Although in-person fundraising has returned for many nonprofits, digital advertising is still critical to amplify messaging, extend reach, grow subscriber lists and, most importantly, increase sustained donations. This DMS Live session will help elevate your understanding of 3 digital marketing best practices that can lead to successful sustainer-giving programs for your nonprofit, and help get your board “on board” with digital, sustainer-focused, performance-based campaigns.
Although in-person fundraising has returned for many nonprofits, digital advertising is still critical to amplify messaging, extend reach, grow subscriber lists and, most importantly, increase sustained donations. This DMS Live session will help elevate your understanding of 3 digital marketing best practices that can lead to successful sustainer-giving programs for your nonprofit, and help get your board “on board” with digital, sustainer-focused, performance-based campaigns.
0:15:35.0 Sarah Cavill: Hello, everyone, and welcome to our final DMS Live of the year: Top Three Strategies To Get Your Board On Board With Nonprofit Sustainer Giving Campaigns. Today, we are excited to be talking about the not-for-profit space, always a hot topic during the holiday season, [and] we'll be diving into best practices for getting your board on board with sustainer giving campaigns. I'm Sarah Cavill, Content Manager at DMS. And joining me today are Ray Schneeberger, DMS, VP of Sales, Jodi Murphy DMS, Senior Director of Client Services, and Janine Scolpino, Strategic Advisor.
As Vice President of Sales at DMS, Ray oversees business development for the DMS subscription marketing team, helping clients accelerate growth by developing diversified and data-driven customer acquisition solutions that deliver scalable, sustainable and measurable marketing results. Jodi, Senior Director of Client Services at DMS, nurtures client relationships prioritizing retention and is integral to creating and executing digital marketing strategies that help nonprofit clients achieve their fundraising business goals. Lastly, Janine, Strategic Advisor, brings 35 years of expertise in direct consumer and subscription-based marketing specializing in the nonprofit market. As Strategic Advisor, Janine is helping to drive acquisition growth across the sector. Welcome all of you and thank you so much for joining us.
0:16:45.0 Janine Scolpino: Thanks, Sarah.
0:16:46.9 SC: One quick note before we get started, please feel free to submit questions via the Q&A feature in Zoom and we'll get to your question if time allows. Okay, let's get started. We'll begin with the current state of not-for-profits. It has been a wild few years, the pandemic brought a lot of changes to fundraising, but where are we now and what trends and strategies are you really seeing rise to the top? Janine, let's start with you.
0:17:10.0 JS: Sure. From a big picture standpoint, I'd say the first thing that I've observed is the challenge of acquiring new donors, this is actually not a new trend, it's just a continuing trend, and industry benchmarking kind of shows that nonprofits do a great job of getting more money out of the same donors, but that same benchmarking shows that it's a consistent challenge for us to just find that scalable, consistent, efficient channel for sustainers. The data actually supports that this is a trend, we saw that in 2021 sustainers – which is by the way, the second trend that I would point out, the need for organizations to grow their sustainer base – seem to be on everyone's mind. And, as I started to say, the data supports that. In 2021, we saw that there was a growth of about 24% on sustainer business, whereas one-time gifts was down by about 1%, and of all online giving, 22% of it was sustainer based.
0:18:18.2 JS: So, this continues to be a big topic. Organizations recognizing the importance of sustainable predictable support continues to be there, and then the third thing I'd say would be about organizational structure. I'm really seeing a continued trend of organizations recognizing the importance of integrating fundraising, marketing and digital together to get the best experience. There's an understanding of the importance of building donor-centric strategies, and given the omni role that digital plays in that, this is what we're seeing, and we're seeing that that integration of these disciplines is really helping to create optimization and growth for organizations.
0:19:03.7 Jodi Murphy: I'll also add during times of recession or crisis, history tells us that donors tend to give more, not less; referencing recent events, obviously, all our clients saw an increase in donors and giving during the pandemic, so shifting the focus to digital channels during Covid led to opportunities, offsetting unspent budgets in canvassing and other in-person events, and also increased conversions. But I'd also like to note, what some are experiencing now is [a]fall off as we see fundraising revenue return to pre-pandemic levels, fostering the need for creative solutions to grow revenues again.
0:19:41.3 Ray Schneeberger: Now continuing with current trends… headwinds in the direct mail channel, paper supply issues and other supply chain issues, have more than disrupted previously predictable timelines, some boards are opposed to canvassing or face-to-face or television as a means to acquire sustainers. These channels, the cost per acquisition, can be anywhere from $250 to $700 per donor as a range, and that can take years to break even, yet, these are two of the three largest scalable channels for sustainers, the third one being digital. And I'd like to add, in all of my calls with potential clients, it's laser focusing on lifetime value, and ROIs, is part of every conversation. I find that there is pressure on the team to work with... To find monthly donors that can break even in under two years, and sometimes the pressure is ratcheted up to even under one year in an ideal situation.
0:20:36.2 SC: Thank you, that's a very helpful perspective to understand where we are right now in the not-for-profit space. It seems that acquiring new donors at the right ROI would help offset some of the challenges you have highlighted, and it seems like getting on the board... Getting the board on board, so to speak, is very important. What do you think the top three strategies are for convincing your board or other senior management that investment in a monthly sustainer program can be a major key to success?
0:21:00.4 JS: I would say… So, in my time at Save the Children, which was about 10, almost 10 years, there were lots of strategies, but the three that stand out for me are one, socializing buy-in beyond board members, and I'll come back and talk about that in a second. The second would be education, education, education and then the third would be stewardship. Let's just touch on the socialization buy-in, because I think this is something that some people maybe take for granted, but I see it as a really important first step, because the reality is in any nonprofit organization, there's limited discretionary funds, there's always competing priorities and goals and...
0:21:41.2 JS: Figuring out... Boards are always trying to figure out how to balance those competing priorities to create organizational strategies, so investment in one area may mean less investment in another, so I'd say one of the first steps is to figure out if there are any people within your organization that you need to get on board because you have to remember that when the board comes into meet three, maybe four times a year, they're having conversations with the individuals that you work with, not just you, and so you've gotta make sure that people are aligned and unified in what they're saying. So it's almost like creating your own advocacy campaign to help people to understand that an investment in fundraising is really an investment in your mission, in your infrastructure, and really ultimately everyone's goals. And I took this pretty seriously when we were doing what we were trying to do to get an unprecedented investment in growing our sustainer, our mid-level, actually almost everything we were doing. I conducted a road show. I actually went out on the road and met with all different departments, from HR to IT, to the program people, of course, finance, all of them, to explain what we were trying to do, but to also give them an opportunity to talk about what that might mean for them.
0:23:03.8 JS: Often times the conversations were hard because they were so focused on their own goals, but if we could talk about how we might be able to work together to achieve their goals, that became super helpful, and to that point, I ended up creating what we called a GA fund, a general administrative fund. And so I tacked on, I forget if it was 5% or 10% to whatever the investment request was, that we could grant out to some of these other departments, and so we actually had a formal application process, they could submit almost like they were applying for a grant, but it became a super helpful way to show that we could work together and build this investment and support these other teams in their goals.
0:23:48.0 JS: So this unified understanding and support really makes it easier to start that education process with the board that is ongoing, education, education, education.
0:24:01.7 SC: Jodi, it sounds like innovation and thinking on your feet is a very important part of that education piece also, and have you been in a position where you've had to support your clients in that process for investment in building a sustainable program?
0:24:13.1 JM: Always. Almost every client needs some level of support in this area, it's important to focus on the digital investment and sustainers, so that's typically how we approach the conversation. That said, we always seek to build understanding around the value of multiple channels, which helps to show the differences in KPIs and ROI in comparison to digital. At the core, monthly donors are predictable, sustainable and stable, say that 10 times, and with digital we don't have to worry too much about seasonality, which helps provide a fluid stream of new donors, not just during peak holiday end of year season giving. We find that many nonprofits are either looking to supplement their current channels like canvassing or TV, or are looking to launch their first foray into paid acquisition of monthly donors.
0:25:01.2 JM: In either case, the investment in digital provides for less risk, which is attractive to most clients and most brands. So besides helping to build decks for clients that show short and long-term investment in sustainers and what to expect from an ROI perspective, it's important to spend time educating the entire team about creative for ads, landing pages, ask arrays, payment processing, welcome journeys, credit card processing and back-end reporting, and I could probably go on another 10 minutes on that. Mutual long-term success and trust for all involved comes from sharing best practices and has been an instrumental part in the client education process.
0:25:42.6 SC: Yeah, thank you, Jodi. It sounds like you're very thorough and you go well beyond just the media buy when helping clients prepare for investment in the sustainer model. While most boards, I'm sure, understand the importance of investment in digital as a channel, Ray, have you found that building greater understanding of education around performance marketing and affiliate itself helps nonprofits get their sustaining donor campaigns to a whole other level?
0:26:03.0 RS: Absolutely, I have, Sarah. Affiliate can mean a lot of things depending on the client's past experiences. So with DMS, our work in the affiliate space is all performance-based, you pay for a sustaining donor on a cost per acquisition, CPA basis, meaning that you only pay for this sustainer donor one time, and you gain a lot of additional media exposure as well. Additionally, the digital model allows our clients to truly scale the sustainer programs within their desired ROI, while also allowing them to diversify their audience. Younger donors as an example, can come on board, and rewards loyalty-based type affiliate programs are comprised of millions of users just like you and me. Oftentimes we find that that audience skews a little younger and towards parents who play online games and choose to get rewards by supporting great causes that we represent. The beauty of these publishers' programs is that while engaging on the affiliate site, the user could choose any type of reward. Goes from packaged goods to shopping coupons, etc., and the fact that users self-select a nonprofit tells us a lot about their interest in a client's cause and the likelihood to become a long-term supporter. The key is to have a partner that knows the importance of brand representation while all the while ensuring the clients ad dollars are spent with trusted publishers.
0:27:24.8 SC: That's interesting, it certainly sounds like it prevents you from getting less-interested buy-in, you get that targeted [consumer]. Thank you for offering clarity on that. I imagine most boards are not only happy to acquire desirable donors, but also appreciate doing so at a fixed cost per donor. Janine, you mentioned stewardship as another essential strategy when working to engage and win over the board. Can you talk more about that and speak about the ROI for these campaigns? Show me the money has got to be a top priority for boards everywhere. I'll tag another question onto that for Jodi and ask how metrics and measurement should be leveraged to increase revenue of an NFP campaign.
0:28:02.1 JS: Sure, but before I go to stewardship, I just want to build on a couple of other things on the education front that I just thought of. First of all, I think it's super important to recognize that your board is busy. In the case of Save the Children, I mean, it was an incredibly impressive board, we had CEOs and titans of business folks that were heads of insurance and mergers and acquisitions, financial companies. We had actresses like Jen Garner and even Jill Biden was the chair of our board for a couple of years before Joe decided to run. I say that only to recognize that while you may not have that kind of board, wherever you are at, your board is made up of busy people, and they come to these meetings a couple of times a year with nine million things on their mind, and so it's super important to recognize that you've got to do the best you can before they get to that meeting in building their education process. And then while they're there, and so a couple of things to just share.
0:29:05.4 JS: The other part of when they're in the meeting, they don't want to look like they don't know what they're talking about. And may not want to ask questions that probably would be really helpful. So with the help of my incredible team when I was at Save the Children, we actually developed a document called fundraising for non-fundraising executives, and we provided that to the board in advance to give them the lingo that we're so used to using that they may not know, the things that they might be embarrassed again, to ask about, particularly as it relates to digital, where there may not have been as much understanding, and so that's just something I throw out there, recognize where your board is at in terms of what they know about your business and how you can educate them in ways that are different than just when you have the opportunity right in front of them.
0:29:53.9 JS: And then the other thing I would add, because we were trying to invest in so many different things at the same time, it would be almost impossible to educate every one of the board members, I think they were 30, on everything we were doing. So we decided to take the sub-committee of the development or fundraising committee and create channel champions, and so board members tend to be competitive in nature, and I think they all respect each other in a way that they might want to hear information from another board member versus a staff member, and so we actually asked individuals to invest a little extra time with our channel people to come in and learn a lot more detail, whether it was direct mail or canvassing or TV or digital with us individually, which then allowed us, when we were back together to meet, for them to kind of be the voice along with us and be that channel champion, and then that kept them engaged and interested for many years beyond that. So anyway, I just wanted to mention those two things on the education front, and then jumping into the stewardship side. Development and fundraising people, they are totally used to stewarding donors.
0:31:08.0 JS: They know how to bring them along the journey, make sure they know what's going on with their donated dollars and driving home the impact that their support is making, and the truth is the board, if they've given you six, maybe seven figure investment, they deserve that same level of stewardship and thinking about it the same way, providing them with regular updates using consistent dashboards and graphics, so they get used to seeing the same things those few times that they're together, making it easy for them to see how you're tracking versus what you've said you were going to do, highlighting what's working, what isn't, and how you're going to optimize all things that maybe aren't working as you thought, or things that are working better, being able to see both the short-term results through KPIs as well as keeping them focused on the big picture goals. And ROI needs to be at the core of every single discussion. In my experience, we were looking to grow undesignated funds three-fold, we ended up growing ten-fold, and the goal around the ROI was that we would break even in under three years. In the sustainer world, we invested in two of the big channels, canvassing and TV canvassing.
0:32:20.6 JS: And the industry, typically, breaks even between two years, right around two years plus or minus, and TV can be three years plus or minus in some cases five years, and then digital, which can be more one year, 18 months. And ultimately the DMS digital affiliate channel was our lowest CPA, highest scale, and fastest break-even, best ROI channel, which is why I actually decided to be a strategic advisor for the team to help some of my peers who were struggling with some of the same things that I was, do this. So, effective stewardship ensures that management and the board is aware of the tactics and the opportunities associated with each of the elements of the investment portfolio, and is a key to building trust, that trust and really showing that we were doing what we said we were going to do allowed us to pivot at any point in the investment strategy, so we could shift money if we needed to, to different channels, ask for more money, sometimes pull back in other areas, which ultimately really lead it to the unprecedented growth that we had.
0:33:33.5 JM: And I'm going to jump in and say, most might not be aware, who are attending today, that DMS has almost a decade of experience working with nonprofits using this model, and that our first client is still a successful, very trusted and invaluable partner today. And to answer your second question, Sarah, about the importance of metrics, metrics and measurement are key to a long-term partnership and regular focus on the right average donation level, changes in cancellation volume, shifts in attrition patterns, overall retention, it all matters to a campaign how campaigns are optimized, and how a client can demonstrate to their board and leadership that they are focused on continuous improvement. This channel has generated an average of 2000 sustainers for clients to over 42,000 sustainers in a year, and we love nothing more than putting together management slides to show this kind of healthy growth.
0:34:29.3 SC: Thank you, Janine and Jody, I'm sure it's very satisfying knowing your clients are doing good in the world. Clearly, these three strategies are helpful ways to launch a successful sustaining donor campaign and convince your board that performance marketing is a great way to do it. Ray, can you tell us the benefits of working with a partner like DMS?
0:34:45.2 RS: Sure, I'd be happy to. Now I'll start with what we call our five unique differences when compared to other opportunities. We have a proprietary screening technology, called TruHost, and this technology opens up an often overlooked channel that can scale dramatically. I’d like to turn this over to Jodi for a quick second for a visual aid to help explain TruHost benefits just a bit further. Jodi.
0:35:08.1 JM: Thanks, Ray. This is one of our favorite graphics and illustrates how DMS not only has the ability to generate thousands of sustaining donors for nonprofits, but also increase organizational awareness by driving millions upon millions of impressions and engagements. A big bonus of brand awareness – always a great thing. Our media is cost-effective using a CPA model, meaning a nonprofit only pays for the media one time and only when the sustainer has been successfully acquired by passing all business rules. Using our real-time proprietary screening solution, TruHost, as Ray mentioned about, earlier. You'll see, with these numbers, we have the technology to cherry pick quality donors. We screen out half, if not more of these donors who are less likely to be a long-term supporter. In the end, the result is the ability to drive greater longevity than other digital agencies who may be advertising in similar channels.
0:36:04.5 RS: That's a great explanation, Jodi, thanks. Being visual, that funnel really, I think, points to the importance of TruHost and what it can accomplish. So let me continue for a minute on DMS unique differences. We have one-to-one publisher-partner relationships. That's human-to-human, meaning phone calls, text, action, when we need to pick up the phone or contact our publisher partner, they react. We've grown those relationships over the years. We have retention best practices, remember that we're talking about sustainers here, retention is key to success. So we offer our clients unparalleled services on the back-end to hold retention to the highest possible expectations. Continuing on, controlled donor duplication is the way we set up our business rules and we can set up to bring in incremental net new and sustaining donors to the nonprofit. And strategic advisement, experience is the best teacher as exemplified by my colleagues on the call today, both Janine and Jodi. And lastly, I'll say because DMS is performance marketing, please keep in mind that beyond the sustainer CPA model we've discussed so far, DMS can also help a nonprofit with the following: We can grow their email donor prospect list, we can bring qualified calls to a call center for donor acquisition, and we can support virtual or live events by driving leads, so we're more than just media.
0:37:30.0 SC: That's great, Ray! Thank you so much for going into details about getting sustainer investment buy-in, it's so important for these not-for-profits. And I think we have time for one submitted question. What do you consider a reasonable timeline for getting a sustainer program up and running with DMS?
0:37:46.1 RS: That's a great question, Sarah, and often comes up at the very beginning of discovery calls that we have with our prospects. I say plan on anywhere from 6-10 weeks for onboarding. We coordinate and do the heavy lifting in bringing in the right subject matter experts from both the client's side and DMS side, so we're using the client's time efficiently, weekly meetings are set up that run anywhere from 30-60 minutes and can often run in parallel, so we might bring in the creative team to one call and the technology team to another, again, to maximize timing, efficiency and getting from onboarding to live. This thorough onboarding process includes a laundry list, we talk about strategy, where we confirm goals and what success looks like for the nonprofit. We have a creative discussion where we prepare to meet the brand objectives between offer ad units, etc, Welcome journey to communications, we're talking about all those elements in the creative process. Technology is key based on TruHost as mentioned before, so technology, strategy and planning is part of the whole onboarding process. That includes things like merchant processing and CRM integration, gift processing and reprocessing and suppression needs, and lastly, tech integration and implementation, and then final testing before we go live, to make sure everything is working properly.
0:39:09.7 JM: And Ray, I just want to add too from a skill perspective, some people might want to just dive right in and generate 42,000 sustainers in a year, that's not what we recommend. We recommend crawling before we walk and then we run, so we optimize along the way, and we scale based on the client's goals.
0:39:27.8 SC: Yeah, exactly.
0:39:30.0 JM: Not sure I said that.
0:39:30.8 JS: And Sarah, I just wanted to throw one thing in there, when Jodi was talking before about the work that she's done to help nonprofits build decks and present to their management board, that can often happen in that onboarding process or before. When Ray is engaging in conversations with nonprofits who may be looking to grow their sustainer program, we often come in and help support those conversations to get to yes.
0:40:00.8 SC: It's as if the processes all work hand-in-hand.
0:40:02.0 JS: Yeah.
0:40:02.8 SC: With the... To get the whole thing kicked off.
0:40:04.5 JS: Yeah.
0:40:05.0 SC: Thank you so much for that valuable information, and thank you to all of our panelists for your insights. I know our audience gained valuable information that can not only help them scale their sustaining donors, but also convince board members that performance marketing is the way to go. Remember that DMS is an ideal partner for leveraging digital strategies to create winning campaigns. Our toolset consists of our first-party data asset, proprietary technology and expansive digital media reach, we'd love to chat with you about how we can help and please do stick around because there is a survey that will come up at the end of our session today, where you can let us know if you'd like our sales team to reach out to you.
This is our final DMS live of the year, but we'll be back next year with more insights and information. Stay tuned for the 2023 calendar, and we hope you'll register and enjoy our upcoming sessions. Thank you everyone for attending today and have a wonderful holiday season. Bye.
0:40:50.6 JS: Bye everyone.
0:40:52.1 JM: Bye.
0:40:52.2 RS: Bye. Thank you.