 Welcome to the nonprofit show, we are so glad you're here and maybe you are joining us again because this is a special week we don't do these very often throughout the year. But we are honored to have our third annual nonprofit Power Week with none other than the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption. Today we have with us, not a new guest but this is her first appearance this week so Jill Crombacker has joined us. She is the senior vice president of marketing and development at the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption. And I'm excited to learn from you as you share with us Jill best practices in particular around testing your marketing plan. We're honored to have this dedicated nonprofit Power Week, because November is special to your mission, which is National Adoption Month and so we've really helped you, you know, in the entire organization, bring more education to the sector across the globe so that other individuals can join your force, advocate, you know, do all the great work that we need to be doing for so many youth so thrilled to have you here with us today. Again, if you haven't met us yet, Julia Patrick, she's here, of course, she would not miss this week, CEO of the American nonprofit Academy, and I'm Jared Ransom co host also nonprofit nerd and CEO of the raven group. Again, honored to serve alongside day in and day out because of our amazing partners. So a shout out of gratitude goes to our friends at fundraising Academy with National University. Bloomerang, your part time controller, nonprofit thought leader American nonprofit Academy, staffing boutique nonprofit nerd, as well as nonprofit tech talk. These are the companies just like the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption that have allowed us these opportunities to have conversations of high high level we get into the weeds we get into some heavy conversations, but they're all around what could serve you and your nonprofit organization. Good news if you missed any of our previous episodes or any of the previous episodes of the Dave Thomas for foundation for adoption team members this week. We've got you covered, you can download the app and watch listen to us on the app you can also stream us on broadcast, as well as podcast platform so we're here for you you're you're viewing pleasure. But again, we are thrilled for our guest today. She's joined us previously again third annual. But we what we love truly with Jill Krumbacher, you are one of our rare guest Jill that serves in a dual role and that is that you oversee marketing as well as development. So welcome back to you. It's always a pleasure to be with you ladies you always make this a fun conversation so I'm excited let's go. Okay, first I've got to ask, and I know, I know things change but could you just kind of give us an overall about how many people are on your team, and how you really do have two major focuses that you bring together. Can you share a little bit with us. Sure, sure so we've been a growing team and we're still growing we currently have on both teams combined so we have a marketing team and a fundraising team that I'm that I manage, and we have about 22 folks all together so we've got, you know, roughly it's roughly split between those numbers so we've got, you know, a sizable marketing department and and fundraising department and their work for us is so intertwined that it's just, we decided not to try to separate it. So, we're one group. Yeah. It's amazing. I've got to ask it within you the structure. I mean, I would imagine you do have some remote employees but are your teams like physically together or are they kind of adjacent like how do they physically interact and engage because so many departments completely split and a lot of times they're not even in the same buildings or cities. Right. We are still mostly based here in Columbus, Ohio, we have a beautiful three story building that we get to spread out and we've got a few employees that are remote. We're the most part the marketing and fundraising team are all here. And we all are on the first floor of this building together so we're all on the same floor. We, we've got, you know, some, some, you know, our marketing teams kind of over here and our fundraising teams over here but we're all on the same floor we're sharing the same kitchen where we're one big department we're celebrating each other's birthdays and all of that. So, we really do physically sit in the same space, really. Good. It's good to know. It's, it's, it's fascinating. Yeah, and it, you know, I was sharing earlier, my preference is when there is a Jill Kronbacher there is someone that oversees both of those moving pieces because they work so synergistically, I believe, if we're doing it right. You at the organization has done a lot of fantastic work you've done that, but let's talk about how you have tested marketing, and in particular we're going to talk about how testing marketing is not revenue measurement. This kind of helped me perplexed when I first looked at that so what does that mean. Well, revenue was part of a measure but it is not the only measure by far and really to be to be, you know, truthful with the audience we are still on this journey of figuring this out so I don't come from a we have this all figured out you know posture. But we have realized that we need to test our marketing, because there are two, we believe there are two key components to raising money are our our goal in raising money. We have to have a lot of mark fundraising efforts which the marketing team supports all of those through all of their channels, whether it's direct mail or digital right there supporting all of those. But also to fundraise you have to have brand awareness, somebody's got to know who you are. Right. And that is 100% a marketing function. So, we are always measuring both we are measuring revenue and if that's going up, but we measure our brand awareness, and it is a tough thing to move. We are a national organization so we are measuring our national brand awareness. And it's really hard you know you've got organizations out there that can spend hundreds of million dollars a year to get their messages and brands built, you know, in the for profit space. But you have to have both of those things and so you know really we came to this journey of realizing we had to measure marketing because our fundraising dollars were going up because of the volume of fundraising. But our brand awareness wasn't going up as much as we would like to see it and so we're sitting here perplexed. Both work together when your volume of fundraising is going up there's more communications out, and more people will know of you, but we weren't really lifting that national brand awareness as much as we wanted and so it left us with the question of why not is something wrong with our creative. There are right there are some of the things that we do are fundraising focused but you might not know the difference between just a brand awareness we spend money just on brand awareness and we spend money just, you know, on fundraising, and the differences can be slight in in, you know, in how you're doing things and if revenues coming in and you're called to action at the end of it, but we are spending money on both things. And so we started to ask ourselves. Okay, well before we spend a whole lot more money on brand awareness just getting our name out there we got to make sure we have the best creative. It could be you all it says it's the Super Bowl one on one conversation right. It wasn't this add so hilarious whatever the storyline was everybody's talking about it the next day but nobody remembers what the organization was. It's the same thing here. And so, as we're trying to grow nationally, we've got great causes. And if someone's just feeling like being more philanthropic, or they come into a windfall of money who knows something exciting they're thinking, who am I going to give this to. If you're a name that can come up in that outside of they received a fundraising letter or they saw something digitally, if you are a name that they can think of that puts you in an opportunity that you wouldn't be in. We want both we want brand awareness and cause awareness the cause of foster here adoption to grow. And we want our fundraising dollars to grow. And so we realized, we need to start testing our creative to say, at the end of this, after they watch this along with 10 other things do they know who we were. Did our name get through. Or do we need to change our creative so that our name is bigger and bolder and in this places that at that place and all of that kind of stuff. So let's ask you to dig into that brand awareness testing because that's a heavy lift. And I would imagine most teams are just frantically worried about their creative and not even the deeper meaning so what does this look like to you and how do you measure this along with the retention. So what we, what we decided to do is we started reaching out to research, you know, firms to help advise us say we need to know if we're stacking up after somebody watches our ad. And again, we're we are looking at radio so could be hearing it we're looking at PSAs which are heavily TV for us. We're looking at digital ads billboard ads so all of those things how do we know that they're going to remember our name we can triple our spending and they're still not going to remember our name because something's wrong with it right so. And we have gone about it in a couple ways so one is of your set of creative how do you know which one's best this billboard ad or this one. You know within your own set of creative so you can test against your own creative and that would look something like you partner with someone online. A survey company let's say, and they show your billboard and then they ask the consumer a bunch of questions that have nothing to do with you. And at the end they say, what was that billboard ad what organization was that for at the beginning and that's not that expensive it's online research they're already doing the survey anyway. You're inserting a question into like let's say an omnibus you know a big, regulatory occurring survey online. And so you can insert all you know you're creative and see which one of your pieces is is at the end of that, doing better. So we do that to sort of narrow down which of our creative is the best for for holding our brand at the end of it. But then we didn't feel like that was enough then we take our best ad, and we put it in what's called a scatter reel. So this is where an online researcher would show our ad along with a bunch of other nonprofit ads, and then they would say which organizations, did you just see. And then we're like, well, we didn't stack up against this organization, and any of these why, you know, and there's no exact, all you can do is sort of look at that ad and be like what is it about it okay well they had a bigger logger it was a different color was, it was on the bottom of the screen the entire time or it was, whatever it was. So that's kind of the two ways that we're going about trying to figure out if our brand name is sticking in what we do. That is so fascinating for me. I'm curious and I've not done my research on this Jill so I own up to this past the organization Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption ever changed its branding. Yes. Okay, we have. Okay, as far as our fonts and our colors and the images we use that sort of brand personality who we are, we have. Yes. Yeah, I'm just so curious because when that conversation comes up for nonprofits right they think that is the silver bullet if we just change our colors if we just change our name if we just become an acronym instead of this big long verbose title that is going to be the slam dunk that we're looking for right I feel like that is such a misnomer. I think it's part of the story you know I don't remember I remember reading somewhere that feeding America really saw a big difference when they changed to feeding America and before that it was like, I'm going to get it wrong but it was some food bank you know, harvest food banks make it harvest something like that but that that they really felt like sometimes a name change can make a big interaction but without major dollars and without, you know it's not going to matter that much and I think you have to be mindful how often you change things like that because you want things to stick and you want that to look like your brand and so when you've just built that. Right, you don't want to just totally read if you redo it you have to think about that I'm not going to be recognizable I've changed my colors I've changed my brand. Sometimes what's better is to just turn the dial. It's just turn the dial a little bit right and that can help retain some of that brand look and feel but keep it fresh and new. Yeah, I love really great advice. You do a lot of multi channel and we know that for sure right and so talk to us about, you know what you've seen in regards to your fundraising channels which include email digital direct mail probably others. What have you tested by way of these platforms and any others that maybe we haven't mentioned. Yes, so a lot of these are direct you know they are fundraising measures and so you do use fundraising as a metric but it's not your only metric clearly. Fundraising is one but you know anyone who's worked in the space for a while and kept track of their data you know you're looking at clicks. You're looking at opens, you're looking at opt outs, like I don't want to see this anymore I'm opting out. All of that stuff tells you something if, if, if they don't open your email they can't read your message so what is it about your email, what is it about the sender, you know we have tested different senders of our emails and a lot of organizations do a lot for us a lot of times it's Rita she's our CEO but sometimes we have when we have a big fund I was just going to ask we put Wendy Thomas the Wendy Dave Thomas's daughter Wendy as the signer or the chair of our board or just other people and it's amazing the different open rates you will find when a different, you know, name pops in there. So, for email I think that's really important on all of it fonts, colors, donate buttons that are one color instead of another is really important to test on direct mail. Kind of what I've learned is a lot of it is not. It's not what they would teach you in English class about these beautiful paragraphs that are, you know, you know, four or five long to know they're like one sentences with tons of underlines and half of the thread and, and two pages long who wants a two page letter right but that's when you test it that's what works people actually ingest reading by sentences and they get lost in the paragraphs and. And so I think, you know, testing options and a lot of these channels is just by continually testing a couple of sets of creatives that classic ab testing, and you can do it with a lot of money and you can do it with not much money. And anyone can send two emails just try to keep as much about it consistent as possible send them on the same day at the same time to an equally split list of locations that you know as much as you can keep as much as you can consistent. So that the only difference is the creative is as much as you can and see what different response rates you get. And so you can do that over and over again is continually changing and then once you've learned something not assume that that lasts forever things change. Right. I love that. I love you said let me ask you this. And I know Jared has a question I want to jump in on in terms of the creative. I can mimic the creative standards for email, you know, anything digital and direct mail so that there's that branding messages consistent, or have you developed specific branding measurements or protocols for those different channels. We, you know the one for us that is most different because we found a testing and our partners that behave the most different was direct mail. Our brand is still the same but again the way we write it and the way it looks is not what performs the best is not clean and neat it's sort of all of those things that I just described whereas your other you know digitally and your website doesn't quite look that way. So, our brand is the same but there is there are definitely differences. Where we have found doing things a little differently and therefore it looks different does pay off in some of those channels why I don't fully understand I just know that. That's why I had to ask the question because it's, it's really a very interesting and sensitive thought process to be looking at your creative, you know, depending on where it's going to go, and what the medium is so yeah. I'm sorry I jumped on top of you. Say, I've been so grateful to have my hands and a lot of different donor databases with the organizations I've had the pleasure of working with Jill and there are some systems that provide that AB testing inside their software and I just think that's fascinating. It makes it easy it makes it enticing. So I'm curious how often are you testing an email are you testing a direct mail piece or you testing an ad right like how often are you doing some of this market research. Great question. You know, I think whenever you step into something new you have to test it so if it's your first entree into it, for instance in direct mail. We sent out a couple of different packages and some are to current donors and some are to acquisition audiences so we write so you're trying to acquire donors. And we do a test between two packages and the one that fares best is the one we use for the next year year and a half. And then you know we sort of let that right it's see how the return rates are going and it was probably be 18 months to two years we would retest on something like that. Here. I think on on email it's probably it's similar. As far as the frequency goes. So I think about 18 months to two year across most things we would retest, but we're also trying so many new things that it feels like we're testing more than that because we just started texting. And, you know, there's larger organizations way ahead of us and probably small organizations right ahead of us but, you know, we were sending just engagement texts without asks and so we're testing those now and now we're going to make our first ask via text and so we're testing those and so every new channel when you dip into it you have to test the retest I think for us we're about 18 months. I appreciate that a lot because I know it's kind of like the shiny object you know it's, especially if it's built into the software it's like well let's test again let's test again let's test again. I'm curious as you, you know, talk about this the cost implications. I love that you mentioned earlier you know it can. It can be costly but it doesn't have to be so you know again as many of our viewers are probably looking at you looking at the branding right there's this misnomer of the connection of Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption and Wendy's. So I would love for you to talk to us about how you know you really looked at the cost of what you do again leading these two departments. And as Rita mentioned yesterday. This organization has not always been a multi million dollar organization right like when she came in it was less than a million. Yep, that's absolutely right so everything that we have to do that we do we have a very sophisticated board. So they expect return on investment. We've got it we've got to show that now in fundraising and in particular building a fundraising program you know the investment happens for a while before you see the payoff and so it's about painting that picture of any expertise you can get from agent how long it will take that kind of thing but I think that's really important to know, but there are. There are expensive ways to do the things and less expensive ways I know that there are a lot of small nonprofits who, you know when we do some of this brand awareness spend. We just spent about 75,000 to do that's the scatter reel and then the testing, you know, on our own creative on. So that gives kind of an idea of how much something like that would would cost, but you know I worked at other organizations or talk to other people and other lives where you just got to get scrappy, and you can do it. You know what, like, get together your ads. Have them play have some some questions together to test your creative against each other, have a survey built go stand out on a college campus give everyone five bucks for state for coming through and answering that question you know it gives you something. There are a lot of civic organizations, you know meetings of different people ask them to come in and do a quick little market research study and be on your way. So it's amazing how open people and I've done a little bit of that stuff you don't want to just get your friends and family because they're too connected. But but there are groups of people that you can walk in, get 100 people to answer this thing and it gives you a start, So, all the small nonprofits we all know where we're scrappy with the best of them. And, and this can work that way to you can find out answers, even with a small budget you just got to put the work into it, get creative. It's a great idea truly for many of these small to mid sized nonprofits, many of them have corporate partners. You know what can these corporate partners provide by way of a $5 gift card. You know we had a guest on from Atlanta, of course she dropped Chick-fil-A I thought a few times in her conversation, like there's so many opportunities I think to partner with your partners to get to these results and I just love because for you and maybe you and the others it seems so so basic so easy but many of us, we don't know where to start right like where where do we even begin this process. And even for us right we we want our brand awareness to grow faster than the even the money that we can spend on it we're larger than some other organization so our one of our big partners was Wendy's we were talking to their consumer research team saying hey we're doing this brand research and they do research all the time and they said you know we've spent so much money with this organization they owe us a freebie. Right. We're going to call them and ask them to do this thing. Right. So a lot of your corporate donors they have access to that kind of stuff and would love to ask their vendors to do that for you. Yeah, I love that and Jared you are right. We need to be connecting with our partners more than just asking for the next big check. Yeah, absolutely. To say how do we connect and how do we build this because it's good for them. Right. It's good for them and their teams and so yeah I love that I think that's fabulous. Well you know Jill it's just so fascinating to have you on with us and again you know as Jared said in the very beginning this is the model that you have of being the lead of both marketing and development is one that you know she wishes we could see more of and why it while it's incredibly arduous and so sophisticated at the same time it's so basic it needs to be the way we think about this whole process and so it's always super fun that you come on and that you were that you're honest and that you share this information. I just love it and I really admire you for it because I think a lot of organizations like you said that scatter real I mean how many organizations are going to want to share what really happened because there's a competitive set right. Right. Right. Right. And so yeah this has been amazing. Really great. Jill Krumbacher senior vice president of marketing and development Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption. Check out their website DaveThomasFoundation.org. It is a beautifully done website that works through all processes if you are engaged or considering being you know an adoptive family if you want to learn about advocacy. If you want to donate if you want to look at you know planned giving all these different things you have white papers you have a lot of incredible research and it is it's really a beautifully done resource that far exceeds I think what most organizations can even put together and so we can't say enough about this it's it's again DaveThomasFoundation.org and check it out. Before we let you go and we're going to talk to Rita about this a little bit more share with us why you and some of your team were in Los Angeles recently for this big 25th anniversary celebration. We just filmed with CVS the 25th a home for the holidays special and it is about adoption and heavily about foster care adoption and all of the waiting children across the United States and for 25 years CVS has aired the special we sponsor it and we are thrilled to be the website you know that the call to action as the special runs so we just got to film the 25th annual one it airs on December 22 at 8pm Eastern time and great talent that's going to be involved this year and we encourage it's a beautiful holidays that it gets you gets you ready for the holidays has beautiful stories of adoption so everyone should tune in. I love that and I need to go pick up my my frosty tag right because that was that was a big gift for me last year where it went in a lot of stockings it was tied to a lot of cards it was like I'm definitely going to do this which I have a special connection with frosty. Anyway so having this as a give away for my family and friends was just fantastic. Yes, and and use those to taste the the peppermint frosty. Oh, we will have to do that you know our executive producer mentioned the pumpkin spice for uh huh. Jill you're always fantastic this entire week has been fantastic it is not over yet because we do have tomorrow, but we've had phenomenal leaders from Dave Thomas foundation for adoption. Again the third annual nonprofit power week so thank you for bringing these conversations to the forefront as we help to advocate awareness for national adoption month truly it's it's just been a pleasure. So, please do take a look at the recordings for all of these conversations trauma and working in the nonprofits realities of founder syndrome Rita was fantastic to share. I love that she's like, I don't want to overstay my welcome I need to, I need to read the room I just thought that was adorable. Thank you for having your marketing plan with you Jill again there's so much for us to learn. And we started the week with researching and changing attitudes and we will wrap up tomorrow for our Friday episode ask an answer again with Rita Soren and president and CEO of the Dave Thomas foundation for adoption. Julia Patrick always fun to be here with you I'm Jarrett ransom and as we sign off today we also want to give gratitude to our amazing partners so thank you to fundraising Academy at National University, bloom ring your part time nonprofit thought leader American nonprofit Academy staffing boutique nonprofit nerd as well as tech talk nonprofit tech talk so thank you again to these companies that allow us to have these conversations always a pleasure Jill. So thank you for joining us today. It's been a lot of fun and it's a it's really amazing work that I think that all nonprofits can learn from what you do, whether it's the topic near and dear to your heart. Just the brilliance with which you pursue your business and you pursue a national framework for your founders vision. It has been a remarkable discovery and we just love these conversations. As Jarrett said join us tomorrow will be our final day with Rita Alson and CEO and president of the Dave Thomas foundation for adoption. It's going to be a little different ask and answer because we are asking her questions that we have some that have come in from our viewers but mostly questions that we have about the whole ecosystem of the organization and how she navigates it along with her brilliant team. And so you won't want to miss it because it's really an opportunity to get inside the head of a phenomenal leader. Hey Jarrett every day we sign off and I think this week it's been incredibly profound with this message and it goes like this to stay well so you can do well. Thank you ladies so much and we'll see you back here tomorrow.