The Good and Bad of Digital Fundraising: Concerns and Hopes with John Walsh

Big Picture:

John Walsh, director of annual giving at a seminary, shares his journey from music therapist to digital fundraising expert, offering valuable insights for nonprofit professionals.

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Why It Matters:

In an era where donor retention is challenging, Walsh's strategies can help nonprofits maximize their digital engagement and fundraising efforts.

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Key Takeaways:

1. Testing is crucial• Test everything: emails, social media, websites, landing pages, text messages• Use built-in tools in your CRM or marketing platform to start• Remember: What works for one organization may not work for another
2. Monthly donor programs are game-changers• Higher donor lifetime value• Often become major donors and planned givers• More cost-effective than acquiring new donors
3. Emerging trends to watch:• Comprehensive automation plans• Hyper-personalization using AI and predictive analysis

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Action Items for Nonprofits:

• Implement a data-driven mindset in your digital strategies
• Review and revamp your monthly donor program
• Explore automation tools to streamline your processes
• Investigate hyper-personalization options for your donor communications

By the Numbers:

• 70% of nonprofits do not have an email strategy
• 55% of marketers are using automation in email

Bottom Line:

Embracing digital tools and strategies can significantly enhance your nonprofit's fundraising efforts and donor relationships. Start with what you have, test consistently, and stay open to emerging trends.

To learn more:

• Connect with John Walsh on LinkedIn
• Visit nonprofitcampaignlab.com for digital fundraising resources

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00:00:03
            

Well, hey there, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Holy Donuts podcast brought to you by we give. If you're looking for the world's best donor experience, go check out our friends at we give.com dot. Thank you to them for sponsoring this episode of Holy Donuts. Well, today, joined with a good friend, John Walsh.        

00:00:18
            

John, how are you doing today? I'm doing well. Thank you, man. Thanks for joining. Really excited to talk.        

00:00:24
            

We've had several conversations that were not recorded where we just nerd out together on all things fundraising, digital, email, the whole nine yards. Monthly donors. So pumped that we get to get this finally actually recorded and get some of that wisdom captured real quick. Why don't you give people just a quick rundown, like the back of the baseball card about you, what you're currently doing, your role right now and then, kind of how you've gotten there, working with nonprofits. Yeah.        

00:00:51
            

So I'm currently working as the director of annual giving at, at a seminary. So my job is to basically create and implement the entire strategy for our general donors and acquiring new donors. If I can, I can take you back home. It's actually almost been ten years now. Yeah, since I started digital is actually my second career.        

00:01:18
            

I was a music therapist at a nursing facility before I became a digital marketer. In my, my digital career began. It was one of those instances where my boss came to me and said, basically, hey, you have a Facebook page. We have a Facebook page. Why don't you run our Facebook page?        

00:01:40
            

And of course, being the team player that I am, and it was our CEO, I said, yes, I would love to do that. And she considered the fact that I could post pictures with, with texts as an expert. However, that was the start of a beautiful lifelong learning for me. I loved it. I jumped in.        

00:02:01
            

I started learning everything I could about social media marketing. And as a result, in a couple of years, our social media presence grew to national recognition in some ways. And so she was like, this is great. Now I want you to take on the email newsletter, and now I want to do the website redesign. And of course, I said yes every time, but I loved it.        

00:02:24
            

I mean, I just, oh, I just got so into it. I loved the feedback, the real time, data driven feedback that you get with digital. So I started taking classes, and, yeah, I became a digital marketer soon after that. My next step in my journey, after I got classes and kind of became a digital marketer, was the opportunity to work at the Billy Graham Evangelistic association as an email marketer. And that's really where I fell in love with nonprofits and christian mission focused nonprofits, more specifically there for five years, fundraising, events, everything that had to do with email.        

00:03:08
            

And it was just, yeah, again, that's just kind of where I took my love for digital marketing and married it to christian minded nonprofits, which is where I've been ever since, as far as my passion goes. So, yeah, so it's been quite a journey from music therapist to digital to digital fundraising. But, you know, God works in wonderful ways, and I'm absolutely thankful for this opportunity. Yeah, man. And I love that your experience is so wide ranging.        

00:03:40
            

Right. Such a common story that I hear from people who are in the spaces, like, didn't really plan to get into this. Just God kind of stumbled me into it. And you grow on the job, you learn. And the best part about this, you test what works and what doesn't.        

00:03:54
            

Right. Like, you're not learning it in a lab or in a degree program, then coming out and be like, let's see. But it's like, no, we tried this. It worked or it didn't work, and that's how I learned to do it. So walk us through a little bit of some of the strategies, some of the things that you really value in digital fundraising for christian ministries.        

00:04:11
            

Like, what are some of the best things that you think ministries need to be focused on when it comes to digital fundraising? Yeah. And I think the first thing is what you just said, which is testing. And that's, I think a lot of, a lot of organizations don't test and don't test enough or they kind of test. They do what other people have tested that works for other organizations.        

00:04:33
            

And really, just because something works for one organization doesn't mean it's going to work for another. One audience is different than another audience. Even in the christian world. It's, you know, it's different. Different missions.        

00:04:48
            

You can talk about churches or, you know, humanitarian aid. You know, it's just so, there's so much variety. So, yeah, I would recommend testing. Testing everything. Really like it.        

00:05:01
            

You know, I kind of got into it with email and I mentioned social media, but. Right. You test website, you can test landing pages, you can test text messages. That's really the beauty to be of digital is. Right.        

00:05:15
            

You don't, you don't send something out by direct mail maybe, and hope it works. You know, you get, you know, maybe a couple conversions, you know, 10% conversion or 1% conversion. Right. And you think, oh, that did great, but I don't know, what about it? Did great.        

00:05:31
            

With digital, you can test things to the minutiae to find out what words worked great, what images worked great. So, yeah, so that's, first is test. Have that data driven mindset, which I guess would be second. That's, again, the beauty of digital is we have these numbers that we can go to and say to our bosses and to the presidents and the cmos and say, hey, this isn't working. Can we test something different?        

00:06:03
            

And this is how I know it's not working. I know it's not working because our numbers went down when I did this and our numbers started going up. So let's double down on this.        

00:06:16
            

This is great because, I mean, we talk about the importance of stories, and it is so important. Behind stories are a lot of great numbers as well. So kind of marrying those numbers with the stories just to keep people engaged. Yeah. Just to hop in there for a minute, because I know you love testing.        

00:06:35
            

What tools or do you keep in the tool belt, proverbially, for testing, what are the things that you like to use on a regular basis for actually getting to figure out which keywords are hitting best with their audience, which headlines. What are some of the tools that you like to employ? Just kind of tactical ground level for that. Yeah. And most of them are probably already built in because that's the tools I use.        

00:06:57
            

They're actually built in tools through a lot of your. Either your CRM or marketing platform, whether it's mailchimp, blackbaud. There are just so many. Right. And they're basic, but if you're just getting started, they're a great place.        

00:07:14
            

Get you started. I mean, I've used other ones that are a little bit more robust, but, yeah, really. I mean, my advice is, especially if you haven't done it before, is just kind of use what you have and then as you progress and, like, okay, I think optimizability is another one that our organizations have used in the past for website testing. So. Yeah.        

00:07:41
            

Yeah, that's. I know it's not. It's not like a, you know, great answer, but, yeah, just. Just start somewhere. No, it totally is.        

00:07:51
            

It's. It's exactly where a lot of people are, which is like, hey, if you're not using the tools that you've already got, you probably don't need to go look for the Ferrari. Right? Like, it's like, I see guys out, you know, down here in Florida golfing, and they've never even golfed before, and they go spend $3,000 on a new set of clubs and it's kind of like, maybe you should just learn to actually hit it off the tee before you go buy the $3,000 tool. Because a lot of times that's just in a built in excuse, right?        

00:08:16
            

It's like, well, we can't track because we don't have like all the great tools to do it with. It's like, yeah, if someone gave you the great tools, you wouldn't even know what to do with them. So how about you just start with the stuff you got, like Matt that out and then move to the more robust tools? So it's a great answer. I was just saying then you have the integration problems, right?        

00:08:34
            

Because if they're already built in, you're not going to deal with as much of the integration. Well, hey there, holy donuts. Listeners, ever feel like your nonprofit's donor experience is like a jelly filled donut with no jelly? Well, don't fret. We found the jelly.        

00:08:49
            

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00:09:06
            

And with we give, you get an incredible donor portal, events, pledges, surveys, segmentation on and on. We could go on the features and those checkouts, though, smoother than my attempt to make homemade donuts, which, let's just say, didn't quite rise to the occasion. See what I did there? With we gives innovative engagement tools, your donors won't just feel the love, they'll be coming back for seconds. Because nothing says thanks for your dough better than a world class experience.        

00:09:35
            

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00:09:45
            

so talk to us a little bit more because I know you nerd out like I do. Why are you passionate about monthly donor programs, sustainer programs, getting those monthly recurring gifts? Why is that such a big deal for you and the work you've done, but then also for what you're doing now with your seminary and some of your agency work as well? Yeah. So as you mentioned, the monthly donor programs, I mean, they're kind of the hot topic for the last couple years.        

00:10:13
            

It's been around for like, they're not new. It's amazing kind of how the trends go. And it's like, wow, monthly donors, well, I mean, they've been around for, you know, decades, so it's. But what we're seeing really is a trend in for profits with the subscription model. And really, I think a lot of nonprofits are kind of piggybacking on that, which is smart to do.        

00:10:36
            

And it's basically taking those same kind of concepts of subscription and monthly donors being very similar. We know from a lot of research is all coming out again. You know, monthly donors have a higher donor lifetime value. Monthly donors are the ones, in many cases, that become the major donors. They become the planned givers.        

00:11:02
            

They're a great way to, you know, sustain donors, and that's, that's what we want. And as you know, and our probably listeners know, we're in the nonprofit sector as a whole. We have an issue with retaining donors, and we want to acquire new donors, but really, it's more expensive to acquire new donors, and so it's cheaper to, cheaper to do the monthly, and that's really why I'm passionate about it. And then, yeah, and then to kind of speak into it from a practical standpoint, we're going through a monthly donor rebrand right now. We have a monthly donor program, but it kind of went stale.        

00:11:42
            

Nobody was promoting it. It was like, on the website, and it had some like, oh, this is what you'll get, but nobody ever got it.        

00:11:52
            

Yeah. And, you know, it's understandable. We can go into the whole reasons behind it. But we knew that it was very important to have this as a solid foundation because of the capabilities and the upside. So, yeah, so we're going through a rebrand right now.        

00:12:10
            

We created a new name, a new logo, some new incentives to go along with it. And we rolled it out. We rolled it out first to our current donors. Our current monthly donors, excuse me, just to let them know, because it's a new name, and some of them have been with us for 20 years. We didn't want to scare them away with a new name again, taking, you know, cues from major organizations do the same kind of thing.        

00:12:41
            

And we've seen great. So, so far, we've seen great results. We've, we rolled it out officially to our entire audience. We've, at this point, we've seen an 8% increase in monthly donors. Our biggest group of monthly donors has actually come at the $500 or more level.        

00:13:01
            

It's huge, which. Yeah, right. So, I mean, we're talking major monthly donors.        

00:13:07
            

And I think the kind of lesson I feel like I've learned through this whole process is that your donors want this. If you're not doing it, you have donors out there who are just waiting for this, they're waiting to sign up because we had a lot of people, like I said, sign up within the first couple days just to take a step back. We rolled it out via direct mail in an appeal, and we rolled it out via email. And now we're going to actually start focusing more on targeting some segments which, you know, which is nice. You know, those segments, like, you talk about nerding out, you know, your donors that give three to four times a year who don't give monthly, those are your, you know, we haven't done that yet.        

00:13:48
            

We're going to do that, believe it or not, we have monthly donors who give by check once a month who are actually already monthly donors, but don't do it automatically. So there's like, I was like, wow. Like, you know, we talk about low hanging fruit, so that's where we're going to next. But it's been very, very successful. Yeah, very cool.        

00:14:09
            

Very cool. No, that's amazing. Just to hear the inside of like, hey, this is what it really looks like to roll something like this out. And like, here's all the stuff you have to think through. And it really comes down to just, like, diving into the data, knowing, like, hey, where are we going to find the easy kind of wins?        

00:14:24
            

Like, what's that low hanging fruit that we can hit on first, and then as it grows, you can build into it. It goes back to the same conversation about tools. You don't have to go all the way there to get started. You can start somewhere and that's okay. And then build as you grow with the capabilities of your tools.        

00:14:40
            

So I love it. I know you see a lot of stuff in terms of the industry, like, hey, what's going on? You are kind of a lifelong learner. You're always reading stuff. You're always recommending stuff on LinkedIn, which I love.        

00:14:52
            

What's a trend in the christian nonprofit world right now that's got you a little bit concerned? What's one that's got you a little bit more excited and helpful? Yeah. So as far as concerns go, my biggest concern is kind of the shifting away from building relationships with donors. And I think in the digital sector, with digital technology, that's really easy to do.        

00:15:16
            

And we've kind of defaulted to digital as, like, an item on a checklist. And that's really concerning because digital, email, social websites, it's a tool. It's a way to communicate with people. But I feel like it's gotten away from that. It's like, oh, well, we need to send an email.        

00:15:36
            

Let's send an email. Oh, we need a post or, oh, we need to put an update on our website, but there's no strategy behind it. And I have seen some data on that. One of the most recent ones was that about 70% of nonprofits do not have an email strategy. And so that's scary.        

00:15:58
            

Right. I mean, it's really scary because what they're likely doing is they're actually another, another data I saw was they're like, oh, we need a fundraise. We're behind budget, let's send an email. Well, that's likely, probably going to fail because it's just not the right mindset. Right.        

00:16:18
            

So you're not building relationships. You're only sending fundraising emails. You're only, you know, sending things people don't care about. And when you do send them, they don't know who you are because you haven't sent something in two months.        

00:16:32
            

For more money. Right, right. And, you know, they either unsubscribe or they unengage and. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that's kind of my biggest.        

00:16:45
            

What's got you a little bit more hopeful. Yeah. Well, it's the beauty of technology. You know, it's, yeah. It's that other side of the coin where a lot of organizations are using technology maybe just to send kind of whenever they want.        

00:17:00
            

If you use the tools you're given, and as you even mentioned, the full extent of the tools for the reason they've been built. And we are just seeing a massive amount of increase in technology. Right. And so, you know, the first one that comes to mind, which isn't even a trend, but it's actually table stakes now. It's automation.        

00:17:21
            

Right. And that's, and that's been around for a while. About 55% of marketers are using automation and email, but it's not enough. Like, email, automation is great, but you can automate so much more. It makes your life so much easier.        

00:17:36
            

So what I'm talking about is, as far as the trend goes, it's a comprehensive automation plan, which is cleaning lists, creating tests. You know, I mean, it just, the sky's the limit. I think we just are so focused on, like, the bare minimum. But the second trend that I'm excited about is hyper personalization. And that is.        

00:17:58
            

Right. So we know a lot of people know about personalization. They've heard about it, and basic personalization is kind of at the surface level. It's your first name or your name, donor history, geography. That's great.        

00:18:15
            

But it's not enough anymore. We're all used to getting emails with our names in it. What we need now is hyper personalization, which actually takes a supporters interests, their behaviors and puts it together in real time to create content. It uses AI and predictive analysis so that it happens in real time and you can send an email or anything else and the donor is going to get something that speaks to them, speaks to their interests, speaks to what they care about, speaks to the programs. And the beauty is since it is technology, it's dynamic so it can change.        

00:18:54
            

So if you care about one program, maybe you care about kids and I care about adults, we're going to get two different emails that speak to our cares. Or if you care about humanitarian aid, I care about church mission, missionary field or something, you know, and it's by the same organization. It can be all done. Or if you care about video and I care about articles, right? Yeah.        

00:19:21
            

So hyper personalization is really, I think it's the future of technology that's great. And any platforms that you recommend for that, that you've seen that do the hyper personalization well, because I can imagine nonprofit marketing director, development director, donor relations specialist, whoever it is that's listening to sit and they're going, that sounds awesome. One, I don't know if our tools can do that right now. Two, what tools would I even look at? Like how do I even Google search for that?        

00:19:48
            

Right? Do I just Google search? Hyper personalization, nonprofit tools. Like can you give a kind of take that next step to help us understand, like where should we be looking around for tools like that? Yeah, I don't actually know very many because it's really, I know virtuos does AI stuff in their CRM.        

00:20:05
            

I don't know if they've taken it as far as hyper personalization, but I know they have that capability. I'm trying to think of donor search does some stuff as well. But yeah, I've actually done exactly what you said, which was type in hyper personalization, nonprofit. It sounds like there's a massive opportunity for some company to come in and build a tool in that space. That's what it is right now.        

00:20:30
            

That's what it is. If they can figure it out, they'll be the first. Very cool. Yeah, well, that's why I love talking with you, because you're always looking at what's coming next and even kind of bleeding and stuff. So love it, man.        

00:20:42
            

John, if people want to connect with you, if they want to find out more about, you've got kind of an agency on the side that does some work as well. Tell us a little bit more about that and how people can connect with you if they just want to start a conversation. Yeah, absolutely. So I do like you said, I have a website. It's called the nonprofit campaign Lab, and the website address is nonprofitcampaignlab.com dot.        

00:21:04
            

Try to make it as simple as I could, although it's a long URL and that's my agency, I do some side work as well, focused on digital fundraising, things like monthly donor programs, email programs, whether it's audits, digital, or automations, as we talk about creating those automations organizations as well. So, yeah, again, nonprofit campaign lab, that's a side hustle.        

00:21:32
            

And then. Yeah, and then the other way to reach out to me is through LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn, so you can reach me there and. Yeah, or you can email me. It's at Johnprofitcampaignlab.com.        

00:21:46
            

Perfect. That's what I'm supposed to do. Awesome. All the ways to reach out to you. I appreciate it.        

00:21:52
            

John, thank you so much for taking the time, man. Excited to see how people are able to use this episode to further their digital fundraising efforts. And seriously, go follow John on LinkedIn. He's a great follower, always posting valuable content. And thank you all for watching this episode of the Holy Jonas Podcast.        

00:22:07
            

We'll see you back here next week.        

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