 everybody. We are thrilled that you've joined us for another episode of The Non-Profit Show. Welcome. Today, I'm very excited because I have on one of our favorite guests, drum roll. They're ransom nonprofit nerd. Welcome. Well, thank you. You know, every so often we turn the seats on each other, Julia, and we have brought up donor segmentation, what it looks like. We've brought up customization. So you had asked me if I would dive a little bit deeper on this topic. So I'm excited to share some of my secrets of success. Well, I really am interested in what you have to say, Jared, because I mean, I'm always interested in what you have to say. I think you're one of the great minds that we have in our nation about the sector of philanthropy, if you will. So I always love what you have to say. And again, if you don't know who we are, I'm Julia Patrick joined by the nonprofit nerd herself, Jared Ransom. But we're going to talk today about segmentation. And we want to make sure that you know that these episodes of The Non-Profit Show are sponsored by partners with us in the nonprofit sector. We want to make sure that you know that Bloomerang, American Non-Profit Academy, Fundraising Academy, The Non-Profit Nerd, your part-time controller, and Staffing Boutique are here with us day in and day out. And if you haven't heard this before, we're marching towards our 500th episode. Yeah, we're marching fast. Marching fast. Okay, so we wanted to get into donor segmentation. And the reason why I thought maybe we could have you on to talk about this is that we bandied this word about segmentation. And I don't know if we always know what that means. And I'm learning as we spend more time with a variety of nonprofit leaders across this nation, it means something different to everyone. And that's true. It's fascinating to me. It's like one of those things that we're all talking about, Jared. But I don't think we're fricking the same lingity as we like to say in my family. Right. And we could be segmenting, you know, our constituency base differently, separately, you know, just there's a there's a lot of ways to slice and dice this. And so when I talk about donor segmentation, and this is, you know, something I bring up in previous episodes, for me, what I'm referring to is literally classifying our constituencies on some type of characteristic. So the official term is we're going to put them in a bucket. Yes, all the time. We're going to put them in a bucket. I love that you have these different paint cans as a graphic on on the image here in front of us. But really, that's exactly what it is. So we're taking a look at our donor database, or our event attendees, or our board members. I mean, you can segment just about anything. And so when you think about this, you know, in particular for our donors, there's a lot of ways in the secrets of success that I like to share. But first and foremost, I think it's important to create a list of particular classifications, right? So we could do gender, we could do age, we could do by the date in which they gave to us, perhaps their anniversary date, perhaps they give to us monthly, and that's a whole nother segmentation. And I keep thanking Julia, we had a fantastic guest on that talked about personalization and customization and how those two are different in and of themselves. And those strategies can be applied to the segmentation. But we have to segment first. So I've got so many questions for you. So first of all, let me ask this, is all donor segmentation the same? I think you're going to say no, because it depends on what you're doing. So I get that, right? But then how fluid is this? So for example, we started our donor segmentation, do we have to like live with that forever? Or can we add something? Because it's going to dilute how our metrics are working, right? Great question. And so I do think that it should be fluid in some way, shape or form. Now, we don't want to change it every month. We don't want to consistently change our segmentation, you know, as we go. But there could be some crossover segmentation. So for instance, right? If you have an event in this donor or supporter or individual in your database, segmented then are classified as having attended that event, you will know to send a follow-up email to this individual specific to that event. You're going to let them know of a save the date. When is that next event happening again so that you can make sure that they are in attendance? So that is one small, you know, segmentation area to consider. But that event attendee may also be a monthly giver or they might be within a certain anniversary date. So that person could be in multiple lists. Okay. Thank you for bringing that up because so what I'm thinking of is an educational system. I'm thinking of the school. And so maybe the first segment would be year graduated, right? Yes. Everybody in your list in theory is well, maybe not, but the majority of your people in your database are going to be assigned or have the ability to be assigned to that, right? And then another another category could be are they are they donors? And then within that are they monthly givers? Have they given to endowment? You know, are they a one-time gift? You know, stuff like that, right? So so you're taking this almost like in a in a spider web format and that they can cross over? Yes, absolutely. And you can dig even deeper in regards to the educational format. Perhaps you know that this person was on a sports team, right? And so you want to contact this person and share about the athletics or perhaps you know that they were in, you know, a production or theater class and then you could segment that way. Again, there's so many ways how you can splice and dice this, but it's really about classifying into interest and categories. And that is so you can customize and personalize in a much easier fashion than to every single donor or supporter every single time. Okay, so that like is a little bit of a hair on fire moment for me because I know which is always a good thing. Yes, you've got this school and you have your alums and you're trying to determine, you know, where their what buckets are going to fit in. Can you get too many segments? Probably. Now, here's what I recommend is as you build out your communications calendar, you're identifying which segments you are communicating with, right? So that way you're mindful throughout your year of all of the different communication towards your segmentation. So for instance, I just helped an organization separate a list of individuals that had not given a gift. So they're in the donor database as someone of interest but has yet to give a gift. So we sent an email out to this particular segmentation. We customized and personalized the email based off of their name and where they came into the organization. So again, an event. Our ask to them was to make a $5 donation because our goal was to move them from a zero to a five, right? But we would not send a $5 donation request to someone that's a major donor because that would be a moot point. We would be going down the ladder if we're playing shoots and ladder actually we would we would just slide right down that slide. So we did not send out an email to the larger donors. Okay, so then I have so many questions. So I'm in the hot seat. You are, sister. Okay, so let's go back to the school model. Okay. And the school models are so interesting to me because as most of us know, the largest fundraising institutions in our in our nation are higher education universities. They're the ones that are the best funded. They have the largest endowments. And it's not just the Ivy League schools. I mean, it goes across this country. It's really an interesting model and system for fundraising. Because in essence, their there's their their engagement ends or recirculates every four years, right? Right. So they don't have this information. So I want to go back to this classification of when you have let that situation where your alums or the folks that you've worked with are maybe no longer in your community or how do you keep up that segmentation and make sure that it's accurate and that you're working it properly? Or do you just have to like give up at some point and put them into a big group? Yes, and probably a little bit of both, right? And I can speak about my particular alma mater. We've had them on Landry University. So I was a mass communication communications theater undergrad. I was an athlete and I, you know, lived in the same same state. So my home state was the state of this university. Then when I graduated and now I live across country from this or from this university, right? So I guarantee you I am in these different segmentation. So a Phoenix alumni chapter, right? I would receive anything that might come to place in the Southwest community. And now if something came up in particular with soccer, I am also receiving information on that because of my involvement with the sports. And then the same for my for my degree or my major is I receive information on the mass communication program. And so I'm receiving multiple communication pieces from my alma mater, but based off of my involvement and engagement with this institution, and we can do this as human service organizations, as animal shelters, we can we can do this in just about any of our top nine nonprofit sectors. Okay, so get out your crystal ball, sister. Okay, I got it. And this is like a weird question. But how many segments do you think that with your alma mater, you're in? I mean, you, you, you, you talked about sports, the class, right? The year you graduated, you are, you think there's a geography point of where you, where you reside? Geography, gender, because I know they will be launching a Women in Philanthropy program, right? Okay, gender. So we're four. I mean, what, what are your thoughts? Like, you know, how, how many buckets is there in that CRM? And that when Jared Ransom pops up, it's like, bing, bing, bing, bing. Yeah. Well, and it's not just segmentation, you know, there are for a variety of organizations in the CRMs that they use the client relationship management tool. And I have had the privilege of working in plumerating, right? And so that's been a lot of fun. So there's classification, there's category, there's attributes, there's groups, there's a lot of ways in how you can identify key words or key targets for your segmentation purposes. But I feel like we're kind of intertwining, you know, is this person in a group or are they, are they in this segment? And so there's, there's some difference there, but all segmentations are not the same, right? And so what I'm doing for one organization may not be the same for another organization. This also comes in greatly with moves management. So again, I talked about, you know, we have a bucket, again, that formal classification word, you put them in a bucket. We have this bucket of individuals that are in our database, but literally have not given a single dollar. So our moves management strategy on that segmentation is simply to move them to make a financial gift of $5, right? And so again, the monthly givers, if those are in a separate classification, some states have a wonderful state tax credit. And so for instance, in our state, Julia, it's 400 for an individual, 800 for my Mary jointly, that is one of my favorite buckets to classify because as an individual, I know that their giving capacity is up to 400. So let's say they've given us 200, only half of that, we know that there's a $200 gap in which we can customize and personalize our conversations or communication with these segmented groups strategically for moves management. I can nerd out about this forever, but again, every organization is different. It depends on what are your goals, what are your your motivation points for your customers or your constituents. And there's so many ways in how you can create and utilize segmentation. Okay, I'm like super excited about this because I just see that this works seamlessly with if you get it to work right correctly with your digital communications. It's just like genius. But if you would help us to understand like classifications, let's say we're just starting out, or maybe we want to revisit to revisit this, I mean, I know so many of us in the nonprofit sector were like, get their email address, get their email address, and then we'll worry about the rest. But, you know, if we're like looking at holistically going through this data and really trying to navigate this, what are some basic starting points that you would say like this is level a beginner and then, you know, we move from there. Can you can you help us synthesize? Yes, I always always say, let's start with the giving threshold. Okay, so again, if you have $0 donors, meaning they have not given to you and they're in your database, or maybe they haven't given to you yet this year, and they're in your database. So that could be a libut or cyber meaning last year, but unfortunately not this or some year, but unfortunately not this. So they've given to you, but they haven't this year. Okay, that could be one classification. Then I like to start at $1 to let's say $249. That is going to be, you know, your second lowest because zero is as low as you can go. And then your $1 to $249, $250 to $499, $500 to $1,000 or to $999. But you really also want to identify and reverse engineer Julia, what is your major gift? So for some organizations, it might be $50,000. While other organizations might have a major gift level at $5,000. So I do like to do some reverse engineer based off of some metrics like that. You know, I love that you said that because I was just working with a very large organization. And we had Fundraising Academy on Jack Alotto and many others talking about major gifts. And it was a whole week that we did that. They had some fascinating ways of calculating and measuring it. So I've been asking nonprofit leaders, what's your major gift threshold? Yes, two camps. One camp, top 10, top 25. It's a hard number. And then I've had other camps that have been like, well, if you give $1,000 or more, if you give $5,000 or more, if you give $10,000 more, nothing has been where I thought it would be. They've all been really low numbers. And so I'm fascinated by this because to me, that's a classification issue that maybe is not being monitored enough. Well, I think it changes. You know, I have one organization that will say, well, technically $5,000 is our major gift. But we get a lot more $1,000 gifts instead of, you know, the $5,000. So those are also our major givers. So there's discrepancy within a singular organization. But again, I think the larger your organization by way of operating dollars, the larger your major gift amount tends to be. So if you are, let's say a $5 million organization, the chances of your major gift being $1,000 or even $5,000 is probably pretty slim. You're probably looking more at $25,000 or above. Okay. Interesting. Along this line of classifications, I'm wondering, do you ever see organizations that you work with turn this information into like a monthly report or some like a, you know, kind of like a status report so that everybody outside of development kind of knows what some of these numbers are, not like a printout of everybody's record, but just some metrics so that we could see how many people we have that are donating at this level or that level or does it tend to just stay in development? So another great question from you, Julia. And I'm sure you remember seeing annual reports that list the entire donor database at these various levels. So not only has that information been used internally, but truly externally as a communication from many organizations now that practice has slipped to the wayside, there's still organizations that do it, but I would say the majority of organizations have stopped doing that for multiple reasons. But I do think when it comes to internally with your team, it's important to share that information and also for, you know, as we talk about breaking down silos within departments as we share information across, you know, organizational departments, it's really important to say what a $5,000 gift can do for your organization and why we are seeking more of those or why we're pushing a monthly sustainer group, right? Even at a $5 a month donation, you know, five times 12 months, that's a pretty decent gift. And that in and of itself is one group of supporters. So this makes me ask this follow up question is, it seems to me like this would be amazing information to put into a dashboard report so that everybody could be seeing this that would demonstrate the growth or the slide depending on what's going on. And I'm wondering if you've ever worked with an organization or that where you would set sub goals, okay, we have as of January 1st, so many people in this classification, but we want to get to X. I mean, is that something that you've seen done or that you were talking my love language, Julia? Yes, absolutely. Because that ties into moves management. So for instance, you know, if I am the chief development officer, and I am managing in my portfolio, all of the major donors, the goal for everyone on the team is to get as many donors on my list, meaning they're giving 5,000 or 25,000 or above. And so working them from, you know, not have giving in the past, maybe they started off on that $0 list. And then now they have been cultivated and steward, perhaps we use the cause selling education model, right? And then now we've engaged them to that to that major donor level. So there's a lot of strategy strategy that goes into place there. And I don't want to say that everyone has to go from the bottom to, you know, the major gift. But if we could move someone from, you know, a $249 gift a year to $1,000 and above, that is a huge win for your mission. Yeah, I think it's really interesting. We don't have much time left. And I have been riveted by this conversation. And part of me wants to witness to all of our viewers, I wish we had had this earlier. And we talk about this so much with our guests in between you and I. But I've really appreciated, Jared, you pulling this back in and giving us a more realistic approach in the cadence to which, you know, our organizations can use this. But I'm wondering, is this the sort of thing where we need outside help, like a moves management, like Sasha Lewis, somebody to come in and help us? Or is this stuff that we can be doing internally? Because it sounds to me like you kind of got to set it up and then work it a while. Like you said in the get go, you can't be changing this every month. No, and I think there's different layers to how you use this and some of those best practices. So could you bring someone in to help you? Absolutely. If you are committed to be intentional with that work, right? But I would say, you know, at the very basic, I would identify your donor database in monetary buckets or in gift ranges. And once you export these reports, if you have a donor database, like something like Blumerang, then you can manipulate an Excel file, right? Then we can manipulate and say, okay, you know, we have a development team of 10 people. So here's how I'm going to divide up our 3,500 donors, right? Everybody will have a list of individuals to get to work with. And this makes it much better to increase our personalization, again, personalization and customization. So there's a lot of ways to do this. There are so many basics you and your team can do on your own. And then when you're ready to level up to that next step and you're ready to truly be intentional on working that strategy, you might want to bring someone in to help at that next strategic level. So what I hear you saying is you kind of got to get in the rhythm and the discipline of thinking this way and working it and then work towards the refinement versus starting out. And it's like totally, you know, totally in there because this is only as good as your information, right? Garbage in, garbage out. If you're not... Absolutely. Yeah. And so I took the Fundraising Academy Cost Selling model and I put it into a donor database. And so each person in this portfolio on the constituency list now is at one of those three phases for cost selling. So there's so many ways, yeah, there's so many ways you can utilize this. Okay. Second here on Fire Moment of the Day. Brilliant. Yeah. And I'm sorry, Bloomerang. It was a competitor CRM. But the point is you can do this. You can engage this and you can customize your donor databases so that you can include these moves management and segmentation tactics. Wow. Well, this is amazing. I mean, there's a reason why we call you, Jared Ransom, the non-profit nerd. I mean, I always say this to you and I don't probably say this enough publicly, but you really are the non-profit nerd. I know you're my non-profit nerd and the non-profit nerd. I mean, to be sharing your knowledge like this, it's really cool. And it's just such a powerful way to be thinking about our organizations. And I can see, Jared, to your point, it's a discipline. It is. And it takes some work. And especially if it's a new change, that in and of itself brings some unfamiliarity. But for me, it is so much fun because it gamifies the development donors. Yeah. And yeah, I can totally see it. And I can see the value in really creating that dashboard or that methodology so that you can track what's going on. You know, because if you don't know where you're going or what the journey is, it's, yeah, I mean, it's a big, big issue. Well, Jared Ransom, you're a rock star. Thank you so much. You know, if this is an episode that you've been watching us live and you feel like you might want to share this with your team or go back and access some of these talking points that Jared had with us, check us out. We are on Roku. We're on YouTube. We're on Amazon Fire TV and Vimeo. Jared always likes to say that, you know, you can speak into your smart remote and we're damn near going to be sitting on the sofa with you because we'll pop up on the screen. Yeah, I think that's our next update. So our software update will allow that. Let me tell you, I have to watch, you know, I don't have to, but I do. I watch these episodes pretty much every night on our big screen TV to learn and to refine and to see what's going on. And it's a bit jarring to see, you know, us on the big screen, but nonetheless, you can see it. Again, we want to thank all of our sponsors who are with us in this amazing conversation, Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy, The Nonprofit Nerd, Your Part-Time Controller and Staffing Boutique. These folks are with us day in and day out and it's really been a pleasure to work with them and to get to know them because so many of the products and the services they sell dovetail to what it is we talk about here on the show. And so something that just is really been a blessing in our lives and in having us afforded the opportunity to work with our viewers every day. Jared, you've really given me a lot to think about and I love, love, love how logical and natural it is, but that it is a practice. It is a practice, absolutely. But it, it should help to elevate your development initiatives. And again, the whole point is the more money we are able to bring in, the better we're able to support our community. So bringing a profit to your nonprofit is really important. It is. I love it. Wow. Well, you know what, my friend, this has been great. I, again, you've given me so much to think about as you always do. And I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing your time and your talent with us. We like to end every day with this mantra, if you will. Stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow, everyone.