Nathan Hill (00:00:03): Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the webinar. I'm grateful that you're here. We'll give a few moments, maybe the next two or three minutes here for folks to be able to join. I know lots of people are just, uh, getting outta lunch, maybe getting out of a meeting and logging in. Um, so we'll give some time for everyone to join. I'm here with my good friend Michael Baker from Idonate and we're gonna be, uh, conducting this, this, uh, small memorial service, I guess for . Sure. For Google Optimize here. I'm not sure I'm properly dressed for a funeral, but, alright. Yeah, it's okay. We'll, we'll keep it quick. It's pretty informal. . Um, , while we're waiting for folks to join, I would love for you, as we always do, um, to jump into the chat, uh, and let me know a couple things. What's your name, what organization are you from, and where in the world are you zooming in from today? (00:00:50): Uh, we are zooming in to you from Plano, Texas, um, just north of Dallas. Grateful to be with you here today. Uh, but jump in the chat, let me know. I see Matt is in the audience today. And feel free to hit the, when you send the chat, you can send it to everybody, not just to me. It's good for everybody to see who all is, who all is here. Some shout outs. We've got Meg from the Morgan Adams Foundation in Denver, Colorado. We've got Frank in Orange County, your Orange, California Hope Partners International. We've got Antonio Walker, who they're coming in the literacy link in Oklahoma. Yeah. Hard to keep up at this point. Oh, Matt from Frontier, welcome in Calgary, Alberta. Awesome, awesome. We're international. Now. That's big. Oh yeah. That's why I was ask where in the world it's kind of surprising sometimes we have people, you know, from other side of the globe and it's 2:00 AM and they're tuning into our memorial for Google Optimize. (00:01:42): So, uh, so glad you all are here. Um, a few kind of opening things before we really dive into the details. Uh, number one, I wanna make sure that you have this on your calendar. Uh, every year we put on this summit called the Nonprofit Innovation and Optimization Summit, or NIO Summit for short. Uh, it is here in Dallas, Texas this year, September 19th through 21st, we would love for you to put this on your calendars and make sure that you can join us. It's gonna be a full game show experience, uh, all throughout, which is gonna be a ton of fun. Um, more importantly, we're gonna dive into, uh, so many different ideas that, that are gonna help move our industry forward in terms of how we approach digital fundraising. Most speakers that you're gonna hear, we bring in from, uh, oftentimes the for-profit sector who have really innovative ideas that can help us grow giving that we think can be, be really meaningful for us as non-profit fundraisers and marketers and communicators in order to figure out what's really gonna work to keep driving, uh, better and better results and performance. (00:02:39): Marissa at Coral Reef Alliance attended last year and said this Neo obviously is a good time. It's not only been really valuable educationally, but it's also been a ton of fun. We certainly value, uh, having lots of fun experiences going deep into the theme to make sure that it's a fun environment where you can actually learn really meaningful things. Uh, secondly, another quote from Danielle Sparks at Every nation. He attended the, uh, free summit workshop this past year where we talked all about value proposition and how to answer this fundamental question of why should I give to you? Uh, and he said this, there's so much information that was applicable. It won't just change the way we approach our donors, but our philosophy of why we're talking to them in the first place. So I can guarantee if you're coming to Neo Summit, you are going to walk away with meaningful insights that can help you grow your fundraising and your digital fundraising specifically. (00:03:26): And honestly, if you don't, we will give you your money back. So that's how much we believe in this, in this summit is is there gonna be a showcase showdown? Cuz that's what that logo makes me think. Uh, we are gonna have all sorts of stuff. We're having fundraising feud, we're having wheel of generosity, ands of stuff that I don't even know should be a good time. I'm considering like a slime time live version of the live stream. So, we'll, we'll see where we go. , um, , should we get to of fun? More to come on Neo. Uh, you could get your ticket@niosummit.com and go check that out. Uh, a few other quick things, uh, related to the webinar. The most popular question we always get is, are you recording this? Can I get a video recording? The answer is always yes. We are recording this and you will be sent, um, a link to go watch the playback, uh, after the webinar. (00:04:10): Normally around 5:00 PM Central time. Uh, today. Uh, we'll also send you links to the slide deck and to any of the resources that we mention. Uh, and then we should have some time at the end for some q and a. So if you've got questions about, uh, AB testing, you've got questions about platforms and testing platforms, uh, we are happy to dive deep and, and answer some questions. So as you have those today, uh, put those in the q and A tool on your Zoom bar. You've got the chat, but use also have a tool called q and a. If you've got questions you want answered, make sure they go in the q and a. That's the best way for us to keep track of those and make sure that you get answers. Uh, other than that, if you've got ideas and thoughts, just fill up the chat. (00:04:46): I would love to see all your commentary throughout. Um, last thing really before we kind of dive deep, and then I'll hand it to, um, baker here to give some opening, opening remarks as we remember Google optimized together. Um, I'll, I have a little poll and I don't normally do these, but I'm curious to see, uh, where you all are at in terms of moving to GA4. Some of you might know exactly what I'm talking about. Some of you may have no clue what I just said. Uh, and that's what I'm curious to know today. So I'm launching this poll and feel free to give your answer. Do you have Google Analytics four set up yet? I feel like we're planning for the next webinar depending on how people answer this question, quite, quite possibly. . It could, could be. And I know y'all can't see the live results coming in, but I'm watching all the bars go up and down and up and down and up and down. (00:05:33): I'll keep it open for another, say, 15 seconds here. Make sure we get everyone's, uh, response in pretty even split. Yeah. Yeah. It is pretty even. I, I, yeah, the number of people who haven't heard of it is always, it's a little shocking, but maybe a little alarming. Yeah. But that's why we're, that's why we're doing this poll. Okay. You've got five seconds and then I'll end it and I'll share the results with you. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. All right, I'm hitting end poll. I'm gonna hit share results. So you can see these two, I believe you should be able to see this on your screen. Here's the results. Basically a quarter review, 26% said you haven't even heard of GA four, which is not all that uncommon, although maybe it's shocking, uh, for, for us as we kind of live in this world every day. Um, I get it. (00:06:22): Uh, staying in touch with the latest on analytics and tracking and all that is not for everyone. Especially if you, um, you're primarily focused on fundraising, maybe not the web technology and all that stuff. Um, re we're, regardless of where you fell on this scale, if you've never heard of GA four, uh, you know, you've heard that that GA3 is going away, but you haven't actually moved over to GA4 yet. You're still learning how to use the tool. Um, just so everyone knows, Google Analytics three, which, or Universal Analytics, has been sort of the primary analytics tool for a, a lot, many, many years at this point. Yeah, for sure. It's going away on July, I believe July one is the date, um, and is being replaced with Google Analytics score. So on that date, you'll lose all of your historical web analytics data. (00:07:04): So I'm sounding the alarm here now and today to make sure that you can start this process of getting moved over. Um, so you can still tell what's happening on your website and what things are working to lead to more donations. Um, I do have a resource for you. Uh, we actually just launched this brand new course called Google Analytics four for nonprofits, uh, working with our, our good friend, uh, Chris Mercer at Measurement Marketing, uh, dot io. Incredible, an analytics mind and teacher. Um, and we have this new course from him in our platform. So if you're a next after institute member, you already have this in your dashboard. You can go take a look at it. It's gonna walk through not only how to set it up, but also how to structure your data and, and find the reports you're used to finding and really dive deep into structuring your data in a way that's gonna help you get answers to what's working and what's not. (00:07:49): So feel free if you're not a member, you can scan this QR code or go to next after.com/membership, uh, and do a 30 day free trial of membership to get access to this course and figure out how to set yourself up for success once GA3 goes away. Now we are staying on the topic of Google, but specifically we're talking about Google Optimize. Google Optimize has been really the primary tool, uh, that we use day in and day out for lots of ab testing with nonprofit clients as well as in our own marketing and, and, uh, all of our kind of outbound communication efforts. Google optimizes like the cornerstone of, of AB testing. And for most nonprofits, it's been one of the best tools because it's free up to a certain, uh, a certain extent. Um, and that normally that's enough for most nonprofits to be able to run high quality experimentation, get really meaningful results to understand what's working in order to increase giving. (00:08:43): Uh, they've recently announced that Google Optimize is going away as GA four gets rolled out. Google Optimize is gonna be sunset a few months after that on September 30th. Uh, you won't be able to run any of any more experiments after that date, and you will have to find a new tool. There's not anoth a a new tool that they're rolling out for you. Uh, initially when this news came out, it, it felt like, okay, but there might be something NGA four that's gonna help us test. And they've clarified to say, no, we're not building a new tool for you. There's lots of other integrations and things like that with other tools that are out there, but they're not rolling out as far as we know. As much as we know today, they're not ruling out a new tool. So optimize is going away. And if you rely on this for testing, or if you've even considered, maybe we should start testing, this is normally the go-to tool, now it's gone and we have to find a new solution. And so today we're gonna talk about that. But, uh, baker, I'm curious if you can kick us off, uh, just on what did you think when you heard this news? How do you feel about it? Michael Baker (00:09:39): Yeah, I mean it's, it's, it was certainly surprising, right? Because like you said, it has been a core piece for a lot of nonprofits to do any kind of testing. And so it's, it's a surprise when that kind of thing, uh, leaves the, leaves the marketplace or you, you find out it's gonna be sunset. But that's, that's the issue with relying, I think on Google. Uh, Google's not built for nonprofits, uh, and nonprofits are not their core business. Sure. Uh, and so when we rely on those types of tools, uh, we have to understand that, hey, that it might one day go away or it might date change, or it, and who knows, Google may bring it back, but it might not be free anymore, right? Like, that's the, that's the big variable that's like, Hey, Google controls a lot of that stuff. Uh, and so we're kind of forced to live in their, in their world. (00:10:19): But, uh, yeah, it's, it's a, it creates a, a problem for a lot of organizations that, that relied on it. And I know some of you on, on this, uh, webinar are probably thinking, Hey, this has been my testing tool. I don't know what to do now past September, it sounds like I, I saw it's, you feel like between now and September I've gotta find the ideal giving, uh, environment and I've gotta create it and I've gotta be done with all my testing. Uh, and some of you, like you said, are maybe you haven't used Google optimized, but you understand, Hey, maybe I should be testing, maybe I gotta go figure this thing out. Uh, but what do I do? Because this is going away. So hopefully we can, uh, we can show a couple of options and really talk about the, the concept of testing and why it's so important today. Nathan Hill (00:10:59): Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you for kicking us off. We're gonna dive in. We're, we're not gonna talk so much about like the, the hard mechanics of AB testing and the tool, all the, all the nuances of tools and features. We're gonna touch on that a little bit of what I, what I really wanna focus on in today is, is how big of a deal it is that we should continue to be testing. Because I think as you're gonna, as you start to look at what are the other options out there, there's some key questions that are gonna come up. I mean, first of all, like, what, what happens now? How do you feel in the gaps if you are either currently running lots of experimentation in your, your, your non-profit marketing and fundraising programs, or you've been considering like, yes, I know we need to start testing and I, I just need to figure out how to do it. (00:11:39): What do you do? Now, there are a few confirmed tools that are gonna have deep integrations into g4, uh, including ab, ab, tasty, Optimizly, and V W O. Uh, these three tools have been announced by Google that there is some collaboration between their tools and the rollout of GA four and how those will talk to each other. Uh, but there's also an open API and there's lots of other tools that are going to integrate into GA four, including, uh, the onesie scan, your screen, omni convert, convert.com, crazy ag. And there's all sorts of other testing tools that have the opportunity to go integrate. The problem with these is, I mean, a lot of what you're saying, like, number one, they oftentimes have big price tag. Many, most, actually all of these tools are built for, you know, the larger industry of people who are trying to optimize websites, not just specifically for non-profits. (00:12:28): And the prices often reflect that, uh, the way that they're designed, the metrics that they're looking at are not always the same. It's not apples to apples with the metrics that you are often looking at as you're trying to understand donors and donor conversion, but also average gift size and, and, and long-term revenue and lifetime value of these donors and things like that. These tools aren't designed specifically for you. And then on top of that, you have to still go and vet all these tools and get different price points and compare things and then go make sure that they're integrated into your systems and all that. There's a ton of work to do to, to get these things set up. So you can actually either start or continue testing. And so you may be tempted to basically throw your hands up and say, kind of like you're saying, like, I've got the September to get that, you know, the ideal, like the sweet spot donation experience. (00:13:17): And then we'll just let it run from there, uh, because it might just be easier that way. And, and so where I want to go for the next, you know, honestly 20 minutes or so is just exploring is it really that big of a deal if you lose the ability to test and to test in a meaningful way? So that's where I wanna go next. Uh, and let's, let's dive in. We're gonna get deep here. Um, let's look at some charts. I'm curious actually what you see in these charts. Okay. I dunno if you've, you've, you've looked at these yet, but you gave me a sneak peek, little sneak peek, but, uh, so we're gonna look at some charts and you can jump in the chat right away and let me know. Do you see any trends across these different charts? So, uh, here's the first one. (00:13:55): This is a policy organization. It's a nonprofit. They do about 17 million in total revenue. And on this chart you can see, uh, their online fundraising revenue year over year, basically since 2018. So take a look at that chart. Okay. Is this fiscal year or calendar year? Do you know? Uh, this one is calendar year. I think there's a few that are kind of split between fiscal and calendar year, but, but just keep an eye on the trend. What do you see in the trend? Here's the next organization. They're faith-based organization. Similar amount of revenue in total. Uh, this is their online fundraising revenue split out year over year, 2018 through 2022. This one is fiscal year. So like a little bit different, but it's kind of the same. What do you see in the trend? Do you see it? I see Mary Ellen already calling this out online. (00:14:38): Giving grew after Covid 19. We see this faith-based organization, 23 million in revenue, similar type of trend going on. This is their online revenue year over year. I've got a few more. Here's a higher ed organization, 26 million in total revenue. Here's their online fundraising revenue year over year. Uh, another organization, 29 million in total, but here's their online and the last one for you. A higher ed organization. Significantly more revenue, 250 million in total. And here's their online performance year over year. What do you see? Mary Ellen really called out a great, great observation here. Online revenue grew after covid 19. Anything else that you see in the data? Kelly Kelly Michael Baker (00:15:19): Kelly's right about that as well. I noticed the Nathan Hill (00:15:20): Same thing. Not getting much of a percentage from online revenue. That's that's true. It's a, it's a small piece of the total pie. Varies organization to organization. But, but a lot Michael Baker (00:15:29): I, from what I saw, a lot of those were like, well, well below the, the industry average. So that was interesting to Nathan Hill (00:15:34): See that. Yeah. And some of these are filtered down to remove like major gifts and things like that too. Sure. So that could be impacting it as well. Sure. The trends is really where I'm, I'm my brain is going. Cause when you look at these all side by side, you start to see a trend that pops out. And I think Matt is calling it out here all time online revenues in 21. And then we're looking at long term online revenue is going up for sure, except in 2022. How many of you experienced something like this in this past year where maybe you've been seeing online giving, kind of moving up into the right, or maybe I have to do it this way. So you can see cuz mirror it up into, up into the right. And then you got to 2022 and you saw this like, ooh, it kind of came back down to earth. (00:16:14): Maybe you had this big spike during, uh, like the pandemic. And right after sort of the height of the pandemic, lots of people were sort of coming outta the woodwork to give sure in order to support, uh, meaningful causes, knowing that there were people in need and they had means to give. And so let's go meet this need now I can see this critical need in front of me. And then we got to 2022 and some of these numbers kind of came back down to earth. And I know for a lot of organizations, uh, ones that we're continuing to talk to, uh, that there's panic about this. Cuz when you look at only your own data, all you see is we've been doing really, really well. And then we didn't. So what happened and what changed and why are we not performing at the level that we expected? (00:16:53): We pr we just straight line projected our revenue growth and we didn't hit where we thought we were going to, to hit with our goals. We've been calling this sort of phenomenon, the, the covid bump where again, you have a very clear and apparent need. This happens all the time and like disaster relief type of of things where there's these earthquakes in, in Turkey. And so there's a very clear need that's in the news and lots of people come out in order to give, to support these people that they can see on their phone or on their laptop or on their tv. That there are people that are in need and I can give in order to help. But it's really hard to retain those people in the long term, especially once the, the need is out of the news cycle. And so we're, we're calling this the covid bug cause it's the trend we're seeing across the board. (00:17:35): And you know, again, in isolation it might cause a panic. Um, but I would actually submit to you that there might be a bigger problem than just focusing on those year over year overall online revenue metrics. Um, and it's a problem that we've known about for a long time and it's probably just heightened, uh, or, or maybe put, put a, uh, uh, put under a microscope through this covid bump phenomenon. And it's really outlined here. So according to this data from m and r, this is looking at online donor retention. Uh, and this is their 2022 benchmark report. Here's, here's what they have found. New donors retain at about 23%, which means . And, and keep in mind, this is data that is leading up to 2022. So it doesn't even have sort of the drop off in there yet. Yeah. But 23% of the new donors that you are working so hard to acquire, only 23% are gonna give to again in next year. (00:18:28): That's really, that's really not good. It's not all that great. Even for multi-year donors. Only 60% of prior donors that aren't net new this year are gonna give to you again next year. The numbers aren't all that different. When you look at offline acquired donors, 29% retention rates for first year offline donors, 60% for prior year donors. That's according to blackboards data. So we know that donor retention is like a really, it's a really significant problem. It is for sure. It's plagued our industry for as long as I've been in it, which quite frankly isn't all that long. And I get that. But, but I know it's been a problem for a long time. Michael Baker (00:19:02): I've been here a long time and it's been an issue. And that, that downward trend is not new, right? It's, it's not, uh, it's not like it's suddenly going down. I I think it's been steadily going down for a while. The, the, I think that the thing that's interesting when you look at that all across there is, uh, new donors of 23% prior donors. It's 60, but overall it's 36, which means I had a lot of new donors in that mix to bring Oh yeah. To bring the average down. Uh, which means, like, I look at that and I wonder, well, hey, are we spending too much to acquire new donors and not enough to maintain the donors that we have? Nathan Hill (00:19:37): Totally. So that's the easy one to fixate on that metric is how do I just get more new people in the door? Cause it's easier to justify budgets and costs when I see that new stuff coming in. It's harder to tie your, you know, you know, paid media spend and things like that. Back to retention metrics, that might be the more important Michael Baker (00:19:54): One. But we all know retention is so key. If you wanna predict future revenue growth, you're gonna look at your retention numbers. And that's, that's a, a really good predictor. Uh, so this is alarming to me that the, the overall is actually closer to the new donor rate than it is prior donor rate. Nathan Hill (00:20:08): Yeah, it's hugely problematic. What's interesting, so this past year, um, we dove into a few different, uh, different angles through some research studies that we released. One on mobile donation experience. We talked about that, um, just this past month on the, the last webinar we did. Um, but we also released this report last year on the first 90 days of becoming a new donor. We partnered with our friends at American Philanthropic, uh, to produce this. And basically what we did was we became a donor, both a, a new online donor and a new offline donor. And we looked at what's the experience Michael Baker (00:20:39): Of, Nathan Hill (00:20:40): Of communication as a new donor in both these channels. Here's what we found, um, just right off the top, 45 of nonprofits sent nothing to their new postal donors in the first 90 days. And it's, it's, it's tempting, I think when you hear me say that to think, okay, by nothing you probably mean like they sent AEM receipt and they sent a thank you and they didn't send anything else. But the reality is worse than that. It means that they didn't send anything at all to these new donors in the first 90 days. Not a thank you. Not a receipt, not anything. This is ho this is horrible. This is, yeah. It's, it's, it's shocking. It's, and it's, yeah, it's, it's problematic and maybe indicative of why we have such poor donor retention rates. The online metrics, you know, are better. Sure. But they might be worse than just like how you, how you perceive the interaction. (00:21:29): Because I expect that when I donate online, I'm instantly going to get a receipt and a thank you. And the first few days gonna get some sort of follow up communication because you can trigger it right away automatically. Nobody has to wait for the check to come in the mail and then like hand it to this person and process the gift and make sure that information gets into the system. It just happens. But 18% of nonprofits send absolutely nothing to a new online donor. Not even a receipt. Not even a receipt. Wow. In the first 90 days. Shocking. When we look at, you know, response metrics, this is data from get response, which is not just non-profit focused, but they're analyzing 7 billion emails sent in 2021. Looking at, uh, typical response rates. The further out that you get from that first point of engagement and the trend that you tend to see is that the closer you are to that first point of engagement, the higher open rates and click-through rates you're gonna have. (00:22:21): And the further away that you get, the further down the relationship you get, the further away you get from that first point of engagement, the lower your engagement metrics are going to be. So the best time to actually create a good first impression and get off on a good foot with someone is right away. And so if you wait 90 days, we've lost the window to actually engage these people in a meaningful way. We conducted this study a few years ago looking at email cultivation. And so we compared donor communication to just someone who's subscribed to a newsletter to see what kinds of communications are being sent from nonprofits. And we found that donors actually received 61% fewer cultivation emails than just your normal everyday newsletter subscriber. Which there's a certain level where that makes sense to me because oftentimes we say like, well, they already gave, we don't want to just keep sending a bunch of stuff and, and blast them. But on the other end you're, what, what this data says is that someone who has simply just signed up for a newsletter has a better idea of how donations are being used than the actual donor, than the people Michael Baker (00:23:20): We gave. Yeah. It's crazy. It's Nathan Hill (00:23:21): Not good. Michael Baker (00:23:23): Uh, it reminds me, I I went to an event one time, uh, for a local nonprofit and decided to give all, we there, I, I don't carry a checkbook. They asked me to write a check and put an envelope on the table. I don't carry a checkbook. And so I went back and had some computers in the back and there was a guy standing there and he's like, how much would you like to give? And so I gave an amount and he just swiped my card and he hands it back to me. I was like, well, would you like my personal information? He's like, Nope, we're not gonna bother you again. I was like, what? What do you mean ? He's like, yeah, isn't it great? We're not gonna bother you again and ask you for any more money. And I'm like, I I kind of wanna know how you use the money I just gave you. (00:23:55): Right. And it's like, that was a, a foreign concept to him to be like, oh, I should, I should give feedback to my donors. Yeah. And I'm like, well, that's what this whole event is. You've been getting feedback to people, you've been telling stories, showing your impact. So yeah. That's what exactly what you should do. Yeah. But you like, get my address, get my email address, do whatever to communicate to me. And it was like, that was, he was just like, I feel like I'm bothering you if I do those things and I'm like, not at all. I want know. Nathan Hill (00:24:18): Yeah. And that's the, I don't mean to like point fingers and say that, you know, we're just bad at doing this type of stuff. Like, I think the best of intentions are there. Sure. Cause they didn't wanna bother you, but it's maybe a false assumption cuz donors wanna know Michael Baker (00:24:30): How they're, how they're, if it's relevant communication, it does not bother the donor. Right. So the key maybe is like, well, you don't know how to communicate relevantly to me. Uh, you gotta figure that out. But relevant communication, uh, is not gonna bother people. Sure. So that, that to me is a, is a key way to look at that. Nathan Hill (00:24:46): What, so taking all this data into account, kind of looking at it at the top level, it kind of begs this question like, we're suggesting and implying that you should send more cultivation email and that's gonna help the problem. And I, I think it probably will, but the reality is that we don't actually, we don't actually know. There's not a clear study that shows if you send x amount of cultivation emails, it's gonna lead to this much better retention rates. There's indicators, certainly we've have certainly some experiments of our own showing leading into cultivation often leads to people being more likely to give later on. But, you know, you, you, we can't get a 10 year look at that sort of thing and look at these long-term retention rates. Yeah. Which is really the data we want to see. So no one actually knows. I think what's interesting is when you go start to look for what are the strategies that are gonna move the needle, um, so I just plugged this into to Google said, show me some donor retention strategies and here's what comes up and we're just gonna break it down. (00:25:40): Maybe this seems silly, but I think it's interesting. Uh, number one, the amount of people that are paying for your retention to tell you what the answers are. Obviously you need to have your guard up if you're clicking through one of these posts because you don't know what their angle is. They're, they're probably trying to sell you on a product or a feature or something like that. So we're gonna skip past the, the ads. Now I am the only one who sees this. Uh, you wouldn't see this, but we have an article on this and clearly we're just not great at seo, at least on, on this post. So we're gonna scroll past that. The first, uh, sort of organic result that comes up are these scholarly articles about how to improve donor retention. Most of these are actually about how to retain people who are donating blood, which might have some interesting applications for us potentially. But you've gotta like really sift through the weeds there. And then we get to these first, you know, like the top three. So theoretically the best content is bubbling up to the top, um, with the best strategies to help you improve donor retention. Uh, we've got a crm, we've got a a donation platform, we've got an email platform. Surely these, these experts, it's also Michael Baker (00:26:40): An email platform that doesn't only Nathan Hill (00:26:42): Deal nonprofits. Right? Like constant contact doesn't make their money off of a nonprofit work with 'em. You know, that's, that's an interesting approach. Yeah. But, but we assume that these people probably have, have the answers. Sure. Um, because they, they jumped to the top. And here's what they have to say here. Here's the, here's the cutting edge, the best of the best opportunities and strategies to improve donor attention. Number one, uh, be a donor manager. That's, that's something you can do. Uh, you can leverage nonprofit data. Mm-hmm. , that would be a good thing. Uh, you can show your appreciation. I, I believe for donors is where this goes on. Show your appreciation for donors. That's a good thing. Okay. You can invest in technology. That's the more that we invest in technology, the more the numbers are gonna go up. Let's focus on that one for a while. Yes. , (00:27:27): Uh, you could include impact stories in your newsletter. You can ask for feedback. You can get personal with your thank yous. You can use events to further nurture donors. These, these, these are the leading like cutting edge strategies. Let me know on the chat like, are any of these blowing your mind? Are any of these really gonna like, significantly shift results for you? You think they're, none of them are bad things and they all have interesting ideas and interesting things that we should probably be doing. But these are also the same ideas that have been in our space for years and years and years and years. And they have yet to deliver on the promise of fixing donor retention for us. So we can't just rely on these kind of best practice approaches to fix this core problem of how do we meaningfully improve retention and grow fundraising overall. (00:28:14): I wanna look at an experiment. Um, and I, I really want your participation on this one. Um, cuz I'm, I'm framing it a little bit different. If you've been on next after webinars before, we've always vote on version A, your version B, or which one do you think. But I want you to put yourself in the mind of a fundraiser. I know we have people that work day-to-day in fundraising on the webinar today. I know we have some more tech-minded people, uh, that that work. Maybe in the IT office. We've got people who are more on the consulting and strategy side of things all over the place. But regardless of what your seat is, put yourself in the fundraising seat for a moment. What would you do in this scenario? You are about to write a donation appeal. You're asking a thousand donors for money in a critical campaign. (00:28:52): If you don't hit your goal in this campaign, let's pretend like maybe, maybe someone has to actually get laid off. Maybe you're at that point. We've gotta hit this goal because we, there's critical funding that we need. Maybe you have a, a specific program as part of your, uh, nonprofit that, you know, if we don't meet this goal, this might actually get cut. There's a lot at stake in this campaign. You've gotta hit your goal. Each of these donors that you are emailing has recently in the past year, given you a hundred bucks, knowing all this, are you going to send them version A or are you gonna send them version B? Let's look at both options. Version A looks like this. The focus of it is to ask for less than what they have previously given. It says today we're looking for 15 people who have supported our organization to make a gift of $75 before midnight tonight. (00:29:38): A little bit of urgency in there. I know this is less than what you previously given with financial uncertainty you may or may not be experiencing. We're ask, we're not asking for the same level of support. Your gift of $75 combined with the gen generosity of others is gonna ensure that we can reach people every single day. Will you be one of the 15 donors? That's version A. Version B sounds like this. The focus of it is to actually ask for more than the what they've given in the past. Remember they've given you a hundred dollars and now we're framing it this way. We're looking for 15 people who have supported our organization in the past to make a gift of $125 before midnight tonight. Your gift combined with the generosity of others will ensure we can reach people every single day. You can make your special gift here. Let me know in the chat. Which one would you choose or you got a lot at stake here. Michael Baker (00:30:25): If people are honest, they're gonna say B because everybody, everywhere I've ever worked, every agency I've worked for, every nonprofit I've worked for. B is the approach we have taken on just about every occasion, right? Mm-hmm. and and it's often, Hey, I'm gonna go look at their, their last gift and I'm gonna ask for, uh, 10% more, 25% more and 50% more. That's gonna be the gift array that I put on online. You know, it's like that we were even using that math. Um, but if you've ever been to a next after, uh, webinar or looked at their site, you know, you're often gonna be surprised. Uh, and I can see from the chat, some people are just cheating because Nathan Hill (00:30:57): , Michael Baker (00:30:58): They're going, what would I do? I'm gonna make the opposite. Because that's what, that's what the right result's gonna be. Cause That'ss always the case with these next chapter things. Nathan Hill (00:31:04): Well, but also most of the time, probably 80% of the time you should vote for version B. That's normally the winner here. So , Michael Baker (00:31:09): That's true. Nathan Hill (00:31:10): Maybe I'm trying to throw people up the send. You don't know. I see lots of, there are lots of B's. We started out strong on B, now we've got a mix of a's it's funny how the way that we comment on it changes how people are gonna answer next. Uh, so we got a strong mix. I think we're leaning a little bit towards B. Just my rough math here. Probably 60% B 40% a here's, here's really the main question though, and maybe this shifts your answer. Which one of these is going to lead to more revenue? That's not total donations. That's not looking at click through rates and things like that. It's the total amount of money that you're getting at the end of this campaign. Which one of these is going to lead to more revenue? Does anyone wanna change their answer? Are you gonna stick with with B or stick with a sticking with a. (00:31:52): Matt says, sticking with a good. Be confident. I appreciate that . Okay, we're locking 'em in here. Keep your answers in mind. Sticking with B me sticking with B I love it. I love the confidence. Here's the result. Version A led to a 12% increase in donations. Meaning the total number of people actually giving a gift regardless of the amount. Okay, that's version A. But the question was not about number of donors, it's about total revenue. And would you believe me if I told you that version A also led to a 15% increase in average gift size? Hmm. So those two together means that version A actually led to a whole level more revenue as well as total number of donors. This is a real experiment that was run and it was run with more than just people who give a hundred bucks. As we looked across overall, all the segments, version A led to 134% increase in revenue cross segments that included four $5,000 donations. Version B obviously didn't hit the same revenue threshold, but it also didn't have any gifts at that 5,000 plus level. So none of that more like mid to major level giving came from version B at all. And you said version B is probably the one that most people once said that that's what you see out out in Michael Baker (00:33:07): The wild. That's what I see out in the wild and that's what I've recommended to people. Um, years ago though. Years ago. Sure. Yeah. . Yeah. Uh, but that's, that's the approach that most people take, right? Um, and I think a lot of donors actually see through it because they know they gave you a hundred dollars and now you're asking for a hundred ten, a hundred twenty five and 135, and they're all just going, oh, okay. They just used my last gift. Yeah. Um, and they Nathan Hill (00:33:28): Ran (00:33:28): Off. They're doing a little math and, and uh, maybe that's part of it is people can see through it. (00:33:33): Sure. I love what Matt says here. A is superior creating empathy in his opinion. Yeah. Way more inviting for any and all donors. And I think that's so true. Uh, that additional little line with financial uncertainty you may be experiencing, we're not asking for the same level of support. It's putting yourself in the shoes of the donor, understanding their perspective of where they might be. Yeah. And it actually leads them to say, not only can I give, but I'm happy to give well above what I've given in the past because I know that there's so much need out there. Yeah. Michael Baker (00:34:01): It's incredible. And there definitely you, we see a, a few comments here, there definitely, there's, there's slight changes in the copy. And so obviously you may say, Hey, you know what, the next time I do this, I'm going to, we can maybe, you know, we, okay, we're gonna run with a but we're gonna, we're gonna change the copy a little bit more. We, we can always test, right? Sure. We can always and refine what are the other things. Let's refine it and make it even better for the next one. Mm-hmm. . Um, but I think it's instructive to go, oh, we asked for less money. More people responded, but, and the average gift was higher. Cause I think I probably would've said, Hey, more people are gonna respond to a, but the average gift is gonna be lower. The, that revenue might be higher, would B Right? And the goal, the goal is revenue than, okay, I'm gonna go with B. Uh, that's probably the way I would've looked at that. But it's interesting that you actually got more of everything in, in a Nathan Hill (00:34:44): Yeah. And really the key point here is we wouldn't have known any of this without putting it to the test, right? And, and what I want you to kind of walk away with is knowing like these best practices that we kind of looked at just briefly around donor retention and these strategies, these best practice or traditional ways of approaching fundraising are not going to fix our core problems. They're not going to lead us into the future, into these drastic growth and online giving and, and, and transformational growth for our organizations. They're just not, they're not gonna cut it. The solution honestly isn't even a specific strategy. The solution isn't a specific tool or a platform. So we shouldn't be so afraid that Google optimizes going away. Whether we shouldn't be silver reliant on the one tool, the the way that we're gonna go forward and the way that we're gonna solve these problems has everything to do with our mindset. (00:35:28): It's not a strategy, it's a mindset. And I wanna kind of bring you into this mindset for, for a moment if you'll let me. So when we think about online donor acquisition, this is sort of the typical playbook where oftentimes we're running paid media largely through Facebook or Meta, if you wanna call it meta high school. I'm gonna call it Facebook, Facebook . But we're running some Facebook ads. And typically when someone's on Facebook, they're not, they didn't show up on Facebook, they didn't open their app on their phone because they wanted to give a gift. No, they might end up giving a gift while they're there, but they typically didn't open Facebook to go donate to somebody. They're there to fill their time and see content that's valuable or interesting or maybe hostile. I don't know, , I don't, I'm not on Facebook anymore because it is, it's, it's a mess. (00:36:09): Um, but lots of folks are, so we wanna get their attention in some way. Largely we do that through a Facebook ad where we're showing them some piece of valuable content that might be interesting to the target audience. And when they click through on that ad, normally it's for something like an ebook or it could be a course, a quiz, a petition, et cetera. They click through that ad, they come to a landing page where they would fill out a form, they'd read more about the offer, whether it's the ebook, the video, et cetera. They'd fill out a form to get it or to sign the petition or to complete the survey. And then on the backside of that, they land on a confirmation page that we call an instant donation page. Or they can consider giving a gift right after they've been giving something of value. (00:36:45): So it's almost like returning, um, the, their gratitude in the form of a generous donation. And oftentimes this is how we build a funnel towards new donor acquisition and within our walls here at next after, kind of like a unwritten rule, uh, is that we typically don't ever run something called a Facebook lead ad. Now, we'll share more about that in a moment. You know, at next after is we're trying to fulfill our mission and reach more and more people with what's working to increase giving. We use the same model where we're trying to get someone's attention on Facebook with something like an ad about, it might be for a Facebook ad template. It might be a strategy or a playbook on how to acquire new donors online. Maybe you saw one of these ads to sign up for this webinar and then you landed on a landing page where you read more about it and you signed up. (00:37:30): And then we have more of this, it's not a donation page, but it might be an upgrade page to say, Hey, you said you're interested in this content. Did you know we actually have this course that can help you go dive deeper? Or maybe it's to sign up for an event, some way to upgrade and dive deeper into the content. But no matter what, we never do this, we don't test things called Facebook lead ads. Now, if you, if you're, if you work in the advertising space at all, you know what this is. But, but many of us on call today might not know what this is. So let's define it. A Facebook lead ad looks something like this where if you're in Facebook, you see an ad and you click into it, it never takes you to another page. You see the ad, you click into it, you can fill out the form right there in the app. (00:38:08): It's basically a form created by Facebook for you. And then you fill it out, you hit submit, and then you have the option in step three to basically hit a called action button to go to the website of the advertiser. So very different process. You never actually leave the app unless you hit that final button to say, yes, let me go view this website now what's the actual problem? Why don't we ever test these things? It's because there's a lot of fear on it and for valid reasons, number one, uh, we think that lead ads are probably, probably gonna be lower quality contacts because there's less work in the process to sort of build the momentum, uh, and lead to a higher quality contact at the end. Secondly, no one actually has to visit your website. So it basically breaks the whole model. If we're trying to get people to this instant donation page, well, they never actually have to get there. (00:38:51): Even if they go through all the other steps to fill out the form. Third, the motivation to convert at the very end might be lower because again, they haven't gone through all these steps to kind of build up momentum. And then finally, we just, we just don't trust Facebooks, we don't trust Mr. Zuckerberg necessarily, um, because he is always change in stuff. And so, you know, we we just don't have a lot of, a lot of trust in that. And so there's legitimate fears here, but we have two, well actually we have eight core values, but two of them are these. One always be testing. We need to embrace the fact that no one knows everything. I don't, baker doesn't, you don't. No one knows everything. We have to test in order to be able to figure out what actually works. And secondly, we've gotta be courageous. (00:39:33): We don't wanna get stuck in the right of doing the same thing over and over and over again because we're just afraid of a potential outcome. We wanna refuse to live in our fears and make bold decisions. And so the combination of these two things led us to experiment number 1, 180 73 in our library. And it looks like this. This is the Facebook weep test version. A uses the standard funnel where you see an ad in Facebook, you click through, you go to a landing page, you can sign up for the offer, and then you keep moving through the process. Secondly, version B, used a Facebook lead add, same exact ad creative, but instead you, you, you, um, fill out a form right there in the Facebook app using the Facebook lead, uh, tool. What we expected to happen is what happened. It led to 132% increase in the total number of emails acquired, the number of people actually signing up through the form. (00:40:22): But again, we expected this to happen. We still have a lot of fears about it. So diving into the notes here, it decreased our cost per lead by 72%. So the cost that it took to actually acquire an email down significantly, which we expected, we didn't know how much, but we expected that to happen. Lead quality, the way that we calculate lead quality decreased by 25%, which is also what we expected to happen. We thought we'd get lower quality leads, but in the net, looking at all these metrics together, it was actually 40% cheaper for us to go fulfill our mission to go equip more of you with what we're learning works to grow, giving 40% cheaper. We wouldn't have known this without actually stepping out of our fears and putting it to the test. And on top of this, 64% of these leads actually still click the button to go to the website. (00:41:07): So it didn't break the whole process. Fundamentally, a lot of these things we were afraid of actually got proven to be wrong because we put it to the test. There's a lot more testing to happen here and figuring out how can we make this, uh, you know, kind of a long-term engagement and make sure these people stick around for, uh, a long time. A lot more testing to do, but we can breathe again a little bit. As you know, Facebook ad costs are actively rising and all of that stuff, we can breathe a little bit easier knowing we're able to really kind of mitigate costs. We can reach more people with what, with what's working to grow giving. And this is what I want to really just drive home and I hope get stuck in your head, is that we need to always be testing the solution to fixing fundraising and marketing problems for our nonprofits is not in a particular strategy. (00:41:54): It's in this mindset of continually testing, giving your donors a voice through the data to tell you what's actually working in order to improve results. The next question then, how do you, how do, how do you actually start? And there's a lot of ways you could get started. Um, we've run to date, I took the screenshot this morning, 4,706 online fundraising experiments logged in our library. Basically over the past 10 years, we've got a big goal to get this to 25,000 by the end of 2031. That's like our, our, our 10 year target here at next after. That's the one thing that I care about is how do we get more people testing to decode what works? And over time we've really found that there's two, you know, primary categories of tests. There's universal elements that you can test that apply across lots of different verticals and nonprofits and donor segments, et cetera. (00:42:41): These are sort of the, like the common behaviors that people just have online, regardless of what they're interacting with, has a lot to do with user experience and things like that. Sure. And then there's the contextual elements, which are the things that are more specific to you. Specific messaging to specific donors and specific segments at different times. Those things that you can't just go replicate from somebody else and expect that they're gonna work for you too. Let's look at a couple examples of one of a universal, uh, experiment can reducing anxiety about donation form, security lead to greater giving. This, uh, experiment with CaringBridge, uh, is a great one. We've run many, many times with different organizations. Version A of the form looks like this. Version B looks like this. Version B is not any more secure than version A . It turns out that just adding a little bit of CSS and a padlock icon does not make the form is Michael Baker (00:43:29): Not actually more secure. Nathan Hill (00:43:30): Not more secure. Okay, but don't you feel like version B'S more secure it? Yeah. Michael Baker (00:43:36): I feel like I've added that little extra key chain lock at the top of the hotel door. Nathan Hill (00:43:40): Yeah. Michael Baker (00:43:40): One, it's one more thing to make sure it's (00:43:42): Secure right now that someone could still bust straight the but doing anything, Nathan Hill (00:43:46): But it makes me feel (00:43:46): Better. That's such a good example. I love that. I'm gonna steal that and use that word. That's hilarious what this did, even though I didn't change the security of the page. Matt's right off of that. With that analogy too, it led to a 14% increase in donor conversion because when I'm entering my credit card information in or I'm going to sleep in this hotel room, knowing like all the other people that are there, the potential of getting, you know, stuff stolen. That little, the little chain lock just goes a little bit further to give me that, that peace of mind. Adding these elements right at this point of high anxiety when I'm entering my most critical information, lets me know that it's okay, it's secure, it's okay to give your information, uh, we're gonna keep track of it, we're gonna make sure it's safe and secure, it's not gonna get stolen, et cetera. (00:44:29): And it led to this little bump in, in donations. These types of things are more universal elements that can be applied across nearly any donation form. And we've seen the same sort of result time and time and time again. But then you have the more contextual stuff, which messaging approach is gonna lead to more donations with the target donor segment, version A and version B. I'll show you version B in a second. Um, this organization, compassion International, does a lot of like humanitarian relief, international relief type of work. The bulk of their donor base is, is recurring donors who have sponsored a specific child. And towards the beginning of the pandemic, obviously we had a lot of people who were furloughed or laid off just across the country and across the globe had some loss of income. And so they had sponsors who just couldn't make ends meet and continue to fulfill their sponsorship for a time. (00:45:15): And so they needed to raise some additional funds. And they ran this campaign to ask for a one-time gift from their current sponsor base who had some means to give, to basically stand in the gap for these sponsors who couldn't make ends meet. And so version A says, help a child keep their sponsor. That's probably the, the typical approach you might take to the messaging. It was sort of the common, the common approach, but they wondered, might it actually be more effective to flip that narrative, a, a small change in word choice, help the sponsor keep their child. Mm-hmm. might an existing sponsor actually have more empathy and understanding for the experience of a current sponsor who is losing the ability to support this child that they've been supporting for maybe upwards of 10 plus years. Maybe that's the more relevant messaging angle. They ran this experiment and it led to 119% increase in donations. (00:46:04): Typically, these contextual experiments are what are going to move the needle in the most significant way. They're harder to find what works because it's more contextual, but they have some of the greatest impact. Now, one thing I'm, I'm excited about as we have, you know, I donate as our preferred, you know, donation, uh, platform provider and, and as we've kind of embarked on this, this journey together over the past eight months or so. Yeah. Uh, one thing that I think is really cool and really interesting is they've done two primary things. Number one, they've integrated a lot of what we've learned through experimentation into one click template, so you can just turn 'em on in the tool, um, so that they're pre-engineered to be based on principles that are proven to work. And secondly, they've actually integrated ab testing directly into the platform, which, to my knowledge, the only donation platform that's actually done. (00:46:51): So, as far as I know now, we could be proven wrong someday, but that's how it stands right now. And so I, that's, that's one reason that I, I wanted Baker to join us today too, is just to give you a little bit of a glimpse into why testing is so important at the platform level and inside of the tool, um, and how it might be impactful for, for nonprofits, especially as we're talking about Google Optimize is going away and we've gotta find a new means to run these significant tests on the most significant part of your website, which is your donation. Yes, Michael Baker (00:47:19): Absolutely. So Nathan, when we started this conversation a while back, you asked me, Hey, why, why build testing into the platform knowing that, hey, there's, there's other testing (00:47:27): Things out there, why? Nathan Hill (00:47:29): Well, I go through all the effort to build that in. Uh, and it, it's not like, it's not as if we, at the time we knew Google was gonna take away the, the tools that most people used, right? It's, you don't see that. I was really hoping they wouldn't. Right. Exactly. A lot of people were, uh, but we just looked at it and said, Hey, a lot of what we talked about here in, in that mindset is, is important. But we also said, Hey, uh, you look at the, the, just the overall trend, uh, giving u s a data, the number of people donating every year's it's going down. Mm-hmm. , uh, the donor donor retention, like we've talked about, you know, throughout this is going down, so there's a, there's a problem, right? But at the same time, online giving that entire time, again, if you look at giving u s a data, uh, that, that's continuing to trend up into the right. (00:48:10): And so it says, okay, there's fewer people giving, uh, retention is an issue, but more and more of it is happening online. Well, that tells us, Hey, that the giving experience online is important. It matters. Uh, and so we set out to say, okay, hey, well, how do we create the best giving experience? How do we do that? Yeah. Uh, and so, uh, what we, what we landed on was no one, no one knows. Uh, and really what we landed on is there isn't a single answer to that question. Right? It's not that there is a best way to do it for everybody. It's, hey, some of that contextual stuff you just talked about matters. Hey, are you a big national organization? Are you a very local organization? Uh, are you talking to an audience of, uh, the people if they give a thousand plus dollars at a time, are you talking to people that have never given to your organization? (00:48:58): Cause there isn't a single don giving experience that works for all of those audiences, right? Yeah. So if you're in digital fundraising, good news, I got, I got just a little stress relief here. Your job is not to know what's the best giving experience. Your job is just to be able to say, Hey, I don't know the answer, but I can find out. Right? Uh, and that's where we just landed to say, Hey, you know what? We, we can't build the ideal. Our platform is not gonna be able to build the, the ideal giving experience as, as if it's a single giving experience. We want organizations to build what works for them and works for the audience that they're trying to target and that sort of thing. And so that's what we tried to do. We, we agree with what we've talked about here, that mindset matters. (00:49:36): A new mindset that says, Hey, we're gonna test and we're gonna figure out what works is gonna lead to new results. Because if we ever wanna change this trending downward thing, we're gonna have to take a new approach. And so if our mindset is, Hey, we're always gonna test, we're always gonna find something new mm-hmm. , we, we can always test something else to always optimize. We're gonna get something better at the end. And so this is just a sneak peek at, at the inside of our tool, this is the way our testing works. You know, we originally, we built version A of a giving form. We threw it up on our website and we said, great, we're gonna, we're gonna throw this up there. And then somebody was like, well, hey, what would happen if we changed the order of the gift array? We're going from lowest to highest. (00:50:14): What happens if we go highest to lowest? Does that make any difference? Everything else about the form is the same. And so when you build a test, you say, Hey, I wanna build a test. I wanna test this form version A, we, we allow you to make the edit. And then we put 'em side by side, Hey, are you, this is it you told us you wanted to test, uh, you know, the, the average gift and the, the total revenue off of flipping the gift array. This is what you're doing. Hey, you want us to notify you after 500 visits or 30 days? You can look at the results, you know, two hours later if you want to, whenever you want. But we're gonna notify if you wanna walk away and be like, Hey, I don't, I don't want to get, uh, spooked by the immediate results I want. I don't wanna know until, you know, 500 visits or whatever. Because the Michael Baker (00:50:53): Purist would say, you set it up (00:50:55): And you walk (00:50:55): Away, make sure it works. And then you walk away until the end of this timeframe, Nathan Hill (00:50:58): Right? Until the, so yeah. So you don't, you don't go, you get itchy about making a decision before the test is over, right? You want, you wanna not let enough run through, but it's really simple, right? And so, hey, here we go. Now you can see our results are 24 days in. We've got real time results. Okay? Hey, I've got four Bs doing $20,000 in, in total donations. I've got 126 transactions, over a hundred on the other one. I've had this many page visits. My conversion rate is this. You look at that and you're like, Hey, this is interesting information. It turned out that, yeah, for this particular audience, for this particular organization, we managed to, to raise more money by flipping that gift array around. Pretty interesting. Okay, great. That's really cool. And now all we've gotta do is that little button up there in test, and I'll end it. (00:51:43): And from there. So the great thing about our tools, Hey, I don't know how to write in code. Uh, I've never written a line of code in my life. Uh, I can set up a test in a few minutes. And so the idea is, some of the other tools, like you talked about at the beginning is, Hey, yeah, they're out there. One, they're, they're sometimes a lot more technical. They take a lot of effort to set up. This is like, Hey, I'm gonna set this form up, uh, without any technical knowledge, I'm gonna go do this. And I didn't have to go do anything on the back end of my website. I didn't have to do anything. I just had to say, run the test our system's then splitting traffic, our system's, then spitting these results out. And oem, by the way, we're, we're spitting the results out to Google, or whatever analytic tool you're using as well. So it's not like this is your only analytics. You can push it, you can push all that data wherever you want to go. So yeah, that, that's just a sneak peek of kind of how we're, how we're running through all that stuff. (00:52:28): I love it. Thank you. Uh, and, and yeah, just thinking about this one thing you had told, um, you know, me in the past is just as you're having more and more conversations with nonprofits is you're seeing this shift in the market where the, the IT group is less and less in charge of things like this. And, and more and more fundraisers in marketers have their hands in the tool and are looking for these ways to figure out how do I actually, as I'm accountable for the revenue and how do we grow it, I need the tools so I can make the tweaks, right? And so it's incredible that you can actually do this sort of stuff without having to go talk to a developer and like, put a ticket in and then wait five weeks and all that sort of stuff. It's putting the, putting the tools in the hands of the fundraiser, which I think (00:53:04): Is incredible. I love (00:53:05): It. So if you've got questions that you'd like us to chat through the next few minutes, feel free to put them in the q and a. I think there's already some in there. I'll go ahead and start to pull that up as you're getting questions in there that have come to mind. Um, just a couple, uh, you know, quick next steps for you. Number one, if you're interested in, in learning more about, I donate, you are welcome to head to this link. You can scan this QR code or go type it in. Uh, and just give a quick, uh, there's a few fields on there, just some basic information, uh, just to sign up to get basically a quick demo and look at what might this tool look like. Um, for me, you know, everyone needs a donation platform, obviously. And, and if you have one that bakes in AB testing, uh, I think that sets you up for even better success. (00:53:44): So feel free to go check that out, uh, and just get some time to see, you know, is would this be the right sort of fit for, for you? And as you're trying to figure out how to test your way to better results, especially as optimized is going away. And then secondly, again, as I mentioned this upfront, but as optimized is going away, GA four is rolling out. We do have this course that's brand new and available for you. You can get a free 30 day membership, uh, to the next after institute a free trial of it, uh, and, and dive into this course right away to figure out how do I set up my Google analytics structure, my data in order to, to make sure that I'm set up for success, to measure my performance over time and how, how is what I'm putting into practice actually leading to results. So I'll leave this up here for a few minutes as we chat. Yeah. Um, but here's a couple of questions. We've got a question from Lindsay, and I'm just going through, you did not even preread them here. What's the industry average for percentage of online giving? You made some comments on the earlier. Yeah. So Michael Baker (00:54:39): Based on giving U s USA data, the average, uh, coming out of, uh, the last one they reported was on 2021 data. So they, it usually takes 'em to the middle of the year to get it all put together. Uh, but that average was 13%. And so that's a, um, that's, that's trending up. Uh, the thing I would, I wish that they did because it, it's, it's absolutely true in, in the, any of the organizations I look at is they look at total number of dollars given and they say, okay, it's 13%. Mm-hmm. , I, I always argue, hey, we looked at the total number of transactions given it's gonna be a much higher percentage because nobody gives, a lot of these organizations have massive donors that are giving 5, 6, 7 figure gifts. None of those, those gifts don't happen online. So when we strip all of that out, we say, okay, what did the average donor, where did, where did the average donor fulfill their gifts? Your percentage of online is gonna be a lot higher than that. So from a revenue standpoint, it's about 13%. I think from an actual number of donors, that percentage is probably much higher. But I don't know that anybody provides that metric. Nathan Hill (00:55:33): Yeah, that's good insight. I would also add to that too, um, you know, as you're pursuing growth in online giving, that kind of shifts where the benchmark goes. If you just look at the benchmark purely and say like, yeah, we're right about there, we must be okay, that's gonna limit your potential . Because there's a whole category of organizations that are shifting to be what we would call digital first, where the first thought as you're approaching fundraising is, what are we doing online? What are we doing in digital to reach more and more people? And with that lens and that sort of focus, your potential for growth goes up, we will, one thing that we see is that you are far more likely to become a multi-channel donor if you're acquired through an online channel, which go kind of flies in the face of some traditional thing about, about fundraising. But if you've got, as someone gives to you online, you can continue to communicate with them online, but they also have given you, you know, physical mailing address as they've given you that gift. And so now you automatically have the other channel to go cultivate them through the mail as well and get them to interact with you in a multi-channel way. So, so I'll, Michael Baker (00:56:33): I'll take the question from anonymous, mysterious, anonymous attendee down here. (00:56:36): I normally don't give, give the I don't answer anonymous question. Yeah. I want us to be confident. (00:56:40): Uh, so the, the question is, can you test other on page elements, reli donate, like headers test, uh, text images, and, and the answer is yes. So we, we can, you can build an entire landing page. Uh, the test we just showed you, there was just the giving form that was then embedded on their website. But you can build an entire landing page and you can test every element of that page from images, text, uh, any of those things. So all of that is in, is then testable in, in a, in an a split. Yeah, Nathan Hill (00:57:06): That, I mean, I think that dovetails right into the question above it from Robert, um, who's asking, you know, how do you run an experiment like the padlock icon in the gray box in a tool, or when you're trying to run it through optimize for the next, you know, six months or so, how do you run it through optimize when you're, you're actual donation platform is maybe I framed, embedded in you don't have the ability to kind of manipulate those elements. That's part of the problem that, that I donate is trying to solve by implementing testing into the platform, is when you just have these embedded, like especially if it's an I frame embedded into your page, you can't really go manipulate it in a meaningful way if you can't do it in the platform itself. Like Google Optimize can't just go look into the iframe and go change it. (00:57:47): So you've gotta be able to do that at the platform level. Uh, so you know, that's where your tech stack really comes into play to understand is it really empowering me to test the things that are most meaningful? So it may be in your case, Robert, that you know, I need to have a conversation with, I think you're talking about classy in this case. How do I go actually implement this at the form level? Well, and, and if you can't, then you may actually need to look for a different provider if those are things that you wanna go test into. So that's where your tech stack does really become really critical. Michael Baker (00:58:13): It does, for sure. Mm-hmm. , Nathan Hill (00:58:16): Uh, let's see. We've got a question from Molly. With running all these tests, how frequently do your tests produce no results or at least not any result that is statistically significant? I love this question . Uh, I love it so much. And, and here's where I would start with it. When we are running an experiment, you know, the, oftentimes I think the assumption is running experiments, we can get a lift. So we can see an increase in giving. And, and certainly from like the, the more business economic perspective of it, that's where it needs to get to, you know, for running experimentation. And we're investing in time and energy and, and even money into experimentation that has to produce an ROI in the long term. But when we look at an experiment by experiment basis, my goal is not to just go get a lift from a single experiment. (00:59:01): It's to get a learning about your donors. And so what I would submit to you is as you're, as you're learning more about your donors through your experimentation and you're designing them in that way, they're going to lead to a lift in the long term. That said, oftentimes when we're running experimentation, you're gonna run that. You can put all the work in upfront to try to understand the amount of traffic coming to a page and try to project out conversion rates and what's the sample size you're gonna need to get validity. There's a whole science around how to do that. Uh, we unpack some of that in our own testing course. Um, but there's even more we could dive into on that front. Um, oftentimes you can even put in that work and then you still don't see a significant result just because it, what you put to the test maybe didn't move the needle enough or it's quite possible that you just got a false positive or a false negative result. (00:59:46): Like, cuz that's just how the, how the statistical math sort of works out. So what we need to do is design experiments that focus around a central hypothesis so that you can know by the end of an experiment you can really walk away with a valid learning. So even if you get an insignificant result, you can fairly confidently say, you know what, we we're pretty confident this approach, this change didn't actually matter. It didn't move the needle for someone, especially if you get an invalid result, you run it again, you see the same sort of result. You can pretty confidently say, you know, changing the messaging in this way, this just isn't impactful for our donors. And then you can move on from that hypothesis and go test the next best thing. But you're stacking these learnings on top of each other to lead to a lift. So quite honestly, Molly, if you're to go look at our, our library of those 4,700 experiments, I don't have the exact breakdown. I wanna say it's about 40, 40, so percent valid, positive, you've got another chunk in there that's sort of the, the invalid or insignificant, and then another smaller chunk that's sort of like the negatives. So all in all in the net it's majority positive, but you can still learn from even these insignificant or even these decreases, uh, as you run these testing, this, this testing. Sure. (01:00:57): Okay. We've got another anonymous. I would love it for if you put names on these speed, let's be bold in our, our questions. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump to Daniel and we have time, if we have time, we'll come back to anonymous here. Uh, Daniel is, I donate a payment processing platform or does it integrate with other payment processors like Stripe? That sounds like a unique question. Uh, Michael Baker (01:01:14): The answer is both. So we have a, we have a preferred partner, uh, that we use. Uh, but if you would like to remain with Stripe, that's fine, we can do that as well. Nathan Hill (01:01:23): Perfect. Okay. And then lastly, we've got this anonymous question. I'll, I'll, I'll answer it. Today's presentation seemed to focus most exclusively on fundraising. Important for sure, but most of our organization is focused on other areas like advocacy, campaigning programs. We're very sad to see optimized going away. We're relied on our website for these activities. We are at a loss for what to do next in a post optimized world. Quick advice for what to do. So number one, I would say that's a very normal situation and experimentation, AB testing optimization can be applied across really any digital practice and even beyond just, you know, digital communication. Um, in fact a lot of, some some like core understandings and learnings, you know, that we apply here at next after we, we learn from, from, uh, a company called Neck Labs that had, that does a lot of that, that work in the for-profit space. (01:02:11): And so you might see some overlap in, in terms of thinking there. So experimentation critical regardless of if it's applied to fundraising, uh, advocacy, you know, growing, growing subscriber bases and things like that. Um, secondly the actual, the tactical question of how do you go implement more testing? Well this is where these other tools that we looked at very briefly early on are gonna come into play because I donate is great in terms of implementing AP testing on the donation page, but it's not a holistic, you know, that's not your fault. The whole website , right? It's not, yeah. And it's obviously we don't know who anonymous is, but it's like she's been sitting in some of our product, uh, roadmap discussions to figure out if we should do things like this as well. . So he or she, I guess anonymous, I dunno who it's, that's hilarious. (01:02:54): That's hilarious. But these, these are some of these other tools that you may, you may consider. And, and one thing that Google has said is, again, there's gonna be integrations into GA four from all sorts of different tools. Some of these do have some, like for the, the first little bit there's free opportunities or maybe some low cost opportunities. It's when you get volume into them that they become like fairly pricey. But this would be the next step is to go look at some of these, uh, already confirmed direct integrations into GA four and start to go have those discussions with these companies about, you know, do you have nonprofit rates and things like that and how can they empower future future testing. One thing that we're doing internally at next, after right now is, is starting to vet all these different companies that provide testing. So as you're trying to run experimentation on your homepage and in other parts of your website, outside of the donation page, trying to figure out which ones are really gonna be best set up for you as a nonprofit, uh, to get the best, uh, you know, feedback in terms of data and use it effectively for your organization. So we'll certainly have more to come in the future with recommendations there, but if you're, if you're gungho and you're ready to go figure out the solution here, these are, this is where to start. (01:04:00): And (01:04:03): I think, I think that's all of our questions we've answered. Thank you so much everyone for spending a little extra time to go through some questions. Thank you. Be you for being here at the platform level that, that I can't necessarily talk about. We're grateful for all of you. I know this is a, a pretty radical shift in our space and so hopefully this is helpful just to kind of shape your mindset as you're going into. Should we really be thinking about how do we invest deeper to continue or even start ab testing in a world where optimize doesn't exist? If we can serve you in any way, I would love to just shoot me an email after we send this, um, follow up with recordings and all that stuff. If you wanna dive deeper into see, uh, if I donate to good fit for you, you can reach out to Baker and we'll send a link for that as well. Um, thank you again, appreciate your time. We're rooting for you here at next after and that I donate. We want the best for you. Uh, and I just wanna wish you happy optimizing . Thanks, y'all. Take care. We'll see you next time. (01:05:02): All right.