 Hey there and welcome. So glad you're here today for another episode of The Nonprofit Show. And Julia and I were just fangirling with Diana Otero joining us today from Bloomerang. We are so grateful to have you, Diana, as well as your valuable time, but your expertise to talk to us about segmenting donor and you're gonna give us some magic in this. So for those of you watching and listening, we're so glad that you're here, stay with us. Julia Patrick, good to see you today, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. And thanks to you, you built this platform. You had the foresight to think in March of 2020 that we might need this kind of conversation. So day in and day out, we have these conversations with thought leaders like our guest today, Diana. I'm Jarrett Ransom, lucky enough to be your co-host, the non-profit nerd and CEO of the Raven Group. We are so honored also to have the ongoing support from our amazing presenting sponsors. So a shout out to our besties over at Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, non-profit thought leader, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, non-profit nerd and non-profit tech talk. These companies are here for you. They're here for your mission. They're here to help you do more good. And they also show up every month to be of service in these conversations. So so glad to have a representative from each of those amazing companies joining us for the conversations. And again, if you missed any of them, nearly 800, you can find them on Roku, YouTube, Vimeo, Fire TV as well as podcast. So queue us up pretty much anywhere. Anywhere you'd like to stream and download some information, some entertainment, you can find us on many platforms. So Diana, so glad to have you back. Again, for those of you watching or maybe listening, we have Diana Otero joining us today. She serves as the project marketing manager at Bloomerang. Welcome back. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here again. You know, Diana, whenever we have somebody from Bloomerang on, it always sparks a conversation. And then we're like, wait, we need to learn more about that. And so during night, we were chatting and then all of a sudden this conversation about donor segmenting came up and then we were like holy moly, you know, we needed like come back and really talk about this. We talk about it in an ancillary way, but to drill down and really get some expertise. And so thank you very, very much for giving us your time and really drilling down on this singular topic because it's kind of a mystery to some people. So I can ask you donor segmenting, it's not all the same or it is the same? What's the deal? That's very interesting, right? I like, I'm very visual. So I like to think of it as, you know, if you're traveling on the road and there's lots of vehicles merging in and out on the road and you happen to be one of those vehicles, we're so used to this now that we know what to do when we merge into it. But we kind of take lose of the, take, you know, it kind of disappears from our mind. Like think of it as the highway is your organization and you have donors merging in. You have new donors coming into the lane along with your new, your repeat donors along with your loyal donors along with donors maybe who are not as engaged anymore. But to them it could be a jarring experience. They don't know what this highway is like. They don't know what this lane is like. And if we just kind of slot them into a like, oh, you go here, it could be a very jarring experience for them. So we need that to be a little more guided experience. And we want that to be a good experience for them because we want them to stay on that lane. We want them to stay on the highway. We don't want them to exit. We don't want to lose that donor. So we want to experience. I love this visual. And in my head, my visual has a lot of horns hawking, a lot of flashers, a lot of fender benders, right? Like really saying, I'm not quite sure we're doing this in a very gentle capacity. So this visual is inciting for me. It's great. It's like, you can see, you know, are you in the carpool lane? Are you in the slow lane, the fast lane? Do you know where you're going? I mean, do you have a clunker of a car or do you have, are you driving the, you know, brand new Ferrari? So I get this. And I'm fascinated by that because it kind of reduces some of the mystery for me. And also, I don't know about you, Jared, but it seems to me like there's this pressure to get it all right, all at once, have it working. And then you're just like freaking out. Like, do I stop? Do I start? You know, that whole thing. So the highway to success, my friend, that's a cool idea. So let's talk about the common data points that even at the minimum or whatever would help us to understand what we should be tracking. Absolutely. So, and I know we have what we're gonna talk about today. These are great starting points for everyone, right? But when we get later as well, you know, you know your organization best, what has worked for you in the past and what hasn't, layer that into all of this. But there's some commonality that you can take a look at that should be common for everyone. And I think in terms of the data points you wanna take a look at, a lot of us are familiar with the recency frequency amount. That's a lot of things we're taking a look at. So recently, recency, how long have they been giving? Are they just a relatively new donor? Have they been giving for a while? Frequency, how often? Are they a one time a year donor, a monthly donor and an event donor and the amount? How much are they giving? Are they upgrading? Are they downgrading? I think we wanna layer in type as well. How are they giving? Are they giving via credit? How could be many different things? It could be the method. It can be how they engage with your organization. They give every time you have an event. They give every time you ask or they give whenever they feel like it. I think two very important data points that we forget as well is the reason that they're giving and the interest. What are they interested in? What topics are they most interested in? Are they more interested in your programs? Are they more interested in your constituents? Are they more interested in your events? What are they interested in? Cause that's where you're gonna capture them. Know what those interests are so you can tap into it. And the reason why, you always have to ask why, right? Ask why five times. Why are they giving to your organization? Because more often than not, that's an indicator of why they're going to keep giving to your organization. Yeah, you know, this is so fascinating. And I know that we've seen so much turnover in a lot of positions across the nation. For profit, not for profit. But you know, when you look at the tenure of a development professional or staff member, right? Within the department. I think what we've heard is like it's a 18 month, you know, window of transition. And so I can't imagine, Diana, that there's so many staff members, consultants, whomever, right? Coming in to say, okay, we need to segment our donors. And the previous person could have done it too, but maybe we're looking at merging our lanes in a totally new way. So I'm curious, you know, to really hear, you know, it might not all be the same donor segmentation. And I know that there's so many different buckets, you know, that we could kind of slice and dice our data. Are there certain common data points that we want to say, you know, new donor, as you said, the recency? Like talk to us about those common points. I'm curious to hear what those might be. So in terms of like recency, for example, a good way to separate those segment out is looking at new versus existing. So first time donors within and define, define what that timeframe is. First time donors within the last 30, 60, 90 days is about as much as I would go. And again, that kind of depends on what your organization would like, even taking a look at your fiscal year. Donors within the fiscal year, within the calendar year, some organizations take a look at it from an 18 month point of view. So define what those are for you, but those are some of the common things. Amount is a little bit tricky as well, because it's very specific to your organization, right? What's an average? If you don't know, find out what your average donation amount is. Because that's an easy way to tell, is this new donor above that average amount or below that average amount? So that's one thing to look at in terms of amount. Another thing is what are your thresholds? Major giving can take a, can look very, very different from organization to organization. So what is a major gift to you? So those are the two things in terms of the amount. What is the average and what is a major gift for your organization? For basic math or algorithms, can you tell us the equation to get that average gift? Are we looking at all donors within 12 months, 18 months? Can you just, what is the basic math for that? Good question on that. Oh my gosh, don't get me started on math, but. That's a great point, right? So for two donors, for new donors, I would go as much as 90 days. So what's the first gift that they're, or even just the first gift, right? It doesn't have to be a timeframe. What is the average first gift to your organization? So that's just, these are the first time gifts divided by, so total, some of total first time gifts divided by how many of those gifts are there. So that's your basic formula. What's the total divided by the total number? What's the total amount divided by the total number? You could also do it by year. This is the amount of gifts you received in a year versus the number of gifts divided by the number of gifts you've received in a year. And then slicing that out to, what about recurring gifts, right? Take out the one-time gifts, just the recurring. What is the average recurring in a year? So take a look at everyone who has a recurring gift. What is the sum amount divided by the total number of recurring gifts? Because it's very possible some might have more than one recurring gift. So take a look at the sum total divided by the number of recurring gifts, not the donors, the number of recurring gifts. Ooh, we could get super nerdy on this, right? Absolutely. Yeah, I love that you clarified that because absolutely, this is an important thing to recognize is that it's not a one and done kind of situation. And yeah, I love that you put that in there. Jared, when you work with clients, and just already the things that we've talked about in a very short window of time, how often are people like, wow, or do they get it or are they halfway there? Like what does the ecosystem look like when it comes to this? You know what's interesting, and I heard it this week, we have too many people unsubscribing from our newsletter, right? And so really looking at, okay, well, are you segmenting your communications? To Diana's point, there's so many different ways that you can slice and dice this data. And so I think a broad stroke statement of, we send out, we talk to our donors too many times, right? We're inundating them, they're falling asleep at the wheel because they're just, you know, they're tired of hearing from us. And I'm like, well, are you segmenting your donors to where your communication is segmented differently based off a newsletter, based off of a program topic? And I would say what I often see is these broad statements are stated, but there's not a lot of detail, there's not a lot of, you know, I don't know, just really breaking down the data to say this is exactly what we do. I know our new donors, I know our recurring, like there's not enough knowledge, I think in the donor segmentation. And it does, it takes a bit to do it, but for those of us that love it, right? It's a fun, nerdy project. Because just talking about this, like I would love, like let's dive into some numbers, right? So that's what I'm seeing, Julia, is there's often broad statements, be it from executive level, be it from the board members saying, we send out too much information, but if we segment our donors and our just broad supporters, I don't think you'll find that from them. If you ask them, they'll probably say not enough. Yeah, I agree with that, I really do. And so it's interesting to hear you say that because I think there's one sense of what's going on internally and then there's another what's going on externally. And you're right, and to Diana's point, if you don't have the data, everything is kind of a, you know, it's just a feeling or an inkling that's making decisions and that's just not where we wanna be. So talk, I'm sorry, Jared. I was gonna say, I think we all know we need to do this, but we don't always do it, which my question, Diana, how often should we be pulling these numbers? That's a great question. I mean, I'm a data nerd, so if you ask me, at least every month you should be pulling it, right? Okay, sure. And so that's at least every month, take a look at that. And I would advocate to like put a process in place of, because that also depends how often are you getting new donors, right? If you're getting a lot of new donors, maybe you do it more often. Maybe you need to reevaluate that more often. So every month, if you can't do that, I know we're all busy. If you can't do that, every time you have something major happen is a good time to do it. I wouldn't go more than six months without checking that, especially you'll notice the more often, you'll notice the change and how those numbers change, because it will change, right? Some people will fall asleep at the wheel, some people will exit the highway. It is going, you have people who will move from being a one-time donor to a repeat donor. Those numbers will change. So the more often you can check it, the more informed you can be. And it's not always a numbers game too, I just wanted to, I love your point of, some people may be falling asleep at the wheel, and there may be too many communications. That's why the reason for giving and their interest really plays into it. You need to be able to know your donors and tap into what resonates with them. Yeah, so much so. And I think to get that information from the start when they are a new donor is so much easier than to go back to a donor who has been giving so regularly, let's say over five years, maybe even longer than that, and to have a new staff member come in and to go ask this donor, their why, what's their motivation? If we can collect that from the beginning, and it might change, right? Like it might increase or wax a wane over time, but getting that from the first-time donor, which I love in the Bloomerang system, and it'll tell you, it'll prompt you on the dashboard, here's the calls you wanna make. Here's the new donors that you've received this week or today. So having those little touch points from Bloomerang, in particular, is so very helpful and really guides the team on what to do next. It's really important. So you've given us kind of an overview of the things that we should be looking at. Now, let's understand some other ideas, and maybe some of these are a little bit more germane to what your sector is and what the health and the lifecycle that you're in of your organization. Kind of paint a picture for us of that, Diana. That's a great point. So some of our favorite donor segments, and we'll weave in some of the ideas into this, or taking a look at, we've talked a lot about first-time donors, monthly donors, what about your lapsing donors? And I make the distinction between don't wait until they're lapsed, try to identify those who are lapsing, and this is where the recency comes in when it was the last time they gave. And going back to how much you know your donors, what's the usual cycle for your organization, right? Taking a look at do people give every six months, every 12 months, every 18 months, what is that cycle for you? And you can be able to tell who's kind of off their cycle and who's going to cycle off or gonna be going away, getting out of that highway. Identify before that happens. I love what Jared said earlier, right? You don't wait to ask till how many years later, get that information up front. Try to figure out what those patterns are. If you know that someone's in this lane, are they more likely to merge into this other lane or go in this direction and catch that before it happens? I would love a good pre-LiBunt report, right? Which for those of you, LiBunt is last year, but unfortunately not this year. And so to be proactive in those lapsed donors, as you're saying, Diana, I would see that we pull a pre-LiBunt or we're always tracking our LiBunt to see, okay, where are we in this quarter maybe and come at it from a quarter perspective so that you're right, like let's be proactive, let's reach out to them. If we know that this person always gives at the end of year appeal, have we gone above and beyond to make sure, because we talk about this always, there are currently 1.8 million, million nonprofits registered in the US. That's a lot of competition. That's a lot of end of year appeals. So we wanna make sure that that donor, right? Like still feels that they are connected to us. Absolutely. And I think a lot of people can be intimidated when we talk about segmentation, but a lot of people are very used to running reports. That's true. And so I like to think of it as segmentation is how you're using those reports and being proactive about the reports that you're running. Instead of just running a LiBunt and figuring out who your lapsed donors are, I can't catch them before they lapse. Be proactive about it. Yeah. I'm curious, Diana, and let's talk specifically about Bloomerang. There are several, what I would consider reports and queries that are already created, like just on the platform that are best practice. Can you talk to us maybe about some of these reports that might just be built into the Bloomerang system that are those best practice? Good question. Absolutely. Great question. So we do have those LiBunt and CyBunt reports built in. And what's nice about that is again, you always want to customize, great starting point, you always want to customize. What are those date ranges for you? We also have a highly engaged report. So these are folks who, and by engage we don't just mean giving, right? Because engagement comes in many forms. They could be volunteering. They're opening your emails. We just talked about that earlier. So what are those indicators of engagement that we aren't tapping into? We have a high potential report, which takes a look at, which marries their engagement with their generosity, right? Because a good indicator of future giving is past giving, not just to your organization. So you might have donors in there. I forget the number exactly, but first time donors, new donors, they rarely, if ever give a capacity. So they might have given to you, they might be, it might look like they're engaged with your organization already, but there's untapped potential there. So what does that look like? What does their generosity look like vis-a-vis their engagement? Or you might have folks out there who may not have great capacity to give, but they're very engaged with your organization. What are you gonna do with those donors? Because whatever their capacity is, it's going to you. How do you want to treat them differently? That is, yeah, that is so good. I love that. The other thing I'm seeing a lot now is how the landscape of fundraising is changing. And the monthly donor, the sustaining donor is popular. The peer-to-peer campaigns are popular. So that really activated that train of thought when you had mentioned their engagement level. If someone's very highly engaged, but they may not have the capacity, they could potentially have the influence of others to also help give to your mission. And those people should not be overlooked. Absolutely, that's one of my, not necessarily pet peeves, but an underutilized, speaking of report templates, we have a relationship report in Bloomerang. And it's pretty underutilized because how can you tap into that network? And how can you expand and multiply your impact? So I love that, Jared. And I love that you said, both of you ladies said this, it's really powerful to kind of, we don't have that much more time left with you, but to reaffirm that engagement piece, it's not just about that money because that's such a short-term thing that engagement aspect fits into exactly what Jared said. 1.8 million nonprofits, heck of a lot of competition. And so there are a lot of choices for our donor investors. And so understanding that becomes even more powerful. Again, we don't have that much more time, but some questions have popped up in my mind and that is tagging on to what Jared brought up and it breaks my heart every time we say this, 18 months, average tenure of a development director, which is so bad. And that comes from the AFP, Association of Fundraising Professionals. So that's like a legit tracked piece of our sector. How often do we look at these buckets and how often do we look at what we're measuring? Because if we're always changing it, garbage in, garbage out, right? What would you advise us on? Marrying, new talent, new technologies, tracking, what does this look like? That is a fantastic question. And first of all, I will also say that regardless of what your organization ends up doing, you have to please, please document so that the next person knows. I feel like every time I come on, I talk about that, but... Drive at home, Diana, you gotta drive that home. Because even things like, you know, you can make a recommendation that this works first quarterly, this works first every six months. The next, if you don't document that, the next person might think, oh, it's okay to do this yearly, right? Okay. So it's important to document, this is why we're doing it that way. This is work for us, and this is what the cycle looks like for our organization. I would recommend really, if quarterly is good, monthly if you can do it, never more than six months. Don't go six months without reevaluating that. But yeah, it can change as often as that. And so don't just like put the flag in the sand and then live with it. I mean, you're encouraging to keep, you know, morphing this and everything. That's not what I thought you would have said. It's interesting because now it might not change. Sure. It might not change, but it's good to validate and it's good to know. Do we need to make a change? Because you want to catch that. You want to catch that before it happens. Like, hey, we're seeing a trend that this is happening. How are we going to respond to this instead of waiting? And at that point, it may be too late. They may have gotten off your highway already. They're on a different highway now. Yeah, you know, I would love to see this monthly as you're stating Diana. And the reason for that really is to keep your finger on the pulse to see what so ever so slight changes might be in effect. You know, I was in a board meeting earlier this week and they were talking about the influx of ARPA funding, CARES Act funding, PPP funding, and how they're seeing now a steady decline of just overall funding. And so I feel like over the last three years, many organizations, right, have received an infusion of cash. Many of it, you know, could be from government and is that sustainable, right? And if it's not sustainable, what other fundraising revenue practices are you implementing now to level the ship? And if you were at a 10 million organization, 10 million dollar organization, is that sustainable without these government contracts, right? And if not, what is that happy balance? You know, are you going down to a six million dollar organization and that's where you can study the ship? So I think looking at these monthly, one, you're able to see that and have your finger on the pulse, right? Consistently. But the other thing too, is once you exercise this muscle of pulling the data, it becomes second nature. And if you do this annually, six months, even quarterly, it's like, how did I do this again? Am I still pulling this accurately in the same way? So I think monthly would really be best case scenario. And you're right, Diana, it might not change, but at least we're seeing, you know, the runway every single month to really track and analyze. Yeah, I think it has to become part of your process and your thought process. Yeah. You know, it's so interesting. Well, Diana, I always love spending time with you. Me too. Yeah, it's really cool. I think one thing for me and Jared, again, we don't have that much time, but you make this very approachable, logical, and necessary. Like this is not a luxury. You gotta be doing this. Yeah. So you can make good decisions and not be just emotional or, you know, thinking, oh, this is the answer when maybe it's not. Absolutely. You ladies have inspired me to maybe do something around the math behind it. Let's put some equations into this. Good. Well, we love to see that. Yeah, we're inspired by you. Diana Otero, Product Marketing Manager at Bloomerang. Coming to us, you know, we really depend upon your knowledge and your wisdom as to what we should be looking at, how we should be looking at. And so this has really been a cool opportunity for us. Again, Jared is really somebody who brings these ideas forward and talks about it, but really drilling down like we have today. We're not, we haven't done as much as I think we need to be doing. And so super cool to have you here. Again, thank you so much. I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, been joined by Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd herself to have these amazing conversations. Thanks to the generosity and those people that show up with us every day. Jared, next week we conclude our third year of broadcasting and we start our fourth year of broadcasting, which blows my mind to think about it. Remember when you told me, it's only gonna be two weeks. We can do this for two weeks, right? Yeah, because I was the rocket scientist who said, COVID, ah, two weeks, we'll be back to normal. Yeah. Yeah, but you know what? Blue Morang American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd, and nonprofit tech talk, all knew that we would be in this more than two weeks. And so these folks are the ones that signed up to be with us and to carry these concepts down the field. And we have many more things to talk about, many more people to interview, and we look forward to having you back with us again on another episode of The Nonprofit Show. As we like to end every episode, we want to remind everyone to stay well, so you can do well. Thank you, ladies, so much. This has been a great episode.