 Welcome everyone. As Mike said, I'm Jenny Arena with Heritage Preservation, but you already know that. It looks like we have 145 folks logged in right now, and it's slowly creeping, or quickly creeping sometimes. So today you are joining us, of course, for our third webinar in the course, Fundraising for Collections Care. And today we'll be discussing this all-important relationships with members and donors. Feel free to continue saying hello in that chat box, and throughout the webinar, feel free to ask those questions. We'll get to them during breaks, and if we can't get to them by the end of our session, I will try to answer those offline, as Mike said. As you guys know, this is just one course in our series, Caring for Yesterday's Treasures Today. Five courses have already been archived on the online community, and they are available for viewing whenever you guys have time. We are so incredibly grateful for the Institute of Museum and Library Services for making these courses available. The series has been made possible by a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Grant from IMLS, and we're also really fortunate to have learning times on board and Mike with us to help us with our website and webinars. So again, today is our third webinar. We'll meet again this Thursday, October 3, and just a note, please, we do have some materials already up on the website, and we're asking for you to read those materials ahead of time. Our presenter, Barbara, is going to reference the things that we're asking you to read, so it'll be really helpful if you can read those materials ahead of time. They are on the course webpage. So like our other courses, you guys know, you can earn a Certificate of Completion in the digital credential from credley.com for participating. To do so, we just asked for a few things. The first is that you've registered so that we can email you. The second is that you watched all five webinars, and you guys should be receiving those recordings. We send an email usually right after the live webinar, so you can keep up if you aren't able to attend live by watching those recordings. And finally, if you are interested in earning a certificate, we ask that you complete all five homework assignments no later than Monday, October 14. So as of yesterday, I had about 113 folks who have completed their homework assignment from webinar two. And I don't think this will come to a shock to any of you, but on this assignment, we asked what types of projects you needed funding for, and our most popular responses were digitization, conservation projects, storage and rehousing, and also cataloging projects. And a few of you also noted needing regular maintenance and repairs, as well as conservation assessments. I was really impressed. We also asked you guys to identify a potential funder, and everyone had some really creative responses. I took all your responses, and I threw them into this wordle, which basically just puts weight to the words that you guys use more often. And as you can see, foundations was one of the most popular picks for funders. But I did notice you guys all chose very unique foundations, whether they were local to national foundations. And we also saw quite a few folks who picked local businesses or local government programs. So all really great. And of course, your reasons for choosing them were fantastic. They either supported projects like the one you had proposed in the past, or your project supported their mission. So really great work. Good job, guys. Keep up the good work. And just a reminder, all those homework assignment links can be found on the course webpage. So if you haven't done it yet, you can find it there. You'll also find all the resources that our speakers have pulled together for you. You'll see a PowerPoint handout of all the presentations and all those links to the homework assignments. Also, for our last webinar, we have posted a PDF of those outstanding questions. Susan was really kind enough to go through all the questions you weren't able to get to, and she has some great responses. And so that's also on the course webpage. So as always, feel free to ask us questions. You can email us or call us. And without wasting any more time, let's move on to our topic today. And I'd like to welcome back Kelsey, Scout, and Bates, who will be teaching us all how to better cultivate members and donors and build those critical relationships. Kelsey, I'm going to go ahead and pull over your PowerPoint. Thank you so much for joining us again. Absolutely glad to be here again. All right, there you go. Okay, hello everyone. Thank you for joining me again today for Webinar 3 in this series, Fundraising for Collections Care. Today we're going to talk about donor and member cultivation. And you'll remember from our first webinar that most institutions receive the bulk of their donations from individuals, not the government and not foundations. And I noticed on Jenny's wordle there that foundations were the top answer for most of you and grants came in, it looks like in a close second, for places where you are hoping to find money. And so I hope that this webinar will kind of broaden your perspective a little bit and help you think about other places that you can go for money. Okay, so let's get started here. So that's what we're going to focus on today, finding the individual donors and ultimately persuading them to support your organization or collection. Okay, so I was trying to think of a good analogy for building a base of supporters. And development people always tend to go to the analogy of the garden where you have some seeds and you want to cultivate them into plants and help them grow. But I don't know if I was hungry or what, but I really just wanted to use a peach pie instead of a garden. And it wasn't quite doing it for me. So I'm going to use a peach pie to illustrate my point. Let's start with a peach tree that is heavy with peaches. Imagine that every peach on that tree represents someone within your community. Now for most of you, the peaches on this tree will represent your actual community, your town, your city, or even your region. And I do realize that not every organization has a local community. I've definitely worked for organizations where the community is spread out over a large region, even across the country or around the world. So this question, who do these peaches represent? Who is in our community? Who cares about us? Who will be different for every organization? And this might be something that is addressed in your strategic plan, or it should have been addressed in the development of your strategic plan. For some of you who are in departments within larger organizations, this community may at first, at least, represent people who are already supporting your organization, but who may be interested or who you could tap to support your particular collection or your department. Okay, so back to the peach tree. You're ready to bake your pie, but you want to choose the best peaches, the peaches that will easily fall off the branch and that you can put into your basket. And those peaches need a little pull, and it's the same way with supporters of your organization. They have to have a little pull or a reason to get involved. Okay, remember last week I shared with you this graphic, the three ingredients that make a donor. Let's focus specifically on the first one, which is interest, because really it's the one that you have the most control over. A relationship of support always begins with interest. For whatever the reason, a supporter has an interest in your organization. It could be as seemingly small as the person lives in your city or as significant as a connection that the person has. They might have donated part of your collection or perhaps they have family who donated the collection. So there are many reasons a donor takes an interest in your organization or collection. I'm not going to look at the other two things right now, ability and inclination. We'll look at those a little later. Let's just stick with interest. And this is where membership programs are really terrific. They give you a vehicle of engagement for people who are interested in your collection. Now, I've heard a lot of people, especially board members for some reason, say that membership programs don't bring in nearly enough money or they're not worth the time, the staff time that is put into them. But membership programs really have another reason for being than just bringing in small amounts of money. And that is that they help you to determine who is interested in your organization. Membership programs provide a base of supporters that you can work with and a place to begin. As most of you already know, membership programs typically allow people to support your organization at a variety of levels. And at each level, the organization provides to the member certain benefits. For example, a $10 donation may come with a special membership card or invitations to events. Whereas a $500 donation may come with a photo, reproduction from your collection, for example. I think most of you know how membership programs work, but I want to just take a moment for a quick survey. And Jenny's going to pull that up here. But I want you to think about the reasons that you, as an individual, decide to become a member of an organization. And I may not have found every single reason here, but hopefully these represent the top reasons. Why do you become a member of an organization? Okay, they're still coming in here, but it looks like we're pretty close between you like their mission and a combination of you like their mission and you enjoy the benefits you receive. But very few just enjoy the benefits. Mission is definitely number one, which is exactly what I suspected. And some of you, all of the above. Okay, great. Well, if you're developing or refining a membership program at your institution, I want you to think about why you become a member of, why you would become a member of your institution. What benefits would you find enticing or interesting? Now, I've also heard a lot of board members and some staff members say, donors should support my organization because they love it and they love what we do, not because they are getting a benefit from it. They should just support it because of the mission. My response to that is always, yes, you will have many donors, the majority, just as was reflected in this survey, who will want to support you and do not want any kind of benefits in return. But why not provide benefits for the many donors who might need an extra incentive? If there's someone out there who's trying to decide whether to support Museum 1 or Museum 2 and everything else being equal, they like the benefit they get from Museum 2, then Museum 2 is more likely to get their donation. Later, we're going to go over different types of benefits, both tangible and intangible benefits to becoming a member. But what I really want to try and get across here is that membership programs can be great ways to determine who's interested enough in your organization to raise their hand and say, I support you with this small donation. Membership is mutually beneficial and provides an entry point for a long-term relationship with a donor. The organization provides tangible benefits, like free stuff, as well as intangible benefits like communication and recognition. In return, you are cultivating a habit of engagement, support, and good feelings on behalf of your donor. And hopefully, at some point, a larger monetary gift. Before we take a closer look at membership, I want to point out that there are certainly other ways, besides traditional membership programs, to determine who your supporters are or to provide that initial base of support. And here they are, or some of them. Besides or in addition to a traditional membership program with levels and benefits, if your organization has had a successful and steady program for a while, you may want to consider adding an upper-level membership program. Every organization has to decide for itself what constitutes upper level. And as I said before, you need to know your audience and what people in your community might consider a high but doable gift. But just to give you an idea, I think in general, upper-level membership programs could range anywhere from between $1,000 to $10,000 and include higher-end benefits. For example, the opportunity to hold a reception at your facility for free or at a discounted rate, a special annual dinner with the director or a curator, or a reception at a board member's home, or a special donor plaque that hangs in a visible location in your lobby or atrium. Remember that the higher levels you have, the more exclusive benefits you need to offer. Okay, secondly, some organizations might want to try what is known as an affinity group. This is similar to a membership program, but it asks people to be part of a special group that is focused on one part or one aspect of the collection. This works really well for art museums that have several works by one artist or one type of artist. A lot of museums have the Friends of Contemporary Art or the Friends of African Art. Let's say that you have a historic house with a garden. You may want to start a Friends of the Garden affinity group. A group of people who provide funding for the garden receive benefits that somehow reflect the garden and even meet on occasion for a special lecture or program about the garden. Just remember, though, that the money that these donors provide will probably need to be restricted to just that part of the collection rather than the unrestricted money general membership programs can provide. Depending on your type of organization, you may want to have a subscription type program. Just like a symphony or theater provides members with a certain number of tickets to performances in exchange for a certain level of giving, if your organization features a good number of lectures, performances, or other special events where you're selling tickets, you may want to tie your membership program in with ticket sales. I think that would be a less common scenario for the types of organizations you all are working for, but I wanted to throw that out there because, as I said, every organization is a little bit different. It might just be a good model for one of you. And speaking of all of you being different, no membership model fits every organization the same. My last point on this slide is that I would encourage everyone to be creative and let your collection determine your membership program. As I said in my last webinar, while you shouldn't copy the membership programs of other organizations, definitely do your research and look at what others are doing. I have a few good models of membership programs that I've put on the resources page for this webinar, but I would love for everyone to do one thing, if you would, and not right now, but when this is over, go to the Whitney Museum of Art to their website and look at their very unique membership program. They call it curate your own membership where members can pick and choose from different membership items. They can decide what their benefits are. It's a great idea. It's very enticing for a new member, I think. On the other hand, I'm sure they had to think a lot about how they would deal with so many different options, members being able to choose so many different options on the back end. Of course, the Whitney has a membership department that handles all the variety of choices people are making, so they're very well equipped to handle this kind of program. I think it's just a great opportunity to think about all the possibilities that there are with membership programs. Let's take a look at the logistics behind instituting a membership program. To keep it simple, I'm going to focus on a fairly traditional program, but many of these points would apply to almost any program where you have people giving donations and the organization giving some kind of benefit in return. I'm just going to read through these really quickly. First, create levels that reflect your constituency. Provide a benefit or a premium for each level that reflects your collection or your organization. Advertise your program. Give people tax deduction information and recognition for their gifts. Have a mechanism for keeping gift and donor information, in other words, a database. Communicate regularly. Keep donors engaged year round. And finally, and very importantly, don't forget to ask for money once in a while. We're going to go through each of these things right now. Okay, so first, I've kind of combined the first two into this one slide. I've already expressed this before, but it's really important that you create a membership program with levels that reflect your constituency, your people, your community. Understand the demographics of your community. Look at other membership programs in your area and compare yourself with peer institutions and what types of levels which they are asking people to join. Another way you can figure your levels is to talk to your board. Typically, board members are leaders and philanthropists in the community, and they probably belong to a variety of organizations. Ask them how much they would feel comfortable giving to an institution they really believed in, like yours, for example, and go from there. Finally, if you have a steady membership level that caps off at like $500 and it's been like that for the last five or 10 years, you might want to consider adding a new, higher level, especially if you have a good number of people on that $500 level. You might consider going up to $750 or $1,000. Along the same lines, you want to provide a benefit for each level that reflects your collection or your organization. Let's say, for example, you have an archive that has a collection of 30,000 photographs. Okay, so here are three possible levels with benefits that you might create for your archives. Okay, so notice I've named each level. The first one I've called the Photographers' Level, and I use that because it kind of reflects the type of collection you're asking your donors to support. In the second level, I'm certain that the benefits that come along with that level mirror my collection in some way. So if you join at the artist level, you get a poster of a photo from the collection. And you would assume or hope that someone who's becoming a member of your organization would really appreciate something that reflects your collection. And finally, the last example here, I used some language at the collector's level that conveys the sustaining nature of a larger gift, and it has some kind of weight to it. So are these types of names for each level absolutely necessary? No, they're not. But in my opinion, my philosophy is that if naming a level creates another association between a member and the collection itself, and that benefit further strengthens or encourages that association, then why not do it? It really doesn't take any time or effort at all. And a lot of donors, I think, feel like it's kind of nice. One note about the types of benefits you will want to provide. You want to provide something that is compelling, but you also don't want to give away something that is worth so much that it eats up the actual donation. I suggest doing an analysis of your membership program so that you know you aren't spending more creating it than what you are taking in. You'll want to find a cost-benefit analysis for membership programs. I'm sorry, you'll want to do a cost-benefit analysis. And one of the resources that I included on your resource list is a book called Membership Essentials. And at the back of that book, there is a great set of tools for doing a membership cost-benefit analysis. And you should be able to find out the cost you are spending for raising a dollar. Remember, you're not providing an equal exchange of goods for cash. A membership gift is still a donation. And I'll talk about IRS stuff here in just a minute. Next, be sure to advertise your program. You will get very few members if you simply add your membership levels to your website. The only way anyone will ever see them is if they happen to be on those pages or if they think just independently, I want to become a member of so-and-so Historic House, which of course happens, but you want to advertise a little bit more than that. You've got to let people know that you have a membership program. And if you already have one, you should remind people once or twice a year. And you can do this in a number of different ways. And if you have a PR person on staff, you should definitely use their expertise to help you. First, advertise on social media. This is the easiest and the cheapest thing that you can do. Make sure that you add a link that takes people directly from Facebook or Twitter to your site. And explain what your members' money goes to pay for. In other words, every time you post something on social media, you don't necessarily have to say, give us money. You can talk about the programs that members are supporting. You can feature a member. You can feature a program or a project that you're working on and also the progress that you're making. Make certain that you're providing members a way to give online so that if they click to your site from Facebook or Twitter, they can sign up immediately. There are plenty of software choices out there for online giving. And I've included a comparison sheet in your resources for this webinar so you can take a look at some of them. But the most important thing you can remember here is to make it clear and easy how to donate online. Don't give people a reason to say, oh, this is too difficult to navigate. I'll do it later or I'll write a check. So you just want to make sure that once you've got them there, they are ready to give you their donation. Second, announce or remind people about your membership program using your email list. If you do a regular e-blast, be certain your membership program is featured as a link in each and every one. Take some space in your e-blast to talk about membership, feature a project that was funded through the member dollars, include a photo, a blurb about a special member. Talk about an upcoming event that would be discounted for members. Next, catch people while they are at your institution. Put signs, brochures and other reminders about membership in your lobby where people are buying tickets or in the bookstore, et cetera to help people know how your organization's funding is sustained. If you do tours of your collection, you may want to ask your docents to include a brief mention about membership at the end of each tour. Say something like, you know, tours like this one and the preservation of our collection are made possible through the generous donations of our members. And here's a brochure if you'd like to learn more. You want to ask people to join while they're feeling a connection to your organization and while their interest in your organization is at its peak. If you have a special event, offer a member's discounted rate or free admission. Also have a membership table set up at special events so that people can sign up at the event and get their discount while they're there. And the same goes for tours. If a person decides to become a member after they've taken a tour, then give them the membership discount. I think a great way to think about this is that retaining a member is cheaper than finding a new member. It costs less money and will bring more money into your institution over the years to retain and keep happy a member than to lose an unhappy member and try to find a new one to take his or her place. So err on the side of giving a discount with the likelihood that you'll have them as a donor for many years to come. Finally, use your board of directors. I'm going to be saying this over and over again throughout the entire webinar. Use your board of directors, if you don't have a board of directors over your collection, then if you have some kind of committee, especially if you have an upper-level membership program. Ask a board member to host a reception at his or her house, inviting new friends that may have the capability and interest to join, but have not had any inclination or reason to give up to this point. A reception is a great opportunity to engage your board members into doing something enjoyable like hosting a party to raise money for the organization. I would also make certain that your board targets an audience that has the ability to give at the levels you have established and that you have established those levels in connection with your board. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that later. One final note, and then I'll take a couple questions. One, make sure that, well, this kind of incorporates all of the above, but take a month or two during the year to focus on membership solicitation. Create a campaign by setting a goal of how many members or how much extra money you would like to raise over a certain period of time. For example, we want 10 new members over the next two months. And then use a combination of these tools, these ideas, these strategies to make that happen and other strategies too that you come up with, but these are some basic ones. Before I go to the next slide, are there any questions, Jenny? Kelsey, we do have one question, and Hugo also has some questions about funding. It sounds like international funding. Hugo, I'm just going to point you to our last webinar. There are some resources for that webinar, which includes international searches for foundations, and I can email you that as well. We've gotten some great responses of how folks are trying to interact with folks, including creating sign-in books and donation boxes at the end of house tours, which is great to see. But Leah does have a question. She's curious, what do you do when you have board members who are either hands-off or they're more old-fashioned and they don't communicate by email, but only quarterly emails? How do you keep in touch with those folks? That's a great question, and I want to say that there are many, many different types of boards, and I've worked with many different types of boards that have different cultures, I guess. Sometimes you have a more traditional board, like you said, that doesn't communicate very well. Sometimes you have a board that doesn't really know what to do, they need some kind of direction, and we actually talked about this in the first webinar a little bit, where you really need a person on staff to provide the direction to your board. As far as a non-traditional board goes, or I'm sorry, a more traditional board goes, well, I think if they don't communicate by email very well, you might have a situation where you'll need to meet more often with them. I have found so much benefit and it's so helpful for me to actually go to a board member's office or home and sit down with them regularly. I have a couple of board members, I've had a couple of board members in the past who also were not great communicators by email or by phone, and I have found that going to their homes or their offices maybe once a month, probably before a board meeting, to talk with them about upcoming projects, to tell them what's going on, and to get their feedback is a great way not only to communicate with them, but also to help set up the board meeting that's coming up. I think that you can make your board meetings more efficient if you pull aside the president or the vice president whoever's running the meeting beforehand, and tell them directly about the things that you want to accomplish. So I guess in your case I would say try some one-on-one conversations with your president or your vice president. Also, if there are other people on your board who you think one-on-one meetings would be good, definitely pull them aside as well. Great, let me throw one more at you that just came in for us, Cindy. She's curious, what if you don't have a committee or a board, and it's just you. She's also curious because she says they can't use the collection box because we're located in a public university. So it sounds like there's some, maybe some higher up departments that she could potentially link to, but it doesn't sound like she does have a board or committee that she can work with. I'm wondering if she might have a, because she's with a university, if she might have a development department in her university or somewhere who's doing the fundraising. Even public universities have foundations or departments that do fundraising. In that case, I think, and I'm going to mention this a little bit later in the webinar, but I think that getting in touch with or having an open line of communication with your development department may be in order. And you'll have to get their attention in some way because if they're fundraising for the university and you have a specific project that you need help with, that might be the only way to kind of divert some money your way or get some of the people that are on the board that's so far away from you to get them interested in you is to work through that department. I guess that's kind of my only advice for that right now. I will, I'll be kind of speaking to that a little bit later too in this webinar, so yeah. Great, thank you. I think I'll hold, I have two more, but I'll hold on to those for our next break. Sounds great. All right, let's see. Okay, now we're going to talk about tax deductions and recognition, which is really scary sometimes because I think they just make people nervous. They're, they are essential though in setting up a membership program. I think whenever we talk about the IRS, people get a little scared. So let's go through some of the things that you have to keep in mind about tax deductions and recognition. And this, you know, you have to think about this not just with membership programs, but with donations from individuals of any variety. First, be sure you're thanking your donors promptly. No matter what size gift they give, a prompt thank you shows that you're paying attention and that you have your act together. It also catches your donors while they still have their mind on you. And they've written you a check for a reason. So to follow up immediately means you have an opportunity to continue that communication with them right away. Rather than simply sending a thank you note, you might also consider sending them your latest newsletter, a printed out e-blast, an invitation to an upcoming event, or some other materials that will keep them connected. For some people who give larger gifts or for those with whom you have a personal connection, definitely send a personal thank you note or a handwritten note on a thank you letter or a separate piece of stationery. Next, be sure always to use standard IRS language in your thank you letters. Remember to consider your thank you letters also as receipts so that your donors can claim their donation on their taxes. This is an added benefit to your donors. That part of their donation will be deducted for their gift and you should make sure that it is stated on all of your donation materials, on your online donation page, and in the receipt or thank you letter. The standard IRS language can vary slightly, but it is on the IRS page that is in your resources list from the first webinar. Remember that if you're giving a benefit, the cost of that benefit must be deducted from the gift amount. So if a person gives you $100 gift and the t-shirt he gets as a benefit is worth $20, then the person can only claim a gift of $80 on his taxes. So make sure you state that in your thank you letter and take into consideration, take that into consideration while you're doing your cost benefit analysis. Okay. This may seem obvious, the next one, but you won't believe how many times I've seen people's names misspelled on donation lists or how many times I've received a phone call telling me that a donor's name has been spelled wrong. There are several checks here you can do to make certain that doesn't happen. First, make sure the person who's entering gifts into your database system is aware of how important it is to spell names correctly. Usually donation lists that go on to plaques and walls come right out of a database, and so whoever, you know, information going, coming out is only as good as information going in. Make sure that you print out a list of your donors before you put them on the website or in your newsletter or on your wall and pass them around for all of your staff to review. Having several pairs of eyes catches a lot of mistakes. And finally, if you are simply not sure if you've spelled a name correctly or how a person should be represented, call the donor. Your donor will be pleased that you took the time to call him or her to make sure you got it right. And besides, it could present another opportunity for you to get to know your donor a little better and make a personal connection. If you do an end-of-year newsletter or e-blast, take a minute to thank your donors. Not only does it make them feel good, but it shows others that people are supporting your organization, and it encourages more giving. I think I've said this before that people like to give to successful institutions. No one wants to give to an institution that it seems like no one else is giving to unless they have a really, really good reason for it. So it is nice to show others that people are giving to your institution. And the end-of-year thing is really helpful because people tend to make a lot of end-of-year contributions so that they can claim them on their taxes. Okay, and last but not least, some donors may be touched by an even greater effort to thank them. You can give them a call. You'll probably get their voicemail in most cases, but just think about how nice it would be to get a voicemail where you didn't ask for anything at all, but you just reached out to someone and thanked them for their generosity. You definitely want to make sure that you are connecting with your donors throughout the year more often than just asking them for money. You want to make sure that you are thanking them, you're talking to them, and not necessarily with your hand out. Okay, so I've mentioned databases a couple of times. So I'm going to step away for a moment from talking about where to find donors and talk for a moment about where to keep information on donors because if you've started to collect people's information, whether it's their email address or their actual contribution, you need to keep it in one place. And as you can see from what we've talked about so far today, there's potentially a lot of information that you'll need to collect. Let me just give you a list of information that you'll potentially be collecting from donors, depending on how sophisticated a program you develop. You'll need to collect their names, their addresses, their donation information, including the amount of the donation, how they paid their gift, whether by check or credit card, what the gift was for, whether or not they received a benefit, if they were thanked, if their requested gift is supposed to go towards something in particular, if they need to renew their membership on a certain date and a reminder to send a letter out on that date. So it goes on and on and on. The more donors you get and the more sophisticated your donation program, your fundraising program, the more important it is to have a donor database. Because of the complicated and significant amount of information you'll be keeping up with, I want to highly recommend that you stay away from databases like Excel, Access, or FileMaker to keep donor information. Although those programs work at first when you have a small program, as your donor base grows, or as you get more donations from more people, you'll need something that is more sophisticated. And there are many, many databases on the market that are specifically geared toward a fundraising program. And they come at all different costs from programs like GiftWorks that are only a couple of hundred dollars a month, to programs like Razor's Edge that cost tens of thousands of dollars to set up. So you have to ask yourself a couple of questions when you're thinking about your database. First, does your organization already have a database? And just like I said, I answered the question earlier about what if you're just a one-person department and you work for a big university? My advice with this database and with any part of fundraising is to start a conversation with your development department about tapping into that database and flagging people who are interested in collections care. There are ways that you can take your organization's already-established membership group and determine who is particularly interested in supporting your special collection or part of your collection. These people can be tagged in donor databases so that you can communicate with just them. You can work with your development department to find out how they are giving. Are they giving the same amount over time? Do they increase every year? Have they dropped off over the last two years? Do they like particular projects? You may even be able to begin your affinity group based on the donors that are already contributing to your organization. That's kind of an additional answer to that previous question is if you can start a conversation with your development department and there's already a membership associated with your organization, why not begin an affinity group where some of those donors, some of those people are supporting your archives, your special collection by joining an affinity group. That's a perfect example, a perfect reason to start one. Next, ask yourself how much database you really need. If you are a small organization that will likely never have more than several hundred to a couple thousand members, you will probably never need a huge expensive database. If you're a large institution that will likely have thousands of members, you'll want to invest in a big database that can handle a lot of information. As I said, I've included a comparison list in the resources. It's going to be part of your homework to looking up those databases and seeing what types of databases are out there. I'll just say that in my career, I've used three different databases and actually they're all three levels. One is very inexpensive, one was moderate, and one was very expensive. And they all have their positives and they all have their negatives. And you just have to decide what's right for you. And finally, as I said before, be sure to have only one person entering information into your database. The information you get out of your database is only as good as what you put into it. If you have multiple people entering information in multiple ways, you risk losing data because you can't find it. If one person enters a gift given to a project called Art Conservation and another person enters another gift to the same project that calls it Painting Conservation Treatment, you'll have a hard time creating a list of everyone who gave to that project because it's been entered in two different ways. It's simply less confusing to have one person be the point person responsible for the data in and data out of the database. This seems like kind of a small point to make, but I have just seen so many databases that had to be completely reconfigured or had to be completely updated and it took so much time to redo them because they didn't start cleanly from the beginning. So just keep that in mind if you're starting a new database. Okay. So there could be a whole other webinar on databases. Make that note to Heritage Preservation. They can do that one next. Let's see. Before I move on, are there any questions? Yeah, we actually have tens of questions. I will make a note real quick so our closed captioning folks aren't on board with us today, but they will be captioning this tomorrow morning. So we'll post that transcript as soon as it's ready on the course website. Okay, let's see. We have a question. It's expensive when mail gets kicked back. Any suggestions other than calling before mailing? Oh, there's so many different ways you can do this that range in cost. There is actually a service that you can buy to verify names and addresses in your database. Honestly, I've never used it before. I've talked about using it with a larger organization that I worked for, and I think I recall that it was just very expensive. But I don't know that for sure, so it's something you might want to check out, especially if you have a really large database and you're just getting so much that's coming back to you. And then, I mean, all the way down to the cheapest ways, you could, certainly, you could ask for verification of your address using email, but, I mean, you're just, you're not going to get a really good rate of return, I don't think. I have even, for smaller databases, I've even, or mailing lists, I've sat down to figure out if I can find the correct address. I know large universities, I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but if you have ever been a member of your university's alumni organization, and then you move, and the alumni newsletter somehow finds you at your new address. I mean, that happens to me all the time. I've moved so many times, and two months after I move, my alumni newsletter shows up at my house, and I've never given anyone my new address. That is what universities are doing. They're using that service. So, other than paying for that service, everything else, you know, it's really going to have to probably be done manually, which is a really tedious task. Okay, and then we had a question from Christina. She, you were talking about providing t-shirts as part of a membership. She's curious, do you do a retail cost of the t-shirt or the real cost? Retail cost. Yes, retail cost. Okay. We also had another question in Colorado. Will there be a discussion or webinar about creating a board? I think I can answer that. I don't think there will be. With topics like this, we could cover everything else. You said databases would be one, too, but I don't think we'll get too heavily into board creation. Yeah, I think board creation and database management, if we ever did another one of these, those would be too good. You could do a whole webinar on those, for sure. Another question from Volinda, and this is another question that gets out of the issue of one part of a larger organization. She says, for a university library without a membership program, how can we convince the administration to allow us to create a membership? She says their museum has had a membership program for many years. Oh, yes. I think definitely compare yourself to the museum. It's nice to know that they are at least open to the idea if the museum has a membership program already. I'm assuming since you're using this web, since you're joining us on this webinar that you have a special collection in your library. So I think that a special collection is definitely comparable to a museum collection and that you could easily make a comparison and show your administration what kinds of extra funding could come through at least an affinity group if not a full-fledged membership for your library. I would go to your museum and talk to them about how well things have worked for them, how much money they've been able to bring in, and talk to your administration in terms of money. How much more you'd be able to fund per year if you had a membership program, even if it's $10,000 a year that you might be able to bring in. When you talk about money that way, administration tends to listen a little bit more, I think. And then just kind of a follow-up question. This is a great one from Joy. She's curious that she has encountered a debate about allowing something like an affinity group. She says there's a sense that if we create one for collections then everyone will want to earmark their donations drawing away from the general fund of money. Do you have any suggestions on how to move that discussion forward? Yeah, I would say in order for someone to become a member of an affinity group, they have to become a member first. So for example, you have a general membership program and it costs $20 to join at an individual level. And once you join, then beyond that, if you want to become a member of an affinity group, let's say it's $10 extra. So you're not taking away money from the membership program. You're adding to the money that comes in through your affinity group. Now, I guess someone might say, oh, but that extra $10 could be going to something else. I think getting someone involved in an affinity group encourages more donations later. You are encouraging more giving, not less giving, by bringing someone in to an exclusive or a special group that provides engaging opportunities all year round. And I think that will result in a greater level of giving overall. Great, thank you, Kelsey, back to it for now. Okay, moving on. All right, I'm going to try to go back to the Peach Pie analogy. This is a really poor analogy I realized, but I'm still going to stick with it. If you've built a lower base of lower level of supporters, perhaps their members or somehow they've shown that they will support your organization enough to give you an annual gift, and now also they're in your database, you've created opportunities for interest and engagement that have attracted at least this lower level group to your organization. So if we're going to stick with the Peach Pie analogy, you're going to look in your basket at all the good fruit you've pulled and you're going to determine which of the plump, juicy peaches will contribute to your end goal, which is, of course, your Peach Pie. Now I want to be clear here because I'm in no way stating that smaller donors who give less money are inferior to donors who give more. All of your donors are equally as important and should be treated with great respect, but you will end up expending more energy on some of them to see if they would like to support you further and further. Remember, you don't want to think of this as squeezing money out of people. You're simply trying to find the philanthropists. You're looking for those who love to give, who want to give, and who want to better their communities, and you're ultimately finding a project that will make them happy to be a part of. So you're creating a reason, which is the inclination. You're creating a reason for a person to give to your organization and for them to give now rather than later. So to encourage inclination, you need to not only keep your donors connected and engage with your organization or your collection, but you need to communicate the opportunities for giving and essentially invite giving. There are many ways to do this, and some of them we've touched on before, but let's look a little closer about how to move people up the ladder of giving to your organization. So your cultivation begins with communication and some might do this with a newsletter, and that's fine. A newsletter could be a great way to tell your donors about specific projects that need to be funded and also communicate with them about projects that have been funded. But I would definitely ask yourself, or better yet, ask your donors, if a newsletter is the best or the only way to keep your group engaged in learning about what your organization is doing. A newsletter is nice to convey information, but it doesn't do a lot for engaging people, like for example, a tour of your collection or part of your collection, an invitation to an event where you can talk about a specific project that needs funding, a multimedia communique that provides a visual to encourage giving for something specific. Be creative and don't be tied to one type of vehicle to get the word out about your project. So with that, I'm going to ask Jenny to pull up the next survey I have for you guys. And I would like to know how many of you work for institutions that send out a paper newsletter, that send out an electronic newsletter, that send out both, that don't send out any newsletter, or maybe you work for a larger organization that does send out a newsletter, but the special collection really isn't featured either enough or at all. Okay, it looks like paper and electronic is winning, but enough or not at all is in a close second. Okay, great. Well, for those of you who chose the last one, that your organization has a newsletter but you are not featured in it, I think already there's definitely room for improvement, whether you can somehow make it into your newsletter or if you have to create one of your own, specifically for your collection. I think one thing that's important is that to ask your donors or your constituency what they want, and that's the last little piece here in this slide, but we'll get to that in just a second. Let's go to the second one here. Be sure that you're asking for renewal each and every year. When it comes time for a person to renew their membership, definitely send them a reminder, but don't stop with one reminder. Sometimes it can take a couple of reminders to get someone to renew their membership. In fact, you may want to send up to three reminders. That's kind of best practices. Now, you could do this in many different ways. You could do it by snail mail. You could do it by email, depending on your constituency. It depends on if your donors are older, younger, tech-savvy, traditional. Again, it's important to know your audience and know what they will respond to. Like I said last week, you can try different things and track your progress. Here, again, is where a donor database comes in handy. Donor databases are automatically set up or you can set them up to track how people renew. Most of your people like to renew on the first try, on the first reminder. Do they tend to renew with a letter or with an email? Do they prefer to send a check or renew online? You have to find out what works best. I worked for a museum and we thought, certainly, we need to start sending out more email reminders because people surely, more people are using email to renew. Well, we've done that. We did that. We didn't get nearly the response we thought. People were still very interested in getting paper and that just had to do with our constituency but it taught us a lot about who we're reaching out to. Now, we find that over time, more and more people are tending to renew by email but it's actually slower. Also, along the same lines, know whether people prefer giving online or writing a check. The best thing there, I would say, is give them the option to do both online or check. All right. Get to know your donors by inviting them to something and give them a benefit at the same time. We've kind of talked about this already but, again, you're keeping them engaged. At the same time, you're getting to know them. You're providing an opportunity to interact with your donors and you're providing them an opportunity to interact with your collection and become closer to it. Here's an important point. Ask your donors to come to things even if you know they won't. We have plenty of people who we know they never will come to anything. They just don't want to. However, that doesn't mean we're not going to invite them because getting an invitation in the mail has an intangible benefit, a psychological benefit, if you will. People enjoy being invited to things in general even if they don't or aren't able to come. Keep email addresses and phone numbers of donors to a specific project separate so that you can keep them updated on project progress. A donor database can do this as well. Let's say 10 donors gave to a conservation project and you want to keep them updated on the progress. A donor database will help you to set up an email list so that you can send just those donors information about project progress. Show pictures, tell them how their donation helped. Finally, ask your donors periodically what they want and here's what I was talking about before. Use some kind of survey software once in a while like SurveyMonkey to ask your donors if they feel engaged with your organization or if they'd like to see more of one thing or less of something else, if they enjoy their benefits or they'd like to see something different. If you communicate with them too much or too little, ask them if there's any specific project they're more interested in and that will help you determine who to ask for what later on. There are many ways to do this. It's often nice if you're asking people to fill out something to give them a little bit of an incentive like maybe 10% off in your bookstore or a free tour or something like that. All of these things hopefully will help you bake your ultimate peach pie and although these cultivation activities, through these cultivation activities you should begin to see some peaches rise to the top and I admit that my peach analogy is totally failing now. Sometimes you'll find that extra special someone. Yes, this guy, Bill Gates. All of us hope that someday we'll be able to find our dream funder. Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey or Bono will travel to our town or city and stop by our institution and be so moved that he funds us for life. Okay, that's generally not going to happen. While always you should dream big, remember this key thing and that is that your biggest and your most likely donors are going to be the ones in your very own town, your very own city and they will be the people who have probably already given to your organization at some level. So that is where your membership program is so important. It is providing the base of funders that eventually your own Bill Gates will kind of come out of. I have worked for and have been in several institutions and the people who end up funding the most money over time are the ones that started out giving $100 a year and then maybe they increased to $500 a year and then eventually a thousand and so on and so on. That person who will become the sustainer of your collection or stockholder so to speak. So while Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Bono, they all have the ability they don't necessarily have the interest in the inclination and those two other ingredients are absolutely essential. So this is the last time I'm going to show this graphic but I want to just show it kind of in terms of action a little bit. Here is, well, you can't control someone's ability to give. You can't control how much money someone has to give but you can control or you can continue the cycle of interest and inclination. So starting up here at the top right ask people to renew at higher levels each year. Like I said, some of the biggest donors most of the biggest donors at the organizations where I've worked have started at a very low level of giving and they give for a year or two, they like what they see and then they renew at a higher level. Do they automatically renew at a higher level? Probably not. You have to ask them to do that. So make sure that you're asking people to renew at a higher level and give them a reason why they should what they are helping to fund. Like I said before, you won't get anything if you don't ask and really all they can say is no. Next, look in your database. Your members even at low levels are always the best bets for future and higher giving. Talk to your board. Like I said, I'm going to keep saying this over and over again. Ask them or challenge them actually to bring in new members at higher levels. Use your board. Get them to have some kind of a party or reception where they bring people. Challenge them each to bring one or two new people. Ask them if they know people in your database and I'm going to talk about that in a second. But definitely use your board. Talk to your board. Ask for advice. Don't just ask your board but ask other donors. Ask your staff and ask your volunteers who they think would be interested in certain projects. In other words, use your connections. Cultivate, cultivate, cultivate. We've talked about this several times. Don't just stop once the gift is given. Continue to engage and communicate all year round. Okay, here's the most important thing. Ask for money. This is the scariest thing, but this is one of the things that many, many institutions, they can do all of these other things. They ask people to renew. They look in their database. They talk to their board. They cultivate. But they never, ever, ever get to this point where they're actually sitting down asking someone for money because it is the hardest part. And I think we could probably do even another webinar about the actual act of walking into someone's office and sitting down and asking them for money. But I do have a resource for you, which I've put in the resources list. It's a book called The Ask. And it helps. It actually provides scripts for people who are asking for money. And it's important. I think a script is probably one of the most important things that you can use. Whenever I go to talk to someone and actually ask them for a gift, I always write out everything I'm going to say and practice it before I get there. It's very, very important to know not only what project you want them to fund or what program you want them to fund, but also know how much you want to ask them for. You want to be able to explain your project. You want to be able to explain what exact things their money will be used for. And then you want to be able to ask them for a specific amount of money, rather than just can you give us a gift. And this book that I've put in your resources will help you to write your script and to understand what language to use when you actually sit down with a person and ask them for money. Okay, so what happens if they say, no, I'm not going to give you $10,000 to buy that fancy digital planetary scanner. What do you do? Well, that's also covered in this book, which I highly recommend. But one broad piece of advice is that you ask for more advice. You ask for, you don't just say thank you very much and leave, but you say thank you for your time. Do you know anybody else that we could talk to? Do you have any other suggestions for us? You always follow up with a continued conversation. And I highly recommend taking a look at the ask and putting together your script and practicing before you do any kind of sitting down in front of someone and asking for money. Okay, and that leads me to my final slide. And Jenny, do you want me to take questions now or should I, you want me to finish the slide first? Sure, go ahead. Okay. Remember the last webinar I said that development is 80% research. And before you ask anyone for any significant amount of money, whether it's in writing through a grant or whether it's actually sitting down with someone whose name that you have gotten and who you've gotten a meeting with, you have to do your research. Know before you go to talk to anyone with the intention of asking for a gift that they have the ability to give a gift of the size you're thinking. So we've talked about interest and how to gain initial interest in a membership program. We've talked about inclination, how to present projects to your membership group and your funders to tell them that you need what you need and when you need it. And finally, the third point in the third ingredient is ability. And no, you cannot control someone's ability to give to your organization. However, you can educate yourself and understand what their ability is or at least have a good idea of what their ability is before you actually ask them for money. So how do you find that out? Let me take a sip of water here. Okay, the first way. Foundation Center. I know that you have heard a Foundation Center already. I've talked about it and I think Susan talked about it in her webinar. And even though a Foundation Center focuses on foundations, it also has lists of directors of foundations. So if you have a name that someone has given you or you found somewhere and you want to know if they have an ability to give or to sit on your board, you can do a search in Foundation Center for the directors of different boards and you can probably find the person's name and see what other boards they sit on. And generally, people who sit on boards are able to make fairly substantial gifts or at least some amount. So use Foundation Center. You can find it at your public library. Generally, many public libraries have a subscription to Foundation Center and so you don't need to buy it. You can actually go to your library. Next, LexisNexis or ReferenceUSA are both good databases for individual searches. If you work for a university or a library, you might have some kind of access to LexisNexis or ReferenceUSA. Both of them will allow you to look up information on people. It's all public information, so if you feel a little bit creepy by checking out people, don't worry, all of this is public. None of it is information that is not available to the public. It's just that these databases put it in an easy-to-find format, which is why they're so expensive to purchase. You can find information on SEC filings for companies. You can find about how much money someone paid for their home and other types of information that would indicate a person's wealth. Before I get into the next three or four here, there are services that you can buy that will give you wealth indexes for your database if you already have an established database. Universities do that all the time because they generally have more money to be able to do something like that. So that is a possibility. It's just quite expensive. The very best and the cheapest places to find information on people are your local newspaper and Google. That's where I go very first thing. When I hear someone's name that I want to check up on, let's say I have a member who gave at the $500 or $1,000 level, I think, okay, well, they might have some ability to give. Let's check it out. Do a search on your local newspaper. Do a search on Google. And it's likely that you'll find something about the person. Maybe they've given to another organization. Maybe something about their job or their home is mentioned. And that will give you a little bit of insight. Next, go to your peer institutions, especially if you don't have any idea of anyone's name and where to start. This is a great place to start. If you have an institution that is similar to yours in your community or in your region, look at their annual report. You can simply call them and ask them for it and they can send it to you. Or most places now have their annual reports online. And so they're very easy to find. Most organizations are listing their donors by level of giving, at least generally by level of giving. And so you can take a look at other institutions and see who's giving to them. And that will help you begin your list and do a little bit of searching. Okay, so let's say you have your list of people. You have a list of names. Maybe you found them from the trustees of a local foundation on Foundation Center. Or maybe you saw something in your local newspaper. Or perhaps you developed a list looking at the annual reports of local organizations. Now what? That is where, again, once again, you want to go to your board or committee. If you have a list of individuals that you called from the above resources and you have no idea how to approach those people, give their names out in a board meeting. Generally, when I have a board meeting, I take, oh, probably 10 names of people and ask my board members if any of them have connections. You would be surprised by how many meetings and introductions I've gotten from board members alone. A board member will raise their hand and say, well, yeah, I know that guy. He and I go way back. And he'd be glad to sit down and talk with us. And this has happened to me many, many times. And you can go with your board member generally or with your director and sit down with a person and talk to them about your program and that you would be interested in their support. Or if it's not appropriate to go sit down and talk with someone. This is a great time to have a special event. If you have an annual special event or something coming up soon, send an invitation. Have your board member reach out to the person and invite them to come to engage with your organization. Invite them on a tour, send them a letter. I think letters are kind of last resorts, though, unless there's a previous connection. So all of these are ways that you can find individuals who may be interested in giving to your organization outside of simply looking at your membership list and determining whether they have the ability to give. Okay, so I'm going to stop now and I'm going to take questions. Anyone has any? Yeah, we have several questions and hopefully I got most of them. We were talking about sponsors staying in touch with sponsors earlier on in the webinar. Make us curious for an event sponsor. Do you thank them before or after the event or do you thank them at both? Okay, I would say probably both. By sponsor, well, I guess it doesn't matter if it's a corporation or a foundation, definitely thank them immediately upon receiving a gift. Even if you haven't gotten the check in the mail, if you've gotten a pledge for a gift for an event, thank them immediately by mail or giving them a phone call. I mean, you definitely should send a letter but also follow it up with a phone call. And, you know, I think it depends if it's a company. A lot of companies would love to have their name at the event somehow, whether it's on a sign or whether it's on, you know, it's just somewhere where people can see it. And it's also a good idea to make an announcement if that's appropriate at the event to thank particular sponsors. Foundations, you know, they're not going to want their name on anything generally, but it's nice to have a little sign or some kind of mention in a program that thanks your individual foundation or corporate donors. And then once the event is over, even if they don't require any kind of report, definitely follow up anyway. Send them a letter that talks about the event, what the successes of the event were, how many people came, et cetera, et cetera, thanking them again for their support. Remember, you're always wanting to keep the good rapport with your donor so that someday, you'd hopefully want to go back and ask them again for another donation. So it's kind of a constant cycle there. So yeah, I would say all of them. Okay. Nancy brought up a really great point earlier on. She said, you know, one of the huge issues with funding for nonprofits is that there's a high rate of turnover in people and staff and volunteers. And she brought up the point that database and process maps are very important. Do you have any suggestions, Kelsey, on, you know, I know I've come into a new job and I've had to learn how we tracked databases and all that great information. Do you have any suggestions on how to make that transition seamless? Well, I definitely think having a clean database and also guidelines for using the database, both of those things are important. I know before I have left a job, I've tried to put together guidelines for at least how I entered things into the database so that that person can pick up where I left off fairly easily. Relationships though, I mean transferring a relationship from one person to another, I think is a little bit more difficult. If they're, you know, I think directors, directors of organizations tend to stay a little longer. There's maybe less turnover than at the development level or the curator level. So I think it's always a good idea, especially with your higher level donors, to get your directors involvement. And actually I almost said your board involvement and actually that's a good idea too, is to, you know, boards tend to, you know, at least stick around for a few years. So having several connections between major donors and different people on staff, whether it's your director or a board member, I think is also important. Having one person with one relationship with someone means that yes, when that person leaves, that relationship might be gone. So engage in many levels with your staff and board and your donors. Great. We have just under 10 minutes, I'm going to just pull over the homework assignment for today and just quickly remind everyone that our next webinar for the course is this Thursday at 2 o'clock, same place, and even the same time. And you guys might have received an email about a webinar for tomorrow. These are just one of our one-off webinars. It's an hour long. You're more than welcome to join. There's no homework. It's just for fun. And you'll just log in as you've done today. So if you were confused, that webinar tomorrow is not a part of the course, but you're welcome to join. And I also will bring over the course webpage. It looks like I need to widen our homework box. And here's a link to the course webpage. And also, I'm going to go ahead while we still have time and pull over the attendance list. So this is just for our group. If you logged in and you saw your name here in the chat box and you put your name and last name and location and you logged in, we've got you, you're fine. So this is just for our folks who didn't log in today and are watching with the group. If you could go ahead, your group leader or whoever's sitting next to that keyboard, go ahead and put your name in there so they can take attendance. And let me get back to the questions while we still have time. Let's see. So Sarah is curious, and I hope I understand this question correctly. Do you recommend allowing members to renew at higher levels by letting them make the payments? She says we're an all-volunteer organization, so we have to be able to keep track of everything. And Rebecca also said, you know, what about letting members make their own payments to get up to that new level? Do you have recommendations on how to track all that? I don't understand exactly how making their own payments, meaning I'm not sure I understand the question. Yeah, that was my question. So Sarah, if you wanted to type in in the chat box, I assume maybe there's a PayPal interface and keeping track of who's done it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if this is exactly the question, but I will try to answer what I think the question is, which hopefully will be helpful in some way to someone. Yes, PayPal and other online donation software services not only allow people to go on and become a member, but also sometimes they can generate their own receipts and thank-you letters. Certainly, I mean, that's a fine place to start. If you have to do it that way, then great. Set it up so that your donor gets an immediate response from PayPal that says, here's your receipt. If in any way possible I would go try to go another step and reach out to the donor through another type of thank-you letter or phone call or something. And yeah, I know it's hard when you have so few people on staff, but yes, at the very minimum you can do it that way. And I've given donations to plenty of places over PayPal and I've gotten an immediate receipt with a little thank-you note and I'm happy to get that and that's fine. It's just that it's always nicer if you can do a little bit more. And I think Sarah weighed in and a few other people weighed in to help clarify. So she's thinking because you have folks renew at a higher membership level by making, say, three payments instead of paying something all at once. So it would be incremental. I see, I see. That would be more difficult to track and legitimately. It would. In fact, I think it would cause a little bit more work. However, it's done. I mean, certainly I have board members who make a pledge at the beginning of a year for a certain amount and they pay over the year. Yes, I think that's fine. It gets a little bit tricky with the IRS though. I mean, you just have to make sure that, I mean, you're going to have to send a letter for each gift and you have to make sure that you're figuring the benefit correctly. It'll cause more work, but I think you can do it that way. Generally, with large donations or larger donations, that is a very common way to accept a donation. If someone feels like they can't give the whole $5,000, you know, the first half of the year, but they can do it over the whole year, then yeah, that's perfectly fine and desirable for a lot of people. Great. Let's see. So this is a great question we get often. Samantha is curious. If staffing is a problem, if that's the reason that you need money, is that you don't have enough staff to do any of this stuff? Kelsey, do you have any suggestions on just very small things, if you have limited time and limited staff, something small that you could do to implement some of these things? Well, I do think, like I said before, having an online portal for people to be able to renew and for an automatic gift receipt to be sent, I think that even though it'll take a little time to set up, that can go fairly on its own. I think for small staff, definitely if you don't have a donor database yet, setting one up to include a template thank you note so that you're not having to write a new thank you note every time, but you can just print out a template that automatically inserts the amount that someone gives and their tax deduction. It can be a little bit less personal, but you've got to do what you need to do and getting those letters out is really important and of course you can always sign them by hand. I think having some membership signage if you're at an historic house or somewhere that you're having visitors coming in, it doesn't necessarily need to be manned, but having a place where members can go, they can see that there's a membership program, they can see how to sign up, and just having that set up in your lobby might be a way that you can encourage donations without having to do a whole lot. And always, if you're doing any kind of communication, always put a link to your online giving page, always. It's easy and you don't even have to think about it. Just use it as a template. Great, let me ask one more question. And, Rodney, I saw your question. If you want to email us that, we can get in touch with you privately to tend to give you some feedback. That would be fantastic. But let me ask one more question from Connie. She's curious. A museum that is recently being developed asked her organization for a membership list. They didn't feel comfortable about releasing this information. Is this normal for other folks to ask for your member list and what's your recommendation on either releasing it or not releasing it? Well, I'll start with my recommendation, and that is that you have to decide as an organization whether or not you're going to share people's information. I mean, it just comes down to your organization's stance that what you decide is appropriate and ethical. It is done very often. It's done especially with larger organizations. I worked in a city that had several museums and we definitely shared lists. And we certainly got new members that way. So it does work, but if your organization decides that you are going to tell your members, we don't share your name, we don't share your email address, or your home address, then that is a decision that you have to make with your administration and your board. But, yes, it is done. Okay. Well, Kelsey, thank you so much for coming back for this second webinar. What a great presentation. Absolutely. I'm so happy to do it. And thank you guys for joining us today. Again, our next webinar in this course will be Thursday at 2 o'clock. You'll log in the same way. And again, there is some reading material. We'd love for you to go through that. It will help you in your understanding of the actual presentation. Thank you all and have a fantastic afternoon. Thanks, Jenny.