 Hello, everyone. I'm going to wait just a couple minutes to make sure everyone else has time to get in before we start. All right, we're going to go ahead and get started. So today's webinar is going to be on tips and tricks to minimize donor fatigue. I'm your host, my name is Austin Story. I am the lead community development manager here at Mighty Cause and my contact email is Austin at Mighty Cause.com. And I can definitely come back, show that before the end during the Q&A part of the demonstration. Okay, so today's agenda is going to cover what is donor fatigue, what are the main causes of donor fatigue, how different ways you can minimize donor fatigue, and then some of the tools Mighty Cause has to assist your organization. Ready. So first we'll start with what is donor fatigue. So donor fatigue is a phenomenon when people no longer donate charities they have in the past, and that can come in different forms, it can mean maybe your donors that have donated larger amounts in the past are donating smaller amounts, maybe your high volume donors are donating less frequently. It can be longer responding to your email outreach or your newsletters, or it could just result in also the loss of donors. So number of different, you know, definitions for donor fatigue, but generally the idea is that donors are not as responsive to the messaging you're using towards them. Now some of the misconceptions with donor fatigue is that it's simply the result of asking for donations too often, or asking for donations too aggressively. Now that can definitely be a part of what results in donor fatigue, but it's not always that simple. And so some organizations may try to combat this by asking for donations less often, or having more soft asks, and that's not always necessarily the right way to handle it. So donor fatigue generally can be caused by organizations themselves, and it's not as simple as just being aggressive or asking too much. It's generally engaging the donors the wrong way so every organization's donor base is a little different. So you're going to have to figure out how to properly engage your donors but usually donor fatigue is a result of incorrect engagement with your donor base. Okay so what are the main causes of donor fatigue. So improperly engaging with donors is one of the big ones and so this can mean a number of different things. One of the common ones is too many emails with a urgent request or limited time basically anything pushing urgency. Now these are definitely important to use throughout the year and when you do have urgent fundraisers, but it's a little bit like the boy who cried if you have urgent on a majority of your outreach, it's not going to generate the same effect, and donors will generally be less responsive to it. Also, if they're a donor that gets emails from multiple nonprofit organizations they can quickly get burned out if they're seeing urgent emails from every organization. So definitely use it sparingly and be careful with how much you're using it because it will not have the desired effect if every single email is urgent. And that also can result in donors you know unsubscribing from your mailing lists, and then they will no longer receive your emails, which will cause them, you know, to kind of not be in the loop on what's going on with your organization. So that's one of the biggest causes improper engagement with this kind of urgent email. Right. Another cause of donor fatigue is failure to close the loop and so what we mean when we say close the loop is kind of failure to complete the entire donation process. So the donation doesn't end after a donor completes in processes their donation through either you know whether it's check payment process or anything like that. Donors are responding to specific appeal so whatever the reason for your fundraiser. You know if you're, you know, building a shelter, whatever the main purposes they responded to that. So they're going to want to know what was the result of the fundraiser. What did you accomplish what exactly happened was it successful. You know you need to keep them updated on the progress of what they actually donated to, so that then they can feel a lot better about what their donation accomplished, right. Also, personalizing a thank you letter email that's going to go a long way so you can't treat donors as just a means to an end, where soon as they donate, we move on and you have some sort of automated thank you you really need to close that loop, and kind of reach out to them after the fundraiser has ended so that they're aware of one, you know what the result was, what's going on with the progress has been made, and just to personalize thank you so they know that you do appreciate their donation. Right. Poor donor management is another cause of donor fatigue. And as I mentioned before donors like to be acknowledged, and that can come in different ways it doesn't just have to be a thank you. It can be a number of different ways also you're going to want to understand the relationships each donor has with your organization, they're not all going to be part of the same segment. Some of your donors may be large donors that give one time a year but they give a large gift. That's obviously a different relationship and someone who's maybe a recurring donor who has a monthly gift of maybe a smaller amount, or for example, pull a donor that also volunteers for some of your live campaigns. So managing your donor base and making sure you know which donors are in which kind of different segments is very important, so that you can email them and message them different ways because they're going to have different responses, and want to be engaged differently because they're interacting with your organization different ways. So that's why poor donor management and sending the same mass emails to everyone can result in that fatigue because you shouldn't be messaging them all the same way because they're not the same type of donors. Donor engagement that that's going to mean building a real relationship with your donors so kind of working with management, you want to you know establish a different relationships with your different donors and one of the biggest causes of donor fatigue is a failure to offer that real engagement with donors. Right, another big cause of donor fatigue is not changing up your ask. So this means a number of different things, you know, not just running the exact same fundraising campaign every year, but also understanding that donors have more to give you than just their money and their donations. They can also, you know, offer you time in terms of volunteering or knowledge maybe a partnership they might be something some a donor that could help your organization. And the relationship is going to begin to feel one sided if you only ask for money so make sure you're also you know, incorporating them in live events volunteering if you have video content that's the kind of thing you can reach out to your donor base they might want to participate. Make them feel like part of your organization, you know, don't just make them feel like they're an ATM that you're trying to pull money out of. So getting them involved and figuring out different ways to ask for their support, other than just strictly donations is a great way to prevent the donor fatigue. Right. So moving in now to ways to minimize donor fatigue. Right. So we're going to go through a number of different kind of main pieces of minimizing donor fatigue. Some I might have briefly touched on already, we're going to dive in deeper here. Okay. So one of the first ones is going to be identifying key donors for your organization. So everyone should know on your team, the largest most important donors, the kind of donors that, you know, cover the largest amount of funds for your organization. Those donors should have priority and they should feel appreciated and engaged above all because they're making up the largest amount of donations. So maybe you have a list of your top 25 top 100, whatever makes sense for your organization, but those key donors should definitely be established, and it should definitely be treated, you know, properly to maintain their relationship with your organization. Okay. Another key piece of minimizing donor fatigue is going to be avoid over pressuring. So this kind of goes back to what I was just talking about before with segmenting donors for different events, different fundraising campaigns, different efforts. So there shouldn't just be the same kind of blanket mass email for each one of your fundraising campaigns, going out to each specific donor. It needs to be segmented so maybe some donors are recurring donors so if you do some kind of membership program with recurring donations, you know you have a membership drive, those donors should be in their own segment versus donors that maybe come to a live event and donate once a year, and then you invite them to your live events so just keep it in mind. It needs to kind of message each donor a little differently and make sure you're not over pressuring them and just asking them every single month for a donation for all the different things you have going on that each donor may not respond at the same too. So it kind of goes back to that, you know, engagement strategy, figure out how to properly engage with each donor. Another great strategy to minimize donor fatigue is to host non fundraising events. So this can kind of, you know, get pushed to the wayside sometimes because organizations are so focused on fundraising, but throwing in some just for fun events that are not, you know, built around a fundraising campaign can be a great way of kind of rewarding donors, you know, maybe you can do a dinner, and maybe you can do awards to donors or acknowledgements at the dinner of your largest donors, you know, the volunteers that participate in the most hours, give out prizes, things like that rewards your donors for, you know, being a part of the organization and kind of set up some sort of events that reward the community versus being just driven by fundraising. So that's another great way to kind of get donors involved without having the pressure on them of trying to solicit a donation. So there's a number of different events you could run for non fundraising. It's just something to consider as a way to really engage and reward donors without that financial loss. Another piece is having a strong monthly newsletter. So your newsletter really should broadcast exactly what your organization is doing as accomplished each month. And this messaging will keep donors engaged and keep them aware of what's going on. So goals are going to be really important, if possible, it's not always, you know, every organization is different, but if there's any way for your efforts to be visually shown, either with videos of what's going on or images of how you're accomplishing projects showing progress, that's going to really resonate with them because then they get to visually see what their donations have accomplished. Not always, you know, possible depending on what the organization is trying to accomplish. But if you can add a visual component, that's very important. Also, you know, any kind of written content can be useful as well. So that's going to be very important to kind of connecting with your donors through your monthly newsletter and not using your newsletter as just a way to solicit donations as well. So make sure it's engaging your donors and really providing them information and updates on what the organization is accomplishing. Right. So moving on to organize and know your donor base. So once again, this is going to be really about donor management. So have a system and if you don't have one try and establish a system to track and manage donor information. You know, all the information on your donors should be easily accessible by anyone in your organization so that they can look up a donor and learn a little bit about them very, very quickly. Creating mailing segments from this information is going to be important as well. So as I mentioned before, not all your donors slash supporters, you know, volunteers, individuals that engage with your organization, they're not all going to be exactly the same. So you should have them, you know, segmented into different groups so you can message them differently. Also taking the time to write personalized notes in schedule outreach, such as if you can learn their birthday and reach out for their birthday, figured out how they prefer contact as well. Maybe some donors prefer a phone call and don't really respond to emails. Maybe they prefer a mailed letter. These are going to be important things to track so that you can actually get everyone to respond to you through the proper channels because not everyone is going to be as responsive for through email for example that may not be the preferred method for everyone. So really figuring out that information for each donor will definitely result in better communication and better response rates from your entire donor base. Okay. Other ways to minimize donor fatigue is hosting a peer to peer fundraising event. The peer to peer fundraising event is a great way to get your donor base actually involved in the fundraising process. It's also a great way to engage with kind of the local community, whether that's through businesses sponsoring the event. You know, any kind of local organizations maybe partner with a similar organization or a local organization for a kind of joint cause event. And the peer to peer fundraising aspect it can really create a larger reach for your organization is getting individuals involved, having them build their own fundraising pages, and then share through their social media it really expands the reach. Excuse me, expands the reach of your organization and allows you to kind of get a broader spectrum of individuals that will have eyes on what you're currently running. It also is going to allow supporters to be ambassadors for your organization. You know they'll have their own page they can build. There's a live component like a 5k a run a gala. It can really you know inspire participation and once again this is going to actually allow them to feel like they are a part of your organization, which that's what you really want to be establishing with your relationship with your donors, and that's the overall pretend prevent donor fatigue is making them feel like they're actually a part of it, and they're not just someone you're soliciting a donation from. Additionally, depending on how this event is run, you know participate participation from local community will then grow your reputation in the community. You're going to be running the live events there, and it will raise awareness and with greater awareness is going to turn into more donors later on town the road. Additional ways of minimizing donor fatigue so one great way in a way I'm a big fan of is growing recurring donors. You don't have to worry about reaching out to them as often because they're set up with monthly donations or quarterly everyone to set those up, but generally speaking, growing recurring donors is a great way to prevent donor fatigue, because it kind of removes the added effort of trying to solicit donations multiple times throughout the year. They kind of already have that built in and will be donating on a regular basis. The way to activate this type of donation is by offering some sort of membership program, you know maybe you have different tiers bronze silver gold this is just simple examples, you could obviously set up your own membership system that makes sense for your organization, but kind of having a focused effort, maybe once or twice a year on a membership or just a recurring donation program is a great way to prevent donor fatigue because then that segment of individuals is not a segment you're going to have to reach out to as frequently, you know you can kind of lock them in for a certain amount of time, and then they will be kind of recurring source of donations, which also stabilizes you know your donation source you know that's a consistent volume of donations you can receive without having to worry so much about fundraising. And then kind of back to understanding your donors, providing surveys for donors is a great way to kind of gather information on your donor base as a whole. So every organization, your donor base is going to be a little bit different. So you really want to figure out how your donor base likes to be engaged. So what methods do they like what are they dislike what is the most successful, and you know, this will change over time as well it's a constant process, and you're going to continue to have to tailor your efforts to you know fit your specific donors preferences, and this will also you know within the base of donors be different of different groups of individuals, but you want to try and gather as much information as you can. So if you do mailed surveys, once a year, maybe have surveys at your live events surveys for volunteers, any type of way you can gather information is going to be very, very helpful, just to kind of figure out exactly who your donor base is and what the right way to engage them is. Okay, so next I'll just briefly go over a few different tools on mighty cause they can assist with some of the different efforts we've talked about to minimizing donor fatigue, and then we'll get to q amp a. So one of the big features on mighty cause they can assist with this is our supporters donor management tool. So this system will create a database of all your donors that you're able to email market message you can segment them into their different groups. So once again kind of create those tailored mailing lists, they'll have their own donor profiles can import data and track their history over time. So this is a great tool for starting to kind of create your own database and create your lists of donors to really start engaging them. Also, our event fundraising. This is great if you're doing a peer to peer fundraising event whether it's going to be virtual or online, you can build to have teams of individuals, you know individuals can create their own fundraising pages, you can elevate the campaigns with you know really getting the community involved also incorporate ticket registration. So really whatever type of event you need to build our event tool is the perfect fit for it. And then one other dimension is text to give. So just with when it comes to donor fatigue to providing you know an additional method of donations can be very useful. And so this is a quick way for them to give a donation through a mobile device, you can have custom keywords for your different campaigns, and it's something you can just incorporate into your regular marketing efforts, whether that's through email, you know, watermarking the video on your website so it's just an additional portal additional method for your donors to donate through. And all those tools are part of the mighty cause advanced subscription. This is a list of the other tools available. You know we have integrations with sales force Mailchimp Slack dedicated account manager. Custom branded receipts volunteer management so there's a lot of cool tools in there. And if you're interested in learning more about advanced you can always reach out to me after the presentation. So next I will leave it up for any questions, and it can be a question about donor fatigue question about mighty cause either one. Do we offer a survey feature. Yes, we actually you can build custom questions in that advanced subscription you're able to generate custom questions on all of your checkouts. And what's great about that is you can build your own questions you can create the prompt, and you can create the answer type whether it's like multiple choice. You know fill in the blank numeric input, and you can decide if a questions mandatory on a checkout, or optional, and you can also set it up where a question may only show up for donors above a certain amount. So the ability to kind of make that a mandatory optional question is a great way to gather additional information from donors, and you can set that up where it's different on each of your checkouts as well. So you know if you're running a peer to peer fundraising events, and maybe you want to ask about, you know, are you interested in becoming a volunteer, but you don't want that on your year round form, there's flexibility there where you can have different questions on different forms. You know a separate survey it's a survey that's actually built into the donation portal. What is my opinion on to frequent. So it's to frequent it really just depends on the organization and the donor base. As I said before, it's, you know just don't be messaging the same groups of donors, basically like every single month every single event. Two frequent will depend on the specific donor. So there's not really like a set timeframe for that. It's going to it's going to just be learning about your donor base and understanding that. Can I show how someone can set up a peer to peer fundraising page. Not it during this demonstration I don't have that kind of setup if you want to set up a demo. You can reach out to me after the presentation I can kind of do a full demo of the platform. I'll actually jump back to the slide with my contact info here. So and you should receive an email from me afterwards. But if you want to set up a one on one with me that's perfectly fine and then I can kind of walk through how our peer to peer fundraising pages work. Essentially, there's options where you can have teams of individuals, or you can just have you know, individuals with singular pages as well. And you can corporate event registration. But yeah we can set up a one on one for that. If you want to reach out directly. We can put it for membership programs. No, we offer you can set up recurring donations through mighty cause but generally memberships, something kind of set up, you know by an organization itself in terms of what you know each kind of monthly recurring amount will mean for each organization. Right. Any other questions. Customers is customer support provided with mighty cause. Yes. There are two different subscription plans, either way, you will have customer support included one of them does come with the direct account representative assigned to your organization. But if you're on the the other plan you'll still have access to a support ticket line. So it's not hard no matter what you're doing on the platform does not hard to get in touch with an actual person that can assist you on the platform. So any questions you have assistance and also any troubleshooting how often emailing should be done each month. Once again that's going to depend, you know, so, for example, you can have a newsletter that goes out each month, but you know as I kind of mentioned before I don't really think a newsletter is should be the place for a donation ask that should be information about what your organization is accomplishing, you know what's on the timeline like maybe a calendar for the organization the current year. So when you say how often emailing should be done really depends what you mean by emailing, you know if you're asking specifically for asks for donations. Once again that's going to depend. You know you could send out asks each month for donations but maybe you're not asking all your donors every month right, you know maybe donors that have donated. For example let's use giving Tuesday for as an example, donors that have donated in the previous years giving Tuesday, those should be individuals you're reaching out to the next year around giving Tuesday. And maybe donors that donated to your summer campaign. You're not reaching out to that. Right, that's just an example you kind of want to segment them you don't want to be messaging the same donors constantly through the entire group of donors constantly throughout the year. What are the essential details components are ambassadors with need to set up a peer to peer fundraising page on mighty cause. So, usually the organization will set up, for example it's called an event page. So you'll set up the event page, and then you can set up templates for them if you would like. There's kind of two ways individuals can join peer to peer fundraising pages, you can have a join button on the page, so they can come click join and then build their page or you can send email invites, and that'll kind of just prompt them to build the page. There's some tool kits available that are kind of walkthroughs for them to help build their page but it's very straightforward. If you do the email invite through the the parent kind of event page. It's super easy for them they'll just kind of use the link and then build their page, and you can also create a template so it pre fill some of that information for them. If you take a look at our support blog, the mighty cause blog. There's also articles walking through kind of exactly how urban and peer to peer products work. And you can also once again you can reach out to me directly and I'm happy to walk through any of that as well. Right, any other questions already well if there's no other questions then I will go ahead and wrap it up. And you guys should be able to access this slide deck shortly after the presentation and we also have a recording. And you'll be able to request as well if you want to kind of watch this over again. And as I mentioned, feel free to contact me Austin at mighty cause calm with any questions I'm happy to set up a one on one demo of the platform. Answer any other questions you may have other than that I hope to hear from you all see on the platform soon. So you guys have a great rest of your day. Have a great rest of your week.