Transcription

00:00:04
            

Well, hey there, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Holy Donuts podcast. Today we're gonna be doing something a little bit fun. I got Dave Raley on the show. Dave, how you doing today?        

00:00:14
            

I'm doing well. And we are actually gonna be doing. We're start off today. We're gonna do some live donut reviews. Well, I guess they're not live.        

00:00:21
            

You'll be. This is pre recorded, but we will be doing live. To me, it's very live for us. It's not a simulation, I promise. Okay, so, Dave, I'm going to let you start off.        

00:00:31
            

You have some special donuts there. And then I've got a standby that we're going to do. Tell us about the donut you've got. I'm so excited about this, Matt. And then give us your honest review.        

00:00:40
            

You're going to take a bite of it. I want to. We want to score it. Scale one to ten. You get to take one bite of it.        

00:00:45
            

That's the rules. And then give us your honest score on how that donut is. Okay. So just a little bit of context because. And.        

00:00:54
            

And I love the whole holy donuts theme because that is a secret passion of mine. Is anything sweet, really. But donuts are a favorite. And the town that we live in, I'm based outside of Seattle, Washington, is called Poulsbo. And the reason it's called Poulsbo is because it's a norwegian town.        

00:01:16
            

Like, it's a. It's known as little Norway in our area. Okay. Which means in the middle of our town, we have a norwegian bakery called Sly's Bakery. So I have my little sly's bakery here.        

00:01:30
            

Okay. So if you're ever in Washington and you get west of Seattle, you have to go to Sly's bakery. And so a little bit cheating on the review because I've been going to Sly's bakery. I just realized next month will mark about 20 years of going to Sly's bakery. So I know this doughnut, but this is called the.        

00:01:51
            

And for those of you that can actually see video, this is the danish doughnut. Okay. Which is ironic danish doughnut for a norwegian bakery. So it is a, like a flaky pastry. You know, it's a glazed doughnut, but it's like, sort of like a croissant meets.        

00:02:10
            

Yeah, like that. Yeah, yeah. So. So I will try it because I. I do love, uh, love the, uh, the danish doughnut.        

00:02:19
            

Isn't it fun trying, like, eating food live on a. On a video? I don't usually have people watching. I can't eat this whole doughnut on the. On the podcast.        

00:02:26
            

No, just. Just a bite. Just a bite. Okay. Honest assessment.        

00:02:30
            

What are. What are you getting out of this doughnut? Out of this? Dangerous. Okay, so this.        

00:02:32
            

This particular danish doughnut, because it is very, um, tricky how they make it. It's probably an eight and a half. Wow. So it's really good. Okay.        

00:02:42
            

But, I mean, easily nine. Nine and a half. Like, man, you told me not to give a ten, but it's my favorite. It would be pretty close. It's your favorite donut?        

00:02:50
            

Okay, that's fair. That's. That's what that spot should be reserved for. It's like, this is the best donut I've ever had in my life. Okay.        

00:02:57
            

Slice donuts link the shownness. We take our girls. We have. We. We've been taking our girls since literally they were born.        

00:03:05
            

Once a week, we go on Sundays before church, and we have a sly doughnut and have conversations as a family and go on with our day. So. All right, so sliced danish doughnut, eight and a half. Market for the history books. I am.        

00:03:22
            

I am way less interesting on this. So I'm going to do something that I've not had this doughnut in probably a decade, but everyone who watches this is going to know this doughnut. Anyone listening is going to stone it. So this is Krispy Kreme's classic glaze. Like, we are going with a staple.        

00:03:37
            

Gee, it is the OG. Like, american donut, I think. Or at least in the south. It is. I don't know about up in the northwest, but I have not had.        

00:03:45
            

Seriously, I haven't had one of these in a decade. My youth group and Sunday school days were just littered with cramming a dozen of these in my mouth and having an absolute, like, diabetic coma, but I've not had one a decade. So I'm going to try it, and I'm going to give you an honest review on this. The first thing that comes to mind seems are kind of small. Like, they're pretty, pretty petite little donuts.        

00:04:07
            

Right? And you need to point out that you have six in that box. I have six in this box. These. I am not going to eat six of these.        

00:04:14
            

These are going to go to my children if they eat all of their dinner tonight. That's kind of the goal. So I'm going to take a bite. We're going to see how this is.        

00:04:27
            

Okay, before I give a number, it is a sugar bone. I mean, this is literally, I could not eat nowadays, more than one or two of these. And these are tiny, and it's. It's got so much butter in it that it literally almost melts in your mouth. It tastes less like a donut and more like a.        

00:04:48
            

I don't know, almost like a piece of candy. Like, it's literally that kind of. Yeah. I'm not sure that I would call this a donut. This is.        

00:04:54
            

This is probably candy if you love Krispy Kreme. Sorry for the hot take. I couldn't eat more than one or two. It's delicious in its own right. As a doughnut goes, though, that doesn't really fall into category for me.        

00:05:05
            

That's. That's a sweet treat of something. That's something else entirely. I'm gonna give it. Man, I'm gonna get killed for this.        

00:05:12
            

I'm gonna give that a six. Eight. 6.8. I think that's a. It's okay.        

00:05:16
            

It's. There's a reason to eat it. Like, it's not. Not great. It's just.        

00:05:21
            

It's. That's not a donut. That's. That's something different. But I know why people love them, because, I mean, if you need a sugar high, that's your thing.        

00:05:27
            

So. Krispy Kreme, classic glazed doughnut for me, 6.8. Come at me in the comments. Totally fine. If you disagree, tell me why you disagree.        

00:05:36
            

But hot take, that's not a donut. Opening on a controversial note. That's okay. That's okay. I am also, though, because you were going to do the local thing, I'm rocking some coffee out of my nick's roast.        

00:05:46
            

Famous roast beef coffee mug today. Shout out, Beverly, Massachusetts. Local spot. My wife and I used to eat it all the time when I was in seminary there, so. Also got a little bit of my local flair to go along with my corporate consumerism of crispy cream.        

00:06:00
            

Love it. All right, Dave, let the people know a little bit more about you. We've met a few times now, you are someone who huge amount of history in the christian nonprofit space. Working on the campaign side, working on marketing side. Give us a quick snapshot of how you got into the space.        

00:06:18
            

You're now a founder at Imago Consulting, so kind of give us just your background. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you asked a question how I got into this. This space, and it really starts with, I met a girl.        

00:06:31
            

I was thinking about that. I thought, I can't. I can't believe that's the. That's the start of my story. But seriously, was living in southern California, engaged to be married.        

00:06:40
            

My wife is from Oregon, and we were living outside of Los Angeles. And candidly, neither of us wanted to stay living in LA. And so we thought, well, we're young, we're getting married. Where do we want to move? And I'm originally from Southern California, she's from Oregon.        

00:06:58
            

And so we, neither of us really wanted to move to our hometown. And so we said, let's just try the Seattle area. It feels like that's a cool part of the country. And we each had one family member in the area. And this is where the career comes in, is I just started looking for work.        

00:07:15
            

I did not know that you could work for charities and nonprofits. Like, I didn't know they were paying jobs. I thought that was like a thing you did, you know, on the weekend in a volunteer capacity or, or what have you. And so I still remember, you know, I was looking at, you know, Microsoft and Washington Mutual bank and companies like Amazon, by the way, were not on the radar when I was looking for work. And just through a whole series of circumstances, found a guy who knew a guy at this agency called Masterworks, which for some of our listeners, you'll have heard of masterworks agency that specializes in faith based nonprofits.        

00:07:57
            

And it was just like a light bulb moment because I had wanted to, I was a double degree in marketing and digital, and it's like, man, I thought I would just have to get a job selling toothpaste and figure out where the fulfillment side of life was. That was now 20 years ago, if you haven't picked up on the math. And so it's been a huge blessing. And I've served a lot of nonprofits, certainly a lot of faith based nonprofits as well. And just, it's been an incredible journey, but a lot of years in marketing and fundraising, building the digital team, certainly at the agency, as well as a number of other teams before launching the advising practice that I do now.        

00:08:41
            

Still working with charities and with businesses on things like recurring revenue and what's happening in their organizations, just around growth. So it's been a fun journey. Awesome. Thanks for sharing, man. One of the things I always like to ask is about campaign strategies.        

00:09:00
            

Your time at Masterworks, obviously kind of a unique role in that. You got to work with a bunch of different clients on a lot of different projects, a lot of initiatives, a lot of campaigns. Was there a lane of that that you think is really effective, that nonprofits need to be focusing on in terms of types of campaigns, types of programs that really are kind of the best ROI for their ministry. Yeah, that's a good question. I would say, thinking about, I mean, you certainly do need a diversified fundraising approach, but especially when you say Roi, there's so many different sort of channels.        

00:09:40
            

The thing, and I debt it earlier is, and where I've taken a lot of my advising practices around what's happening in the recurring giving space, it's certainly higher ROI when it comes to particularly long term value, as well as just kind of in the general direct response fundraising space. But from my perspective, it's always been important. But really, the last, you know, five to ten years has really completely changed the game in terms of accessibility for that, that type of giving and those types of programs. So you say the last five to ten years have changed the game. Say more about that.        

00:10:25
            

How, how has what's happened in the last five to ten really had an impact on that? Yeah, you know, if, if you look at the history of recurring giving, particularly in North America. Yeah, you know, a lot of people say, well, you know, 100 years, something like that, which, you know, that's a long, long time. But actually, if you really do the, your history, the first recurring giving kind of sponsorship program goes back almost more than 100 years. It goes back to the 18 hundreds, the early 18 hundreds, by the way, not the late 18 hundreds.        

00:10:58
            

And so, you know, recurring giving has been around, you know, forever. If you even study history, biblical history. Otherwise, you realize that this idea of a recurring gift is not a new concept, but what is new and what has really changed is the subscription economy and what's been happening, particularly with how consumers have changed their behavior, their expectations and their engagement with what, what banking industry calls discretionary automated payments, aka, you don't have, like, it's not like your mortgage payment or your power bill. Yep. That has really transformed the way Consumers act and think, which has in turn changed the way donors are now behaving, because those consumers are donors.        

00:11:50
            

Right. You and I are members of the subscription economy. And, and so it's always been interesting to me, candidly, over the last couple of decades, to see these different kind of consumer trends really lead the way in terms of changing behavior, which then do impact donor trends. Yeah. Well, hey there.        

00:12:15
            

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00:12:26
            

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00:12:56
            

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00:13:20
            

Can you maybe speak to the nonprofit out there or the marketing director that saying, hey, listen, like we've got recurring giving as an option on checkout and we've got like a monthly newsletter that goes out. Isn't that leaning into the subscription? Isn't that having a recurring donor program? You can differentiate maybe that model, that's just very well, of course you've got recurring giving as option and you've got a monthly newsletter. From what you're actually talking about with building, these monthly donor programs are really leaning into the subscription economy for donors.        

00:13:51
            

Yeah. You know, and by the way, if you have the checkbox, which hopefully you do on your website, that's great. Like you should have one of those. You will. By the way, a lot of organizations are seeing just natural organic growth because donors are just choosing it as a convenience factor.        

00:14:06
            

Yeah. Now, I do think the real opportunity is to actually how fast can you grow and how much can you grow, if you really are intentional about it. But really, historically there have been three kinds of recurring giving program. I mentioned one, which is sponsorship or one to one. So I, the donor, give on a regular basis and I am paired with a beneficiary who receives some sort of value.        

00:14:32
            

So a child sponsorship situation or a staff support or a missionary sponsorship or in the idea is I'm paired with an individual recipient. The problem with that model is that the vast majority of nonprofits don't have the programming or the structure or the means to actually execute a one to one sponsorship type of offer. So that's category number one. Category number two of recurring giving is membership. So these are organizations that provide where the donor is often, at least partially, the donor is the beneficiary.        

00:15:11
            

So they're receiving some sort of maybe goods or services or maybe just they listen to the radio program, or they, you know, they are a member and they receive, you know, they receive value, or their family receives value. And in membership programs, you can think of organizations like your local zoo or museum or public television or public radio, where, again, I give, but I give at least partly because there's some sort of benefit to me, and I value that benefit, and I want that benefit for me and for my, you know, people that I love. Um, but there's a problem, Matt, and that is the vast majority of nonprofits don't have the kind of programming and sort of model where the donor is the beneficiary. And so they can't really tap into membership, which basically leaves the category. You just described the third category, which is everybody else without a, you know, like with a glorified checkbox or in the olden days, it was a glorified check writing program.        

00:16:12
            

Right. Please give us money monthly. Yeah, please, you know, friends of the organization. Exactly. Yeah.        

00:16:20
            

And it's actually that category, which my estimate is about 75% of nonprofits fit into that third category. That's the category that stands the most to gain from this shift. You don't have to have sponsorship, you don't have to have membership in order to actually create a strong, healthy, renewable, sustainable source of revenue that you can rely on to do the work that your organization is called to do. That's huge. That's huge.        

00:16:56
            

And if a nonprofit's out there and they say, hey, listen, like, where do you even start with us? What's ground? Step one, like, okay, so we've got this checkbox, or maybe we don't, we get that set up. Where would they even begin? Are there tools, resources?        

00:17:11
            

Are there tactical steps that you recommend just as starting off? Yeah, I think the first thing I would say is just take stock of what you have. That's that first piece. It certainly, yes. Do you have the checkbox?        

00:17:23
            

You know, can people actually sign up, go through experience? But, you know, how many recurring donors do you have now that are active? How many, how much revenue did you see from those donors in the last year? And by the way, look at total revenue from those recurring donors, because I found, and we found that recurring donors are often the most generous single gift to donors, additional donors. So on average, we see somewhere around 25% additional giving on top of the recurring giving amount.        

00:18:00
            

So if you have $10,000 a year or a million dollars a year coming in from your recurring donors, you should see in the case of 10,000, it'd be 2500. In the case of a million. It'd be $250,000 in additional giving from those nonprofits. So first step, take. Take stock of what you have.        

00:18:19
            

I had a wise mentor once say to me, it's really hard to know where you're going until you know where you've been. And so it's like, where are you today? Right? And start from that place. Don't look at the organization that's got the billion dollar program and 50% of their revenue from recurring giving, unless you're, you know, pretty close to that space.        

00:18:41
            

So take stock of where you're at, and then I would say, evaluate your current experience through the donors eyes. And this is really hard for leaders to do themselves, but you can do it. It's just you need to step outside of your, I know the reasons why things work the way they do hat because you'll have all sorts of good, very legitimate excuses why the experience maybe is not as awesome as it should be. So oftentimes either I'll suggest that somebody have an outsider, somebody, you know, somebody's spouse or a local, you know, volunteer to actually go through the, this process of, like, signing up to become a recurring donor and, you know, documenting what they receive. We do that for the clients we work with, you know, where they come in.        

00:19:29
            

And the one of the first things we do is a total secret donor project where we evaluate. And I've been doing this for years, Matt, and it's just like, I call them facepalm moments, because it's like, oh, my gosh, the receipt didn't go out like. Or what? It's like, it's not really advanced fancy stuff. It's like, did you communicate?        

00:19:52
            

How quickly, what did you communicate? Did you get their name right? Basic stuff on the response device. And so I think if you do, either you have an outside group like ours do that, or you do it yourself, you're going to find some pretty obvious big stuff if you just can take your I'm a marketer hat off and put your I'm a donor hat on and think through it from their perspective. Yeah, I love it.        

00:20:21
            

Yeah. And I would definitely recommend an outsider doing it, mostly because, you know, if you're, say, you're the marketing director, you know the quirks and, say, your user interface and how to get around them. Right. And how to over, you're like, oh, well, of course that button lives there. Well, you know that because you built it, right?        

00:20:38
            

Or your team built it, the donor doesn't know that. And so I would definitely recommend working with an outside team like you guys at imago or anyone. Yet again, it could be a volunteer who's shown up only a few times, doesn't give, have someone outside do it so that they really are coming at it with a clean slate. I think that's great advice. Okay, let's shift macro.        

00:20:57
            

We kind of get in the weeds there a little bit, which is great. I love that tactical stuff. Let's go macro. Tell me about a trend that's a little bit concerning to you in the nonprofit space right now and one that's kind of exciting to you. Oh, okay.        

00:21:09
            

So let's. Yeah, well, let's do concerning. I'm happy. I'm. I don't know that I'm happy to talk about what concerns me, but I think that's the piece.        

00:21:18
            

That's where we get the most motivated, and I really do think it's what's been happening with the state of generosity over the last, well, probably decades, but really. And we just had Nathan Chappelle. I don't know if you know Nathan, but Nathan and Chappelle and Brian Cremens just wrote a book just about a year and a half ago called the generosity crisis. And, um, it's a very good book, but it's one of those where you're like, oh, boy. It's like, yeah, it's gonna be heavy.        

00:21:51
            

Take my medicine. Like, oh, and it's true. Um, I I told. I told Nathan. I said, man, I'm two thirds of the way through this book, and I am just, like, depressed, whatever.        

00:22:01
            

You know? He's like, I promise we get to some solutions. I was like, okay, great. But it is really. I would call it a call to action, call to arms, you know, an important moment in the history of philanthropy, at least for those of us in the west, to understand that we can't just take for granted that our culture, our heritage is one of philanthropy and generosity that's changing the way younger generations, for example, see generosity.        

00:22:31
            

It's like, well, yeah, I've been mode of friend who, you know, needed help. Like, so I've. I've. I give charitably and. Right, right.        

00:22:39
            

But also, there are these 501 nonprofits, you know, and, you know, fewer. Fewer people than ever before are seeing, you know, are sort of thinking of charity through that traditional, you know, ir's designation lens. And so it is a call to action. They do propose some. Some solutions.        

00:23:00
            

I think they. They did a. A really good job, though, of just catalyzing, like, this is an issue, and that is the. Just to give you the short version, what is the generosity crisis? The short version is there are fewer donors than there were before, and the trends are negative that way.        

00:23:20
            

A lot of the headlines are about the number of dollars, which have mostly gone up, although last year they did go down in individual giving. Um, but that's because of a few mega donors right now, the Mackenzie Scotts and, you know, and the Bill Gates and, you know, the Warren Buffet who. Which is awesome. I think that's great. That's great.        

00:23:44
            

They're doing a lot of good, but it's, it's masking an underlying problem, and that is your core day to day, you know, citizen is not giving like they used to? Absolutely, and there's a lot of reasons why, but I'm more interested in the solutions to that problem. Yeah. Well, then that leads us nicely into something exciting that you're maybe seeing for nonprofits across the space. Yeah.        

00:24:09
            

So not to beat the dead horse. Yeah. Um, because one of the things they talk about in the book is, you know, um, certainly artificial intelligence, personalization, all those sorts of things. But I'm going to come back to, um, to the subscription economy and what's been happening with what I call subscription giving. Yeah.        

00:24:26
            

And it is so important because not only is it sustainable, ongoing, recurring. And so when you see these, these charts where giving is going down, you've got to look under the surface. So, for example, Matt, as we're recording this, three different nonprofit studies have come out in the last week on giving in the year 2023. And every one of those studies cites that basically, overall giving is essentially flat or down.        

00:25:02
            

But every one of those reports, when you look one layer under the surface and you look at the difference between one time giving or basically single gift giving and recurring giving, in every case, it's the one time giving that is down and recurring giving is up. So in the case of, for example, MNR, who is one of the, you know, they've done online benchmarks for years and been just a wonderful contribution to the industry. MNR found that, for example, in online giving, online giving was down 1%, which, by the way, as a digital fundraiser for years, I'm like, whoa. I remember the days where you could like, you know, you would have to, like, actively sabotage your fundraising strategy not to grow 20%, you know, in digital. And so overall digital fundraising, down 1% over the last year.        

00:25:53
            

But you look under the surface, and the truth is that one time giving was down five or 6%, and recurring giving was up five or 6%. And so what you're seeing is the under the surface trend is that one time giving is declining. And I'm not knocking one time giving, by the way. I've done a lot of that for a lot of years, and that's an important part of the puzzle. But it's just harder and harder to get those one time gifts.        

00:26:20
            

And so what are we doing to create true loyalty and ongoing sustainable giving from those donors who, partly because of the subscription economy and partly because of other reasons, are more warm and open to giving on a recurring basis than they've ever done before? Yeah, man, there are 35 questions I wish I could ask you, but we're going to be at a time crunch today. Okay. If folks want to. I always ask about resources, but you're kind of a walking resource hub.        

00:26:51
            

So I just want you to have space to tell us about some of the resources that you have available to help nonprofits and ministries grow. Think through digital, think through monthly recurring donor programs. Tell us about some of those resources and how people can contact you if they're interested. Yeah, thank you for that, Matt. I would say the best resource that I put a lot of, uh, mind and heart and effort into is a weekly column that I write.        

00:27:18
            

It's called the Wave Report. Yeah. And it is essentially trendspotting. So the wave report is a total, you know, surfing metaphor of the southern californian in me, which, by the way, I am a wannabe surfer. I am not good at actually surfing, but I have taken some lessons and I've learned a thing or two, and I think there's a lot we can learn from surfing, by the way.        

00:27:36
            

Yeah. But the idea of the wave report is, what are the waves or the trends, the insights, the leadership lessons that we can use to help grow our organizations. And so that comes out every Friday. Put a lot of time and research and effort into that, and folks can sign up for that on our website. It's imago dot consulting.        

00:27:56
            

So not.com, which is im a g o, imago dot consulting. And you can just click on weekly trends. And thats our wave report. I also post pretty regularly on LinkedIn. I love it that we now have, like, I remember the days when you were like, is my Facebook profile, like, where I'm supposed to post work stuff, professional stuff?        

00:28:19
            

Yeah. Like, my cousins don't want to hear. About what I do. No. So I love it.        

00:28:26
            

I saw very active on LinkedIn. Would love to connect with people on LinkedIn. But yeah, go to the website embago consulting or just hit me up on LinkedIn and, and then the last piece is we do a podcast, and so we record a podcast. A co founder and I created a podcast called the Purpose and Profit podcast. And the whole point of the show is to interview leaders of causes and brands.        

00:28:53
            

So we have people like, from brands like Disney. We have people from brands like Domino's Pizza and Netflix. We just interviewed a guy who was part of opening the third ever blockbuster store. That's awesome. And so it's like, wow.        

00:29:12
            

Everyone talks about, like, blockbuster, you know, as the cautionary tale of missing innovation. But I'm fascinated to learn about Blockbuster that literally invented a category like they were the innovator. Right? What can we learn from the early days of blockbusters? We interviewed Tom is his name, but then we also interview leaders of nonprofits.        

00:29:33
            

And so charity water Tom, who I just mentioned, is now actually head the chief people officer at Compassion International justice mission. And so the whole point of the show is, what are the lessons that we can learn from the world of business and brands? And what are the lessons we can learn from the world of causes? And how can we? What are the ideas that come at the intersection of those two worlds?        

00:30:02
            

And so that's purposeandprofitpodcast.com, or most people just use whatever their favorite podcast feed is. Big, bright pink logo so you can't miss it. But not as cool as the holy donuts logo, but pretty, pretty stand out. We're a little outside the box. We do our own little thing over here.        

00:30:23
            

We'll have to offline, guys. Matt, on how, you know, if you look at your podcast feed, like, how many logos are just, like, muted, you know, like, blend into the background? So I know I see what we're doing. I appreciate it. Okay, Dave, thank you so much for taking the time today, man.        

00:30:42
            

I learned a ton. I know our audiences really appreciate you coming on. Dave Raley, founder at Imago Consulting. Go check out the podcast, check out the wave, check out the website. Hire them.        

00:30:54
            

Do all the things. Wonderful people doing wonderful work. Dave, thanks so much. Yeah, man, it's been good.        

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