 Make sure that we give our wonderful guest, which today is Sasha Lewis. She's not new to us. In fact, she comes and joins us at least once a month to talk to us about her company, Moves Management. And today, I'm really thrilled to have you joining us, Sasha, to talk about the donor database. Is it your digital paperweight or is it your tool for success? So thank you so much for joining us today. And of course, you see her logo also hanging out with the cool kids, the presenting sponsors. We really appreciate all of the commitment and the investment that each and every one of these sponsors provide, not only the nonprofit show, but truly the sector at large. So these companies exist to help you do more good in your community. If you haven't checked them out yet, please do. They are all online and you can find them on all of the social media platforms, I should say, most of the social media platforms. But we are just so grateful to have each and every one of you and supporting us. Julia Patrick, as you see, has let me play solo today. So Julia will be back tomorrow. Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm Jared Ransom, also known as the non-profit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. And back to Sasha. Again, welcome so much. Glad to have you here and to really talk to us about this digital paperweight and just overall CRM donor database. So welcome, Sasha. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. It's always fun to join you in the morning. Well, we so appreciate it. And again, Sasha and Moves Management Consulting is one of our continued sponsors. So we are so grateful to have your continued sponsorship and investment. Again, in these conversations and in the sector at large. So I know that you've had a lot on your plate lately. You're very involved with the Arizona, sorry, Association of Fundraising Professionals, but in particular that Arizona chapter. So I know that you just had a big event and curious how that went. Thank you. It actually went really well. And we were talking about technology in the non-profit sector. And it was a miss to miss yesterday's guest speaker, Brian, because he actually joined us for that event as well. And it was just fantastic because it really lends to the conversation that we're having today is, you know, are your databases or these tools that you have? You know, and I kind of jokingly call it, are they digital paperweight? Are they really something that you're using to drive your mission? And so it's exciting to continue to elevate this discussion of technology CRMs in the non-profit sector. And what that means for our industry moving forward, because I do think it's, and I've said it before, and we'll say it again, the most exciting and kind of provoking thing that's happening in the industry right now is our need for quality donor data and data managers as well. You are so right. And I'm glad that you mentioned Brian Greenwald yesterday with Generate Impact. We had a wonderful conversation with him all about tech equity. And I really got to the root, Sasha, of like, what is this? What is tech equity? And, you know, we talked a lot about like, what are the systems that help to advance the human center experience? And so I'm looking forward to learning from you because I would highly, you know, endorse you for all of your expertise when it comes to donor database. Because you, like me, as a great, great nerd when it comes to this information. So, you know, that's an honor. I always love to find fellow nerds. But talk to us about, you know, really this donor paperweight, like, is it a digital paperweight? Or is it that tool for success? And how might we be able to see the difference? Absolutely. Well, and when you think about within your organization or organizations you've been with, how often do we talk about our donor database as something we're strategically using for our organization? When we're looking at the strategic plan, always sitting there and asking ourselves, is our donor database set up to help us be successful with the strategic plan? Or do we need to do some work to help get it to that point? And I think that's a question that is so often missed. And because it all, you know, we talk about our database being the place where you put in your contact reports, we just record donations in. But it's really a living, might not necessarily breathing, but digitally breathing, you know, tool that has a lot to offer. And so when I've looked through and I visit with clients, I consider my own career and professional experience. And when I can look at how the organizations have approached their database for some people, it truly is as I consider a paperweight, you know, that thing that sits on your desk that we never think about. And it's kind of there sometimes and we move it around a little bit. And that's what the database has been for so many organizations. It's in the back of the mind, but it's not really something that the CEO is thinking how does this make me be a better in my position? How does it help me understand my tools? And so when I talk about it, I said it jokingly a few times and it's resonated, but is your donor database a digital paperweight? Or is it something that's helping your organization drive success? And that to me was just a fun way to approach to challenge you to think about what is your database doing for you and how as an organization are you strategic about its engagement and use within your within your mission and to drive those things forward. So very much again, love the idea that is it that digital paperweight or are you using it? I do too. And as I think of the time literally the calendar, right? We are four months until the end of the year. So I can't believe it because some of us are still stuck in 2020, right? Like, what is still happening? Where are we? And so when we think of this as a digital paperweight or can we truly make it as a transformational opportunity? I'm wondering if you would be so willing, Sasha, if we could also focus today's episode around the last four months, right? Like, how can we use everything that our digital, you know, data provides us into this transformational time to finish out this year really strong? That's such a great question, Jarrah. And it really goes back to what is that strategy behind it? So if we're getting ready for some really, you know, great end of the year drug mail campaigns, you know, have you really thought about how that database is being used to help drive the success? Is it just something that you're pulling a list from? Or are then you using it to actually do follow up engagement? You know, what are the bells and whistles that you have available in your CRM that's doing marketing that's saying, hey, this person gave a gift to this campaign. So now we're going to have an automation or a workflow in place that's going to send them a thank you note and a phone call afterwards. And so it's not just, how do I use it to get the mailing list together? How do I, you know, that those are the transactions, those aren't the things that again, make it strategic. It's how am I using it to one of the donors? To me, you know, when we hit August, it's end of the year. I feel the end of the year panic, you know, tax statements are coming up and the end of the year statements are things that we need to do. And we're always panicking because we don't feel very good about the database. And so to me, when I thought about transformational as a topic of our databases, it's when when done right, when a strategic tool, when not a digital paperweight, our databases can do so much more for us to be able to drive those missions and transform the organization. And so although we are getting near the end of the time, I struggle sometimes there because there's so many variables with every organization to say, here's what you need to spend your time on. But if I could say anything, it's hone in right now and make sure your stewardship process is tight for those thank you letters. Can you get gifts in the door? Can you do your daily gift entry well and get solid stewardship letters out in a timely manner? That is one of the most important things that we can do right now. But I do want to talk a little bit more about transformational here in just a moment as well. You know, just as you're speaking Sasha, I physically felt my chest get tight. No, it's really about that end of year. And I think the same way once August is here, it's end of year. And I think the statistic is, you know, roughly 30% of all operating budgets are raised within these last several, you know, last few months of the last quarter of the calendar year. So regardless of your fiscal, but that calendar year is really when 30% or more is really raised. And that's where we are. We're in it right now. That is volume and that is scale. And I think it was actually Julia's or maybe it was the pages, LinkedIn post this morning that was talking about the ability to scale. That is such an important variable or factor today is the scalability of your operations, the scalability of your engagement with a donor. You know, if you're struggling to get 10 thank you letters out on a reasonable timeframe during the summer months, I'm scared for what the, you know, that the next few months will look like for you. And so it's taking these moments now to put in the extra work because it is absolutely extra work to right size and clean up processes. But to do that now, the time savings that you're going to get over the next few months as we close out the year will be measurable will be things that you can easily see. And that to me is where we get into a little bit more of the transformational part. And if I can kind of jump into that and continue on that, you know, I look at and you hear me talk about we've got to fix our databases, we have to have this intention between how we're using it, how we're working with accounting, how we're tracking our information. If we don't record it, we can't report it. And just this week, I we've been working with a client and we've been addressing some very significant issues and getting things closer to those really final deliverables. And we're visiting with a few different team members from other departments. And one of the other colleagues made a comment that through the work that we've been doing together as a team to fix the database to really dig into the root causes of the problems. For the first time, I think is what this individual said is they fill peace, like the anxiety and the stress that was always there within the organization, like they didn't have that anymore. There was a good cohort and collaboration amongst departments that hadn't been there, because there'd been so much tension for so long, because we didn't understand how to use these tools. And I continue to kind of want to push this conversation of again, is it a digital paperweight? Or are you strategically using it to help your mission? Because when you change that mindset, more often than not, you fix a lot of other problems that are happening in the organization that are rooted in bad operations, bad data. And not that everyone doesn't want to help, they just sometimes can't because the information is not there. And so this is a space to truly transform your mission and transform your organization. If you're spending time and you're constantly rehashing where there's conflict between programs or volunteers or development or accounting, I encourage you to take a time in to sit in a room and go like, how do we help each other? Because there is always a solution somewhere in there that will truly help your organization transform when you're not spending time, I mean, pulling a mailing list or trying to generate a board report and you're actually working on the mission. That's what your donor database should be doing for you. So when you say, how do we help one another? I'm curious if you could go a little bit deeper, Sasha, into the board, right? Like, how might we use the data from the database and share those reports or, you know, thermometers scales, pie charts and graphs, right? Like, how do we engage our fundraising committee? How do we engage our programs? How do we engage our board members to really make this a transformational opportunity for the organization? Absolutely. Well, it takes time to build on trust. I mean, let's be honest. For the 20 years that I've been doing this, the database is this thing that just is dunk in most organizations. There's rarely confidence in the gift entry process. And I don't mean this across the board. Your organization, you know, may very well have these things in place. But across the board, you know, there's, we can't always reconcile with accounting. We can't do these things. And so there's all this extra work. And when I think about how we need to function for, let's just take our board reports, how we're reporting out to the board. When I look at the time that my friends, peers, colleagues, clients spend trying to extract a board report, it's painful. And that to me is one of the things that should be an on-demand, never have to question, never have to, you know, go, well, hold this report. I sliced in the dice and I think this is how we got it. It should never be that way. Your donor database should be such a confident source of truth that you have it designed that it gets accounting's information the way they need. And that's a whole nother topic we've talked about, gets development the information that they need and the meaningful parts that they do. But we're not editing and tweaking and, you know, making it work. Because then what happens is year over year, we are never really understanding our successes. We are never really understanding our revenue pass, how are dollars coming into the door? If we took our time to make the stoner database more than that digital pay-per-weight and a strategic tool, we can drive ROI. We can look and look and see what's the, you know, return on relationship. We've had this person engage so many times with us. They've attended events. They've attended as a volunteer. They've given a donation once a year. All of those things coming together into strategic cultivation and strategic plan, they should have never be considered an asilo. And that CRM is that again, space for us to just strategically look at it and say, how am I using this to better engage with my donors and better serve my mission so that we are doing the right things for our organization? Right. And you're so right. I too have heard from too many organizations that are like, oh, we don't like our donor database. We don't like our CRM, right? And as you would say, and I love this because I want to say this was like early into one of our episodes, is you were like, yeah, most organizations are not using their CRM with all the bells and whistles that it truly does provide. And so that, you know, to me really sunk in and rooted into my memory, honestly, Sasha, because I now remember that when someone, you know, speaks ill of their donor database or of the data that they have in there, right? And it's like, okay, well, are we using this properly? Or is this truly that digital paperweight? But all of this is amazing for the transformation. And again, as we move into the final countdown four months of the year, which it's really hard to believe, you're also sharing with us today in this episode, Sasha, all around some keys to success. And I feel like you shared a little bit about this already, but I want you to go a little bit deeper into like, what are some additional ways that we can engage our donor database and move it from that paperweight to truly be a key for success? Now, great, great questions and lead into, you know, this discussion, again, trying to think of things that we can share that are universal to all organizations. And so I'll go back to something as straightforward and simple as your stewardship daughter acknowledgement process. Use your database to create personal engagement. So when I sit there and I think, and I hoping you're having this happening at your organization, but if your thank you letters are going out, and it's still, you've heard me complain about, dear friend, if you do not have a personal thank you name or a personal name, if you cannot get their nickname out, first and foremost, go through your database and spend the painful time it takes to get those nicknames in the system to know how to extract them so that if they go by Jim that you're pulling that and you're not calling them James after they've been your donor for 15 years. And I've told you every year for the last 15 years, not recall them that we have to start honoring and showing our donors that we're listening. And sometimes this information gets embedded into notes or just we email them, but we never take the time to transport into their system. And so to me, the keys to success is if you are especially a frontline fundraiser, if you are a portfolio manager, or you are one of those individuals that are lucky to be the person that answers the phone for your organization and you talk to the donors the most, every time you get that beautiful tidbit of information about their preferences, how they want to be communicated with, stop everything and go stick it in the database because if you don't, it's near impossible to honor that back to the donor. And so we can use those as drivers and motivators or decision makers into the database. And so names you'll always hear me just over and over again, get your donor names, right? Especially your most closest individuals that are engaged the most with your organization, ensure you have their information, their birthdays, their anniversaries, grandbabies, kids' birthdays, all of those things are so important to record and the place that they belong in the database. And I think that's another key part is if you're just sticking this in a note and you're going, oh, donor, left organization, A, B and C now works with organization D, E and F, but you didn't go record that as their primary business information, guess what? The next time we're trying to engage this new company, we're not going to understand that our longtime volunteer and donor has already, is maybe on the C-suite there because we didn't put it in the proper place. So it's not really just about us, but it's about your team members, it's about the people that follow you years in the future at your organization, how are the work that we're doing today? How are we helping to set up our everybody else for success? It's not just about kind of where we're at. So you're saying every time we have a conversation or we learn a new piece of information, we should stop and do it right in the moment. Yes, and I know everyone's like, I don't have time for it. Right. Now, that's where I can sit there and kind of challenge you to say, yeah, you do. Let's be honest, you've taken five minutes today and you've gone and surfed the internet, you picked up five minutes on your phone and you've opened up Facebook, you've opened up Instagram or whatever it is, your social media things is, I'm sorry, there's no way anymore. You can tell me that you're too busy to do it, especially when the majority of the CRM platforms have a text-to-speech feature now where you can do this all on your cell phone. So you cannot tell me that this is not possible anymore. It's just not. It's whether or not it's important enough to you to make it a priority in your daily activities in your daily life. So when I'm engaging with the donor, they don't know it, but their donor record is up on the screen if I'm on the phone and we're not face-to-face. Their donor record is right there in the moment we're done. I'm making those notes because I want to honor the time that they gave me and it goes back to I think an example I've shared before where I called up a lapsed donor and I was thanking them for their past support, wanted to, you know, see what we could do to get support back from them and he, the donor was one having dinner with your founder tonight. Nobody bothered to record in the database that that person was the brother-in-law of the founder. And so can you imagine my, you know, stumbling as I'm trying to regroup myself and honor that this person is closely connected, a very close member, but it wasn't in the database. And so as a new staff member, that was a really uncomfortable place to be for me at that moment in time. And it's things that I think about with our, you know, turnover in the industry, put that stuff in now. So you remember the next time, the person that follows you remembers the next time. And again, we're helping to connect those donors with meaningful, meaningful ways in honoring what they've shared with us. I can't imagine that feeling and I've had something similar, but I'm curious. So as we, you know, really want to transform not only the data in our CRM, but we also want to transform the way, let's just say our board members are engaged with this transformation as well. When it comes to knowing nicknames and, you know, this personal information, would you recommend that we ask our board members, like if they were to bring someone to a table or they were to bring someone into the organization in this virtual space, should we ask that board member to provide that, that personal level of information? Is that appropriate? Yeah. I mean, why not? Like at this particular point, we all know the expression too, you know, and if that board member is making that invitation, you know, we want to be mindful the first few times that we're getting to know somebody that if they have a very, you know, family-oriented nickname that we just don't jump in with that very private one, but we do want to have it in the background. And then once they introduce themselves with that very personal name, then we're invited in to be a part of that. And so that, you know, I kind of jumped over earlier when I started to talk about thank you letters, but that's actually another important place to put that question in the body of your thank you letter, put in a field for their recognition name and say, hey, is this how you want us to reach out to you or to put your name in our annual reporter to list you as a supporter? Just ask in that. And one of my favorite expressions was, here's how we're going to acknowledge you. If you would like this to be changed, just let us know about five or six times a year, I'd get a phone call from someone that'd be like, oh yeah, make that change. And it would turn into an amazing stewardship opportunity. So your database has all these great ways to just merge that field in and that merge field in makes it sound like you wrote that letter personally just for them. So that's why those fields are so important, because if you can merge it, you can use it as a customized field. But if it's not something that's mergeable or usable, it's just buried into a note. And we can't act upon that to help drive our engagement with our donors. Right. Okay. Now, let me ask you this question, because oftentimes, when I'm in a donor database, rarely is the birth date filled out, right? What is your key to success to finding someone's birth date? So it's a, it gets a little bit more, but some kind of ways it's easier. Honestly, depending on their Facebook settings, you can get very stalker-ish. I mean, let's be honest, we're stalkers in what we do. So you can get that. There are a lot of tools that will age append your database. And so if you are doing something that is really kind of in that space, especially if you're maybe considering a plan giving campaign, something of that nature, it very well, maybe a good investment to do some data mining and to actually do like an age append. Frankly, if you are a portfolio manager or a major gift officer, I will still challenge you. Just ask. If you don't have it in your database, ask your donor. Most of the time, as we know, they're going to give us every bit of information. They'll probably give you their birthday, their grandkids' birthday, their spouse's birthday. I mean, honestly, if you just have a conversation, you're going to find out. And so what I also encourage you to do is demystify this whole process and just be a human. You know, when you're on a conversation and you're talking with a donor because they call them to say, Hey, my address is wrong. You can be like, Hey, you know, we'd love to send you a birthday card. You don't have to share it with us. But could I put your birthday down in our database? Would you be comfortable sharing that? And something as simple as that, they may not, but at least you give them the opportunity to say, I care enough about you to ask and let them choose whether or not they want to provide. I love that. And I so appreciate it. I was in Bloomerang the other day in their CRM. And I noticed that you could put in the constituent's Facebook information, right? So that URL as well as their Twitter. And I thought that was fascinating. So Sasha, when you touched on the point of like, you can go to their Facebook page and find it, I now connected the dodge just just here in the moment as you were sharing to, you know, go into that constituents profile. If the Facebook page is not there, go see if you can find it added in there. And then like you said, more, maybe nine times out of 10, right? Their birth date is listed. It may not have the year, but it typically has the month, the date, you know, that kind of information. Yeah. And to be honest, early in my career, I was really uncomfortable with that strategy. It really made me feel that it was inappropriate because were we invading or we crossing the line because this wasn't shared with us. Then I realized when you get into the analytical mining that Google, that all of these other tools, that all a lot of these other software platforms do that are now on the market for donor databases, they extract and find this just by doing searches of the internet. And so this isn't private information. These are things that people have now made public or made, you know, public to certain extent. And so once I started recognizing that it is now kind of a normal culture to know that your information is being used to serve up an experience for you, I have allowed and reframed my viewpoint and mindset on looking at social media information. I'm still very respectful of it because I do think that there are things that, you know, are personal and private, but it is a useful tool to understand what our donors, you know, care about. We talk about it before it's honestly, yeah, they care about our mission, but they don't really, they care about how they're helping impact something that's important to them. And that's a slightly different viewpoint. And those social media profiles can sometimes give a glimpse into, you know, they're really looking at nature a lot. I see a lot of things about, you know, animals on their profile. And we've got this program, maybe I'll send them a little bit of information and see if it piques their interest. That's the opportunity that it has at hand for us. And to me, that's, I go back and I called honoring the donor. And I do believe it is honoring their donor and who they are. And that's something that for profit companies do really well, that nonprofit companies, I think we've missed the mark for a long time. Yeah, I so appreciate that you shared, you know, at first your hesitancy to going into social media. And I can imagine, you know, I don't think that was just a couple of months ago, this was probably a couple years ago, right. And just the landscape of social media has drastically changed. Artificial intelligence has drastically changed, right. But really having this access to the information is, it's right there at our fingertips, literally at our fingertips. And so, you know, I just think you sharing for many of us watching live, or maybe the recording here is, you know, when you do feel that kind of like ping and you're thinking, sure, I'm doing this. I love how you tied it back into, you know, this donor, this constituent is really sharing a lot about nature, maybe they're, you know, maybe they have this whole other love that ties into your organization, and you can now start to share that in a compatible message. And I think that's, that's beautiful. Well, that, you know, that's the ultimate goal of segmentation and engagement and some of these, you know, really exciting things that these new platforms that are coming on the market, because there are a lot of platforms on the market, let's be honest right now, CRM platforms, and they, some of them will just go out and grab it, and then they start doing dynamic content where if this person has this tag on their record that says nature says this, all within one singular email, we can, you know, really customize that message. And when we talk about our database, you know, tools for success, that's what we're talking about is, is it helping you create a better experience? Because frankly, you can't do it the way we did 20, 30 years ago, I remember starting out and working with a colleague that actually had an like, index card in their front suit pocket. I mean, that's how they still carried their little notes. And that was one of my early experiences into moves management was that little note card. And we can't do that anymore. We can't keep track of the volume of information. We can't keep track of the volume of donors. And back to the LinkedIn Post this morning, we have to do this at scale, because there are enough organizations competing. We have all figured out that the top of the pyramid is at capacity. So now mid-level giving is the, you know, big thing that we're looking at. And so as we look at engaging mid-level donors, that is major gift to activity, which is very personal at an annual fund scale. You have to have the tools in place to be able to have your database be able to scale that up with you and become a key to success along the way. Couldn't have said it better. That's why we have Sasha Lewis joining us today. If you have not checked out Moves Management, please make sure you do that. MovesMC.com and you will see Sasha Lewis there. Thank you so much. And I know that we are blessed with your presence here, you know, monthly, especially as you are one of our presenting sponsors. So thank you so much. Julia Patrick typically joins us, but she let me go solo. And I think Sasha, I think we did a darn good job. I'm going to say nothing more, but I think we did a darn good job. I'm Jared Ransom, also the nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. And again, thank you so much, Sasha, for being one of our amazing presenting sponsors. And thank you to all of our presenting sponsors for continuing this conversation. What we thought would be a two week journey, as we all know, we're now back to, you know, deciding what to do with the Delta variant as the world continues to change and everything continues to be a new navigation point. So we are so appreciative to have the generosity of our sponsors. Sasha today was amazing. I'm just so grateful for your time and your expertise. Thanks to all of you that have joined us live or tuned in to pick up these nuggets of information from Sasha. So thank you so much, Sasha, and thanks to all of you who joined us. Well, we like to end every show as we have the last 352, I think, are 53. I'm not quite sure, but we need to find that out. We hope that you'll join us tomorrow. Let me check. Yes, tomorrow is Friday because today is Friday Eve. So until then, stay well so you can do well, and we will see you all here soon.