Fundraising+ Communication

Resources:

• Transcript

  - Hello everyone. Thank you all for joining. Thank you for being so prompt and as a gift for being so prompt today, I will tell you that we are gonna start two minutes after, so if you need to do anything in that two minutes, if you need water or just to like get up, jump around, get excited, we'll start two minutes after. But thank you so much for joining us today. All right, I think we still have some people trickling in, but I think let's go ahead and get started today. So, hello everyone, and welcome to the second event in this year's philanthropy series, Fundraising and Communication. I'm Samantha, my pronouns are she/her. And I'm the Client Relations Lead here at Spektrix and I also lead our global fundraising team. Today, we're also joined by Sara Stevens and Miriam Wright, both Senior Fundraising Consultants. Sara is joining today from Austin, Texas, and Miriam is joining from Manchester. We are recording today's session, and we will send the recording, as well as other resources that will be mentioned by the team during the webinar, by email after the session. The webinar will last approximately one hour, including time for questions at the end. And we do have live captioning available, which you can turn on and off using the CC button at the bottom of your screen. Okay, let's take a quick look at our agenda for today's webinar. So, once we are done with introductions, Miriam will talk about the different purposes of communication and how that affects your approach. Then, Sara will guide us through different tools you can utilize. After, we'll briefly take a look at a few partner solutions that can help take your communication to the next level. And we'll finish up with a brief Q and A. And you do not have to save your questions for the end. Feel free to pop them into the Q and A feature within Zoom as you think of them. Okay, so as the title suggests, today we are going to focus on communication. So, I'm sure you would all agree that communication is absolutely essential for fundraisers. So, from telling the stories behind our exhibits to inviting people to experience the magic of our performances, communication brings our missions to life. It's how we connect with our community, spark curiosity, and inspire action. By telling compelling stories and showing the impact of your projects, you can inspire your community to support you. But it's not just about asking for support, it's about showing supporters the real difference their generosity makes. Communicating impact is integral to building trust with your donors and community. Donors need to see how their support ties back to your mission. And that's not just through numbers, although numbers are definitely helpful, but it's also being able to hear real-life stories of how their contributions have made a difference and impact on your community. Good communication builds trust and credibility, crucial elements in cultivating long-term relationships with your donors and prospects. So, whether it's through your personal conversations with donors, the language you use on your website, and in social media, and newsletters or the interactions that you have at in-person events. Being able to clearly convey why your organization's work matters can make a huge difference in galvanizing support. So, I'll now pass it to Miriam to dive into the different purposes of communication.
  
  - Thank you so much, Sam. So, similarly to what we touched on in our previous installment of this year's philanthropy series, Fundraising and Community, it's important to consider communication as the primary way that organizations build, interact with, and maintain their communities. So, like Sam touched on earlier, the efficacy and quality of communication with those communities can have a large impact on the strength of their relationships with your organization. And this is the key to our ability to effectively ask for donations, get renewed memberships, attract new donors and patrons, and create a sense of belonging that makes our organization uniquely special to them. But before we dive into exactly which Spektrix tools you use to communicate, which Sara will be taking us through later, it's really important to first assess what your goals and donor communication strategy are. And it can be really tempting to jump right in. But developing a donor communication strategy takes thoughtful planning. And two key ways of thinking about the value of the communication with donors is both communication as a benefit in exchange for donor support and communication as cultivation to foster new and renewed donor relationships. So in a previous philanthropy series webinar, specifically, Fundraising and Ticketing, which we held in September of 2023, we discussed how organizations approach donor benefits and communication with donors is one of the most important benefits that charitable organizations can provide. But when it comes out to planning out exactly how communication fits into our benefit offering, there are many considerations. So firstly, what can and cannot be automated? Do we have tiered communication benefits? So, do all donors get the same information in the same way or is it different dependent on your giving level? And if so, how do we value our pieces of communication if we do provide those tiered communication benefits? Also, how do donors fit in with other stakeholders to our organization, such as our board or our community groups that we engage with? And finally, are we ensuring that our donor communications are personal and tailored? So, let's take a step back to discuss a very simplified version of the donor management ladder. So, different donors require different management and the decision about how we group our donors can be one of the first decisions that we make. So, it's not exactly an efficient practice for us to talk to all of our donors in exactly the same way. And before we even touch a CRM tool like Spektrix, we're already doing a form of segmentation in the way that we approach how we talk to donors. The difference between automating communications and communicating with donors in a one-on-one way. So, there will always be donors, new and old, making new donations organically on your website or via your sales team. And these donations might be small, a few dollars, pounds, or euros added onto a ticket purchase or a lower tier membership purchase. And because they are small, they are likely numerous. And it would be impossible to communicate with all of those donors one-on-one all the time. Automated communication and time-saving tools are key for these types of donors. But remember that automation does not mean impersonal. Then, there are those donors that we cannot necessarily communicate with in an automated way. They may be on the higher end of the donor ladder, such as major donors, trusts, and foundations, and corporate supporters. But really, it's any donor or prospect contact that you interact with and work with on a one-on-one basis. So, you are meeting for conversations or writing proposals or application documents or engaging in email communication, and we wouldn't want to treat that communication the same as our lower-level communications as there are just some things that we can't automate. Now, Sara will be demonstrating those specific tools in Spektrix that we use to communicate shortly. But your first step to segmenting and assessing the way that we communicate with donors is by determining which donors will benefit from automation and which should be given the personal touch. So when we go further into this idea of segmenting our communications, we come onto the idea of communication as a benefit tool. And when thinking about tiering communications based on donor or member level, it can be easier to begin with the widest pool of donors and work upwards by donor level. For example, a very common example of a communication benefit for all donor member levels is a newsletter just for those who are part of that giving circle. And here's an example from Tobacco Factory Theatre in Bristol that demonstrate their donor benefit levels. Now, the exclusivity of this newsletter is an immediate benefit, something that couldn't be received without being part of a donor community. And this is also where communicating the impact of their support can be central, ensuring that your donors are learning about how their donation has allowed your organization to thrive. Exclusive updates can be a part of many membership or donor giving schemes, meaning that certain pieces of information are often shared early with those who have already donated. And this might include things like season announcements, new projects or casting information. It can be helpful if you have updates that happen on a regular basis to put together a framework of communication order with other departments in your team. This will also help with determining where your donor base sits in relation to other stakeholders that are also invested in these types of updates. For a lot of organizations, stakeholders like board members should be the first to receive certain bits of news. And then, of course, there's things like press embargoes, which are a delicate business. Working collaboratively with other departments, such as marketing and your executive team, will help with such a standardized announcement order. When it comes to tiering things like season announcements across donor levels, treat each donor as a stakeholder to fit into this framework. So for example, perhaps the general member or donor circle base should be told at the same time, but higher-level individuals or institutions can learn about things earlier. Public acknowledgements are also a great example of a communication benefit, and acknowledgements are a great way to both publicly thank donors for their support and to display this gratitude to other non-donors to encourage their support. In my last fundraising position, I was told a lot from patrons that when sitting down in their seat at the beginning of a season or at the beginning of a performance, the first thing they would do is flick to the back of the program and show their friends their name on the list. And because of this, if we got it wrong or we missed someone off that list, it was really upsetting to them. You may wish to consider whether every single tier of giving receives an acknowledgement like this or only some higher tiers. So, coming back to my Tobacco Factory Theatre example, they offer website acknowledgements from the patron level upwards. Another approach if you do provide paper brochures would be that your website is for displaying all donor levels and you restrict paper program and season brochure acknowledgements to higher tiers. Finally, you have invitations to events. Now, I hear you ask, how is this benefit related to communication? Well, if we think about communication as the sharing of knowledge, the sharing of information in order to foster a community, so much of that exclusivity of information and knowledge does happen at donor events. So perhaps it's an invitation to attend a closed rehearsal of an upcoming performance, allowing donors to understand more about the process and effort that goes into the work in the closest way possible. But if we are thinking about tiering certain pieces of information and saving other pieces for those who support at a higher-level, we need to think about how we assign value to each piece of information, which is easier said than done. If we are making certain pieces of information exclusive, we need to know why are our prospective donors finding that information valuable? And a lot about the value of information has to do with the timing of the information, who the information comes from, and where it is displayed. But you should also consider what you are asking of the recipient of that piece of communication. So, for example, when we offer early-season announcements to an entire member or donor base, the expectation for this is that they will book early, and they are able to take advantage of the availability of tickets, and their favorite seats, of course. And this is why early announcements so often coincide with priority booking. We expect our donors to support our work and we need them to see it. And so that communication benefit that we are offering serves us in a way that we ensure that we're getting seats booked, but it also serves our donors in a way that allows them to be fully prepared for an on sale. The value of this information is related to the ease of access to tickets, which means it's likely we want all donors to make use of that. Something I didn't really touch on is those one-to-one conversations that we have with high level donors and prospects. So let's say we are working on developing an exciting new project in the next year or so, the purpose of communicating that information to a prospective donor, one-on-one in a meeting or a phone call, is so that we can understand whether their interests and values align with the project goals. And ultimately, to see whether they would be interested in supporting it whilst also fostering a one-on-one connection. It's not an explicit benefit of their support that they have access to those pieces of information. But again, we don't communicate things like this to all donors regardless of level because the value of that conversation is much higher and our ask is going to be higher. It's also important to think about the ways that you may be undervaluing certain pieces of information and knowledge. So thinking back to my example of a rehearsal viewing, in my last fundraising position, we realized that we were missing a trick by inviting most of our donor levels to dedicated rehearsals with access to the director to ask questions, to meet the artistic director and the cast. And the level of closeness to the artistic work is an absolutely fantastic way to foster that sense of community. But if we wanted to encourage donors to support at a higher-level, we were losing that incentive by making it a part of every donor's experience. Though we provide benefits in the form of communication, it's not always a distinct type of communication that is benefit and another separate type of communication that suddenly becomes cultivation. And that's what's exciting about the donor and fundraising cycle. We give members their exclusive newsletter to foster that community, that engagement with our work. And so, yes, it is a benefit of their existing support, but it is also allowing us to cultivate for their renewal because after all, if they didn't renew, they wouldn't get the newsletter anymore. Tiering our communication benefits can also act as an incentive for higher-levels of support. So in that example, we were once asked by a donor why they weren't being invited to a certain event when they knew that their friends were being invited. And we were able to be pretty transparent with them and said, well, your friends give at a higher-level and that's why they've been invited. And so this donor increased their gift to have access to that behind the scenes close to the action knowledge. And then that example I gave of the meeting or phone call with a high level donor to discuss a project. It's a blur of both stewardship of an existing relationship and, of course, cultivating for another gift. So, communication is also one of the primary tools with which we use to cultivate, but again, we don't cultivate everyone in the same way. Think back to that donor pyramid. If we are hoping to increase the number of low level members or regular supporters, we won't necessarily be calling audience members individually to ask them to give at that level. We automate that process, assessing the criteria of a potential donor and targeting communications towards them. Similarly, if we are hoping to approach a major supporter to increase their support for a particular project, we won't be automating that process and including them in a wider email campaign. We'll reach out individually to them. To determine how we communicate to cultivate, we must keep in mind our end goal before we make any decisions to ensure the communication is personal and appropriate. So, what is the purpose of our cultivation? Are we cultivating for an increase in our member base or are we interested in asking higher-level patrons to support specific initiatives? Or, of course, are you working with individuals associated with a trust or a corporate prospect? Once that is determined, we can identify these prospects using segmentation that fit the criteria of a potential supporter, but only after we've established that purpose and our goal. We can then decide whether that cultivation should be automated cultivation or personal cultivation, again based on the goal that we've established. Finally, we want to be sure that the right people are getting the right information at the right time. If we are hoping to increase our entry tier member numbers, and we establish a criteria for a potential member, and we don't consider whether a major supporter of a production also meets that criteria, we run the risk of accidentally asking someone that's already supporting at a high level to join our lowest membership tier. So, it's important to know who we should include in our criteria, but also who we should exclude using certain tools like for example, a Spektrix tag. So, I've talked a lot about the considerations and research that go into a donor communication strategy, but I imagine that you're interested in hearing exactly what are some of the tools in Spektrix where you can put all of this into practice. I'll hand over to Sara now to take you through these Spektrix tools.
  
  - Thank you, Miriam. So, when it comes to communicating with donors and prospects, it is essentially a cycle. And that cycle is always going to start with the ask or more importantly, what leads up to that ask. So, regardless of if you're asking somebody for $10 or $10,000 or if this is their first or their hundredth gift, it's important to be strategic about how you communicate with that donor and still make them feel like this is the very first time that they're donating. Then once you make that ask and receive that money, hopefully, it is important to say thank you in as many ways as possible. It's a motto of ours on the fundraising team that a thank you goes a really long way, and more importantly, not saying thank you will be a major step back in your relationship with that donor. And then there is the follow-up. Not every interaction that you have with the donor should be an ask. You need to develop and cultivate those relationships outside of the financial aspect to keep a steady and strong relationship. Now, I'll dive deeper into each of these steps and outline how the Spektrix tools can assist you in successful communication. So, let's start with the ask. Everyone should feel like they are part of the community, and like they're partners to you and your organization. So the sentiment behind an ask should always be the same, whether it's a lower-level or a higher-level ask. And that ask should always be rooted in honesty, transparency, and your mission. Honesty goes a really long way when it comes to donors, and I think that was showcased to the highest extent at the start of lockdown when all of us were working at home wondering if our industry would be able to bounce back from a hit this hard. Personally, at my last organization, our donors were really receptive. I was working on a gala that was supposed to be scheduled for April 6th, 2020. We then pushed back to May, and then again, we pushed back to October, and then we were like, well, an in-person event is just not gonna happen, so let's pivot to a virtual event and have it take place in June. But then, it didn't feel right focusing our energy on a gala in the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and the We See You White American Theater demands. So we paused and then we pushed again. We were honest with our donors every step of the way as to why we made the decisions that we did and why it was important for us to make those decisions. And very few people asked for their money back on their gift. Even though we did pivot to that virtual event and there were not nearly the amount of grandiose benefits for the virtual event as the in-person event. And you can only be honest by being transparent, and not just with your board and not just with your internal teams, donors wanna feel like their money is making a difference and being used well. There's a theater in my hometown recently that was not transparent with their finances, not even to their staff or their board. And then there was an expose written about them in our newspaper stating that they were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and they had to pause their season. They held what ended up being a successful fundraising campaign to fight and save the theater. But personally, I didn't feel super confident in donating. I didn't want my donation to be mismanaged, so I wasn't gonna donate until I saw a clear effort made from the organization to stabilize their finances and actually hire folks that had a background in running an arts nonprofit. And then, finally, everything needs to align with your mission, not just the work you're doing, but also in the ways that you communicate. Everything should be brought back to that statement and your values. So, our mission at my last organization was to spark conversations that may not have happened otherwise, and that didn't just include what we were saying on stage, but also who we were reaching out to. Were we communicating with folks who may not have seen a show with us or not donated with us before? Those conversations wouldn't have happened without an initial reach out, whether that was to community organizations, and leaders and partners in our neighborhood or encouraging board members, and donors, and subscribers to bring their friends to shows regardless of if they were a prospect or not. And so approaching every conversation and interaction with patrons, regardless of their giving level, with those pillars can only lead to building a stronger relationship. And while that sentiment is the same, regardless of their giving level, the tools that you use might be a little bit different. As Miriam mentioned, those lower-level gifts might require more automation and mass resources while still trying to remain personal, whereas those larger gifts from major donors, and foundations, and corporations might require more one-on-one communication and documentation of that communication. So let's take a look at some of the tools that you might use starting with those lower-level asks. We all know the purchase path is a prime place to communicate to folks that you're a nonprofit and actually ask them for a donation. They're already purchasing something, which means they have a basket, they signed into an account, they have their credit card out and ready to go. So an ask should always be visible in the purchase path. But don't forget that that ask can be tailored. You might be fundraising for multiple projects at the same time. For example, general operating support in addition to an education initiative, for scholarships for youth programming classes. Or also maybe you might be raising money to buy a brand new piano for your venue. Using event and customer criteria on the fund in Spektrix allows you to suggest different funds to different people based on what they're purchasing and who they are according to their customer record. So, here I have this education fund that asks people to make a donation to ensure that their classes remain free for all students. Then I've set this to peer for anyone purchasing tickets to "Mama Mia Junior", this is a target ask to encourage folks who are already interested in arts education based on their purchasing. And since this ask is tailored to their interests, they may be more likely to contribute to something that aligns with their personal values. Another key here is to make sure that the ask is always visible because the worst that somebody can do is say no or ignore it. One way that we've seen this done is via infographics on websites or in email signatures like this example from A Noise Within in Pasadena, California. So this image is part of their regular email signature. It's a super clear way to tell anyone that they're emailing the impact of a donation to their organization. So, it clearly states that ticket sales only cover a third of their operating costs, and without donations, ticket prices would be so much more expensive and inaccessible. And I also love the nod to how many students, artists, and employees that the organization serves which aligns with their mission and values. And so this image then is hyperlinked to their support page on their website to encourage folks to give once or on a recurring monthly basis. And finally, as we all know, email will always be the greatest, easiest, and most automated way to reach out to a wide base of people. And as we touched on in our Fundraising and Marketing webinar this past November, dynamic content in Dotdigital allows you to create one template but then swap out the content in that template based on things like attributes or tags on the customer record. So for example, say you have a season announcement email that is going out soon, and you wanna do a donation ask in the email, but you don't wanna ask people who just gave within like the last 30 days or so because they just gave. Using an auto tag that looks for anybody who gave within the last 30 days, you can set up a dynamic content block that asks for a donation for anybody without that tag as shown here. But then you can set up a thank you for those people who do have that recent donor tag as an extra way to show that their donation is impactful and valued. Now, pivoting a little when it comes to higher-level asks, there is a bit more detail involved and probably a few extra people within your organization involved. So maybe you have a major donor prospect and it's important that your executive director is the one to make the ask. However, your executive director might not be in the database day to day, so you're the one pulling the strings and tracking the status on that progress in the system. There are tons of resources in the opportunities interface to keep track of those communication points to keep everyone internally up to date. Now, I realize that not everybody here on this webinar today might have the opportunities interface turned on, but if this is the kind of communication that you're looking to do with your higher-level donors and prospects, I would definitely recommend reaching out to us to chat through what it would take to turn on these useful features. First things first, opportunities themselves. You should be creating opportunities for a donor every time you are actively reaching out to them one-on-one and asking for a specific amount of money. And this goes for both individuals and for organizations. This allows you to keep track of the status of an ask at any given point, based on the campaign stages that you set. So for example, in this opportunity, we are soliciting Jake for his renewal to our membership program. We're able to put him in that cultivate stage. However, maybe at the same time I have another opportunity open for Jake because we are also soliciting him for a gala ticket. You can have multiple opportunities open at the same time and keeping them as up to date and clean as possible ensures that your whole team has all of the information that they need. So in this example, we can see that Jake's gala gift is currently in the pledge stage. So, that could be a signal to the other person on the team who is soliciting that membership renewal that they might wanna wait until after that pledge is paid off to reach out to Jake so it's not overwhelming. Next are activities, which might be my favorite. These are crucial in so many ways because they allow you to track communication that happens or needs to happen outside of your Spektrix system. So for example, you run into a donor at the grocery store and they mention that they know of a grant that your organization would be a really good fit for. You can set up an activity to track the conversation that you had with the donor and then also create an activity to do research on the grant that they mentioned and then potentially, you know, supplementary activities to track things like their next steps for that grant. So in that case, you can fill out an activity that includes all the grant requirements in the body of the notes, so you have clear instructions on what's required. The more detailed the better. Then on this sidebar, you can set the date of when this needs to happen, the activity type, which is totally customizable to your system. You can create as many as you want. You can mark the priority as high, medium, or low, assign it to yourself or delegate it to another staff member, and mark it as complete when the time comes. And finally, you can also include like time and money spent on that activity to track things like billable hours or the ROI on the gifts. And then when linking your customer records to the activity, you'll be prompted if you want to link that activity to an open opportunity. If that activity has to do with an ask-out that you have to the donor, then select that opportunity. And I'll show you how that can be really useful in just a moment. And then last but not least, you can include attachments on activities. So, when this grant application is done, you can attach the file for easy access should you ever need to reference it. Activities are also a way for you to track your own capacity and the capacity of other folks on your team. So, you can set up these little tabs that filter your system's activities to look at your assigned ones or those assigned to other team members so that you have an at-a-glance of their workload. This means that you're communicating internally without having to set a meeting, or check-in, or have that conversation. You can see whenever you need to know. And all you have to do is filter your activities dashboard to the desired search, and then you can bookmark it by labeling it under that tab name and clicking that plus sign. And finally, there's the timeline on the donor record. This timeline is a gorgeous chronological view of every single interaction a customer or organization has had or will have with your organization, including things like activities, pledge installments, dates of gifts, past and upcoming performances booked, all of which you can filter down to see more explicitly. But what I don't see as often is people filtering by the opportunity. And what this does is it's gonna show every interaction linked to that specific ask that you currently have out or that you had out in the past. So for example, it's time to renew a grant application and you might be a brand new manager of institutional giving. You can use that timeline to filter into the opportunity from last year's ask and see everything that happened in order to secure that gift. So, now you can see what are the activities linked to the opportunity, like when was the letter of intent sent? When did I get the budget from finance? When did I press submit? When did we receive the award letter? You can also see things like pledge installment states, links to that opportunity. So then you can anticipate cash flow in your budget for the upcoming year. Everything there is at your fingertips for future you and for future others. So now you've done all this hard work, someone has given you money, that's great. Woo-hoo. There's still a lot more that needs to happen. And the first thing that should happen is a thank you. In June, 2023, Theodore Wagenaar wrote an op-ed piece for The Chronicles of Philanthropy called, "Why I Stopped Donating to your Organization". He sent a number of substantial gifts to many institutions and then tracked what their responses were, or in his words, their lack of responses. Not only did he not get immediate or even prompt thank yous, he was actively reaching out to these organizations with questions about their programming and wasn't getting any answers. He says in the article that collectively these nonprofits have lost about $20,000 in annual gifts and a $100,000 in estate allocations from him because of their inadequate responses. He states in the article that an acknowledgement of the gift would've been enough and that a formal receipt could have come later. Immediacy is key here. And the easiest way to do this is via email. And there are a few ways that you can accomplish this in Spektrix. The first is through our standard confirmation email that is sent to any donor when they donate online. Pardon me, so sorry, my notes just completely disappeared. We love live events. So sorry, folks. All right, sorry. Back in action. So the confirmation email can be sent to donors when they donate online, and then you have the choice of whether or not to send that email when entering gifts into the sales interface. So we have this concept in Spektrix called the confirmation text attribute. And this can be applied to many concepts in the system including funds, memberships, events, and event instances. So when someone donates to that fund or buys a ticket to that instance, the confirmation email will pull this text in that is filled out in the attribute. So in this example, if I give a donation to the Our Closest Friends fund, I would receive a confirmation email that has this additional language of thank you for going the extra mile to support us. We couldn't ask for better friends. Now we often see clients include their tax IDs here or something that says a formal thank you letter is on the way. Now, if you want something a little more personal, you can use the integration with Dotdigital to set up a customer list schedule to thank donors on a more regular basis. Now, as of now, this would strictly be a thank you email. There are custom fields that we can pull in like customer attributes to personalize the greeting for example. But currently, we can't pull in things like order information. However, as you might have seen in a recent blog post that's in the pipeline, we're expanding our integration with Dotdigital so that we can pull in order information like the amount, fund, and date of the transaction. So we'll, of course, keep folks up to date on that expansion. What I love about this email from Birmingham Rep in the UK, it is that it has a clear and bold thank you for donating and emphasizing the impact of the contribution that was made. But it also takes this a step further and continues to engage the donor by encouraging them to continue their support by setting up recurring giving. And lastly, they go one more step when it comes to emphasizing the impact by including a real-life quote from a young rep participant that says, "I'd say without a doubt that the Young Rep has been the best thing that has happened to me. It's a wonderful safe space and it was ran by the loveliest of people." So this quote signals to the donors that their gift is truly making an impact on the people of Birmingham Rep and it builds trust amongst the donor and the organization, which then strengthens that relationship. And while emails get the job done, there is nothing like a personal reach out, whether that's an email or a phone call directly from the executive director or board chair. In my last organization who is a Spektrix client, we had a way of flagging on the customer record if someone was connected to a board member. We used an attribute but I've also seen other organizations use tags. And you may be asking, Sara, isn't that what relationships are for? And while that's true and also a helpful way to track those connections, we have more flexibility in pulling in attributes and tags into things like reports and customer lists. So then, we could program those tags or attributes to pull into something like the standard donations report as shown here. Now, I did remove a few columns for clarity, but in this case, I can now see that Samantha gave and her connection is Mike Geller. So this signals to me that I should probably tell Mike about Sam's gift so that he can personally send an email or give her a phone call to thank her. Now, there were times where we forgot to let board members or members of leadership know that their friend gave and it came around to bite us. The friend would then get upset that the board member didn't thank them, which then put their relationship in jeopardy, which then put our relationship in jeopardy. So, having clear processes outlined and documented for when gifts are given will only help everyone involved. And lastly, things like Thankathons are growing in popularity, especially at the end of the calendar year. I've seen our partners at Donorly, a fundraising consulting firm based out of New York, host events like these. And also, Theatr Clwyd, a client based out of Wales, showcased their version of this back in last year's philanthropy series on fundraising and collaboration. A thankathon is essentially when you get a bunch of people together from your organization, so development staff, leadership, box office, artists, and so many more, so that they can write cards to donors or make phone calls to thank them for their support throughout the year. And this is such a nice way to show internally why thank yous are important and cultivate that relationship further with those supporters. And now the follow-up of the gift is more than just the thank you. In the op-ed I mentioned earlier, the author gave to an organization that had also recently received a multimillion dollar gift. And the author expected some information about that gift and how it would be used, but that gift wasn't really acknowledged to the organization's core base of donors. He was curious if he should reallocate his donations to programs that might be less supported. And after reaching out to the organization's director, he didn't hear back until he told them that he would stop donating. Then they had a conversation of what led up to that point. And you never wanna get to that step where a donor is begging you for information and they only get that when they threaten to stop donating. So in that case, not every interaction with a donor should be related to an ask. You should be telling them good news when it comes up, updating them on fun community events that are coming up at your venue or in the surrounding areas because treating your donor as a partner will make them feel like they're valued, not like a piggy bank. And think about it, when you come home to your partner or you're spending time with friends or family, you're telling them about your days, and what you're working on, and the exciting things that are on the horizon. Hopefully, you're not just meeting up with those people to only ask for favors. And then tracking those conversations as activities is helpful to keep records of those conversations because you never know when something valuable could come of that. Because those conversations allow you to gather intel on, and when you do need to make an ask that can be helpful. So, we had a donor who had expressed how much she loved a certain playwright that we had produced and we knew we were gonna produce again in the following season. She had seen a show a few times, had always come back to the talkbacks and came to the donor events. And so we asked if she would be interested in funding a scholarship to make that playwright, our playwright, in residence for three years. And she happily agreed. And lastly, a way to build those stronger relationships is to create small moments. You may have heard the word surprise and delight before. This essentially means that when a donor appears at your venue for an event, then you surprise them with something outside of their benefits. It can be as simple as a thank you note or a drink voucher when they pick up their tickets from the box office. Or it could be that you or someone from leadership greets that person at the box office or says hello to them at their seats before the show or at intermission. For our first performance back from lockdown, we had everyone on staff take part in writing welcome back note cards, and we placed them on all of the seats in the theater along with a little branded mask as a thank you for their support and patience as we got back to the stage. This was incredibly impactful for the folks that attended the performance because in fact, some of our Spektrix staff members were there that night and still talk about it to this day. But who should you surprise and delight? There are plenty of ways to flag donors or prospects in your system to come up with a game plan. And the first, is using something like the event instance occupancy report to highlight when donors are coming to your space. So in this example, I've added a column to flag various tags like an auto tag to flag giving level or manual tags that flags people like board members. This report also has the membership information as well as seat location. So, if you're leaving a note or you're stopping by to say hello to them, you know exactly where to go. And I would definitely recommend setting something like this up on a report schedule so that it hits your inbox a few hours before each performance so that you can have all the information at your fingertips and plan these moments accordingly. Customer groups are also a great way to flag donors and other VIP folks to people who may be outside of the development department, like box office staff and ushers. Customer groups are by utilizing things like tags, and attributes, and memberships to create signals when searching for the customer in the sales and opportunities interfaces. But this can also pop up in scanners as shown here. This enables those other team members to personally welcome audience members based on the information on the scanners when scanning tickets into an event so that they feel extra welcomed to your venue. So, some key takeaways from my piece, then I'm gonna pass it to Sam. Honest and transparent communication that ultimately aligns with your value and missions is the pillar of your relationship with your donors. Those elements help build trust from your supporters to your organization, which will only strengthen and maintain that personal connection, which will lead to continual and potentially increasing donations from them. Thank yous are crucial as soon as possible, even if it's a simple recognition before a larger thank you. Get that thank you out as soon as possible so that your donors don't feel taken advantage of. And lastly, not every interaction should be an ask. This is not just a transactional relationship and you should be putting forth just as much effort as they are putting in monetarily. Now all of these takeaways only work if your entire team is aligned on them as priorities. So, I'm gonna pass it back to Sam to chat through how internal communication will support these efforts.
  
  - Amazing. Thank you so much, Sara. So, we've spent most of our time today talking about external communication, but it's important to also mention that internal communication is key to achieving goals at your organization. Internal communication fosters collaboration, alignment, and a sense of belonging among your teams. It's not just about passing along information, it's about creating a shared vision and purpose that everyone can rally behind. When your team is kept in the loop and they feel heard, they're more engaged, motivated, and productive. Effective internal communication ensures that everyone understands their role, goals, and expectations leading to smoother workflows and better decision-making. Ultimately, prioritizing internal communication isn't just a nice thing to do, it's a strategic imperative for organizations looking to succeed. So here are a few great ideas to increase internal communication while also being very efficient that Spektrix organizations have shared with us. Creating an internal newsletter that's sent out on a regular basis that gives everyone in the organization details on what each department is working on. So, this can feature progress to goals, individual accomplishment, and asks for support, which also increases opportunities for collaboration among your teams. Creating project groups where a member of each department is nominated to serve as a representative for their team for a specific initiative like preparing for a season announcement, preparing for your end-of-year appeal or streamlining tags in your Spektrix system. This allows team members of all levels of seniority to have ownership over certain areas. And this can make meetings easier to schedule since the whole team or the same person doesn't have to be in everything. And something that we do here at Spektrix at the end of every week, is have an organization-wide meeting dedicated to shouting out team members accomplishments. This could also be an email that goes out to the entire organization. Either way, this is a great opportunity to give team members recognition and highlight accomplishments that you might not have heard about if you're not in the same department. Alright, so before we move into the Q and A, as a reminder, pop any questions that you have in this Q and A box at the bottom of your screen. I wanna talk about a few partners here that can take your communication strategy even further. So, partner products allow you to open up communication channels such as text messages and push notifications on mobile phones. So, if a donor or prospect is attending the show that night, you could send donors important messages leading up to their visit, like reminding them about VIP parking or letting them know when the donor lounge will be open. And if you're an organization that offers members a discount on merchandise or a discount at the bar, you can allow members to download digital membership cards so they can redeem their benefits at your venue and at participating businesses in your community. For this, you can leverage partners like crowdEngage, Cuseum, Folio, and Visit for this type of communication to elevate donors experiences making their visit feel more bespoke and tailored to them. Next, it is incredibly helpful to know when someone is actually in your venue, whether they purchase tickets or not. So, by using partners like Social Sign-In or Wireless Social, you have the ability to collect information from anybody logging into the guest wifi at your venue. This will then create a customer record in Spektrix. And once you have that information, you can pair that with segmentation and Dotdigital to be able to send relevant follow-up emails, welcoming a patron for the first time, or thanking someone for being a repeat visitor. You could use this opportunity to send more information about your organization and the work that you do, educating your audiences while also getting more people into your pipeline. So here are the partners I mentioned today. We will be sure to link more information about these partners in the follow-up email, but if you can't wait for that, you can view them right now on our partner directory, which has just been linked in the chat. Thank you so much, events team. And if you have any further questions, please get in touch with our support team. Okay, so we have about five, six minutes. Let's see how many we can get through. Questions for, time for Q and A, as a reminder, submit your questions using the Q and A tool at the bottom of your screen. We're gonna get through as many as we possibly can, but even if we can't answer them live here, we are gonna send a follow-up email afterwards if you just provide your information. So, your name and what organization that you're with. So, to start us off, a quick one, is it possible to get a copy of past philanthropy series events? That is absolutely yes. So, we are going to link it in the follow-up comms after this, but you can view that by going to www.spektrix.com/events/philanthropyseries. Awesome. So next here, can you process gifts in the opportunities interface? I'm gonna throw that one to Sara.
  
  - Yes, absolutely you can. There's a little basket icon on the left-hand side of the panel that will show you all of your funds and memberships so that you can start transactions in the opportunities interface. The caveat there is just when processing gifts in the opportunities interface, they have to be linked to an opportunity. So that is a step that you bypass when processing gifts in the sales interface. But yes, it can be done.
  
  - Awesome, thank you, Sara. Next question, and I'm gonna paraphrase it a bit, but is there a way on Spektrix to automate acknowledgement listings for a website or program listing? So very short way to answer that question is yes, definitely, for your program listing. That's something that we help a lot of organizations with. So we have a lot of practice doing that. In terms of website, I would wanna take that offline because that's gonna depend specifically on your integration and your web developer. So, we would want to just take a look at that after. Great. Moving right along here. Can the criteria be genre of event type instead of just a certain instance? So, I believe that's relating back to the ask on the way to check out. Miriam, can you take that one?
  
  - Yeah, absolutely. Great question. And the answer is yes, it can. And it's a really great opportunity too, even if you have a lot of, I've seen organizations with different funds based on different kind of types of events that people are booking for. And really, the funding is unrestricted, but because you can tailor it to specific event attributes, so if someone is booking for comedy, you can tailor that ask to actually align with that. So, you know, please support us to continue bringing comedy to you. And then the same for other different types of events. So yes, absolutely you can do that. Great.
  
  - Awesome. Thank you, Miriam. Moving right along, can you include subscription information in automated emails such as membership names, renewal prices, expiration dates? Sara, would you mind grabbing that one?
  
  - Sure. A little bit of yes and no. So, we can pull in things like membership name, but since things like the start and end date are tied to the order itself, that is something we currently cannot bring in. But as I mentioned, we are expanding our integration with Dotdigital, so it is in the pipeline that we can pull that information in the future. And again, we'll link the blog that has kind of all of the details of what's to come. So, stay tuned in the follow-up materials.
  
  - Amazing, thank you, Sara. This might be our last question and again, please keep submitting them if you have them. We're gonna follow-up with you. But the next one is, if I create a guest list and opportunities for an event and schedule an email to be sent, can I later add or remove donors from the guest list and have those changes automatically update in the email that would be using Dotdigital for sending? Miriam, can I throw that one to you?
  
  - Yeah, good question. So yes, if you have a guest list in the opportunities interface, you are able to segment within a customer list to say, I would like to identify customers that have an invitation for these events and then send an integrated email based on that. Now, what is interesting and what needs to be kept in mind when sending a one-off email from within a customer list, that once you schedule that to be sent, that customer list is locked. And so any updates that are made will not update the list that that email is sent to. Now, that can be different based on whether you're using something like a customer list schedule, which might be a little bit different, but it is worth keeping in mind that when you are scheduling a one-off email, that list is locked. And so if you then change an RSVP or remove someone from a list, that customer list will not update. So, definitely something to keep in mind. And again, if we want to, if you want to chat through that process of, you know, getting a good email strategy for those invitations, then yeah, get in touch.
  
  - Amazing. Thank you so much, Miriam. I think, y'all have so many good questions, I wish we had time for them all. Unfortunately, we don't. We know you have to get back to your day. So what we're gonna do is take all the questions that we haven't answered. You will get a follow-up email after this webinar. But we will be sending the recording of today's webinar along with a list of additional resources. So, we referenced that throughout. So, you will have the chance to review today's content and share it with any team members who were unable to join us today. And please check out the philanthropy series webpage to register for the two remaining events coming up later this year, Fundraising and Connections, and Fundraising and Culture. And if you can't wait until the next philanthropy series, we've got plenty for you in the meantime. Hubs, we are thrilled to be heading into this year's Hubs. So in June, we will be bringing the Hubs to London, Glasgow, and Manchester in the UK. And in September and October, we will be in New York, Cincinnati, San Francisco, and Houston in North America. So, we hope that you will join us for the opportunity to connect in person with your fellow Spektrix community members and the Spektrix team. You'll find more information about these by heading to www.spektrix.com and clicking on events. For our friends in the UK, the London and Manchester Hubs are currently full, but you can register for the wait list. So, please register for the wait list. And there are still spaces to join us in Glasgow on Friday, June 7th. And for everyone in the US and Canada, registration opens today. You might be the first to know about it. You should receive an email with more information that will be sent at 10:00 AM your time. So, some of you might have already gotten it if you're on the East Coast. So, please be sure to go ahead, register, get those dates in your calendars. Awesome. So, when you leave this webinar, you will see a Zoom webpage with a super short survey. As we mentioned earlier, these sessions are designed for you and to support your teams. So, we do our best to action your feedback. So, please do take a second to tell us what you thought. So, these sessions can provide you with the most value possible. Thank you, everybody, so much for joining us today.

• Resources

  What we're unlocking in Dotdigital

  Setting Up Funds and Donations

  Understanding & Creating Opportunities

  Activities

  Confirmation Emails

  Customer Groups

  Report Request Form 

  Dynamic Content

  Why I Stopped Donating to Your Organization - OpEd Written by Theodore Wagenaar for The Chronicles of Philanthropy 

  US Hubs

  UK Hubs