because i no longer believed that the organization like could manage my money because i couldn't even manage taking notes from our conversations and and it goes back to like number one i i said it earlier record stuff in the in the database christy put it up there you know throw it put it in the database if you can't see it it didn't happen and it also speaks to how we're looking and personalizing outreach previous notes and then just understanding like who people are they stopped giving seven thousand dollars a year now this wasn't a huge organization so that is a pretty significant amount and i talked to this gentleman like a year ago i saw him at a baseball game and i'm pretty sure he's still not giving to him because i asked him about that and um so that's one story like just to to compel you all to continue to look at what we can put in the system change up our questions i always had some of my favorite questions i was from gerald pannis there's a book called 300 power questions one of my favorite questions was of all the gifts you've ever given what is one that brings the most joy to you and another question i would always ask when i talk to donors dealt around like the programs and services of everything we're doing at the university or organization what's what calls to you or calls your heart the most and you'd be surprised at how many people it's not even your unit it's not even the specific area they're supporting it's something else but they feel compelled to continue to give to like their their college or or wherever within their university and so it's just those are some good questions to know another another one came from a consultant i was friends with her name's diana a wonderful person and she told me she was like coaching someone and they had a donor tell them that they thought they screwed up the donor thought they screwed up they did a handoff where the donor moved into someone else's portfolio it went from a major to a mid-level portfolio didn't tell them why they thought they did something wrong because they did not clearly communicate with that donor about the situation or why they were moving people and and i know there's always friction when we look at moving people from portfolios especially if you know them well and so this is a another huge reason on why and then the the last one deals with video so when i left my last organization which was greater twin cities united way to come work for gravity i had asked i gave him about about a month transition and when i went to leave i said who are my donors or the donors i had the opportunity to work with they're not mine but the those that i had the opportunity to work with who are they going to who are they transitioning to and we decided to do portfolio reassignments as i was leaving because i had the largest portfolio the highest grossing portfolio and so when we did it they were split about a third a third a third i did a video transition out to the donors to say hey as you know i am leaving today is my last day i first of all just want to say thank you and then i wanted to introduce you to who is taking over for me uh as i as i exit and what it was is there was a second video and the second video rolled into the next gift officer who's going to be working with them and i'll never forget i had a cfo from a fortune 500 company email back immediately and said this was the most thoughtful and nicest like handoff i've ever gotten and we sometimes forget those that we're reaching out to especially in in university in higher ed that these people they have i wouldn't say hundreds but others reaching out looking for their support looking for giving be at their place of faith um the a board they serve on i saw someone serves on a board as well for the pacific northwest ballet like we're serving in other places and other capacities and so we're donors and so just understand like differentiation and personalization is key because of that how are you going to stand out among all the other noise that's in the space and in that kind of um gives me a good reason to say this stat so uh it works well so 72 of business leaders think effective communication has actually increased their team's productivity so effectively communicating to your donors to others and and to share what is happening with donors with others because the relationship shouldn't be with you singular it should be with you plural and it should be with the organization because one of the biggest challenges and i'm i know i'm kind of rambling here but one of the biggest challenges we face is the professional and personal relationship we have with donors and how do you introduce that donor to not just frank or not just their gift officer but to christine to the ceo to the dean to whoever so their relationship is beyond just that one person who eventually leaves after 18 months i think is still the stat with major gift officers and so as all of us as an industry we have to get better at that and then someone put in the chat uh if you have people in the central level as well as those housed in college units proper information sharing and documentation is vital absolutely like thank you sarah for for sharing that it is it's key um especially if you have working groups principal working groups or principal gifts or corporate working groups how do they know you're even working with that donor and you get pulled into that principal gift working group if you didn't put any notes in so it's it's a crazy thing christine anything else to add yeah i just wanted to to highlight some a lot of comments in the chat for people are working in really small shops and maybe you're a one-person show right in terms of advancement and engaging your donors and it's super relevant for you too because to frank's point maybe one day you're not going to be at that organization anymore and we still one thing i love about working in the philanthropy field is i've deeply cared about every single organization i've gotten to work at and the mission so even if i'm leaving i always want to make sure that that organization is set up to have its mission continue to be supported for the long term so what you all can do now in terms of getting the interactions you're having into your database as much as possible thinking to the future about maybe when you hopefully will have more staff someday and be able to perhaps upgrade donors enough that you can justify a mid-level a major gift maybe an annual gift program as well we always want to be thinking to what comes next and how do we keep moving the needle for our organization so thank you for all of you who commented in the chat and i've been there i've worked in small shops i've worked in vigor shops and it's what the work you all do is so important day to day and helping donors feel supported along the way while they support you is just key to what we all do absolutely i i'll never forget we had we i was part of a non-degree granting unit within the university and so we're just so unique because everything no offense to anyone but everything from the central foundation was very much alumni oriented and you sometimes felt kind of lonely because the resources the ideas was all really geared towards alumni and we created a working group within our within a space of all nine degree granting units we call ourselves the imts the island island of misfit toys and it was literally we we just didn't we named ourselves something different like externally but internally we're the island of misfit toys and it was helpful to be able to not only talk to others about how they're navigating things but how we could collectively come together to have representation when it comes back to the central foundation and we i had people who had no degree from the university but had an affiliation through a youth serving organization they were part of and they were billionaires and and that was their only tie to the university it's just wild what what is out there so awesome okay i'm going to keep us moving along and and uh we will do some q a here too if people have questions but this is all you christy all right i know there are a ton of words in this slide so i'm not going to sit here and walk you all through every single piece this is more of a a take home if anybody is starting to think about maybe you are a small shop and you're not sure where to start in terms of portfolio handoff maybe you're a big shop and you just don't have a process right now so these four areas identification qualification cultivation and disqualification are i think the four really big buckets to start thinking about in terms of establishing processes internally for portfolio handoffs and just a couple things to highlight here so i always like to start with disqualification because even though that is something none of us want to do we never want to have to say, yeah, a donor has told me they do not want to support us anymore for the long term. It's a really important thing to document. So if anybody here is trying to figure out where do I even start, I would start with that disqualification piece and having some way of marking donors who you don't need to engage with in the future, because this is going to save you a lot of time down the trail on potentially trying to engage with folks who just don't want to hear from you. So that's a place to start. And then if you're curious about any of the other little buckets, I would definitely encourage you to kind of dig into each of these suggestions here. One other one I'll just highlight for folks is when you're thinking through what cultivation can look like. A lot of organizations, if you're lucky enough to have a research team, you might have capacity ratings, or maybe you work with a vendor who helps to provide you estimated capacity ratings that are going to give you a picture of what a donor might be capable of giving. So I actually like to flip that around a little bit and think of that more holistically. And what I've used in the past is prospect status. It's a bigger picture than just capacity. So maybe you want to be able to capture that a donor is going to be stewardship only going forward. Maybe they've given a lot in the past, but you only need to give them regular stewardship. You don't necessarily need to engage them with cultivation focused work. Maybe somebody comes to you and says, hey, my kid is in school right now. And while I love hearing about everything they're doing, it's just a little too much. So can you just hold off on reaching out to me until they graduate? And then I'll start to maybe think about what comes next. So thinking about some different categories here in terms of how we can group our donors beyond just what they're capable of giving. This is a way I would recommend starting to organize your work a little bit there. But I'll leave you all with this is just kind of a take home. Feel free to review. And we've definitely got time for some Q&A here. Yeah, absolutely. This is more of a saver. This is like my slide. No, no, is this has too many words. It's like gives me slight anxiety. But this is for those who want a nice takeaway with trying to figure out the best practices. And and the other thing, too, is when we do handoffs, when when we share appreciation, don't feel bad to loop others in and to say like, hey, this person also want to share their their sincere thanks, which is super important as we continue to build out with who the organization is, who works there, all of that, because I continue to see, you know, LinkedIn's great at telling you what what jobs are out there. They're like, hey, this development jobs open. There's there's jobs. There's people moving around still. And when we see movement, we see opportunity to be able to bring people closer from the donor side and the alumni side with the organization holistically. Awesome. OK, so with that, as far as like any general questions, I or Christine, Christine or I can can answer either about gravity or just what we're seeing in the space. As Christine said, she works with a ton of our clients. She hears things across across the board and then I work with I talk to thousands of people here. So I get to hear everything, which is super fun as well. But. Any burning questions that either we can answer or we can put it to everyone on their call. And feel free to put these in the chat or we do have a Q&A as well. So either place, feel free to just type in. Or if you're like, how do I get find you and follow your stuff? I've put my I put my LinkedIn info in there. Oh, looks like we have a question. So one of the questions is, what are some really innovative ways you've seen institutions showing impact? I'm going to let you answer that first, Christine. I love this one. OK, so one of my favorites, I know we've talked a lot about video today, but we work with a 4-H branch and they had a video where basically they had the director who is oversees the fundraising. They took a quick video. It was like, hey, Joe Schmo, I am so thankful for your gift. Just wanted to share with you an example of what you're doing to help support us and what that makes happen. And then they had a series of videos from a bunch of different kids who participate in 4-H, all sharing what it has meant to them. So I love that example. I've also seen one from our friends over at Juilliard where they had a student with their instrument showing and saying to their specific donor who helped support their scholarship, thank you. And I think those student stories are so meaningful. And I would say for any of you who are thinking through, yeah, I mean, video sounds cool, but I don't really want to have to record myself at the end of video. I would think about embracing your students because for the most part, that's why your donors are supporting, right? They want to help give that experience to their kids or future alums of their school, the students who are there now. So definitely think about bringing students in. Seeing a question here, any common trends and types of videos? Yes, the student videos, absolutely. I see students the most, I would say, from the clients I work with. And I think one thing to think about, actually two things, when you're bringing students in is you do not have to have videos that are beautifully curated in a studio with perfect lighting. It's actually way more effective to have students out there in the field and recording themselves on the fly from their phones. And just being able to show that really, really authentic experience to your donors. I always say, if you've got a big capital campaign going on, maybe to build a new building, send your students out, ideally with their phones, have them record themselves in front of the construction site. And that's going to help your donors understand, yeah, this is actually really going to make an impact. So don't be afraid of it being perfect. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. And then another thing I would say is, if you're not sending your students out into the wild, and maybe you want to keep them in the call center, I get that too. Anything you can do in terms of personalizing by maybe using a whiteboard or even just a little piece of paper, have that student, or maybe it's a faculty or a staff member, write that donor's name. Frank's got his example right on that board, because that's the little snapshot that your donor will see when they see that video preview. And it's their name, front and center, so they know, one, it's not fake, and two, it is customized to them. Love it. And there's a couple of questions in the, a couple others in the chat too. One was, what do you recommend to do when outreach to multiple, to a donor multiple times through email, they don't respond? Is there a plan B approach? People don't always love my answer to this, but to call them. As a former student caller, I loved calling donors and reaching out to them. And some just won't answer, but it's just a matter of leaving a message or telling them why you're calling, and not everyone's ready or wanting to respond. And that's, for me, why I used video. It was a way to differentiate. People would get something of me waving at them. And speaking of video too, someone asked a question regarding videos. They send out a video of their students in a quarterly e-newsletter, but find that the open and click-through rate for the videos is really low. Any strategies? So Christine, you were kind of mentioning, like I used a whiteboard. The other thing too, is it, if you're sending that out, are you doing it with a still image, or are you utilizing like a GIF or GIF, whatever you want to call it, something with motion, to encourage, to inspire them to click into it. And then when we look at mass personalization, you can still segment down, you know, 100,000 people into smaller segment groups. Not saying direct mail here, but we're talking about video. But one of my favorite direct mail pieces was, I took 11 college units and we segmented based off of like present circle, normal donor, and non-donor. And I sent out 33 different versions of a direct mail piece, and it just said different things in it. And you can do that with video very easily, or with an email, or with how you would segment out. Anything to add to that, Christine? Yeah, I would just add, I saw somebody in the chat who asked about, you know, if you're sending out a mass video, right? Maybe you don't have the resources to record an individual video for hundreds of donors. Totally get that. So, if you are looking at trying to still personalize at scale, one thing I would just highlight is, if you have a tool like Gradavid that we have here, you can actually upload a list and then record a video. And when the emails go out sharing that video, it's going to merge in that donor's name. So, at the very least, that individual email they're getting is going to say, hi, Joe, I wanted to share this video with you. So, that's still a way you can personalize. One other way I think about it creatively is, if you're a fundraiser who does manage a portfolio, is maybe use video as a way to reach out to your portfolio once a quarter, maybe ahead of certain events you have coming up, just to share a little bit more exciting of a medium about what's coming up. So, I've seen folks use video to encourage event attendance, to also thank people who came to an event. And if you have a tool that helps you to put your whole list and send out on mass, that can be really empowering as well. Yeah, love it. And a lot of it, once again, comes back to segmentation and how you can customize, or the reason why you're reaching out. Maybe they met a giving milestone. Like, it's such a good opportunity that is, doesn't have to be super hyper personalized, but you could say, did you know that, you know, you're one of many who got over $100,000 in giving. Those are other opportunities. Someone asked a question, we have a very antiquated CRM, not been there, and lengthy process for sending thank yous to donors for scholarship at their institution. Upgrading technology keeps running on the back burner. Are there ways to help automate and speed up the process without having to invest in a program? And yes and yes, there's a way. When we look at personalized outreach, all of that on the scholarship side, if you're doing letters, if you're doing handwritten cards, like, that's a great opportunity. You can also map, like, if you've ever used mail merge through Microsoft, and you have the student data or their name, and you have the donor, if you can map it, you can actually send a mapped email mail merge to say, like, here's your student who got the scholarship, stuff like that. And then I know some, during, you know, the last four or five years, some people have put and brought back the scholarship lunch and brunches, but at bare minimum, if you're able to use an Excel spreadsheet and map the scholarship recipients with a donor or the people who have interest in that scholarship, to just send them a message with a personal note that you can map in. So if you've, if you know how to use Microsoft email mail merge, it is your friend. Anything to add to that, Christine? I know you've done some on the scholarship side and stewardship as well. Yeah, yeah, I think mail merge is a great tool. And then again, just, I would, I would also just encourage you all to think about, try to get that back into your database. You can't get, like, a gif of a video back in. But one way I've just seen folks, if you're trying to think, all right, great, I'm doing this video outreach, but maybe I'm doing it on that. How do I actually make sure that gets into my CRM for the historical context? I've seen folks use just, like, a list upload where they just have a list of everybody that have a list of everybody that got a video, and they just upload that into their CRM en masse to say at least that this happened. I did want to highlight, somebody asked in the Q&A about how many outreach attempts would you suggest before disqualifying someone because they're unresponsive? And this person has said it's typically three times through each channel, email, phone, mail. So nine outreach attempts. What I've seen anecdotally is six as a bit of a sweet spot for a number. But the key there is, as you said, multiple channels. So we want to be making sure that we've tried somebody on the phone, if we have been emailing them and maybe not hearing back. And of course, we have donors who maybe we don't have a phone number and email for, especially if they're on the older side. So direct mail still can be a really powerful tool for them, I would say, but six is the number that I tend to hear there. I would, yeah, I did, I would hit about seven. And then when we did phone-a-thon, I ran the call center too. After about six attempts, the numbers just dropped off and our ROI was really, really low after that. But once again, phone, email, text. If you're not texting, text, please. It is very powerful. And people will respond to text of all ages. People will screen your phone call, but they'll text you back. So they're like, oh, good, I don't have to talk to you. It's a beautiful thing. Someone in the chat asked if we are a K-12 school, our students are underage and we can't do, I believe, video. Do you have suggestions? So we do have partners. We work with CASA of Northwest Arkansas. We do work with K-12 independent schools as well, where they are sharing video. They're just getting written consent from their parent, but it's not like anything crazy. It's like, hey, thanks so much. It's not personalized video. It's more generic video. And then at K-12 independent schools, what you can also look at is getting a family or a parent testimonial and using that to not only share with other people who give, but you can share that with your friends in the admissions office as well, because they would love to use that story as well. Frank, I want to just jump in there too, because I've seen some fun stuff as an alternative to students with K-12s. And a couple of examples I would give is, I think this is a great opportunity to involve your faculty and your maybe coaches, if you have an athletic program. I've seen, I work with a school that has, football is a very big part of their culture. And they did a hype video leading up to, it was either their homecoming game or a championship game they were in. And so they had the coach record a quick video saying, hey donors, just wanted to get you excited. Like we made it to this incredible game and wanted to share with you all. So I think that's a great way to also creatively address for, if you can't have your students on. Yeah. And that reminds me of what Butler did with their dog, their bulldog. They did like a day of the bulldog or something, and they did a cool, cute video where they followed the bulldog around. And I was like, and then they got a new, I think, I don't know, maybe they got a new dog or something. It was a year or so ago, but you can follow a mascot around. I've gotten videos from my alma mater. They use our technology and they sent me happy birthday with a mascot baking a cake. And it was just super cute and unique. It was something that was fun to watch. Awesome. There's some other questions. There's one in the, in the, there's a bunch in the chat and then there's some in the Q and A. So someone asked for any of you that work with alumni association, volunteers, do you acknowledge volunteer appreciation week with a mail piece or gift? And if so, hang on, let me go back. And if so, do you document that constituent? So I think if people want to answer that in the actual chat, are you doing alumni association volunteer acknowledgement? I was an alumni board member and I would love some continued appreciation, which I get. And then are you using with a mail piece or a gift? Are you giving them something? And if so, do you document that? So anyone in the chat want to answer that? But I would say, yes, do acknowledge for volunteer week, like absolutely do it. And it's not always about a gift. Like it's just the fact that you took the moment to acknowledge them. Like you could do it very personally, the phone call and email or whatnot, and just taking the time to do it as a gift enough. I would also add another way to think about it is maybe you don't have the budget to send out a physical gift, right? But think about other ways you can get them back on campus. Maybe you can give them a free sports ticket for whatever event you have coming up. And then not only are you showing them appreciation, but you're also encouraging them to come back to campus and keep that relationship going. Yeah, absolutely. And then someone asked in the chat, do you have an example of an email customized for an event follow-up? Feel free to ping us. I'll put my email in the chat. I can send if anyone wants to put their email in there too for others to ask them questions, but happy to give samples. And then everyone's, every millennial's dream. Okay, that's funny. Our younger alumni who is now an adult, but who can reflect on their education. I see that. Okay, cool. I think we got through most of the questions and we're at time. Look at that. So lastly, thank you all. Scan that if you want to get in more contact with us and truly appreciate the time and opportunity. Christine, any parting words? Oh, sorry. My mouse is running slow today. Just thank you all so much for joining. It's been great chatting with you. Thanks for the great questions as well.

donor retention

personalized communication

appreciation strategies

storytelling

video engagement

CRM technology

AI personalization

donor relationships

portfolio handoffs

automating tasks