Did you catch MemoryFox’s October webinar on finding the right donors with Ellen Bristol? Watch it now!

About this webinar:

This webinar took place on Wednesday, October 4th.
Are your donors “right” for you? The “right” donors are passionate about your cause, become deeply engaged in your mission, and stick around for years. If you don’t have a clear, concise, and documented Ideal Donor Profile, you might just wind up slogging through too many prospects who are just DOA – Dead on Arrival. Cut through the clutter with a Prospect Scorecard, a great way to document your Ideal Donor Profile – and help your fundraising team invest most of their time on the “right” donors. Their capacity to give is important – but not as important as other factors!

Full Transcript:

0:00now great okay and I’m letting people in

0:07and I’m going to Spotlight of

0:16there we go welcome everybody

0:22thank you for coming today I’m so excited to have Ellen here today to talk

0:27about finding the right donors for your non-profit like we talked about doing this topic I mean I feel like we first

0:34met maybe back in March it was at least March right yeah and I have been literally excited for this topic since

0:40we popped in March because I was just I know like having been a fundraiser

0:46it’s just such a thing that like you need to sit down and think about and really put some time and effort into it

0:52so I’m so excited to have you today I hope we have a few more people joining us but if not

0:57um we are going to record this and this will be a great uh resource for people to use later

1:02um like I’d say let’s get started I like to be pretty yeah I want I want to say

1:07one thing to you in the audience we have a small audience let’s make it interactive we won’t wait till the end

1:14you guys are gonna ask whatever you want to ask and you know just raise your hand

1:20to get the opportunity to be her or unmute or however you’re gonna manage this Carly okay that sounds great we

1:28have a few more people joining us so um you know when we get to 135 maybe

1:34we won’t make it quite some winter I love that

1:41um wonderful so yeah here I um oh here’s a couple more people we get

1:47them in here um great so um just really quickly I’ll introduce myself my name is Carla Euler

1:53I’m the marketing manager at memory Fox memory Fox is a storytelling platform that helps non-profits collect organize

2:00and share uh great stories from their Community um our organization is is uh based in

2:08Buffalo I actually myself am based in Rochester New York um but we actually do have people across the country and

2:14um if anybody is interested in learning more about memory Fox at the very very end after Ellen has given us all of her

2:21wisdom I have just a short little introduction to memory Fox that I’d love to share with you all but for now

2:28um Ellen take it away

2:33um my uh deck is going to kind of give you

2:42what I’m all about let me

2:49let me let me give you guys a little bit of background on me

2:55first of all I spent about the first 20 years of my business career

3:02um in corporate sales I sold mainframe

3:07computers I doubt that many of the people here know what a Mainframe is or

3:12have ever used a Mainframe or certainly ever sold a Mainframe but that was in

3:18the days when okay one of my last reasonable sales was

3:25fifty thousand dollars worth of tape backup and it had less

3:32memory that fifty thousand dollar investment that my five-year-old Android

3:39phone it does so when I launched Bristol strategy

3:44group back in 95 . yeah you guys could do the math

3:51um I got really intrigued by the non-profit sector because I found that fundraising

3:59was such a difficult issue for most non-profit organizations and I

4:08also discovered folks in the sector were doing things

4:13that made what is already difficult raising money he made it more difficult

4:20so I decided okay you found your mission in life Bristol

4:26let’s repurpose some of the truly High performing

4:32disciplines um that I learned in my years in selling

4:38and make them fit the philanthropic heart and charitable soul of our third

4:45sector the social sector so I’m a little bit different and the

4:50rest of my small firm we’re a little bit different from most fundraising Consultants because we don’t do

4:56campaigns we don’t do Capital campaigns we don’t tell you how to write grants

5:01we work on Performance Management and data analytics and

5:09you’re going to hear a little bit more about the data analytics as we as we go through this program so in case you

5:16don’t already know what I look like here’s a picture of me and we’re going to talk about why you

5:24need an ideal donor profile

5:29um you guys know you can move our uh our faces around right

5:35so all right Ellen get with the program here

5:42if you don’t have an ideal donor profile

5:48you are going to end up wasting money and time you can’t afford to waste

5:54because you’ll basically be in the shooting

6:00gallery in the dark without any Target to shoot for

6:05and let me tell you exactly what the ideal

6:11donor profile with that phrase really means and I quote

6:17I did not write this I looked it up somewhere on the internet the ideal donor

6:24or the ideal customer or the ideal Grant or or the ideal corporate sponsor

6:30and PS the ideal board member the ideal

6:36employee be whatever it is the perfect fill in the blank

6:45for what your organization stands for excuse me I had laryngitis and I’m still

6:52a little hoarse um so this is like an avatar that’s the

6:57term we’re using term of art these days but it’s a fictitious donor with all the

7:03qualities that would make them the best fit to invest in your non-profits cause Mission or programs

7:12every non-profit is competing for charitable donations

7:18from funding sources whatever they may be but I’m here to tell you

7:25if you run a food bank in West kneecap Idaho

7:32and I run a food bank in Center City Baltimore

7:39we are going after different donors we’re not competing with each other for

7:46one thing you’re in Idaho and I’m on the you know Maryland

7:51but Way Beyond that there are there are specific things about you your program

7:59your organization and so on nuances that make a big difference

8:06as you craft this now we started to do some research

8:14way back in 2011 I thought it would be a cool idea to have something interactive on my website

8:20and so I created the original leaky bucket assessment for

8:26Effective fundraising I didn’t realize at the time that there

8:31were no popular or academic studies of fundraising team performance

8:40and when I say fundraising team I mean employees

8:45volunteers contractors or members of the government board

8:53I I don’t care if if the person who’s raising money for you gets a paycheck

8:59but if they are raising for money and you don’t have a good ideal donor

9:04profile you’re making their lives more difficult as I said we’ve been running this uh

9:10particular version of this assessment since 2011. uh and we didn’t get a lot

9:18of feedback during the pandemic so we’re late at coming up with the

9:23latest version don’t hate me um we’re currently working on doing one

9:30for 2024 so guys go to our website I’ll give you a link to it later

9:38but the the statistics have never changed no matter how many samples we

9:46have how many people filled out the assessment this version of it is free by

9:53the way and we are just in the process of publishing a new paid version that’s

10:00much more sophisticated but if you’re running a small org take the free one

10:07and this is really kind of a horrifying

10:12set of data here of the 1500 or so people who have

10:18contributed assessments only six percent of them have an ideal

10:26donor profile that includes wealth capacity how much they can give

10:33and whether or not their motivations for giving are a good match to your mission

10:40and as you can see if we just looked at the first two

10:45that’s something like 84 percent I can’t do math in my head so excuse me

10:52if I screw that up 84 have no documented ideal donor

10:58profile and then another 18 just look at how wealthy is that Prospect

11:06which is a bad idea because

11:11I already told you that the first rule of fundraising is no

11:19money no mission like any other type of business a

11:26non-profit has to fund itself adequately and that means

11:32paying decent wages to your staff no matter how small that staff is

11:40for adequate facilities or if you’re all virtual at least sufficient technology because

11:49if you don’t have such a profile it is tougher to raise money and you’re

11:55already exhausted I know that I don’t want you to be more exhausted

12:01okay we are going to track through four steps

12:09I just like to remind people if you do things like this the right way

12:17they are simple simple however does not necessarily mean

12:26easy so I want all of you to tuck up your skirts so to speak

12:33tiny belt a notch and be prepared to invest some effort in this stuff

12:39you’re going to have to take a little break from running around like a chicken without a head trying to raise money to

12:47doing the Strategic stuff so

12:53step one before we get to Step One

12:59the rules of the road or the Rules of Engagement or whatever other phrase you want to have all of these exercises

13:07should be done in a group by consensus so we’re not only relying

13:14on Fred’s ideas about who the ideal donor Fred you’ve got to shut your trap

13:20sometimes and let other people speak up so everybody click or something if you

13:28uh if he get me right

13:34um Kylie can you check the chats we have a couple of chats I want to make sure we

13:39don’t miss it all right so here’s step one

13:47coming up with your value proposition please do not say oh yeah Ellen’s

13:53talking about the elevator pitch your value proposition

14:00is not the same as your mission it’s not the God forbid elevator pitch it’s an

14:07understanding of what makes your non-profit worth other people’s investing in it

14:15whether that investment is money time or

14:21uh goods and services

14:28oh that’s what I was looking for gifts in kind and I’m gonna

14:33go through a little bit of how you dot do Define your value proposition but

14:40you’re going to get a little present at the end of this when Carly sends out the link to the recording

14:46she’s also going to be sending out a PDF of the slide deck and four documents

14:54that are templates you can use in your organization to fulfill these next steps

15:03so here’s what the value proposition is we sometimes recur refer to the value

15:09proposition as value added so again let’s take our Idaho based food

15:16bank and our baltimore-based food bank so just based on the size of it maybe

15:23the baltimore-based food bank has access to frozen crab cakes

15:30once or twice a year right Baltimore Maryland crabs you get it

15:36and Idaho the food bank might occasionally have

15:42some elk Stakes thanks to generous hunters in the

15:48neighborhood um yeah don’t hate me if you’re a vegan that was just realistic purposes of

15:56illustration so your value-added is what you do well

16:04and we like to call this half a SWOT analysis

16:09the way we find it’s easy for you and your team to figure out your

16:17value proposition [Music] half a SWOT analysis Squad is an acronym

16:23that stands for internal strengths and internal weaknesses external opportunities and external

16:31threats and if you are doing formal strategic planning for the facilitator

16:37they’ll probably have you conduct such an analysis but for the value proposition all we’re doing is a

16:44analysis just going to ask ourselves

16:49what do we do that’s really great and what are we also faced with that’s

16:56hampering our ability to perform so here’s a completely fictitious

17:03set of examples everybody loves our CEO but we know we’re too dependent on our CEO we

17:10remember this is brainstorming so don’t worry about who’s

17:15got the right contribution um and we say well you guys can read

17:21this I don’t have to read it to you please don’t take this is only an

17:27example ideally if you have four or five people that you can get together for this

17:33exercise should probably end up with somewhere between

17:3918 and 25. strengths and I don’t care how many

17:44weaknesses you can have you can have a thousand weaknesses be my guest the

17:50reason I like to add the weaknesses at this point is because many times your

17:57group is so frustrated by what you don’t do well or can’t seem to get done that

18:04it’s hard to focus on what’s working so I’m going to let you do some put off

18:11some weaknesses now the next step after that

18:18oh sorry let me come continue to explain and I don’t have a slide for this but

18:23you’ll see all the details you in your template

18:28so first you do your S and W then you look at that and you say hmm

18:37and guess what you do with the weaknesses you throw them away or you save them somewhere but you don’t

18:45pay anywhere attention to them then you’re going to look at the strengths and review them and see where you have

18:51duplication and where things might be smushed together because they say the same thing

18:59but with a slightly different uh nuance

19:05then you’re going to say let’s all pretend we are donors

19:11or grant writers or Grant makers or whatever we are what kind of funder we are

19:17which of these and we’re going to go over all items on your internal

19:23strengths list and mark them h

19:28for highly persuasive M for moderately persuasive and L for

19:37whoa I can’t figure out the adjective lowly persuasive

19:43and now you gotta look at it as a group again and say is that right but at the end of the day what you’re

19:49going to end up with is only those items

19:55that you all agreed were of Highly pers

20:00were highly persuasive so your final list of your value proposition are these

20:09internal strengths and I’d be surprised if your list was more than seven to ten

20:15okay so now we know pardon what I’m going to say what we

20:22what you have to sell what you’re promoting to prospective

20:28funders and I hope this is making sense to people and if it isn’t speak up or

20:35write a screaming chat I think it definitely is I’m loving this I think it

20:40all makes sense great now step two is what are the factoids

20:49do we do better with older people or younger people or is there a gender

20:54difference or is there something about where they live Are we more likely to

21:00get people from the high rent district the low rent district the industrial

21:07district that I I don’t know but just what you can see here

21:14are examples of factual criteria that are always available in the public

21:21record the most

21:27sophisticated way to look up these facts is by using a

21:33Prospect research service like donor surge or eyewave or wealth engine or

21:40there’s there’s not a lot of players in that industry um

21:45but you can also use the old-fashioned method reading the newspaper

21:51looking people up on on LinkedIn and so on so now we have two sets of

21:58characteristics you’re value-added the things that make

22:04your organization interesting to potential investors and I’m going to use

22:09that term to cover all types of investors and whether that are not those investors

22:16match certain factual characteristics P.S you guys all know that if you’re

22:23getting money from foundations you can use candid or whatever the foundation

22:28directories called these days or Grant station and so on to find out

22:34their equivalent stuff like how much they give who they give to what their

22:40Grant guidelines are blah blah blah so this part is pretty straightforward

22:47simple not easy you’re going to have to work on it now we come to

22:55an important Criterion if you’re looking at donors

23:04there is not a good correlation between level of wealth

23:10and what’s often referred to as giving capacity

23:17if all wealthy people gave away a huge amount of their money

23:24there’s a lot of second third and fourth homes and Yachts

23:31and private airplanes and luxury hotels that

23:36would be crying in their beer about now so

23:42you really need to be open to people whose motivations for giving

23:50are a great match and selective about whether or not you have the right

23:56factual match and the right

24:03you know you’re willing to take lots of smaller gifts if you can’t find larger

24:10gifts from people who also are very motivated by your mission

24:15real quick I love that you brought this up I think about this a lot especially

24:21like I’m a millennial um I know I have a lot of friends who are gen Z and I think sometimes us just

24:28because we’re younger we kind of get looked over as not um just because we don’t have as much

24:35wealth right now but over time we might and if we become if we’re loving your

24:41non-profit now maybe over time we’ll have more capacity to give but I think this is such an important conversation

24:47about the um like like you were saying like the capacity to give versus an

24:54actual person’s generosity like yeah yeah that’s exactly right

24:59um I love that my favorite cousin’s eldest daughter became very interested

25:04by the way she’s in her mid-50s now she became very interested in

25:10one of the in a refugee resettlement charity and her first paid job that charity hide

25:20hired her right after the war in Kosovo

25:26um to manage their fundraising

25:31and she’s she’s quite a distinguished non-profit leader at this point but she didn’t have what

25:38does she have as a a high school student five dollars out of her weekly allowance

25:44so and another important thing especially if those of you on the uh on the poll

25:50are running small organizations having a large following and a large

25:57base of people investing in you at modest levels makes your organization

26:04more resilient and more sustainable than making all of your money for one or two

26:12government grants or contracts You’re vulnerable then so this is part

26:18of why you want to be so selective about these things now

26:24step three gets to the part that’s tough to figure out

26:31it’s easy to know about your own organization well I hope it’s easy to know and get through that exercise in an

26:39hour and 90 minutes it’s easy to look up the other kinds of data

26:47but step three is finding out what motivates

26:53people to want to give you money

26:59these are only four uh

27:06examples there are many many other examples

27:12the four I’ve listed here kind of pop up everywhere

27:18if you grew up

27:24in a situation that you don’t want your friends or your kids or your grandkids

27:30to experience that’s a strong motivator if your family or your religious

27:37affiliations had a tradition of giving that’s great to know whether whether you

27:44share that as a fundraiser or not that’s often a big motivator which is one of

27:52the reasons that houses of worship are the most heavily

27:58funded non-profit organizations in North

28:03America because people are going to church every

28:09week and there are tithing and doing all that stuff wanting to see a better future for

28:15others pretty obvious getting passionate about

28:21well if you’re a vegan you’re probably pretty passionate about animal welfare

28:26and animal Justice if you uh I don’t have to go there’s I

28:32mean this is self-evident now here’s the part that’s not self-devident how do you find that stuff out

28:39let me just I forgot what comes next yes this is how you find out what their

28:46motivations are um I would like to suggest that when you

28:54down when you get the materials that Carly’s going to send you the first one

29:00you read is the template suggested Prospect

29:05interview interview questions really um

29:10we came up with a long list of such questions

29:15thing to do is sit down with a few of your your teammates

29:21and say let’s narrow this set of questions down to no more than four maybe five

29:28and none of them are designed to ask hey would you give us money

29:34they’re all and and what you do is

29:39you go back to the donors or the board members or other Advocates maybe they’re

29:45graduates of your program and

29:51what I always like to do because everybody is either on text or email

29:56send them an email and say hey schmutzy are you would you do me a favor we are

30:03doing some work on our marketing and I would like to ask for 20 or 30

30:09minutes of your time to provide me some guidance

30:16there’s nothing people like better than asked to talk about themselves

30:22and there’s also nothing that works better than to ask people to do you a favor especially if the favor is not hey

30:28would you give me some money so all of these questions are kind of in

30:35the realm of tell me about yourself

30:40so I think you’ll find three questions that are highlighted

30:46in this template and my two favorites they’re not the

30:51ones to start with kind of go like this if our organization was able to

30:58Thrive Beyond Your Wildest imagination

31:03what would that look like and why would that be important to you

31:08people I don’t know why people respond so fervently to that question but it it’s

31:15on for one thing it’s unexpected right so

31:20it first they say good question let me think about it and then the next

31:26question is okay I write this I write this down writings down I’m ready to get down um

31:32the flip side of the question is let’s flip this upside down and say

31:39you had to close your doors

31:46what would that look like and how would that feel to you

31:54now I have heard an answer as follows I would be thrilled because it would

32:02mean we had solved the problem I I think this was an organization that

32:09was doing research on an orphan disease okay I had another I had we’ve done some work

32:17with my all-time favorite client in Kenya that provides scholarships to

32:22Kenyan children so they can attend high school because High School is not free in Kenya

32:28and um the leadership of the organization

32:36took their alumni team out camping in the bush

32:42we had a lot of laughter over the fact that they had to slaughter two goats and would kill them

32:49we still laugh about that anyway they asked this negative question what would

32:54happen if we had to close our doors and they said it several of the alums who are now either

33:03in University or running businesses or had good jobs in Kenya they burst into

33:09tears and they said we can’t let this happen P.S the alumni group now supports I

33:18think three full-time year-round scholarships every year so that’s not small money

33:27by Kenyan standards so asking these questions is wonderful in

33:34two ways because when you master it your anxiety about talking to strangers kind

33:40of goes away because you’re going to start out talking to people you’re comfortable with

33:46and second of all these are the questions you ask to get somebody into the state of

33:55cultivation and at a certain point you can say boy

34:00you sound like such a great match for us would you be willing to consider

34:06making a financial investment or volunteering for us or giving us you

34:12know 10 pallet loads of office supply whatever it is okay so that was

34:19step three oh here we are yeah

34:26what makes you a charitable person is also another great thing

34:32don’t ask them for money another hint here is

34:38you know Mary I’m you’ve been so kind I just want to do a time check I asked you

34:44for 30 minutes of your time or at the 22 minute mark

34:49um and I have a couple of other things I’d like to hear invariably they say yes

34:55or they say because I have an appointment don’t be surprised if some of these

35:03interviews run an hour or an hour and a half

35:09especially if you’re talking to current donors or current board members if you

35:15don’t Cur if you’re if you’re a startup organization

35:20um so uh oops I didn’t mean to jump ahead

35:27but don’t ask them for money there’s a there’s a wonderful saying in

35:33the world of fundraising ask for advice you get money ask for money you get advice

35:44so I have never heard that before and that is so true isn’t that great yeah

35:50I’ve never heard that before that you want to be able to master

35:57you don’t talk very much you ask these wonderful open-ended questions and then

36:03you make um oh yeah I understand that kind of noises that maintain rapport

36:13and if there is a solicitation it’s not so terrible anymore because at

36:20some point somebody’s gonna say you know we’re currently giving you 500

36:25but I think we should be giving you a thousand dollars and what do you say you

36:30don’t say oh my God you say it’s great we would really

36:36appreciate that so all of your emotional feedback is tempered it’s quiet that

36:44it’s not a surprise that somebody wants to give you more money okay you’re with me guys

36:54now there’s an important part of the ideal donor profile that not enough

37:00people talk about and we call that the danger signs

37:08example been talked on action I’ll give you this gajillion dollars

37:15to run your um program for homeless pregnant teenagers

37:23as long as you open a dental clinic or or something wacky that you know or I’ll

37:31give you 500 if you name the building after me we’ve let me tell you we’ve seen that and then there’s all of the

37:38unprintable things that I don’t want to talk about now talking about the danger

37:45signs yes we all we’re not as sacred and holy and

37:51wonderful as we think we are because this is the conversation that really gets people going

37:58and I’ve seen people actually put in their criteria no a-holes okay

38:05uh excuse me but exactly how would you

38:10define that um so you need to know what you want

38:19but you also need to know what you don’t want what you want to avoid

38:24you can find out a lot about whether or not a particular Prospect is going to

38:32torture you for six weeks before they give you less money than

38:39they can afford to and much less than you need them to get so

38:46it’s just as valuable to know what the positive criteria are as well as to have

38:54some idea of whom you want to avoid now before you all throw Rotten Tomatoes at

39:01me I want to make one major caveat if you are raising money in small

39:08donations low dollar transactions they’re called that’s a 10 20 25 40 50 bucks

39:18you don’t need to worry about the danger signs you only need your marketing

39:25to attract people based on those

39:31values the giving motivations don’t worry about danger signs or gift

39:39capacity until you’re trying to cultivate larger

39:45gifts or larger grants and you get the one you’re you get to be

39:52the one who defines what the floor of a major gift is

39:58um I think AFP says it’s a thousand dollars

40:05others tell me it’s five thousand dollars a children’s hospital in our

40:10part of the country uh it says it’s twenty five thousand dollars

40:16um World Vision says it’s a hundred thousand dollars so use your best

40:23judgment but the ideal donor profile I’m gonna go backwards here for a moment

40:29in many ways the most important element is this understanding giving motivations because

40:38that is the source of a great deal of your marketing your digital content

40:46your memory videos and testimonials that that

40:52memory Fox does such an outstanding job of helping gather and so on

41:00so here’s what you’re gonna do and I I should have done this and please forgive me I didn’t

41:08put a copy of the actual document you’re gonna get

41:15a sample scorecard from Carly it is a

41:22very simple Excel spreadsheet and it’s called Simple

41:28Prospect scorecard there’s a more sophisticated version of it but I knew

41:33it would confuse you to start out with it well all the scorecard does is it

41:39helps you list up to five factual statements now this let me tell

41:47you why I want you to limit the number of criteria to five in each category

41:55it means that you and your team have to come to consensus on the five most

42:02important entries in that category

42:08it’s fine if there are other positive or negative things to know about

42:15less is more when it comes to data analytics and one of the reasons you

42:21want to be able to actually document this is so that from time to time

42:29when you do some I can

42:34rearrange my mouth when when you analyze your donor base

42:40or your funder base wouldn’t it be nice if you can see

42:47how many people were really good matches you know what how you segment your

42:56um donor base in comparison

43:02to this set of criteria

43:09you don’t you’re going to score each Prospect so every time you’re going to

43:15open this little spreadsheet which is filled with completely fictional but reasonably representative statements

43:22right now you replace all the statements with your statements and then you

43:30when you’re look when you’re looking at Carly or you’re looking at me

43:35you put our you know the name of the prospect on the top of the scorecard and

43:41then you say Ellen or Carly or Fred our friend Fred um

43:47matches that line item at a five or a four or a three or a two or a one

43:54the danger signs get subtracted so the highest possible score

44:02a donor a prospect could get it’s only 50 points

44:08any of the danger signs are subtracted from that 50 points and you’ll see on

44:15the scorecard itself um

44:21how to rank them it’s like I I can’t remember but zero to ten they

44:27get a d which means you don’t want to spend a lot of time cultivating them

44:39you limit personal effort the most expensive asset in your organization is

44:46your time spent with donors it’s incredibly valuable

44:55so it’s not a good idea to figure out that somebody ranks as a d

45:04against your criteria and you decide although they’ve never

45:09given you any money that they deserve hours of your

45:14cultivation time it’s a bad idea

45:22now we’re almost done and then we’re going to open to questions and conversation ta-da

45:28you now have your ideal donor profile now

45:34you follow pretty much the same format for ideal Grant maker and ideal

45:41corporate sponsor okay now there are many other uses

45:47for the ideal donor profile knowing your audience is what powers

45:54marketing so at least these four things

46:04are directly tied to the degree of clarity you have

46:09on who is most likely to invest in your

46:15organization because those who are a good match are

46:20going to give you more money with less trouble

46:26and less time on your part a lot of people are not willing to say

46:33give to you forget it swipe right right or left or whatever we

46:39do to send them to jump out um

46:45so if it’s take they don’t like to say no so if it’s taking too long and

46:50they’re coming up with a million excuses and the dog has a hernia operation scheduled for next week and my

46:56son-in-law is coming in from Zurich

47:02no when you know your target audience will

47:12you’re going to start learning what is the correct how to leverage

47:17search engine optimization how to attract new prospects

47:24and that is that your Outreach your digital Outreach your participation in

47:29webinars and panel discussions and podcasts and email marketing and all the other Jazz you can do

47:36will attract not only attract new prospects but attract new prospects who

47:41are already warm leads they’re already they’ve already pre-selected them

47:48there’s something you said that resonated with them and they said I want

47:54to find out more this is a cause I believe in

48:02and by the way the ideal donor profile includes your ability to talk to a donor

48:10or a prospective donor you can already assume based on

48:16the initials scoring of that person some things about them so it’s like

48:23meeting an old friend I believe the single most valuable

48:33reason for building these ideal donor profiles is to guide your Discovery calls with

48:41prospects now

48:47there’s Discovery and there’s discovery and the older I get the more I learn

48:53about this stuff the same thing that guides your

49:00Discovery calls somebody says get in touch with so and so

49:06and tell him and you you can use my name that’s great but you may discover that

49:12so and so is already giving all their charitable money to an orphan disease suffered by their

49:19grand nephew and their alma mater and they ain’t got no more money

49:24or nice person not interested

49:31there are things about the ideal donor profile that also assist your stewardship

49:36and if you’re one of those lucky organizations that’s been able to persuade your board members to

49:42participate in stewardship activities like a phone call once a year to every

49:51single donor no matter how small the donors are they already know they surely know

49:56something about those donors just by the score you gave them

50:04and other things that you’ve taught your volunteers to do

50:11so I just want to say in case you didn’t figure it out I can’t

50:19think of a more important thing to do first when you want to improve your

50:25fundraising results than to have an ideal building profile so Carly let’s

50:30open this to questions yeah wow okay this was amazing thank you

50:39so much for everything you feel like I’m so glad that um our audience is also going to get the

50:45templates to go with it um so they can like you know really put it into practice because I think sometimes we go to these webinars and we

50:52learn things and then we think well yeah it’s very long right yeah it’s so nice

50:57to have it there to look at fill in the blanks love that um but yeah if anybody has any questions

51:03please do um either let’s see come off mute and ask or go

51:10ahead and drop it in the chat I’d love to hear from anybody

51:16um but in the meantime I do have a question yeah well you were talking about the so you talked a lot about the

51:23prospect interviews um so fascinating the questions that you were talking about

51:29um my question is and I apologize if you covered this but who do you recommend

51:34should do the interviews and how often should you be doing interviews like these that is an excellent question

51:42do not Outsource those interviews

51:48if you’re a fundraising professional or a fundraising volunteer

51:56you do them if you’re in leadership you need to do a few of them okay

52:03your board members need to do a few of them

52:08finding out what’s out there is amazing and

52:14the act of doing the interviews yourselves has a very powerful impact on something

52:23that most of us suffer from and few of us are willing to admit to ourselves

52:31nobody likes to ask for money it freaks everybody out

52:39now I’ve been around a long time in the selling Biz one way or another so I kind

52:47of over it now but one of the most important things to

52:52do is be comfortable talking to strangers so I can’t talk to strangers on your

52:59behalf nobody but you can talk to those strangers which is one of the reasons if

53:07you currently have a base of individual donors

53:12you should speak to a few of the donors who you know and like the best always

53:20start where it’s easy the first time I taught this to someone she went out and

53:28She interviewed her father you know if you can’t talk to Mom Jack

53:36right then you need some more practice Yeah and or it turns out her father had been

53:42a a a a donor to this it was a big event

53:48um that this small organization ran and he when he did the event

53:55it’s called Over The Edge if you’re wondering and people pay money to climb off

54:04the top of a skyscraper no they’re all they’re all attached to a million bits

54:11you know there’s there’s no real risk involved but it’s still scary so he did it and she went to him later and she she

54:18did this whole interview so that’s a critically important thing is that you

54:23guys have to do these interviews yourselves it doesn’t matter if

54:30um a third party does them because you didn’t hear not only the words that the

54:38interviewee said but the music behind the words the meaning between the lines

54:44does that help yes definitely

54:50um we have a little time so Carly if you have any questions unless I see there’s

54:55two new chats here let’s say a quick peek yeah it looks like Deanna asked um Ellen can I get a rundown of your

55:01experience it says how long do you have Dina okay uh you remind her of a professor

55:09she has oh cool well I have been working

55:16um primarily in sales since the early 1970s

55:25I first I worked for a very small organization that sold one of the

55:31earliest Standalone word processing systems then I sold for one of the major

55:37companies that sold word processing systems then I went and I sold

55:43mainframe computers which back in the 70s and 80s cost millions of dollars so you can

55:50imagine what they would cost in today’s money and in 1995 I’d had enough of corporate

55:57America and I opened my own shop

56:02and I I worked on sales Consulting for the first few years but throughout the

56:09right from the beginning I was Consulting to non-profit organizations

56:15so in one of the very few consultants in the market who never worked as a fundraising consultant

56:23which kind of gave me an edge because I didn’t have any bad habits and I just

56:30looked at everything yo from the data that makes sense exactly I do think sometimes

56:38um because when you do work in fundraising for so long sometimes you just feel so emotional about your mission or about your donors or about

56:45your sponsors that I do think that sometimes it does um it is valuable to to have maybe

56:51someone who has a little bit of a different perspective I love that well yeah I just I just want to jump in

56:57Ellen I just want to jump it doesn’t surprise me that you have a sales background all right it seems like you

57:05really know how to connect with people um

57:10in a way that uh you know I mean only in some ways experience can lend all

57:18right thank you I’m very proud of my sales background

57:23and I had the good and the bad I mean the bad was uh Working For Less

57:30experienced much younger and far less well-educated guys who treated me yeah

57:37let’s not yeah no my mom was a real estate agent and broker as well so

57:43um but anyway it’s it’s what I want to say is I’m just really I’m I made a lot

57:49of notes and uh yeah the um you’ve breaking it you’ve

57:54broken this down in a way that’s extremely uh easy to understand and is

58:00if practice is a real um easy way to connect with people and

58:07that’s what I find just so intriguing but then on the flip side you’re really speaking to like knowing the research

58:15knowing the information and and and using that to your advantage

58:20so it’s you know some real two really uh good weapons or

58:28you know yeah well I just can’t think of it no um and this leads me to here’s how to

58:36get in touch with me we are launching Bristol analytics because now that I’m older than God

58:44um I don’t want to work so hard anymore so we

58:50always or so to repurpose some of our methodological approaches into actual

58:57software and I invite you all to take a look at both of these websites

59:05so meanwhile my time is up I actually have another

59:11appointment Dina thank you so much for your conversa for your remarks there yeah thank you

59:17for your time thank you so much yeah on LinkedIn

59:23um I love that yes let’s let’s all connect on LinkedIn thank you all for coming if anybody does want to stay on

59:30for a few minutes Ellen you’re welcome um thank you so much I really have to jump okay

59:37um I’m just gonna share my screen quickly and tell you all a little bit about memory Fox um so let me do that right now we’ll get

59:46started

59:53Okay so let me see if this will just presently

59:59there we go okay wonderful so when it comes to memory box um like I mentioned what we do here is

1:00:06we’re a technology solution for non-profits that help you collect organize and share the great stories

1:00:12that you already have from your community um because a lot of times people ask you what your mission is and you have you

1:00:18know you know what to say you you know your mission like the back of your hand but are you able to show people and in

1:00:24this world where everybody is so focused on video and photo and things that can

1:00:29really um that can really take hold of your emotion in real time it’s more important

1:00:34than ever to be able to show someone so

1:00:40we find that when we talk to a lot of non-profit professionals like yourselves there really are kind of three reasons

1:00:45why they have barriers that come with showing their mission um number one it it’s that collecting

1:00:52content can sometimes feel like you’re pulling teeth um you’re asking people you’re asking people and maybe they just don’t have a

1:00:58good way to get it to you or they’re not feeling inspired to give it to you

1:01:03um number two the organization of the content after you have it that can be frustrating it also can be time

1:01:09consuming and then finally a lot of nonprofit professionals will say well we just need

1:01:15a more efficient way that we can actually share our story with our community after we’ve already collected it and making sure that it’s really

1:01:22compelling for them so because of these barriers we created memory Fox it’s built specifically for

1:01:29nonprofits to be able to go through this three-step process to address every single barrier you might have

1:01:35um so step one we do collect we help you with the collection step two is organize and step three is share and I will

1:01:42explain just a little bit about each step if you do want to go ahead and scan that

1:01:48QR code you can see for yourself how the collection process works

1:01:53um basically verbally how it works is we help you build branded campaigns and

1:01:59then you distribute that link or that QR code directly to the person you want to get the story from

1:02:05um so that can be your donors that can be your program participants your board members your staff members the

1:02:10possibilities are endless here all they really need to do is just click that link and then they could submit

1:02:15their pictures their videos a written testimonial um they can do it in real time or they can upload

1:02:22some really cool things about art the way we collect is that there’s no download or login required so people

1:02:28don’t have to download an app there isn’t those extra barriers that might stop people from even getting started

1:02:35second we always capture or we give you the option to capture your consent up

1:02:40front and be able to manage your own consent so whatever legal language makes sense for you and your state and your

1:02:46mission based on how you’re planning to use the content really make sure that people know that up front and in that

1:02:53way you always know that you’re able to use that story after it’s given to you

1:02:58and then finally after someone submits um they’ll it just it does go back to

1:03:03your website so if you want it to go immediately to a donate page if you want to just go back to your home page maybe

1:03:08to a sign up to volunteer page something like that um after someone submits a story it’s going to go uh redirect to

1:03:15your website so it all as you can see here it looks it’s got your logo it’s got your branding and in that way people

1:03:22will feel secure giving you their photo video or written testimonial and like I

1:03:28said you can go ahead and scan that QR code and literally see how it works um if you would like

1:03:36but after the content is submitted that’s when it gets to the organization process and what we do is we manage your

1:03:44memory box story bank so every single piece of content is going to automatically populate in your story

1:03:50Bank um you have um you have the ability to go ahead and tag it based on how you might plan to

1:03:57use it we see a lot of people will tag their content by program maybe by the event it came from maybe by the

1:04:04department that it impacts or or how you plan to use it for example a lot of

1:04:09people will tag their content with something like annual report and in that way they’ll remember when they’re

1:04:15putting together their annual report oh that was a really good story that I want to make sure I put in and don’t forget

1:04:20to put in that report also you have a bulk upload option so

1:04:26every content all the content that you already have it’s super easy just to upload that to your story Bank as well

1:04:32and that really is also helped out by the fact that it is unlimited storage so

1:04:37we we know you all have great stories to tell we don’t want people to feel like they are being barred from uploading any

1:04:43of their stories it is unlimited storage when you have a memory foxtory bank

1:04:51and then in terms of sharing we actually offer a ton of options that help you make your stories into really compelling

1:04:57content um you know a lot of people are looking for more short form social media posts

1:05:03short film videos um that really get the your mission out there we actually have a video editor

1:05:09within the platform that you can combine you can edit you can trim you can do all sorts of things with your videos in

1:05:15there um we also have this cool feature called our story Builder and it helps you

1:05:21create a shareable web page where you can display several stories at once so

1:05:26you might have an email that you’re sending out as a thank you to your donors and maybe when they go to their

1:05:31story page they can see some testimonials from the people who they helped this year something like that is

1:05:37really compelling for people to see several stories in one place

1:05:42um in terms of sharing you also always have the option to download the high quality original so um I don’t know if anybody on the call

1:05:49has had the same experience as me but I would often get people to email me photos then they would show up too big

1:05:54too small too blurry it’s a thumbnail I can’t use it um when you have a submission to memory

1:06:01box that avoids all of those problems and then finally we are integrated with canva so I hope if you work at a

1:06:08non-profit I assume you do I hope you have a canva pro which is free for non-profits when somebody submits to

1:06:16your memory Fox account it’s gonna automatically populate within your canva account as well right in the um little

1:06:23app section on the side as you can see from this GIF here and um that’s just super helpful because

1:06:29then you can just drag and drop into an already existing graphic design that you

1:06:34have um maybe with your logo maybe with your branding just makes it super duper easy

1:06:42and then just I will just quickly finish this up by letting you know that um a

1:06:48lot of people will ask okay well how much does this cost well like I said we actually believe that all nonprofits

1:06:53have great stories to tell and therefore we provide Equitable pricing that is based on your 990. so we want to make

1:06:59sure everyone has the opportunity um to capture those videos photos and rent testimonials that they need that

1:07:06will support their fundraising efforts but also a lot of other efforts at your organization

1:07:12um and if you are interested in connecting with one of our memory fog storytellers today

1:07:17um go ahead and scan that QR code or you can head to memoryfox.io backslash demo

1:07:23um and all this will be in the follow-up email so don’t feel the need to write this down

1:07:30okay so again thank you all for coming today this has been a really wonderful

1:07:36webinar I know we all learned a lot from Ellen and I look forward to connecting

1:07:41with you all again in the future be on the lookout for future memory Fox webinars thanks everybody