 Welcome. Thanks for joining us today. If you're joining us live, it is Monday. And if you're joining us recording, who knows what day it is, glad to have you here. We're thrilled to have Timothy Sarantonio with neon one joining us today to talk to us about what time is it, and when do donors donate. So, Tim, we will jump into this conversation. Deep with you but before we do that we of course want to make sure that our audience knows who you're seeing or listening to Julia Patrick is here the American nonprofit Academy CEO. I'm your nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven group, and we are so thrilled to have our continued supporters. Thank you very much to Bloomerang American nonprofit Academy fundraising Academy nonprofit nerd, your part time controller, the nonprofit Atlas nonprofit thought leader as well as staffing boutique. These companies are invested in you in your community in your mission. They're here to support us and to allow these great conversations, like the one that we are about to share with Tim from neon one. And again if you've missed any of our episodes you can find them on root Roku YouTube fire TV Vimeo, and also in podcast form so make sure that you stream that and you queue up the nonprofit show. And today again thrilled to have Tim joining us and really excited to get super nerdy with you Tim because you just said in the green room chatter that this chapter of the report is your favorite so yeah welcome back our friend. Well thank you for having me and so soon after the last time I know that that's an honor. You know that that not many folks have so I really appreciate being here, but you got me on a topic that I can go on and on about so. We only have 30 minutes I know that so we're really just scratching the surface here. But let's talk about this, this topic for those of you taking a look at the video. There's a nice graphic of this very beautifully done report. We can dive deep into donors and understanding the future of the individual giver and again, you're right this is something I'm sure we could all talk hours about and when we talk about the time continuum. That's certainly something to consider. So, so get us started here what are some things that you'd like to say. Well so for folks that that might not know what this report is this is a new neon one report that came out in March. It's very fresh. Yeah, and we basically wanted to answer. Since March 2020. What has changed and what is maintained about how individual givers behave, and we wanted to answer six key questions who what when where why, how. So, by starting with that each is a chapter. It helps hyper focus the types of research and analysis that we did. And the, when chapter is nump chapter three and that's when things really kicked in the high gear in my opinion I think that the whole report is is very insightful talks about demographics and and kind of the psychology of things but the, the when chapter. We really, I think it just blossoms in terms of of really kind of sinking in and unpacking some of the deeper questions that the data presents us, because ultimately, we want to act on this a lot of reports just end up being like, you know I'm going to sit this on the table. I've been blown away since the last time that we talked. One, how many people have downloaded this thing. Good, good. If you haven't get it. Yeah, and, and to how many people printed it out. Actually, like I got, I got tagged and we got tagged in a bunch of, of like Instagram posts and things like that where people were like showing, they printed it out so. And that's I think it's because people learn in different ways to and some folks like they want to be able to highlight and spend a little bit more time that's one thing that I've had people say is, I want to make sure I have the time to focus on this so ultimately, my final point here is time is so precious. And there's only so much in the day. We live on, you know, a different planet. And so we have 365 or whatever, depending on a leap your days in a year. 24 hours in a day so what are we going to do with it. What are we going to do with our time and so we're so appreciative that people found this a useful expenditure of their time. Before we get get into more specifics. If you can paint the picture of your research, because you took a lot of information from a lot of different sources. And I think sometimes we look at data and we're like, we're making a lot of decisions but when basically the sample set has been 22 people and half of them were employees and the other halfers family. You're looking at something that I feel in the statistical world is really has a lot of gravitas and really is can support these theories that you've uncovered. Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you for that flag to Julia because we we looked at two primary data sets when it came to time in particular. The first is with our partners at blue meringue donor perfect in Kila, the fundraising effectiveness project, because that is going to show over near 10,000 organizations in 2021 alone, we drew from, and you know $10 billion right like this is a lot of money. And so what was fascinating was to be able to validate, you know, what time of the like what time of the month somebody's giving what time of the year somebody's giving so that was the big data set that we drew from there. But then, what it doesn't tell you is, for instance, what time of the day somebody is giving. We have that those we looked at our, you know, 2.2 billion and. Oh no. Well, it's Julia. Oh, we'll be good. Okay, we'll go times a flat circle she'll come back. So, um, so we, we also looked at our online giving behavior in particular because that's really reliable to know what the donor is doing. Right. Because, and I know for the nonprofit folks were listening out there, you might not always enter the checks the day you receive them. So, so dates are important. But we know if somebody donates on their phone or through the computer, or something like that. There's a timestamp. We know exactly when they hit the submit button. So we can say this is what the donor did not what the nonprofit professional did when it came to something like a check. Still interesting. But with online giving we actually could tell exactly when somebody preferred to give. So, so we looked at a few different data sets for this type of thing that Julia's point but it was really fascinating to kind of see calendar year as well as the day of the week. I had a theory we can get into when appropriate. Well, hey, I'm all for that and we're just going to, you know, do and prop to here thankfully we know the topic and that's something that we can certainly talk about. I'd love to hear your theory and I'd also love for you to demonstrate to us as much as, as well as you can really what the system you've provided on the report it's interactive we can go in we can toggle, you know the time calendar. So this is something that we can all take a look at and really play around with because you're right, guilty as charge we don't always, you know, input the data right when we receive the check, but we can certainly talk in track exactly what our donors are doing and that's really important. So we created a data hub that that lived that lives on our website you don't have to enter an email or anything anybody can go to this it doesn't matter if you're using our product or not. And there's a few interactive elements that play actually pretty heavily with time right now so. So if you just want to kind of get a snapshot. For instance, Jared you can just go and look and there's a clock and the clock will actually recognize what time zone you're in and show you pretty much the the from the report, the the number of gifts coming in. So yeah. So basically let's see oh yeah so so here's the interface itself perfect timing. I'm going to stop using the word time if I can. Yes, like, like, at least in terms of bad puns dad puns so so this is the interface folks it'll it'll recognize your time zone and you can play around and you can say like okay. We did, we did actually think about, should we add toggles for like day of week and things like that. And, and we found for simplicity of understanding that will do this is a blended analysis but the report actually has a graph. And that is much more detailed around the details. And so, but we found that around 1130 in the morning on a Thursday is when people prefer to give online. So, my theory, Jared that I was reference referencing was I when I originally asked to have this data point pulled my theory was that people would get blitzed on the weekend, and want to give at like, you know, after having a few beers. Right. So would we see a spike on a Saturday, and a sun like a Sunday like during a football game or something like that where it's like, right. Code is bouncing right. Yeah the bar code's bouncing and it's like let's go act on it that type of thing. That theory was completely disproven. It is does not bear out other than a small blip at 830 on a Sunday which might correlate to something but, but in general, no people are not bothered to give on the weekend they're stopping to think about it so I have further things that we need to analyze that I think you're going to be really excited about that we're we're starting to think about now from an analysis standpoint, but yeah 1130 on a Thursday, 1130 on a Thursday. So that's fascinating time because we, when we look at, you know, marketing, when do we send emails, you're not necessarily saying this is when you send the communication, you're telling us this is when that communications receiving reaction. Yes. And that to me, you know, I would love to compare this with the marketing to say, when is the open rate. You know how often what what are the times that people are. What do you what do you think I'm going to look at next so we have we have and there's has been so so giving Tuesday or partners at giving Tuesday did work on some benchmarking work with with Mailchimp. Relatively recently but the problem with that data is is it isn't necessarily really drilled down an indexed against when people might be clicking through and activating on a form. Right. The Mailchimp callback data is is kind of labyrinthine and if I'm going to be honest, but, and now they're actually more geared towards small businesses because they got acquired by the people make quick books right so for us, we have our own email engine. That thing sent out 250 emails last year I think that's a pretty good data set that you can draw on. So that I hinted at it that's actually where I want to go next Jared is to do that exactly is to see when are people sending the emails and when are people opening the emails and if there anything that lines up. I'm so glad that my crystal ball is working. I'm going to go buy my lottery ticket numbers now. What about the calendar impact how does the calendar you mentioned 365 days a year unless it's leap year. So how does that impact our culture of philanthropy in relation to that donor engagement. One of the facet this actually, they're all fascinating obviously but I think that that one of the most interesting questions that fundraising consultant T clay buck brought up when he started thinking about this was, Have we conditioned donors to give in something like December. Is that we, is that when we're asking them, or do they prefer that. And I think there's some interesting things that don't paint a clear one way or the other that I can unpack right now. So one of the funny parts is that like one of our best performing blogs for instance, is end of the year statistics that every nonprofit fundraiser should know it's just like everybody like Google's it and it pops up. And, and one of the ones at the top is like 31% of gifts come in December and I was like, that's true anymore. So, we're going to have to update the blog spoiler and, and, and, and that's fine that's fine and it actually turns out that that was some old data from the network for good, from about, I don't know like five years ago, and, and that's part of the things that like I encourage everybody. When you're doing your research when you're trying to understand what's happening in your own world. Just check the attribution and the methodology this goes back to Julia what you're talking about like this survey come from 22 people and three dogs and then that's it right like, like, what is the demographics that's why in our center. In our report, extensive methodology is outline. Same with fundraising effectiveness project we lean very hard on transparency there so you can trust it. And so, for us, I actually for for calendar year giving, I didn't want to use ours I actually wanted to see fundraising effectiveness project data so they gave that to me. And it found that 20% or so give or take a few percentage points which is still significant but like, it's not no 31% I'll say that. And so it was about 20% 1720% came in December. Good. That's a lot in one month. But it actually some of the more recent research that FEP had come out with shows that November December, especially in the past few years are starting to trigger some really interesting donor behavior. So, I'll talk about FEP but I do want to mention something we saw internally in our in our research to for something like online giving. So, some research that we found is that I'm going to read it some read doing it correct. We also found that donors whose first gift first gift to an organization ever in November or December has retention rate that is 53% higher than those making their first gift in the period of January for and through October we also find that they're typically making their second donation which we both are we all all of us now is way important for any times more important than the first gift. And that's coming around 11 to 13 months. So, this begs the question. Is it because we're slamming people with end of the year updates and communications, and then they're giving a year later, typically, because there's a big spike that happens at that 11 to 13 months. Is it because we're slamming them with communications, or is that when they prefer to give the final interesting point that leads me to believe that I actually think that there's a fair amount of people who do like to give in December. As their preference was that FEPSA that donors who gave in the last day of the year have a lifetime value 15% higher than the average donor. And that if you play around with our interface there. We actually have day by day analysis of December because it's so significant. And we show that, and it spikes way more than giving Tuesday, even online donations, because if it's if it's offline, going back to the thing. Yikes, I forgot to enter all the checks to get into all the checks right like, like offline is not as sure fire as online. And so with online I said, Okay, what happens there, bunch of people really love to give on the 31st way more than giving Tuesday online. And that makes me feel like either they're getting slammed with so many communications, which yes that might be happening but if they didn't care they wouldn't be given, or they would give another time right. That is also geographically so I live in Arizona we have our qualified charitable organization tax credit state right we can give to several different buckets for for state credit, if you will. And so for me my cycle is not December 31. It's tax day. It's like, Hey CPA, you tell me how much is coming up. It's coming up. This is fairly very relevant. How many, how much money do I need to put and then what buckets buckets. Well, guess what, my second favorite chapter is the where chapter, and, and, and we are working on geography as as part of that interface on the crystal ball I knew it, I knew it. But now I had to index it now now you have me intrigued to actually go back and look at state giving by month to not just as an aggregate that's that's probably another round of things but probably mid March, mid April, you know, kind of that November December trigger it's also that March, April. Okay. And I would also see to it really depends on what part of the country let's say for example, you're in the south where or the Gulf States where you are prone to weather disasters that happen in a specific time of the year that then drives community response, the Plains Middle America, another time with year where you have major environmental things that can, can, storms happening on the east coast the northeasters that we're typically not going to see during those summer months, like we're going to be, unless it's a sandy situation, we're typically not even worrying about stuff in a major way. Maybe it's kind of weird flooding season that's starting to happen but yeah it's. And there is some some really interesting research around disaster timing. There's, I remember a graphic that I saw very early on. During the pandemic, and then there was also some follow up analysis by fundraising effectiveness project on kind of what happened in 2008. For instance, right, you know, there's a timeline that follows that and then the typical disaster situation where you can see a big spike. And then a major drop off. And then you're going to see actually a second. I don't want to use wave but you understand another bump of giving that that occurs, especially from those major donors the more committed people who are starting to come back. And we're seeing this the fundraising effectiveness project data for 2021 just dropped. That November December analysis was only a snapshot the larger report just came out AFP FEP dot org. And there's a nice visualization that that giving Tuesdays done there too. And we're finding that those first time. Those first time donors have stuck around, especially if they're on the larger side, but there's a lot of concern on the smaller gifts that are just being left behind and ignored kind of those those midsize donors and things like that. Well and I'm sure we're seeing that also with, you know, the war in Ukraine and seeing, you know, so many US donors giving either, you know, in that country or two agencies that are supporting that, you know, that that affair. Let's get even nerdier acronym soup. Let's move into these NTE codes right and let's just start off with what the heck is this. Yep. I know it has something to do with the red tape and the IRS and you know, always naming something differently. So what very basic Tim NTE. This is the many ways the self reported designation that you put for what do you do it you're not what what is your nonprofit do. That's it this is what the IRS. That's the IRS has this is the IRS naming of it. IRS designated category. Yeah, it's the category so they have two levels they have the major category which is what we filter by here. Is it healthcare is it human services is it animal and environmental is it religion. And then there's the sub designations that like number in the hundreds that overwhelm we just kind of draw it up at the top level but we could get down here and we have done that before where it's like. Wow, it really looks like food pantries did this or interesting that type of, you know, labor union did that like you can get to that level of detail but but most analysis doesn't, you know, start with that. There's a Canadian version to of this that they're starting to do mapping between all these different government designations for for international analysis. We don't have much time you mentioned early in the episode which was just about 20 minutes ago that you could talk about this for hours so graph that we have up on the screen it does show pretty pretty pretty much the same pretty equal except for there's a huge spike. And if my plesural eyes are reading me correctly, it's December 2020. And that's where it really jumps not completely off just the chart, but doubles the majority of the other dates. And that maintained through 2021 to so when we get a we just again there's so from a nerdy standpoint. The reason you don't see a lot of reports coming out or pretty much you shouldn't see reports on 2020, you know the previous years giving in January February is lagging lagging data entry. And we see those checks, and we see that the kind of the, the, the, the lagging data that comes in the drift is the proper term for it so the data drift is people who are like, Oh right I forgot to put like the date on this and then they go back and then suddenly the data is popping up so we don't, we kind of wait, because we know historically there's, there's a period of time that's like the drift will be over. And so that's why you don't see data like like 2021 in December until now, but held strong same idea, people just do give a lot in November and December this is this is the big aggregate time. And a lot of people do their appeals as well so they're definitely as correlations there but there's also a lot of, even if we go back historically, when you know, the Christmas giving in, in, in England would occur and it's our Christmas appeal right and, and things like that and so that did carry over that did carry over. And I think it's cultural and I think we see that with Ramadan and, you know, different different times of when our people are called by an action of faith or witness of faith, you know to participate that way and look at the data, sorry Julia but like yet to just kind of show that in terms of even the data, like a lot of the stuff we don't, we serve some religious organizations but a lot of it is, is even not logged necessarily by the IRS, for reasons. And so that makes up a huge pie. And so all the major monotheistic religions have big times and periods in December. So there's there's a correlation. There's a lot of globalization and correlation aren't always related but there's, you know, there's definitely something happening. Well yeah I think there's a call to people and I think also to it becomes part of that, you know, piece to where we, we fulfill that prophecy because to your point you know we're having more events. We're sending out more communications we're doing more walks or appeals, I mean it all works together. I mean that's why I found your report so amazing. Is there any correlation between Easter and Tax Day? Who knows, right? I really don't know but hopefully one of our viewers and listeners will know. Maybe shed the light on that I don't know. So thank you so much for having me as well. It's been great. I want everybody to know where they can get this report. It's absolutely fascinating. We see a lot of data, a lot of reports that come to us at the nonprofit show and a lot of them can be really Mickey Mouse where you're like really wondering what the gravitas of this research is and how was it put together. It's like a master class and how this is all done. So Tim I'm delighted that you would come on and then also that you could actually communicate this to us and we could discuss it because that's the other part is the interpretation and the vocalization of this and then also the visual elements. So how we can get to this information. It's just so impressive. And think about that from the nonprofits perspective they should take inspiration from that that like the best way that you can actually tell your story isn't through data. It's through making the data very simple to understand. And so when it comes to your impact, it's actually a lot more effective to use an individual story to demonstrate that, right. So, so absolutely and I'm so so so thankful and appreciative of that feedback. Well, it's really cool and it's, it's the old econ major side of my brain coming out. I went to school for history. I don't know how I got into this so I love it. Well, here's Tim's information again neon one. Check them out. You can download this report. It has amazing infographics that time slide riveting I played around with that for 30 minutes trying to figure out, you know, keep adding to it to we're going to keep adding to it. Good, good, good to know. Here's Tim's information. Again, I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit Academy been joined by the nonprofit nerd herself Jared ransom CEO of the Raven group. Again, we want to thank all of our sponsors, and to let you know that if you want to share this episode with somebody else you can find us on Roku YouTube, Amazon Fire TV, Vimeo. Again, all of our presenting sponsors that are with us day in and day out. Thank you from Bloomerang American nonprofit to your part time controller the nonprofit nerd fundraising Academy the nonprofit Atlas nonprofit thought leader and staffing boutique. We say thank you thank you for your support. Wow. Okay Tim, we are buying you a beer at AFP icon in Vegas I'm just with I'll see you there I'll get I'll get that stuff to you after. Thank you so much. Thanks again for having me. Yeah that have joined us. Please stay well. See you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow.