150: Donors Are Shoppers Now. Is Your Nonprofit Ready? with Salvatore Salpietro

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All.

I am thrilled for today's podcast because we're finally meeting kind of in real life that we. I've got Sal Pietro here on the podcast run Fundraise up, and he and I share some very spicy beliefs about the nonprofit sector. So I'm really excited for this conversation. We have definitely messaged a lot through LinkedIn and when I heard you were speaking at the Stripe sessions, I was like, please come on after you speak. So. So a warm welcome to you, Sal, and tell us a bit about your role and then we'll dig in to all of your findings from the most recent Stripe sessions and beyond.

Sure. And thank you for sharing, joining me in some of the spiciness and having being another colleague appear in the space of sharing some spicy takes. My name is Sal. I am the chief Community Officer at Fundraise Up. I am the first employee at Fundraise up. So I've had all the jobs back when we were a small company. So I've done the support inbox, the marketing, the onboarding, the demo, the whole thing.

I don't think I realize that that makes sense that, you know, I feel like you then you know each facet of like the customer and the donor and all of the different sides.

Yeah. And. And prior to being a Fundraise up, I was the director of digital fundraising at a nonprofit, national nonprofit, and I worked in academia some years back. So I've got this kind of, I. I hope a 360 view of, of what we're dealing with. And, and yet prior to that role at the nonprofit, I was working at an e commerce startup. So I've got the whole kind of like all the pieces to put together in my current role. I'm chief Community officer. And that means, Sal, go do things like this, like talk to Christina and go to conferences and try to learn from the space and share learnings with the space. So.

But there are so many people who go to conferences and do things like this, but they don't say, and they don't say what you say. They don't do what you do. And I think that's the perfect place to like, what is. If you were going to just anchor us in on a hot take that you have about this sector that I find very refreshing and forward thinking that is going to move this sector into more impact. Tell us, anchor us in on that.

So everything that I talk about starts from we as a sector are 10, 15, 20 years behind. We have a lot of solutions and roadmaps available to us of how to have impact, and we just don't do it. We prefer to commiserate than act.

Because what do you think?

Because I think it's almost a learned behavior now for the whole sector. I think, I think it just takes like changing the mindset. Like, let's have an Action Forward event, not, you know, let's talk about how we're going to fix a problem event. And, and then obviously the other things that are inherent, we have, we're overworked in the space, we are underpaid in this space, we, we're underappreciated, et cetera, et cetera. But you know, and then we talk about, you know, I can't find new donors and the younger demographics, don't want to give. And I go, but, you know, look at that donation form. It's literally from 1998.

Like, I think I should have it embroidered on a pillow. At this point, I feel like I say it on all of my webinars. I've said it so many times on the podcast. But my litmus test is, can I donate from my phone on my couch if I have to get up, it's not me. You've lost everyone, right?

One of the first conferences we ever did, it was myself and Peter, the co founder and CEO. We went to the Storytelling Tellers conference in San Diego. Awesome conference. We had no money to buy swag in a booth. We had some cash and Christina, what we did is we covered the table in $20 bills. Huh. We had a little time, kind of like a frame, paper sign, fundraiser, whatever, early, early version of the software and the paper, the table was covered in 20s. And people would walk over and go, what is like, is this real money? Pick it up. I go, here's the deal. Open your phone, make a donation to your own nonprofit for 20 bucks. I'll give you 20 bucks.

Back. Okay. Yeah.

Eight out of ten gave up. Oh, couldn't do it. One. One woman was an executive director, says she was there for about 18, 19 minutes, and she said, I refuse to give up. Like, this has got to work. Right. I can't be running in it.

Yeah. She's like, I can't be representing this experience. This is terrible.

Right. And the common response was embarrassment or, oh, I don't really want to do that. I'm afraid to. And that's like, what?

And we are accepting this. And I can kind of hear my audience going, okay, ours isn't that bad. Ours isn't that bad. But we are accepting status quo. Of like, yeah, all right. You got a pinch to zoom in. And, yeah, all right, there's 25 Fields, but it's not Christina now. It's not terrible. And it's like, that status quo. You're leaving so much potential money on the table.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're not pinching to zoom when you buy on Amazon or Uber Eats. That's right.

So perfect. I was going to say donors are acting like digital shoppers right now. So that was one of the things I got from your session. So talk to us about that.

Yeah. Nonprofits aren't getting a pass by donors from donors. Right. They're not saying, oh, it's a nonprofit. I'm going to take the extra 8, 18 minutes to get through that donation form.

Right.

They're not doing it. They're just not able to. They're not hardwired that way now with an instant economy. So their expectation. This is kind of the crux of the session at Stripe Sessions was the expectation of the consumer is a donor, and a donor is a consumer. That's all one person. We don't need to separate that out. And they spend 95% of their dollars on things and stuff and services, and it's super easy to do. And 5% of charitable. 5% of overall income is spent on giving in the US as a loose statistic. And the 95% of their interactions are dictating what they expect on the 5%. And if you're not there and meeting them with an experience that allows them to participate how they need to. And when I say need to, I literally mean need to. Like, I'm a mother with a child in my arm, and it's a month old, and I have one hand free and I'm watching TV and holding my baby. Like, I can't go upstairs and get my credit card. And because you just texted me with this and I hit the link on the text and I get to a donation form that looks straight out of, you know, the early 2000s.

And I personally in that situation, the first feeling I feel is overwhelm and I'm out.

Correct.

I'm like, forget it. Right.

I was talking to somebody other day that said like, even like buying, like if they don't have Apple Pay, I'm not, I'm out. Yeah, yeah.

Right before this, this interview, I went to walk to my coffee shop. I just take my phone now. That's it. Apple Pay. That's it. That's it. There's no wallet, there's no. And it's like that is a habit now. I, once I, once I move to Apple Pay, that is a habit that is in my brain. It is so easy. I love it 10x more than I love any other option and it is a barrier and it will continue. Yeah.

About 20% of donations are going through Apple Pay that is growing as non profits are embracing and opening their doors to younger donors and millennials and 20 somethings and 30 somethings and 40 somethings. So it's moving that way.

So it's not just about a form. It's not just about having Apple Pay and other Venmo, PayPal, all the things. Right. It's, it's about this idea of what else. And this has always been the foundation of a lot of what I teach and research and look into is what are they doing out outside of us, outside of the sector that is working so beautifully, especially for E Comm and where can we adapt that? So like for, for your work. I've seen, you know, the sticky button. I've seen the abandoned emails. I love an abandoned email. An abandoned email is basically like, hey Christina, hang on. You were looking at those shoes. You were close.

It works. There's a reason every McDonald's and every shoe company in Bombas are doing it.

They're like, you liked them, you want to. And I'm like, yes, I did. As a matter of fact. My son came in the room, I got distracted. Thank you so much. I would like the shoes.

Right.

These are doing us a service as much as they are doing the company a service. So you know those. There's so many opportunities to like to tap into technology to help fundraise and I feel like so many non profits aren't doing it. That's kind of the crux of what brought this conversation together.

Yeah, correct, correct. All the things that E commerce things, you know, platforms do, you know, we work At Fundraise up and I work personally to educate an industry like, you need to translate that and find that version of it for you. We do that at scale for thousands of nonprofits. But things like the card abandonment, like recovering transaction costs. But you know, I, I can't tell you how many meetings I've been called to last minute where we don't, you know, we don't think it's right to ask donors to cover fees. Well, you know that's a hot one, right?

I mean, I hear you sigh, guys. You can't see if you're not, if you're just listening. My eyes are rolling. My, I want my head in my hands. Yes.

Well, the difference, you know, between asking for a tip on a donation then being very upfront and saying we have transaction costs, would you like to cover them?

That's right.

Humans are used to that. They are paying for their safety car beyond Uber. They're paying for the Uber Eats delivery fee, Ticketmastered convenience fee. You're paying for it.

They're used to it.

They're okay with it.

Yes. I think the amount of time people and I would imagine boards have just lamented about something as finite and tiny as that when they could be solving a better problem together, then that is so frustrating to me. That is the cost of doing business.

So we built this, this functionality around that specific hot topic that allows AI to figure out when to pre check the box and when not to. And it looks for every org's individual kind of breaking point where you pre check it. I'm offended. And I'm going to kind of like not give because you assumed I'm going to cover another $70 whatever. So that, that seems to make everybody happy. Like, okay, so my larger donors won't, you know, they'll be able to opt into it and the, the lower value are accustomed to it and okay with it. So, you know, kind of working to bridge those gaps and conversations, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. And when you think about what nonprofits are missing out on that is already working so well in the for profit world. From the sense of, you mentioned AI, from the sense of technology, what else comes to mind is like, why aren't we doing more of this?

I mean it's, it's the whole end to end experience for a donor dynamic. Pricing exists in E commerce dynamic s. Now, you know, we started rolling that out into the space when we founded the company and when the company started in 2018. Now a few platforms have the intelligent askaray, which you know, I am Glad to see this technology that's, you know, being brought into the space, being adopted by more and more. So that's a big one. Right? I mean, we see that dynamic ask arrays allow the right ask, not the highest ask.

Right.

The iPhone donor, you know, donors.

Let me, let me. I'm sorry to interrupt, but let me stop you real there. Which is what he means is instead of landing on your form and it's saying 25, 50, a hundred dollars in the box, it actually we let AI take the driver's seat and decide it might say, what, 24, I don't know, $70. It's dynamic based on several factors, a lot of factors.

And none of it's like personal information. It's not like I know you own a second summer home, so I'm going to ask you for more. It's based on, oh, Manhattan residents have higher disposable income than people that are in Nebraska. Or the data showing us that iPhone donors give 30% more on average than Android. So let's, let's ask them for 30 instead of 25. And let's factor all that in just making it feel more personal, more relevant. 20 bucks is coffee and a croissant in Manhattan. And, and it's a week of lunch, you know, maybe a couple days of lunch in, in, in Omaha. I don't know. So it's about making it relevant and personalizing.

Yeah. What else, anything else come to mind on that, on that topic of, of what else you feel like is low hanging fruit we should be doing more of.

I mean, in that, in that checkout experience is where I kind of spend my time.

Yeah. Tell us about that.

Methods are, are the, the key there, just removing friction as much as possible. Christina. I don't know the last time I've entered my full mailing address anywhere online except on a nonprofit form. Like, they finish it for me when I type.

That's right. That's right.

So is it low hanging fruit? Yes and no. Right. It's fairly complicated to build that into technology because there's a lot of, a lot of implications. What if I'm outside the country? What if I'm an ex, whatever. But it's critical. It's ubiquitous everywhere else in our space. I'm still typing my phone and they go, my dad and my CRM is so dirty. I just. Everything's inconsistent. And I have street and st and str. Yeah, well, hey, if you had an autocomplete and took the. Take keystrokes away from the donor, that's the Whole game, the whole game is take keystrokes and clicks away. And when you automate and you personalize and you have payment methods and autocomplete, it's. You're just making it. You can make it a zero click experience where I just tap, scan. Done. Right. And that's it. A slight digression, unless you want to get to specifically.

No, no, no, keep going. That's good.

This will loop back. I did a session called Bias in Fundraising Data Identify, mitigate and grow. I did it both at afp, Icon and ntc. Those are two different audiences.

Yeah.

One might be more progressive, one might be more center. Nonetheless, I show I shared the same content and data with both cohorts. When I start the session, I ask everyone, get out your phone, scan this QR code. This is spike. Hope you're ready for a little spicy. And I say in the word cloud, enter the first word or words that come to your mind when you think of your ideal, your, your typical donor. People start entering on their phones, click, click, tap, tap. And the word cloud starts forming. Yeah, and we had maybe about 100 people in the one room and maybe about 40 in the second room. Nonetheless, the words chosen for both groups were pretty much the same. And the most selected words, old, rich, white. Oh, now we're self identifying. In a session about bias, about who your perfect donor is, no one said, longtime citizen of my community, tree hugger, parent with children, cancer survivor. No one said anything that had to do with the mission. Yeah, Right. And then we just kind of automatically pigeonholed us ourselves into oh yeah, 65, old and white, with a college degree and two houses. That's my guy.

Yep.

And then we, and then we go into another session at the conference, go, why can't I find more donors? Like, that's wild. And all. When I say it comes off full circle when we take the technology.

Right.

A 65 year old retired person that has money, that has. Is looking for things to do, can power through your antiquated donation experience. Right. They need something to do anyway. And I mean, I'm speaking for my dad. He does handyman jobs and he looks for things to do. And if I send him a new trick for the iPhone, he's all over it. So when we upgrade that experience, we're now able to accept and meet younger donors where they are. They're not going to give as much. No. You're not going to lose the 65 and older. They're still going to give. You're going to add net new massive Groups of donors that are younger, more passionate, longer. Ltv. Right. Longer life value because you're getting them now at 28 years old when they're getting married and they're going to with your organization for longer. So that's again, is it low hanging fruit? I don't know. It's necessary fruit. Eat your vegetables.

I think it's a matter of just realizing that if you want more of something, you have to rise to the occasion of their user experience. And also that if you're looking for only old white guys, it's a terrible fundraising. Right. Like you're reminding me. So I had several yard sales in, I don't know, the past 15 years. Right. My very first yard sale was probably 15 years ago or loft complex. Right. Had all of our stuff out. And I remember it. These are, these are the cash days. This is when yard sales. I remember I sent my husband to the store. I was like, go get more ones.

Right? Yeah, yeah.

Fast forward. Yard sale about three, four years ago. This time, our house, the whole street did the yard sale. And I ran inside to my printer, print my Venmo code. No one had cash. No one.

Yes.

And I was like, I'm ready, let's go. And at some point then people would say, well, do you have this app? And I was like, no, I was ill prepared. Right.

Yeah. Everything.

And what happens? People leave. They go into my neighbor's house and stuff. Start shopping there instead. Right. And it's like, you have to. Now, did some retired folks come with piles of cash? Sure. Ready to shop. But what if I was only selling to them? My kids had their whole Pokemon table set up. Okay. They were ready for mom or dad to whip out Venmo for their shoppers. Like, you got to meet people where they are.

My daughter would be there at your table getting all the, all the Pokemon cards.

Yeah.

We, as a nonprofit space.

Yeah.

Are having a yard sale and only accepting cash.

That's right. That's it. And people are. And also I do want to talk a little bit about. There's this resistance that I hear that sounds something like, you know, I don't want my, my accounting person. They're going to. They don't want to learn another tool. It's more for them to reconcile. They are really comfortable on this one. Oh, my marketing person only knows this one. And it's this resistance to any change. Meanwhile, we are being lapped. Lapped by the for profit sector because their thought process is they also have the accounting person. They also have the marketing department Is like, I guess we got to figure out how to, how to learn this new tech. Let's go. It's totally different. And instead this, this need to stick to what we've always done gets us always done results.

Yeah. I mean as a, as a sector, as a non profit sector, do we want to be more like the government sector in our approach or more like the profit sector? I mean like you have to make a choice and I think we find ourselves in a limbo. I'm all for let's go, let's, let's go the innovative route and, and let's find the more efficient way to do things.

Yeah.

You know, but yeah, that, that happens all 12. I, if, if I, we call him Joe in accounting. And it's always Joe in Accounting that says he doesn't want to change anything.

Right.

I don't want to change my, my exports reports, anything.

He is, he knows exactly how to run those reports, how to reconcile and it's, it's going to be more tech, more, more blah blah, blah for him to learn. And it, it seems to me that oftentimes the conversation starts there when you add Joe in accounting. And then to me it's the board member who's like, oh, the fees.

And I'm like, yeah, look, I think when we make those requests to Joe in accounting or the board, instead of saying, hey, we want to change X platform and this change might be needed, I think what we fail to do is add the next paragraph which is we're going to be able to feed 600, you know, more children this month because of this technology. If we do not meet that goal, we're happy to revisit like tie the impact in that message. Because when Joe in accounting says I don't want to work with a new spreadsheet format, I go, please deliver that message to the person has to euthanize the dogs, the spca. I'm brutal. Like, like, like it's got to be that. You know what I mean?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I think that's really important is like what is the purpose of having more modern tech? What is the purpose? What is the outcome? And really laying that out. And then ultimately my style is, is a Joe's decision. Does Joe get a weigh in or are you as a CEO saying let's go, we're going to add this tech. Because if I ran my business and last asked for, I used to have an agency and so it's like, yeah, if I had asked everybody their opinion if they liked this style. Oh My God.

Yeah.

It'S crazy.

Look, it's at a point, especially with all the funding changes and the instability and I think I have this in my session. It's. This is an existential problem. Like nonprofits will not exist, they will not thrive if they don't sort this out and you know, rid themselves of this kind of how it's always been done mindset and this apprehension to change and evolve and meet donors where they are. This is, it's not us, us based fact, but it's a perfect example in the UK and fresh top of mind. I just got an email about it this morning. All charities in the UK pretty much only accept direct bank debit for monthly giving. Right? Because it's always been that way and because in the 80s, anything that was a subscription was done that way and it had lower and it was harder for them to cancel and so on and so forth. Not a single e commerce platform in the UK accepts direct debit for subscriptions. Right? You, you pay with, you pay your insurance, your rent, utility, direct debit. You don't pay with for your Netflix and your dog food subscription. And the things that we employ and we have an entire country that's resisting modernizing that which I'm on there too. You know what I mean?

Now you're like, oh, I'm, I'm all in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

That's the thing that's going to be the, the cancer that's going to cripple us if we don't, you know, make those decisions.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's like another arm of this is, you know, for the organization that's like, we have some monthly givers. Of course they always want more. Like, of course, we all do. They're like, that's, that's recurring revenue. That's amazing. And I find if they would just look at how to your point in the beginning, okay, if I want to become a monthly donor right now, what is that donor experience like? And just changing that, you will see to more forward tech, you will see more monthly donors come in without even running a campaign. I know this because I had my clients do it. They haven't even run a campaign. They've changed their tech, they've changed that experience. It's asking them at checkout, hey, do you want to shift and actually become a monthly donor? Like, okay, sure. And we as just by asking and again, letting the tech do that work for you. Right? And, and this is the stuff we're used to all the time in the for profit world. I'm thinking about my supplements. They're like, hey, you could order them right now. Cool. Or you could just subscribe. We'll send them to you every four weeks. We'll give you a discount. What do you think? And I'm like, that sounds great. If I were to audit how many subscriptions I had right now, I'd probably be, like, embarrassed. Right. But that's. But that's it. It's also like, you know, I think I have a toothbrush subscription, like, down to the most teeny, tiny little things. So why aren't we doing that? Why aren't we automating when we can? Why aren't we asking? Yeah.

3 to 10% of donors will switch to monthly when asked in that fashion. Right?

Yeah.

They don't want you to call them and ask them. Right. I don't care if my pizza is three hours late. I'm not calling the pizza shop. Like, I don't want to talk to anybody. Yeah. I'm going to go into my Uber Eats app. I'm going to hit the chat. I'm going to report the thing. It's late. I'm not going to talk to anybody. They don't want you to call them. They want to have an experience that lets them decide on the fly impulse.

And I do think that's going to be increasingly, increasingly generational. So even my generation, like, I talk to my friend Jen. I'm like, jen, remember when we would talk on the phone in college for like, two hours and we would ask each other, do you have minutes or do I have minutes? Okay. Now our entire friendship, she's in Ohio is we're voice tech. We're voice apping each other. Right. So, like, what's up?

Yep.

But I think about generations below me, they didn't even have the phone experience. They would rather die than have you call them. Right. So they do want this whole thing again, not only from their couch, but they want this whole experience of not only making the donation, but being stewarded.

Yes. Yes.

Potentially.

Yeah. Yeah. Send me an email once in a while, let me know how much impact there was. A stat by next after that said 28 of nonprofits don't send a thank you email. I'm like, that cannot be true. And I was at Neo Summit, and every orb that came to our booth, I said, can I just make a donation to your nonprofit? They're like, yeah, sure will. Give me the domain. And straight up, that's true. Half of them didn't send a receipt or a thank you I couldn't believe it. And I'm talking food banks for entire, you know, state regions, like, oh, thank you. Email. Come on. Yeah.

A lot of my work is, while I do think Legion is essential, it's a back. It's the backbone. A lot of my work is you're sitting on untapped resources, you're sitting on, on tap revenue, and it's right there. When the person makes the donation and they don't hear from you, that's it. They've churned and just making that simple change, you're going to see them give again. You're going to see them become monthly donors. You're going to see them come to your event just from that simple change. And it's not about, oh, well, we need Facebook ads or we need this outside big thing. We need to hire an agency, we need this or that. It's like, oh, well, maybe, maybe the call is coming from inside the house. Right. Maybe we need to start there.

Absolutely. I posted, might have been late last year about the Polar Bear, Polar Bears International. I made a small. I was with my daughter. I think we made a five or $10 donation because she had some money in her greenlight account. And I got an email that was automated. I got another email that felt personal. I had a voicemail three days later from them that dropped my voicemail saying, hey, hey, this is Brenda. We just want to say thank you and your daughter for the donate. It was a never ending gratitude. And I asked him, I said, how are you doing that with a small team? They go, oh, it's automated. We're using some tech.

Yeah, guess what?

I've given like 20 times to them since then. You know, I'm in because they reached out, they showed gratitude, and it's top.

Of mind it for me. It's like, it's not that you're telling me, gosh, I need to be thanked. I need to be inundated with thank yous. But that process, what did it do? It created trust, it created connection. You didn't forget about it.

We became fans of each other.

There it is. Yeah, totally.

That's how it happened.

So I want to ask you this question just based on knowing each other and the, and the posts you've had on LinkedIn. I'm curious if fundamentally I want to, I want to know where you fall on this. Is fundraising just sales in a different package? What do you think is fundraising selling and selling fundraising?

Wow. This one will get a lot of angry comments. The donor psychology and the buying psychology is Different. The expectation is the same for both. Right. I expect the receipt, I expect fast payment methods, I expect auto, etc. But the reasons and the psychology are different. What you're selling. And I think I tapped into this in this. Right. Sessions too. Toward the end, what you're selling is an emotion. Yep. And you're selling, you're selling an intangible, an impact, not a good. So you have to sell that. Right. You have to sell. I'm going to give you an opportunity to make a difference and you're important. So that's selling. I think I'm answering your question, but it's a kind of a two module piece.

Yeah.

The expectations are the same in the experience, but the way you sell it is very different. But yes, you're selling, you're selling impact, you're selling generosity. And that's what you need to facilitate.

And that's why to some extent, yes, that's different. But using urgency, using strong tech, using good copy, all of those are essential. And that's why when it's something as simple as, you know, the programmatic update we get from the nonprofit, that's super boring and sterile, it's forgettable versus some other type of. Usually what we see from the for profit sector, that feels very personal. That feels.

Get an email from one of the nonprofits I support that has a subject line like check out what we just did and has one thing and it's a photo of them doing something super impactful. And that's all I need. I got Megan Walsh. She's all over the place, but she does a nice Friday photo and she sends one photo on Friday of something that the organization is doing. That's about as much time as I have to digest. Report. I don't need a big huge newsletter. Give me a quick digestible.

Yes, a quick digestible. I think that's so good. And I think that also takes again from the person who is sending that email to not ask for buy in. Because if you ask your board, if you ask Joe from accounting, what do you think they're both going to be like? You got to do the programmatic update. People aren't going to like that. It's too informal. And I really. You, you want to question all of that? You want to question all the. And go, all right, I want. Here we go. We're going to try it. We're going to let people in, we're going to give something a little bite size. We're going to do it, you know, maybe more frequently and just see how people respond. See how people respond. I want to talk a bit about going in a slightly different direction. Something else I see that that is fairly common is tech hopping. Okay. So I think tech copping looks like we're changing our CRM again. We're changing our fundraising tool again. We're changing our email marketing tool again. Trying to solve. Right. For a fundraising problem, thinking the tech will save you. The tech is the end all, be all. And it's. It's tough for me because the tech is so important, so important to the experience. And tech hopping is something that I see happen in our sector, especially with free or lowcost platform. So where do you. What do you say to this? What do you say to the org who's like, oh, maybe we'll try this. The wind blew. Maybe we'll try that? My board member said to try this. Yeah.

Yeah. A common theme that I'm hearing at a lot of conferences is I'm overwhelmed. There's too many tech options. Yep. Last five years, so many have come onto the scene.

Yeah.

Tech hopping, I'm okay with it. As long as you're upgrading something modern. We all know who the legacy players are, and the ones that feel and look legacy, they might be listening. They know who they are themselves as those platforms. And if you're moving from those to something modern and innovative and agile, hop away. As far as. Is tech the solution? It's not the solution, but it's the. It's the component that will determine the multiple on the return of your efforts.

Oh, I really like that. Okay. Yes. I'm gonna put that in layman's yes.

I've never used that before, but I think you get. You get what I'm saying?

Yes. Okay. You yourself, dear executive Director, dear fundraiser, you have to take action and you have to hear no's and yeses and no's and yeses. And you're gonna keep doing it. You're gonna keep doing it. You're keep doing it. And the tech will be the. What was the word you used? The.

The factor that determines the multiple on your return on efforts.

That's right. I'm doing like a swoosh. Yes. It will help you scale what you're doing. It will help you have higher conversions. It will help the donor who's like, remember, you know, the donor is like, well, I didn't bring my, I don't know, checkbook. You're like, not a problem. Here we go. Right? It will. It will help you with all of that. I love that. I Think that's a really good analogy.

Nonprofits ask me all the time, like if I use fundraise up, am I going to just get. Are you going to send more donors to my website? I said no, we're going to convert and give those that you already have a better experience.

That's right.

Right.

So your job to get the people there. Dear.

We're going to squeeze more juice and better experience to those that you're engaging with already giving you a solid foundation and hopefully the confidence to build your outreach programs, your lead gen programs, your awareness programs. And then with that foundation, the return and the fruits of that will be so much higher.

I love it. And then this is a little bit of an adjacent. But do you have organizations that you. I would think this is fairly common. But I do want to check in because I haven't asked before. But where they're using your tool for certain use cases like maybe they're monthly givers, their main page of their website. But there, there are sometimes other tools that they're going to use for, I don't know, an auction events, things like that. And can we just give everyone permission to have multiple tools And Joe from accounting is going to be okay and why that makes sense.

Yeah. Joe's going to be all right. It's all going to go into one bank account and we're going to reconcile it and we're going to now use tools like Perplexity and Chat GBT and throw the spreadsheets in and say kick it back the way I need it. It's all there. We can, we can solve for all of it. Our tool is a. A point solution. We do the one thing. We don't do auctions, we don't do events, all those things. Many platforms have a lot of things there now that's a common question. We chatted a little bit about it before we started.

Yeah.

At some point, one of those things, things in a multifunction tool events, the auctions, the online fundraising, whatever it might be, one of them is going to be a standout for you, hopefully. And that's the part that you want to upgrade eventually to a point solution or a specific tool that does that extremely well. Right.

Yeah.

It's. The spork will get you so far. Right. And at some point you need the real fork.

Yes, yes, yes. I love it. So good. We didn't dig in to the. We didn't dig in too much into any other takeaways from stripe sessions. I want to ask you that. And also Pulse of Donor Report, if you want to get into that a little bit.

Yeah, well, they kind of coincide. A lot of the data that I shared at Stripe sessions was from the Pulse of the Donor report. So the Pulse of the Donor report, you can get it at Pulse of the Donor. I was tired of giving out the long URL, so I bought that domain myself and just redirected it. And what we have in that report are a set of data from a set of nonprofits that are all using modern AI powered, forward thinking tech. Right. And in this case, and because it's first party data and it's what we're allowed to have, we have our data and that from Stripe. So Stripe partner on the report. So we're using a payment processor that is very innovative and aggressive. We're using nonprofit fundraising tool Fundraise up that is very innovative and aggressive and obsessive about improving the donor experience. And that's our data set. And we compared it against industry benchmarks. MNR benchmarks.com is the one we mostly refer to to see how we're doing. It's a report card. It's not the weather, as Woodrow Rosenbaum says all the time from Giving Tuesday data comments. So we looked at that, which is a couple hundred nonprofits that are a variety of technology platforms and then ours. And what we saw, the Pulse of the Donor report is that our numbers are often, you know, in average gift size, an average monthly gift, one time 80, 90, 100% higher. When you're using tech that is aligned and pushing you in that direction, conversion rates are double. A lot of the stats that we have are just kind of like, wait, is this the same industry? Yeah, it's actually like, so the tech makes a difference, right? And the nonprofits that are doubling down and leveraging it and investing into their campaigns and efforts on top of a solid tech foundation are seeing growth. All the numbers in fundraising effectiveness report Giving Tuesday where like things are down a little. This is down a little. All of ours were not.

Okay, I have to interrupt because I love that so much. I really think there's, I think it's Beter Meinhof, this sort of idea that like what you see grows, like what you focus on grows. It's true over here. This, this report shows that giving is down. While it's also true over here for this report, in this segment, in this audience we're doing, we're rocking and rolling, right? So it's like, stop boohooing over here and focus on your opportunity. Keep going. Talk more about the report that's right.

That's right. It's like if we have one more session where we're, we're, you know, upset about it and at a conference and trying to figure out why and like you said, like kind of boohoo, hey, we don't have to cry anymore. We have a roadmap. We have, that's right, 3,000 nonprofits that are using this tech stack and they're defying the industry numbers. And I don't. And this isn't a, you know, a fundraise up sales session. Like use whatever you got to use. Yeah, do it. But you need to have Apple pay. You need to have the thing.

That's right.

To have a smooth experience because it's going to turn the tide for you.

Yes.

You know, I think the phrase I use is, is the technology you use can reverse negative trends and amplify positive trends. You know, that's, that's the impact that the technology can have.

I feel like for every organization that you can find. Sure. That's like so hard giving us down, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, okay, let me introduce you to my clients. Let me talk to the people. You're, you're, you're, you know, there's so many organizations that are like, this is happening and this is what, this is, this is what we're doing, who are growing, who are seeing more recurring. I just got off the call with an executive director and he was like, hey, we have a board meeting coming up. Hey, we're going to make sure we talk about how many new recurring giving. Let's, let's pull that data. And it's like, yeah, it's not all doom and gloom. You certainly can find it if you want to find it and spend some time there. But that's not very productive and it's also not true for everyone.

Yep. We, I think we can start being more ambitious in what we compare ourselves against.

Yes.

Right. I'm, you know, you don't want to look at your neighbor necessarily. You want to aspire to be something that's, that's elevated and beyond that, I'm trying to find the right example on the fly. That's not coming to me, but that's.

The part we can learn so much from, especially E Comm. Especially founders. I'm lucky in the sense that my husband works in fintech and so he's on calls with these people who are founders of 3, 10, 20, 50 million dollar companies growing very quickly online and they don't break a sweat. When last quarter Was down.

Right.

In fact, they're doubling down. And sometimes, sometimes he's like, well, I. We call it lovingly. And like, it's a healthy delusion. That healthy delusion of being like, I see what last quarter did. Watch. Watch me this quarter. Instead of being like, let me talk to the other ecom people that had a hard last quarter.

Boohoo.

Like, he really. I've noticed the edge in the mindset that that sector has where they take what happened and they move faster and they iterate and they go.

You reminded me of high agency dot com. Have a read when you have a moment. 30 minutes. The Wright brothers. He. He read the story on here. Like, he tried for years. The same week that they flew for a minute and a half or whatever it was, for the first time, the New York Times published an article that said scientists have determined that human flight will not be possible for at least a thousand years based on math needed in the same week.

That's what I'm saying. And he's. They're like, what? They're like, watch us.

He was. What was it? Delusional. Happily delusional.

Healthy delusion.

He was. He had healthy delusion. Check out highagency.com.

That'S good. We'll link to it. We'll link to it for sure.

And it's pretty amazing. And also, we went on the moon before suitcases had wheels. Did you know that? That's in there as well.

Thank you for that. Talk about holding on to old tech, right? Schlepping as a chronic overpacker. Like, this is real. This is real thing.

Yeah, sure. For sure.

Totally. Oh, I love this. Anything else before we wrap up? This has been such a juicy conversation. Thank you.

That's. That's, you know, the takeaways I'd like to leave with, with your audience. The stripe sessions that I did, you know, it was mostly geared to the e commerce space to show them that we're here and we are going to show up and we're going to play the game and we're going to learn from them with, you know, a subtext message to the nonprofits to say, hey, by the way, we're now. We're now being seen. We got to step Up. So this is my invitation to everybody that's listening to Step up and take that invitation and. And set a new North Star for ourselves.

Love it. And no matter where your organization is at scale, there is something you can do today to level up. Level up on this.

Absolutely.

So we ask every guest on the podcast to share a thought that they like to think on purpose. This could be an affirmation, a mantra, something you heard, a quote, just something that guides you forward. Would you share yours with us?

I think one of my mantras that I try to live by in anything is if it's not a win for everyone, it's a loss for everyone.

I love it.

That's the first thing that came to mind. It's got to be a win situation.

Yeah.

Losing, it's. It's. It's not good karma for anybody.

Oh, that's good. My son just had his final little league game and they lost. That's okay. In the playoffs, but I watched the other team, the coaches for the other team, care about the win way too much.

Right.

And it's making me think about, like, how is it just. It was. I mean, they're nine. It was an amazing part.

That's perception. Right. The losing team, it's like, we had a great time and learned a lot. And it's not about that. Right. But for the donor, make it. Make it a win, win, win.

Make it a win.

You know, everybody.

Yeah. Where can. Where you can roll out the red carpet. I have some teachings on that for them of just making it a win, making that trust right out of the gate, that honeymoon period. Really, really important. Thank you so much. We will link to all of the things because there was a couple of really important reports and people can watch your stripe session. Can we link to that too? Is that cool?

Yeah, it just. It just went live.

Okay, we'll link to it because it's a good session and I like the straddle between the for profit, nonprofit world and the way that you're showing the data. So I think that's important for everybody to see. Thank you so much for, for joining us on the podcast. We really appreciate it.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Hey, high achiever. I know your sights are set on ambitious world changing goals. In the purpose and profit club group coaching program. You can get the support, motivation and strategy to accelerate your impact. I like to say it's where the inner work meets big impact and big funding. Go to splendidcourses.com waitlist and you will be first to be notified when we open up doors. And you'll get some special bonuses when you join our wait list. See you inside.