 I'll just introduce myself very, very quickly. I'm Mike Paquette, and as you can probably tell from the screen in front of us here, I'm with People First Fundraising Solutions. And this is my company. What we are is a Fundraising Consulting Agency. And we're based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Essentially, we work with nonprofit groups and charities primarily of a grassroots community-based nature, although there are some larger ones and some other groups that we do work with. But primarily those that are the most in need, we find are the ones that don't have any real solid in-house fundraising or fund development expertise. And so we work with them to help them get past whatever's holding them back from becoming sustainable. And of course, during the course of this pandemic, I think this is hitting a lot of groups hard where there, those that have been very, very dependent on one or two major funders or government funders in the United Ways, they're the ones that are really finding it tough to keep their doors open and really keep themselves afloat, especially when a lot of funding reserves have dried up in recent months and during the past year. But we work with them to basically enhance their basis support and that can involve fundraising, revenue-generating activities like appeals and campaigns and grants and special events, individual giving initiatives, corporate philanthropy, service clubs, foundations, private and public. And but it also means addressing some of the, what we like to call the fundraising engine parts, that is like the systemic elements that make a fundraising program actually excel, things like stewardship practices, volunteers, having a strong case for support. And of course, having what we're gonna be talking about here today are very reliable and the very, very solid and thorough CRMs, customer relationship management system. And all sorts of those are donor database, something that can track relationships which we're certainly gonna be getting into. But I'd also like to introduce someone who is also kindly joining us today from India, Syed is from Calhub. And so let me say it, if you want to just take a couple of minutes just to elaborate on who you are and who you're representing today. Sure, Mike, thanks for that. So yeah, I'm from Bangalore based in India. So we, I'm working with an organization named Calhub. I'm a non-profit consultant here. So I started my career as a sales into this same organization. So I used to help non-profits with regards to their campaigns. So we have a virtual texting and calling platform. A lot of non-profits prefer texting at this point of time. There has been a change in the trend shift from emails to texting due to COVID and that's been working really well. So I started working as a sales help, help non-profits reduce their cost to run more campaigns. That was my target. And then later on I started working as a non-profit consultant, helping non-profits select the right option for their campaigns. So that way it helps them achieve the fundraising goals. Simultaneously, I also work with a lot of non-profit consultants helping our clients direct to the right consultants so they can direct them and help the campaigns and that way they can come and run campaigns into our platform. So that is what we as a Calhub do. Yeah, I'm pretty much new into this non-profit industry. It's been like six months now and I'm learning from great leaders available here like Dan, Eli, and Mike. And yeah, I'm looking to learn more in the market and scale up Excel mice up there. Great, well, thank you very much for sharing this with us today. And I also just want to mention for myself, this is my first presentation for NetSquared in TechSoup and it's a thrill to do this and I'm really looking forward to subsequent ones and just sharing different topics, whether they're more, I guess, artsy sort of fundraising subjects or more technical things. They're a little bit more of the systemic side such as today's presentation. But no, this is wonderful. I mean, I've been aware of the work of NetSquared and certainly TechSoup for quite some time now it's certainly a name that I drop whenever possible and I'm always referring people towards because TechSoup certainly is an indispensable online resource for nonprofits across Canada in some cases even across the world. So by all means, check them out. I should also mention just I will be posting this with the presentation towards the end but my contacts can be found at peoplefirstfundraising.ca and we should mention that we also have different workshops and on grant writing and other fundraising activities and so by all means, check us out. We have our sustainable solutions blog with all sorts of different articles and information that we like to post there. So by all means drop us a line, excuse me, sign up and we would love to have you. But on with today's presentation, so again, the topic that we're looking at today is the importance of a fundraising CRM system. CRM also standing for Customer Relationship Management System. Now, in this case with a CRM, those of you in the private sector are probably familiar with this. I mean, as the name implies a Customer Relationship Management CRM. Normally this is a software application that will track sales and marketing data but in this case, we're applying this to the nonprofit sector and more specifically to fundraising. So really, rather than tracking sales, we're tracking donations. And so we're tracking not just donations but really it's used to collect and gather any sort of data that is related to the pursuit of the charity's mission and specifically the acquisition and sustainability of resources that charities need to actually deliver their programs and services. Now, primarily when we think about CRMs in the fundraising sense, also sometimes referred to as donor databases or fundraising databases. Primarily the sort of data that we're tracking here is of a monetary nature, so donations and sponsorships but also it can be used to monetize in-kind donations as well as tracking things like volunteer hours and basically like any sort of contributions that individuals, that organizations, government agencies and any other entities in the community that are willing to contribute something that will enable an organization to deliver its programs and services. Now on a macro level, of course, where CRMs are really useful is it really allows an organization, it gives an idea of the current state, the current health of its fundraising system of its fund development strategies. It allows it to play in campaigns to basically monitor and engage how close they are to realizing campaign targets and whatnot. And actually, I'm just gonna say, I'm not sure how we turn off, just as an aside here, I'm just gonna pause for a second. Is there a way to turn off the transcribing mechanism here or do I? Yes, is it totally distracting? Yes, I can definitely turn this off. Oh yeah, go ahead, let's just block you part of it. Yeah. Yeah, well, you can also just turn it off personally, pop up where it says live transcript and then hit hide subtitle. Hide transcript, okay. Are you gonna be showing the PowerPoint? I feel like you're maybe partway into it, but we're still seeing. Oh, can you not see it? Now, I think maybe you're showing the PowerPoint, but not the displayed PowerPoint, you have to switch to that, switch your screen share to the actual, it's a different app. Yes. Dana, would you want to figure that out? I'm not sure if I'm not sure. I got to start slideshow, can you guys see it? Yeah, slideshow, I could see that. I think if you click that, I think it will pop up in a separate window. So if you share just one window, you won't get it. You'll have to stop the screen share and start a new screen share on the right window or on your whole screen. Yeah, totally, or it takes like the fail-proof way, which is like share everything and live dangerously. Let me try that again. I'm just gonna, okay. Okay, we've got that corrected. So please let me know if you don't see anything else on here. Actually, but getting back, I'm sorry, the live transcript is that? I'm sometimes, maybe that's, okay, there we go. Yes, okay, now we're in business again, guys. Okay, yeah, like we were saying earlier, so on the macro level, utilizing CRMs, they allow us to, not just to track appeals, but also, it gives an organization an idea of how close it is to reaching any targets that it sets. But really, it's used this to kind of give an idea of how healthy and how vital the current status of the fund development strategies and systems that are being implemented. Now, on a professional fundraising standpoint, however, the one utility, I think that CRMs are really, really useful for is tracking relationships with donors and not just with donors, but other types of stakeholders such as volunteers in kind supports and sponsors and others who might be in a position to contribute something, whether it's time or talent or treasure. But really, the CRM is a relationship management device as the name implies. And obviously, it allows us to track each, not just collectively, but each respective relationship with each respective donor stakeholder sponsor, or again, whoever happens to be coming to the fore. And so the type of data that we're talking about here, I think what most of us do think about a fundraising software program, we're thinking about tracking donations, so monetary gifts, whether it's the total dollar amount that we're tracking or the number of different types of appeals and fundraising activities that the donor takes part in, but it can also track the volunteer activities that they take part in. And the different types of appeals and the different types of projects that they support. But in addition to some of the more obvious metrics that a CRM is going to track, the one big thing, when we're talking about tracking or relationship, it's not just the monetary, it's not just the hardcore numbers and figures that we're worried about. It's also the anecdotal information. I think much like, again, anybody with a sales and marketing background, I think really understands the importance of relationships and getting to know your customers. When the nonprofit sector, you know, a parallel of that is getting to know your donors because your donors really are your champions. They're the ones that make everything possible. And so understanding what motivates your donors and what keeps your donors outside, what brings them outside, what causes them to go away from time to time. So a very, very useful CRM is one that is also able to store a number of personal as well as anecdotal information that was relevant to a donor or a sponsor or a stakeholder's ability to make a gift, whether it's a gift of money or their personal time and energy or their connections or their in-kind support. And so we're talking about, you know, just by example, we'll get into some other metrics very, very shortly. But things such as their current job status, so are they currently employed? Have they been laid off? Have they been affected by COVID in some very negative way? In some rare instances, people have actually been positively connected. But also, you know, other aspects of our donors' lives, such as how many kids do they have? What is, what's their kid's situation? So do they have kids in university? You know, in other words, like, do they have educations to pay for? Do they have races to pay for? Do they have kids who are getting married? So obviously they might have a wedding to pay for or a dowry to put together. You know, do they, you know, are they involved with other organizations? Are they, you know, do they have other charities that they champion or other causes that are near and dear to their hearts or understanding? You know, just the different aspects in the lives of our donors so that, you know, we can track their relationships as we go along. And this way we would know in a given situation as to whether or not they are in a position to make a donation or to make a commitment of time and energy or a combination of something. Do they want to enhance things? Do they want to take a step back? And once again, this is where CRM is a very useful instrument because this enables us to track things as we go along. Now, in addition to, you know, some of the stuff that I mentioned here, getting to know our donors, our donors don't want to be seen as an ATM or simply as a sponsor of money. They want to be seen as a partner, as a stakeholder and basically more importantly as a person. So one of the things that is always nice is that personal touch. So having information such as their birthdays and anniversary dates, you know, their children's birthdays, their, you know, their children's wedding anniversary dates, you know, their grandkids birthdays and like, you know, just being able to know these so that we can send, you know, a nice little notice of happy birthday or congratulations on the promotion. The kind of things that a person would expect us to know. And that's the thing. When we pretend that we, when we say that we know our donors, we want to be genuine. We want to be organic and we want to be honest about it. And so one way of proving that is to make sure that we, that we, that we're aware of this information. This is where a CRM is very useful because that allows us to store the information and access it when it's, when it's important. The other thing when the CRM is, you know, is having one that alerts us when this information is available, such as an anniversary date. Now, why this is crucial of course, again, it goes back to that personal touch because donors want to feel like they're a part of not just the cause, but a part of the family. They want to be seen as a part of the solution. And I think the one big message that we're always trying to instill with donors and every opportunity with every communication is because of you, we're this much closer to realizing our mission and vision. And so regardless of whether a person is giving money or in-kind support or volunteer time or a combination of these things, you know, we want to make sure that they're aware of that, you know, of that message and just that sentiment and every opportunity. And basically they want to be seen as a part of the family, a part of, you know, the entire equation that's allowing this change to happen. And so advancing relationships and having these little personal, and so as a part of the family, it's important that we also have this information so that, again, we can actually engage them, you know, not just when it has something to do with the delivery of programs and services, but also their lives as well. The CRM also allows us to really, in tracking them, we can see which ones are the strongest, which ones are going, you know, by the wayside, which ones are waiting, which ones are ramping up. And so it just allows us to, you know, as we're engaging our donors as they engage in what we call the donor journey, you know, we can see which, you know, which ones need a little bit of touch-ups and which ones need a little bit of, you know, maybe a little bit of just stepping back from time to time. Now, what I'd like to do is just to invite to say it, is there anything that you would like to add at this stage? So with regards to CRM, I would say it would add a lot of value for doing fundraising because CRM helps you track the high-value donor, the low-value donor, so you can keep a track of which donor has been actively contributing and keep that relationship stronger by engaging with them, the different tools, I would say, maybe email, maybe scheduling them with Zoom one-on-one meeting, telling about how their donation has made an impact with the current activity for non-profit. And also they can send them texts, keeping them updated with the current activity so that they feel happy. And you can also send a link in the donation so they feel happy donating again and again. I think repeat donations is something that adds a lot of value, keeping them engaged and sending MMS is the new trend that I've been seeing. A lot of customers have been clicking a picture of the situation and they've been sending to donors that way, they feel more happy because you are creating more importance to him and he feel happy donating more and more. So I think, yeah, having a CRM would actually give you manage the entire donor journey, I would say, like Mike mentioned, starting from how much he donated and what good has been doing to the organization. Yeah, I think that is definitely a major purpose of CRM. And without CRM, I think it's very difficult to track our donors and keep a relationship with them. Great, thank you very much, Said. Yeah. So, now Said also mentioned the importance of the donor journey. And I think one of the things in backing up for a second, I think I mentioned at the beginning how, like what we do and what a lot of fundraising consultants do essentially is help organizations to build a sustainable base of support. And by building a sustainable base of support, meaning a sustainable donor base of support, that means developing a pool of supporters that again have an increasing affinity or attachment to the cause. And so how we actually develop, how we populate that base of support is by optimizing the relationships that we have in front of us. And one of the things with that, so using a CRM, this is the primary tool that an organization would use. And so in setting up a CRM, there are particular metrics that we use when we are measuring and tracking and monitoring relationships. And so the data that we store and the metrics that we pay attention to, from this data, this allows us to plan appeals to set future campaign targets. And when we're planning capital campaigns and annual campaigns and endowment campaigns, this allows us to identify among the people who have been supporting us or among our donor base, which ones are in the greatest position to support us at the moment and what levels and specifically what kind of cultivation strategy should we use in approaching our donors? Are there some lapsed donors? Another very key area that often gets overlooked when you're tracking relationships, donors that have gone by the wayside. So sometimes reaching into the recesses of our CRMs can allow us to identify some lap supporters who maybe have demonstrated a strong affinity for the cause in the past. And maybe those are relationships we can resurrect. But the other thing in terms of advancing relationships, I think a big part of that is making sure that, not only do donors feel appreciated, but they feel engaged and they feel like they understand that we know that they have given and there are a reason why we have made the progress we have made. And they're the reason why these people's lives who we're serving are in a much better position than they were prior to their involvement with our association or with the organization. And so making sure that they realize that they're the heroes, they're the champions and they're the ones that are helping us to get through this COVID experience as well as other obstacles and other challenges that we might be facing. So in terms of the types of metrics that we use, again, this allows us to really chart the future. And really it makes the concept of building a permanent basis of part of reality by tracking each of these relationships. And so when you're talking about the different types of metrics, so the different sort of units that we're gonna be paying specific attention to as we track each respective relationship, some of the more obvious ones of course are gonna be of the monetary nature. So the total dollar amount of gifts I think and the number of gifts contribute. In other words, what is the collective amount of donations that a person has given and over the course of their involvement, not just the course of the past year, but collectively how many donations or contributions have they given? So that ratio of the total dollar amount with the total number of gifts is an indicator of just how involved a person is because a person that gives a single million dollar donation isn't necessarily going to have the same level of affinity for somebody that gives $10, $1,000 gifts. And so giving frequency is a big one here. So the total number of gifts given. So it's how often and how consistently they give. The types of gifts contribute and by that we mean is it strictly monetary, is it in kind? And if it's a monetary, is it a straightforward donation? Is it a sponsorship? Is it a plunge? Is it a monthly contribution? So it gives an idea of not just how varied the person's involvement is, but at what level? So a person who's giving on a monthly level, as opposed to let's say sporadically throughout the course of the year, either one of those two things, that means they're going to have a strong connection to the organization. So they're willing to upgrade the frequency that they're giving, or this is a person who might have a little bit more disposable income. So only by taking a closer look at some of the other variables that we're going to look at, can we really qualify? And what I mean by qualify, that means to kind of gauge, like how, you know, if we know that this person is in a position to give, you know, getting more specific of how much can we expect this person to give at this point in time, you know, or maybe our expectation might have to be tailored back after we take a closer look. So the types of gifts contribute, the types of appeals participate in it. So do they only give during the Christmas campaign or do they also take part in special events as well as peer-to-peer appeals? Do they also take part in, do they have a membership with the organization? Do they sponsor a table of events? Do they sell tickets? So just the types of, you know, the more varied the, you know, the more varied the types of appeals and the types of fundraising activities that the donor takes part in, this shows that there's a great willingness there to play your role across the fundraising spectrum. So the dollar range gives, again, this gives us an idea of just the giving ability of a person when we're trying to take a closer look at how they're going to get involved. Now, as far as getting to understand the interests of our donors and the motivations of our donors, you know, looking at metrics like this would give us a clear understanding of how they want to be involved and what aspects of the programs and services that we're providing, would they like to support? So the types of programs important, the types of costs that they would like to support such as operating or capital, the types of costs they don't want to support, would they like to volunteer in some, you know, in some activities, whether it's fundraising really or not, the number of hours given. So obviously a person that's giving a lot of money as well as a lot of volunteer hours, this can be something that's an indication of someone who has a much higher affinity for the cause than somebody who's just dropping off a check every once in a while. So the combination of giving both time as well as dollars and cents and maybe even some in-kind support. You know, this is an idea, this is an indication of someone again who has a very strong affinity for the cause itself. Now, another thing to look at here when you're thinking about volunteers, an old saying is your best volunteer prospects are your donors and your best donor prospects are your volunteers. So when you have someone who maybe hasn't given a lot of money to the organization in the past, but they take part in all sorts of volunteer activities and the number of hours that they give is also tremendously high or maybe comparatively higher than somebody, some of the other people involved. This might be somebody you might want to convert to a monetary support at some time. It's just, you know, for whatever reason, some groups, especially the grassroots organizations that I come across, a lot of times it just doesn't occur to them that maybe we should be approaching some of our volunteers for monetary support and maybe some of our monetary supporters might have some time with their hands that they might want to contribute. So, you know, offering that opportunity for donors to get involved in other aspects. So the three T's we sometimes refer to this, time, talent and treasure. You know, these are things that we certainly want to keep in front of us in terms of the different options of involvement that we can extend to people that do have that growing affinity for the cause. Now, as far as getting to know our donors a little bit better, metrics like these can give us a better understanding of what their lives are like and, you know, a little bit more about their given capacity and their other priorities in their life as well. So other organizations and causes supported. So, you know, as human beings, we do have that need to be our brothers and sisters keepers. And so a lot of times there might be more than one group that is on our support list. So just understanding like what other causes are near and dear to their hearts and where do we stand? Where does our cause stand in terms of their personal rankings? Do they have other friends and family members involved? When you see groups, you know, getting their friends and family members involved. Again, this is a huge indication that there's a growing affinity for the cause. And this is somebody that you, this is a relationship you definitely want to optimize. So employment information. So again, you know, are they gainfully employed or have they been laid off? Or are they retired? So they might have some more time with their hands. They might not have as much money more as much disposable income. You know, also, is their home paid for? You know, have they won the lottery? Now, the one thing I want to also qualify here is this is information that has been voluntarily shared with, you know, buy a door. So we're not talking about, you know, creeping somebody's personal data or contravening any privacy pieces of legislation. We're rather information that has been voluntarily and willingly shared by the donors. And once again, you know, only if it's information that they would expect us to have would I suggest that we document and actually track this sort of information. And of course, storing this in a cloud is, you know, for security purposes. I think this could be extremely, extremely sensitive personal data that we certainly don't want to expose anyone to any, you know, identity fraud opportunities so by grifters. So we certainly have to be extremely vigilant in terms of actually storing and safeguarding this information. But also little things like this that we might want to track on our own, the little satisfaction that they have with the cause. So are they happy with their involvement? Is there something else they want to be involved in? Is there, do they have some, maybe some armchair quarterback sort of feedback or constructive criticism that they might want to share? Perhaps they've got something, some experience with other organizations that might be similar in different communities. And so any, you know, anything that they have is value add any information or thoughts or reflections or, you know, experience or expertise, skills or knowledge, other connections in the community as well. So keeping track of these again, is a way of optimizing the relationship as well as getting a handle on what sorts of other assets and other interests that the donors might want to be involved because a person who has been strictly donating to a cause throughout their involvement might have some, you know, might have a lot of knowledge and skills that they might want to share. And when they're not given that opportunity to share that, that's where relationships can go so. So being aware of the different aspects of the different, you know, things that donors can bring to the table, such as other skills and knowledge, you know, and connections, stuff that they're proud of, you know, things that they want to share. And I think looking at, you know, in this way as well, if we don't ask them, they might be highly offended. This is where, you know, a little bit of attrition can also occur. And so yeah, and I don't know if you've got anything else to maybe, if you wanted to expand on anything here or just maybe compliment or even just- I think good for now, yeah. Okay, so you also had I think some data that you also want just to give, I think, also, I think to maybe expand a little bit about Colhab's work and the impact that it has with this illustration. I'm not sure if you wanted to maybe describe what we're looking at here, Saiyan. I'm sure, yeah. So this, why I wanted to bring this report is I wanted to show how texting has created impact in terms of fundraising because a lot of nonprofits, primarily they've been dependent emails, but these emails are being added into the pool and inbox and people don't prefer opening them and checking individually, which takes a lot of time for them, so texting has been really working. So this was a recent successful case study we had with one of the new client who never did texting before, okay? They were just dependent emails, direct emails and other activities, so they were just reaching out to them to different sources, but they're texting, they wanted to just give a try for one time, they did year of the end campaign appeals. So I personally worked with them, helped them, so they did campaign for 323, as you see right in the screen, they did the campaign for 323 donors list. So they did two campaigns. So for the first campaign, pretty much the opens were like 90%, I would say they had 290 open rates and they didn't receive any donation, that was just a warm up campaign without asking anything for donation. So this report comes for the second campaign, year end appeal, so they did campaign again for same 323 donors list, so we saw 270 opens which is equal to 84% open rate. Usually in emails what they have seen is like the maximum 34% open rate is what they had seen, but in texting, they saw like 84% open rate which is very good for them. One thing was, what was exciting for them is they received 130 responses from these 323 donors whom they reached for the first time to texting and they were very pretty excited because they never expected that they would be reached to texting as well to keep them updated with the current activity. That is where a lot of interaction happened and from 323 donors, they got responses 113 out of which they were able to generate $71,500 donation. And if I could tell you how much they spent on this, it's very minimal amount, I would say. It's just like $67, they spent on two campaigns and they have generated $71,500 donation and they personally send this email to me with the stats on an email. I just wanted to put this in the form of graph to you guys so you know in real time how this has been impact to nonprofits and they are looking to run more campaigns. They recently ran one more campaign yesterday and they're pretty excited to do more campaigns and they were happy about it. So this is what it has created impact in terms of nonprofits. Yeah, and the costing is something that we have, we are a pay as you go platform which helps nonprofits to use as and when they need. A lot of nonprofits, small and mid-sized nonprofits, they want to run campaigns in bits and pieces and they don't want to pay a set of fee or monthly fee, registration fee. That is where we brought this platform that could help small and mid-sized donors. Pretty large enterprise, I'm sure, they already have their CRMs in place, they have their budgets, let's say for Blackbot, for example, so they have these CRMs to track. But yeah, small and mid-sized is where they rely more on these kind of platforms and they were happy. So yeah, if anyone have any questions, leave my contact details in the last slide. So do reach out to me, I would love to assist like how you have been reaching out. And me and Mike would love to help you and take this next step to help you success, bring success. Great, thank you very much, Sam. And so just to kind of start to bring things home here, I think like, when you're looking at these metrics, I mean like what is the utility, like how are they important? Well, in essence, as you've heard us mention, it allows us to really track and phrase the donor as they embark along the journey and by embarking along the journey, we're talking about the path that a donor follows when they first become involved with an organization. And they, not just when they make that first skit, but when they make the first inquiry. And a lot of people think the donor journey begins with a donation. It actually begins with hello. And it begins more or less with hello, what is this and what are you guys all about? And so when a donor embarks on a journey, you know, they're working their way towards the first, what we sometimes call the first call to action or I like to call it the first milestone in the relationship and by the first milestone, for many of them, of course, it's making that first donation and that might just be a little $10 contribution at Christmas time or it might be dropping some quarters in a jar somewhere or it might be buying a raffle ticket or again, whatever the case may be. But the donor journey is basically the entire path that an individual who is supporting and that individual can be a monetary supporter, a volunteer, a sponsor, a contributor or a combination of these three. But basically it's, you know, it's where they began as an entry level, you know, casual supporter to where is, it's not so much how much their donations increase, it's how much their affinity and passion for the cause increases over time. And through relationship and by stewarding those relationships and I apologize, this is actually a term I should be dropping a little bit more than I have them but really, you know, the driving force behind the CRM is stewardship and stewardship really complements the data that we track is the relationship or sorry, is the result of our stewardship practices. That is how we steward relationships with each of our donors. And so it allows us to really, you know, as a donor is traveling along that, you know, the journey pathway, it's, you know, having a CRM allows us to identify what is the next subsequent course of action. And by the way, a course of a call to action can also be a negative. That is, it could be, I'm not in a position to help you right now, but I would love to maybe if you can keep me on the list, keep me engaged. And so even rejection are seen as a milestone in the relationship and even rejections are traced and we don't want, we never want to see a rejection as the end of our relationship, but simply as either a hiccup or more importantly just as a milestone. It's not a restraining where it's simply, we're not in a position now, but if anything, we want to make sure that their affinity is increased. And so, and so not only does this allow us to track the evolution of a relationship, but they allow us to really focus on, you know, what are the most crucial aspects of your relationship? You know, that is like, is there something that is causing a donor to perhaps reduce their involvement in the organization or is there something that's increasing it? You know, they're satisfaction of it. So paying attention to certain metrics allows us to really gauge the current state, the current health or decline in a relationship. And so guiding the courses of action and also the appropriate communications that we want to use to employ. And this is something that Sayed has really been sharing. So are they into texting really before email? Perhaps they might even like more face time. So more personal, more direct or maybe they're busy people and we can't really connect with them in real time. So shooting the right communication vehicle as well. And I apologize, I realized I just grossly misspelled communication. I'll make sure that I correct that error before we actually share this officially with everybody. So going forward then, like, you know, when we're using the data for CRM again, this is going to allow us to chart the, you know, on the whole, it's going to allow us to really chart the future direction and the objectives of each respective relationship. But also understand, you know, their needs are evolving. We're talking about humans here and human beings, you know, our interests are going to ebb and flow. Our moods are going to ebb and flow. Our, you know, our apathy might even set in from time to time. There might be some, you know, some, you know, variables outside of our control that might cause this. But, you know, again, having a CRM that's reliable and updated and fed is something that will allow us to really keep our breasts and keep our finger on those pulses. And when we can pinpoint what is preventing a person from maybe becoming more engaged when we feel they should be, this allows us to maybe pinpoint that. And again, Guardi gets donor attrition and donor loss for that matter. But I think it's also something as we engage with our donors, what we're basically doing is we're working with them to increase their affinity for the cause. And the one consistent message again that we always wanna share is because of you, we are this much closer to realizing our mission and vision. As something else I probably am not saying nearly enough, this is also something that will allow us to, it coaches us in engaging two-way conversation. It's not just about us talking to the donors, it's also having the donors talking with us. We wanna get, getting a donor and building their affinity, it means working with them to get them thinking and behaving like stakeholders and not just like ATMs, but making them feel, it's like taking a customer service approach. So getting their involvement, getting their feedback, understanding where their interests lie, where they think, what are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? And anything that can help us move forward. So optimizing the donor journey. And I think most importantly, this safeguards our sustainability. And so that's the whole idea is, when you're trying to build a sustainable base of support, it means creating a small base and populating that base with passionate long-term and committed donors and having a healthy CRM is a mechanism that can really safeguard that. And so again, Sayed, I'm not sure if you've got anything else to share for the last few points that we've made, but certainly communication, desperately a huge role in this, does it not? Oh, yes, definitely. I think I have caught almost everything, yeah. But other than that, folks, I just wanna give a very, a very quick thank you. And I'm going to also insert a couple of coordinates for Sayed there. If you want to get in touch with him and find out more about Callhab and how this can help with peer-to-peer appeals and another fundraising activities that might enhance your respective sustainability and growing your basis of support, but just wondering if anybody has any questions at all. Sure, I'll start with that. First of all, a welcome to Tim Middleton. If you would like to come off mic, throw a question in here, introduce yourself. Love to get to know you. But in the meantime, I'm Eli in Vancouver, first time, long time. And what can I say? Basically CRM is really intimidating to me. And so I wanna get a sense of, before I go through the process of even starting to like think through, what is the right tool for me? What would be your recommendation for the first steps I would take to start thinking about like, what is the right CRM tool? What are the needs I'm trying to address? Like is there like some steps I might follow in the very early process of a CRM project? I would think you would want to, first of all, if you're running an organization and you're not strictly dependent on a single source of income. I think it's taken inventory of what donors you have on site. And also I think what, you know, and by donors that again, I'm not just talking about monetary supporters, but also volunteers and in-kind supporters. And anybody who basically has provided you any sort of support going back within let's say the last three or four years. And just seeing if we can maybe establish that as their basic support. And I think just being able to separate each of them into the different categories who are monetary supporters, who are volunteers, who are in-kind supporters, who are let's say sponsorship contributors or those who are giving for let's say marketing purposes. And is there some overlap? And I think building some kind of a matrix where we can actually establish, those who are donating, those who are volunteering, those who are giving strictly in kind and maybe monetizing those amounts a little bit if we can. Approximately what's the value of the volunteer hours they've contributed? How much in-kind support have they given of the marketing dollars? How much of that has been going towards charitable causes? And I think using that as your starting point, so we really have to take inventory of our base of support. And then once we've got that, I think you wanna start with the basics. I think like the metrics that we first listed here, the first five like the total dollar amount, the number of guests they get frequency and perhaps what sort of projects that they have supported. So establishing the basic metrics, I think is would be the first steps I would take once I've identified who those donors are that are supporting us. And if we're a grassroots organization just starting out, I think even prior to selecting the right CRM, just having spreadsheets and access documents that can provide us with some data that can be transcribed into a database would be something I would certainly wanna have in front of me. Cool, that's helpful to get a sense of like, you have to do that initial inventory and start thinking about like what are the data sources and also like what are like the success? Like whether that's like a financial success, but like those kinds of trackable things because you can't just put inconsistent things into a database because then you can't really query on it. Right, exactly. Producing reports and queries and downloading, extracting information is needed and I think having so having the basics inputted first can allow us to expand. And then as we go along, then we can add other, introduce other metrics that we can track such as some of the more anecdotal stuff. As well as maybe getting a little more scientific where we talk about the gift range as a mean gifts and that kind of thing. And it costs the rate of return and such. Mike, what CRMs do you recommend? Well, I've always been, call hub certainly is certainly a common entry and that's certainly one I would, first of all, you'll urge a lot of people to check out but others like a lot of BlackBod products are certainly great. Donor Perfect is a pretty good one. E-tapestry is not bad. Of course, the Cadillac, that most big organizations use would be Razor's End which one of the things I like about some of these is they break down campaigns and appeals. Campaigns are like the umbrella sort of term we use. The appeals are the little sub points are the kind of like the sub activities that support the overall pursuit there. So the campaigners, the war, the appeals are the battles. So as long as we, any platform that provides that sort of a breakdown of the ones that I would start with. Fabulous, I think that's a good place to start with some of those tools. And I think, yeah, Dan just shared a really great resource as well from Tech Impact into the chat where they did a recent analysis of like CRMs with a lens around like integration. So necessarily looking at the all in one tool is rather the, it'll be like on the database but the email tool might be over here. So it's got, you know, there are different approaches whether you're going to take the all in one or the let's like plummet altogether approach. Something that we can also sync with our social media platforms as well and, you know and other communication avenues, absolutely. Well, there we go. Thank you so much for coming together and leading this first session, Mike and also for bringing Saeed in as well as sort of like the focus area expert, you know, with some real experience around building out some of these campaigns. It was such a pleasure. Now it's time for us to start plotting and scheming about what could the next one be? And I'm going to, you know I think we'll work together like maybe put together a bit of like a promo email campaign series to see if we can like, you know, start letting the Toronto audience know that there's a new organization coming in with like a set of a plan for upcoming events. Excellent. Thank you. Well, I will thank you gentlemen for joining us as well today. It's been a great time meeting you. Mike, thanks a lot. Thanks, Dan. Thank you. Thank you, Eli. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Dan. And we'll probably see you in a couple of months. Count on it. And in the meantime, I will take the video, cut the front part off before we actually began and throw that on to the NetSquared blog. And I'm sure Mike will then also share out that link with all the members of the meetup as well. Great. Thank you very much, guys. Perfect. It's a pleasure. Catch you all. Bye-bye.