Nathan: Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the webinar. All about high urgency campaigns specifically. I know many of you are going through fiscal year end campaigns at the moment, not everyone, but many of you are. We're gonna give another couple of minutes just to wait for everyone to join. I know folks are coming from lunch. Some people had a meeting, had a project, whatever you're trying to wrap up and now get into the webinar. So we'll give a couple moments here for everyone to join. Uh, the way I love to start every single one of these is to hear from you. I don't know who you are, who you are, what organization that you are from and where in the world are you zooming in from today. So open up that chat tool in your zoom and let me know who you are, what organization you're from and where in the world are you zooming in from today? Nathan: Um, I can kind of kick us off as you're, you know, getting fingers on your keyboard and both up the chat and typing everything. Uh, my name's Nathan Hill, I'm here in Plano, Texas. So we're just north of Dallas, uh, from obviously from next after. And we've got the chat blowing up with all sorts of fundraisers, marketers, communicators from across the globe, all rallying around this idea of how do we grow generosity together. So we've got Chuck from mission Springs camp in Santa Cruz, California. I'm not gonna read everyone. We'll just kinda give some highlights here. We've got, uh, Gilbert CCA in Lewisville, Texas. That's where I live. So not far from, from my house. I'm sure. Uh, welcome Gilbert. We've got, um, Allison from blink now foundation zooming in from Weston, Vermont. Uh, we've got another, uh, person from Christian community action in Lewisville. Welcome Sherry. : Glad you are here. I know exactly where Lewisville is. Uh, we've got a valley animal in valley animal center in Fresno, California. We've got David from Olympia, Washington. We've got folks all over the us. It looks like we've got some Canadians in the house. Also. We've got Amy, um, and BC, uh, from, uh, ever free. Welcome, welcome, welcome. So glad that you are here and hopefully we don't waste a moment of your time. Hello, Julie Watkins from next after. Thank you for your encouragement. Uh, let's dive into a couple things here. A couple housekeeping things. Number one, if you haven't heard yet, uh, in September, we're putting on our annual summit called the nonprofit innovation and optimization summit. It's very wizard of Oz seemed if you stick around to the end, I'll show you a picture of me dressed up as the tin man. Uh, cause we were doing some filming in our office last week. So stick around for that. Uh, but I wanna give you just like a little bit of a picture of what Neo summit is like if you've been before, you know how over the top it is and how actionable and data driven, uh, all the speakers and insights are, if you've never been, this is a conference that is very different from every other nonprofit conference you've ever been to. I'm gonna show you 30 seconds of what it's going to be like. Speaker 2: So I was really looking for a conference that was targeted to nonprofits. So I went signed up for the workshop. One of my teammates came along for the actual conference part of it. She loved it. It was just like takeaway after takeaway. And there were things that we could apply. Um, that's why I keep coming back and we'll continue to keep coming back. It's amazing. Nathan: Again, just a tiny little window into what the summit is like. It is gonna be so different than any other nonprofit event that you have ever been to if you haven't been to Neo summit, uh, because there's a few things that are really, really important to us. Number one, we wanna bring in speakers that you haven't heard at every other event, we bring in a lot of speakers that are hand selected often from the for-profit space who have really innovative ideas that we think can make a dramatic impact on your fundraising work to help you grow giving generosity and revenue. So that's what you can expect from the speaker side of things. We've got a couple pre-conference workshops where you can earn certifications, different areas of digital fundraising. Uh, for the first time ever, we have a post-conference workshop that's really gonna be designed around how do you take all the best ideas from this event and go put them to work. Nathan: Uh, and then all throughout there's lots of parties and networking opportunities that are just a ton of fun because we think that being in a fun creative space is gonna prompt a lot of new ideas for you and help you connect deeper with other fundraisers facing similar challenges and problems. And together we can learn how do we grow giving, uh, together. So I would encourage you to check out Neo summit. Uh, I can't promise you results, but in this case, John attended last year and saw 35% increase in giving at the end of the year. Uh, we've got some great speakers lined up, Amy Harrison talking about copywriting. We've got my friend Dana talking about social media. We've got Marcus Collins talking about some brand strategy. Uh, several other folks, Michael King talking about SEO. Seth Godin will not be there in person cuz he is not doing in person events, but he will be there virtually to give a special message to Neo attendees and a whole bunch more. Nathan: Uh, so that's what you can expect at the Neo summit. And you can save 500 bucks on your ticket if you get your ticket before the end of the week. So use the code early bird save 500 bucks. All right, enough about Neo for now the most popular question we ever get is this webinar recorded and can I get a copy of it? And the answer is always yes. So we'll send you an email later this evening with a link to the recording and to slides and any resources we mentioned. So you'll have all that in your inbox and we should have some time should keyword should have some time for some questions at the very end. So if you have questions along the way today, open up the Q and a tool in your zoom bar, zoom tool bar, and put your questions in there. Nathan: That's the best way for me to see what's coming in and keep track of what we've answered. I can't promise we'll get to every single one, but we certainly will try. All right, without further ado, let's dive in today. We're talking about five proven tactics that you can use to boost your fiscal year end campaign results. I know not everyone has a fiscal year end, that's ending, you know, at the end of next week, but many of us do. And so if you're in the midst of a fiscal year end campaign where you're trying to raise money before your fiscal year closes, or you're gonna get some really, uh, uh, practical ideas and tactical ideas to help optimize your campaign in this final week, if you have a fiscal year end, that's ending at the end of next week, but you haven't started a campaign, I'm gonna give you some ideas to how you can sort of, uh, streamline a campaign going into next week with some E some easy wins. Nathan: Uh, and if you don't know what I'm talking about related to fiscal year end campaigns or high urgency campaigns at all, we're gonna do kind of an overview to talk about how these can be really effective to help activate donors and lots of different types of donors. And here's where I wanna go first divided this kind of into two parts. We're gonna talk about, uh, these campaigns kind of at the, at the global level, what do they look like? What's their purpose. And then we're gonna dive into some of these really practical ways to grow and optimize them. I wanna show you a chart and I want you to take just a moment to kind of look at it, squint at it and tell me what you see. What do you see in this chart? Does anything stand out to you? I'll give you a moment, just kind of process it. Nathan: If something stands out, feel free to jump in the chat and let me know. Is there anything interesting about this chart to you? I'll give you a little bit of context. Obviously the top says cumulative revenue. This is digital revenue coming in for an organization over a two year period. Uh, Silas says you see growth. Uh, my Austin connection says steady growth. Darin says increased revenue. Yes, it's going up into the right and that's good. Uh, I would hope so because it is cumulative revenue. So it's growing over time. Uh, it shouldn't be going down, uh, but this is cumulative revenue over a two year period. And when I look at this chart, there's a couple things that jump out to me and there are all these little like jumps in the chart. You've got steady growth over time. Yes, but you've got these little jumps all along the way where you go from down here to up here all of a sudden and basically a day or a couple of days. Nathan: And if you, if you squint at the chart, you can kind of see this first year, here's sort of the trend line of growth. And in the second year it's more of an accelerated growth. And it's almost every time we have one of these little jumps and bubbles, it's like the growth trend starts to increase incrementally. So we've got a steady drip of donations, but now it starts coming a little faster and a little faster and a little faster. There's all this momentum being built up over this two year period. I see Josh says biggest bump is in December. And absolutely absolutely it is because every single one of these little bumps is a high urgency campaign. Everything from giving Tuesday to December 31st, the end of the year, that's gonna be the biggest giving day for everyone, um, every single year. So you see those big jumps and then they've got this special high urgency campaign that's being run in the spring time. Nathan: And then they have a fiscal year end that's in the middle, uh, or the end of June. And then the cycle repeats going into year two and every single one of these campaigns, obviously you see this big jump in revenue coming in. So the question is, why would you run something like a fiscal year end campaign or a higher urgency campaign in general? Uh, if this chart isn't convincing enough to you to show you all these opportunities to kind of, uh, leapfrog in, in revenue growth along the way, we'll talk about a couple other things as well. If you start to break down your different, uh, audience segments that you have, uh, add your organization, this isn't gonna be all encompassing, but here's a few of them. You've got people who subscribe maybe to an email list or have volunteered or been around your organization, but maybe never given those are non donors and ideally you and I would want those people to become a first time donor. Nathan: That's kind of the next step in the, the donor life cycle. And then you've got these people who are first time donors, or maybe they're second time donors, they're existing donors that you want to move into a deeper relationship gift. They're second gift or their third gift or a fourth, whatever you've got lapse, donors who have given to you in the past, but maybe not in the past couple of years. And we wanna reactivate these people, uh, so that they start to give to you again, they trust you. They express interest in the work that you're doing. They wanna be involved in the cause, but for some reason, it'd kind of fallen away. How do we reactivate them? And you've got recurring donors that faithfully give to you on an ongoing basis, but maybe want to, we want them to give a gift that's above and beyond maybe at a higher level or a different capacity or to a specific cause. Nathan: And what, uh, these high urgency campaigns let us do is really focus on activation across all of our different donor segments. There's lots of nuanced ways to approach messaging and conversations with each group, but it gives you the sort of clear bounds, a time, a snapshot in time where you can create a lot of urgency for each one of these types of donors and activate them to step into that next, uh, the next phase of their life cycle or journey with you. Ideally even cultivating these donors over time, you've got some drip communication going out via email. Maybe you're posting content on your website. You're making donor thank you, calls and that sort of stuff, doing all the right things to go build a relationship. And in the context of a high urgency campaign, we wanna create a real case for support reasons why they would actually give to you. Nathan: We wanna establish a clear deadline to give because, you know, I might really value your cause and I might be passionate about it, but I can always ask this question, like, why should I give to you now rather than next month or the month after that, or the month after that, or next year, what's the purpose of me giving now rather than later, establishing a clear deadline allows you to increase urgency. And then you can also bake in some different incentives to, uh, lead someone to think, why should I give now rather than later? Or why might I give more rather than less? So all these pieces come together in the high urgency campaign to activate all these different donor groups. We're gonna spend a few minutes just looking at, you know, what does one of these campaigns look like specifically from the email side of things, but also just on a more general level, here's kind of your general timeline for what a high urgency campaign typically looks like. Nathan: And I wanna zero in on that urgency piece, you see at the very end, uh, at the end of your campaign is gonna be this really high urgency time where a deadline is coming up. You're in the last few days, it's 48 hours left to give today's the last day to give that type of messaging. But to get there, you have to tell a story over time to help people lean into your campaign to understand that something is going on. There's, uh, reasons that I need to give that you've been communicating over time. You're sending appeals. And you're also cultivating along the way, working backwards. You have a launch point where you've actually kicked off your campaign, but you might need to do some work even before that, to get people to lean in and to listen. And that's kind of the engagement phase. So let's plot out, you know, what might be sent throughout the course of a campaign like this, uh, pulling from our typical playbook as we work with different organizations and, and, and clients to help grow giving inside of a high urgency campaign, we might do something like this, where in this engagement phase, we're just trying to sort of, you know, wake people up, help people know that something is coming and get them to lean in through some cultivation work. Nathan: So we might do something like this and send a couple of, of surveys that are really focused around, uh, what are the core beliefs of the potential donor or existing donors? Uh, what are the problems that our organization is trying to solve and getting our donors to say, yes, I think this is valuable. Yes. I wanna see this type of change. It's sort of priming people for appeals that are gonna come later. And that's what happens, um, in the launch phase is you actually kick off your campaign. So you're basically 30 days out and you say, here's what we're doing this month. We wanna raise X amount of money in this timeframe. And here's all the reasons why you might write a pretty lengthy campaign, kickoff email to show people well, what's at stake. What's the deadline, what's the goal? What are the incentives? You're moving people, uh, towards the appeal phase. Nathan: After you've kicked off over the course of your campaign, you wanna send some different appeals, but you wanna also set in some cultivation. So your appeals can start to dive into different aspects of your case for support, which we'll talk about here in a moment. Um, but they can dive into some more nuance aspects, telling different stories and testimonials that are leading towards, uh, direct donation asks. But you also wanna weave in some cultivations, you're not just asking, asking, asking, asking for, you know, a 30 day period, but you're cultivating along the way with blog posts and stories and videos and things like that, to get people to really understand the depth of the work that they're investing in. So not everything needs to be a donation ask. We can cultivate along the way as well. And then again, you get into this high urgency time period where you're basically saying like there's 48 hours left to give tomorrow is the last day to give, you might send two emails on the very last day. Nathan: That's saying, Hey, today's the last day, or, Hey, there's only hours left all those types of emails you tend to get during the very end of the year, both from nonprofits and for profits that are trying to meet a goal and get revenue coming in, uh, by the start of the new year, we're doing that same thing throughout any higher urgency campaign. So there's kind of your different phases, but I wanna work backwards here. Uh, for those of you that are going through a fiscal year end campaign right now, um, or have a fiscal year end ending at the end of the month. So basically you can say, okay, well, it's my deadline. Well, in this case, it's June 30th, which happens to be, um, next Thursday. So we basically have a week and then you're going to subtract a day for that. Tomorrow is the last day to give that's easy. Nathan: Uh, the engagement cycle would happen before your campaign starts and you see basically would look back 30 days and say, here's where I wanna launch. We've got a 30 day window. And then in between, I would recommend that you send emails anywhere from, you know, three to seven days apart. See, you might kick off your campaign. You might wait a week, you might send an appeal at the end of the next week. You might send a cultivation space. These out it's gonna be dependent on how big your file is, how often you communicate. Um, but give some space in between these different types of emails. Again, if your campaign is wrapping up at the end of this month, you might feel like you're out of time to do some of these different appeals and cultivation along the way. But what I wanna encourage you is if you're really trying to raise some funds before the end of the fiscal year deadline, whether that's, uh, basically ending on June 30th, here's something that you might do next week. Nathan: You can send an appeal on Monday, you can drop a blog post or some other cultivation piece. Maybe you just send a story of, of some person being impacted by your cause. Just to lean into cultivation on Tuesday on Wednesday, you can send this tomorrow's the last day to give. And then on Thursday you can send this final, you know, kind of quick reminder, Hey, we're trying to meet this goal. Will you give, so you can compress this timeline to meet your needs. So I don't want you to feel like all hope is lost if you haven't really started yet. Now that's a, a very high level overview as to what a high urgency campaign might look like for you. And where I wanna spend most of our time today is really talking about some of the more practicalities around how do you optimize optimize the heck outta your campaign so that you can help meet your goals either next week or in the next high urgency campaign that you run. Nathan: If you haven't been a part of a next after training before or next after webinar before, um, there's really one thing that we do better than anybody else in the world. And that's we, we help nonprofits grow their digital fundraising. And we do that in three primary ways. Number one, we are a research lab. We conduct a lot of research. Some of it is like mystery, donor type forensic research, where we're going out to see what's the lay of the land. What's the nonprofit landscape. What are nonprofits doing today to try to raise more money, but we don't wanna just leave it at that, cuz we don't never wanna just copy and paste what someone else is doing. We wanna know exactly what works to grow giving. So we take the best ideas that we find. We put them to the test to decode what actually works to grow giving generosity and revenue. Nathan: We do a lot of that testing, uh, with specific organizations that we work with through our digital first agency, we do a lot of AB testing experimentation. We also full are a full service digital agency. And from those two different, uh, areas from research experimentation, as well as the hands on work we're doing, we take everything we're learning and we try to give it to you through our training Institute. So through webinars and through blog posts and tools and resources and courses, our mission is to go decode what works, but also equip as many nonprofits as we possibly can with what we're learning. So we can see giving grow. That's really our heart and our mission. Uh, and over time we've run over 3,600 online fundraising experiments. These are AB tests trying to decode what works with a variety of different nonprofits, uh, and seen tremendous results in growing digital revenue over time. Nathan: I say all of this, not to like brag about us or next after, excuse me, but because I want you to know that everything that you're going to hear from these different, uh, you know, test ideas is based not on gut feelings, not on intuition, not on best practices, but it's based on real data and evidence and research and testing. I don't want you to trust me. I want you to trust what the data says because the data is our way of listening to donors who are the experts and the only experts and trying to figure out what's gonna lead them to give more. So all of that being said, let's look at, um, basically test idea number one, and this can be, um, pretty complex, cuz there's so many different ways it can go. But number one, the best thing that you can do to strengthen the results of your campaign is to craft a strong or stronger case for support. Nathan: So I'm gonna show you a pretty interesting experiment as I've been diving into it this week. I'm fascinated by it. Every time I read it, this is an email appeal sent from our friends. Uh, the organization called CaringBridge. If you're not familiar with them, CaringBridge is awesome. Uh, they've been beneficial for, for my family at large, um, and lots of different people going through, um, you know, health crises and health journeys because they allow you to create these free, um, like journal sites where you can keep family and friends and loved ones updated about a health journey that you're going through. So you don't have to go like text every single person individually about what's going on. Um, your family and friends can, you know, sign in there and add comments and send encouragement to you through it. It's a great resource, um, to keep people, you know, encouraged as they go through, uh, sometimes really, really hard seasons. Nathan: Um, so that's what CaringBridge does. They're a nonprofit. They obviously run on donations. They sent out this appeal and I'm gonna read some portions of it to you. They sent from their CEO starts out since hi Kelly, hope your week is going well. I can't believe it's March. How about that? March also means that we celebrate caring bridge supporters like you, uh, this, well, let's see today and tomorrow you can double all donations, caring bridge today. And tomorrow up to $10,000 through a matching opportunity, your donation is gonna power awareness and it's gonna power growth. So that families have a place to turn. When the world's turns upside down, you scroll further down, you move towards the call to action. If you can help keep our nonprofit free and available for every family that needs support, please donate today, double your ordination. Now it's not a bad appeal. Nathan: It's actually, it's actually a really strong appeal. Uh, especially if you're familiar with the work that CaringBridge does and you've been following them. Maybe you've been participating, sending encouraging notes to a loved one. And now you're seeing this appeal from the CEO to kind of keep things running. This can be really, really powerful. However, they tested it against a different, a different approach, a different kind of framing of the case for support. So this appeal actually comes from someone who has benefited from carrying bridge, not just the CEO talking about here's what we do, but someone who's been on the receiving end trying to build trust and maybe increase some authenticity, but tell a, maybe a more powerful story about the impact that your gift can make to create a stronger case for support. So here's now what it says. We won't read every word, but I'll highlight a few things. Nathan: It still has the same sort of phrase near the top donations. The caring bridge are being doubled today and tomorrow up to $10,000. So this is a high urgency portion of this couple of days. Your gift can be matched up to 10 grand. That's awesome. CaringBridge helped my husband, Ben and me live in the whirlwind of three months in the NICU. Tate and Milo were born in August and they didn't come home from the hospital until November. Now, if, if you have children, uh, you know that that's a, that's a long time to not be able to bring your kid, your kid home. That's that's a lot, that's a lot to go through. The outcome of our story is better than we could have ever imagined. A few months ago, I looked back at our Karen bridge site and I thought, I can't believe that we went through all of that. Nathan: I especially remember the hope and the encouragement that came to my husband and me through caring bridge. If you can help make caring bridge possible for the next family that needs support, please donate today. You scroll down, please have this double yeard donation called to action. Thank you so very, very much Katie, which one of these do you think is going to lead to better results? You can feel free to jump in the chat and let, let me know. Peel from the CEO or this personal testimonial. That's really outlining and illustrating the impact of your gift. I see Silas says testimony. Anyone else think testimony or CEO don't be shy? Personal appeal gives me goosebumps way. The winner. I'm also trying to like push you in the right direction by reading it with a little bit more emotion, but yeah, testimony, testimony, testimony, personal appeal. Nathan: Here's what I led to. Who's a 54% increase in donations. Now what I can't do today is I can't go give you like this perfect formula to go write something as powerful as this appeal for your organization. But what it can do is give you a working template to go put your case for support together that you're gonna use as you put together different appeals and different messaging, whether it's in an email or on a donation page during your campaign. So here's just a, a very basic way, a very straightforward way to think about how do I build a case for support, shout to, um, my colleague, Greg Kalonga who put some of this thinking together, I'm gonna do my best to translate it for you here. So number one, we want to be able to define the problem at hand, if you've gone through our value proposition course, uh, you've heard me say many times in that course that if there's not a problem to solve, then there is no reason to give. Nathan: So we have to define the problem. And I wanna look at an organization, uh, called save the children. You might be familiar with them, a pretty large brand, um, and on their website, it's actually like on their, about page talking about their history. They have some really interesting language and I think powerful language that's really helping kind of define the core problem. So this is on, on their, on their website. It says, uh, in 1919, uh, the save the children was founded and the founder's conviction was that children have the right to grow up healthy, educated, and safe. And this was not a mainstream idea at the time, moving further down, uh, the UN convention on the rights of the child based on the founder's declaration is now the most universally accepted human rights treat in history, which that doesn't sound like a problem. This is like, okay, hurry. Nathan: This is awesome. Uh, this is, this is fantastic. You've done great work. What's what's the problem. Here's the problem is that despite all that, there are more children living in conflict and war zones now than at any time in the past 20 years. Whew, there's, there's, there's your core problem. And it's a big problem to try to solve moving further down the page. They say in particular, more than 12 million refugee boys and girls now face a triple jeopardy, uh, they've lost their homes and lost education. Uh, they now face the additional impact of COVID 19 on their futures. So knowing that this is kind of like the core problem that save the children is, is trying to solve currently in the world. We can go back to this case for support. What is the problem? We can easily plug this in here. So more children living in conflict and war zones now than at any time in the past 20 years. Nathan: And they've already started to move towards, uh, potential solutions, even just in that about page copy, 12 million children need shelter, they need education and they need support, you know, from the pandemic, there's lots of voices. That's impacted people all across the globe. I share this example. So you can just start to think through like, okay, if I'm trying to define my problem, how do I plug that in? What are the solutions that I offered the problem? How do I plug that in? Here's how you might do it. Even just from existing sort of like mission statement, um, about us, copy, start to build this case for support. Um, and then moving on, you know, how is your gift actually gonna be used? I wanna show you an experiment showing a couple different ways to talk about how someone's gift can be used. So this is another caring bridge experiment. Nathan: They run a lot of experimentations. It's really, really interesting. The control version. Basically this is a little call out on one of these webpages to ask you, to consider giving a tribute donation. It says tribute donations are vital to keeping caring bridge and Laura's website running honor, Laura, with the contribution to caring, bridge, very straightforward, very simple something you would see pretty commonly on a lot of different websites that are asking you to give nothing super out of the ordinary version. B reads a little bit differently. It says, do you appreciate staying connected to Kelly like this? You specifically, you do. You appreciate this. A $30 donation powers a site like Kelly's and their updates for one month, will you help ensure that caring bridge and its journal notification system stays online for them and for you for the next year, honor, Kelly, with a contribution to caring bridge. Nathan: Now, which one do you think is gonna lead to better results? The control kinda like the short copy version or the treatment it's got longer copy. It' getting a lot more specific around exactly what kind of impact your gift is going to make. The treatment actually led to a 78% increase in donor conversion. That's the number of people actually donating on the page, which is quite impactful. And so, as we consider, you know, how do you fill in this next sort of gap in your case for support? How do you, uh, communicate impact? Well, we can even look at save the children's website, uh, on their donation page. They start to get into some really specific ways your gift can be used. $50 can provide food for three children, $150 can wrap 30 warm, cozy blankets around kids affected by conflict. $300 can provide 150 face masks to refugee health workers on the front lines. Nathan: So how's your gift gonna be used? We'll start to fill this in. What does the gift actually do? It's not just going to solve the ultimate problem, your gift. Isn't gonna be used to take care of 12 million children. Your gift is gonna provide food for children going hungry. It's going to help wrap blankets around kids. It's going to provide face masks specifically. Here's the ways that your gift can be impactful and how it might be used. We're not asking for like a designated fund gift, but you're talking about here's the different ways it can be put to work after you've defined your problem, your solution. You're talking about how the gift can be used in this type of a high urgency campaign. You definitely wanna use some sort of incentive again, we're explaining why someone should give, but we also need to give some other reasons why you should give now rather than later, or maybe give a little bit more than you hadactually planned. Nathan: So promoted incentive. I'll show you a couple different incentive examples. Um, not because they're gonna be like brand new, uh, ideas for you, but to show you the potential impact. So, uh, this donation page you make Kelly's website possible. A little bit of copy donation form version B includes a matching opportunity. Straightforward. You've got this sticky bar at the top, says reminder, the family of Kathy blue will match your donation today up to $25,000. That's the only difference on the page. And by having this matching opportunity presented in a clear way, led to a 24% increase in donations. So these incentives can be really, really impactful on your bottom line. As you're trying to activate these donors during a higher urgency campaign. Here's one other example. Uh, this is on what we call an instant donation page. We can talk about what that is another day. Nathan: Um, but the control versus the treatment, the treatment, excuse me, has a premium on it, which is a free gift that you can get when you donate. And by having a premium, it led to a 92% increase in donations. So this is the power of incentives. They're, they're not new reasons why I should give, but they are additional reasons why I might give now rather than later, or maybe give a little bit more. So coming back to building this example, case for support, promoting an incentive, let's just simply plug in a match. Your gift today will be matched dollar for dollar up to $25,000. And then after you've laid all of this out, then you have to go make the ask. How do you actually make a clear call to action? And I wanna show you one more experiment around this. That's that's really interesting and might be counterintuitive for you. Nathan: It might be surprising to you, maybe not, but we'll see which one of these calls to action. This is a real question. So get your fingers on the keyboard, ready to chat. Which one of these do you think is going to lead to more donations, version a says, make your gift. Please make your year end gift to our organization. Today. Version B says, stand with us. Please stand with our organization today. Tell me in the chat, which one do you think is going to lead to more donations? I see a couple people saying stand with us. I see Katie saying, make your gift. Silas stand Stacy says, stand kind of a mix. Some a, some B, and this is why we have to test. We've got a pretty split result here. We don't know if we are, if we're open and honest with ourselves, we just don't know until we put it to the test, we've got gut feelings and intuition and best practice and all that, but that doesn't tell us the real result. Nathan: We put this to the test during the year end season. Here's the result. Are you ready? Stand with us. It was the lucky winner of leading two more clicks, but be careful if you're only measuring clicks, you're not actually measuring the most meaningful metric. If we're trying to lead to more donations saying, please stand with us. Would've actually led to a 50% decrease in donations, even though you've got more people to click. And we see this time after time where a more vague call to action often leads to more people saying, oh, interesting. And you click, please stand with us. Good, man. Do you want me to sign a petition? Do you want me to take a or a fill out a survey? Do you want me to volunteer? Do you want me to give, what do you want me to do? Let's find out, but I don't really know what's happening on the other end. Nathan: I'm not set up for the taking the next step. If we're very clear in our call to action, you might not get quite as many clicks, but the clicks you're gonna get are gonna be the people who are most highly motivated to say yes to the next step, which is ultimately giving. So if we're going to move to making our ask, we want to be clear about what the next step is. So you might say something like this. If we're going with the save, the children example, will you donate today and directly support children living in conflict around the world, feel how this really clear, doesn't say, stand with us, but it's also not asking you to go solve the ultimate, you know, macro level problem. You're not saying, will you make sure that children don't live in conflict and war zones anymore? Like, that's this huge call to action. Nathan: We wanna just invite the donor to take the next step. Will you donate today to make this impact be clear? Don't ask for this huge, uh, macro decision don't ask for something super vague. We would just wanna be clear about what's the next step that I need to take. So if you've been tracking along all the way here, you've already seen that there's actually five different experiment. Examples I've shown you that you can actually go test either next week or in your next campaign. Number one, test your case for support globally. You may have a good idea of what you think works, but you might have a couple ideas and we gotta put them to the test to see what do your donors actually resonate with. So just broadly speaking, you can test your whole case for support in a given to email appeal or on a donation page. Nathan: So there's one. Secondly, you can test increasing specificity about how a donation is going to be used. What types of things is a donation going to do? Well, actually look at that one in a bit more depth in depth here in a moment. Uh, third, you can test using a match. If you haven't used a match before, or you don't know how much it actually impacts giving for you, put it to the test. You can test using a premium, a free kind of gift to give away when someone donates and then finally test using this direct call to action. Not something like learn more or give hope or stand with us. These things are vague. They don't tell me what the actual next step is. So there's five different test ideas, even just right there, but I wanna make sure that you've got your money's worth today. Nathan: So we're gonna dive into four more, not quite as in depth as to what we've done so far, but let's kind of go, uh, kind of rapid fire through four more different specific, uh, test ideas that you can put to work in your next campaign. Here's the next one. Number two, test using direct and specific language. We talked about this a little bit, but I wanna look at some specific experiments that illustrate how this can be done in a variety of ways. Here's another email. I won't read everything to you again. We'll just kind of hit the highlights version a of this email uses fairly passive language. I'll read some out loud and I think you'll feel it says my name's Caleb. I've been a camper, a crew member counselor, and now full-time staff member at Eagle lake camps. I was 13 when I embarked on my first camp experience. Nathan: There's something so powerful about getting out of the normal, but it's more than that. Cuz at Eagle lake, I have more than just friends. The bottom line is that I'm a better leader today because of my experience at Eagle lake and I will be forever grateful. So hear this personal testimony. That's great. Scrolling down, couple more things. That's why I hope you'll take part of this opportunity to help Eagle lake raise $125,000 by May 20th. There's your goal. There is your deadline. Your donation of any amount, uh, will help. You can give here pretty straightforward appeal. They're leaning into this kind of personal testimonial from someone who's, um, you know, kind of been on every side of the Eagle lake camp experience to help paint the full picture for you. And they move towards a clear donation called action. But what if you could be more direct and more specific about your donation ask? Nathan: So this is what they tested in this second version of the appeal. Now both of these came kind of later in the campaign with about a week to go before the deadline. So not like fully in this high urgency season yet, but there has been some context and some buildup, the treatment sounds a little bit different. It's got shorter copy and it's more direct to the point and ask for something specific. My name's Caleb be beta camper, crew member, counselor, et cetera, et cetera, same kind of intro. Then it moves on. It says there are currently 30 kids waiting to find out if they can go to camp, they badly want to go, but they can't afford to go without a scholarship. Would you consider sponsoring one of these kids today they're being very direct and very specific with their donation ask, they're asking you to sponsor and basically say, if you don't, somebody's not gonna be able to go. Nathan: And we've been telling you about the experience that people have when they go to this camp and how beneficial it can be $150. Let's be specific here. $150 provides a camper with that desperately needed scholarship. Here's the link to sponsor a kid right now by being this direct. I now have a clear decision to make, am I going to help one of these kids go to camp or am I maybe gonna risk them not going at all? And I know exactly how much I have to give in order to see the impact that I want to see and what this led to passive language versus this very direct specific language led to a 219% increase in donations. Now, one word of caution here. If you take this super direct focused language and you put it at the very beginning of your campaign without any, any further context, it might not be as effective. Nathan: But if you've been cultivating people over time, telling stories of impact, bringing donors along with you, as you get more towards the end of the campaign, you can be really direct with your language and lead to a much more significant lift and giving. So there's one example. Here's another one, not in an email, but actually on a website popup. So go with me here. This popup says working preacher, that's kind of the name of the resource. The raising funds for working preacher creates thoughtful and faithful resources. Uh, and it's only possible because of your generous support. We're seeking to raise $50,000 this month. There's the goal. There's the deadline. Will you make a gift today, make your donation now pretty straightforward, again, not bad, uh, common type of language that you could probably put on your own website too. Just kind of swap out, uh, the organization, the specificity of it. Nathan: You can swap out, uh, but it's fairly passive. It's not really directly addressing the specific reader. So they tested something different. Knowing that the people coming on this site are readers and people that are taking part in this working preacher content. So here we go. Here's what they say from the get go. They're addressing you, the audience, the reader, the ideal donor directly does working. Preacher help you grow closer to God and lead others closer to him as well. You know whether or not this is valuable to you to the ideal donor. The answer to this question is going to be yes. Yeah. I read this because it's valuable to me. This is the impact it makes on me. Yes. Let me keep reading. We're seeking to raise $50,000 this month, same goal, same deadline as a working preacher reader. Would you make a gift today? Nathan: This isn't like a fundamental total transformation of the copy, but I think you can feel the difference instead of just talking to this sort of broad audience of whoever might be passing by on the website. They're talking to the person that gets value from the content and asking them to make a donation very directly. And this led to a 49% increase in giving in donations. So consider whether it's in your emails or it's on your website or it's on your donation page. How can you be a bit more specific and direct in your donation? Ask, not just talking about kind of vague concepts, but specific needs, specific goals, specific impact. Um, I'm gonna show you some how-tos for a couple of these experiments. This one isn't like abundantly clear. I can't say here's exactly what you do cuz it's, there's an art form here, writing copy for your organization. Nathan: But here's some questions that you can ask to help. If I am a particular audience segment, why would I give to you rather than to some other organization or at all? So if I'm an email subscriber who engages with this type of content or if I'm a donor, who's seen the impact of my gift in this way, or if I'm a volunteer, who's kind of been on the ground, seeing the program side of the organization, start to plug these different motivations in here and see how can you craft your copy to talk specifically to the person on the other end. Maybe I'm a reader of your content. Maybe I'm a viewer of a course or a video series. How do you talk more directly to the audience at, at hand you might ask these three questions as well. What do they believe? What are the core beliefs that they they hold and that you share? Nathan: What are they concerned about in the world specifically, what problems do they wanna actually see solved and make an impact on that? What claims of value or programs that you have or things that you do can address those concerns for them. So just start to ask some of these questions as you're writing your copy, how do I be more direct and specific to the, the individual that I'm talking to? Number three and we'll keep moving a little bit faster with each one of these. This one's really straightforward and very tactical, just use a sticky bar to humanize your value proposition or humanize your case for support. Here's an example. Uh, this is just a standard donation page from MAF, their emissions organization, that flies planes into, into places that need, uh, help and relief. And in this case, sharing, uh, sharing the gospel with them. Nathan: So that's what they do. Uh, and this is their donation page down below, they have a donation form. The only change that they made on this page was this who humanized sticky bar. You see a little picture of the person that's, that's, you know, making the appeal a day on here, says, I need your help. This year. We expect to invest 1.9 million to maintain our fleet of 41 aircraft. Your gift today can help ensure that our plans keep flying safely, make your gift. Now there's nothing super complicated here. It's just adding this bar at the top picture of a human being. That's now making a more personal appeal. This one change nothing else on the page. Change. This one change led to 114% increase in donations, which is, is pretty significant. If there's one thing that you can test going into like this next week, it's this, this is really simple and easy to set up, but let's not just look at one example. Nathan: We've seen this start to work in multiple different places. Uh, here's another organization, uh, on this instant donation page. Again, we can talk about what that is another day, but this type of donation page, they just threw another sticky bar on top. We've got picture of a human being, clarifying the appeal in the words of a human being. That's the only difference. And it led to an 839% increase in donations. I'm putting this a little little flag on here. This was kind of low sample size. Uh, so keep that in mind. This is an idea not to just say a hundred percent it's gonna work, but to make sure you put it to the test. So you know exactly how much of an impact it's going to have. So test this. It's actually really easy to set up one tool you might use to do it. Nathan: It's called Unbound. I'm not gonna read these instructions for you, but you'll get these slides so you can kind of walk through it. Uh, this tool specifically starts in 90 bucks a month. So keep that in mind, but can you justify a $90 a month tool if you can lead to 114% increase in donations on your page? Probably. So keep the, keep all those things in mind. As you're looking at the tools to go implement these different strategies, I'll send you this how to, so you'll have it to read through later, let's look at number four, reduced, reduce your list, churn, reduce your unsubscribes, reduce your opt outs from one of these campaigns. This might not make a dramatic impact in giving in your campaign, but it would reduce the churn on your list. So you can go continue to cultivate and talk to these donors and potential donors over time. Nathan: What does that mean? Here's an experiment. Uh, this organization was sending out, um, appeals for north Texas giving day, which is kind of a baked in high urgency campaign for organizations here in the north Texas area. So they're sending this appeal kind of getting people ready for the giving day that's coming, but they wondered what if people aren't ready to give. We don't want them to just hit unsubscribe or maybe maybe worse spam when they get this appeal. We don't wanna just keep bothering them if they know that they're not going to give. So what if we give them a way to just opt out of the campaign, but not totally unsubscribe from us? So here's what they did. They added this link at the bottom that says, if you can't join us this north Texas giving day, click here and I'll remove you from these messages. Nathan: You click there, you get removed from the campaign, but you don't get removed from communication just from these couple of days. And here's what it led to was a 33% decrease in people unsubscribing. So if you're really worried in one of these campaigns about lots of people opting out and choosing to unsubscribe, use a strategy like this, to keep people around, give people choice and get their permission basically to continue to send appeals and, and content. And this isn't just a one off scenario. Here's another one from CaringBridge where they did the same type of thing. If you're not able to give this holiday season, would you click here? So we knew not to send you more emails like this this month and this one led to a 14% decrease in unsubscribes. Now I don't have how to walkthroughs for every single possible email platform out there. Nathan: Again, I'll send you these slides. You, we won't read through this now, but if you're on MailChimp, here's some, uh, quick steps to think about how do I set this up? If you're using something like HubSpot, here's some other guidance as well for you. You can read through this on your own time. Hopefully there's some good pointers there to get you moving in the right direction. If you wanna go implement this number five, test using a number of donors goal, and this is kind of where we'll we'll land and wrap up here is, is on this, this, uh, method of goal setting. So we'll look at an experiment here from save the children. This is not during a high urgency campaign specifically, like there's not a deadline, but there certainly is urgency around it. Uh, they started putting up this emergency alert banner, um, basically at the start of the, uh, invasion of Ukraine when Russia invaded Ukraine, uh, saying that we're gravely concerned for children in Ukraine and Afghanistan and around the world who are caught in the middle of armed conflict. Nathan: Uh, we're on the ground right now. Uh, and around the world doing essential work, your donation helps do this life saving work donate now. So this was on their website, but they wondered what if we set a number of donors goal and basically had like an hourly goal for how many donations total number of donors would make an impact. So here's what they tested. Very similar type of value proposition language, uh, delivered in a slightly different format pops out of the side of the screen, but it says 17 donors are still needed to reach our goal this hour, not a revenue goal, but a number of donors goal. And by using this type of an approach to create urgency while they saw a 21% increase in donations, which if you have a significant amount of traffic on your side, as they do this can lead to a dramatic impact in donations and revenue, even just at a 21% increase, which is, is, is pretty significant. Nathan: But as you can see this, isn't going from like a revenue goal to a number of donors goal. So let's look at one more experiment around this. Uh, this is another caring bridge experiment you can see it says caring bridge has received a hundred thousand dollars in a challenge gift, but only if we raise it for midnight, you've got this thermometer progress bar at the top of the page, uh, showing that their 88% of the weight to the goal. And I don't know about you, but when I look at things like this and I'm, if I'm gonna consider giving like 50 bucks or a hundred bucks or, or something like that, I can pretty quickly do the math and figure out that, you know, my a hundred dollars donation, isn't gonna move this progress bar at all. Like, so, and if that's the case, if I can't give a thousand dollars or more, am I really making a significant impact or, or might my a hundred dollars gift be better invested somewhere else? Nathan: These might be the questions that donors are asking, but again, we don't know until we, until we test. So here's what they tested. They tested using this number of donors goal. In fact, they had an hourly goal that kind of ticks down as they get new donations in, they call it a power hour, it's CaringBridge power hour, and we're looking for two more donations left this hour to reach the goal. So no matter if I'm giving 10 bucks or 50 bucks or a hundred bucks or a thousand bucks or more, I know that I'm gonna go, you know, cut this, cut this progress in half, or I'm gonna, we're gonna go from two to one and I've gotten us 50% closer to the goal. Now that might make me feel like my gift is, is even more impactful and what it led to was a 25% increase in donations. Nathan: So that going from revenue goal to donor goal led to this tremendous amount increase. And it's not just on a website, it might also work in your emails too. So here's one more example. This is more of a policy organization, uh, in Canada. I won't show you the full email, but looking at this sort, this one section, the only thing that changes in version a to version B, they're running this campaign where they're putting billboards outside of the prime minister's office to try to influence policy decisions. That's essentially what's going on. And it says one more thing, hundreds of supporters, like you have made it clear. You want those billboards stay up. We've budgeted $1,300 to extend those ads. That's like the broad goal. We just need this to go keep these running version B same email, same everything, same call to action. But this little section of copy changes has the same sort of intro. Nathan: One more thing. You've made it clear. You want these to stay up. We budgeted $1,300 and we need 130 supporters to donate $10 to keep the billboards up. They're being specific. They're being direct. They're setting a number of donors goal. They're actually asking for a very small amount of money here, which may cause some alarm bells to go off from your head, which will we'll try to address here. But by adding this specific number of donors with a num with a donation amount goal led to add, to put 'em side by side a 74% increase in donation. So this approach can work not only on your website, but it might also work in framing your, your goal in really any channel, whether it's website or email or otherwise. Now some questions you might actually ask here, like, well, if you're only asking for 10 bucks, you're only gonna get like, not, not very much money. Nathan: Like, are people gonna be more inclined to give you larger gifts? If you don't set this sort of threshold? Well, what they actually saw here, uh, was an increase in overall revenue, not just number of donations, but an overall revenue increase. They actually had more people giving over a hundred bucks to the treatment than they did in the control. So at every level, the treatment actually led to the greater giving. So that's another idea for you to test. How do you frame your goal more around number of donors instead of just revenue, something to test, all right, we've covered a bunch, lots of different ideas thrown at you today. Hopefully one or two of them sticks and you can go implement it and test it and see what really works for you. And what's gonna lead to greater giving let's recap some of these high level ideas. Nathan: Again, if you've got a fiscal year end that's ending next week, and you haven't really started, here's your timeline, send an appeal on Monday. If you can get that going really quickly, send some cultivation, it doesn't have to be complicated. These don't have to be overly designed emails. I'll actually give you a template here in a moment that you can use to guide your emails as you're creating them. Uh, but send some cultivation, a link to a blog post, or maybe it's just sending a story about someone who's been impacted. Doesn't have to even link anywhere. It can just be a story to cultivate. And then on the 29th, uh, talk about how the deadline's coming. Tomorrow's the last day to give, ask for direct donation, June 30th, last day, short email ask directly for a donation, super high urgency. So there's your kind of compressed timeline, a few things to test again, test your case for support. Nathan: You don't actually know what resonates with your donors until you've seen it work. So you've gotta put it to the test to know what's going to lead to greater giving. Secondly, test that very specific language talking directly to the person on the other end, not just in vague terms, but asking for something specific to achieve a specific outcome. Third, you use a humanized sticky bar. That's a really easy tool. Use unbalance, just go put a picture of a person. Maybe it's you, maybe it's your founder or, or whoever with some personal copy to emphasize the value proposition, number four, reduce list churn by using that campaign opt out option. And then finally test that number of the owner's goal, not just the revenue goal, but you know, how many donors do we need to get there, cuz that's how you can be involved regardless of your gift amount. Nathan: Okay. We've got a little bit of time for questions. Looks like it's 1 53 central. We said we'd go till two. So get your questions in. I think there's a couple, at least one in the Q and a panel already. If you drop some in the chat, please move those over to the Q and a, because it's really hard for me to sort through all the comments and find your questions. So drop 'em in the Q and a while you do that. Um, I wanted to give you that email appeal template that I mentioned. So if you just pull out your phone like this, open your camera, you can scan that QR code on your screen, go to a landing page where you can go download this email appeal template or go to the URL either in your chat now or on your screen. This is not the ultimate email appeal that's gonna magically change your life forever, but it is based on data testing and optimization. Nathan: It's a tool that you can use to make sure you have all the key components as you write your appeals. Uh, again, doing dense in a format that's based on testing and optimization. You'll notice there's not a lot of design in this template. We tend to err on the side of humanized, email fundraising, not lots of HTML and graphics, but sending emails that look like emails from authentic human beings. So be sure to get that email template, uh, and finally be sure to its attend the nonprofit innovation and optimization summit deadline to get an early bird ticket is tomorrow. So check that out@niosummit.com. All right, we've got two questions in Q and a. We'll try to address them here. Uh, and then we'll send you on your way today. Question from Ben in the experiments where donors were given an option to opt out of a campaign, but not fully unsubscribe. Nathan: What was the impact on donations for the campaign versus the control? Uh, quite honestly, Ben, in that specific campaign, I don't have a window into the exact impact on donations. Um, I don't believe we saw a dramatic impact on total donations. That's something we've actually asked and we want to do some more testing into it's kinda hard to isolate sometimes, but what it does do is keep people around. So you can go ask them, um, later on in future campaigns. So that that's where it becomes difficult. You can look at impact on the campaign, but then long term, how does it impact giving overall that's an area we probably need to start to dive, dive into and get some more experimentation around. So great point, Ben, uh, and those are really good metrics to start to look at, not just unsubscribes. How does it affect giving in the campaign? Nathan: How does it affect giving maybe in a six month or 12 month period as well? And then we've got a question from, um, Thea, is it ever effective to have the incentive clearly be avoiding a dire consequence for the program? Um, let me think about that one for a second. I'm not quite sure exactly what it, what it means. It sounds like the, oh, I, I think I know what you mean. So like if you don't give or if we don't hit this goal, then we're not gonna be able to do X, Y or Z. I believe that's kind of what, okay. She says yes in the Q and a thank you. Um, well we did look at that one example about, you know, sponsoring these 30 kids who basically can't go to camp otherwise. Uh, and it did lead to that increase in results. Nathan: I worked at an organization before where occasionally they did some broadcasting work and we need to raise money to go basically buy some new equipment and occasionally would lean into this. Like if we don't replace X, Y, and Z, and this is gonna go off air, cuz this, this equipment is failing. We need your help to go replace it so we can keep reaching more people. So there is a time and a place for that. I think you have to be careful. And this is where, you know, a testing, maybe doesn't come into play in this case. Exactly. It's hard to AB test how often you should lean into like the world is burning down in this organization won't exist anymore. If you do that every six months, well it might not really be believable or people may also ask other questions about like, well, how are you really managing, you know, finances and donations? Nathan: Do I trust that you're gonna be doing something impactful with my gift? If every six months, six months you'd come back to me and say, we need more cuz we're not gonna make it. So you kind of gotta be careful and sort of walk a line there. Um, so I'll leave that with you to, to figure out to the best of your ability, how to, how to kind of manage that. Yeah. You're welcome. The no problem. Thank you for the question. That's all that I see in the Q and a tool. So thank you so much for those questions. If you have other things you wanna dive into, you're looking for another resource or something like that, feel free to shoot me an email nathan@nextafter.com. I'll do my best to get back to you as soon as I can. Um, as you're kind of pondering some of this information, we've got a question from Jess that just came in here. Nathan: We'll answer this one. And then I think we'll wrap up. We are granting foundations so we can never be quite certain what programs and projects will be supported by donations, donations we receive are invested in granted in future projects. Many of which folks have to apply for, I get stumped on how to create a sense of urgency for gifts way an organization funding immediate projects can do that's that's, that's, that's the challenge. That's certainly a challenge. Uh, and it, it kind of reminds me of a common question about like, you know, designated funds. And if you talk too much about one specific thing, then do those funds now have to go in a designated fund instead of like a where most needed type of fund. So it reminds me of that type of a question. Um, so maybe there's opportunity Jess, for you to talk specifically about some of the ways that, you know, these gifts get used. Nathan: Some of the projects that are coming up, or maybe examples of what's happened in the past to show kind of isolated incidents or isolated projects where donations have been put to work while walking this sort of line of not, not saying like your gift is gonna do this thing exactly. But using those examples to illustrate impact. So that's something you'll have to kind of play with in your copy. Um, you can probably do some testing around to figure out how specific should we be and how specific do we need to be. Um, but yeah, I, I, I, I see the, I see the difficulty and the challenge there, there, Jess. Okay. I think that's all the questions we have. Thank you so much, everyone. Hopefully this is helpful for you, whether you've got a campaign ending next week or you've got, uh, you're planning your next hire agency campaign, or even just starting to get wheels turning for year end season again, reach out to me anytime. Nathan: I'll do my best to get back to you. If you've got further questions, looking for a resource about something else that I can point you in the right direction, I'd love to, uh, best of luck to you and all of your fundraising work. So grateful to be able to be a part of it, at least in a small way. We're rooting for you here at next after. And hopefully we'll see you@neosummitiosummit.com. Oh, I promised if you stuck around to the end, I'd show you, um, a few fun things. Let's see, where'd my slide go. Uh, here's something you can expect at the ni summit. You ready? Here's Dorothy. She was in our office last week, doing some filming for Neo here's the scarecrow, AKA Tim dressed up as the scarecrow. We've got, Paul is the cowardly lion and here's me is this sad to man. So this is what you can expect as far as you know, over the top themeing for the summit. So hopefully we'll see you there, uh, fully in costume and it'll be a ton of fun. All right. That's it for me. Thank you.