Hi everyone, my name is Claudia Taylor and I am Director of Events and Stewardship at the Ryan College of Business at the University of North Texas. And I also serve on the cabinet for CASE District 4, and I am thrilled to welcome you to our very first CASE District 4 Best of Together. This is a second chance for members across our district to see our highest rated sessions from our 2023 conference in April in San Antonio. Today's session, Strategic Stewardship to Increase Donor Retention, is filled with incredible tips on how to keep those at-risk donors giving year after year. Before we get started, a few housekeeping items. First, we hope you'll ask a lot of questions. Please drop them in the comments and I will filter them up to our presenters at the end of the session. We will try to get to all of your questions while still respecting your time. Keep an eye on the comment section. I'll be dropping links and additional information there throughout the presentation. And if you experience any technical difficulty, please feel free to reach me directly via the chat feature. I will do my best to troubleshoot for you. Now, I'm thrilled to introduce our presenters today, Sarah Sims and Liz Many. Sarah is Associate Vice President of Donor Engagement at Texas State University, where she oversees donor relations, stewardship, events, communications, and advancement services. She has been responsible for building new and innovative donor relations programs from the ground up at multiple educational institutions, and she is committed to not only stewarding past gifts, but inspiring future giving. Oh, at higher education and nonprofit organizations nationwide. Sorry, I had a little glitch in my script. Liz is the GTM Launch and Otter Manager at EverTrue, a fundraising and donor engagement platform used by probably a lot of your institutions and institutions across the country. She also holds a PMP certification and is an associate helping clients at DRG. She has led ventures involving reporting, renewals and reminders, software implementation, events, agreements, and more, working with teams across the southern United States. Sarah and Liz, thank you for joining us. Take it away. All right. Thank you, Claudia. We are so thrilled to be here with you guys today. Liz and I both absolutely love this topic. Liz and I have known each other for a long time. We have been professional counterparts for many, many years. We also work through DRG together, so we are co-consultants on many projects. And this last year at CASE, we decided to present together on this topic because it's something that we work with our clients a lot, but we work on within our own shops as well. So Liz is an absolute data genius, I have to tell you. She is my absolute right hand in everything, even within my own work. There's lots of times that I pick up the phone and I call her and I'm like, what am I doing in this space? So this is a space that we really love to dive into because it's a little bit of an art and a science in our industry. So we are going to cover a lot of ground today. We have a lot of samples, but we also have a lot of infrastructure and metrics and so forth. We had a lot of fun presenting this in April in San Antonio. We have updated a few of our samples in here. So if you did attend in April, you might see a few new things in here as well. But with that, we will hit the ground running. We have several things on the agenda today. We are going to be identifying several different donor populations that we feel are highest priority. When we say at risk, we're talking about those that are probably the highest risk for not retaining. We're going to talk about retention a lot within this presentation. Also, what it is that we need to do to demonstrate impact, communications, events, engagement, recognition, what all that means in this space and how to improve retention, how then to evaluate and demonstrate the success of that. And then we're going to talk about how to put all those pieces together into a case study and how that actually plays out in our day-to-day work. Because it's one thing for us to talk about all these things. It's another to actually figure out how to put the pieces together and make it work in our day-to-day. Because we can go to professional development conferences all the time. We can listen to webinars. We can learn all of these lessons. But it's very different than actually taking it back and figuring out how to apply it and leading up to our managers and our leadership teams as well. So we're going to talk through a case study as well so you can sort of see this come to life. So just sort of real quick pop quiz. You all know what donor retention is, right? Just just to make sure we're all on the same page to start with. It's your returning donors from the previous year divided by your current donors in the current year. So making sure that everybody who gave last year is giving again in your current year. Now, typically, that's based off of fiscal year, whatever your fiscal year is, whether you're on a June or a September, whatever that is. I, for the first time ever, I'm on a September and that's that's new for me. So I can't quite get used to that. I've always been on June. So this is a new one for me, but it's making sure and trying to attain the highest percentage possible of returning donors year over year over year. And there's lots of ways of getting that. But it's very, very simple math at the end of the day. But sometimes it's the hardest work that we actually do. The very first thing that we are always asked when we talk about this topic is, well, what's normal? Right. What's best practice? What's national average? So now every institution is going to be a little bit different. It's, you know, depending on what state you're in, depending on what type of institution you are, whether you're private, whether you're public, whether how your advancement or your development organization or your shop is structured, it's there's many, many factors. But generally speaking, across the board, these are some of your national averages. Unfortunately, they're not great, really, honestly, for any of us. The national average right now for just general retention is just under 50 percent. So that means that of all of the donors that you have coming into your organization, less than half of them are retaining year over year, which means that you're probably spending a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of financial and probably staff resources on getting new donors every year and retaining the ones that you have. First time donors is always the lowest and typically the most depressing number that we face. When we pulled this, this is actually credited to Bloomerang. Bloomerang pulls these figures every year. This is where we source our numbers. When this was pulled, I believe these are 2022 numbers. The first time donor retention rate as a national average was about 23 percent. It's right now hovering around 20 percent, which means that only about one in five of your donor of your first time donors is retaining year after year. There's lots of reasons why first time donor retention is as low as it is. We're going to talk about that today because first time donors are one of our priority audiences that we talk about. Repeat donors. They're great. Obviously, given the nature that they're repeat donors, they do retain at higher levels. But once you get them in, once you get them connected to your organization, they are coming out of more regular basis. So that's about 60 percent. So those are the ones that have an ongoing relationship with you. So whether they are they are typically the ones that are coming to your events, they're opening your communications. They are the ones that are giving it probably slightly higher levels than just your entry level annual giving. They may not be at your major gift level, but they are more engaged than your first time donors and so forth. The monthly donors are trifecta donors. They're the ones that we really, really want because they retire. They retain at the highest levels at approximately 90 percent. So that is why many organizations and many nonprofits, nonprofits tend to be a little bit better at monthly donors than higher ed institutions. Work so hard to convert their regular donors or their annual donors into monthly donors because of the whole idea of you sort of set it and forget it, for lack of a better phrase. Once you get somebody into the habit of giving monthly, it becomes such a habit and such a repeat behavior that it's it's not very often that they stop that. So they they retain at the highest level. So just thinking about where you fall within this spectrum. Now, I hope that you know where your organization is in some of these benchmarks. If I were to ask you right now, what is your organization's first time donor retention rate? Can you answer that question? If I were to ask you, what is your organization's overall retention rate? Could you answer that question? Some of you maybe. Yes. Some of you maybe. No. If I were in the room with physically in the room with you right now, I would ask you to raise your hands and we'd probably all be a little surprised. But generally speaking, many of us don't know these numbers. So if you don't, very first piece of homework is to figure those numbers out, whether that means going back and having a conversation with your annual giving team, with your development team, advancement services, prospect research, whoever might house these numbers, go back and have that conversation and try to know this so that you have at least some baseline knowledge about where your organization exists, because it's really critical when developing your programs to know where your institution falls and some of those national averages. Now, for many of us, donor participation does not equate to retention. And that's a really double edged sword for many of us in the industry. And it's become even more difficult because of especially in higher ed, there's been such a push for APR or alumni participation rates that we are pushed and pushed to have more and more donors give at any level, any level at all, just to get to those participation numbers. Right. So a five dollar gift, a ten dollar gift. They're great because they're giving and they're engaged. But that oftentimes on the back end does not retain, does not relate to retention and can really hurt donor relations efforts. Right. Because those things are not one in the same and they can be very difficult for donor relations professionals to retain that many donors at those levels, because sometimes when you are really hard core APR campaigns or participation campaigns, sometimes that giving can be a little bit more transactional, especially if you're running things like QPQ campaigns or quid pro quo campaigns. Sometimes that can feel a little bit more transactional. The gift levels are a little bit lower. And so that pressure is felt by your donor relations or your donor recognition teams because you're supposed to retain all these donors. But it's really not the same feeling as those that may be giving at higher levels and so forth. So it's very much a double edged sword for all of us, whereas donor participation does not equate to retention. And that's very hard for many of us. And we have to work on both sides of that. I won't go through this chart specifically, I just put it in as a very quick visual so that you can see with the average attrition rates, attrition is obviously where donors fall off. It's the opposite of retention. Right. So if you have a retention rate of 20 percent, that means that you have an attrition rate of 80 percent or vice versa. So this chart is showing you how many donors that you have left after five years at these different numbers. So if you get a thousand donors last year, right, and you have an attrition rate of 20 percent, meaning that you have a retention rate of 80 percent at the end of five years, you will still have three hundred and twenty eight donors. Now, that's still not a lot, but not many of us have a retention rate of 80 percent. Right. I don't have a retention rate of 80 percent. Not many of us in this audience have a retention rate of 80 percent. Now, if you look at the bottom row, thousand donors, you have a retention rate of 40 percent, which is more standard average industry average. After five years, you're only going to have 10 of those donors left. So that's a very, very hard statistic for many of us and backs up the reasoning why we're talking about these audiences, why we're talking about these donor segments and why it is that we have to look at putting all of the additional timing and resources, staff efforts and so forth into these populations is because this is the reality that we're facing. We're either going to see all this drop off and we're going to we're going to be constantly chasing new donors at this level, or we can put some of those efforts into retaining and acknowledging and engaging these donors and then be spending less money on the acquisition and so forth. So just some some reality. Right. Reality bites, unfortunately, in this situation. So talking a little bit about why do donors leave our organizations? There's a lot of reasons why donors leave our organizations. Some of them are out of our control, but many of them are within our control as well. So there are legitimate reasons. Maybe they move away from the proximity of your organization. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't have a great experience with your organization. Maybe they do. They no longer have the financial ability to support the organization. There's many things that are not within our control, but there are many things that are maybe people over solicit them. Maybe they're not receiving any or too little genuine gratitude. Maybe we're over soliciting them and we're not showing any impact of that of that gift as well at any level, whether they be annual giving level, mid-level or major giving. Sometimes our really poor communication methods can affect their ability or propensity to give again as well. And that can be everything from the amount of communications that we are sending them to the quality of communications. If many of you might be in larger decentralized organizations and perhaps they have many different pieces of the or areas of the organization talking to them at once, and it feels like lots of different organizations. Sometimes we're undermining ourselves and we don't even realize it when we're using incorrect data, such as salutations. I think the crux of many of us are Achilles heel. Are we using the wrong salutations? Are we using the wrong prefixes? Are we consistently misspelling their name? And even if they have told us how to correctly spell their name, have we not updated it in the database? And we are undermining ourselves all the time. Are we talking to them via the wrong mechanism? I use this example all the time. I don't even own a checkbook. OK, I don't mail in any gifts at all. I don't do anything in the mail. So why my alma mater continues to send me mail solicitations is beyond me, but they will not email me a solicitation. So they are completely missing the boat with me. They are clearly not listening to the way in which I want to engage with them. Every gift I've ever made is online. Therefore, they're completely disregarding the way in which I want to engage with the institution. Are you doing that to your donors? Think about the ways in which you might be undermining the relationship and not even realizing it. And sometimes just that lack of personal connection to your organization can make them leave that relationship as well. Now, on the flip side of that, why do donors stay? Because we give them a prompt and meaningful thank you, because we show them gratitude and impact, because we actually tell them in a timely manner that we appreciate and recognize what it is that they have done, that we don't treat them as if they are one of many or one of a mass of people, that we actually recognize that they have done something above and beyond their normal behavior by giving to our institutions. They feel part of a meaningful cause as well. Maybe they have the opportunity to have really positive interactions with members of our leadership or faculty or staff or students, whoever that might be. But they're also given opportunities to see their gift of work. That can come in lots of ways that can come in communications that could come through events that could come through volunteer opportunities. So really, that's all about engaging engagement in a multitude of ways. So thinking about what you're doing to undermine the relationship and what we're doing to reinforce those relationships. And we don't have to do all those things just for major gift donors, but for gifts of all levels as well. So Liz is going to talk a little bit about engagement and traditional and also modern constructs on donors. Yeah, so. I love these pyramid charts because we all think of our giving in a pyramid style, right? Like we all have that focus of goals of where our pipelines coming and all these things. But the traditional construct is only looking at one core element. And if I was in the room, I'd have somebody raise their hand and tell me what that is. But since we're here on Zoom, it's honestly it's just looking at that dollar value, right? We're in that spectrum of money, so to speak, that they're giving. There's a lot of great things in that pyramid. But in this construct, because we need to hit those goals and we need to accomplish those things, we pay attention to one small part of this pyramid. But what we realize, and as we're seeing in our retention rates, is that if we're not paying attention to the base and building those relationships as they move through the construct or through this pyramid, that we're not getting them to the space that we need them to be to reach our organization's ultimate goals. So it's not that the pyramid is wrong necessarily, but sometimes we need to break out of that pyramid structure and the things that we do and see what spaces we can communicate broadly to everyone that builds that relationship and helps move them in that pipeline versus what things we really need to hold near and dear as you have reached that pinnacle within our organization, and how we express that impact, admiration, and et cetera. Most of us will assume that the majority of our pipelines actually look like this. I would say, go pull your reports, because it's not really in a true pyramid fashion in the way that we think about. We're going to have a very big base and a very narrow top, but that middle doesn't necessarily narrow as you go up. Sometimes your middles are really bloated in a good way. You want that middle to bloat in a good way, but you also have to be able to know in that middle section, identify who's going to stay there. That's their max, and we love them for that, and who we can continue through that pipeline. We talk about funnels. Sorry, crowd fun. So much more engaging when we're living in my crazy personal life. Funnels, I love this visual because we are all in this big crowd over here to the left, and we're all trying to get in. We got to get them in in a participation mode first. Whatever their participation mode is, ideally with gifts, but sometimes it's time, right? Or other resources, volunteering, being able to connect us with those. The only way we can bring them into participation is by engaging them. We can no longer assume that they have an affiliation with our organization, and that is strong enough for them to give. Just because I went to your organization for my master's degree does not mean I'm going to give to you. Just because I had a family member receive really great treatment at your hospital, and I really was thankful for everything you all did, doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to participate in whatever you're asking me to participate. So that first focus is now no longer just kind of getting them in the door as a gift level, but we're focusing on engagement, how we're bringing them along on this journey with us. And then once they're engaged, that's where the participation hits with that first gift, that first time commitment, whatever those things are. But we've got to continue the engagement as they're continuing down that funnel into their appropriate space, whether it's loyalty, principle, major, all of those things. I almost wish that diving board would like kind of curve into the funnel so we see that that engagement keeps driving that funnel. Our first time givers are so low in retention because we just assume that satisfaction and commitment with our organizations is enough, and it's not. The engagement brings the relationship along. The relationship, the feeling of well-being and support and community with us is what drives us down the funnel. And then you'll see the people kind of on the outside. They're like, you know, all of us lifers, as I like to call us, right? We love this space. And so we are like, we're going to change the world, and we are going to stand out here and tell you all about it, and hopefully that it's cutting in through all the noise. We need to be those loud cheerleaders around the activity to really continue to engage them as they move through that pipeline. Part of this is being able to know what engagement you have with your donors. We do a lot of tracking, appeal tracking. We will track our emails in our CRMs that we've sent out something, but we're not necessarily doing a really great job of being able to go, what is an engagement activity in our platforms, right? What email was intended to start this engagement track or what event, what of those things, right? So engagement, if that is our new focus, how can we start tracking and organizing that in our work, in our goals, in our databases to make sure that we're focusing on that right part? Because engagement is, for lack of a better phrase, is where the money's at. Because, you know, at the end of the day. Sarah, I think you're taking identifiable behaviors, if I remember correctly. Yeah, yes. There are many, many behaviors that drive engagement. There are many ways in which donors come into our organizations. So, and this could look different for everybody. There are, so think about all the different ways that your donors enter your organization or interact with your organization. They could be first-time donors. They could be giving day donors. That could be the only way, perhaps, maybe they interact with you. They could be honor and memory gifts or pledge payments. Monthly donors, faculty and staff donors. So there is this new thing in our industry right now. It's a completely different topic that Liz and I could talk about, all about donor matrixes and donor journeys and mapping all that out. Mapping out all of the different ways in which donors come into and interact with your organization. But this is what we call behavior-based. And this really feeds the funnel model. So that instead of focusing on that traditional construct of dollars only, that at a certain level, you get X, Y, and Z, and associating certain benefits with dollars. We are instead recognizing the behavior in which or the entry and point in which, the behavior in which somebody is choosing to engage with your organization and focusing on that instead. So maybe it is by fund type or passion area. It's all about recognizing that individual in the way in which they are engaging with your organization and not necessarily that dollar amount. So there are lots of different behaviors. Every organization, as I mentioned, is going to have a slightly different focus on what is most important to them. So I know based off of my metrics and my numbers here at Texas State, because I have dug into that early in my first six months here, where my weakest points are. And that's where I'm building my donor recognition and engagement program first. Those are my highest priorities. The behaviors that we have here in green are some of the things that we at DRG feel like are the highest priorities for almost any shop across the board, where you're going to have the highest levels of ROI. That's going to be loyal donors, faculty and staff donors, because they are great planned giving donors. They're typically your most loyal donors as well, planned giving donors, and then also monthly donors. So there's, but again, that may look a little bit different for your organization, but some of these are also some of your highest or your most at risk, which is what we're going to talk about today, some of these populations. And we're going to go through some samples for each one of these as well. So Liz is going to go back into some of our priority behaviors. First time loyal donors. Okay, so we all know that this is a group that we focus on, right? We all know that we spend a lot of time bringing in new donors. We all also know that it costs a whole lot more to bring in new donors than it is for retention, but new donors is still always going to be a part of our process, right? And these donors are ones that we go, let's get them in the door, right? We're not aiming for you have to be at an X level or you need to be, it is the behavior of the act of giving and then loyal donors is the act of consistent giving, right? So those are the behaviors we need, the first gift and then the consistency. These feed all of our pipelines, all of our pipelines. You can't have major gifts without them being a first time donor. And it is very, very, very rare that you find that diamond that comes in as a massive major gift on the first time, very rare. That's like safe for corporate specialty level in this, right? So if we need the pipeline and we got to grow it, we got to get them in the door. And that loyalty also gives way to other types of behavior and giving activities that we'd like, right? Those that are consistent in giving are most likely your best plan giving prospects because it's something they do and they're already committed to that action. And so by asking them to give one last final piece as part of their planning, odds are they've probably already done it and you just don't know it because this is important to them. That's why it's a consistent behavior. Just like those of us that, let's go to the gym every day and work out. We all have that friend, right? That like, oh, I got to go every day and it's the gravity at this time and I'm gonna do that thing. I'm that friend to a lot of people so I'm gonna call myself out here but it's part of their plan, right? They have it, it is their consistent behavior and they know that all of their forward work and movement is going to be based around this consistent behavior in some capacity. Plan giving, same concept, right? We want them in the door, we want them talking about it and then thinking beyond. We've talked about acquisition costs a lot and we know that we're gonna have to spend a little acquisition here but the plan is that once we're getting them in, we already have that journey to continue them through into that loyalty space. But nine times out of 10 to bring them in that door, there is some affinity association, right? Yes, I am an alum of an organization and therefore odds are I'm more likely to get there. It's not the only reason I'm going to get there but that is kind of that key in the door. Using affinity-based language for first time but also through that loyalty journey, one is allowing you to recognize that you know something about that donor which they love, right? They want to know that you know me, that I'm not just a number in your pipeline. So by using that information of what you know and understand about your donor through this journey, they will know that you care about them and so this is now a reciprocal piece of a relationship. My Zoom is, oops, sorry. You gotta love this. We're share screening in Zoom and it's causing me lots of fun slides. So I'm sorry, I keep messing that up. Key milestones. So part of that loyalty giving, and many of us do this really well. We know their first year and we celebrate it. We know that fifth year because we also know that if we can get them to five, they're golden, right? We celebrate the 10, we celebrate the 15. Part of focusing on this group is really going every year between one and five is a milestone. Maybe not like a celebratory, let me give you a gift milestone, but it's a milestone because it's building that consistency, right? So being able to recognize that in simple, when you're doing your anniversary thank yous, I'm not gonna say appeals because yes, but in that thank you based off of those things, acknowledging that anniversary. Again, you know about me which leads into that tailored acknowledgement language. Being able to add in a little nugget, a little piece that goes, this isn't just a form letter. Again, you know me and therefore we have this relationship. First time donors and loyalty donors deserve at least one, I would say probably two impact communications. This is a spot that many of us do not do well. We all do annual reports in some way, shape or form, but nine times out of 10, we're focusing on that top part of the funnel to get those nice printed pieces or whatnot, where your annual report is actually the most impactful for this group right here and your first time donors and your loyalty donors, because it goes, hey, I acknowledge you are here. I acknowledge that you gave some amount of money to probably a slightly more general fund than most people. And here's what we did with that along with other things. So not only is it showing impact, but it's also giving them information about other ways they can support you, right? And then how we recognize the loyalty. There's a lot of different options, consecutive giving, loyalty and funds, create the modes that work for your organization. There are lots of tips and tricks and we have an entire presentation in blog posts, which are some of my fave on the best ways to handle kind of these giving societies or giving groups in terms of communication. But the key here is to continue to focus on that behavior you're wanting to drive them to, right? So if it's consecutive giving, using that as that journey initially for years one through five. If it's a mix of consecutive and growth, right? You want them to start giving other places, using that as part of that language. It's no longer just, thank you, right? We want to take them with us and our job is to guide them through this journey of that growth plan. Their job is to say, yes, I wanna hop on that bus and then figure out where in that plan that they wanna say, this is where I'm gonna hang out. And now that I want to change it, so there we go. All right, so this is a sample of a first time donor experience that the University of Florida put together. And you see up here at the top, it kind of lays out all of the pieces for this first time donor experience in a year, in a year, right? Because they're a first time donor for that full 12 months. So they make their first gift, that typical tax receipt that comes from your gifts and records. That's an important piece that we all kind of forget about or don't focus a lot on in terms of experiences. But even though it's tax oriented, we can still have some influence on that engagement angle of that communication, of that text. How can we make it better than just, here's your gift? We're a 501C3, we're, we're, we're. You can add some great thank you language or things to that receipt. And then you get the acknowledgement letter, which is that real good feel personal part, right? For you, if they do it at the college and unit level, your organization might do it like that. Your organization might do it by like hospital departments, whatever those things are. But that makes it a little bit more personal, right? Because now it is the group that received that money saying thank you, right? So now we've done the whole, the organization is saying, yes, thank you. We've received it. And now the people that are getting it are like, heck yes, we're so thankful for you. We're so excited for what we're about ready to do. We can't wait to show you. A month after their first gift, they receive a postcard, which you see here on the screen. How pretty is it? From the donor relations team, basically welcoming them to the giving family. And I love that they call it the Gator giving family specifically, because they might've already been a part of your family in a different capacity, right? An alum who hasn't given is still technically a part of your family. So really calling out the fact that they've made the step into this journey. So you'll see that it's kind of like a pre-printed postcard. You can use your label, sign a quick thank you before you drop it in. You know, we all like to say, schedule like 10 minutes every Friday to write a thank you note. This is one of those activities that you can do that just adds that really extra personal touch. Then from there, students do a thank you call two months after, yes, yes. From the donor relations team. And while we know most people aren't answering the call, that's okay, because we're gonna leave them that grateful message that says we're so, so, so thankful for you. At higher ed, most giving is student supported, supporting students. So having a student caller makes a lot of sense because it is putting a representation of where that money is going into that gratitude piece. So you see, we've kind of stair-stepped in impact and narrowing down that connection, right? And then at the 11 month mark, so right before that anniversary solicitation hits that door they get a thank you video in their inbox. And that's their thank you for your first gift, kind of the recap of all the great things that have happened over the last year. So you see, it is not a gift and done until we're ready to ask again. They took them on this progressive journey of recognition, thanking, and connecting them in the areas that they're preparing to give. And they did it in very different mediums, right? You've got a letter, some mail, postcard, another mail piece, great phone call and video, email. So they're hitting them in all of those areas. So you're also gathering a little bit more information of how they wanna interact with you as well. See, all the things we can do. This is a really great plan that you'll see a lot of it is like kind of already preset in a process, but then it includes a little bit more personalization as it goes along. There we go. Ooh, we have so many more. I love these. Can I see them all? Yes, okay. So now, caveat, all good higher ed things here. And I know we're mostly higher ed, but sometimes I like to call out, there are really great things from the nonprofit space as well. So if you happen to donate to a nonprofit that you think thanks you amazingly, share that with your coworkers because we can all learn a lot from there. But okay, I'm done. All right, so the examples we have here are from the University of Wisconsin. You'll see it's a nice little kind of trifle postcard setup. So a unique size and shape that's coming to them. They've got some cute little stickers, but this was sent in the mail right after that first gift. Same with Abilene Christian. They have a series of postcards that they use throughout their kind of journeys. So they've got their making your first gift, anniversary, they've got a couple other good ones kind of preset through that journey. They do, it's pre-made, they throw on the label, but they use their student callers to write thank you, like quick little thank yous and things to personalize it a little bit more on that postcard, right? So you're not creating a lot of lift in work for the loads of first-time givers that we have, but you can still make it personal. And then again here from the University of Iowa, they actually mailed them the cute little journey that they put them on, right? Get started, you made your first gift. Oh, hey, you already did that. Step one, you're gonna read this and feel really awesome. We sent you a pennant. Pennant, use it. Three, four, five. So what I love about this is they kind of are just taking them along in the process and showing them, hey, you're already accomplishing a lot of great things here, and it all started with your first gift. That's a fun, really unique kind of layout. I kind of hope some more people bring that back because that's a lot of fun and we'll stand out with what your donors receive. Gift anniversaries. Is this one me or is this you? I can take it. Sorry. Right, something that we always like to recognize, especially with first-time donors, loyal donors, and so forth is just the little ways that you can recognize gift anniversaries. It doesn't have to be highly or overly produced. You don't have to have expensive videos. It can be simple mail touches, simple digital touches. Abilene Christian, again, does a really great little postcard here. I love the phrase, happy donorversary. One year ago, you made an investment in the future of students like Jason. I mean, it's personal, right? It's impact. And it also reminds our donors that we remember them. We remember the fact that they did something a year ago at this time and that that made a difference to us. Tennessee has one of the best behavior-based programs in the country, so please go out and look at some of their samples. It's really great. But happy voliversary. I love that as well. Their imagery, their language is great. Tulane also has some really good examples. It's time to celebrate you. The one-year anniversary of your first gift to Tulane University is a protree, and we want you to know that we're thankful. So again, it's reinforcing that behavior, reinforcing that entry point. Just small touches, nothing overly produced. You can set it essentially and forget it. You can have your students help you fulfill it or a mail house. It does not have to be highly complex. I think that's the thing is people think that these are really hard programs to administer, but they don't have to be. Loyal donor recognition is sort of the same way. This example from UGA, I absolutely love this because as Liz was talking about earlier, getting them through those first few years is always the hardest, right? Because we know that the greatest years of attrition is typically between years three and five. This is usually where we will lose them the most. And so UGA actually built a program very specifically to get them through this time period. They built a special acknowledgement piece called their double dog thank you, because you know their mascot is the bulldog who doesn't love a double bulldog, acknowledgement for their second gift. And that would get them through that year two. And then in year three is actually when their loyalty recognition society kicked in. So they had a specialized touch point for every year along the way for year one, two, and then three, they would get them into that loyalty. So this was very specifically designed to help them get through attrition. And that's where that strategic philosophy comes in. I'll just mention since this was from my time at the University of Florida, this was our loyalty program as well. We recognize we had a hybrid program at UF. So with two years of giving, they actually became members of UF Loyal, but then once they were members, we would recognize them for their total years of giving to the institution. So if I had given for two years consecutively, I would be a member, but if I had given a total of 10 years, 10 different years to the university, then I would be recognized for 10 years of giving. So that was how we recognized both consecutive giving and loyal giving. And here's just an example of some of the collateral that we did for renewals and so forth. And at the higher levels at 25 and 50 and so forth, we incorporated some art pieces. So we provided those digitally at the lower levels. We sent them via email. And then as you worked your way up and you hit 25 and 50, we provided hard copies of those art prints. So it got us away from sort of the tchotchke space and branded things and got us into more of the unique gift space. Thank you. This was an example that I put in from NC State. This is a newer example. We actually didn't show this one in April. And I really, really loved this one because they went above and beyond in a very unique way to talk about loyalty. This was a brand new program that they had rolled out. They completely revamped it. They wanted to inspire annual giving, but at the same time, they wanted to recognize loyal and long-time giving. So they clearly laid out very visually in sort of a landmark way, a check mark way. When a donor consistently gave, they would sign them off for the year, right? They gave them this special pack loyal gift that was designed for the year and so forth. They launched it and they saw huge increases in retention rates. But I love the language in this. And I think it reiterates the fact that in first time and loyal, not everything has to be really formal. Nothing has to be really, I mean, I think sometimes in academia, we tend to think that everything has to be from our leadership. Everything has to be signed by our VP or our president, very academically oriented in terms of writing and so forth. But this is fun. It's colorful. It's bright. It's differently designed. This is something that's eye-catching. And in this annual giving space and in this behavior-based space, this is a place that we can explore a lot. We can do something very different and get very creative. So, Whitworth University, this is an older example and it's been around for a long time, but it's a classic and we love it. They have a loyal program. They actually use their students to do this. If you are familiar with Whitworth, pine cones are a big symbol on their campus. It's one of their main, has a lot of history for them. They had students go out and collect pine cones and then spell out every letter of the alphabet and photograph every letter. And then they provided all of that to a mail house. And then for their loyal donors, they actually would receive a postcard with that donor's name spelled out in pine cones. And then it obviously recognizes on the back the number of years that they have given. So if I were receiving this postcard, then in pine cones on the front, it would say Sarah. Liz's obviously would say Liz, but it's just a really unique way and a very simple, very cost-effective way of doing something very cool that is unique to the university that a donor is gonna love to see. And it has, it's very simply done through the mail house and mail merge information and something that a student put together. So again, a very easy way of showing some simple ways of building in creativity. This example from the YMCA, we always add it because of the example in terms of the language. The first line it has, well, it's for five-year donors. So it's their recognition letter. And it says, this little swimmer was born the year you started giving to Harris YMCA. I mean, what a great sentence is that, right? I mean, it's this recognition that here is a beneficiary of the organization that you give to, and she was born the year that you started giving. So it's a really great connection with the support that you are giving. Tulane, again, has a really strong behavior-based program as well. They have really strong loyalty program. And I put this on here because the small card there in the front, in the lower right-hand corner, when they rolled out their new loyalty program, they wanted to do a little surprise for their donors. And you will see the silver circle, which is a scratch-off. And underneath each one of those, it was the actual total number of years that each donor had been loyal to the university. So for their first launch mailing, every donor received that, and they could scratch off and see how many total years they had actually been giving to the university. Just sort of a surprise and delight moment, again, in something unique and fun in this space. So do you wanna talk about emergency and unrestricted fund donors? I was going to, and then Zoom decided to move ahead. Yeah, so this group is really special because we've talked a lot about the pipeline, the funnel, all of this stuff, but this group almost kind of like sits outside of it for a minute because the way that they come to us is typically through really important and focused needs. So they're not coming through that kind of general just engagement in life, right? I'm gonna call us all back to the year of 2020. We all experienced that year together, and it was an interesting one, but this is a great example for kind of that emergency need of unrestricted funds. It is a specific call, but this call is not something we can make often because unrestricted just does not sound fun to give to. What does that mean? You're gonna use my money for the lights, the building, you know? But in these kinds of emergency or must need situations, this is where we get a kind of different set of donor. They are emotionally supporting you with this money. I know that sounds interesting, but your call, your need, the desire of whatever you're trying to accomplish, helping students continue to pay for food during COVID and pay their bills and wash their clothes and all of those things, right? That is an important driver. They know that their money is going to a specific cause because you have shown them that this is the specific cause that you need. And it's typically time-bound. So it's not like we're putting out this call and it is a call that we're going to use every year, all year. We need kind of the support and the rush within that timeframe. But because it is an emergency, we're asking them to give quickly. We also need to make sure that we have that internal expectation of we're going to use this money quickly, but we're also going to tell them about how we used it quickly, right? So if we have an immediate call of action, we need to then return that expect and anticipation in how we communicate to them. Because this is a short time window, we're really kind of wanting to really grab at that emotional connection quick and fast. Short attention spans happen, short time windows. You got to use all of your options. Yes, thank you. All of your options to capture them and bring them in and get them to give. So video, email, social media, all things that we can use and then copy and repurpose everywhere because that is really the important way that we're going to drive these quick and time restrained kind of giving. Let's see if my Zoom lets participate. Yes, it does. Beautiful, okay. Your communication and your giving channels are going to matter, right? So how we're communicating this need is how we also are going to need to provide it back. But because it's time sensitive, odds are it's going to be quick, it's going to be snappy, it's going to be online, which means we have those quick giving pages. We're not asking them 1,200 fields to fill out, none of that. We're getting them through the door. And because of that, that also means, again, that immediate kind of response back. And we can't drop them into our normal processes because they're not our normal donors. This group needs to have a small and dedicated journey that draws attention and uses the language of why they gave in the first place. And please, please no tchotchkes, please no tchotchkes. One, if you're in an emergency and you're giving something away for them to give, they know that your money's going towards the gift, not towards what your need is. And so it's kind of a little off. I'm not saying it doesn't work in some instances, and we're going to talk about those, but for the majority of those kind of emergency needs, they want to know that their money's going holistically to what your emergency is, not to give them that present. So once we have them in the door from these emergency situations, taking that specific journey that we want to lead them on through impact and communication of the emerging needs, we can take this journey and hopefully use that to then bring them back into that participation fold and continuation. So we're going to have those separate stewardship plans for this group. We need to have very specific language around what they gave to and why they gave, but this language needs to be continued throughout all of your processes. So it needs to go beyond just that initial thank you letter and beyond just an initial impact moment, right? We're going to continue to show that this impact was more than just this one-time need and using that language throughout. And we're going to do this over the course of a full year. So almost like that new donor journey that we talked about, we want to engage them and let them know throughout an entire year that impact, their importance, and why we're thankful for them. We talked about personalizing that acknowledgement communication for the specific area of giving. Take that template you're used to using and ignore that it exists. It might be a little bit shorter of an acknowledgement. It might be a little bit tighter, but you're going to want to drop in very specific imagery words and quotes that are related to that emergency purpose, right? In COVID, using those thank you, quick thank you statements from students that received that emergency funding is so, so impactful, but you couldn't do that in a traditional acknowledgement process. And again, that impact communication also needs to be quick. So within the first one to three months, we want to show utilization. And you might not have used it all, but you have used some of it. So let's make sure that we're showing them along on that journey. Here is how much we've raised. Here is what the support is going to, and we've got some really good examples. This impact over the course of the year is also going to show some milestones throughout the progress of the funds, but odds are you're going to get some information about your donors throughout that time as well. So you're able to kind of use this strategy to not only highlight those things, but be able to fold in some major milestones or key anniversaries that that donor may have with you, whether that's, hey, we also know this, you have a graduation anniversary. We're so thankful that you're continuing to think of us and continuing that support and drawing those parallels there. And as always, impact should always be visually, visually meaningful. We're going to use words, we're going to do all those things, but being able to show visually what we've worked on in short snippets over the course of that year is really going to make that impact immediate and show why the emergency was and how we've solved that. I also just like infographics. I just think they're a great way to communicate. So this is one example out of the University of Florida, and they did an Ada Gator Steward... Words, less money. Telling you. Ada Gator donation call. And the great thing about this was that the gator is the student, right? And so they were able to then take students to record short, short videos that just said, hey, you providing here impacted me and how. And they were able to turn this around really quickly because we all know students are on their phones and their computers all day long. So they see these requests and they can turn them around. The great part about this is it was sent rather quickly after the donation. And you can see at the bottom, the engagement level. This is a 42 second video of a student saying, thank you. She's in a very casual setting. She's talking about how all of this helped her. You know, we didn't put her in a studio. We didn't give her a script. And 52, 53, I'm going to round up. 53% saw the email and clicked into this video. It was 226 people, but it was viewed 342 times, which means people rewatched the video. They shared the video. They engaged with the video. The video meant something to them. Also, eight people downloaded this video. Say what? And 11 donors felt the need to respond back to Claire and say, oh my gosh, I'm so happy that, you know, this could help you and moving forward in that. So we started a dialogue and a relationship. Here's a few others. These are all talking about those impact pieces for their quick stories. But I'm going to highlight the one in the middle here, Bolts of Honor. And I just love that it opens really, really, oops, sorry, sorry. With that big, bold, beautiful number, right? We were able to do this. But then it comes in with another bold number and it goes, this amount equals 152 scholarships. We helped 152 people. And here's one. And a nice little story. So we accomplish, we're saying thank you. Here's how much we brought in. Here's the person that benefited from your support. Beautiful picture. It's bright, beautiful. We love Team Rubicon. Team Rubicon sends people everywhere and does all great things. But the best part of Team Rubicon is they understand how to say thank you because they do it all the time. I actually think that they built their entire platform off of saying thank you because that's what they do. This is a great one using College of Charleston and their COVID emergency request, right? What I love about this one is one, it's an infographic, but the very first image you see on that left, because that's typically where our eyes go, is a pie chart. It's not dollars. It's not anything. It's going, here's how that support was used. Flat out. And that's the point of the piece, right? And then you go across and you see some other things. And it ends on the right with your student coalition of saying why they requested assistance, how it helped them. And they're just thankful that it's an option. So I love this. It's a unique layout, infographic-y style, but also getting across all that information that you need. Yep. I know that we are right at time. So I'll just give you some highlights from our case study. I wanted to show to you, obviously, we know that giving days are hugely, hugely important. And it's one of our other at-risk, high-priority audiences. There's so many things to being successful in the space of retaining giving day donors. It's all about pre-planning for your giving day. I mean, we know that now giving day is a year-round planning process for many of us, but it's also about identifying some of these segments that we've talked about, those first-time donors for your giving days, your loyal donors, your faculty and staff. And pre-building as much as you can, and then making your plan and making sure that you know what you're going to say to them before giving day, how you're going to thank them on the day of giving day, and then also directly following the event itself. What does that entire giving experience look like? When I was at the University of Florida, giving day was a huge initiative for us. And we did create a very robust strategic plan around this because we knew that we had talking earlier as we did in the early session. We knew that we would have so many donors coming in that day, but that was going to be a huge task for us to retain those donors or recognize those donors. So we had to go in with as much planning as possible. We identified our highest priority audiences, our first-time donors, our faculty and staff, and then those three, four, and five-year donors, because we really wanted to retain them through that time period. We also wanted to enhance our recognition and then also those that had given to us through challenge situations and so forth. So, so much pre-planning went into this. Sorry, my images are covering some of my text here, but we did this through a series of initiatives. We did handwritten notes from students. We did general and also personalized thank yous. We pre-planned a lot of our email drops, our gratitude email drops. So just as much as you pre-plan your solicitations for Giving Day, you should be pre-planning your gratitude emails as well. We did a lot of post-email stewardship emails, you know, thank you postcards and so forth. But we also made sure that all of our standard communications like tax receipts and pledge fulfillments and so forth also had that Giving Day language. So back to Liz's point about that affinity language is we were reinforcing that affinity and recognizing why it was that they were giving to us. So some of the key metrics that we would track coming out of Giving Day to make sure that we could reinforce why we were doing this was that first time donor retention year over year. How many of those donors did we retain from year one to year two? That overall retention number. So remember, if you remember way back to slide one, the general overall retention is around 50%. So are we in that ballpark? Are we raising that from year to year? Because our goal should really be to be raising that. Did these donors give any additional gifts in that first year? Did we inspire them to give again? That's another really great metric to follow. The number of donor touch points that your team is generating during this time and then also your general communication stats. Liz mentioned some really great communication touch points, whether it be via your website, whether it's your impact communications, but track the purpose of those and track them in your database. What is open? What is clicked through? What is downloaded and responded to? And then our key takeaways for the day. We've really touched on all of this, but there's lots of key behaviors that we talked about first time, loyal, Giving Day and so forth. Pick one or two for your organization. Pick the ones that have potentially the most ROI for your organization and just tackle one to two per year. You're not gonna be able to do all of them, but make a strategy for one to two. Focus on the behavior and not on the amount and then don't mainstream those donors. Once somebody gives to your organization, don't just drop them into all of your channels and expect that that's gonna be the magic bullet for everybody. Create a specialized journey for them and figure out what's going to resonate with them. You're gonna have to be flexible and timely and nimble. And I know that in higher ed, that's not always our forte, but you really have to think about that in the behavior-based space. Think about all the different channels that you can utilize. If you don't have the time to do it all, if you can't do all of the different touch points, always, always, always choose an impact communication over anything else because that will have more ROI than anything else. If you have to choose where to put your time and your resources, choose that. And then really just think about the donor experience and what you would want when you're supporting an organization and let that drive some of your decision-making. So, sorry, I know we tried to cram so much into our hour and we're four minutes over, but I hope this was helpful to you. I hope that you took a couple of nuggets out of this. Liz and I are always happy to answer follow-up questions if you want to reach out directly to either one of us via email, but please do let us know if there's any other ways that we can help. Yeah, I do have a couple of questions, if you don't mind, for just a second. I promise I'll be fast. Someone wanted to know for the UF recognition that was kind of joining the giving family, was there a specific gift amount threshold or was that every donor? It was a gift at any level to any area. Now, I will say the only area of our university that opted out of that program was our UF Health because they had their own program and they were pretty significant program in and of itself. But anyways, any gift of any size to the university. Wow, that's really awesome. And I know a couple of people have asked if you would be willing to share these slides and I think that was standard after the conference, so I'm assuming that that will be okay. Of course. Okay, great. I'll make sure that everybody gets these slides. And then I have one more question. So thank you, videos. What are your tips on kind of, or Gratavid or whatever platform folks use, what are some of your tips on things to say? I know our institution, it gets real awkward real fast and they tend to kind of drone a little bit and it's like, okay, we try to keep it short and sweet, but what are the impactful things people should be saying in those kinds of videos? I would like to take this because Liz works for the master in this space. Okay, so this kind of goes back to some of the things we talked about earlier, but like affinity communication, talking about why you're saying thank you, right? It's not just thank you, you made a great impact. Those are all great words and I don't wanna discourage anyone from saying that. But what you should be talking about is focusing on why that thank you is coming about, right? You are either recognizing a behavior, you are recognizing that they gave to a particular fund, you are recognizing an anniversary, whatever this thank you is. You wanna make sure that you're using that as the, I will say structure around your thank you. What I will also say is if you are requesting a thank you from someone, whether it be a student, faculty member, president, insert important person here, you should always provide at least bullets for them to know why they're doing what they're doing and the point of what we're trying to accomplish, right? So if you are wanting to do a thank you for all your first year donors to the College of Engineering, you're gonna reach out to that dean and you're gonna go, hey, we'd love you to record a quick 30 second video saying thank you to your first year donors to the college this year, saying we're just so appreciative that you wanted to support our college, say one great thing that has happened courtesy of donor funding this year and be done, right? So you've given them a small little structure without scripting. Now we all know that there are some people you do have to script and we'll ignore them in that, but being able to use language that identifies why you're saying thank you and what you're really trying to reinforce, those are your like key factors to be considering as you're structuring those thank yous in the video. Okay, that's really helpful and that's something I'll definitely use in my day to day work life going forward. So I appreciate that on a personal level. Thank you both of you, Sarah and Liz. Thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate you and I hope that you will be joining us at our 2024 conference again in San Antonio. That goes for all of you on our call today. Thank you so much. I hope you'll mark your calendar for our next District 4 Best of Together happening on Thursday, December 7th at 2 p.m. Central. We'll be joined by Elvia Aguilar who will present her popular session from the conference, Back to Basics, Old School Mentoring in the TikTok Age. So if you are in leadership or hope to be in leadership or you work with students a lot, this will be one that you won't want to miss. Also about our conference, you can submit your session proposals through October 27th. Check our website for the link. And finally, registration is open for the District 4 conference already. I can't believe it. We're going back to San Antonio March 3rd and it's open until March 3rd, 2024 for early bird registration. So you can find that link at case.org and navigating to our district page. Thank you all again for joining us and I hope I'll see you on December 7th. Bye. Thank you.

strategic stewardship

donor retention

engaging donors

donor pyramid

behavior-based donor retention

customized stewardship experiences

first-time donors

emergency fund donors

unrestricted fund donors

impact communications