Good afternoon, everyone, and greetings
from ever to headquarters.
We're excited to present today's webinar introducing a hot topic
in the advanced space that of digital gift officer program,
also known as donor experience programs.
And we are thrilled to host 300 of you on this webinar today.
It is my privilege to introduce our colleagues
from Kansas State and University of Wisconsin
along with my colleague Maggie Patterson.
Maggie you want to say hello.
Yes Hi, everybody excited to join the panel today.
I'm going to help moderate a little bit on this session
and make sure that we get all of the great questions
that you guys have.
Make sure that I keep all of these gentlemen on time.
So that we move through all the content and in a great way
Brent moves through the question side.
But we do want to hear your question.
So on the bottom in between the participants in the Q&A
you'll see the questions element.
Go ahead and throw your questions in there.
And we will get to them at the end of the session
to make sure that we hear all of those great things.
So there we go.
There's the question side.
Make sure he's there.
I'm in there, you can also just say hi to your fellow
participants and other people on the call
and we're excited to hear from you.
The next slide.
Just quickly on ever true for those of you that are new here
and don't know ever true in the future,
we are the highest rated advancement
software in the space and have a five rating on tap.
So really excited to think about ways
that we're going to show you about our digital engagement
program.
Some of our customers are listed here on the right hand side.
And for those of you guys that are new and joining us.
Welcome to the family.
We're excited to have you as part of the conversation today.
The next slide here will actually
let all of the participants introduce themselves.
So I'm Maggie Patterson I'm the director of customer success.
Your moderator for today.
And Eric, why don't you go ahead and say a little bit
about yourself and we'll go left to right from there.
Sure Eric Holder is Associate Vice President of development
here at the Kansas State University Foundation.
My role.
I oversee what we refer to as strategic solicitations as well
as our university wide front line development team.
Hi, my name is John Grice.
I am at the University of Wisconsin
foundation and Alumni Association serving
as their director of annual giving.
I oversee our aim caregiving team
that's comprised of our direct marketing efforts inclusive
things like days of giving direct mail.
But also a newly founded donor experience officer team.
And I'm Brent grant founder and CEO of ever true.
And we've been focused on this topic
of how we might craft new job descriptions and leverage
technologies to be able to personalize the donor
experience at a portion of the giving pyramid that has not
always had that kind of one to one outreach
and so it's been really exciting to see this space evolve
over the last three years in particular.
And while we all today have different perspectives on how
to test concepts like this.
It's been a privilege to get to know, Eric and John as they've
been moving down this path.
Now we wanted to start out with a little bit of context
around just where you all are as it relates
to thinking about donor experience or digital gift
officer programs at your institutions.
And so I'm going to launch a poll right now.
And you all should see that pop up on your link here
and we'll just give you some time.
We'd love to know if you already have a digital gift officer
program and that it's well established
and if so, we're going to invite you to be
on the next webinar with us.
If you're just about to launch one
that's good to know as well.
If you're thinking about it, which it looks like most of you
are.
Hopefully we can give you some ideas over the course
of the next hour or so.
And if you're not even sure why you're on the webinar today,
that's OK too.
We're going to have a good time. So that
would be apps for.
All right, cool.
So it looks like about 60% 70% of you are thinking about it.
A handful of you have just launched
a program and just a few have a program already running.
So hopefully we can see all that.
All right.
And we're now going to I guess will ask this question.
Although only I think 15 of you or so
are running a digital gift officer program.
But curious to know if you have a point of view
and how it's gone so far, whether it's
gone extremely well.
OK not sure too early to say.
And if you're willing to admit that it just has not worked.
We also want to learn from those experiences as well.
So let's see give maybe 10 more seconds.
If anybody else wants to answer.
But the results are pretty much split in the middle here.
So we will go on to the next slide.
So that's some good context, I think the overall results here
suggest that there's a lot of interest in this space.
We know, that many of you have been
trying to come up with different programs
and we're hopeful that we can give you
three distinct views that you can then
learn from and potentially shape and apply
your institution based on the goals
that you've been able to achieve and I
think that much of our perspective on this that ever
true has really been shaped by learning how organizations
outside of the education advancement sector
are doing a better and better job leveraging technology
to be able to create more personalized experiences as it
relates to their customer base.
And I wanted to share a recent experience
as it relates to my flying patterns on Jetblue.
I am a loyal Jetblue customer and it really
has struck me how well they've been
able to personalize my experience ranging from nice.
Thank you notes waiting for me at my seat
to those delicious chips that I just can't say no to.
But when I think about myself in the context of the Jetblue
flying pyramid I am not a principal flyer for Jetblue.
I am a solid mid-level flyer and it has struck me
that in spite of not being in their top 5% of fliers
I'm still made to feel very special
and that they've obviously been able to track
data and personalize my experience in a way that
has the evangelizing about Jetblue to all
of you on this webinar right now.
And that's the kind of experience
that we're really trying to identify where
our mid-level prospects who we know
have meaningful capacity there engage with the institution.
But maybe aren't converting to traditional outreach methods.
And so when we look at the data across our customer base
and through case and other survey work.
It is clear that over recent years revenue has grown.
But donor counts have dropped.
Not just alumni participation with larger class sizes,
but the actual donor counts have been dropping
at many of the institutions in the sector and a big reason
that donor counts are dropping is
because donor retention continues
to be a real challenge.
And so across a subset of institutions
we recently did an analysis that showed 65%
was the average donor retention rate.
And that can vary greatly based on gifts size.
And so forth.
But that is a big opportunity.
And we also realize that old school tactics have not
been hitting the mark for constituents
across many different generations whether it's
a traditional phone it on program or even responses just
to emails to mass emails or other mass marketing.
It's really hard for that to turn around the donor account
challenge that we just talked about on 0.1.
And then finally, there are many tactics
that can create short term spikes thinking about giving
days and crowdfunding as ways to entice people
to become first time donors.
But our data suggests that there's
a real challenge in particular around campaigns
like that to create ongoing retention and Welty.
And so while giving days in crowdfunding
have been a good part of the good addition
to the tools in the toolkit of advancement
and Eric and John both have experience with each of those,
they alone have not solved this problem.
And so that's really what we're thinking about.
And as we've been assessing the space, what we found
is that across our customer base fewer than 5% of constituents
are assigned to frontline fundraisers.
There just aren't enough major gift officers to go around.
And especially at a time when the industry
is moving to smaller portfolios there
are fewer and fewer covered prospects.
And as a result, we've been relying on mass marketing
channels like the ones I just described
to reach a larger and larger portion of the giving pyramid.
And it just hasn't translated into strong retention
and a growth in donor counts.
And so our belief is that there is an opportunity
to introduce new job descriptions redefine
the advancement org chart to really create
more personalized experiences that while reliant
on digital outreach and can be supported by technology.
It's really about facilitating human to human interaction
with John and Eric are going to talk about
and we think that by marrying that kind of approach
with traditional frontline fundraising
and then continuing to complement it
with direct marketing efforts, we
can have a big impact on renewals of sub $10,000 a year
donors.
We can have a big impact on reactivating laughs supporters
and we also can support acquisition
of engaged non donors without spreading ourselves too thin.
So that's what we're going to talk about today.
We think that the digital gift officer trend can
be a huge part of the solution.
Technology is a part of it.
But technology alone.
I promise you will not raise the money.
What is required is one to one outreach at scale.
Whether you're in Manhattan, Kansas or Madison, Wisconsin
or Boston, Massachusetts.
It's never been easier to be able to engage people on a one
on one basis and scale.
And in doing so, we can really prioritize mid-level supporters
who maybe aren't yet ready for a frontline fundraiser
to get on a plane and fly out to see them to have a discovery
lunch that informs you that there actually
isn't a lot of potential or even if there is a lot of potential.
Can you get there much more quickly at a lower cost
but still in a way that aligns with donor expectations
and creates a good experience.
So that's really what we're going to try to present today.
This is not new.
It is just kind of new to advancement.
When you look at the commercial world inside sales
has played a massive role over the last 10 years
in reducing the cost of selling products and services
relative to field sales field sales has historically looked
a lot like major gift work.
But there is proof.
Now that.
Thanks to technology, even technologies like Zoom,
which reusing today, we can have quality touch points
with prospects at a much lower cost
and maybe even grow revenue.
And so that's really the hypothesis
here we've got some early indications
from Eric and John and others that this is not just
a hypothesis.
But it is becoming reality.
And that's what we're going to talk about.
But we also want to acknowledge that we are building that
airplane as we fly it.
We are not here to tell you all that we've got it figured out.
And here's how to do it.
You know Eric John and I are all humble enough
to acknowledge that we're excited about this topic
but we really have to bring an entrepreneurial mindset here
where we're going to have different tests we can run.
We're going to start small.
We're going to pilot we're going to measure.
And then if it works really well.
We're going to help educate you all on the rest of the sector.
But we also promise that if it doesn't
work as we expect we will reveal that data
and learn from that as well, because it's
going to taste a few different iterations to really get
this right.
So we're not here with all of the answers.
But hopefully some positive out of this.
Now, I do want to kick it over to Eric to just get
a little bit of context and maybe John,
before we dive into the next slide.
Just on how we got to this place.
How it is that we all got connected.
What the catalyst was for your organization
to decide to do something about this.
So why don't you give me some just high level thoughts
and then we'll dive into specifics around both the case
data and the Wisconsin programs.
Yeah So you know how we got to this spot was
we recognize that major gifts are what it is.
And obviously acknowledging the 5% of those
are giving 95% of the dollars.
And so we are after however an oil pipeline.
And we're hind us.
But instead curating the appropriate prospects up
and to the right throughout their journey with us.
And so what we'd hoped to do was exactly what
was described, which was deliver a donor experience at scale
to all of those that have made and chose to make
an investment at Kansas State.
And so we had been after we got the principal gift stuff right
in the major gift stuff, right.
And then, you know, we set out to really refine
what it is we were doing in that strategic solicitation
space the middle of this pyramid thing qualification referral
was role.
And so how are we going to continue
to produce more and more major giving givers
each year because we're so that's how we got where.
We were thinking through some of this brand approached us
and helped us.
So I think even deeper about this issue
and actually made it even accessible to say, you know,
we can solve this problem together
with the use of our true as a technology and others.
So that's kind of where we are.
We've been at it since April with a couple
of development officers in Virginia and Quinlan,
who are knocking it out of the park.
But really that's kind of our journey to get to where we are.
Great John, how about you.
How are you doing Madison.
Our goal for my team is to deliver discretionary dollars
to our units on campus.
So we're trying to connect down our passions
with those university priorities and it's all about retention.
We started with the data.
And we found that in many of our campaigns
that leadership annual giving donors are driving the numbers.
However, we also saw in that data
that we have a challenge with retaining those donors.
So if we're going to move the needle here
UW Madison and that's going to require a certain increased
focus on those leadership, giving us
donors throughout all of our work that we do each year.
We're really good at the top one or 5% of those donor
engagements here with our gift officers
where we can improve upon is the middle of the pyramid
because we can always manufacture ways to get you
donors through days of giving or crowd
funding or other campaigns.
It's really hard to get people to give the leadership
or giving level year after year.
It's going to take some personalization.
So we started purely which was looking at the data
and realizing that if we can improve retention
of those donors and that'll significantly
improve the number of dollars that we
deliver to the institution.
Great And I think what you're going
to see as we advance through that the examples today is
that Casey has approached this with one very
specific strategy, which is around pipeline generation
for major gifts actually accelerate the number of touch
points.
We're having on a one to one basis
prior to investing in the time and attention of a major gift
fund raiser at Wisconsin.
They're leveraging similar tactics
but it's a different strategy.
It's about retention and driving some of those annual use
dollars that John just talked about.
So we're not seeing that one way is right or wrong.
It's really what is your organization focused on.
What are the problems that you're trying to solve
and who which of your leaders frankly,
are willing to invest in the kinds of roles
that are going to address those problems.
And so Eric, why don't you just dive in a little bit more
specifically walking folks through the program
and talking about just the overview of a day in the life,
if you will, of your colleagues.
Sure Yeah.
And so while it's plainly seen here on this slide,
but it is that we are curating this major pipeline because one
of the most meaningful measures in fact, the most meaningful
of our current digital development officers
is to produce major gift leads.
And those are those that have raised their hands
through our lead identification program via the phone channel
email or mail could say, yeah, I have an interest in doing more
and seeing how I might be able to do that
and then letting our digital development officers
have that conversation a deeper, more
focused on that on those passions as John referred.
So yeah, as you can tell here major gift leads
and delivering solicitations while we are focused
on that major gift pipeline, we believe
a byproduct of that focus is actually leading to a higher
retention rate, reduce reducing donor
churn because we're delivering a better donor experience
and engaging people in a conversation
about their philanthropy early and often,
again thus closing the gap for anyone that expediting
a major gift acquisition stage.
So we've got a couple of them.
Now we actually have a job posted right now
just so everyone knows.
But because we're solving a couple problems, not just
a prospect pipeline, but also a talent pipeline, which I do
think we'll get into a little bit later,
but we sort of have a forever open position
with our digital development officer.
We think two is the right number,
but understand that the two, we have are very good at what they
do and trained fully trained to have conversations
in the same way that our front line view.
So we expect them to be very attractive
for internal positions don't come sniffing around
our videos.
But So what we've done is we're addressing it
not unlike an inside sales or we have narrowed their prospect
pool to $40,000.
And by narrow.
That's sort of laughable right.
But those are those in our pipeline
that have the capacity to make a major gift because we
had to start somewhere, right.
Like to say that we are going to deliver this sort of experience
183,000 people, which is the number of solicitor records
we have was sort of that's unfounded.
That is what our that is what our strategic solicitations
in that direct marketing channels are for.
So this is where we started.
And we wanted to start to deliver
that experience to them.
And it's all an open cultivation.
There is no there's no management
in this part of our organization of course,
our major gift fundraisers manage folks.
But we respect those rules of engagement.
And then don't.
We are just open cultivation some people have been
met with before and are were then disqualified
and may be ready for another touch.
And actually, some of our early successes
are actually those that at a moment in time
were disqualified.
But through an engagement opportunity with our dda oes
have actually said, you know what I'd really like it
if Eric would call me back.
I've been thinking over the past couple of years
since I last saw him and I'm ready to do something.
So ultimately, those are the outcomes
we're after and to get those outcomes though we've
got to do it in UMass.
So we do about 100 contacts a day
that comes through the phone and email direct mail
as well as social networks, which we have personal or well
professional personas on Twitter and Facebook for each
of our Dios my kid them that I want them to lay landmines
worth of giving links.
Right like everywhere.
So if there's a conversation going on about Kansas State.
I want them to have a personalized giving link
right underneath the comments.
Yeah, it is a beautiful business building right. Well,
you can help.
So of course, they're better at the language
than I am just more abrupt.
But that is actually what it is we're
after and are doing some really cool things as you can tell.
We have a whole host of technology.
But it couldn't have been set better.
Technology is not what it is pulls this thing off.
It is those folks that are boots on the ground
without ever having to leave their seats.
And so it is it's really cool.
Doing a little bit of social listening
to that psych eval solution that you see there
on the right in case you're not familiar.
That one's leading us to day to day sentiment about what's
happening at Kansas State.
We obviously had a big, big day on Saturday actually
a couple of Saturdays in a row now.
That's a really positive sentiment.
But we also like to keep track of things
like our Casey knight rally, which was yesterday on campus.
And we get to get to track sentiment
see who it is outside of our general areas
our general database.
Frankly that might be interested in what
we've got going on here.
And then reach out in a one to one DME mail scenario.
So that's really the run down at Kansas State
and can't wait to get into more detail.
Great summary Eric I'm curious when you got started right.
You really did spin this up quickly in April.
And what was it like in those first weeks or months
that you can think back.
You've sort of invented this job title
we've been trying to modify it for your specific goal
within early wins or you know what
was it like with your colleagues who were working in this role
early on anything stand out.
Yeah challenges frankly.
Yeah Yeah.
So yeah a couple of things stand out.
And I think we have a discussion about how it is.
You sell this to the rest of your organization.
But and I've got some other context to provide later.
So I'll just go ahead and share this now.
We were all together in an all staff summit Casey Foundation.
And we were addressing internal customer service,
which at a place where we're breaking
records and those sorts of things was sort of scary to me.
And one of the things that was happening was
is that people were not available to feel the phone
call when a donor called to make a gift of all things right.
So this fundraising organization was not
meeting making itself available to take
a gift over the phone for someone
that's just voluntarily raising their hand to do it.
So almost immediately because we'd
been thinking about this part of our program already
it struck me that we needed to have these deeds those trained
not just to take a gift online.
But to expand and have a conversation on that gift.
And so almost immediately in the first week,
we had Penny at the front desk transferring phone calls
to Quinlan and Georgina.
They're able to have conversations first
to say thanks for those $1,000 gifts.
And then to ask them what compelled them.
So what is it about Kansas State or this particular passion
project that really gets their juices going.
And how is it that we can have a deeper discussion and frankly,
in the first couple of months, we
had a really good one where we shook a tree
and learned a little bit more about a particular donor
that it turned out we had.
We were now in the final stages of documenting a $1 million
estate plan based on a conversation that was expanded
upon from $150 gift right.
So that I already write.
So now I already sound like a genius,
but I'll be honest outside of that there
was a lot of sitting and waiting and being
patient with one another as we built this plane on the runway.
Georgina McQuillan would be the first to tell you
that a couple of times there was some very anxious
as I walked into my office, whether or not they
were doing the right things.
And while they definitely were they bring transferable skills.
So they weren't used to fundraising work
used to what it is the pace.
And frankly, I didn't know what it
is we need to be measuring as a meaningful indicator
of success.
So yeah, there was some angst I won't lie.
But it was trusting the process and understanding what it is
we were we were set out to do.
And I think today, they would tell you, and much more
concisely be able to tell you what
it is they do for a living. So
that to me is right.
Know I appreciate that background.
And I think one of the challenges around this space
is as it relates to setting goals and benchmarks
for major gift fundraisers there's so much data
about that topic at this point that is being shared
through their consultancies or just passed from institution
institution.
And I think in this space based on the specific goals
and based on the rules and skill set goal
setting itself is a little bit more up in the area.
It could go on a lot of different directions.
And so I think being able to test with an initial hypothesis
and then read shape the goals as you get more data to support
that makes a lot of sense.
We're going to move on to talk through the Wisconsin scenario.
And I want to just acknowledge we've
got some really good questions coming in Cali Valerie
others we see you.
And we will hold some of those questions for just
a bit longer here, but we're going to make sure to get to as many
of them as possible.
John, why did you take it away a little
bit of context for Wisconsin and I
think one thing that struck me was that you all
have moved aggressively in this direction in about a short time
period, and the seed sector.
How did that happen.
Why did that happen.
Tell us about the opportunity that that you
saw when you were interviewing Wisconsin less than a year ago.
Deborah the reason that we moved so quickly in this space
is because the problem and the challenge is that serious.
We know that we have to deliver these discretionary dollars
to help change the world through the University of Wisconsin
creating a personalized experience
for that mid-level donor who May 1 day become a major gift
donor who may just continue to develop and deliver
incredible dollars to the institution.
That's important.
So we have to move quickly in that space
are primary goal is really looking at donor and revenue
retention.
The reason we chose these and is because we
know that there are more than 6,000 people at UW that
are giving about $1,000 on an annual basis about half
of those people.
No one's contacting on a regular basis
and there's no real plan for their philanthropy moving
forward.
So the tremendous amount of people
that was one reason that we had to move
pretty quickly to try to develop a program.
But then we also know as a byproduct
that we will likely be able to qualify people and deliver
referrals to our major gift staff
at a much more efficient and effective manner.
I think, than someone having to fly out and have
that conversation with someone in there.
I had a coffee shop or in their home.
So what we're looking at right now
is trying to focus on activity.
So how many engagements can they actually have.
I would define engagement as an email or a phone call
or social media conversation with someone,
and then a continual contact with them actually
engaging back with you.
So we want them to be doing a high level of activity
of work of reaching out to donors,
but then also we want these conversations to be quality.
And our hope is that that'll drive the increase in donors
as well as dollars.
So like you said Brent.
We move fast.
And I think that not only moving fast.
We did it in a big way.
So we hired five people at the end of June.
We decided that we're going to get into the space on September
9th.
I believe we had five people show up
at the front lobby for the very first day
on this new development officer track, which
is just kind of nuts.
But it also was the best way to do it.
I think we knew that we had the opportunity there to hire five.
And I think that bringing the five of them
on it once was a really great solution because they are all
from different walks of life and they all
add something different to each other.
So the training as a cohort allowed
us to kind of find some efficiencies in how
we onboarding them, but then also they're
learning from each other and they're adding value
to each other as well.
We sort of look at this as not necessarily a portfolio
that they have.
But certainly a prospect pool of people.
So there are several inputs that all we're
asking to do really three things.
One is to retain passive donors.
We want them to also re-engage donors
who have laughs that are at the $1,000 level or above.
And we also want them to raise donors
from their lower than leaders fail giving level or evolution
and giving level to a major gift level.
So we're looking at upgrades as well with that.
We haven't really defined like the number of assignments
or even the you what's a quality of engagements.
In fact, right before we hopped on this conversation,
I was talking to one of them about,
you know, do we really scale the work that she's doing.
How do we take her from talking to 40 people a week to 50
people a week.
What are the real challenges that she faces
and where does she feel that she's
able to move the needle with these conversations.
So it almost starts to look like this sort of sales
funnel that we're working on and that we
may be able to add in technology,
to start conversations with more people.
And that will lead us to be able to deepen
those relationships once she has someone engaged with her.
And then we can have those conversations
that eventually will lead to us earning
their gift for another year.
So we really want to add the personalization wants
to establish contact.
And that is what we are learning a lot about as far as how we
grow and technology certainly adding a lot to that.
Right now they're just using Excel.
They've become masters at picking the tables
and scrolling through those Excel spreadsheets
because we know that we can do this as just an Excel program.
But we know that that is taking a lot of time.
You have to go through a lot of records
and touch those records multiple times
before they can move forward and have that conversation
that donor.
And that's a lot of time.
In addition to building great videos
curating content and creating new content that we believe
is what donors will see as a great personalized experience
that will have to feel like they get that Jetblue experience.
So we're really looking to optimize our program
a little bit more and we think that if we can do a little bit,
it'll have a great impact because we have
five people doing this work.
It's a great overview John and I love the expression
you used in the middle of that, which is hopefully
we can earn their gift.
And I do think that that is a fundamental difference
in the way that you both are approaching this program, which
is instead of calling somebody at night when they're putting
their kids to bed the phone a thon
and trying to close the gift in seven minutes or less.
We have an opportunity to earn the gift over a period of touch
points over the course of weeks or months or even a year.
And so I think that is it feels intuitive to us.
But at the same time, I know it is scary
when you think about basically slowing down to speed up.
Right by improving the quality and focusing
less on just quantity of dials for example,
we are all betting that we can improve the donor experience
improve retention reactivate more people
and generate more referrals.
But is that is that a leap of faith.
That was difficult for people to take.
And I know some of you have had varying degrees of experience
with more traditional just volume based you know interrupt
based marketing efforts as it relates
to you know the traditional outbound program you know,
Brent.
We are not changing our current annual giving program
as it stands right now, we still do all the direct mail
Dave giving phone on currently where it could keep doing that.
What we're using with this DSL program
is that we're overlaying that strategy with our existing
program.
We may change it in the future.
But we're looking to find ways that they
can integrate into their existing
into our existing strategy.
So we have a couple of interns that, I
hope will become future CEOs and those people
are the only people that are calling donors that
are at that level and they're going through some
of the same training that we're putting our full time staff
and resign.
And we hope that that develops a pipeline.
But then also creates a personalized experience
that isn't just about how many numbers, we can get through.
But it's about what else can we learn from this call
that we have.
So we're sort of redefining what we
hope to get out of our traditional direct marketing
metrics.
We've also taking our direct mail program.
And I had this idea that my team probably doesn't love,
but they pulled out their prospects the hundreds of them.
And they wrote personal notes on the solicitations
to recognize someone's past giving
to make a clear connection, which behind
why we're asking them again.
And we slowed down a very automated process.
And we added some personalization to it.
And I hope that we'll see that type of return.
So while it's not digital.
I do think that we can look at our entire programs
and think about how we can add that personalization
because if that's a person is given 2003 1,005 $1,000.
And I think the least we can do is put a little bit
ink on their piece of paper where they get something in
the mail or send them a note or send them
an email about it again OKRs is similar in that we.
So we have a omnichannel approach
in our two solicitations department
wherein we don't let a mail piece go out without a heads
up.
Hey heads up email or we still, of course,
have the phone channel hard at work
following up on those that might prefer to give you direct mail.
But we're just calling to remind them and say thanks
when it is we have the opportunity to talk to him.
We do that with student gift officers where
the digital development officers come into play
is in their prospects in which we noted was 40,000 at scale.
We're able to actually deliver them a heads up email
like it's from one of the videos to say,
hey, I know you prefer to give the mail just wanted to let you
know that it's headed that way.
And within two weeks of that mail hitting their mailboxes
we follow up.
Yeah, again, this time maybe with a text
or perhaps even with a phone call
dependent upon how high value they are
and how often they might have given in the past.
So where wherein we have that omnichannel approach,
we actually consider the data shows yet
another channel to utilize even in fulfillment of pledges.
So we have many of those that may
raise their hands over the phone with us to
give college student gift officer
and we have our digital development
officers send reminder texts.
They actually read every student gift officer note as well.
And look for key things that are happening
in those conversations like, yeah.
You're actually in my will or oh Yeah, I'd
love to do more someday.
And those are the fun ones that we actually
get to follow up on and say, what did you mean by that.
Tell me more about what it is you hope to accomplish one day.
And so that's the way we view them and currently interplay
those into our regular annual giving strategy,
which we've enhanced a great deal,
but it is that's we've seen them as additive as more fuel to be
able to do that, we're.
Great We are going to keep moving.
We've got some really good questions coming
in a few of you have asked will this recording be available,
it will be made available.
We will make sure to send it to everybody
who listened today, but also, if there were folks
who registered on your team.
But couldn't join them.
I want to keep moving along.
We've only got 20 minutes left.
So we're going to try to make the most of it.
Just to be clear at ever true.
We have been we've had a good relationship with the K State
foundation for many years now, we've
not worked formally with John and the team at Wisconsin.
We did work with John during his time at Oklahoma State.
But we've observed that with the growth of programs like this
we feel like there's been a gap in the market as far as we
and other vendors have been concerned
and we've really been working hard
to introduce a consultative service that would allow
us to help create donor experience officer digital gift
officer programs.
And so I wanted to share our philosophy
we are starting to partner up with institutions
to really create more of a framework
and a set of playbooks and support the technology
to talk a bit more about that.
But in general, I think what you heard from John and Eric aligns
with our vision.
Eric happened to be first and foremost
a case date focused on major gift referrals
but secondarily focused on improved retention.
John focused on improved retention,
but secondarily focused on referrals.
And I think it all relates to this idea
that there is a massive missing middle in our giving pyramid
that needs to be addressed and can be addressed through more
personalized outreach.
We believe strongly that donor retention
is the single most important metric that
can be moved to both improve results in the short term.
But also support pipeline and discovery
in the medium and long term reactivating lapse prospects
in this manner has to be a key priority.
And so those are really the metrics
that we are focusing on the programs
that we're helping our partner institutions build.
Focusing on an activity focusing on dollar retention donor
retention reactivation.
And then also referrals to major gifts.
We are looking at large portfolios
of up to 1,000 prospects for digital gift officer.
The only way you're going to be able to support 1,000
prospects on an ongoing basis is heavily
leveraging technology and working in a high activity
manner.
We're targeting 40 to 60 touch points per day.
Somebody did ask Valerie asked and I
think it's been answered what is considered a touchpoint.
It could be an email a text a LinkedIn message
a video conversation like this a video sent via email.
Lots of ways to establish a touchpoint
and I will say we won't talk too much about compensation.
But in the programs that we're helping design,
we are strongly recommending that our that our clients test
incentive compensation plans.
Tying metrics of the DGSE goes the plus
to some of the key metrics based on whatever
the institutional goals are not commissions
based on the amount of dollars that come in.
But trying to create incentive programs that
align with attainment of the key metrics we are using
our own platform video email cadence technology sales
enablement software.
We'll talk more about that in later conversations.
But did want you all to understand that we
see a need in the market.
And we want to be a partner, not only from a technology
perspective.
But in creating and managing programs like this.
And the objective is really about creating that better
donor experience.
And so we want to talk a little bit about why
technology can be a part of it.
But again, it is not going to solve the problem by itself.
However, John talked a lot about spreadsheets
and obviously you all have familiarity
with your data based systems.
We have been focused really hard on continuing
to integrate enrichment data and engagement
data to paint a more complete picture of who
your constituents are.
We are doing more and more integrations
as it relates to wealth and other behaviors
from an enrichment perspective.
We are doing more and more integrations
as it relates to understanding socially digitally how
your constituents are engaged and all of that
can help inform the conversations and the topics
that are brought up via not only a digital gift officer program.
But a broader gift officer program as well
from an organizational perspective.
This is where we think technology can really help.
Not working out of spreadsheets.
If you have to work out a spreadsheet to start,
please do.
Do not wait for the technology.
But being able to really manage your prospect in a more
intuitive way automatically getting
alerts around key activities being able to maintain
your portfolio, especially when it's a larger portfolio
and keeping things well organized.
And then the newest area for us to focus on
is really this idea of building out a strategy consulting
program model after for profit.
Sales programs inside sales programs in particular.
And so average have started to provide hands
on training, coaching, and oversight of the digital gift
office or donor experience officer team.
And in doing that at complementing that work
with analytics to really help focus on the key cohorts that
are going to be most likely to be reactivated or retained.
And then the final point is complementing
our own software and your existing databases
with a broader technology stack to integrate
some of those tools to allow you to personalize
that kind of outreach at scale.
And so we are excited about moving in this direction.
We've frankly got a bunch of feedback from Eric and John
about their experiences and trying to basically create
this on their own.
And we feel like there is an opportunity to really
partner in a more hands on way.
We do want to talk a little bit about just
a day in the life of the donor experience officers
and digital gift officers.
And the idea that we've been talking about you've
heard John reference that I think Eric as well as
just this idea of operating in more of a funnel mentality
when somebody engages with you.
How can we qualify that individual
make a decision of where they go,
whether it's going to be engaged by the though
or did you have an articulate or if it's referred somewhere else
into the organization ultimately who's
accountable to do the solicitation
and then work on that ongoing contours like retention
approach.
And I think while we often talk about digital what
Eric described as far as the phone calls
coming into the front desk exactly
represents what we just talked about somebody with calling in
to engage.
Historically there wasn't a way to qualify and route
that person to the rest of the fundraising organization.
And that's really the process that the DOJ case
state had been able to execute.
And it sounds very similar based on what
John described at Wisconsin as an illustrated example.
I think you've all heard already John and Eric
mentioned Omni channel or multiple channels.
But the idea is that as opposed to one
student calling somebody at night.
And if they get that person to answer great.
But if they don't, they go back into the calling pool
and then another student calls them the next night.
What would it be like to have an ongoing multi-channel
touchpoint plan, for example, starting with an email maybe
sending somebody introductory video maybe sending
a message via LinkedIn maybe scheduling
a conversational resume to do qualification.
There's not one specific script that is in the way to do this,
but this is an illustrated example where on a certain day
one activity happens followed by another and another and another
and the more that you can automate
the organization of these activities
the more we can move away from one to many appeals calendars
and toward a one to one engagement
calendar for every specific prospect based on the time
and in interests that resonate with them.
And so that's hopefully an illustrative example.
But I do want to talk a little bit just
about the hiring process.
You've both mentioned the talent pool and the opportunity
to not only improve the donor experience at a level that
maybe hasn't warranted or hasn't received
this kind of attention.
But also do so in a way that creates more of a talent
pipeline for your organization.
John, why don't you share.
Ben absolutely so we were hiring a cohort.
So I took this as an opportunity to try
to add some people with various different experiences
that our life on the far left, you'll
see that you have David and Heidi they're
two of our top performing badger call students, which
is our call center on campus.
What I was really excited about them
is that Heidi has a personal finance background.
She loves having conversations about how people can better
leverage their finances philanthropically.
And she's not afraid to make the ask.
So she's great at getting on the phones
and having those conversations.
David has that time with our badger call.
But she was also our intern when it came to our social media
at the foundation.
So it gets a video he gets digital.
He is our creative asset to us when it comes
to leveraging social media.
Lindsay has came from our marketing division of she
is very talented in knowing our processes
and understanding which tools we can leverage
and how to do so well as we're trying to add personalization
to a lot of our direct marketing processes.
And she just has this great passion
for wanting to talk to donors and learn more about what
they're passionate about.
Betsy comes from development.
She has a background in annual giving and direct marketing,
but she spent some time with our frontline fundraisers
working with securing major gifts
and going through all the processes it takes
to an organization at least to be able to document those gifts
and to move through all of our steps in the process.
And Cameron we're able to recruit
from New York, where Cameron was working on with a non-profit.
And what I loved about Cameron was his just incredible ability
to communicate impact.
And I think that he does it in the way
that we in higher education need to do it a little bit better.
He is very focused in his communication
and can articulate what $1 can do at our institution.
And that really excited me about bringing Cameron onto the team.
So as a cohort, they all bring something a little bit
different.
And in a program where we're still
trying to figure things out they're
all adding value in different ways
and that gets me really excited as a trust.
Join us in this journey to raise a little bit more money.
Thanks, John one thing that has stood out
in some of our partner institutions
where we're helping guide them on their programs
is there are people who've interviewed
who have been terrific candidates for this program who
are going to be hired who would have never been eligible
for a junior entry level fundraiser role.
And so these are people who historically, they would
have said really like you.
There's no place for you here.
There's no role that aligns with your relative lack
of experience.
And so this is a bit more of an on ramp.
And I'm curious Eric from your perspective, if that resonates
and how you all are thinking about that.
I know talent pipeline building is a huge part of your culture.
It is a big part of my job and actually a great sideways
is to Georgina and I joked with her actually
in her second interview with us that we created
this position based on that exact sentiment
that we had about her is that when she left it was really
hard to tell her to do so and instead
went back to the drawing board and said, how is it.
We keep people like that from leaving and going back
to their home in Kansas City and where
it is she worked for a logistics company was
on and off the phone selling you know freight loads on and off.
And so was really good at it tactically
being able to deliver a high end customer experience to an end
user that ultimately may have a disconnect with the larger
body.
So she's really talented at that and really
good at high volumes worth of interactions and frankly,
she's an aspiring social media influencer.
If I had to have had to be fair.
And so she brings a great bit of great bit of talent
in that space to helping us think outside the box
and the two ladies have something in common.
I'll get to before the end here. But
Quinlan she worked in a smaller development
shop in southern Kansas during her undergraduate years.
And so the both of them had relationship building
in their background.
They both had the ability to work in a CRM.
So I think that's one of most undervalued transferable skills
in when we're out talking to folks.
They understood the value of documenting and interaction
and what it means to manage moves
on behalf of an institution and that you don't own anyone.
But these donors actually belong to Kansas State not them.
So both of them have that in common.
But both of them are willing to take a leap.
They understood what it is that we were trying to do.
It was clear in each of their interviews
that they wanted to be a part of something great
and that they knew that the first steps to be
to really take us to be the best development shop in higher
education like the last bit of that
relied on the digital development officers
here at Kansas State.
So the both of them coming with us on this journey
and having a open mind is ultimately
why they got hired by both of them
bring a great deal of attributes to this position.
Everything I think thanks Eric and everybody should
follow Georgina on Instagram and she's the aspiring influencer.
So we've got a lot them.
And I just I just got a point for a plug.
We have 10 questions waiting.
We have seven minutes going.
Somebody commented that this should have been
a four hour webinar.
So we're really sorry that we only plan for an hour.
But we appreciate that vote of confidence.
I'm just going to ask you each to maybe share
one quick success.
You already jumped to it.
Eric So I will.
Let me give you a pass.
John any early success you want to share.
Let's go into lessons and then maybe I had some questions.
Yeah early success is that we're working
with people that have not.
And probably would not have received some level
of engagement from the UW.
So our personalization goes a long way
when it comes to that person's perspective of UW Madison.
So we've already had successes with being able to secure gifts
on the first week that we started
asking security gets a donor at given $250 every year.
And this person got a call had a conversation,
and we locked down for $1,000 for the next three years.
That is the type of work that I think
that we're going to be able to do just
by adding personalization and showing these donors
that we care and that they don't dollars are
making a difference here at UW.
I think that we're also seeing success
when it comes to just the pipeline
that we're developing for our organization.
I'm thinking about our nonprofit management programs
on campus, our call centers.
These are ways that we can pull people in
and there are oftentimes where we
have one directed development position
and we have to make a hire and that second person.
We want Wisconsin.
So that's been an early success that organizationally
has provided a ton of flexibility
for us to be able to create a kind of training
ground for future fundraisers at our organization that
are bringing in these significant gifts
and upgrading donors love it.
All right, but let's be honest, it's not perfect.
This is messy.
What should folks watch out for.
Biggest lesson so far.
You guys both seem really upfront
about the challenges and the opportunities.
That's the biggest lessons.
Higher development is somewhat has deep roots that
weave in and out of each other.
We're learning that the way that we work our processes
the language that we use, such as I'm not a prospect
does not always apply when it comes to leadership
and giving donors versus a major donor
the context of the questions that a major gaffe
officer was probably asking.
Maybe Marxism is not a prospect, but there's certainly
a prospect for us.
It's not just that instance.
It's how we assign plans.
It's how we move people through our steps in our system.
It's how we're considering what is a quality conversation know
is a zoom call really the same thing as sitting down having
coffee with someone.
We're learning that these groups of how we do development
in higher Ed are deep, and we're having
to sort of figure out where does this new program fit
within that.
And how can we re-establish definitions
that are commonly accepted across our organization.
It's been a big challenge, but we
have incredible partners that are open to thinking
about this disruption.
And I think that if you have an organization that
is willing to step back and say, what if we did a different 2019
let's try to fundraise a different way that's
going to push us forward.
Then I think that you'll have a lot of success.
But that is a big lesson.
Yeah Eric, I would add only second
that if you think you've explained it too many times
to those internal stakeholders go back one more time
because it is this idea that we're doing something
a little bit different.
And everyone seems to have a bit of consternation
when people start to reach out to their prospects
or whatever it may be.
And so what's the endgame here.
And so internally if you think you've
done it one too many times.
You probably deserve one more go around explaining
exactly what it is you hope to accomplish with this program.
Great perspective.
I think that, you know, as we have to wrap here.
For those of you.
We're trying to make the case ultimately,
this can't be because it's a cool concept or a neat job
description.
It's got to be about solving a business problem.
So really finding out what is the business problem
is it about dollars donors pipeline.
I had somebody messaged me this week
and say our president is on us about US news and World Report
rankings.
We have to grow alumni participation.
That is our main focus.
How do we approach that in a context like this.
Somebody else reached out and said
it's not about participation.
We don't care about those rankings at this point.
It's all about pipeline generation.
So you can still use a lot of the same strategies and tactics
but exactly how you reach out to folks
in which cohort you target are going to be different.
You're absolutely making the case to your team
that this is a way to create an on ramp for talent
who otherwise might not have a home at all our organization.
We always hear the challenges around gift officer retention,
et cetera.
And I think you can really build a strong base in the medium
term if donor count or participation isn't what
get people excited help your team realized this is the way
to accelerate major gift pipeline,
you can do that via Zoom or visa personalized engagement
without having to get on a plane.
And there are just too many folks that
are highly rated not assigned.
We're never going to get a real human interaction from a gift
officer anytime soon.
That can be excellent prospects for programs like this.
And ultimately, it's about the donor.
They deserve to be treated in a personalized way.
If Jetblue can give me that handwritten note and the terror
chips what is the equivalent of that experience
for your institution doesn't always
mean that you've got be in first class to acquire experience.
And so that's really what we want to talk about.
I think our hope is that as you all reflect on this,
you can do something different based
on what we've learned today.
You can absolutely start moving towards prioritizing
your prospects based on their interests
and their engagement with the institution
so that you can go from 40,000 potential lead down to the best
4,000 or the best 400 and then ultimately, you're
not being afraid to ask for help with us with John.
With with Eric we're all happy to share ideas templates
examples.
But really try to put this into practice.
The beauty of these programs is that they're
incredibly measurable.
This is not going to be a you know
it's going to take 5 or 10 years to figure this out.
As you've heard from Eric and John,
you can start to get results immediately.
And then whether the results are good or bad.
You can then adjust based on those results.
So we want to conclude start to conclude here
with one last poll.
Actually I'm just going to go ahead and let
me see if I can pull that up.
Seeing our poll for some reason.
So we're going to keep moving in the Q&A.
And let me see if there are any questions that stand out.
I have one Brent that I can ask from the group.
All right.
Go for the one that.
I thought that was really good.
That was submitted.
Asked about people with tighter budgets
and if you thought that you could recreate
this with graduate students.
So maybe a student call system that has a higher touch.
Have you guys thought about anything like that.
Yes I think that you can recreate it
with a tighter budget.
I think that even in our organization a deal
compared to this role.
It's going to be a little bit more affordable for
organizations budget line.
But there also are models that are out there that
use graduate students.
I believe that case date plays them
this weekend and down in Texas.
So you got to check out them.
But it will work.
We're trying to pilot that with our interns
right now because these are really qualification calls
and they can do a lot of work. So
if you were to reach out to us.
We're certainly happy to help.
I can definitely directly some programs that are doing it
at a much cheaper cost.
Yeah, I would agree it is replicate bill.
And I think it's mainly about training.
It's people doing the work to be sure you're
empowering them to ask the right questions and
listen appropriately.
And I think anybody can do it.
That's great.
I think the other theme that I'm seeing and commute
and questions in general is around communication
and how that looks like for these digital folks.
Is it that they are introducing themselves
or they have different titles how
do they make the donor feel comfortable once they've
had that conversation, how do they
go back and Steward somebody.
So I don't know if you can answer quickly
on communication.
If you've tried a different thing some a B testing.
But that seems like a theme that we might want to follow up
with after the fact, as well in our follow up period Yeah,
we actually have an introductory web page.
We had a video that was put together by our staff
here that actually introduced them
and their titles to the masses that way that people
were more comfortable.
And we still have a major digital development officer
sort of video that they can send out.
And it was a lot of, hey, this is my face.
This is what I do.
And really it was about to expand on the conversation
that you're used to having.
So yeah, we did do a lot of work in ensuring
that people were comfortable and speaking with a digital gift
officer.
We've tried that titles.
So now we're sitting on our experience officer
because we want to clearly demonstrate and communicate
on what that person is getting into
and they're getting into an experience
about their philosophy with UW Amanda Schmidt asked
a really good question.
Let's say you're dsa dga calls the $250 donor upgrades them
do 1,000.
What happened stewardship and if there is an assignment.
How do these donors not slide backwards after they
aren't engaged regularly.
And I think that that's an area Amanda
that from our perspective, there needs
to be ongoing relationship management.
If we just dive in depersonalized close a gift.
And then back off it.
That's not going to be a great experience either.
So I think that that's going to be one of the areas that
evolves over time and that either that individual, then
gets assigned into a different portfolio upgraded
to a new portfolio or they stay in that video or Jeff Bezos
portfolio so that there can be some ongoing relationship
management.
But the worst thing we could do would be to show up.
You know friendly face video close a gift
and ride off into the sunset.
But I don't think that's the goal.
But exactly how we maintain continuity
is going to be one of the things that we have to work out.
We didn't get that whole running by the way.
So if anybody wants to share we'd
love your feedback just on how you feel about the content
here the idea and whether this is something that could be
relevant for your institution.
But I think that we've pretty much moved
through most of the questions.
If anything else came in, we will make
sure to address it one on one.
But I just want to thank Eric and John
for giving us a window into something that is new.
And just to reiterate, we have not always figured this out.
We're not here to tell you exactly how to do something.
But hopefully you'll understand why
we're so excited about the potential here.
And I guess with that.
I might just offer.
John and Eric the chance to share any closing thoughts.
John, let you go first.
I think that this is the direction
that we need to be moving.
It's just that important.
And we're try
again. And I think that we've asked for a lot of grace from
our leadership.
And we're already delivering results.
So for in try again.
I'm happy to share with you.
But it's really fun.
It's exciting.
And energizing for Iran to be standing up.
And I think that you'll be able to uncover new ways of doing
our work that we've always done in a way that's
fit for 2019 and beyond Yeah.
Definitely you know I'll close with it's about time
and that this sector sort of recognizes itself
as exactly what it is.
And we help those donors.
Someone asked me the other day it is like should we care.
And I looked at them and said, we should because we can.
The technologies allowed us to now care
about the middle of the pipeline and do something that we've
never been able to do before. So
yes, we owe it, whether it be to our institutions.
But those donors that make our institutions.
So powerful.
We do owe it to them.
So yes to echo that sentiment just
do something that looks and sounds like this.
And that'll be a good enough step
for me haven't given an hour of my time.
Awesome Eric John Maggie, thank you all.
We look forward to continuing to learn about this together
and to all the attendees.
Thanks for joining us today.
We will make this available a bunch of you
shared kind thoughts already.
We really appreciate it.
Without further ado, I'm going to sign off Brent granite here
at ever 2 headquarters in Boston.
Thanks, Eric.
John and Maggie take care.