 Welcome, we are so glad to have you here at the nonprofit show for a nonprofit power week with Bloomerang. So each and every day this week, we will have a representative from Bloomerang joining us. And today we have none other than Josh Meyer. So glad to have you here, Josh. And he's going to talk to us about learning from current nonprofit giving trends. So stay with us as we launch and kick off the nonprofit power week with Josh. We do want to say huge thank you to Bloomerang, you know, really dedicating this week to this intensive conversation, conversations, plural. We have a lot to talk about. And we have several representatives from the company joining us. Julia Patrick is here for all of it. CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. I'm Jared Ransom, your nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven group. We are so honored each and every episode to have the support from our presenting sponsors. So another huge shout out goes to our friends at Bloomerang, American nonprofit Academy, staffing boutique, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising Academy at National University, nonprofit nerd, as well as your part time controller. These companies are here for you. And they also allow us to archive our episodes 700 plus plus plus we're marching towards our fourth year, in fact, next month. And you can tune us in anywhere you stream entertainment. So you know, you can watch us on Roku, YouTube, Vimeo, Amazon Fire TV, as well as listen to us anywhere you stream your podcast. So go ahead and queue us up there too. Josh, we are so excited to have you. For those of you watching and listening, today we have Josh Meyer, VP, Vice President, Demand Generation at Bloomerang. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And I just want to let the audience out there. There will be no sales pitches this week. All right. It's just lots of good information. So stick around with us for the whole week. The team is super excited to be here. And I'm incredibly thrilled to be here this morning. Thank you for having me. You know, one of the things that I love about your organization and that it's been my experience from the beginning well before we ever met you. And that is this generous spirit that Bloomerang always comes to the table with information that you share with the entire world. And frankly, I always think of stuff you could be gating that you could be like, no, this is only for our clients or you're going to have to pay to play kind of thing. But you day in and day out seem to really be on the cutting edge of knowledge, but sharing that knowledge. And I think that's why Jared and I are so excited this week. Good. Yeah. No, we love that. We, you know, we love being able to get it out there because I feel like it just helps the nonprofits, right? And like at the end of the day, everyone sort of wins, right? And so I think that's the, that's the goal, right? That's the reason Bloomerang was started, you know, back in the day is, you know, to make it easier for nonprofits to fundraise. So, and part of that is understanding the data and the trends, which we're going to double click in on today. And I cannot wait to very excited. Well, let's start off because, you know, trends, it seems like that's for like the big players and the enterprise, you know, sized organizations. But I think you're going to help us understand that this could be something that even a small, if you will, typical nonprofit can engage in. How can that be? Yeah, I mean, I think you look at, you know, how trends impact typical nonprofits, right? It's really, you can be small, you can be big, right? And where I like to tend to look towards is the data, right? And that data comes from all different places, right? Which I think is another slide that we have in this deck here, but it is looking towards both in sort of seeing what are you seeing within your nonprofit, right? But then also the larger macro trends, which are in the industry, and there's a lot of sort of different places that we can find that. And, you know, it can look at something like donor retention, right? We can look for a trend in that, but it doesn't necessarily have to be there as well, right? You can look at sort of how are your response rates on your emails and how are your response rates on your direct mail, right? Or how is phone calls having an impact, right? And so there's all these little data points that says this little trail of data, right, that all these nonprofits are making. And so it's really important to look at both the micro, right? Sort of how are you doing as a nonprofit and sort of comparing, you know, what you did this year versus last year, but also looking at sort of the larger nonprofit ones, because I think that's where we can borrow ideas and sort of implement them in our nonprofits on a day-to-day basis. Yeah. I love how Bloomerang is so giving, you know, really looking at the trends and compiling the trends and sharing the trends. You know, Julia, we have seen not only with the Bloomerang representatives, but many thought leaders around the nation how these trends have changed over the last three years. Yeah. And Josh, you know, talking about this today, you're so right. There's many microcosms, but we can borrow from some of those, you know, larger organizations to see what's being done. So this is really impacting so many, you know, organizations. And we always say that, you know, there's 1.8 million registered in the U.S. So where are these trends being discovered? Talk to us about that. Yeah. So I think there's two. So when you're thinking about the macro, I mean, there's a number of sort of people doing a number of studies, right? But I think where we tend to gravitate, where we pull a lot of our data, there's two, which is the Giving Institute, right, which we are members of, and they do giving USA every year. And that is, that report, I think there is sort of a nominal fee there, but there's a lot of really good data in there. We also look at the Fundraising Effectiveness Project. Now that's a project out of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, right? The largest fundraising association in the country. And they actually aggregate, we sort of contribute some of our blimmering data into that data set, but then there's a couple of the other CRM donor management softwares also contribute. And so they aggregate the data and they sort of issue quarterly reports and then they'll do one big one to summarize the previous year. So I'm really excited actually to see the Fundraising Effectiveness Project data for 2022. We're still waiting on that. It'll be interesting to see. But those are, those are where we kind of look at, we're thinking macro and sort of big sort of trends in the industry. Now I think you can also double click and look at your own data, right? That's the other thing. And we sort of, we looked at this and I think some people get really, like, oh my God, I'm not a mathematician. I'm not a statistician, right? Like, I can't do that. And so I think, you know, I think when I look at that, I say, well, no, you can do this, but you just got to start small, right? And that's the, that's the thing, right? We work with a lot of small to medium sized nonprofits. And so it's really sort of, it's picking one or two data points, right, to sort of click in there and sort of look at and start looking at those trends, but they have a ton of data that is at their available. Now, whether or not it's organized or not, right? And we, I could even say that's not a little bit about Bloomerang as well. But we all have, you know, issues with data and trying to keep it clean. But, but yeah, it's, those are the two sort of big pieces. I think it's within your own backyard. But also, right, looking at sort of the larger studies that are done, oftentimes on an annual basis, but in some cases on a quarterly basis. Yeah. Wow. Josh, I'm curious, are you seeing these trends changing? You know, like we've been in the sector a long time. You both say exactly how long, right? But really looking at how these trends continue to take place and shape, is there anything that's been like, wow, this is just amazing to me? Is there anything that stands out to you? Well, I mean, I think there's a couple of things. Like one of the things I always look at is like the average, not the average, but the total donation amount, right? Through, and that's a really big one that the Giving Institute does every year, right? They have this chart. They've been doing this, I think since they've either been doing it since 1980, or that's the first year that they aggregated the data, right? Sort of, they may have retroactively done that. But you look at the total revenue, the total amount given to nonprofits over that timeframe. And one of the things, the trends that I love to look at is it goes up and to the right. And what I think is, I wish I should have had it ready for you guys to pop up here. But I think what's really interesting is you look at the savings in crisis, savings and loans crisis, and that was at the 80s or the 90s, right? And you look at the dot com bust in, you know, around 2000, 2001. And then you, the great recession, right? And the late aughts, right? The 0809, right? And even in the peak of the pandemic, right? 2020, there was marginal drops, right? In the amounts of revenue that was being brought in. But overall, that trend line is up into the right, right? And we'll look at, I think here, we have my three trends that I want to sort of double click in. We'll look at that in a second. But I think it's really important to keep that in mind that even through all of those sort of crises, if you will, right? There were little marginal dips, but the bottom didn't fall out. And so I think as fundraisers, as we're trying to figure out, like, how, what do these trends mean to, for me, and how do I, how can I use this data? I think it's a really encouraging sign that it goes up into the right, even despite some of the economic and just sort of other things that are happening in the world, right? That that fundraising continues to grow. The other thing is like looking at donor retention, right? And we're not, I didn't have that on my top three, but I think donor retention is one thing that if you're going to measure a metric, or if you're going to try and look at something within your own data, donor retention is a really big one. And what we're starting to see is that it has been going down over the past five years, right? It is, you know, roughly, you know, just below first-time givers is, you know, closer to 20%. The average is around 40%. But I think what's, and that has been going down, but I think what's really interesting, the one thing that hasn't changed when you think about donor retention is repeat donor retention. So if you can get them to give you that second gift, that has been average, that has been staying around 60%. And so that's like, how do you get to the second gift, right? And that's one of the things that I always like to talk about. It's like, if you can get them to that second gift, your donor retention will stay. But, you know, as you're looking at a trend and something that as a nonprofit that you can do, I would highly sort of, that's the one thing. And if you're like, I don't know how to do donor retention, we do actually have a couple blog posts on our blog. And we actually have a calculator, like, you know, one of those calculators when you're trying to figure out your home mortgage rate or your student loan rate, we built one on the Bloomerang website for people to be able to go in and sort of put in their current donor retention and what would it look like if they could increase it. That new donor journey is so important. Like you said, they give their first gift. How do we get them to activate a second gift quicker and possibly higher? And you're right. Bloomerang has a lot of information, blogs, webinars, you know, that talk about that. You're already super nerdy, Josh. And I love this, right? Because Julie and I have also said, you know, data is sexy. We think it's sexy. So let's talk about those top three trends that you suggest we watch. I know you mentioned a couple of them. And then you're like, this other one wasn't even on my trend list. But talk to us about these top three that you've identified. Yes, I think the first one is, and again, this comes from a combination of the fundraising effectiveness project and the Giving Institute. But I think when you look at the fundraising effectiveness project data, right, what we're seeing is like individual smaller donors are down, right? But the overall, and so the overall number of donors is down, but the revenue is up. And so it's like a head scratcher to me. It's like, how can my number of donors going down, but retention, or but the overall revenue is going up. And the secret sauce there is major donors, right? And so it's looking at those really large gifts. Those are going up, or those people are maintaining their level of giving. And so that's a trend that I think is really as fundraisers, we need to be really focused on that, which takes me to my next trend here, which is trying to figure out, which is looking at building a plan around non-cash gifts or not credit card, not check, right? Not actual cash cash, right? And starting to think about why, right? Why would you want to do that? Well, major donors oftentimes aren't giving in cash, right? They're giving in stock, or they're giving through a donor advice fund, right? Or in some cases, they're giving through crypto. And as nonprofits, we need to be ready to figure out what is my strategy around non-cash gifts and how is my is my website ready to accept those types of gifts? Is my staff know what to do? If someone picks up the phone and says, I have $100,000 worth of Amazon stock that I want to give to you, do you know what to do? And I think that's really important. I think those two are tied together. I'm going to stop here because I know I'm enrambling. No, I mean, my first question is when I think about these super gifts, understanding that we are in a period of, there's been a lot of money made in this country through the pandemic and through the tech world. We know that. But is this something that is going to shift? And at the same time, we're seeing a major demographic shift where people are inheriting that second house that was their parents or an art collection or land or, you know, expensive collections of whatever. It seems to me like while those super gifts might shift these other gift types, it's going to continue on, don't you think? This isn't just like a trend that's kind of like a flashy thing. It seems to me that the trajectory of this, because we are inheriting different types of wealth, it's going to really be something that comes our way, to your point, if we're prepared. Yeah, I agree with you. I think looking at some data, the Schwab charitable giving, which is Schwab's donor advised fund, I think the deposits into the donor advised fund were up, I think it was, I want to say mid 20s, 22, 27% over the previous period. And so I think that the part of that is this wealth. But I think also the tax laws that were rewritten a couple years ago makes it a lot more advantageous to make one big gift into a donor advised fund and get the tax right off that specific year and then make gifts from the donor advised fund over the subsequent years, because they may not qualify for whatever that minimum threshold is to do your deductions. This is where I, tax laws not my strength here, but yeah, there is some key benefits there. Yeah, and I think that that's one of the things that we're seeing the financial institutions offering this. It used to be that the deaths really only came from like the community foundations or from, you know, very small numbers. But now you're seeing more and more opportunities for, you know, middle class upper middle class families to get involved. It might be small, but it can grow. And it's a, it's something we haven't talked enough about I think in our industry. So very, very interesting. Okay, so you see this trajectory of money coming in, it's going in, but the profiles of how it's coming in and what's coming in is changing. This trend, again, is this going to be something that you think it's going to be disrupted by another trend? Or is this just going to continue to grow? What are your thoughts? Crystal ball moments. I mean, here's the thing the data will tell us in time, right? But I do think, I do think we are in a point where sort of being able to understand these major gifts and having a hard, you know, being able to harness that I don't know that a ton of nonprofits are doing that really well. Or let me, let me take that back. I think there's just always room for opportunity, right? I think there are nonprofits, there are several nonprofits that are doing a really good job. And I think it's just how do you continue to stay on the ball, right? And how do you continue to, you know, to evolve there? Another thing that we're seeing is right bequests, right? 9% of the guests come from bequests. Who gives bequests? Right. Jared, what? Who does? Right, they're people, but it's like, you know, it's the long-term game. You're right. Yeah, you know, it's gifts from people that have passed and have left us in their trust or will. It's so interesting to me because, you know, organizations, I always hear them, Josh, will be like, we need to take legacy giving. We need to take legacy giving. And it's not the instantaneous result. We're waiting for people to pass. It's the long game, right? But I think just being aware and sort of doing education with your donors and your community, sharing what a bequest could mean to your specific organization and how to plan for and giving them the resources along those lines. And so I think that's also something to sort of think about, right? As you're thinking about your mix, I think we always get, you know, your online campaigns, right? And your email campaigns and your direct mail. And it's like, how do we factor all of this in? Because it is. It's these savvy nonprofits that have this multi-stream of revenue, right? Like that you're not relying on one. So if one is down, you can offset it by another, right? And I think that's really, really important. So you think big, you know, Fortune 500 companies do this well. You think about Amazon that started just with books, right? But now you can buy anything there, right? And I think as nonprofits, we got to think about where is our revenue coming from and making sure that we're not relying on just one sole stream of revenue for our success. And I love seeing in the financial revenue when nonprofits have earned income. Like I remember when that started trending and looking at adding that into the diversification, you know, really looking at how to build out a healthy. I'm still stuck on the major giving, honestly, Josh, because major gifts are defined differently by organizations across the nation. For one organization, it could be a thousand, someone else 5,000, someone else 25,000. So really looking at the makeup of these trends could change based off of the organization. Is that right? Yeah, I think that's right. And I think it's what is meaningful to you and to your organization and sort of how you're and where you are in your stage of development, right? That could change, right? You could take your thousand dollar donors and the goal is to right to move those people up, right? Using data intelligence, right? There's a number of data intelligence services out there will sort of append data, public records, so you can kind of understand so if a thousand dollar donor has that, you know, two, you know, two, five million dollar houses that you don't even know about, but you're able to get through some of that data intelligence. And there's a number of services out there that will help you with that. It's then trying to have those conversations and move them up. And so then you start having more and more $5,000 or $10,000 donors. And so you adjust, you adjust your program and you adjust your benefits. And I think as you grow, then your major gifts and your major gifts program should change as well as you're as you're developing, for sure. You know, when we talk about trends, I'm so curious, I mean, because it seems like a lot of pressure to put on an organization. And I think sometimes we're so busy trying to do our work and our programming that we don't invest in stepping back and thinking about these things, looking at the trend lines. Can you give us, and this is like a total curveball, but can you give us some strategies on how we can even begin to wrap our heads around this and have the discipline to be looking for this information? Yeah. I mean, I think some of this comes down with goal setting, right? Like what are your goals for the year, right? And what is the intention of those goals? You know, I think making sure that you have the proper tools and you're investing in the right system so that you can track things, that's also really key. And then it's, I think this is the thing, right? Like I get, I think we all, right, the three of us, right, get so excited and we're tossing all these ideas out and things that, you know, nonprofits should be doing or thinking about, but it's really taking a really intentional breath and saying, these are the three things we're going to focus on this year, right? And I think three is a really good number, right? I think when you get more than three, you know, you start, your priorities start, you know, shifting, you know, you could argue, you could go more. So I'm not going to lay down a sword on that. But I think, you know, if you can focus on three metrics, right, for the year and sort of look at those metrics and intentionally look at them on a weekly or monthly basis, right, you're going to be, it's going to become routine. And then you're going to try and figure out, all right, how can we move the needle? Maybe it's the number of major donors. Maybe it's your, the one that I would say the gold star metric that I is donor retention, right? I think if you can measure donor retention and keep your eye on donor retention, it just has so many really positive benefits. And I think it's just trying to find, not to overwhelm, right? Because we know the programs, that's how the work gets done. But we got to pay for that work, right? We got to make sure that we have the right staff to be there and to be able to deliver the work. And so I think the fundraising needs to sort of equal weighting on that. Otherwise, you're going to end up with all these fabulous programs, but no way to pay for them. Yeah. It's got to sustain, help to provide that maintenance. And then also the potential of growing that. And what does that look like? If there's a program growth that's needed, or if there's a new program that's needed, really looking at that cost analysis. This is all so very interesting to me. So those top three trends, I also talk about them. I'm sure you too, Josh, about KPIs. These are our key performance indicators. These are the three that we want to track. How do we measure success internally? How do we share that with the board? And then how do we tell that story to our supporters? Yes. It's a lot to think. Was there a question in that? No question. A statement of importance. Yeah. You know, Josh, I think it's really interesting because I love your comment about boiling it down to three things and then really focusing in on that because it's really easy to get overwhelmed and then to say, oh my god, this is trending here. This is trending there. And then we lose sight and we get, it seems to me like we can be chasing things that ultimately don't matter for our organization. So I think this is like, for me, maybe the moment that brings it all together and it makes it a lot more achievable. So I appreciate you saying that, pulling that back down. Really, really interesting. Well, our time has flown by and it's really hard to believe that. But you know, this is what I love about Blumerang. They have these amazing talents that share their knowledge. Josh Meyer, vice president, demand generation at Blumerang. You're just such a font of knowledge, but I love how you can always, you always seem to make it like plausible and real for us. And speaking about that, we have a real IRL, Jared always teases me about that, but we have a in real life thing coming up with you. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah, sure. So we are super excited to be welcoming the nonprofit show to our booth at the AFP icon show, show in the show. Right, happening in New Orleans. So for those of you that are going to be joining us for AFP icon in New Orleans the week, I think it's April 16th through the 18th. We'd love you to stop by and watch the show is going to be live. Did we decide Monday and Tuesday? Yeah, right. Monday, Tuesday, I think it's the 14th, 15th, or something right around like mid-April, yeah, in New Orleans. And we'll have Mike Geiger from AFP joining us as well and possibly the new CEO of Blumerang. Maybe, we'll see. You have to work on that. But yes, yes, there'll be definitely whoever's there, it'll be a really awesome lineup. And we'd love for you to watch, come join us, watch live. We'll have some chairs set up and you could meet Jared in person and it'll be really fun. It'll be a good time. You might actually even get like pulled into the show last year that happened. People standing around, it was like, you know, just pop on in and it's high energy. There's a lot going on. Blumerang is, you know, always one of the thought leaders I tend to go to with my clients and talk about. And so, you know, starting this nonprofit Power Week with you, Josh has been such a pleasure and the entire lineup this week are representatives from Blumerang. Tomorrow we have Anne Feldman on, I believe she's chief marketing officer, you know, come in, talk about all of this. And if you missed it in the beginning, as Josh said, there is no pitches, we're not selling Blumerang. In the spirit of Blumerang, the culture of Blumerang, really looking to share, you know, all of the insight that this thought leader provides. So a lot, a lot of information coming to you this week from Blumerang. So thank you for the partnership. It's going to be really amazing. We're going to be talking about everything from how you steward your first time donors and really an interesting thing because it tags on to what Josh was talking about getting to that second gift. And there are five really easy tangible things that you can look at that. I can't wait for this one, spring cleaning your donor database because we always say this, you know, we believe that data is sexy and so how do you, you know, how do you get that new wardrobe going? And then tax receding, how to make it easier. And then at the very end of the week, we're going to take a look at how you, what are the questions you as a nonprofit leader should be asking when looking at a CRM. And this is going to be a really interesting series of questions because they're not the typical things that we tend to know about or ask until after we've made a decision and sometimes the wrong decision. And so this is going to be a really interesting way to kind of front load some of these questions that we should be thinking about. So anyway, a lot of exciting things. We are super, super excited to dig into this. Josh, thank you so much for being such a big part of this. Because you've been right in there with us trying to help figure out what nonprofit power week looks like and what we should be talking about. So we definitely want to give you our gratitude and just say thank you for kicking off the week. Yeah, well, thank you for having us. Thank you for having me and thank you for having us this week. We are super excited. So it is a, we love this partnership and thank you for all the work that you do. And for all of our nonprofit friends out there, thank you. You are the true heroes in this community on the ground getting the programs up. So thank you for your work. Thank you. And that's true. And we, we, that's a wonderful way to end this because we do believe that. I mean, this country is great because we do have the nonprofit structures in place and continuing to grow. And our partners help us let these nonprofits grow and flourish. Everybody from American nonprofit Academy to our friends at Bloomerang, Fundraising Academy at National University, nonprofit thought leader, our friends over at Staffing Boutique, your part-time controller, and of course, the nonprofit nerd. These are the folks that are with us day in and day out. And as Jared reminded us, more than 700 episodes moving into our fourth year of broadcasting. So we are super grateful for their support. Hey, Jared, I love the way we started off this week. This is a great trend. I mean, it couldn't have gotten any better. And yeah, so no pressure to the rest of the Bloomerang team, right? But yeah, it's, it's, it's so fascinating. I've told so many of my friends and clients in the, in the sector, hey, tune in this week. If you can't make it live, make sure you watch the recordings. So much information coming out. I just, I love the culture of Bloomerang, the customer service that you provide. It's, it's just fantastic. So thank you, Josh, for kicking off today's episode with us. And for all of you that have joined us, we end every episode with the same mantra. Thanks to Julia to please stay well so you can do well. We'll see you all back here tomorrow for the remaining of the Power Week. Thanks.